Oxendine actually emailed reporters, last night, to prepare them for this amazing clip. And:

The [event where the ad will be released] is being held at an undisclosed laser-tag facility and is closed to the public. After viewing the commercial, the volunteers will enjoy pizza and laser-tag.

Jesus. Wow. Laser-tag, pizza, new media, yes. If you laugh at this why don't you go back to Hollywood, New York, Washington, or France?

Georgia Gov. Candidate Produces ‘Citizen Kane'-esque Technical Breakthrough Of Our Time [Wonkette]

The ad is about Guantanamo Bay, and how Barack Obama is trying to close it, but Senate Democrats are all assholes who are now trying to block that. It is a legitimate point, that Senate Democrats are assholes, but how this helps the Republican party, to point out that all the major debates about governance in this country are happening on an intra-party basis completely excluding the so-called opposition, is unknown.

Also what the hell does this have to do with the Daisy ad?? They cut out the damn mushroom cloud so there is literally no message here beyond "a little girl can't decide something, and Harry Reid is a dick." But, you know, we probably shouldn't pay any attention to web ads, because they are only designed to be written about, not to be watched by humans.

Meanwhile, in yet more "Harry Reid is a dick" news, the Washington Post reports the startling news that hey there are already terrorists being held in prison in the US, alongside all the murderers in the supermax prisons. HARRY REID WILL NOT ALLOW CHARLIE MANSON TO LIVE AMONG US.

And, amusingly, the YouTube features Al's fairly succint explanation of the tax problem: his accountant fucked up. But that doesn't even matter because who will this video convince and what will it convince them to do? Franken already probably won his election by a couple votes and now it's tied up in court. Is this directed at a judge? A judge would probably not see this video and decide, based on that catchy tagline, to give some extra votes to Coleman as a reward for paying his taxes.

So, yeah, some video intern at the Minnesota Republican Party just had some free time, we guess. Al Franken sucks! Paying your taxes rules!

From Obama's prepared remarks for a rally in Raleigh, today:

That's why he's spending these last few days calling me every name in the book. I'm sorry to see my opponent sink so low. Lately, he's called me a socialist for wanting to roll back the Bush tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans so we can finally give tax relief to the middle class. By the end of the week, he'll be accusing me of being a secret communist because I shared my toys in Kindergarten.

ZING. McCain will now parry with more airquotes and saying "blah blah blah."

Not that zingers win elections or anything, but, you know, they're more fun than race-baiting attacks on your opponent's Other-ness, right?

[Via Radar]

Coleman's running against Al Franken. Franken basically didn't have a chance in hell of winning, until a) Obama began surging and b) the economy went into a tailspin. Suddenly, Obama is occasionally polling in the double digits in Minnesota (a double-digit Obama victory may be the only way for Franken to get into office), and, even worse, Franken is sometimes outpolling Coleman (Franken is up 9 points in the most recent Star Tribune poll, which is an outlier, but Coleman's lead seems to be shrinking everywhere else). The campaign's been vicious and negative by any standard, but especially for Minnesota, where campaigns have always seemed a little more polite.

All this was before a video of Coleman's spokesman disastrously not defending Coleman's gifts from wealthy businessmen swept across the internet.

Finally, MSNBC points this statistic out:

A Minnesota Public Radio News/University of Minnesota poll showed:

Who Is Running More Negative TV Ads?
N. Coleman 48%
A. Franken 21
No difference 23

Coleman got Franken's negatives down as far as he could, and now his favorables are falling too. So! Stunt time! Honestly, McCain could've used something more like this back when the race was way closer. Instead he went the opposite direction ("canceling the campaign" never had a chance in part because it was transparent lie and was reported at such), and now he's stuck in deep dark attack mode.

Will it work for Norm? It'll probably help. All bets are off if Obama wins big in Minnesota (where he's polling a bit behind the rest of the upper midwest), but in a narrow election Coleman gets enough Obama converts to win it.

Which means, sadly, that Americans waiting for the first SNL veteran to hold elected office will have to rest their hopes on a Piscopo Governorship.

• Domino's Pizza is attacking Subway: their sandwiches are inferior.
• Campbell Soup is attacking Progresso: they are not fresh.
• Burger King is attacking McDonald's: Big Macs are small.
• Beer companies are in an all-out war.
• Even New York condos are trashing each other.

• Andrea Levine, director of the [National Advertising Division of the BBB], says that in August alone, the NAD had 15 advertisers challenge competitive ads that rivals had begun using — compared with six challenges in August 2007. September also saw complaints jump about 50% from last year.

  It's a fact: when times get tough and money gets scarce, the knives come out, meaning attack ads are here to stay. Watch for more updates here, and not on weak-ass Perez Hilton. Thanks. [WSJ]

[Via Radosh]

Though this Michael Kearney was actually Obama's great great great great uncle, it's apparent that his political instincts were passed on to his distant nephew. A wig-maker, or something, Kearney was a member of the Guild of Barber Surgeons, which basically is the same thing as being in the Illinois State Senate. "In 1720, within three years of joining, he was elected house warden. In 1724, he was openly critical of the master and warden of his guild, and led a petition against them." Then they all elected him guild master, in what is an obvious parallel to the political career so far of Senator Obama.

But most interesting is this crazy rhyming pamphlet about how Michael Kearney is evil and aided by The Devil, or something. We really don't get most of it. But Kearney surely issued his own "fight the smears" pamphlet in response while 1700s Irish Lee Atwater accused Irish John McCain of having a Danish baby. Nothing ever changes! Except blogs which cheapened and coarsened our politics.

Here's the family tree that proves Barack "O'Bama" Obama's filthy drunken Irishness.

Aides would give few details beyond the fact that McCain will speak directly to the camera, addressing Obama.

The strip-tease on the ad is one of several moves by the McCain campaign that could distract attention from Obama's big night.

Ok, John, that's a really bad idea.

Also his Vice Presidential pick will be announced either right before Obama's speech, which is a brilliant way of getting it no publicity until tomorrow, or after the speech, when we are drunk or asleep. It will be either internationally beloved sanctimonious baby mole-rat Joe Lierberman or reviled phony rich prick Wilbur "Mitt" Romney And His Totally Not Gay Sons.

Or Pawlenty or Kay Bailey Hutchison, who are boring, or Rudy Giuliani, who is not boring.

A McCain fundraiser named Harold Simmons funded the ad through one of those shadowy nonprofits the kids are so into these days called the "American Issues Project." Simmons was, you may be shocked to learn, also a Swift Boat Veterans for Truth funder. This particular ad is so distorted that CNN and even Fox News have refused to run it! Which leaves, of course, the local channels owned by Sinclair Communications.

The Sinclair Broadcast Group owns the largest number of local TV stations in the country, mostly throughout the South and Midwest. They last made headlines in 2004, when the company refused to allow its stations to air the Nightline segment that named American casualties in Iraq (they hate the troops!), and then six months later when they made all their stations broadcast a crazy Swift Boat documentary about how John Kerry committed treason in Vietnam. Oh, and then they were the ones behind the Armstrong Williams debacle, in which Williams was revealed to be a White House-paid propagandist while hosting a syndicated show as an ostensibly independent commentator. The show was produced out of Sinclair's "New Central" office, which produced much of the insane "news" content Sinclair feeds to its many stations. (Sinclair received a $36,000 FCC fine for their trouble.)

But besides a GQ story on Sinclair back in '05, no one really pays any attention to the work of Sinclair. They reach nearly as many homes as an actual television network and purposefully exert more control over the message they broadcast than any 24-hour news network, but because they own podunk affiliates in flyover country, no one notices. Per Wikipedia:

Sinclair still produces a one-minute national news briefing for its stations, entitled Washington Newsroom. Starting in 2007, Sinclair launched a new newscast on some of its' stations, completely separate from local news operations, called American Crossroads. Like News Central and "The Point", the program, hosted by Jeff Barnd (a news anchor at WBFF) covers national news stories and offers a conservative editorial segment.

Oh, and the co-owner who controls the in-house produced conservative "news" that each of their stations are forced to play is also a war profiteer and a convicted whoremonger.

SO! Harold Simmons does not actually need the reasoned and wise gatekeepers of the real national media, or even the nutty-but-mainstream gatekeepers of the conservative national media. Because he can reach nearly a quarter of America at home, on their local channels, across Ohio, Florida, Missouri, and other small-market towns in swing states. For cheap!

Of course, unlike Kerry, Obama's fighting back hard against this smear. His campaign sent strongly worded letters to all the stations that played the ad, featuring veiled threats against their broadcast licenses in the event of an Obama presidency ("Your station is committed to operating in the public interest, an objective that cannot be satisfied by accepting for compensation material of such malicious falsity.")

And, of course, in going after these ads, he's getting them more play from those respected gatekeepers, who will now play them all the time to tsk-tsk about how terrible it all is.

In McCain's defense, we'd have six more houses too if our first one was this garish. (And OMG that sweater!)

“We are trying to push free speech,” she said, while acknowledging that the ads would still have to conform to the cable companies’ restrictions on content. “I’ll put out the cacophony, and the cream will rise to the top.”

Oh, chief executive. Is this your first trip to the internet? If by "cream" you mean "lip-syncing girls in short shorts" than yes, sure, it'll rise above the cacophony. But they're not encouraging that sort of thing—they're courting political bloggers. First up, a group of activists are raising the funds necessary to air an ad accusing the media of not talking enough about how John McCain cheated on his first wife. Finally, publicity whore political activists have a soapbox!

The clip comes from someone named CamPain2008 and he is some sort of genius. Here's another classic:

We're soliciting ideas for our very own exclusive internet attack ad, and we welcome your suggestions, in the comments or the inbox. Remember: his middle name is Hussein, he's a secret turban-wearing Muslim, and he loves blow. Just like all of you!