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John McCain's campaign has released a new :30 spot airing in battleground states titled "Troop Funding." It's focus is Barack Obama's lack of support for winning the war in Iraq and Afghanistan. This ad comes a week after Obama's negative attack on McCain regarding gas prices, the Obama campaign's retort to this ad was to call it negative.

St. Cloud, FL businessman Mike Meehan thought it was appropriate to use the image of the Twin Towers burning on 9-11 to promote a song and a CD, ostensibly to "help Republicans". This image is prominately displayed on a billboard at John Young Parkway in Orange Co., FL and elsewhere along Orange Blossom Trail.

Obviously, both Democrats and Republicans have called for the removal of this billboard. The local Democratic Party representative said, "This is a blatant exploitation of that terrible tragedy for political and, perhaps even worse, personal gain." and the local Republicans have called it "inappropriate".

The billboard owner, Beech Outdoor Advertising, says that this is a first amendment issue and vows that it will remain until after the November election.

Meehan appeard on CNN's American Morning to incorrectly explain that "9/11 could have been prevented if we'd had a Republican president".

[h/t Think Progress]

The John McCain campaign has released a nearly eight minute video they title "The Obama Iraq Documentary - Whatever the Politics Demand."

Barack Obama's campaign has released a new :30 another ad to air nationally on cable. The spot is called "Changing World."

Barack Obama's campaign released a new :30 second TV spot in battleground states titled "American Leadership." It's focus is national security with an eye on nuclear weapons.

Update: I can't believe it, either, but here I am in agreement with Captain Ed:

This is a monumentally stupid ad. It spends a full minute saying nothing about the issue it supposedly addresses, and it insults the intelligence of the people whom McCain is trying to woo. And I'm someone who has a little more sympathy for McCain's efforts on immigration than most on the Right. Take two big steps backward, Senator McCain.

John McCain has released a new campaign ad, entitled, "God's Children," that seems to be stating something so obvious, you have to wonder why it needed to be said at all. Via press release:

ARLINGTON, VA -- U.S. Senator John McCain's presidential campaign today released its newest television ad entitled "God's Children." The ad features John McCain's remarks at a June 2007 debate in New Hampshire honoring the service and sacrifice of Hispanics in our Armed Forces. The ad will air in Colorado, Nevada and New Mexico.

The McCain campaign has also scheduled a conference call to discuss the ad. I'll have more on that later.

Here's the ad, followed by the transcript. Ask yourself, "Who is this ad aimed at?"

The Democratic National Committee (DNC) has a new web video targeting John McCain for his position on Iraq. The 1:16 minute spot is titled "When."

The union bosses at the AFL-CIO has launched a :30 TV ad against John McCain titled "Now Now." It's a negative attack from a special interest group supporting Barack Obama.

As I reported yesterday, the re-launch of John McCain's campaign is sputtering in its berth, due to a number of miscalculations. The latest of these harks back to a popular gaffe game from the primaries, the subject of plagiarism. McCain introduced a new slogan yesterday in his "love" ad, but as Andrew Sullivan points out (via the UK Telegraph), the mantra is far from fresh:

The first work produced for the party was a television broadcast devised by Charles, in which images of everyday Britain were run in reverse. The dramatic sequence was concluded with Michael Heseltine uttering the slogan: 'Backwards or forwards, because we can't go on as we are. Don't hope for a better life; vote for one.'

Sullivan fails to note, however, that the slogan might be even older than that, drawing on Dante's Inferno for inspiration.

First off, I love that the first half of the slogan, "Backwards or forwards, because we can't go on as we are," cuts right at McCain and his support for President Bush's policies. Perhaps Obama should look into licensing it.

The fact that the slogan is not original isn't the worst part, however. While it's good for a headline or two, voters don't care much about the plagiarism charge. No, the real problem here is the slogan itself. It sounds clever, but without the preamble, it just makes me think, "Well, I was planning on doing both."

I touched on this earlier, but the evidence is starting to pile up that when John McCain shook up his campaign last week, he didn't shake hard enough. Even in a turtle-orgy-slow news cycle, McCain is managing to do damage to himself through inept campaigning, while failing to leave a scratch on opponent Barack Obama.

The biggest disaster, from a campaign standpoint, is McCain's sloppy and poorly-received new economic plan, but the latest is a complete dismantling of McCain's most recent Spanish-language radio ad by Factcheck.org:

McCain's new radio ad, in Spanish, aims to show Florida would benefit from the Colombia Free Trade Agreement, which he supports. But every number in the ad is wrong, except one, a prediction of job gains taken from a group favoring the trade deal. And even that number is rounded upward so generously as to flunk third-grade arithmetic.

I also noticed, the fact that McCain's new economic plan contains a proposal for a gas tax holiday to begin on Memorial Day, 2008. I initially chalked that up to McCain simply wanting to score those points regardless of the fact that it is July now. Upon reflection, I'm starting to think it was more sloppiness than anything else. The McCain campaign admitted that there was really nothing new here, and that this was a repackaging. I think they forgot to check the expiration date.