The other day, this picture showed up on Matt Drudge’s website:
Drudge claimed that the Clinton campaign, or a Clinton staffer at least, had been handing it around in an effort, presumably, of keeping the ball rolling on the whole “Obama is a closet Muslim” story. For what it’s worth, even if Obama were a Muslim, it wouldn’t matter–we have that whole freedom of religion thing working for us and we will, believe or not, eventually have a Muslim president. Nevertheless, in today’s fear-slathered world, it is easy to see why such a “fact” would be harmful to Obama’s campaign. Also, Obama isn’t a Muslim.
This is not a picture of Obama playing dress up, hoping that one day he can be a real Muslim boy. In fact, it’s a picture of the senator performing an aspect of his job. A goodwill function that Senator Clinton admits that she has also done. Many political leader have traveled the world and played dress up with foreign leaders. And in order to prove this point several news outlets have trotted out old photos of other politicians in various (and unflattering) ethnic garb. What’s neat about these pictures is that most of them show presidents doing it. Which means that this photo, held up to public scrutiny, has actually helped Obama appear more presidential.
But that’s not why I’m posting. One of the pictures that one of the news services pulled from the archives was a picture of Bush in some South American country dolled up like Juan Valdez or the Man with No Name (aka “Blondie”) from the Fistful trilogy. Standing next to him is, I thought, Mitch Daniels, the governor of my home state. I didn’t read the caption but I knew Ol’ Mitch recently toured Mexico and I know he used to be head of the Office of Management and Budget for President Bush (where he wisely saw to it that we use up all that surplus cash we had hanging around). Here’s the pic:
Here’s the thing–This is not Governor Daniels. Nope! That’s Vladimir Putin. So I’m thinking I’m crazy. I do a couple of web searches–and, it turns out–those guys are game for a Separated at Birth challenge. If you squint a little bit, they’re basically twins. Check it out (squinting affected by low res image):
Weird, right?
