(click image to watch)

ABC News has obtained from a former staffer an exclusive copy of an ad produced by the McCain team attacking Obama for his relationship with the Reverend Jeremiah Wright. According to Brian Ross, McCain never saw the spot, even though his team had it fully produced and ready to go.

ABC News:

Even as his campaign fell far behind in the polls, Sen. John McCain refused to authorize the use of a fully-produced 30-second television commercial that criticized Barack Obama for his relationship with the controversial pastor, Reverend Jeremiah Wright.

A copy of the spot, obtained by ABC News, indicates the campaign spent the time and money necessary to produce a polished final tape, even after McCain publicly said the pastor should not be made a campaign issue and that he wanted to run a "respectful" campaign. His aides told ABC News that McCain simply decided "he did not want to touch" the Rev. Wright issue.

If there's one thing you have to respect McCain for, it would have to be his adherence to the promise of not bringing up Wright. Sure, independent groups ran a barrage of anti-Wright ads in the final days -- and, indeed, McCain crossed a whole slew of lines throughout the campaign -- but McCain promised to stay away from the issue and he did. The ad in question highlights the importance of character. How ironic is it, then, that the one issue on which McCain displayed true character was the one many Republicans think could have made him some real headway?

Exit question: What does it say about the Republican party when many of its adherents think McCain lost because he didn't sling more mud like this? It's almost as if they think McCain would have won despite any real ideas on how to lead the country if only he were able to remind more voters about a fiery pastor. Pathetic.

Economist's View: Bankruptcy for Lehman, Merrill Lynch sells to BofA, AIG in serious trouble. It looks almost certain that this week will be the one where we see the financial implosion in U.S. banking and brokerage that many have been expecting for some time.

distributorcap NY: The irresponsible, shoddy and pedestrian way the pundits and media use the results of polls to represent news, directly affects the tenor of the campaign.

No Rest For the Awake: A Native Alaskan perspective on Palin

Pruning Shears: This Week In Tyranny

The Mahablog: Teh Stupid, It Runs Our Country. More atrocities below...

ANNALS OF JOURNALISM: MSNBC's Brewer aired McCain attack ad without mentioning it was full of lies...Rachel's first exclusive...Frameshop's, Jeffrey Feldman on Bill Moyers...Try and put lipstick on these losers...Old habits die hard...Balz in the tank for the Psychogeezer, but a couple other WaPo reporters noticed the lies...More NYT false equivalence...Even Hactacular Howie is fed up with their lying...George Will attacks firefighters on 9/11, yesterday pretended that, like Palin, he doesn't know what the Bush Doctrine is...FUAX scrapes bottom...Lou Dobbs just loves to spread a little hate...NPR cannot find any pessimistic economists but push the GOP agenda on oil drilling...I thought James Carville was supposed to be a Democrat...It helps when you've got your own network

Download | play Download | play (h/t Heather)

Dana Milbank's recent op-ed in The Washington Post changing its description of Barack Obama from the "presumptive" nominee to the "presumptuous" nominee has stirred not a little debate. First there's the utterly one-sided nature of the attack. Milbank criticizes Obama for acting as presidential candidates act, as if he shouldn't visit with foreign heads of state that he would likely meet if elected president and other Washington figures and for having a big security detail. Nothing Obama's done is different from what McCain has done, it's just been received better received. But Obama is presumptuous and McCain is not, even though McCain had an ad calling himself "President McCain."

Which leads into a more malevolent subtext for the choice of the word "presumptuous," which is just a few words over in the thesaurus for the more loaded "uppity."

Poor Rachel Maddow has to fight through made up quotes--because the media doesn't want to question why McCain is trying to portray Obama as messianic-- to challenge the media for selectively crying hubris. Watch her put Pat Buchanan in his place.

MADDOW: Whether or not (McCain's attack ads) are working, I think we have a responsibility to talk about whether or not they are deserved, Pat. I think when John McCain doesn‘t speak to Pat Buchanan as being presumptuous, when he calls himself President McCain, but Barack Obama speaks to you as presumptuous for doing something much less damning, that says more about you than it does about the candidate.

God, I love this woman.

Transcripts below the fold

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Download | play Download | play (h/t Heather)

The earth spun slightly off from its axis on Monday, because Mrs. Alan Greenspan actually defended Barack Obama's European trip from John McCain's spurious attack ads.

MITCHELL: Did he make a bad call deciding not to go to Ramstein? He had every right to go to Ramstein, to visit the troops in Landstuhl. He had already been to visit the troops in Iraq. Without cameras, without an entourage. And he got-his people, rather-got so backed off by warnings from the Pentagon. Now please be careful, don't bring your military aide, because he's now a political aide. The Pentagon was way too aggressive probably in that. And they got so nervous: oh this is going to look political. And they were damned if they did or damned if they didn't. Let me just finish what I was saying...just this one point...there was never any intention-let me be absolutely clear about this-the entourage was never going to go. There was never an intention to make this political. But by tacking it on to the tail end of a political-the political leg of the trip, they opened themselves up they feared to the criticism, and if they'd gone, they'd be criticized and not going, they were criticized and the McCain commercial on this subject is completely wrong! Factually wrong.

Goodness, will wonders never cease? It begs the question, though, if these journalists, who accompanied Obama on his trip will similarly speak up for the truth of his trip and not just parrot McCain's fact-free slurs:

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UPDATE: There appears to be a coding problem with the YouTube. The original video is at John McCain's campaign website.

Or try this: Download | play Download | play (h/t BillW)

Did you catch it? At the beginning of the ad, the title burns onto a picture of Obama, but the order is striking.

A L Q D C MT RY

(screengrab courtesy of JedReport)

al Qaeda Commentary? al Qaeda Cemetary? al Qaeda Documentary? Who knows? But it's not accidental. In fact, Alex Castellanos is reportedly now working for the McCain campaign. Who is Alex Castellanos?

There is speculation in the blogosphere that Alex Castellanos is behind this video. Who? This guy:

The Republican media consultant Alex Castellanos has been called the father of the modern political attack ad — an appellation he might not offer up himself, though we suspect he’s kinda proud of it. Although Castellanos has served on the GOP media team in every general election since 1988, his most infamous spot ran in the 1990 North Carolina Senate race between Jesse Helms and Harvey Gantt, the former mayor of Charlotte, who also happened to be an African-American. The commercial was called “Hands,” and it showed a white guy sitting at a table, the camera trained on his mitts as he crumpled up a job-rejection notice. “You needed that job and you were the best qualified,” intoned the voice-over. “But they gave it to a minority because of a racial quota.” Ugly? Sure. But it won reelection for Helms. In this year’s Republican race, Castellanos worked on Mitt Romney’s primary bid, but today he sits on what’s known as the McCain Ad Council, a group of A-list Republican admen serving as outside media advisers to the GOP standard-bearer.

FDL offers some more on Castellanos

Beggars Can Be Choosers: $10 billion Pentagon program fails to defeat IED threat in Iraq

Immigration Prof Blog: Business is fighting tough measures on immigration. Who didn't see this coming?

Ice Station Tango: If Karl Rove isn't in prison by then, he and John Edwards will have a debate at the University of Buffalo on on September 26.

The KC Blue Blog: Looks like the ol' Southern Strategy is alive and well in Missouri

Calculated Risk: More trouble in bank paradise

ANNALS OF JOURNALISM: The Media brought me donuts...A sterling example of why Mr. Sheri Annis is such an important 4th Estate Lawn Jockey...ABC: Agent Backs Cheney...Fighting the shock-jocks...The Atlantic Monthly continues to decline...Journalism without journalists...The ubiquity of inanity...At Last! A good, issue-driven Health Care Story...And NPR did one, too!...Taken for a ride in Miami...Fox moves from eccentric to weird...This explains a lot...CBS aired a portion of Floyd Brown's attack ad, failed to report Obama is not a Muslim...

Via MyDD:

I'm told there's an outside shot that House Democrats on the Armed Services Committee will put a restoration of habeas corpus into the Defense Department Authorization Bill being marked up tomorrow and Thursday. Apparently Chairman Skelton has the votes but there are concerns about whether to have this fight now.

Now's the time to let them know that this is something that we elected them to get done. There's a bit of fear that this vote could put freshmen members at risk, though I don't really know why as the data on this isn't compelling and the attack ads just didn't work in 2006.

The most important members to contact are Ike Skelton, antiwar freshmen, and members of the Armed Services Committee. Pelosi and Hoyer would be good too. Each link below goes to that member's email form, and their phone numbers are to the right. I've only included Democratic members of the committee since the decision on whether to make a vote will be made within the party - the full list of Armed Service members is here.

Call and ask them to restore habeas corpus and put it in the Defense Department Authorization bill. This is an especially important message to deliver to freshmen members who have the moral credibility of having been in elected in 2006 in the teeth of Republican fear-mongering.

Ok C&L'ers, get to work...

Contact information and numbers below the fold

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I made it to DC. It took a lot out of me and I had to stay in bed all day yesterday, but I'll try my best later today. The first thing I saw when I turned on the TV was Jim Webb asking for your vote. The very next ad said he's a sick author...Typical Republican garbage. I didn't see one Allen ad that talked about his values---only attack ads against Webb. Now the FBI is checking into voter intimidation from Allen's camp. Anyway, it's been a great ride and no matter what happens today, I want to thank C&L readers for your help and you know tomorrow we'll be right back at it. I'll be checking in later from CNN...

Tbogg has his predictions...

Defense Tech: The Pentagon has entered the political fray by setting up what amounts to an RNC talking points website to refute criticisms of the Iraq war effort. Your tax dollars at work...for Bush, Cheney, and Rummy

Vagabond Scholar: Batocchio on attack ads...the RNC dirty tricks continue around the country, whether they're legal or not. In NM, a judge injoined GOP to stop calls to non-Republican Voters

Confined Space: Here's the reality in the U.S. today: Negligent homcide gets 'a walk.' Workers can be killed due to employer negligence and the employer will get away with a slap on the wrist.

uggabugga: Neocons ar "combatting anti-Americanism in the United States"...go read

The Aristocrats: Ted Haggard's Travel Tips...and some Diet Tips, too-

The Left Coaster: Election 2006: GOTV

Attytood

GOP Pa. Sen. Rick Santorum's flagging re-election campaign has launched a new TV attack ad that can only be described as absurdist theatre, if not out-and-out absurd--Indeed, one of the past Casey donors -- portrayed by an actor -- died 22 months ago, while the Democrat had not yet even been considering his race for the Senate. And while he was alive, Philly power broker Ron White also forged a link to Santorum through their charities