The man has absolutely no shame. C&L spotlights his latest false claim: that he supported a state holiday for Martin Luther King, Jr. in Arizona, when in reality he opposed it.

Also, in C&L's video, during that long pause, do you think McCain forgot the question he had just been asked? Or was just an awkward moment, like with his birth control/Viagra episode? It was definitely weird -- he didn't answer until the questioner repeated her query.

Andrew Sullivan, Chris Bodenner, and Eli Sanders all note that the McCain campaign's strategy on race is to (a) play the race card and then (b) accuse Obama of having played the race card.

The issue here, of course, is that John McCain claimed great umbrage at Barack Obama's lighthearted comment that Bush and McCain would emphasize that "he doesn't look like all those other presidents on the dollar bills."

But if John McCain thinks that comment was playing the race card, then why did he play it first? One month ago -- in late June -- a McCain ad superimposed Obama's visage on a one hundred dollar bill as part of an effort to mock his supposed 'presumptuousness.'

McCain attack ad, released June 27, 2008:

It's worth taking a look at this Washington Post editorial from August 12, 2004, attacking the swift boat smears on John Kerry as unfounded. It's not the strongest condemnation in the world, at times tough, but at other times giving Bush's allies leeway. In that sense, it's similar to the pushback in 2008 against John McCain's swiftboating of Barack Obama.

Of course, we know how 2004 turned out. In retrospect, I think we all wish Kerry had not only fought back more forcefully against the smears, but also I think most of us wish Kerry (and his allies) had unleashed a similarly tough attack on George Bush, probably on his AWOL record in the national guard.

It's tempting to apply those lessons to 2008, and in fact, Barack Obama is doing so, at least in part. Most specifically, his campaign is vigorously disputing the particulars of McCain's attacks and also using the overall tenor of the McCain campaign to portray McCain as following the low road, dishonoring the reputation he had going into the campaign.

This counterresponse is important, but is not be entirely sufficient. Something must be done to change the topic of conversation -- if this election centers on John McCain's characterization of Barack Obama, this will be a hard election to win.

Last night, I was talking politics with my mom and grandma -- both of whom support Obama, though my grandma a bit more tepidly than my mom. I asked them both whether they thought McCain was pro-life or pro-choice.

With almost no hesitation, both said they thought he was pro-choice. This morning, my mom tells that she ran into my uncle at the grocery store and asked him the same question. He knew that McCain was pro-life, but thought that he had been pro-choice up until recently, suggesting that he felt McCain's true views were more aligned with reproductive freedom.

Keep in mind that all three of them are more politically aware than the average person, and they are all left-of-center -- but even they didn't know the basic facts, that John McCain is a pro-life extremist and has been that way for quite some time. In fact, in the early 1990s he was one of just 30 senators to vote against a crackdown on right-wing anti-choice domestic terrorism, including abortion clinic bombings.

To help set the record straight, here's a video of him talking about his desire to overturn Roe v. Wade:

Never mind McCain's bizarre false prophet ad, he's now out with the strangest ad of the campaign so far.

The premise of the Spanish-language ad is that Barack Obama failed to mention any Latin American countries during his speech in Berlin. True, but if you read Obama's speech you realize that there's a reason why he didn't mention any Latin American countries: his speech wasn't about Latin America.

The really funny thing about this is that when John McCain went up to Canada to give a speech on NAFTA he didn't mention Mexico at all -- not a single time.

So given that there really isn't any substantive defense to McCain's new ad, what is he trying to do? Well, it's simple: he wants to run video of: (a) Obama saying the names of foreign countries; (b) Obama with rhythmic music playing; and (c) Obama with Spanish language video titles on the screen.

In short, the real purpose of the ad is to continue McCain's "Cuntry First" smear campaign against Barack Obama.

As I noted on Thursday, John McCain's Paris Hilton ad flashes the word "foreign" on the screen next to Barack Obama's face. The point seemed obvious to me: McCain was calling Barack a foreigner. (An odd thing to do given that Barack was born in the United States, while McCain was born in Panama.)

Some might say that I was reading too much into that aspect of the ad, that McCain's only goal was to discuss the issue at hand, "foreign oil."

But yesterday, Markos posted the actual screenshot and I noticed something else: the letters in the phrase "more foreign" are brighter than the letters in the word "oil." In other words, McCain tweaked the image so that "more foreign" would pop more from the screen than "oil."

Take a look for yourself (view the ad here):

An easy way to compare the brightness of the letters in each word is to take a look at the letter 'I' which both words share in the middle. I measured the color at the centerpoint of each occurrence of 'I' -- the color on the left is from "foreign" and the color on the right is from "oil."

On the left: the font color of "foreign"
On the right: the font color of "oil"

As you can see, there's no doubt McCain's ad intentionally brightens the word "foreign." (The color of the 'I' in "foreign" is #faede3, while it is #dfd5cc in "oil.") The obvious goal is to focus attention on the phrase, and associate it with Barack Obama.

It's pretty much an open and shut case. It's as clear an indication as we'll get that McCain is intentionally trying to smear Obama with the foreign label -- and it comes in an ad in which McCain takes pride.

I'm about to put up a new post, but before I do, I want to thank debrazza for doing an excellent job of keeping things going during my relatively brief time off from the blog. You'll get another dose of debrazza in the coming week -- he's agreed to reprise his role as a guest blogger on Tuesday and Wednesday.

Guest post by debrazza

Guest post by debrazza

How will the media treat the two upcoming anti-Obama books coming out?  Media Matters asks the crucial question,

In covering forthcoming anti-Obama books, will media repeat Swift Boat coverage mistakes?

The question of whether the media will be complicit in the Swift Boating of yet another Democratic candidate is a question we all have to prepare ourselves for.  Media Matters has been doing yeoman's work documenting the clear falsities in both publications.  The books in question are "The Obama Nation: Leftist Politics and the Cult of Personality" by Jerome Corsi, co-author of "Unfit for Command: Swift Boat Veterans Speak Out Against John Kerry" and "The Case Against Barack Obama: The Unlikely Rise and Unexamined Agenda of the Media's Favorite Candidate" by David Freddoso.

Guest post by debrazza

Guest post by debrazza

Barack Obama has unveiled a new line in his stump speech recently.  It's an oldie, but a goodie.  And damn if it isn't effective.

H/T Steve Benen

Guest post by debrazza

Guest post by debrazza

• Walmart organizing against Obama/Democrats

The WSJ reports today that the big box giant is potentially engaging in illegal campaign activity through intimidating hourly employees to vote against Obama.  The retailer is forcing employees to attend mandatory meetings where the evils of unions are espoused and Democrats and Obama are targeted as the enemy.  ThinkProgress reports that employees who have attended such meetings have contacted WalMart Watch and reported the tactics to be intimidating

• Obama announces 'emergency' economic plan

Politico.com reports that the plan will give an emergency energy rebate check of $500 to individuals and $1000 to families.  Other parts of the package that will be partially paid for by a windfall profits tax are assistance to state governments and replenishing the National Highway Trust Fund.

Guest post by debrazza

Guest post by debrazza

We've just spent the last 2 weeks witnessing a relentless negative barrage of attacks from the McCain campaign against Barack Obama.  It looks ugly, it looks scattershot, it looks ridiculous.  So why do it?  It works.  And here's why:

1. The media loves it.
2. It defines your opponent.
3. It works.

1. The media loves it.
Despite all the hand wringing that you hear in the press about how disappointed they are in how negative the campaign is getting, don't believe it for a second.  It's conflict, conflict makes news, conflict draws eyebals and conflict sells.  That is why they loved the primary, that conflict generated high ratings and huge profits.  It is why, during the most disgraceful debate moderation performance in American political history, Charlie Gibson referred to the primaries as boxing match, calling the debate in his very openning comment, "sort of round 15 in a scheduled 10-rounder."  And that outlook of course dicating the ridiculous questioning from those two disgraces for journalists.

This very week, just as we have seen print publications all calling out St. John for the dishonesty of his relentless attacks, all of the cable and national news organizations dutifully and gleefully repeated the ads over and over and over on a loop as the centerpiece of their news programming, most without even reporting that the charges were false.

By relentlessly and carelessly repeating the negative attacks over and over and over again for free, the media have their money where their mouths are regarding their most precious commodity (air time) and decided, despite all the accompanying hand wringing, that they enthusiastically endorse these tactics.

2. It defines your opponent.
Whether fairly or unfairly, the only way to define your opponent is going negative.  That is the reality of politics.  The point of defining you opponent is to get the regular media and journalists to incorporate your message into their narrative.  For the Obama campaign, they have sort of hap hazardly tried to get at the McCain/Confused narrative, with mixed results.

Instead of trying to get journalists to adopt a new narrative for Obama, the McCain campaign has instead decided to redefine an existing narrative, Obama/Rockstar as negative.  It is shrewd because the only thing it asks of journalists is to reframe their existing reporting from "Obama Rockstar!" to "Obama Rockstar?".

You cannot do this without going negative and the Obama campaign should learn a lesson from this and make McCain's "maverick" image negative.  The questions are already out there, the Obama campaign only needs to reinforce it.  The key question should be, "can America afford to have an unorganized and undisciplined President considering the challenges we face?".

3. It works.
McCain has not been effective at increasing the number of people that support him, but he has driven more people from Obama to undecided.  Negative campaigning works because it brings everyone down.  McCain is already sitting at his solid level of base support, so I doubt he will go much lower.  He doesn't want or need to present his own agenda, he only needs to bring Obama down.  I doubt that McCain will be able to increase his support above 45% during the course of the campaign, so the obvious GOP game plan has to be to keep it close like this by going relentlessly negative and then hoping beyond hope, that like during the primaries, late deciders will break away from Obama.

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Guest post by debrazza

Guest post by debrazza

In another edition of you can't make this up.  McCain's own website referred to him as a "political celebrity".

A political celebrity, McCain is considered a top contender for the nomination.

But...since this is self-defeating and contrary to their line of attack against Obama, they thought they could just delete from their website and it would disappear.  Don't these folks know about Google Cache?

Guest post by debrazza

Guest post by debrazza

This morning, I posted on the hilarious blowback on McCain's ridiculous "celebrity ad".  It seems that the Hilton family are prominent large donors to McCain and Republican causes.  Rick Davis defended the ad saying that Paris is the 2nd most popular celebrity in the world after Obama.  So why then did they create a new website with a "Celebrity Quiz", but totally exclude such a prominent celebrity and instead are featuring second rate celebrities like George Clooney, Madonna, Cameron Diaz and Matt Damon?

Considering that this new tact is taking them off their dirty signifying message, I smell a coverup.

Guest post by debrazza

Guest post by debrazza

On Monday, Dana Milbank published what can now be considered the most infamously disgusting hit piece on Obama in this campaign, the message: Obama is presumptuous/arrogant/uppity.  It has been called, and rightly so by prominent DC insiders as, "smarmy" and "a lie...was not only inaccurate and factually false...twisted, distorted and misrepresented what Obama said".

Guest post by debrazza

Guest post by debrazza

It seems that there was an additional motive in McCain playing the "'race card' card" against Obama.  They were hoping to generate a lot more discussion about Bill Clinton and hence lay bait for their White PUMA hunt.  But since their charge was so ridiculous and McCain's defense of it so ham handed (I guess Richard Cohen is right, he is a bad liar - shouldn't stop people for shaming him about it though).  So instead of tying to be subtle (these folks don't understand subtle), they have just come right out and said it.

Guest post by debrazza

Guest post by debrazza

Since John McCain is the self-professed expert in military tactics and counter insurgency, perhaps he could enlighten me as the proper terminology for this.  I am leaning towards blowback, but it just doesn't fully encapsulate the raging hilarious stupidity of his campaign.

The John McCain campaign may want to rethink its strategy of attacking Barack Obama by comparing him Paris Hilton, her family has kicked a lot of money to his campaign.

Paris's parents have donated a combined $6,900 to the McCain campaign. The celebutaunt's father Rick gave McCain $4,600 in March, and her mother Kathleen spent her own $2,300 in April.

The family patriarch William Barron Hilton, the co-chairman of the Hilton hotel chain and celebrity's grandfather, has made five seperate donations to McCain, totaling $15,100. The elder Hilton is a highly active GOP donor for several campaigns and committees, having donated to Mitt Romney and Rudy Giuliani as well as the National Republican Senatorial Committee to the tune of $15,000.

Guest post by debrazza

Guest post by debrazza

Hello everyone, I am debrazza and I will be guest blogging over the next few days to help Jed while he takes a short respite.  I am extremely grateful to Jed for asking me to do this considering the high quality of his work and the effort that he has put into building this site.  So, since he has taken such faith in me with the keys to his pride and joy, I thought it would only be appropriate to introduce myself a bit to let all of you great fellow readers and commenters know a bit about about who I am.

I like that question of course because I am always a little tempted to respond by saying either D.R.I. or Rock N Roll.  While I am sure most folks are quite aware of Mos Def, he is of course #69 in Stuff White People Like, I would be highly surprised if anyone was intimately familiar with obscure early 80's hardcore.

So why do I mention D.R.I.?  Well, D.R.I., along with a host of other early 80's punk bands that perhaps more folks are familiar with, like Dead Kennedy's and Minor Threat, were really what got me politically conscious at an extremely young age (I'm in my early 30's).  And of course, since that is how I was brought into politics, I still retain a lot those sensibilities despite the fact that I am now a suit myself.  And that sensibility can only be expressed as a deep and undying antipathy to conservatives and the conservative movement told most poignantly in my favorite D.R.I. song, Reaganomics.  It is only a 40 second song, so the lyrics are direct and to the point.

Reaganomics killing me
Reaganomics killing me
Reaganomics killing me
Reaganomics killing you

Although I like to believe that I still own all of that angst and certainly I have extremely strong opinions about what I think of social, corporate, neo- and paleo- conservatives and their ilk, I am certainly not an orthodox liberal/progressive.  That is primarily derived from the fact that I support "fair trade", particularly the ending of agricultural subsidies in the U.S. and Europe and I believe that too many public sector unions have their priorities on backwards and do considerable damage the cause of justice, education and good government by providing grist to the right wing propaganda mill and engaging in activities that undercut public confidence in public servants.  So what else is there to know about me?  Well here is a short list (or long, depending on your proclivities)

As I mentioned yesterday, I'm going to be off the grid tomorrow (Friday), leaving the blog in the hands of debrazza, who will be guest blogging in my place. (I'll be back Saturday, but I'm also taking off a couple of days next week -- Tuesday and Wednesday -- and debrazza has agreed to keep things going then as well.)

Before I "sign off" there's a few items that I had meant to get to today:

• Sam Wang (the Princeton University neuroscientist who goes by "mindgeek" at Daily Kos) wrote another extraordinarily interesting essay about the neuroscience of false beliefs. It's an absolute must read for journalists and political communications professionals, particularly those who cover or work for Barack Obama. (His work inspired my post about the AFL-CIO's excellent mailer on who Barack Obama is, a mailer that debunks smears against him without reinforcing them.
• Did I mention Professor Wang's essay is an absolute must read?
• There's a new chapter in the never-ending saga of "what the heck is John McCain's position on taxes." Now he's returning to the 'I'm against it, but everything is on the table' position.
• Speaking of John McCain and taxes, AMERICAblog's John Aravosis had some incredibly kind words to say about me and my video on McCain's confusing position. So let me say thanks to John, not just for what he said, but also for the support that both he and Joe Sudbay have given to this blog from the very beginning. (And just for the record, I write and edit my material in a home office next to my kitchen -- no basements here in Vegas.)
• This probably isn't relevant any longer, but I wish that I had mentioned it during the Landstuhl debate: John McCain used images of him and David Petraeus in fundraising mailer just a couple of months ago. Even McCain ultimately admitted it was wrong of him to politicize that active duty military.
• For those of you who recommended I get a Mac after my BSD experience, allow me to recommend to you "The 'Mojave Experiment.'" It'll be sure to generate a thousand platform flame wars, and feel free to let it rip in this thread!

Somehow this passed me by:

With Commercial, McCain Gets Much More Than His Money’s Worth
By JIM RUTENBERG - Published: July 30, 2008

WASHINGTON — The number of times Senator John McCain’s new advertisement attacking Senator Barack Obama for canceling a visit with wounded troops in Germany last week has been shown fully or partly on local, national and cable newscasts: well into the hundreds.

The number of times that spot actually, truly ran as a paid commercial: roughly a dozen.

Result for Mr. McCain: a public relations coup that allowed him to show his toughest campaign advertisement of the year — one widely panned as misleading — to millions of people, largely free, through television news media hungry for political news with arresting visual imagery.

Does the McCain campaign have to report this as an in-kind contribution?

I continue to be pleasantly surprised by Andrea Mitchell's coverage of the campaign. Her report on NBC Nightly News tonight was pretty solid.

Video below, along with the first segment of Countdown.

It's simply, really.

I'm about to go renew my license plate tabs. Wish me luck.

A quick note before I leave: at this point, it seems pretty clear that the media is steadfast in its refusal to cover Obama's response ad connecting McCain with Bush.

Because they won't play it, I'm going to repost it here:

In an interview on MSNBC, Rick Davis claimed John McCain had not undertaken any presidential campaigning outside of the United States.

But McCain has campaigned outside the U.S.: he gave a political speech in Canada, went on a Congressional junket to Europe to look like a statesman, and while he was in London, England, a British Lord hosted a fundraiser on his behalf. (Thanks to commenter alchemytoday for pointing the Davis comment out.)

FactCheck.org looks at the central policy attack in McCain's new ad and declares "that's false." It turns out that despite McCain's claim, Barack Obama does not support raising taxes on electricity.

So which campaign is lying more than the other? Hmm. How about let's take a look at the FactCheck.org home page. I took this screen grab at 11AM Pacific time:

This isn't all that surprising. After all, Reagan took naps during cabinet meetings.

Andrea Mitchell's good week continues -- she just gave McCain campaign co-manager Rick Davis a very hard time during an interview on MSNBC. He really struggled to explain McCain's tactics.

One can only hope that more reporters follow her lead -- and that she sticks with it.

The Obama campaign returns fire against McCain with a new website, previewed here.

No subtlety left behind:

"Do the American people want to elect the world’s biggest celebrity or do they want to elect an American hero?" -- Steve Schmidt, McCain Campaign Co-Manager (July 30, 2007)

John McCain's war service was heroic.

It is now clear, however, that the man is no longer any sort of hero. He had the opportunity to run a clean campaign, and he chose not to.

He has dishonored his own name.

I just noticed that someone "dugg up" an old post of mine about John McCain's fourteen hour long craps sessions, his lobbyist gambling buddy, the biggest federal land swap in Arizona history, and one of McCain's top contributors. It even has a picture of McCain playing craps at Bellagio here in Vegas. And I'd be remiss if I didn't thank SeattleAJ for making the connection between the land deal and McCain's gambling buddy.

Update: Of course, just as I posted this, the digg.com seems to have completely crashed. Update 2: And it's back online.

Now John McCain is now accusing Barack Obama of playing identity politics?

This coming just one day after McCain's campaign put out a memo calling Barack Obama a "worldwide" celebrity instead of an "American" celebrity?

This coming from a man who says that he alone in this campaign "puts country first"?

This coming just one day after McCain put out an advertisement flashing the words "is he ready to lead" superimposed on the first closeup shot of a person in the Berlin crowd, and that person just happened to be black?

I'm too tired to fire up the video editor, but you'll get the point just by reading James Rosen's (a Faux news reporter) words from Brit Hume's broadcast last night. Barack Obama, Rosen said, is "coated with a Teflon veneer of urban cool."

As I'm sure many of you will be horrified very happy to learn, I'll be taking a few days away from blogging over the next week, though not all in a row.

My plan is to take off Friday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, though there's always a possibility I'll screw up and slip in a post or two. I've asked debrazza, who is a fellow Seattleite and one of the most prolific commenters on this site, to guest blog for me on those days. Thankfully, he agreed to put up a few posts to keep things moving along.

The other housekeeping item of note is that I've spent much of the evening and early morning expanding my ability to record live TV. If I've set things up correctly (cross your fingers), I'm now recording FOX, CNN, and MSNBC 24x7, except for repeats. What this means is that things like Rachel Maddow's smackdown of Pat Buchanan won't fall into a black hole (The problem is that MSNBC doesn't post every clip of David Gregory's show and redlasso was shuttered.)

So if you see anything noteworthy on cable, drop me a line, and I might be able to put it up (no promises though, and nothing until after Wednesday).

Guest post by barath

Over at Daily Kos, Barath is fighting the ugly smear campaign against John McCain by starting a viral e-mail initiative to defend McCain from the false rumors that he's gambled away millions of dollars in Las Vegas to equally false rumors that he buys shoes $50,000 at a time. You can digg Barath's campaign to set the record straight here, and you can e-mail it to everyone you know.

As several commenters and e-mailers have noted, now that Barack Obama has responded to John Bush McCain's attack ads with his most forceful counterpunch of the campaign, the question is whether the cable networks and broadcast news networks will spend as much time analyzing Obama's attack on McCain as they have today about McCain's attack on Obama.

And I don't mean analysis of whether or not this hurts or helps Obama -- I mean analysis of whether or not Obama's response helps or hurts McCain. For example, if Barack Obama succeeds in tying McCain and Bush together in the perceptions of independent voters, does John McCain have a chance of winning? Whatever the answer to that question, how effective is Obama's new ad in tying Bush to McCain? And what are the implications for McCain?

Whether or not the media does this tomorrow will be an objective indicator of whether or not they are capable of being fair.

McCain = Bush = Status Quo.

That is the entire campaign.

Everything else is a sideshow.

Awesome ad. LOVE the image of McSameMcCain and Bush.

The Lie:

John McCain drove former President
George H.W. Bush's golf cart while wearing a pair
of $520 Salvatore Ferragamo 'Pregiato' Moccasins

I know the Republicans think they can use their tendentious reading of this "symbol" controversy as a way of reliving the glory of past campaigns, but I think they are making a big mistake.

The truth is that Barack Obama's candidacy does represent our best hope for real change, for living up to America's promise, both at home and overseas. Barack Obama's candidacy does symbolize a break from the status quo of the Bush-Cheney years.

Meanwhile, John McCain does symbolize the past. McCain does symbolize four more years of the same old stuff.

If the GOP wants to dispute that, then fine -- game on, let's do it.

So this one of the only times you'll ever find me in agreement with the Club for Growth: John McCain is trying to have it both ways on taxes. Today's re-flip-flop-flap just makes it all the more clear nobody really knows what John McCain actually believes. Maybe he's just as confused as we are.

This was awesome -- Barack Obama tying John McCain and George Bush together on economic issues and framing the election as a choice between a new direction and the Bush-McCain status quo. The best part of this is that he hit a populist note, but it didn't feel forced. This was authentic Barack Obama, hitting on the issues the Americans care about most.

This is exactly what I've been looking forward to seeing. Here's the video, from a town hall event on the economy in Springfield, Missouri:

YouTube link

Here's my transcript of the key passage:

So we've got a choice in this election. We can either choose a new direction, or we can keep on doing the same things we’ve been doing. Now my opponent, John McCain, thinks that we’re basically on the right track. [Boos from audience.] He does. He’s said our economy has made great progress in the last eight years. [Laughter.] He’s embraced the Bush economic policies and promises to continue them. Same policies as George Bush -- he wants to continue the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy, and he wants to put another $300 billion in tax cuts on the table for corporations. [Audience member yells: "why not small businesses?"] Well, why not small busineses? Because he thinks it's okay the way things are going right now. Let me tell you, we can't afford to keep on doing more of the same and that's why I'm running for President of the United States of America. [Standing ovation.]

Update (4:40PM): The Obama campaign has posted the full video here. I am in the process of a posting a larger segment, including Barack Obama's hilarious Wild Bill Hickok story.

Update 2 (6:20PM): I have now posted a new version of the video in this post. (It's a bit longer and includes the Wild Bill Hickok story.) If for some reason you want to watch the original video, you can find it here.

Wow. This is just the strangest campaign in the world. Ben Smith:

McCain campaign backs off 'cameras' charge

McCain's camp, accused in the New York Times and the Washington Post this morning of distorting Obama's canceled trip to a military hospital in German, seems to have backed off the core of the charge: That he canceled the trip because "the Pentagon wouldn't allow him to bring cameras."

"It does now seem that Barack Obama snubbed the troops for reasons other than a lack of photo-op potential," writes McCain blogger Michael Goldfarb this morning, contradicting his campaign's televised ads and his candidate's statements.

But as the media swings around to contradict McCain's story, the campaign is trying to stay on offense, blaming the press for the confusion:

So basically they campaign now seems to be trying: our ad wasn't true, but we don't take responsibility for the falsehood because the press screwed up? But how does that explain the fact that they linked to an outdated version of Lynn Sweet's blog that had only stayed up online due to a server snafu?

::: :::

Well this is a nice surprise: The Washington Post's Michael Shear and Dan Balz completely annihilate John McCain's dishonorable Landstuhl attack in no uncertain terms:

For four days, Sen. John McCain and his allies have accused Sen. Barack Obama of snubbing wounded soldiers by canceling a visit to a military hospital because he could not take reporters with him, despite no evidence that the charge is true.

Also, Lynn Sweet takes a whack at all the Republican lies, demonstrating how they willfully misinterpreted her reporting, even taking advantage of a server glitch to distort what she had said.

Josh Marshall salutes Joe Klein for standing by his condemnation of the bellicose war policies favored by Jewish neocons towards Iran.

Like Klein (and, I believe, Marshall), I'm Jewish. And like most Jews, I completely agree with Klein -- it's an absolute farce that anyone would suggest that he is an antisemite for stating his views, and it's not just because he's Jewish.

So I've finally watched Countdown and the segment that interested me most was the one on McCain's tax schism (and schizophrenia). Basically, McCain has now returned to the "no new taxes pledge" which is directly opposite what he said on Sunday's This Week broadcast (and also said in 2005). So who in the world really knows what he believes? I sure don't.

But there was something else that confused me. McCain took the question about taxes from a cute little girl, and his answer was somewhat charming. Definitely it was good theater, and I think it's great that he's taking questions from younger folks.

The whole thing seemed a little staged to me, especially coming after Club for Growth's freakout. It seemed like a real about-face from McCain's long-standing proposition that aside from his open remarks, his town halls are completely unscripted.

• Al Giordano takes a look at the veepstakes, reminding us of that ol' Kerry-Gephardt ticket.
• BarbinMD nails McCain about Landstuhl.

Well, I just spent more than two hours wrestling with Microsoft customer service over the most inane issue: my computer crashed BSD-style just before Countdown, and when it came back to life, it claimed that my Vista license key needed reactivation. But it wouldn't reactivate, and it wouldn't even let me reenter my product key.

Finally, after a phone call that spanned the life of two cordless phone batteries, a guy in technical support walked me through the steps that I needed to take to regain control of my computer (basically, I had to delete and reinstall the license key authentication software).

What a complete and total hassle. Making things more annoying, I record most of my TV on this particular computer, so I don't have Countdown saved. Fortunately, I can watch it online, which'll be a nice way to unwind.

Anyway, there is a political point to this post: I just checked HuffPo, and they featured this most glorious of articles from Politico. It turns out that the AP's bureau chief, Ron "Keep up the fight" Fournier, considered taking a job with John McCain's presidential campaign. I guess he ultimately decided he could do more good from the AP than inside the campaign.

Rasmussen is out with an interesting poll showing that a slight plurality of Americans think its more important to crackdown on speculators than it is to expand offshore drilling.

Obviously, this is something of a false dichotomy, but this is also politics, and I think the poll suggests that Obama can push his anti-speculators argument in contrast to McCain's offshore drilling argument.

Update 2 (4:33PM): Wow. On the frontpage of digg in less than 90 minutes. Incredible!

Updated and bumped (3:11PM): The McCain bury brigade buried this on digg despite getting 180 diggs in the first 2 hours. When will they ever learn? Anyway, you know what to do: please redigg and spread the word.

Original post (12:29PM): Via commenter evathia, here's the newest video from Humanitainment, the folks that brought you The Empire Strikes Barack. It's called "The Commander in Chief Test" and it's the funniest McCain video I've seen.

YouTube link

Two interesting things about Barack Obama's (not quite) new counterpunch against McCain's gas prices attack (via Ben Smith):

1. As Ben notes, Obama's "new" ad has been running for two days. So for those who've been wondering when the Obama campaign will respond to McCain's attack ads, well, they already have
2. Obama's ad counters McCain's gas attack ad, not the Landstuhl one. Despite all the attention we've paid to the troops ad, the gas attack ad McCain is actually emphasizing in his ad rotation. The troops ad is just a free media play.

Here's the ad, airing in the same markets as McCain's:

According to CNN, I felt the earthquake in Los Angeles all the way out here in Las Vegas, albeit only "slightly."

Also, according to Wolf Blitzer, the earthquake is a nightmare scenario. Wolf seemed a bit disappointed when the Mayor of LA told him that he wasn't aware of any major injuries or structural damage.

p.s.: I did feel the Joshua Tree earthquake and the Nisqually quake, both of which were much stronger (7.0 and 6.8 respectively) than today's (5.4).

DHS thinks they can scare you into voting for John McCain by issuing a terror alert sponsored by ABC News.

Remember 2004? Just a few days after W won reelection, the government lowered a key terror alert. Hmm. Coincidence?

Remind you of Charlie Black's not-so-wishful thinking?

One of the big challenges with defending Barack Obama -- or anyone else, for that matter -- against false, viral smears is that the last thing you want to do is to inadvertently reinforce the smear.

In late June, Professor Sam Wang, a neuroscientist at Princeton (mindgeek at Daily Kos), penned a New York Times op-ed describing how debunking falsehoods by repeating the falsehoods can in fact strengthen the original falsehood. Consequently, the best way to spread the truth is by leading with the truth to debunk the smear. For example, emphasize that  "Barack Obama IS a Christian" instead of saying what he is not.

Today, Ben Smith posted a new mailer from AFL-CIO aimed at debunking several of the most prominent smears against Barack Obama, and it is by far the best effort I've seen during the entire campaign to combat the smears.

I know it might seem presumptuous to offer advice to a campaign that is currently ahead by as many as 8 points in the national tracking polls, but armchair campaign management is way too much fun, so here goes: a list three ideas that might prove useful for the Obama campaign.

In brief, they are:

1. Recognize that you already have all the presidential imagery you need, and start putting it on the air.
2. Feed the beast from time to time, but continue giving McCain the opportunity to self-destruct.
3. Start defining McCain by tying him to Bush in a Harry and Louise-style TV ad campaign

Details below.

:: :: ::

First: Recognize that you already have all the presidential imagery you need, and start putting it on the air.

Barack Obama's trip overseas was more successful than anybody could have ever imagined; it produced more presidential, commander-in-chief images of your candidate than Bush has had in the last six years combined. You cannot recreate the magic of the past week, nor do you need to.

Specifically, you don't need to do events like the one you had today with Wall Street and labor leaders. I understand the meeting was set up to look like a Cabinet meeting, and the intention was to produce more presidential imagery. It was probably scheduled before last week's trip, so you couldn't have known that by now you'd already have all the presidential images you need, but at this point, images like today's meeting fall far short of the high mark set last week -- and even if they didn't, they'd be superfluous.

So instead of trying to create new presidential images, use the ones you already have in web videos and television advertisements. Frank Rich was right when he said Barack Obama seemed like an acting president last week. To make that point, all you have to do is run the tape. Milk it for all its worth.

:: :: ::

Second: Feed the beast from time to time, but continue giving McCain the opportunity to self-destruct.

There's no doubt that despite the media's bias towards McCain, he's his own worst enemy, and it is a smart strategy to let him hang himself from his own rope. And it's also true that every time he goes on TV the odds are better than not that he's going to inflict some damage on his own campaign.

So you don't need drive every news cycle, but you should aim to stir things up at least once or twice a week by giving the media some fresh material to work with. Use the tried and true trick of the minimal ad buy, or once you have a Vice Presidential candidate, use him or her launch a serious missile volley every now and then towards McCain.

Create a bit of a commotion, enough to keep McCain off-stride and the base fired up. But don't overdo it. Continue giving them breathing room: the more the McCain campaign keeps on trotting their guy out there, the more likely it is that he's going to snap -- and when he finally does, it's going to be a big deal, perhaps even lights out.

:: :: ::

Third - Start defining McCain by tying him to Bush in a Harry and Louise-style TV ad campaign

Obama should probably use a slightly more downscale version of Harry and Louise, but this image from the original ad gives you the idea.

Most of us on the left have bad memories of the Harry and Louise ads (featuring a couple sitting at a kitchen table talking about health care policy), but the reason why we hated those ads was because they were incredibly effective. You deployed them effectively during the primary on behalf of Barack Obama -- now is the time to use a similar style ad campaign against John McCain.

These ads can focus on any number of economic issues, but they should be oriented around driving two central messages: McCain = Bush = Stats quo, and that Barack Obama = Agent of Change. Done correctly, the imagery of these ads will make McCain seem out of touch.

Be creative with these ads -- come up with a some memorable hook like the 3AM line. Maybe it's a new set of names for the couple in the ad. But let the ad tell a story, a story about a family, and the disastrous impact that Bush-McCain policies will have, and how the change represented by Barack Obama will offer hope for renewed American greatness and economic strength.

I'm not saying to abandon other types of advertising; in fact, the kitchen table ads should be run in conjunction with ads featuring Barack Obama himself, both in images from his trip overseas, and also talking straight to camera and with voters about pocketbook issues.

So use the kitchen-table/Harry and Louise ads to define McCain as Bush/Status Quo/Out-of-Touch, and then use the rest of the ad rotation to simultaneously build up Barack Obama's strengths.

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I don't watch Dan Abrams' show all that often, and I was about to kick myself when I started watching the broadcast earlier this evening because it started off dreadfully. First, Abrams launched into a typical he said-she said overview of McCain's new ad, and then Jonathan Alter slept his way through a tepid rejection of it. Then Brad Blakeman (or whatever his name is) started spouting off the McCain talking points and all the sudden Alter woke the ___ up.

So says the AP.

For perspective on the problems this could cause McCain with his conservative base...take the negative fallout that Barack Obama took from what actually happened on FISA, add to that the negative fallout that would have happened had the media's initial reports about his Iraq timetable been accurate, combine them, and then multiply that total by 5,432,981, and then apply it to John McCain.

Club for Growth, the conservative anti-tax organization, is already ripping McCain a new one in a letter from their organization's president, Pat Toomey:

Rachel Maddow and Keith Olbermann take on the media's coverage of the 2008 campaign, calling the MSM's handling of McCain's dishonorable Landstuhl smear "unconscionable."

All of John McCain's attack ads have had major factual problems. He's falsely claimed that Obama is responsible for high gas prices, he's falsely claimed that Landstuhl had something to do with cameras, and he's falsely claimed that Obama opposes nuclear power. And those are just off the top of my head.

On policy issues, he hedged his bets on the surge back in 2007. He's nearly impossible to pin on key issues ranging from affirmative action to cap-and-trade to gay adoption to whether or not he supports a timetable for ending the war in Iraq. Even on local issues he's all over the map: he flip-flopped on burying nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain in Nevada, but now he's flipped back to supporting it. And that was just in the course of one month.

Steve Benen has compiled a tremendous list (edit: I fixed the broken link) of flip-flops by McCain. Some of these flip-flops might be evolving positions based on new realities, but far too many of them are purely political.

So here's the thing: John McCain really isn't that honest a guy after all, is he?

Rasmussen did a fav/unfav poll for the various VP possibilities for both Barack Obama and John McCain. Romney's fav/unfav numbers really aren't very good -- 42 favorable, 48 unfavorable. Huckabee's are decent -- 47/39, as are Lieberman's -- 46/39. John Edwards does best on the D side, 56/35, and Hillary Clinton comes in at 51/46.

Pretty much all the other names Rasmussen tested weren't very widely recognized. I'd have liked to have seen Wes Clark's numbers to see how many people know who is. Anyway, I suspect that Obama's pick won't be one of the names Rasmussen tested, but that McCain's pick will be.

Also: While I'm on the subject of polls, this USA Today/Gallup likely voter screen sure does seem strange. (Another odd note: Gallup now has one poll showing Obama with a 48-40 lead, and another poll showing McCain with a 49-45 lead. Hmmm. Just imagine if Diebold ran the polls...)

Remember cap-n-trade, the anti-global warming policy on which McCain flip-flop-flipped? Well, now it seems that his campaign is signaling a reflop.

FORBES: Yes. I think cap and trade is going to go the way of some other things...I don’t think those things are going to get very far as people start to examine the details of them.

BECK: But shouldn’t he have examined those details, Steve? Shouldn’t he have known that’s a bad idea?

FORBES: Yes, well, he’s moving in the right direction. You got to give him credit. He’s now for really having active exploration offshore.

Once again, I'm totally confused about where John McCain really stands. This pattern of trying to be all things to all people is a hallmark of McCain's presidential campaign, and the media allows him to get away with it. He is playing them for a fool. Either that, or they are playing us for a fool.

Wow.

Andrea Mitchell lacerates McCain's dishonorable Landstuhl attack. In her words: "It seems inexplicable that this whole thing has become an issue."

Political Radar:

McCain Has Mole-Like Skin Removed

ABC News' Bret Hovell Reports: John McCain had a small piece of mole-like skin removed from his right temple this morning at a regularly scheduled dermatological checkup in Phoenix.

Update: Video of McCain talking about his doctor's visit:

This made me chuckle. From Ben Smith's and Jonathan Martin's article on how the McCain campaign is focusing its dishonorable campaign around character attacks:

Jim Pinkerton, a contributor to Fox News who worked for Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush, and for former Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee in this year's GOP primary, isn’t convinced of the efficacy of this line of attack:

"First they goaded him into going to Iraq and that was pretty successful — for Obama. And now the McCain people are trying to goad him into spending more time with the troops and going to hospitals to visit wounded soldiers.

“They better be careful what they wish for, since Obama just might screw them up and do it.”

First of all, I have to concede defeat: my prediction that McCain would pick his VP last week didn't come to pass. But Novak did float -- falsely -- that McCain would make the pick, so I'm going to take a partial victory.

I'm going to stick with my other prediction, that that McCain's pick will be Romney, but I'm beginning to think that Romney might be a better pick for McCain than I had originally thought. Nate Silver does a good job running through the impact a Romney pick would have on the electoral map and demographics. The short version is that Romney would be a smallish boost in a lot of states that matter (western, New England, and Michigan) and a liability in the south.

My take is that in a close election, Romney's liabilities in the south wouldn't make that much of a difference -- I can't imagine McCain would lose any southern states in a very close election, with the possible exception of Virginia. But in a close election, Romney would also provide a significant boost in states like Michigan, New Hampshire, Nevada, and Colorado.

The flipside is that if the election isn't close (in Obama's favor), Romney could give Obama the best chance for a huge electoral college. Not only would McCain still be losing the states Romney would help in, he'd also be more likely to lose southern states because Romney would be an additional drag.

At this point, it seems impossible that McCain would win by a large margin, so if a close election is the only kind of election he can win, Romney makes sense, despite his downside risk.

::: :::

Beyond the electoral map, Romney is a strong fundraiser and is also popular with the DC Republican establishment, who fear nothing more than a Huckabee pick. (I still think Huckabee would be McCain's best pick.)

Pawlenty might be a decent pick, but I'm not sure where he helps McCain outside Minnesota.

The other name you hear some of is Tom Ridge, but Ridge comes with a huge problem: he's pro-choice. In theory, you'd think that McCain would like a pro-choicer on the ticket to appeal to independent women. The problem is that in order to get away with putting a pro-choicer on the ticket, he'd have to really emphasize is pro-life position to conservatives, which would likely neutralize any impact of Ridge.

Moreover, the media coverage would be entirely fixated on their schism on abortion. Some of that would be positive, but ultimately it would highlight McCain's anti-choice views, and that's not what he wants to be talking about.

So I'm sticking with my Romney pick, though I'm thinking that he brings more to the table than I originally had thought.

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The election countdown is now below 100 -- just 99 days left until the election. And speaking of numbers that keep getting smaller, this seems like just as good a time as any to take another look at a certain presidential candidate talking about his academic record.

Josh Marshall digs up a Salon.com article from February, 2007 arguing that John McCain hedged his bets on the surge:

By simultaneously endorsing the surge and harshly criticizing certain aspects of the Bush plan as potentially disastrous, McCain appears to be hedging his bets should the surge fail. "He is looking for an exit strategy if it does not work," said Stephen Wayne, a political science professor at Georgetown University. "It says: 'You just did not do it right, Mr. President.'"

The article points to a February 8, 2007 Senate floor speech by McCain opposing the nomination of Gen. George Casey to be Army chief of staff. I found video of it, and sure enough, McCain did hedge his bets on the surge -- and he wasn't subtle about it at all. Here's what he said:

I am very nervous about this new strategy. I am very doubtful that we have enough troops. I don't know if the Maliki government will be strong enough. But if General Casey is appointed to this position, my confidence will be lowered because it is not appropriate to put someone who does not support wholeheartedly the new strategy in a position where he will be responsible for a great deal of it.

Here's the video:

More photos at icebergslim's Daily Kos diary.

Is it just me, or does it seem like the Republican noise machine has all but given up on John McCain's dishonorable attack on Barack Obama?

I've now watched all four morning talk shows, and the only full-throated embrace of McCain's attack came from McCain himself (recorded yesterday) and John Thune (who wants to be McCain's VP).

When Stephanopoulos brought it up on This Week, George Will gave gave Obama a light slap on the wrist, but quickly moved onto a new topic. On FOX News, if the panel mentioned it at all, they barely dwelled on it. Karl Rove muttered a couple of the talking points, but moved right along, clearly more interested in talking about other issues. And on Face The Nation, Chuck Hagel ripped McCain in the most personal terms that I've yet heard from him. (I wouldn't have expected Hagel to defend McCain, but there's a big difference between being supportive of Obama and attacking McCain.)

Over at The Field, Al Giordano makes two important points. First, McCain's attack ad is a play for free media -- it's only airing in three locations (edit, I left out PA: DC/NoVA, PA, and CO) with very small buys. It's entirely designed to derail the Obama campaign from its message.

Second, Al also points out that the backlash to McCain's ad is so fierce that the Obama campaign may not need to engage in tit-for-tat (so long as this stays as a chattering class issue). I'll let Al take over:

Note that the pushback is so far coming from a multitude of surrogates, bloggers and journalists, none of whom waited for orders from above to get out their blowtorches. To me, that's a more significant development than anything the Obama campaign itself does. That brings to mind another rule of life: do not shake a hornet's nest! Obama's gonna have to take a number behind everybody else that has lined up to throw knives on this one.

And now here's Chuck Hagel and Jack Reed proving Al's point. Each Senator devastates McCain in a different way, but just as importantly, they both speak to the strength and promise of Barack Obama.

I can't stress this point enough: during the portion of his trip that was official Senate business -- the portion in Iraq and Afghanistan and Kuwait -- Barack Obama visited with wounded troops, and he did so without any fanfare.

Nonetheless, John McCain is criticizing Barack Obama for not seeing wounded troops at Landstuhl, even though during McCain's most recent Europe trip, he didn't visit them either, despite being just a short drive away.

The funny part is that McCain's trip to Europe was official Senate business, funded by taxpayers. Barack Obama's trip was political and was funded by the campaign. Now, I would never suggest in a million years that John McCain -- whose several decades of service I deeply honor -- doesn't care about the troops. But it's simply remarkable that he sees fit to make such an attack on Barack Obama.

From London, recorded on Saturday afternoon. Worth watching for the first 90 seconds alone.

Gold star goes to the first person who can figure what what the **** his real position is on ending the war in Iraq.

Well, we're back where we started. John McCain made it clear today that he opposes a timetable for ending the war in Iraq. (He also denied ever having used the word.) So the choice once again is between Barack Obama's plan to end the war and John McCain's plan for neverending war.

Update: I've now updated this post with a short video of McCain denying having used the word "timetable." You can find the full segment of the interview in the vodpod at the top of the page. Edit: I had a typo in the dates on the first video. That typo has been corrected.

Mixed results in the tracking polls today: Obama's lead dropped from 6 points to 5 in the Rasmussen poll, but grew from 7 points to 9 in the Gallup poll. Net/net: Since leaving for his trip overseas, Obama is +5 in Rasmussen and +7 in Gallup.

PHOENIX, AZ -- U.S. Senator John McCain (whom we honor and respect for his decades of service to this country, blah blah blah) today spun completely out of control while chasing the runaway polling numbers of his political opponent, Barack Obama, who all rational people intend to make the next president of the United States of America.

The curious thing about John McCain's dishonorable attack on Barack Obama is that McCain himself visited Europe in March, but didn't visit the wounded troops in Landstuhl, Germany.

It's true that McCain's trip to Europe bypassed Germany -- he only went to London and Paris. But as you can see in the map below, it turns out that London and Berlin are about the same distance from Landstuhl, and Paris is just a four hour drive away.

So if McCain wanted to visit the troops, it would have been trivial to arrange -- no seismic event needed. But it's clear McCain didn't want to visit them, and as a result, it should be fair to ask McCain why he now feels entitled to attack Barack Obama.