Obama should use the same strategy Franken has been using in the last few days - put out ads telling people that the smears are an attempt to distract them from McCain's complicity in the economic disaster. I really don't think people are in the mood for b.s. this time around. It may backfire on McCain.

Coming from a former chairman of FEC, this is an especially urgent and important message. Can you possibly get a version of it published in a more influential venue as to the target than TPMCafe?

All Obama needs to do at this point is just hold a mirror up to all the foolish stuff his campaign management is saying:

Nobody is hearing us
We have to change the subject
Issue ads turn off as many voters as they turns on
Dirt works

Hell, even my parents have caught on to their shenanigans. But, like Hillary, I think they have held back their really nasty stuff until it is too late.

There's an integrity to most everything Obama and his campaign have done the past two years. I'm not talking in this case of integrity in the strict moral sense (though that seems to be present also), but in the sense his campaign operation all hangs together as a whole. It's been remarkably measured, steady, sure, focused, thoughtful, sensible, and effective. It's as if, gosh darnit! someone actually sat down, made a plan, examined the plan, revised as necessary, then carried it out with an authority that has felt professional and now seems thoroughly presidential.

I'm partisan, but I am not the only one in America who has noticed this.

And ever since Obama said, basically, that if they bring a knife he'll show up with a gun, I haven't been too worried about what will happen when the October slime flys. For a man who has to carry the additional burden in this campaign of having to come off presidential without coming off as uppity, I thought this was a particularly bold and risky statement. But, judging by how he has run his campaign, I don't think he would have said this without a distinct purpose. I think he was saying, as he did when challenged about the war . . . Okay, you really want to talk gutter politics? You're sure now, because THAT'S a fight I'm willing to have.

Of all the jaw dropping machinations of Karl Rove, none astonished me more than the way they targeted the very foundation of John Kerry's claim to the presidency: the suffering he endured for his country. Four years later we have a candidate basing his claim on this same suffering. Just as their were Swift Boaters For Truth, there are Vietnam POWS For Truth. Yes John McCain was a POW. Yes he suffered. But, in service to his ambition, not his country, he has shamelessly embellished his POW experience to polish his brand as both a hero and a maverick. Other POWS who were there also are beginning to speak out about this, as are other veterans speaking out about his character and behavior previous to his POW experience.

It sickened me to watch the Swift Boating of John Kerry. It would sicken me to watch the same thing happen to John McCain. But right now Sarah Palin is running around firing the first volley of the McCain campaigns new charge: Obama consorted with a domestic terrorist!

We all knew it would come to this. Tomorrow it will be Rezko. The next day Reverend Wright. I've given up trying to predict how and when Obama will respond. I'm one of those who panic every time this shit comes up, but the campaign, thus far, has seemed to take it in stride.

Someone wrote somewhere in the last few days, and it's too late and I'm too tired to hunt for and attribute it to the correct author, but they basically said that, every place the McCain campaign goes, the Obama campaign is already there. He has shown that he will do what it takes. And I think he was saying that if you really want to knife me with character assasination and draw serious blood, that is a fight I look forward too.

We shall see.

Dohhhhhh! Again:

Please read the first paragraph of my post above as:

All Obama needs to do at this point is just hold a mirror up to all the foolish stuff McCAIN'S campaign management is saying.

Sorry AGAIN for the confusion.

I think Obama's campaign is handling this pretty well. By giving terse refutations they stay out of the mud themselves.

The msm, well, that's another story. Why are they even covering Palin? Palin, who refuses to even answer a shouted out question from a reporter; Palin who is the first VP nominee who eschews the Sunday am talk shows; Palin who has never once given a press conference! If they would have a media black-out of Palin she would learn a lesson, and perhaps make herself available to those of us who demand some answers from her.

Here's a question: "Governor Palin, do you believe in the validity of legal subpoenas for ordinary citizens such as your husband? If not, why not?"

Here's one for McCain: "Senator McCain, in light of your ads attacking Senator Obama for attending one campaign event hosted by William Ayers, are you prepared to defend your own associations with people such as Charles Keating and E Gordon Liddy and others?"

And another: "Senator McCain, can you please provide our listeners with the name and contact number of the company that will insure a family of four for $5,000 a year? Why do you say that you will not increase taxes on the middle class when your plan includes taxing employer contributions to their insurance premiums, which is not currently done?"

You know given the persistent maniacal zeal these right wing political operatives have systematically raped our country's wealth and standing in the international community, you can almost sympathize with an Ayer wanting to take action into his own hands.