"The scheisse man cometh... can obama stand up to him?"

Michael Hood (BlatherWatch):

With Barack's successes, and Hillary's deep problems, the Republicans see blood on the moon.

Here's comes the smut, Thelma.

They're sharpening the box-cutters, and buffing out the talking points. The White House is tuning up the fear generator; the 527's are auditioning the voices of doom, and actresses who can do the best "slut."

Rachel Maddow (KTTH m-f, 3-5p) described Barack on MSNBC Tuesday night as a cute little bunny frolicking as the Republican Shit Machine, like a giant snow plow bears down.

Rachel says Republicans win elections when Americans are afraid.

Item: WASHINGTON (AP) -- President Bush pressured the House on Wednesday to pass new rules for monitoring terrorists' communications, saying "terrorists are planning new attacks on our country ... that will make Sept. 11 pale by comparison."

Item: Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates issued a stark warning on Sunday to Europeans, saying that their safety from terrorist attack by Islamic extremists was directly linked to NATO’s success in stabilizing Afghanistan.

Here are the talking points fresh from the Shit Machine:

• Obama is likable but he's the most liberal member of the Senate
• Obama is likable but America is not ready for his extreme views
• Obama is likable but he's foreign policy lite.
• Obama is likable but is he mature enough to meet the challenge of a dangerous world?
• Obama is likable but he's black.
• Obama is likable but he made some bad choices when he was young.
• Obama is likable but Americans don't really know him.
• Obama is likable but will Americans still like him when they find out who he really isn't? (read: "when we get done with him")

Barack's never had a negative ad run against him, as the Clinton campaign keeps telling us. He only had to step over the silly little Elmer Fudd/Gantry-like Alan Keyes to be elected to the Senate.

If he thinks the Clintons are mean, he ain't seen shit-- at least not like that extruded from The Machine. He'd better peddle hard to keep up those atmospherics and make sure that tsunami is still cresting after suffering eight long, long months of incoming.

He'd better drop his pledge of nice; get aggressive, and into the realpolitics of fighting shit with shit. Everybody says they wanna be transformed, and want a politicians who can be above all that nasty stuff, but that stuff has never not worked in presidential politics.

When she began in the Senate, Hillary Clinton dove into the subject, and won respect of the security community in the process; she's been inoculating herself from the "Democrats are weak on security" charge ever since.

Barack has not. Our darkest fears are he'll look vulnerable and wet behind the ears when the 2008 version of Threat Level Orange starts making Americans nervous and looking to the Daddy Party.

This could be trumped, of course if all the folks Barack's wowing now stay engaged and takes takes him (and us) to victory. The 2 to 1 Democrats to Republican voter turn-out is very impressive. The demographic he's winning, and how well he's done so far against daunting and experienced foes gives us flashes of optimism.

But hearing the R's getting ready to rumble gives us the shivers and flash us back to those dark days in October 2004 as we watched our good candidate, a war hero, and thoroughly capable guy, reduced to rubble by some flabby Texas dirty tricksters with a few hundred thousand bucks, a website and the megaphone of talk radio.

We like Barack, and maybe it's just heebie-jeebies, but underestimating the morally-challenged right-winger who still hold the levers of power would be, as Luke Burbank would say, "not awesome."

Howie P.S.: I don't know what the "scheisse man" refers to, but we will get an answer to Michael's question sooner rather than later. I don't want to antagonize Michael, but Obama has been dealing with the Clinton campaign pretty well so far, judging by his delegate count.

Barack Obama