The DSCC is sinking some big TV ad money into the hard-fought Oregon Senate race, because national Dems think they need to hurry up and drag down GOP incumbent Gordon Smith's numbers before his own aggressive ad campaign succeeds in fortifying them.

So they've just released this fun new attack ad. Check it out:

"In Oregon, Gordon Smith will say anything to get elected," the announcer says -- a clear reference to Smith's pattern of running to the left during an election year, exemplified by his recent ad

Ooooooooooo-kaaaaaaaay....

Now we have a McCain surrogate explaining away McCain's flubbing of the Anbar Awakening and surge timing by saying that asking for the truth about Iraq undermines the troops...

We listened to that several times, and we're pretty sure that this McCain surrogate, Nancy Pfotenhauer, actually said...

"Barack Obama and his supporters can try to litigate what came first or what was crucial, but that's really an attempt to undermine the significance and the impact of the American tr

The Republican National Committee has just unleashed a tough new radio attack ad that hits Obama for voting against the Iraq supplemental without withdrawal timelines last year, casting it as a vote against funding our troops in wartime:

In a somewhat puckish touch, the ad, which is timed to coincide with Obama's trip to Berlin, will run in Berlin, PA; Berlin, WI; and Berlin, NH.

"If Obama can't rise above politics to support our soldiers in a time of war, then how can he claim to have the strength to c

Check out this new attack ad from Minnesota GOP Senator Norm Coleman, who's locked in a tough race with comedian Al Franken -- it's Coleman's first TV spot directly attacking Franken for his history of dirty jokes:

"Foul-mouthed attacks on anyone he disagrees with," says the actor playing a blue-collar everyman. "Tasteless, sexist jokes. Writing all that juicy porn."

The "juicy porn" line is in reference to a comedy essay Franken wrote years ago for Playboy, featuring graphic sexual humor. And make no m

Check out this fun new ad from Mark Begich, the Dem candidate running against ethically-challenged GOP Senator Ted Stevens of Alaska, depicting Begich sending dour men meant to be Washington politicians through a car wash:

The ad is consistent with Begich's strategy so far: Talking about ethics and hitting unnamed crooked politicians in Washington, without directly mentioning Stevens or his specific investigations just yet.

As you all know, McCain has repeatedly referred to "Czechoslovakia" in recent days, even though that country hasn't existed since the beginning of the Clinton administration.

Well, at a town hall meeting in New Hampshire today, McCain again made the same slip-up. But this time, he caught himself, and proceeded to deliver a rather extensive mea culpa of sorts for his serial mistake. It's worth a watch...

"From time to time some of us misstate and say Czechoslovakia when the fact is it's the Czech Republ

The campaign of John McCain -- who once described the media as his "base" -- has come up with a pretty creative way to portray the media as "in love" with Barack Obama, blasting two versions of this video right into the in-boxes of the swooning reporters themselves...

It actually is a pretty funny idea, we have to admit. MSNBC takes an especially hard hit, with Chris "Thrill Up My Leg" Matthews singled out for particularly scalding ridicule.

Still, all that said, McCain is no stranger to media adulation

Obama Arrives In Jordan
Barack Obama's foreign policy tour continues, with the candidate having arrived in Jordan after his two-day tour of Iraq. Obama is set to hold a press conference expected at around 10 a.m. ET, will meet with King Abdullah, and will later a attend a state dinner.

McCain In New Hampshire Today
John McCain will be campaigning today in Rochester, New Hampshire, a swing town in the middle of what is very much a swing state. McCain has long been popular here, but a recent University of N

This is interesting. The McCain campaign, which has long thought it holds an advantage on foreign policy issues, is shifting the focus to domestic concerns with a new ad blaming the gas crisis on Barack Obama...

The ad, which will run on national cable and in "key states" (no further details given), reflects the fact that the McCain campaign believes it has staked out an advantage on the gas-crisis issue. The Dem polling firm Democracy Corps recently concluded:

"McCain's message adding domestic oil pro

Third-party presidential candidate Bob Barr explains to TPMtv his transformation from conservative bomb thrower to libertarian bomb thrower and how much more he loves bloggers than John McCain does.

Obama Arrives In Afghanistan
Barack Obama has arrived in Afghanistan, meeting with American General Jeffrey Schloesser, commander of NATO forces. "I want to, obviously, talk to the commanders and get a sense both in Afghanistan and in Baghdad of, you know, what the most, their biggest concerns are," Obama told reporters before he first departed for the trip in secret on Thursday, "and I want to thank our troops for the heroic work that they've been doing."

John McCain Raising Money Today
John McCain does n

The McCain campaign has just unleashed a brutally negative new TV ad on national cable and key battleground states, accusing Barack Obama of shifting his positions and failing to support the troops:

"He hasn't been to Iraq in years. He voted against funding our troops," the announcer says. "Positions that helped him win his nomination. Now Obama is changing to help himself become president."

"John McCain has always supported our troops and the surge that's working. McCain. Country first."

Wow. Things are so bad for the GOP that even Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell, a powerful institutional player from a red state, is taking his re-election fight very seriously.

The evidence? McConnell is already on the air with a negative ad against his opponent, businessman Bruce Lunsford, even though there are still three and a half months until election day:

If Democrats can beat McConnell or even make it close, it will be a very huge deal -- after all, nobody in the Senate has done more than

Here it is!

As promised, the McCain camp has now held a press conference in D.C. where they rolled out their new "documentary" called "The Obama Iraq Documentary: Whatever the Politics Demand." Take a look...

Senator Jon Kyl doesn't appear; the MSNBC report I linked to below didn't actually say he would. Kyl actually introduced the vid. My mistake. Apologies.

More in a sec.

Late Update: My take on the "documentary" is right here.

Obama goes up with his second national security ad in two days, a spot that highlights our changing security imperatives in a way designed to dovetail with today's "21st Century Threats" summit...

There's no mention of Iraq in the ad, just as in yesterday's spot. But the ad underscores the intensity and seriousness of purpose of the Obama camp's push on national security in advance of his tour abroad next week.

"New leadership, for a changing world," says the ad, putting Obama's change message in a nat

Vets for Freedom, the pro-war third party group that's vowed to spend huge sums on ads pushing for "victory" in Iraq, goes up with a new ad insisting that the surge has worked and that Dems have their heads in the sand about it...

The ad will air in multiple markets in the battleground states of Ohio, Michigan, Virginia, Pennsylvania, and New Mexico.

The ad reflects the GOP's strategy of focusing the discussion of the Iraq War on nothing but the narrow question of whether the surge has produced military

Oh, dear. You know things have really gotten out of hand with the GOP myth that China is drilling for oil off American shores when a Republican Senator pushes it, only to be called out on it by a Fox News host.

The latest hawker of this tall tale: Senator Pete Domenici, who appeared on the Fox Business Network to promote offshore drilling. He repeated not one but two GOP myths: That China is drilling in the Gulf of Mexico, and that Hurricane Katrina did not cause any oil spills:

But this is the funny pa

MoveOn goes up with a new ad attacking John McCain for opposing a timetable for withdrawal from Iraq:

The spot says that Americans and Iraqis want this thing to end, while McCain would continue to spend "hundreds of billions" to keep our troops in Iraq for "years and years."

MoveOn will spend $100,000 to run the air on national cable, suggesting that the target audience is largely an insider one.

Planned Parenthood Ad Hits McCain On Birth Control
Planned Parenthood Action Fund is launching this new ad against John McCain in the swing states of Colorado, Iowa, Minnesota, New Mexico, Ohio and Wisconsin, plus the D.C. media market. The ad bluntly tells women voters that they can't trust John McCain on the issue of birth control, playing back the video from when McCain couldn't answer a question about requiring insurance companies to cover it:

Obama Discussing National Security In Deep-Red Indiana
Ba

Oh, boy.

Former Rep. Melissa Hart -- a Pennsylvania Republican who lost her seat in a 2006 upset and is now seeking a comeback -- just can't seem to let go of the myth that China is drilling for oil off American shores. She now admits the Chinese weren't drilling in the Gulf of Mexico when she pushed it last month -- but she says they might be drilling now.

Here's a clip from an interview with Hart earlier this week, with Pennsylvania blog 2 Political Junkies:

"The fact was that they were not at t