More on Hillary's "3 a.m." Ad...

In case you're wondering... yeah, in this week's cartoon, one of the dancing terrorists is doing the M.C. Hammer dance.

Tidbits:

• Perhaps the most objectionable thing about Hillary's fear-mongering here is her ad's lack of originality. Check out some oldies-but-scaries:
  
  LBJ's original red phone ad (and the creepy "Daisy" ad).
  
  Mondale's red phone ad.
  
  Reagan's scary communist bear.
  
  Bush Sr.'s infamous Willie Horton ad.
  
  Bush Jr.'s scary terrorist wolves from 2004.
  
  
• Todd Beeton:
  

  "I think that since we now know Sen. (John) McCain will be the nominee for the Republican Party, national security will be front and center in this election. We all know that. And I think it's imperative that each of us be able to demonstrate we can cross the commander-in-chief threshold," the New York senator told reporters crowded into an infant's bedroom-sized hotel conference room in Washington.
  
  "I believe that I've done that. Certainly, Sen. McCain has done that and you'll have to ask Sen. Obama with respect to his candidacy," she said.
  
  "Certainly Senator McCain has done that?" Really? How? By promising to continue the neo-con bully Bush doctrine for 4 more years? By escalating and perpetuating a tragic war?
  

  Rachel Maddow said on Keith Olbermann's show that she thinks Hillary is angling to be McCain's running mate.
  
  
• Glenn Greenwald:
  

  Slimy accusations that one is "soft on the Terrorists" or "unpatriotic" will be effective if people see the accused, in response, nervously trying to deny the accusations, trying to run away from one's own beliefs, defensively trying to comply with the demands of the accusers in order to make the accusations go away. By contrast, the accusations will be rendered worthless if the accused stands by one's own principles and convictions and aggressively seeks out the debate, turning the accusations around on the accusers.

• Juan Cole:
  

  ...let us take the name "Hussein." It is from the Semitic word hasan, meaning "good" or "handsome." Husayn is the diminutive, affectionate form.
  Barack Obama's middle name is in honor of his grandfather, Hussein, a secular resident of Nairobi, Kenya. Americans may think of Saddam Hussein when they hear the name, but that is like thinking of Stalin when you hear the name Joseph.
  
  

• Frank Rich:
  

  In desperation to land some knockout punch, some McCain supporters, following the precedent of Clinton surrogates, are already invoking Mr. Obama’s race, middle name and tourist snapshot in Somali dress to smear his patriotism. The idea is to make him a Manchurian candidate, a closet anti-Semitic jihadist trained in a madrassa run by, say, Louis Farrakhan.
  What repeatedly goes unrecognized by all of Mr. Obama’s opponents is that his political Kryptonite is the patriotism he offers in lieu of theirs. His upbeat notion of a yes-we-can national mobilization for the common good, however saccharine, speaks to the pride and idealism of Americans who are bone-weary of a patriotism defined exclusively by flag lapel pins, the fear of terrorism and the prospect of perpetual war.

• You've probably seen this on the news, but the little girl in the ad is actually now a high school senior in Bonney Lake, WA, who supports Obama.
  
  And, yes, Rep. Steve King says the terrorists will be "dancing in the streets" if Obama wins.