Coming in November to a ballot box near you.

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The ad is entitled the “Trap Door” and will run in South Dakota.

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Well, the Republican National Committee (RNC) certainly is wasting no time in painting Obama as “out of touch” and “not ready to President.” As I noted in my earlier post on the series of ads being produced by the RNC, the line of attack on Obama is pretty straightforward:

The RNC will exploit several avenues, really more like super highways call them express lanes to victory in November for John McCain, of attack. There will be attacks on Obama’s values defining him as out of touch, there will be attacks of Obama’s inexperience and naivete in foreign affairs, there will be attacks on Obama’s judgment given his long-standing relationships with the Reverend Wright, William Ayers, Tony Rezko and Rashid Khalidi among others.

I should have added a profound lack of understanding economics and global financial markets to that list. In thinking about this further, the words “effete” and “too liberal” are also bound to come. He is certainly the former. On the latter, I think the charge inaccurate. More like spineless liberal because as someone who adheres to liberal values, I find Obama a sell out on long-cherished liberal progressive goals such as universal health care and on energy. But that won’t matter to the GOP. It’s about winning the Presidential election not being accurate.

These ads are not surprising, many of us who support Hillary Clinton have been warning on the tsunami to come. In its wake will fall the hopes and aspirations of the progressive left and fair-minded center. And it should be noted that these ad are not malicious, vicious nor inaccurate. They are fair accusations to make against the very junior Senator from Illinois. Wait until the 527s start on the Reverend Wright, Michelle Obama, William Ayers and who knows who else and their assocation with Obama.

Barack Obama, out of touch and not ready to be President. The truth hurts.

The text of the ad is below the fold:
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Here is the Monday, May 26th, 2008 edition of interesting reads from around the world.

Billions Wasted on UN Climate Programme
The UK Guardian reports on findings that billions of dollars are being wasted in paying industries in developing countries to reduce climate change emissions, according to two analyses of the UN’s carbon offsetting programme.

Hunger in Myanmar
Weeks after Cyclone Nargis ravaged Myanmar, the government of Myanmar has sought to suggest the country has enough rice, but people lining the roads of the ravaged Irrawaddy Delta waiting to be fed tell a different story. More on this story from the New York Times and The Times of London.

As Colombia Winds Down Its War, Mexico Is Just Getting Started
In Colombia we have lived through a nightmare with guerrillas and drug trafficking and its lessons should be obvious to others– a firm and untractable hand is required. Now Mexico, our neighbor to the south, is on the verge of a full scale drug war that has deep and widening implications for the United States and the world. Colombia is a nation of 44 million people. Mexico is two and half times that size. The New York Times reports on Mexico’s very worrisome drug war.

The Lebanese Parliament Elects a New President
Lebanon’s parliament elected the army commander, Gen. Michel Suleiman, as President of Lebanon Sunday, filling a post vacant for six months and bringing a symbolic if tenuous end to the country’s worst crisis since the 15-year civil war ended in 1990. The stories from the Washington Post and the UK Guardian plus some analysis from the Israeli newspaper Haaretz.

Anti-Immigrant Riots in Italy
The Times covers the latest craze around the world, bashing immigrants. Balaclava-clad gangs, some wearing bandanas emblazoned with swastikas, smashed shop windows with iron bars and baseball bats and beat up shopkeepers in a hitherto bohemian neighbourhood of Rome. Members of the gangs shouted “Get out, bastard foreigners” as they attacked Bengali shopkeepers in the explosion of xenophobic violence. This is only going to get worse and Silvio Berlusconi bears full responsibility with his xenophobic rhetoric.

Korean Politics, The Roughest of Them All?
Presidents of South Korea enjoy very short honeymoons. President Lee Myung-bak’s honeymoon is over as this article from the Asia Times reports.

Singapore Manufacturing Sector Declines in April
In a sign that the slowdown in the American economy is beginning to severely effect the export-oriented economies of Asia, the Asia Times reports that Singapore’s manufacturing output declined 5.7 percent in April, worse than analysts’ expectations, due to a contraction in electronics and pharmaceuticals production, the government said Monday.

Canadian Abortion Rates Continue To Drop
In Canada between 2004 and 2005, the most recent data available, the number of induced abortions dropped 3.2 per cent to 96,815, continuing a five-year downward trend. The rates fell in every age group except for women aged 35 to 39, which remained the same. More from Toronto’s Globe & Mail.

Issues that have not been at the forefront of the race for the Democratic nomination are likely to haunt Barack Obama in the general election should he be the nominee. Obama’s inexperience and quite frankly his naivete in a series of gaffes over the past 16 months are now rising to the surface in a series of ads by the Republican National Committee that will seek to define Obama in the minds of many before Obama himself has a chance to “introduce” himself to the majority of the American public.

The RNC will exploit several avenues, really more like super highways call them express lanes to victory in November for John McCain, of attack. There will be attacks on Obama’s values defining him as out of touch, there will be attacks of Obama’s inexperience and naivete in foreign affairs, there will be attacks on Obama’s judgment given his long-standing relationships with the Reverend Wright, William Ayers, Tony Rezko and Rashid Khalidi among others. And this is just the beginning, who knows how many of Obama’s pratfalls we will have to endure? My guess is quite a few.

The text to the ad is below the fold:
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