Friends, with apologies to the Poorman Institute, these here rats aren't going to fuck themselves.

Barack Obama needs your help to drive home the point about just how rich and out-of-touch John McCain is. I'm interrupting my vacation to tell you one thing you can do to make sure those rats get good and fucked.

Hi, I’m John McCain, and I’m here to show you how you, too, can become wealthy beyond your wildest recollection!

McCain wanted this scummy fight.

Now he is perceiving that Obama is attacking Cindy McCain because of her lavish spending and the homes.

This house, thingy is a bombshell.  It is called, "peeling the onion" on McCain.

Now, they are shaking and the gloves are off.

Rezko and Reverend Wright ads are now being made.

Having trouble remembering how many houses you have, John?

K, well...

Update -- Obama pounds 'No Change McCain': Here's video of Barack Obama in Chesapeake, VA this evening, sticking to the "out of touch" theme illustrated by McCain's "How many houses?" moment. He was just scorching:

:: :: ::

Original post:

My oh my, how quickly things can change. From the handwringing of yesterday to the buttkicking of today. It started with the news that he couldn't keep track of how many homes he owns:

You remember how McCain was saying that all of his questioning of Obama's motives in ending the Iraq war wasn't questioning his patriotism, but instead his JUDGMENT? Well Obama saw through that BS. Sounds to me like Obama's gloves have also come off on Iraq. First Obama called him the liar that he is.

On Thursday, Obama took umbrage with this interpretation of events. "I expect [John McCain] to show me the same courtesy that I showed him," said the presumptive Democratic nominee. "Then yesterday he tried to say he wasn't challenging my patriotism, he was challenging my judgment. What does it say when you say someone would rather lose a war than lose an election? Of course he was challenging my patriotism."

What a difference a day makes...

UPDATE: Obama spokesman Tommy Vietor responds:

The fact that John McCain dispatched his paid consultant to launch this despicable ad from a so-called ‘independent’ committee shows how desperate he is to change the subject from his shocking disconnect with the economic struggles of the American people. He knows that Barack Obama has denounced the detestable crimes that Bill Ayers committed forty years ago.

Instead of invoking Paris, Britney and obscure sixties radicals, Senator McCain should take the day off at one of his seven homes to consider whether his support for outsourcing, tax breaks for companies who ship jobs overseas and continued spending of ten billion a month in Iraq is really putting ‘country first.’ To us, it sounds like just more of the same.

In a very defensive response to the fusillade of attacks from Barack Obama's campaign with their "McCain McMansions" ad, the surrogate attacks, and the press releases, the McCain campaign had this as their response. Let's all guess what it is below.

CROSSPOSTED AT STRATEGY08.

I outlined some of my criticism of the Obama press strategy yesterday, and with McCain making a huge blunder, the Obama camp senses a huge opening. And like a lion catching a zebra, it looks like Obama is poised to go for the jugular.

There've been diaries on this, but piling on is the point.

McCain's two gaffes in the last week--his inability to remember how many homes he owns and his expressed belief that people worth 4.9 million are middle class--are an enormous gift to Obama. And Dems, for a change, seem to smell blood.

Dude, I just wanted to get this out there. I'll add more. It was uploaded to youtube 7 minutes ago, I stumbled on it by accident.

Script via FleetAdmiralJ

   Maybe you're struggling just to pay the mortgage on your home, but recently John McCain said that the fundamentals of our economy are strong.

   Hmm.  Then again, that same day, when asked how many houses he owns, McCain lost track.  He couldn't remember.  Well, it's seven.  Seven houses. (show White House on screen) And here's one house America can't afford to let John McCain move into.

In a hard-hitting Op-Ed in this morning's Financial Times, Singapore's Kishore Mahbubani writes that The West is strategically wrong on Georgia

... most of the world is bemused by western moralising on Georgia. America would not tolerate Russia intruding into its geopolitical sphere in Latin America. Hence Latin Americans see American double standards clearly. So do all the Muslim commentaries that note that the US invaded Iraq illegally, too. Neither India nor China is moved to protest against Russia. It shows how isolated is the western view on Georgia: that the world should support the underdog, Georgia, against Russia. In reality, most support Russia against the bullying west. The gap between the western narrative and the rest of the world could not be greater.

He extends that diagnosis to our overall approach to the world (as quoted below the fold) and makes a convincing case that the West has an incoherent strategy towards the rest of the world. I would like to suggest, however, that the current 'strategy' has a narrow rationality intimately linked to our current dysfunctional politics.

And now for some good news: Barack Obama and the Democrats are taking their gloves off.  

This morning on CNN, Paul Begala of all people made a good point, that nothing unites a group like the definition of a common enemy.  That enemy is John McCain and the Republicans, and it looks as though the Democrats are waking up to how much fodder this guy keeps giving us.  As Tom cataloged today, Obama's language is getting tougher and more progressive.  He was asked about this by Time Magazine:

TIME: Your speeches seem to be getting far tougher.

OBAMA: Well, it's getting to be crunch time.

In a 3 hour marathon last night, CNN devoted an hour and a half to each of the life stories of the two major candidates for President.

The Obama segment featured clips we have all seen, along with some new, and flattering information.  The only thing they could find to say that smacked of "negative" was a comment from a Chicago print reporter, and Obama biographer, that his initial foray into politics was "cut throat".  That was followed by 3 different people saying "That's the way politics is played".

(And I have a Hannity Debate Chickenwatch update as well.)

The Insanitized One is becoming more unhinged by the day.  

On Tuesday, John McCain's chief surrogate Sean Handy Hannity, after frequently referring to us collectively as the "Daily Kooks" (while also mentioning "The Move On dot org crowd"), lost his marbles.  He claimed that people at the Convention are going to be throwing spitballs and other things at him.  Then he said that the "Daily Kooks are going to be at the convention and I may not get out alive." This is truly shameful to smear an entire community in this fashion.  Sorry Handy Hannity but no one in the Daily Kos community has ever shot churchgoers.  The same can not be said of your disgusting listeners and fans.  Plus I've met your audience of bottom 2 percenters.  As a whole, they are violent, vulgar, and utter bigots.

So we're going to do two things here. 1) We'll quickly review the peaceful rules that we want ALL delegates to follow around Hannity in Denver and 2)  Talk about how Hannity is afraid to debate me and what he said on his show to this effect.

This is good news.  Barack Obama is presenting an economic populist message that I believe will help propel him to the White House, along with showing more anger and fight.  And he's talking about how the American Dream is slipping away for many.  Yesterday, in Martinsville, Va, Obama said:

This election is about "deciding right here and right now that we are gonna fight to make government accountable to the American people to make sure that the special interests aren’t dominating Washington," Obama told the crowd of about 350 here at a community college in the southern part of the state.

"That’s why I promise you this: that if you will vote for me, if you give me that opportunity, if you give me that chance, that I will fight for you every single day. I will wake up in that White House thinking about the people of Martinsville and the people of Henry County and how I can make your life better"

msnbc.con: First Read

More, with video, after the fold.

Update ((Please keep digging the article, and see Obama's new ad below. That was pretty fast, kudos to the campaign.))

Politico:

Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) said in an interview Wednesday that he was uncertain how many houses he and his wife, Cindy, own.

"I think - I'll have my staff get to you," McCain told us in Las Cruces, N.M. "It's condominiums where - I'll have them get to you."

The correct answer is at least four, located in Arizona, California and Virginia, according to his staff. Newsweek estimated this summer that the couple owns at least seven properties.

He's just giving this stuff away. I feel like we can safely do ad-lib attacks now. Just put an issue (mortgage crisis) and a McCain quote together, and voila!

  We Shall Keep the Faith  

      Oh! you who sleep in Flanders Fields,
      Sleep sweet - to rise anew!
      We caught the torch you threw
      And holding high, we keep the Faith
      With All who died.

      We cherish, too, the poppy red
      That grows on fields where valor led;
      It seems to signal to the skies
      That blood of heroes never dies,
      But lends a lustre to the red
      Of the flower that blooms above the dead
      In Flanders Fields.

      And now the Torch and Poppy Red
      We wear in honor of our dead.
      Fear not that ye have died for naught;
      We'll teach the lesson that ye wrought
      In Flanders Fields.

   by Moina Michael, November 1918

Tonight we remember 3 Marines who were killed in Afghanistan.