It's really true that the Internet is changing every aspect of politics. First it was the use of email to propagate Republican smears at the speed of light. Now, there's a Web site that acts a clearinghouse and central control for the myriad Republican smear campaigns against Barack Obama: exposeobama.com. This is a real powerhouse of a Web site, set up by the infamous smearmeister Floyd Brown, who created the racist Willy Horton ad that torpedoed Dukakis in 88. It's niceconvenient to be able to bookmark a single Web site where I can watch the Republican smear campaigns unfold.

The subject line was inspired by one of their latest attempts, Faked Certificate Suggests That Obama May Not Be "Natural Born" US Citizen (authored at another site called "Israel Insider" and excerpted and promoted at exposeobama.com). It really took me back to the days when I interacted with Mars anomalists and dissected their PhotoShop follies, because it all depends at looking at crappy JPEG images of a birth certificate and making totally unfounded assertions based on what are apparently malevolent wish-fulfillment hallucinations.

It's a hoot. The article has a link to a search on PhotoBucket for "Obama birth certificate", which returns a half-dozen images of no known provenance. Including such classic Republican smear campaign gems as this:
<img src="http://i297.photobucket.com/albums/mm224/thepubba/BO_birthcert.jpg";

I'm guessing that between now and the convention we're going to see only moderately-virulent outbreaks, because prematurely torpedoing Obama risks the substitution of Hillary at the convention. Brown's sure to be reserving his "best" work for the general election season. If you like stuff like the above, you're gonna love what the Republican smearmeisters unleash on us between the convention and election day.