DOWNLOAD (116)

PLAY (203)

It's getting harder and harder to be a Republican flack these days. Poor Ed "Who the F@&# is that guy?" Rogers summons up his very best Lee Atwater training to throw whatever he can at Barack Obama, but the uncharacteristically pugnacious Bob Shrum isn't having it.

Even Chris Matthews is finding the whole thing laughable:

ED ROGERS: Obama, rather, is able to get away with platitudes. He says things like, you know, we‘re for justice, and we‘re for peace, and we‘re for prosperity.

MATTHEWS: No, he says unity. (LAUGHTER) He says unity.

ROGERS: Unity is a platitude.

MATTHEWS: It is?

ROGERS: Yes, it is. (CROSSTALK)

MATTHEWS: Well, why doesn‘t your party use it?

Oh boy, that's just not flying, Eddie, is it? Undaunted, Rogers launches into the tired redistribution of income meme (Um, hello, Ed? Social Security, Medicare, fire departments, police departments...what do you think those are, you hack?), claiming that Obama doesn't have a plan--just an ideological belief.

Teh stoopid, it hurts. What is "you don't raise taxes" except ideological mumbo jumbo, especially when McCain is spinning mightily to distance himself from Bush?

ROGERS: McCain is a legitimate opponent of the status quo in Washington, period. He should get credit for that. He always has been. He‘s not for more of the same. And, yet...

MATTHEWS: He said he supports the Bush tax cuts.

Seriously, Ed. This desperate flailing about just isn't working. Even Chris Matthews, for whom politics trumps all, isn't buying it.

Transcripts at MSNBC.

The onslaught of attacks from the punditry class on Barack Obama hasn't even really got off the ground yet, but they've already managed to be disgusting just the same. I caught Ed Rogers last month highlighting his middle name as a signal of what's ahead for Barack and they have slowly started piling on ever since. Michael J.W. Stickings caught Debbie "I wish I was Coulter" Schlussel's latest bigotry.

So, even if he identifies strongly as a Christian, and even if he despised the behavior of his father (as Obama said on Oprah); is a man who Muslims think is a Muslim, who feels some sort of psychological need to prove himself to his absent Muslim father, and who is now moving in the direction of his father's heritage, a man we want as President when we are fighting the war of our lives against Islam? Where will his loyalties be?

Media Matters has a great round up of our liberal media in action including more on "Schlussey"

CNN is the latest to jump on Obama's name. As Eric says: "It makes you wonder if the ad man for GOP Senator Saxby Chambliss — who unseated Max Cleland with ads linking him to the two — is working for CNN now."

Download | play -WMP Download | play -QT

They also put him in a picture with Saddam as well.

CNN did include my Ed Rogers post about his slimy entry into the name game. (without credit of course) Meanwhile, Jeff Greenfield is playing the Fashon game with Obama:

Jeff Greenfield protests that his comparison of Barack Obama's fashion sense to that of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was just a joke.