Russia's Dmitry Medvedev Hailed President Barack Obama as "My New Comrade"

I fully expect the right wing to pick up on a comment made at the recent G-20 Summit in London. Russia's Dmitry Medvedev hailed Barack Obama as "my new comrade" yesterday after their first face-to-face talks, saying the US president "can listen" -- even if little progress was made on substance. Here we go, the labels will start flying again. Never mind the rest of his statements, they will just zero in on the "comrade" portion. Remember, on the campaign trail President Obama was labeled as a socialist, a communist, an elitist, palling around with terrorists, among other things.

Medvedev contrasted Obama as "totally different" to his predecessor George W. Bush, whom he blamed for the "mistake" of US missile shield plans fiercely opposed by Moscow. Obama has agreed to visit Moscow in July.

In their London talks, Obama and Medvedev launched a milestone quest to slash their nuclear arsenals, hoping to reverse the worst slump in the former foes' ties since the end of the Cold War. The pair also discussed thorny issues including NATO's eastwards expansion, long opposed by Moscow which sees it as a power-grab by the West's former Cold War-era military bloc into former Soviet territory.

"Yesterday I spoke about this with my new comrade President Barack Obama," Medvedev told reporters travelling with him to the London summit. "Today from the United States there is at least a desire to listen to our arguments," he said, adding that: "Such defence measures should be carried out jointly" between Washington and Moscow. Source: Yahoo News

Matt Drudge has it the comment displayed prominently on his website, The Drudge Report, and I suspect conservative nutjobs will make hay of this -- Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Laura Ingraham and so on. Yep, they will try to make a mountain out of a mole hill.