This is so ham-handed, and stupid, I am really amazed. Imagine the prospect of a potential future President being popular around the world. Be afraid, America. Be very afraid.

Thanks to Josh Marshall. The attack ad had me scratching my head...uppity celebrity - I didn't know whether to snicker or yawn until Marshall pointed out the Call Me Harold connection.

I really don't think very often of oversexed white girls or any girls for that matter!

Went right between my legs

I just saw it at lunch...it isn't very good...never would've taken "Puffed up Dandy" from it...now Ludacris' Obama rap did kind of make me think "Puff-Daddy."

Trying to link Obama to young white women. Classy.

Global leader? What?

Living in Texas and sadly exposed to almost 15 years of the Bush/Rove Show, it looks like a classic Rove tactic, ridicule with a dash of "dog whistle" racism thrown in.

It's not very good, maybe Carl's off his game, maybe his contempt citation has him off.

Greg, Eric, why are you being so charitable.

They're trying to paint Obama as a "puffed up dandy"?

Er, no. They're trying to paint him as an uppity Negro who wants to fuck your sister.

Here's the first draft of the ad.

That would only happen if the media criticized McCain for his actions like they did Hillary. That's not going to be the case when it comes to Maverick McCain.

I hope the Obama campaign doesn't plan on defending themselves with press releases from now through November.

So what is McCain: The Elephant Man with that strange growth on the side of his face? Wilfred Brimley? Grampa Munster? Grampa Simpson? He's the crazy old guy who used to sit around mumbling and yelling at us to get out of his yard when we would walk down the sidewalk passing his house.

I loved that RNC David Hasselhoff video. It was so stupid and funny that it reflected how dopey they are and how out of it they really are.

McCain's angry, bitter, confused, out of touch, losing it.

"Puffed-up dandy" is just a euphenism for "uppity n*****". That's the real message.

McCain as the 'love-child' of Grandpa Simpson and Mr. Burns . . .

The McSame standard applied.

How long before Paris and Britney are asked for a response.

I also love how the McCain campaign likes to make fun of allies like the French (the snide remark above and the luggage tags) and the Germans (Hasselhoff video) but then profess McCain has the foreign affairs chops.

Of course, what is Obama famous for? He is famous for his politics and run for the Presidency. McCain on the other hand was a "war hero celebrity" and leveraged that to run for Congress. So who has had celebrity advantage and who has had to introduce himself to the nation?

"Oops! He did it again." -- a fine response, but immediately followed by a sentence of no less than 74 words.

Unless the Obama campaign shortens its swing and learns where vital organs are, they'll flail their own hopes away.

McCain-Rove have put the killer meme on the table: nastiness, confusion, serial lying. Let's grab it & make them digest it.

The McCain camp is getting a ton of free air time for these "ads" though. They're clearly thinking that if they run malicious/false/outrageous ads, the media will just eat them up and air them constantly. So far they are right.

What I see is a positive message about Obama. The shots show Obama looking young, fresh, handsome, and the cheering crowd is a terrific background. The McCain camp is building him up, in my opinion. I see why people are upset by the Britney/Paris comparison, but I don't believe the McCain camp makes the point well enough.

"Oops, McCain is a lying fuckin' bastard, again" would have been a great response too!

Aren't we missing another bigger point? Paris Hilton and Britney Spears are sooooo 2006. Once again, McE! is out of touch with reality...next time use miley cyrus or whoever else is on the cover of Us magazine

There's the other part of this call that's important: the statement about American's not wanting the French president pick our president.

Francophobia rears its ugly head, again.

I don't understand why TPM is always so quick to post these McCain attack ads. It's not as if the 24hour news culture wont mention these ads hundreds of times. Why give McCain one more free source to get his negative message out?

Rove. They're using one of his greatest strengths. But this is an old tactic right? The Obama campaign should be all ready to fight back on stuff like this right? No surprises, right?

So, a legal question: can McCain use the image of Britney and Paris to smear Obama?

He has no association with these private citizens, and the commercial is smearing them as much as Obama.

Maybe the pushback is "today's news" vs. "yesterday's news?"

The McCainiacs are obviously suffering from a bad case of media envy. Or maybe they are trying to get people thinking Obama has gotten too uppity.

The sad part that McCain's camp doesn't want to recognize is that the only reason Obama is greeted overseas as a liberator (apologies to Bill Kristol) is that the world is hungry for American leadership that is rational, multilateral and cooperative. The more John McCain moves to embrace Bush policies, the smaller he becomes in the eyes of the world.

I think it is smart. For a job as important as POTUS, this celebrity thing is scary. I hope people wake up and realize that Obama has to do more than give a well written and read speech, if he becomes president.

CNN Political Editor called the ad "a desperate call for attention" (basically). Expects more nasty ads from the McCain campaign and from 527s.

If the oil companies raised their prices to offset the windfall profits tax, but retained the same profit margin, why would they not still be subject to the aforementioned tax?

Way past time for bloggers and surrogates - NOT Obama - to start repeating all the evidence that McCain is even less of a hero than Smirky is.

Bottom of his Annapolis class, crashed at least three multi-million-dollar planes in training exercises, cheated on and abandoned his loyal first wife because she was disabled in an accident, keeps his finances separate from Cindy's so he doesn't have to pay his wife decent maintenance, has been a paid-for shill of corporate criminals for almost thirty years, lies about everything, etc., etc., etc.

For details, check out Glenn Greenwald's new book, Great American Hypocrites.

And specifically in retaliation for the n****r-wants-to-rape-your-daughter crap, throw in the rumors about how he cooperated with the Viet Cong to protect his own ass.

I usually don't jump on the anti-Obama campaign bandwagon, but I do think they need to hammer on the theme that "John McCain is running a negative campaign". Just make sure they say those words in every appearance.

It takes away a major asset of McCain, but only if people start to associate McCain with negative ads.

"We see him more as a global leader than a global celebrity," Davis said of McCain.

That's funny, I see him as an old, out-of-touch liar who has completely wasted and emptied the goodwill he had built up with independents like me by basically becoming what shit all over him in 2000: W's campaign, in style and substance (or lack thereof).

That's not even a remotely accurate description of Obama's policy proposals. You need to go to his web site and actually read them, rather than basing your comments upon the GOP's twisted intepretation.

OMG obama u r exacly lik Britny Sperz! LOL ROFL ROFLMAO

Never mind Obama, he can take care of himself. But poor Britney... what did she do to deserve this? Say what you will about week-long benders with skeevy backup dancers while her kids played with electrical outlets, but she never, ever sank so low as to be fair game for a McCain political ad.

this is worrisome. As stupid as this ad is, McCain's numbers having been tracking up, ever since he started using Rove as his advisor.

While Obama's response to the ad is a good one, it's looking like he, and/or his surrogates are going to have to start hammering away at McCain, to bring his numbers down. It's risky, but the down side of not doing so is that Obama will end up like Kerry and Gore, honorable candidates who were punked.

Right now, for all of his incompetence, childish ad campaigns and regressive policies, McCain is still the media favorite. Obama has to figure out to at least get them to be more neutral.

Man, it must suck to sacrific your character, principles and integrity for the gop nomination.

McCain should be embarrassed of what he's become. But then again - he's just another C- legacy admission that had opportunties because of family connections rather than intelligence and ability.

I smell an Olbermann special comment coming.

Alternatively you have Obama as Ludicris:

"Hillary hated on you, so that bitch is irrelevant," say the lyrics. "McCain don't belong in ANY chair unless he's paralyzed Yeah I said it cause Bush is mentally handicapped."

The song also celebrates Obama's rise.

"The first black president is destined and it's meant to be," go the lyrics, calling on voters to "paint the White House black.

http://www.politico.com/blogs/bensmith/0708/Obama_camp_condemns_song_Ludacris_should_be_ashamed.html

This will play well with those suspicious of Obama's "real agenda".

Sorry, but when the McCain campaign starts talking about Britney Spears, my brain immediately starts thinking about Britney and a certain other very old Republican senator/war veteran/presidential candidate - Bob Dole...

I actually kind of want to see the Obama campaign simply respond by putting the Dole/Spears Pepsi commercial on continuous loop... especially the priceless/creepy scene where, as soon as Dole sees Spears, the screen switches to a shot of a Pepsi bottle ejaculating...."settle down boy"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jt8uNG02ixA

And if that doesn't make the point enough, there is also the opportunity to reprise the infamous Bob Dole/Viagra ad -- I'd post it here, but it seems to have disappeared entirely from the web -- no doubt Dole and Pfizer have made sure that it has been scrubbed out of virtual existence....

And that, of course, brings us back to Senator McCain - who is flummoxed by a question about, what else? Viagra

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kkQDbfF4RqA&feature=related

---

It is pretty simple isn't it? Kind of a six degrees of Kevin Bacon game isn't it?

Barack Obama- Britney Spears
Britney Spears - Bob Dole
Bob Dole - Viagra
Viagra - John McCain

All it does is remind me of another creepy mean old white guy who can't get it up on his own anymore and who wants to bomb Iran to prove his manhood... is that really the message that the McCain campaign wants out there?

(and, for the humour-impaired Republican on the site, this is intended to be snark...)

Next up:
An ad that juxtaposes the White House with a rap party and Luracris song as the soundtrack.

Fo Shizzle, gonna paint the White House black. True dat. Off the chain.

Obama's message this week is about he economy. If the Obama campaign responded to every McCain ad that they put out, then thety will never get their economic message out there.

Aren't some of you guys the same people who said Obama needs to be hitting home his economic message more. Well that is what Obama is trying to do. While McCain is having to respond to the response to his own ads, the campaign can never talk about get it's message out.

If Obama stops to respond to every McCain ad, then doesn't he become McCain. That is how Obama truly beat Clinton early on, because the Obama campaign was good at staying on message. It was once the campaign go off message (neg ads, PA, Rev Wright) that time became dicey.

Obama needs to talk about the Bush/McCain economy destroying America every single day.

Actually, Obama made the determination that it would be inappropriate to visit the hospital since the trip was being paid for with campaign funds. See he wanted to avoid giving the Republicans the ability to claim he was politicizing the wounded troops. The cost of that is having to push back as the Republicans politicize the wounded troops. But the claim that Obama didn't go to Landstuhl because he couldn't bring cameras is patently false. The only people pushing this idea are the McCain team and their water-carriers in the right-wing media. Everyone who was actually there agrees on this.

So are you merely misinformed, or a liar?

The McCain videographers, coming on yet again like Force 10 from Navarone, call Obama a intercontinetal boob---and what's the reaction?
"We're disappointed," say the Obama spokesmen.
"McCain has really let us down."

Jesus Christ, who are those guys?
Will they ever stop talking and get up off the floor and fight?

The new CNN poll has Obama six or seven points up, but on offshore drilling, 69% of the dumb American people think it's a good thing for heaven's sake and Obamaism says nothing to rebut it. Don't they have T. Boone's number?

As the ship quietly moves on, with most of the passengers and crew sound asleep, somebody should tell the captain that even though the night is clear, they're near an ice field and had better start acting accordingly.

Scum that they are, this once again demonstrates that while their candidate sucks, the Republican tacticians are opponents one must take seriously. Their tactics continue to beg the question: "will Obama, unlike the Democrats of the past two cycles, fight back?". So far, the answer is clear:no, he will not fight back.

If this continues to be the case, the Republicans know they have, at minimum, a fighting chance to beat Obama because his refusal to fight (and I mean fight here not parry and not respond by calling these calumines "the old politics") signals that they will be allowed to run the table in terms of defining Obama and his character. By the time November rolls around they will have a huge portion of the public believing Obama is a sex-crazed dilletante who is in this only for his own self-agrandizement, an elitist who not only doesn't care about regular people, he doesn't care about America! Right now they (team McCain) are just testing to see what Obama's team is made of and they must be cautiously optimistic because no matter how disgusting the insult or the lie, camp Obama is nearly mute in response believing that they are ahead and when the convention comes they will take charge. This is a massive tactical error that has been repeatedly committed by Democratic Pres. nominees, but they never seem to learn.

Unless and until the Obama camp comes back at the McCain lies and slanders hammer and tong, the McCain camp, with their nearly senile and certainly inferior candidate will continue to shape the message and the tone of the campaign but most importantly they will be allowed to continue to be in command of the public impression of who Obama is and what he stands for. If Obama's people allow this to continue with nothing but proper and "above it all" kinds of responses then they and the nation will lose in November. It's just that simple.

McCain proves yet again he is a premature sore loser.

Do they think McCain is not going to come off like an a-hole for attacking Britney, Paris and Obama? The people who are dumb enough to believe and ad like this love celebrities. I don't see how this works on any level other than showing how culturally out of the loop and tin eared is the McCain campaign.

"What we decided to do was find the top three international celebrities in the world," Davis said. "And from our estimations, Britney and Paris came in second and third.

"Estimating" Paris and Britney as the number 2 & 3 celebrities in the world is simply another indication as to how out of touch these douchebags are.

Where's the "just leave Britney alone guy?" /snark.

Really, I live in the DC area, one of the markets where the McCain camp is bombing this drivel and upon coming home saw his new ad TWICE with the hour.

Very glad a response from the Obama camp has been created for this and the moronic gas prices ad, but I have yet to see these responses. And you know this ad targeting in this market it to get lazy press corp to give this crap free coverage.

Sean Hannity? Who's Sean Hannity? You don't mean that guy who used to be a backup QB for the Steelers?

effete dandy? maybe they should have a free throw contest to decide the race.

I wonder if Britney and Hilton* are racist enough to sue McShameful for comparing them with a brown person -- and finding them less important to the world than is the brown person.

*I long thought "Paris Hilton" was a hotel in Paris in which all sorts of anonymous strangers slept.

Obama doesn't play the snap-fast mockery game well at all. Here's what he should have said:

"A couple of weeks ago John McCain finally learned how to use the Internet. It appears he's been spending his time watching Paris Hilton videos. Kind of creepy, don't you think?"

The Democratic Party has a huge responsibility in the candidates they have chosen. The early joint endorsement of Obama by Kennedy and Kerry was symptomatic. The problem is that the same losers will be there to nominate the wrong person next time.

Everyone knew a year ago that the Republicans were going to "play dirty". If the Democratic Party tries to blame their upcoming loss once again on those "nasty Republican bullies", they'll just lose another 30% of their electorate.

Of course, Axelrod is every bit as wily as Rove and Obama is not the first black politician he has promoted. I think it's appropriate that McCain attack the Glitzkrieg that Obama waged against Clinton. And every time McCain catches Obama using the race card, you better believe there are thousands of Clinton supporters applauding the Republican candidate.

I'm sympathetic with people who call the ad stupid. But this completely misses the larger point that a vast number of american voters really are very ignorant and stupid, and will love the point of the ad. It's an all-american trait of Joe Sixpack that successful people are always to be hated and distrusted, especially if they're educated and black. The truth has already become the first casualty of this campaign. Forget about truth and fairness. From now on the whole point will be mudslinging, as it's always been what republicans do best. Like the man said, you get what you vote for.