Paul Krugman

Something very ugly is taking shape on the political scene: as McCain's chances fade, the crowds at his rallies are, by all accounts, increasingly gripped by insane rage.

I don't know, the only insane rage I see around this election was when Sarah Palin threatened to completely knock Obama off of his pedestal. We saw lots of ugliness then.

Michelle Malkin has a list of stuff like this

The Republican V.P. nom would be "gang-raped by my big black brothers" if she enters Manhattan, Bernhard said. Palin is said to be making a campaign stop in New York next week.

And this:

And this:

And so much more, now including Molotov cocktails:

Authorities have arrested two men after a Molotov cocktail was thrown at a 4-foot by 8-foot campaign sign for Republican presidential candidate John McCain in a southeast Portland yard.

Karen Scrutton said she was asleep inside her home at 7956 S.E. 17th Ave. in the Sellwood neighborhood when she saw her sign go up in flames after 1 a.m.

But I guess this is all McCain's fault darn him! Obama was so busy trying to raise the civil discourse until that McCain up and makes the left angry by actually trying to win an election. How dare he!

Of course there are some kooks and thugs on McCain's side too, everyone has them, and McCain had better do something to lower the temperature quick. Why, one of his supporters might even break the law and hack into a candidate's personal email and expose private family pictures. That would be bad, might make Obama cry.

p.s. Yes this article is mainly just an excuse to write that awesome headline.

That's the boast that John McCain made to staffers on Sunday. Yep, after losing the first two debates, McCain now says he's going to whip Obama's ass in the third and final meeting. Nothing like a little rope-a-dope. Let the challenger have the first two rounds, watch him build a big lead in the polls, give the nation the impression that you're no longer talking about issues, piss off your supporters as well as your opponents, and then--wham!--come back with a massive last effort to save the day. Of course, McCain assures us that the ass-whipping will be done respectfully.

"I want to emphasize again, I respect Senator Obama." McCain said. "We will conduct a respectful race, and we will make sure that everybody else does, too."

I mean, sure, Cindy accused him of endangering the life of the McCain's son, and Sarah Palin (who was indeed found to have violated Alaska's ethics rules) says Obama pals around with terrorists, and doesn't believe that America is a force for good in the world, but none of that would be reason for John to lose any respect for the Illinois Senator, right?

Well, good luck on Wednesday, Senator McCain. Maybe the third time really will be a charm. It's never too late to hope that you'll put your uppity challenger in his place. Especially when there are only three weeks to go in the race, and you're still mulling over whether or not to unveil yet another new economic plan. In the course of the previous three weeks, you've gone from declaring that "the fundamentals of the economy are strong," to calling for the head of the SEC, to suspending your campaign, to offering a harshly criticized mortgage plan, to whatever hail Mary you can concoct this weekend. Yes, indeed, you've shown that anything can happen over a three week period.

So don't hurt him too bad, John. You know we all like a good clean fight.

The latest kerfuffle over violent rhetoric from the McCain campaign is still yet to play out, yet we already know that it was based on one or two comments and the feverish imaginations of the left, who are eager to assign blame and culpability on John McCain for one guy in 10,000 who shouts "terrorist."

The result is a pure psy-ops operation not directed at you or me or the casual John McCain leaner, it is directed at John McCain himself. What if they can get him to back down? What if they can get him to pull all the negative advertising? We already know that John McCain has a high opinion of himself as being the peacemaker, the laudable and honorable esteemed colleague that Joe Biden loves.

The result will be that instead of mounting the continuous negative attack that will raise Obama's unfavorables and seed the last minute decision makers to break McCain's way, (which is exactly what Obama himself is working on toward Sarah Palin over the last month and continuing) McCain will give up the race this weekend and determine that he will lose honorably, even if he betrays the thousands of Republicans who actually believed him when he asked them to "fight with me" at the convention. He will give up his best weapons and allow Obama to be defined only by the worshipful national media.

McCain just might do it. He is that vulnerable to a too common Republican malady wherein a Washinton DC politician gains an intense desire to be liked. McCain has been losing that status, when it looked like he was going to win. National media loves Republicans when they attack other Republicans, and especially when they lose. When they win, not so much.

So, question to McCain: Did you really mean that stuff about winning, or are you going to let the lefties get away with it?

For answer, we'll know soon enough, in the debates, where McCain will signal either gracious loserdom or that he will fight for us as he promised.

Reminder: Obama doesn't have to worry about rhetoric and ugliness on his side of the street, the media will never call him on it, even when he tells his supporters to "get in their face".

Kind of like this:

John McCain, late yesterday, was demanding that Barack Obama repudiate "shocking" remarks by Rep. John Lewis (D - GA). Lewis, you may recall, was among the 3 wisest people that McCain named at the Saddleback forum in August, along with Ebay executive Meg Whitman, and General David Petraeus.

AOL News has the story:

In a statement issued Saturday, Lewis said McCain and running mate Sarah Palin were "sowing the seeds of hatred and division, and there is no need for this hostility in our political discourse." He noted that Wallace also ran for president.

"George Wallace never threw a bomb. He never fired a gun, but he created the climate and the conditions that encouraged vicious attacks against innocent Americans who were simply trying to exercise their constitutional rights," said Lewis, who is black. "Because of this atmosphere of hate, four little girls were killed on Sunday morning when a church was bombed in Birmingham, Alabama."

...In his remarks, Lewis also said: "As public figures with the power to influence and persuade, Sen. McCain and Gov. Palin are playing with fire, and if they are not careful, that fire will consume us all. They are playing a very dangerous game that disregards the value of the political process and cheapens our entire democracy. We can do better. The American people deserve better."

McCain said the remarks were "shocking, and beyond the pale," and demanded rebuke from Barack Obama. Obama spokesman Bill Burton offered a pitch-perfect response:

"John Lewis was right to condemn some of the hateful rhetoric that John McCain himself personally rebuked just last night, as well as the baseless and profoundly irresponsible charges from his own running mate that the Democratic nominee for president of the United States 'pals around with terrorists."

Lewis issued a second statement, clarifying that he was not making a direct comparison between McCain and Wallace, which experts on the english language already knew.

McCain missed a real opportunity here. His reaction to Lewis' remarks is dead wrong, and only serves to deepen the divide.

Update: Here's the video. They definitely turned the music waaay up to drown out the boos. Considering the game was in Philly, this was probably a best case scenario for Palin. Also, please note, this was an NHL game, not an Obama rally. There were also no discernible calls for violence or accusations of mass murder and treason.

I guess this proves that all different kinds of people dislike Sarah Palin.




Update: I just watched the puck drop, and there was definitely a lot of booing, at least from what I could hear. The Flyers had the music up extremely loud the whole time, drowning out the crowd. We'll have to wait for some of those fan videos to get the real scoop. These are Philadelphia fans, so I expect there will be some raucous ones.

I received the following via email today, from PuckYouPalin.com:

It's time to hip check the right wing!

Join PuckYouPalin.com on Saturday during the Rangers/Flyers game and chant... PUCK YOU PALIN!!!!!

With the announcement that VP nominee and self professed "hockey mom"Sarah Palin will drop the puck at Saturday's Flyers/Rangers game, puckyoupalin.com is getting inundated with emails. The web site has heard its fans and will post video of hockey fans chanting PUCK YOU PALIN from Saturday night's game.

The game starts at 7pm EDT, so I guess we'll find out soon how big their email list is. I can't stand hockey or Palin, so I'm not sure I'm exactly their target audience.

Even as the news media and the left focuses on the "deeply divisive" and "ugly" tone of McCain supporters responding to his current attacks, as they all but ignore the content of those attacks, we know that there are kooks and ugly supporters, sexism, smears, etc. on both sides. As an example, my fellow blogger Tommy Christopher brings up an excellent example:

It's time to hip check the right wing!

Join PuckYouPalin.com on Saturday during the Rangers/Flyers game and chant... PUCK YOU PALIN!!!!!

With the announcement that VP nominee and self professed "hockey mom"Sarah Palin will drop the puck at Saturday's Flyers/Rangers game, puckyoupalin.com is getting inundated with emails. The web site has heard its fans and will post video of hockey fans chanting PUCK YOU PALIN from Saturday night's game.

And with appropriate sexist image:

So. Anyone want to take bets on whether anyone in the media will start writing stories about the "ugly" tone of Obama supporters or demand that Obama give them a stern talking to?

Yeah, I know ha ha. Yet we all know how the comments are here for both sides. And yet somehow, only McCain is being tasked by the media. Interesting how that works.

As Gateway Pundit noted before, when McCain supporters start printing and distributing signs saying Obama = terrorist. Then we'll know we have a problem.

Rensselaer County, NY election officials had a little bit of a controversy on their hands when 300 absentee ballots went out with a typo. Instead of Barack Obama, the ballot reads Barack Osama.

According to the Albany Times Union, it looks like just an honest mistake:

Elections officials on both sides of the aisle insist a simple typographical error caused the national embarrassment. "It was a mistake innocently done," McDonough said. "We catch almost everything."

Republican officials were apologetic. "We have three different staff members who proof these things and somehow the typo got by us," said Republican Commissioner Larry Bugbee. "We really apologize."

All 300 ballots were reprinted and redistributed.

I tend to believe it was an honest mistake. I've made it myself - maybe not typing, but definitely speaking. "B" and "S" are not really neighbors on the keyboard, but if you have Osama on your mind I can see it happening.

Time will tell, but as I said on last night's Unusable Signal, I think that the spectacle of increasingly ugly and hostile McCain crowds is going to hurt the GOP nominee badly with independents. Fair or not, it raises the spectre of two Americas, and decent people want no part of McCain's Ugly States of America.

The fact that McCain has started to fight the fire he started is creditable, if not laudable. Creditable because, by tamping down the hostility, he risks disarming the only weapon he has left: Obama the Villain. Earlier this week, I shared with some close colleagues my sense that McCain was feeding this narrative more deeply than is evident.

The refusal to even look at Obama during the first debate, his snub of the Democratic nominee on the floor of the Senate, and his reference to "That one...", when placed in context with the campaign's actions this week, send a message: John McCain is the hero who has so much honor, he can't be cordial with his rival, nay, his enemy, our enemy.

McCain has embroiled his most impressionable supporters in a badly written episode of 24. When it looked as though one of them might actually go all Jack Bauer on Obama's terrorist-loving ass, he took a deep breath and walked it back. A little. If I were forced to write a story called "John McCain is Not a Murderer," you'd probably wonder what I wrote in those earlier stories.

So, how did we get here? It's been a looong week, like many this campaign, so let's start at the beginning. Sarah Palin lost the debate, at least to the extent that she could have helped McCain but didn't. With Mac's poll numbers slipping, and no foothold on the economy, panic set in. An already dirty campaign didn't just jump the shark, it shot the shark in the leg and made it talk.

For all you history buffs, Washington Monthly has uncovered an interesting election year factoid:

The McCain/Palin ticket is the first in American history in which both candidates were found to have violated ethics standards before a national election.

McCain, of course, was admonished by Senate Ethics Committee "for exercising 'poor judgment' for intervening" with federal regulators on behalf of Charles Keating, as part of the infamous Keating Five scandal.

And now McCain's running mate has also been found to have violated state ethics laws and abused the powers of her office, as part of the "Troopergate" scandal.

The nation has had 102 major-party tickets covering 51 presidential elections over more than two centuries. And we've never had a ticket in which both candidates on the same ticket were responsible for ethics violations before a national election. McCain/Palin is the first.

They really are mavericks.