Saturday October 11, 2008, 12:21 am
This truly scares me. I fear for Obama.
Sign the petition demanding that McCain issue a formal apology and condemn the hate speech! This needs to stop before it escalates into seven more dangerous behavior... http://www.thepetitionsite.com/takeaction/746582395

Saturday October 11, 2008, 8:29 am
At what point do people realize how crazy things are? Republicans are whipped into a frenzy.

John McCain showed respectable constraint. I wonder how calculated it was. I wonder if his campaign staff are discussing the long term impact of running a campaign that goes this far in vilifying non-Republicans?

Republicans have convinced themselves that they are under siege. The language they're using is as strong as I've ever heard, and it isn't about the promotion of American values, it is about the defense of the American way of life from an internal enemy. Whether or not it is explicit in these campaign speeches, the message being taken away by Republicans is that those of us who aren't Republicans are fighting a cultural war against white heterosexuals, Christians, and Jews, and that we are collaborating to make ourselves rich by creating economic turmoil.

The videos from Ohio and Pennsylvania are not of individuals gathering around a common idea, they are a mob gathering around a common enemy. And, they're lashing out at their neighbors. Not objects. Not property. At people. There's a difference between schadenfreude and sadism.

Republicans aren't wishing their enemies trivial misfortune, they're wishing them dead.

How does this not call for alarm?

Saturday October 11, 2008, 10:20 am
The hatred that we are seeing now is truly scary.

Saturday October 11, 2008, 10:23 am
A HISTORIC TICKET.... Now that Sarah Palin has been found to have abused her powers, violated state ethics, and lied about it, I did a little digging and found an interesting historical footnote.

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.

It makes the whole "reform" pitch a little more difficult, doesn't it?

Saturday October 11, 2008, 11:31 am
I believe that we will have massive violence and poverty if we get stuck with republicans again.