The John McCain campaign just won't let go of Barack Obama's European tour and his popularity. It should be noted that despite the pundit outcry about negative attacks -- along with the cries of racism, fearmongering and desperation -- the McCain camp just keeps plowing along. The most obvious reason for that is because -- duh! -- it works (for now ... and possibly at the expense of some Hilton money and the vote of registered Republican Britney Spears).

But Team McCain is pushing its luck with two ads released today. The first puts the pedal to the medal on the "Barack as Messiah" trope -- well, in this case, it's Moses. But that's not where the line is crossed. The line is crossed, I think, when the commercial quotes Obama himself: "A light will shine down from somewhere ... you will experience an epiphany and you will say to yourself 'I will have to vote for Barack.'" That's just a cheap shot. Obama was making fun of himself with that speech, yet the ad plays it as straightforward. At any rate, I never thought I'd see Obama and Charlton Heston in the same ad, but there they are.



In the second ad, Team McCain puts one in mind of a second-grader tattling on a classmate. The sin in this case? Obama, while rattling off a laundry list of countries during his "citizen of the world" speech in Berlin, left out all of Latin America.