More Please!  At the moment only airing in Georgia... CNN?  This is the first true Obama "Kidney Punch" of the season, lets see if the Media bites.  Clearly it indicates a foul quid-pro-quo... low blow yes... effective? YES  Finally some Chicago style bloodsport...

Script

"It was one of Washington’s biggest scandals. And the Republican power broker Ralph Reed was in the middle of it. In deep with convicted felon and lobbyist Jack Abramoff.

"But when the Senate investigated, the senator in charge never even called Reed to testify....And that senator? John McCain. And who’s now raising money for McCain’s campaign? Ralph Reed. For 26 years in Washington, John McCain’s played the same old games. We just can’t afford more of the same."

One of my favorite blogs, DownWithTyranny has just informed me that today is Ashwin Madia Blog Day. Ashwin Madia is running for the Jim Ramstad seat in MN-03.

The Republicans have announced that Rudy Giuliani will be the keynote speaker at their convention on Tuesday, September 2nd.  

Based on the growing list of no-shows within the Grand Oil Party who fear being seen in public with the parade of has-beens, never-weres, and public disgraces who comprise this cabal, it seems increasingly likely that the protesters outside the Xcel Center will vastly outnumber attendees.

But the Traditional Media will, of course, go out of their way to obscure this reality from the American viewing public.  And breaking through their barriers in order to be seen requires some serious efforts at PR.

Follow me after the jump for a strategy that will ensure that, for at least the night of Rudy's triumphant speech, the protesters outside will garner as much or more attention than the travesty inside the hall.

We must spread this around the blogosphere and get the MSM to cover this.

Via Think Progress, John McCain was at a townhall today, and a questioner said:

If we don’t reenact the draft, I don’t think we’ll have anyone to chase Bin Laden to the gates of hell.

To which McCain responded:

Ma’am, let me say that I don’t disagree with anything you said.

Video below the jump:

There's an amazing article in The New York Times. A true must read.

Obama and McCain’s "Slur du Jour"

Barack Obama faces a quandary: how to respond to the McCain campaign’s Niagara Falls of negative attacks, a "slur du jour" since Steve Schmidt took charge that pummeled Obama’s lead.

So says Human Events.com in a recent e-mail to its supporters.  They plan to put signs up all over Denver with this statement, more detail below.

Check this out.  I was doing my daily Google News search for "McCain adultery" and I found this by Mildred Perry Miller:

There is much about John McCain that most people don't know but it is imperative that they learn. He is not as he presents himself.

He is aided and abetted by many in an adoring but incorrect media. He is a representative of a decadent and destructive Republican Party. He is willing to do anything to win, even keeping America in a constant condition of resentment and hate. He is a George W. Bush clone and will follow Bush's dastardly agenda.

Sen. McCain seems willing to engage in slander, bigotry, and non-issues. Imagine what our country will look like if these conditions which already exist under the present regime are allowed to continue.

Those are just my favorite parts!

I think some need a reality check.   And here it is.   The momentum of the race has changed.  McCain is leading now both nationally and at key battleground states.

Unless people wake up and realize that this election can be EASILY lost, we will all wake up with a nightmare becoming reality in 1/2009: President John Sidney McCain.

As readers know, Slinkerwink and I have been fed up with Obama’s milquetoast, undisciplined press strategy. For all the talk about how miserable a candidate McCain is, he says something, his advertising echoes it, his press releases repeat it, and his surrogates are disciplined and drill in the same talking points over and over. Obama’s camp wants to get something across, they put the candidate out there to say something once in a town hall and then they drop it. No surrogates. No repetition. No discipline.

Now, to get this out of the way, Obama is, in our opinion, one of the best candidates we’ve had in years and, more importantly, will make a great president. And on the ground, in terms of organization, his campaign is incredibly impressive. But a ground-game cannot make up the difference for lacking a coherent strategy for setting a macro-narrative, and it’s mind-boggling to think they’ve let McCain hit them with the “celebrity” tag over and over for a month now with no response.

So, in interests of DOING something instead of just complaining about it, Slinkerwink and I are launching a new project: putting out our own proposed press releases and talking points.  

I'm talking to all of you people who sit on your asses, bitching about how luke-warm the Obama campaign is, how it's not going negative enough, it's not refuting enough, it's not active enough. And then you just sit on your asses and keep bitching.

Where is President Bush?

Look, I wish we never had to see him again. Hell, I can't stand the man. But finding The President in a news report about the campaign or in a campaign commercial recently has been like playing Where's Waldo? It's that absence at this critical hour that's pissing me off.

Watching the general election campaign so far, you'd think the incumbent Republican President didn't have a 30% approval rating. You'd think he wasn't reviled by over 50% of the American public. That's because John McCain is hiding the President and Barack Obama is letting him.

That needs to end. It needs to end now.

Reuters is reporting that McCain now has a five point lead over Obama.  Like all polls, this one is just a data point, and people should not get too high or low over any one poll.

In a sharp turnaround, Republican John McCain has opened a 5-point lead on Democrat Barack Obama in the U.S. presidential race and is seen as a stronger manager of the economy, according to a Reuters/Zogby poll released on Wednesday.

McCain leads Obama among likely U.S. voters by 46 percent to 41 percent, wiping out Obama's solid 7-point advantage in July and taking his first lead in the monthly Reuters/Zogby poll.

Poll shows McCain in 5-point lead over Obama

More, after the fold.

One more round on the Church thing--but perhaps from another angle.  Pardon me if this thought has been posted before, but I haven't seen it.

As far as the Saddleback thing goes, couldn't Obama have pulled a Stephen Colbert/Press Club thing that night?

By that I mean, while McCain was speaking to the audience in front of him and ignoring the fact that the nation was watching, Obama was speaking to all of us.

Howard Dean.

I mean, this guy ran for president 4 years ago and came darn close to winning the nomination.  I'd even say that if he were the nominee instead of Kerry, we might be running a re-election campaign for him this year.  I think he could have beaten Bush.

Here are all the reasons why he would be a great choice:

"We cannot forever hide the truth about ourselves, from ourselves."
-Fictional Maverick John McCain

Sooner or later, the day comes when you can't hide from the things that you've done anymore.
-Fictional Character William Adama, Battlestar Galctica

I'm through with it.  I'm sick of listening to, as one diarist referred to it, The Legend of John McCain.  And because I am sick of it, because forcing myself to watch his zombie base mindlessly applaud his pandering, talking points performance at Rick Warren's bloated, ego driven Christianity for Happy and Bigoted Capitalists Forum unsettled me for the last three days, I am going to rant and attack.

All throughout the end of the primary season when it looked like Obama was headed
into  battle with John McCain, he would magnanimously say that "John McCain is a
genuine American hero, and I respect his service but..."  The first time was OK, but he says it every time he makes a campaign appearance.  He must stop this now!

Dear Kossacks,

The politics season is truly upon us when we begin hearing that Republicans are push-polling.  Remember that push-polls are different that testing messages.  Message tests tend to be long polls, sometimes with nasty questions.  They are designed to judge your reactions.  Push polls are short and obviously far from factual.  They are intended to push people buttons on wedge issues or push vile rumors into circulation.

Tonight, we have the first evidence that the Norm Coleman campaign has started push polling ...

It should be noted from the outset that this diary is not moralistic--it is not cut from a we're-above-this-type-of-ugly-campaigning cloth. But this diary also is not a case for a new, Democratic Swiftboating campaign to be waged against McCain.

Instead, what follows is a brief exploration of how, in both substance and form, the "McCain wasn't tortured" line mirrors almost perfectly the attacks waged against Kerry in 2004.

Whether it's an attack strategy that WE should use is up to the masses, or Obama, or both. (Or some rogue 527.)