The Boston Globe has an interesting piece from Obama’s native country on attempts to cash in.

Fortunately, an eagle-eyed reader already asked Kurtz about this in an online chat. “Oy,” Kurtz said, by way of correction. “I obviously meant the country of his father. He wrote a book about it.” And I’m surprised that no “birthers” have caught this yet. One popular “birther” touchstone is a 2007 Honolulu Advertiser story that refers to Kenya as Obama’s “native” country, an error that the paper retracted.

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The conservative newspaper ABC, no close friend of Obama, opens its coverage with this admonition (and bear with my less-than-eloquent translation):

The cool relations between the governments of the United States and Spain might continue if the Republican candidate John McCain wins the White House this November 4th, after he yesterday three times avoided answering whether he would receive José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero in Washington once elected.

Other papers, including El Periódico, expressed disbelief at McCain’s apparent ignorance of the fact that Spain is not, in fact, in Latin America.

If you have no idea what I’m talking about, be sure to give this a listen. It’s from an English-language interview with the Spanish-language Radio Caracol WSUA 1260AM in Miami. The interview was conducted on Tuesday, but the news didn’t hit the blogs until late last night and this morning. It’s one of the more astounding slip-ups of the campaign:

And a side note: The Spanish press coverage of the American presidential campaign is surprisingly vast and detailed. Just this morning, La Vanguardia’s website had nine pieces on the campaign, and it’s introduced terms like “hockey mom” to the Spanish public, for better or worse.

There’s more funding (for teachers and charter schools); more standards (to improve achievement); and more choice (for local “innovation” programs and open source classrooms).

Obama speaks at an Ohio school on Tuesday.

These policy events present something of an alternative campaign universe in targeted states. While the national press and political websites go gaffe-gorging, local papers cover Obama’s working class agenda. Take these headlines from this week’s Dayton Daily News, for example:

OBAMA ON EDUCATION: PARENTS MUST HELP
OBAMA TALKS WITH ABX WORKERS ABOUT JOBS
SUPPORTERS WAIT FOR CHANCE TO HEAR OBAMA

Local voters gain information by attending events or learning about them through their circle of friends. At each stop, I’ve watched campaign organizers ask attendees to sync their cell phones with Obama’s text message network. The campaign is also furiously registering new voters in red states like Virginia to buck the region’s Republican foundation. (It hasn’t gone blue since 1964.) Jay Newton-Small reports the early returns of that effort, in a new article today for Time.com:

Virginia is one of 10 states that went for President Bush in 2004 but that the Obama campaign believes will be [tight in November]… Since January alone more than 3.5 million new voters have been registered in 17 of the 23 states tracked closely by the Obama campaign where information is available…. [I]n 14 of the states at least half of the new voters are under 35, a key demographic for Obama. (emphasis added)

Obama’s education speeches have been depicted as an appeal to women voters, but they also resonate with young voters in general, whose priorities include education, along with Iraq and the economy, and could be crucial to Obama turning the tide here.

Former McCain strategist Mike Murphy called his old boss “cynical” for tapping Palin, and Peggy Noonan, a widely read columnist and former aide to President Reagan, said McCain’s “political bullshit” made the race basically “over.”

The off-message clip immediately began burning up YouTube on Wednesday night, and within hours, the liberal group MoveOn.org swung into action, tapping its email list and social network to get the clip a wider airing. MoveOn’s Director of Strategic Campaigns, Adam Green, started a Facebook group to push the video beyond political junkies — with the alluring title “Caught on tape: Watch this amazing video and pass it on!” A MoveOn email also urged activists to spread the word:

If we act fast, we can give it more momentum and help it get more attention. Can you forward this video to your friends today?

This kind of media activism — agenda-driven digging — not only pushes politically damaging stories, it also presses the traditional media to discuss gaffes, including their own, that might not otherwise garner much coverage.