And it's a Karl Rove trick to attack the opponent's strength and turn it into a weakness. He's popular and charismatic? Turn that into a bad thing; he's a “messiah,” he's a cult leader.

He went to school and doesn't talk like he's a refugee from a rap video? Turn that into a bad thing: He's talking white, he's trying to be white.

He's thin and trim and eats healthy foods? He's too skinny to relate to fat America, he's elitist because he eats healthy foods.

He goes to church and is reaching out to evangelicals? He goes to a radical, racist black church. He's the brown anti-christ from the East the Bible warned your about.

So where does the concept of (his) Affirmative Action (daughter) fit into this discussion?? :>) :>)

I'm just asking . . . .

And it's a Karl Rove trick to attack the opponent's strength and turn it into a weakness. He's popular and charismatic? Turn that into a bad thing; he's a “messiah,” he's a cult leader.

He went to school and doesn't talk like he's a refugee from a rap video? Turn that into a bad thing: He's talking white, he's trying to be white.

He's thin and trim and eats healthy foods? He's too skinny to relate to fat America, he's elitist because he eats healthy foods.

He goes to church and is reaching out to evangelicals? He goes to a radical, racist black church. He's the brown anti-christ from the East the Bible warned your about.

So where does the concept of (his) Affirmative Action (daughter) fit into this discussion?? :>) :>)

I'm just asking . . . .

And it's a Karl Rove trick to attack the opponent's strength and turn it into a weakness. He's popular and charismatic? Turn that into a bad thing; he's a “messiah,” he's a cult leader.

He went to school and doesn't talk like he's a refugee from a rap video? Turn that into a bad thing: He's talking white, he's trying to be white.

He's thin and trim and eats healthy foods? He's too skinny to relate to fat America, he's elitist because he eats healthy foods.

He goes to church and is reaching out to evangelicals? He goes to a radical, racist black church. He's the brown anti-christ from the East the Bible warned your about.

So where does the concept of (his) Affirmative Action (daughter) fit into this discussion?? :>) :>)

I'm just asking . . . .

Attack McCain's “strength” on foreign policy, patriotism, and veterans affairs.

That's McCain's position! Secret message of the ad: The smart position is McCain's position and not Obama's.

Now, you might want to say that all that funny stuff at the beginning about McCain's age is anti-McCain. No, it's not! It's McCain's position. McCain is constantly making jokes about how old he is. How many times has he said “I'm older than dirt and more scarred than Frankenstein”?

Finally, Hilton is giving the “biggest celebrity” ad another big boost. That ad has already worked, but it was coming to the end of it's life cycle. Hilton jolted it back alive.

One of the persistent, if not overarching, themes of this presidential campaign is that folks don't know Obama. Obama and his advisors have nearly chewed their foreheads in trying to figure out how to get through, over or around this perception.

What they need to do, in my opinion, is to stop treating this problem so seriously and look at it as an opportunity to draw some contrasts between Obama and McCain. One approach they might take is to do a series of ads featuring Obama, sans suit and tie, encountering ordinary people as he goes about his daily business, not as a candidate, but as he, e.g., shops for groceries, visits the post office, waits for his kids as they get out of school or takes them for dental visits etc.

The thrust of the ads is that Obama seems vaguely familiar to these people but they can't quite place where they know him from. Did he go school with them or one of their kids? Have they seen him at a school or community event? Was he sitting across the room from them the other day at the dentist's office etc?

The point is that the ads have to be humorous and play, in an ironic way, against the theme that someone would not recognize Obama.