No good deed goes unpunished

Senator Obama has completed a successful overseas tour, partly at the urging of Senator McCain.

Naturally, the McCain Camp has spent the time sniping at every event, and spinning every word to make their guy look adequate. Good for them. I do enjoy the hopeless causes.

So why is it that nobody is mentioning the primary difference between this tour and the dozen or so overseas tours undertaken by the presumptuous .. sorry, presumptive ... the word gets used so often in regard to Obama one forgets that one can write about the campaign without it's use.

Note for new writers: I see many people misspelling "presumptuous" in various comments. Soon we will be in the final 90 days of the campaign, and you can use the McCain-Approved Synonym: "Uppity" without fear.

Oh yes, the difference in the two candidates? Other than his trips to Iraq and Afghanistan, where he was accompanied by senior Senate colleagues who had their own reasons for their presence, Senator Obama paid for his trip from campaign funds. His Senate staff left the entourage when the other Senators headed for home, and the campaign staff came on board. How is that different? Simple. In his dozens of trips each year since 2000, all of which include "off-duty time" spent in fund-raising or other political acticivies, Senator McCain takes three or more senators, drawn from a group known in D.C. as the Mac Pack. The presence of this bunch of drinking buddies meant that the trip is going to be paid for out of Senate funds ..... unless he hits a military base somewhere, where it gets reimbursed by the DoD.

So the candidate that pays his own way gets called an elitist and the candidate who has had very few subsidized days in his life is somehow "Just Plain Folks???"