Hells Yes! This is shades of Bush being introduced to a grocery scanner in 1992. Out. Of. Touch.

I think we'll see team Obama put more of these out now that the convention is near.

Thank you Obama team, and more like this please.

Thanks, Mr. Mavericky McCain, for a little Christmas gift in August.

It has all along been all about timing. Such brutal attacks are now entirely justifiable in everyone's eyes.

Damn!

AND DOWN GOES GRAMPY McSAME!!!

Why is this a brutal attack? McCain raised the issue as to who is the person really in touch with the common person. I have not seen the ad, however, it would be nice to have something about the modest beginnings of Obama, his community organizer work and the fact that he was paying off college debts until recently.

Very impressive. They cut this in, what, 2 hours? I heard about this gaffe this morning before a meeting. Then I went to the meeting. Now I'm out of it, and Obama's cut an ad and made a national buy? Feiler faster indeed.

McCain's a gaffe machine so I expect Obama's ad team to be busy for the rest of the election season.

Now lets explore the reasons why McCain doesn't know how many he homes he owns. . .

I think a nice touch would be to say they don't know exactly how many houses he owns...
"some reports say 7 houses, some say 11 houses, some say it depends on if you count his X million dollar, X sq ft mega condo as 1 or 2 hoomes. We just don't know. All we do know is..."

For the rumor mill...

A GOP guy I know says that Schmidt is working on a response hitting Obama for giving less than 1% to charity before he ran for the US Senate.

It will point out that he made nearly $300,000 a year and people making that much usually give around 3%, so Obama gave a lot less.

A second mention was going after Obama for leaving his brother in Africa destitute. Obama made over $6M in the last 3 years while his brother in Africa lives on less than a dollar a day and Obama has apparently done nothing to help him. They are going to use his quote from Saddleback "As You Do For The Least Of My Brothers, You Do For Me" along with his comments about how we do not give enough back and help each other.

After hearing that, I am not sure this is the sort of game Obama should engage in.

Neither of those potential attack spots sounds very flattering for Obama.

Yes. You hit the nail right on the head. That IS the standard reply by wingnuts. They are Cindy's houses, and John McCain is always in Washington anyway, so thats why he doesn't know. Then there is the "At least Rezko didn't buy it for him" ad hominem, and then there are the people who say, "who cares how many houses McCain has, Obama is ".

O's house ad is good. Doesn't hit you in the face like it should. Why do they use the same narrator? Maybe a women's voice? How about a child's voice?

- My mom and dad say we have to move to an apartment because we can't afford our house anymore.

- I hear that John McCain has seven homes. He can't live in all of them, can he?

- Maybe John McCain will let us live in one of his?

Dang.

And I expect that during next week's convention, alot of speakers are going to be asking the attendees "Do you know how many houses you own? Well, John McCain can't keep track of how many he owns..."

It's not that he has seven houses, it's that he didn't know he had seven houses. Obama's Camp has known he had seven houses for a long time but they never hit him on it because it's not an issue, nothing wrong with success. However to not know how many houses you have, well there is something wrong with that, and that's what they're hitting him on.

by the way i was just told that defense security services is focusing on a change in their budget next year based on a mccain presidency. from my understanding they are evaluating the fact that mccain will tear their budget apart eliminating waste. i thought that was great to hear!!!!!!!! a politician cutting defense and military waste!

Finally! The Obama team has got some, well, testicles...lol. Keep hitting McRich with these type of ads and he's putty in their hands.

Great. I would put that commercial into heavy rotation.

well i guess if you can count two as one if you combine them and numerous others are located at one estate and can be considered differently in certain reqiuired reporting this again is a non starter. folks here are sounding more jeoulous than it being relevant. be careful as you are acting as though success is bad. i like the mccains success and wish i had it too! if i work hard enough i too can lose count of my number of homes. hahahaha that's the america i want to live in!

Regarding the Obama campaign's decision to go with 7 homes... this might encourage more discussion about exactly how many homes McCain owns. Maybe some nice arguments on Fox about if condo such-and-such is really a home or not. Imagine McCain have to say that Obama is wrong and that he actually owns 10 homes.

this pussy voiced announcer has got to go

Make no mistake, McCain is going to hit back hard - Rezko, arugula, Wright, Ayers - they're going to throw it all against the wall and see what sticks. This is great, but Obama also has to go hard on McCain's policies and his record. I want to see ads going after him for everything from privatizing social security to voting against the Martin Luther King holiday.

FINALLY! FINALLY! FINALLY! I just watched Barack in Cester , Vaginia. He delivered a great populist message and finally tore McCain a new one. He talked about $5 million being rich and the 7 homes. I wish he had mentioned the $520 shoes. But FINALLY.

This is a double whammy.

McCain is a rich elitist who owns seven homes worth $13 million, and he doesn't realize how regular folks are hurting in this economy. Out of touch. Wham.

McCain is so befuddled he doesn't even remember how many homes he owns. One of his people will have to look it up and get back to you. Wham.

"I don't know how many houses I have, but you damn kids better stay off all the lawns!"

not gonna work. everybody already knows they are rich. this is sad as there are a bunch of jeoulous, bitter and miserable folks on this board towards people who have been lucky enough to succeed in america. i see and hear people like you in life and you get on my last nerve. people who complain about his wealth are the first to say they are going out and partying instead of staying in an working your arse off to make wealth. once you become rich then you have to hear asses like you complain that they have wealth and are enjoying the fruits of their hard earned labour.

how pathetic.

That's funny. A follow up ad would be that he owns

- somewhere between 7 and 10 homes, depending on how you count them

- some of us are just too busy I guess

- Don't you think John McCain should count the homes he already has before he tries to move into another one?

The McCain campaign is saying that they own only 4 houses. The Newsweek estimate that Obama uses was based on properties, not houses.

The claim of 7 may actually not be true because the question was how many houses, not properties. Condominiums are not technically houses, nor is commercial property or empty land.

...one of the risks of a rapid fire response is that the facts may get tangled.

I hope that we didn't just trip over our feet.

If McCain calls Obama a liar, and can prove it, that does not look too good.

My bet is that they will be happy to just let the story fade away...

Is it just me or should the Obama campaign get someone else to voice over their ads. I know I'm nitpicking here, but the guy sounds like he just woke up from a Valium-induced nap ... Not that I know anything about that.

Barack at town hall.

"How many of you own your own home?"

"How many of you own more than one home?"

"How many of you aren't sure just how many homes you own?"

More McCain House hypocrisy?
I've heard it before:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=axrgFGZYFzE

Let's have some fun now:
The McCain-Nixon-Bush Tango
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NyvJVy_7LYU

All you have to do now is follow up with he is a kept man from the Sugar Momma Express.

What a difference a day makes!

Gotta him on the run now. Keep the pressure on. Sooner or later he'll snap. Get mad. Scars will flare up. He'll call his wife something nasty - oops! He'll call his mother something nasty.

It'll be beautiful.

John McCane has a greater number of homes than the number of class mates who came in behind him at the Naval Acadamy (5).

But on the bright side, the number of planes he lost as an under-qualified Navy pilot is also fewer than the number of his homes (also 5). (Four planes were lost in "training.")

And consider the practical reasons someone may need no fewer than 7 homes: His wealthy beer heiress second wife is a drug addict and needs multiple stashes for all the pills she buys "for charity." Ever consider that?

Also, my friends, Barack Obama is an out of touch elitist.

Not for nothin' but I read that People Who Live In Seven Glass Houses piece that's listed on the first page and the comments were amazing. Everybody was name calling Obama baselessly, and practically chanting Rezko, Rezko. John McCain just needs to get a little closer to the flames to go up in smoke. This is truly Obama's to lose. The Republican's truly got nothin'. Just amazing.

"what 7 houses?",...let's talk about the price of salad instead. Did they say a million dollar mansion or 5 million dollar condo on a rooftop in Phoenix with all the amenities that even a saudi prince could dream of?

These guys have the gall to portray Obama, as the rich privileged one,....let's talk about net worth. Poor McCain, he's only worth 100 million or so, he's barely rich.

Game on!

but...but...but...rezko! I SOOO hope they bring that crap up so we can really shine the spotlight on the Keating Five scandal that many people are unaware about.

its a start. but we need to get much vicious and personal

Yep, McCain's smarting...they know that between this and the new "reckless" meme that Obama's finally found a weak point.

Obama should use this take on bitter tyrant from monoply

DannyNoonan: This is shades of Bush being introduced to a grocery scanner in 1992. Out. Of. Touch.

Bush (41) may or may not have been "out of touch" in 1992 (I think he was) but the "grocery scanner" anecdote does not prove it one way or the other: the scanner being tested was indeed a new type of scanner and Bush's not recognizing it during his visit didn't really mean anything. The original (pool) reporter's story portrayed the incident accurately but most of the follow-ups were incompetent: they got the details (and gist) wrong.

As for McCain's comment about his (and/or his wife's) houses: here's hoping the Obama folks bury him with it. (Not that they'll get much help from the mass media.)

.

Work this too death. It is obvious bogus Puddleglum HRC fan hand wringing aside this is a huge break for Obama. Additionally if McNero tries to pviot back to foreign policy Obama now has the draft nugget tucked away for a rainy day. This, the 5 mill, the reaction and the draft comment may have just halted all the mo McNero had. That housing and 5 mil comment is goign to hurt bad in swing states, very bad. Additionally this may have just allowed Obama to pick Kaine and not Biden....

And here's the narrative: McCain went negative early and hard. Obama is now forced -- Forced! -- to hit back as hard.

This stuff about McCain's houses....

is another perfect example of something which the MSM/Corporate Media would JUMP ALL OVER if it was a Dem.

Can we stop suggesting things for ads, and start to control this process? I mean, all of us shouting up advice to Major Ad Agencies is like yelling acting advice at a Hollywood star from behind a barricade.

The whole Message Machine, as it runs thru the Corporate Media, is cruel hoax.
We are never going to get fair treatment. The Networks will carry the McCain/Houses story just far enough to drag it out of sight, when once around the corner and behind the smokehouse, they will promptly bury it.
Truly, it is as if they found a dead body on their lawn. An unfortunate story for a Repub. Can they afford to let it lay rotting out on their lawn? Are they going to do an expose, and investigate? No, they are going to send the lawn guy or gardner out there and drag it out of sight. Then bury it.
The Media is all powerful, but they cannot control what does happen in the real world. But since they are the lens and microphone of our society, they can surely apply Damage Control on the stuff that would hurt them.

Maybe they cannot justify complete silence, so they give it minor play and throw in a bunch of stuff about how unfair it is for Dems to bring this up, a few conservatives denouncing the Dems for such lowbrow tactics, and maybe a Rovian play that ends up attacking B H O at his strength.....then never mention McCain's houses for the next 3 months. That is how they work this stuff, and they can point to the fact that they did AIR A SEGMENT on it....even tho the segment was really a hatchetjob on B H O and amounts to the network disposing of the body or shredding the files.

We are going to have to devise END AROUNDS if we want to get anywhere. Unfortunately, the rightwing and the corporations are pretty effective at countering our NETROOTS advantage....which is really our only weapon. If the networks ignore the blogosphere and TPM and HUFFPO.....it is like the tree falling in the forest. The Corporate Media has also been quite good at DISAPPEARING large scale bodily protests....shooting from angles which do not show the numbers and acting like a few ne'er do wells and rabble rousers gathered for an ineffectual and sorry demonstration blah blah blah.

We need to acknowledge what is going on with CorpMedia and change strategy.

Blaming B H O for not being able to beat ALL the networks and 95% of the cable and radio and newspapers is not helping. And it isn't his fault that he cannot overturn a Century's Worth of media consolidation and complete control powergrabs. The CorpMedia is why we are like we are. They are WHY a BuuuschCh e ney cabal could operate, while they play disruptor and obfuscator. They are why we have a dumbed-down populace that wouldn't know what was right or good if it was spanking them.

Sure he is defensive, he is trying to avoid all the pitfalls. Unfortunately for Dems, everything can turn into a mis-step, primarily because the CorpMedia will take your best attributes and ridicule them, question them, ceaselessly. If you make a real blunder....X100.
And they will gloss over or bury every real problem the repub. has. He is playing not to lose, because he is in a system that is totally rigged. Whining won't make the CorpMedia roll over. Even awesome strategy and great candidate and wonderful message can't win when your delivery system has to go thru the CorpMedia. We have seen network after network refuse to run ads and shows that help dems, yet constantly run horrible ads and shows by repubs.

So let us think of ways to break the paradigm. I don't know the answers, but I sure as hell know we are asking the wrong questions.
We need to stop HOPING the CorpMedia will stop acting like Carnivorous, Predatory, Amoral, InHuman, AllPowerful beasts; becasue that is exactly what they are.

DM in WI

The $4 million came from his books, which he wrote himself, not by a ghostwriter. McCain can barely write a sentence himself, much less two best-selling books. Keep the new ads coming, please. On the house - Northern Trust is highly reputable in the Chicago area. They issued a written statement that the Obamas did NOT receive special treatment on their mortgage. The Obamas have a very high credit rating and they earned the money through their own efforts, not be marrying some sleazy heiress. Doesn't Cindy McCain remind you of an aging Paris Hilton?

This is a good ad. McCain gave Obama an opening and he has taken it. It ties very well into the housing/economic crisis and is clever in its use of the White House at the end. It is not over the top in the way McCain's negative ads have been. And it comes as polls show people believing that McCain is the more negative campaigner which means that people will not necessarily even see this ad as a negative ad.
Believe it or not, Obama is in a good position today. It seems reasonable to say that he goes into the VP selection-convention part of the campaign with a 3-point lead (See NBC/WSJ, CBS/NYT,FoxNews and Rasmussen w/o leaners). Other reaults with a larger Obama lead(Quinnipiac), a smaller Obama lead(Gallup), a small McCain lead(Battleground) or even the Zobgby 5-pointer are all within the margin of error of a 3-point Obama lead. And he holds this lead after being attacked as the unqualified celebrity living grand running against a better known, more experienced, former POW who is generally liked and respected in the electorate. Obama holds a 3-point lead even though McCain has given people an inaccurate picture of both Obama and himself. Obama will now use the convention to give an accurate picture of both McCain and himself. Things can only get better for Obama from here.

This ad is absolutely fantastic, and oleeb, it sure does have a great punch line--what are you talking about? This is EXACTLY what many Obama supporters have been hoping for. Great work from the campaign and a good sign for the beginning of the convention week. I'll bet Obama won't announce his VP till late Friday now, just to let this story ride for another 24 hours.

Things are looking up!