PITTSBURGH, PA — Sen. McCain, joined by his wife Cindy, made a previously unannounced visit to the Primanti Brothers Restaurant and Bar, a famous Pittsburgh-area sandwich shop, Tuesday evening for a retail stop-turned media availability.

After briefly greeting a couple dozen patrons, including an Arizona family, McCain took questions from the gathered local and national press as he and Cindy were seated on stools at the counter, waiting for their cheesesteak sandwiches.

Asked for his reaction to recent Maliki calls for troop withdrawals from Iraq, McCain said he is confident that the Iraqi Prime Minister will allow the U.S. to withdraw forces in direct relation to the reality on the ground.

“I am confident that he will act, as the (Iraqi) President and foreign minister have both told me in the last several days, that it will be directly related to the situation on the ground–just as they have always said,” McCain said. “And since we are succeeding, than I am convinced, as I have said before, we can withdraw and withdraw with honor, not according to a set timetable. And I’m confident that is what Prime Minister Maliki is talking about since he has told me that for the many meetings we have had…he doesn’t want to give up these hard won victories in Basra, in Mosul, in Sadr city.”

Additionally, the candidate who received much grief last year for singing “bomb, bomb Iran” to the tune of the Beach Boys’ ‘Barbara Ann’ at a campaign event, made another joke regarding Iran that could also potentially be seen as offensive.

Informed of a report that U.S. exports to Iran have “increased ten-fold” during the Bush administration, with the biggest export being cigarettes, McCain interrupted the reporter before he could finish:

“Maybe that’s a way of killing them,” he said, before quickly adding, “I meant that as a joke–as a person who hasn’t had a cigarette in…29 years.”

When a local reporter queried the presumptive GOP nominee about his chances in Pennsylvania, where he currently down by nearly double digits in the polls, McCain said he is confident about his chances as he got in a “bitter” dig at Obama.

“We are going to be spending a lot of time here. We are going to be getting on the bus and we are going to go to the small towns in the state of Pennsylvania. And we’re going to tell them that we don’t agree with Senator Obama when he said that they cling to guns and to religion because they are bitter about the economy,” McCain added. “We are going to tell them that we love them and we appreciate them and that they’re the heartland of America and they believe in these things because that’s the abiding faith that they have in America, in their families and their future.”

The 24-hour eatery, which includes a wall-full of caricatures of famous Pittsburghers and Pittsburgh athletes from Andy Warhol to Terry Bradshaw to Dennis Miller, is widely known for adding french fries, cole slaw and mayo to the sandwich of your choice

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Pittsburgh, PA — Speaking to a group of Pennsylvania Democrats on the home turf of the Pittsburgh Steelers Thursday night, Sen. Hillary Clinton got into the mood and broke out some of her best metaphors from the gridiron.

“I want to tell you that I will be the best quarterback I can be for our country to take us to the future,” she said to a group of Allegheny Country Democrats at their annual Jefferson Jackson dinner held at Heinz Field. “We’re gonna start calling some new plays. And we’re gonna go on offense as well as have a good defense. We’re going to have a new approach to bringing jobs back to Western Pennsylvania, to creating an economy that works for everybody to move us toward the goal line of Universal health care. We are gonna get across that.”

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But after Clinton played with language (though one might add that she is actually making a defensive goal line stand of her own in the Keystone state), she took aim at an Obama ad in which the IL Democrat declares himself free of oil company money.

“I know that my opponent has been running an ad recently across Pennsylvania very forcefully saying that he doesn’t take money from oil companies,” she said. “Nobody takes money from oil companies. It’s illegal to take money from oil companies…but more than that–we both had a chance in 2005 to stand up and be counted–not just what we say when we are on the campaign trail but how we act when it matters. And we had a chance to vote yes or no on Dick Cheney’s energy bill which gave billions more in tax breaks to the oil companies. I voted no, he voted yes and we’re going to take that message across Pennsylvania. If you want somebody who is strong enough to take on the special interests and mean what I say and deliver results than I’m your candidate.”

While the Obama ad, which currently runs in PA, has been the subject of some back and forth between the campaigns during the last few days Camp Hillary seems to have the edge on this one with the independent website, factcheck.org calling the ad “a little too slick.”

Yesterday on the campaign plane, Barack Obama’s traveling staff was busy filling out NCAA Final Four brackets for a staff pool - no press allowed, per one aide. Each staffer, and the senator, forked over $10 per bracket - the winner taking the undisclosed pot.

Today the campaign announced Mr. Obama’s picks - two of which are schools in states with upcoming primaries.

In the South division, Obama picked fourth-seeded Pittsburgh - Pennsylvania’s primary, of course being on April 22nd. In the East, the senator chose #1 ranked North Carolina, where he hopes to win the state’s primary on May 6th. His other two picks, in the Midwest, Kansas, and in the West, UCLA, were states that went for Obama and Clinton respectively in their contests, held last month.

Today on the campaign trail in West Virginia, Senator Obama headed to a sports bar to mingle with patrons/voters and to eat some chicken wings in front of cameras, of course. “I’m fishing for a few votes around here, you know,” he said to the bar full of mostly male basketball fans. “At least I can show off my basketball knowledge, you know - these are the things I like to do. Sometimes here in this bubble with the press corps around you, you don’t get to talk to people,” he said, cameras rolling.

When ribbed for not picking near-by West Virginia University (ranked #7), Obama joked, “Now that’d be playing politics.”

So who did Obama bet on in the finals? UCLA v. North Carolina. He’s hoping for a Tarheel win on April 7th, after winning in the Tarheel State on May 6th.