Yesterday I posted a link to the Seal commercial run by the McCain campaign in late June to TPM Cafe, under a post entitles "The "Insult to the Intelligence" Card""

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CDTJDv4hevU&feature=related

Today, the Jed Report carried this same story, but pointed out something additional that was very important, which constitutes proof positive that the McCain campaign's cries that Obama played the race card when he pointed out the obvious - that the McCain campaign would attack him because he looks different than those other presidents on the dollar bills -- were craven and deliberate smears, intended to allow them to claim a free pass to hammer at this issue for the next 100 days:

http://www.jedreport.com/2008/08/setting-the-rec.html

As my prior post (and many mor elike it in the blogosphere) pointed out, this ad created teh image of Obama on currency a month before Obama spoke last weekl.  But as the Jed Report points out, the McCain campaign home page also chose this image of Obama on a $100 bill as the icon to link to the ad on its home page at You Tube:
 
http://www.youtube.com/profile_videos?user=JohnMcCaindotcom

Look at these images until you find the image for ad named "Seal"  (in my browser, it was the image in the lower right hand corner of the first page) -- this is the still image they chose.  How do we know they chose it (as opposed to being a quirk of You Tube)?  Because in You Tube, an mpeg defaults to the midpoint as its "still image", whereas in "Seal", the dollar bill image appears 3/4 of the way through.  So it was a conscious choice by the McCain campaign to use it as the still image for that ad, to put it out there as the image a web surfer would see when you link to the ad.  Why did they do that?  Why the choice of THAT image?  Yes, a rhetorical question.

More troubling, when Obama made reference to the fact (not a charge, but the fact) that McCain would try to scare people by telling them that he (Obama) doesn't look like all of those other Presidents on the dollar bills, and Rick Davis immediately hit the airwaves crying "race card" and calling it a "disgrace", when, in fact, it was an image from one of the campaign's own ads, and not only that, an image they chose to accentuate.  All of that outrage and hubris was a fraud, a deception, intended to mislead.  And the media fell for it.  For several days, the so-called mainstream media (I think "corporate media" would be a more accurate description) has been saying or implying the Obama was, in fact, playing the race card in that statement -- even the WaPo's
editorial this morning said as much (falsely, thanks once again to Fred Hiatt's tendency to buy McCain friendly meme's).  But it's a fraud.

This is a really important story.,  McCain is trying to put in motion a campaign, supported and facilitated by the MSM, based on the notion that Obama has delusions of grandeur, is acting above his station -- all code words for "uppity" as David Gergen pointed out so forcefully this morning on ABC -- and then they will rely on the MSM to remind people that Obama started it back at the beginning with that "dollar bill" remark.  Only Obama didn't start it.  It's a deceit, a sandbagging, and the MSM cannot be counted upon to get it right.  The fact that this is a deciet cannot be restated often enough, and in enough places.  The use of Obama's still image as the link for the video ad, and the campaign's immediate cry of foul -- of absolute outrage -- when Obama made reference to an image the McCain campaign itself put out there -- proves that the McCain campaign has launched a reverse race card campaign, another GOP campaign of deceit.  

There is no more powerful disinfectant than exposure to light.  And there is nothing that shows a crooked stick more effectively than placing a straight stick right next to it.  Obama's job in this campaign is to be the straight stick against which the deceitful McCain campaign is measured.  And our job in this campaign is to make sure that there is a light shining every time the McCain campaign, and its surrogates in the MSM, try to pull one over on us.  The corprorate media cannot be relied upon to do it.