old-man-yells.thumbnail.jpgSo, George Bush, voted most second most popular President ever by both the James Buchanan and Warren G. Harding Fan Clubs, goes off to another country and makes a speech slandering his potential successor.

And John McCain, riding those 27% approval coattails jumps in with both feet, because he's so darn classy:

Senator John McCain...wholeheartedly endorsed Mr. Bush’s veiled rebuke in the Israeli Knesset of Senator Barack Obama that talking to “terrorists and radicals'’ was no different than appeasing Hitler and the Nazis.

Of course, what Obama said he was willing to do was talk to actual sovereign states, Iran and Syria for example -- like even Bush realized he should do with North Korea. But Bush and McCain want to pretend Obama is going to hang out and chill with the "terrorizers" ... maybe have them over for some CostCo beef ribs with some of that lovely Kirkland Dry Rub. And NOBODY out-grills the master of propane John McCain with friend or foe.

Well, as James P. Rubin can tell you from first hand experience, McCain is lying:

But given his own position on Hamas, McCain is the last politician who should be attacking Obama. Two years ago, just after Hamas won the Palestinian parliamentary elections, I interviewed McCain for the British network Sky News's "World News Tonight" program. Here is the crucial part of our exchange:

I asked: "Do you think that American diplomats should be operating the way they have in the past, working with the Palestinian government if Hamas is now in charge?"

McCain answered: "They're the government; sooner or later we are going to have to deal with them, one way or another, and I understand why this administration and previous administrations had such antipathy towards Hamas because of their dedication to violence and the things that they not only espouse but practice, so . . . but it's a new reality in the Middle East. I think the lesson is people want security and a decent life and decent future, that they want democracy. Fatah was not giving them that."

And so we have the prototypical John McCain political statement...constant duplicity hidden under the mantle of occasional deprecating humor, dipped in barbecue sauce, oh the press does love it so.

UPDATE:

Via the Moderate Voice here is the video of Jamie Rubin's interview.


This provides the tone of the conversation to the text-quotes that by themselves McCain could try to explain away. A video like this should be pretty damaging to McCain per the Tim Russert rule (there's videotape) -- but can the press actually harm their sainted grill-master by using the truth against him?

(pic from here via Southern Beale...but really the responsibility of Keith Olbermann)