No one ever said having a pragmatic foreign policy was easy, but it’s what Barack Obama wants, and sometimes you just have to let terrible states work out their internal political problems on their own (at least for a few days or weeks or whatever). The other option is to have John McCain as President of the United States, a situation where skepticism over the legitimacy of foreign election results would immediately lead to all sorts of belligerent condemnations and freaking *oil embargoes* and eventually nine or so wars, on the same country, before the dust settles. [Think Progress]

Eric Cantor’s Boner wasn’t the only guest of honor at Barack Obama’s press conference today! John McCain was there too, and Barack Obama called on him to talk about the defense budget, leading to McCain’s bizarre swipe at the Presidential Helicopter he will never have: “…your helicopter is now going to cost as much as Air Force One. I don’t think that there’s any more graphic demonstration of how good ideas have — have cost taxpayers an enormous amount of money.” Then Obama says a number of likable things that make John McCain look both petty and subservient. [YouTube, The Plank]

• NEW YORK TIMES IS WRONG ABOUT WHATEVER: Your Wonkette editors spent a few minutes this morning coming up with the new standardized spelling of John McCain’s, uh, “sound,” and it is now “HEHNGNN?” But fancy this, the liberal junk-rated New York Times has a new piece up and spells The Sound as, “Henh?” Not only is that… stupid… dumb-looking… but it’s also very Vietnamese-ish, which is sexist to John McCain’s programming operation during his years as a prison hero. [NYT]