Chamber Of Commerce Moves To Bolster Their Boy Rubio, As Palin And The Hate-Filled GOP Base Reject Him

Two polls were released Monday-- and both auger terrible news for the GOP. One, by the reputable Pew organization trumpets the broad national support for comprehensive immigration reform embodied in the Gang of Eight proposal. The other, by the Republican Party's own polling firm, Rasmussen, showed that Marco Rubio's support among Republican voters has plummeted because of his role in the drafting of that immigration legislation most Americans want to see passed. 71% of American voters say undocumented immigrants should be allowed to stay in the country. The racists, xenophobes, Know Nothings and teabaggers who are now the base of the GOP, disagree. Rubio's dilemma is fraying the Republican Party. Republican base icon Sarah Palin started the week rolling by smearing Rubio now that he's down and out with her followers.

"It’s beyond disingenuous for anyone to claim that a vote for this bill is a vote for security," Palin wrote. "Look no further than the fact that Senator Rubio and amnesty supporters nixed Senator Thune’s amendment that required the feds to finally build part of a needed security fence before moving forward on the status of illegal immigrants who’ve already broken the law to be here.

"And if shooting down the border fence wasn't proof enough, they blew another chance by killing Senator Paul’s ‘Trust But Verify’ amendment which required the completion of a fence in five years and required Congress to vote on whether the border is actually secure before furthering any immigration measures. And then they blew it yet again, nixing Senator Cornyn’s ‘Results’ amendment, which also required border enforcement standards. Now the Senate’s pro-amnesty crowd is offering a fig leaf to security via the Corker-Hoeven Amendment, but this is really nothing more than empty promises. It’s amnesty right now and border security … eh, well, someday.”

Palin promised to make immigration a major issue in the 2014 election cycle, comparing it to 2010 when the tea party movement helped propel Republican gains as Americans rallied against President Barack Obama’s federal health-care law.

“As the Senate moves to pass amnesty, the only bright spot in this travesty is the rallying revolution we can look forward to,” Palin wrote on Monday. “For just as opposition to Obamacare became a rallying cry for the 2010 midterm elections, opposition to this fundamentally transforming amnesty bill will galvanize the grass roots in next year’s elections. And 2014 is just around the corner.”

Nor was this Palin’s only attack on Rubio in recent days. On Sunday, Palin highlighted a story from Townhall.com which insisted Rubio shifted his position on immigration between when he ran for the Senate in 2010 and today.

“Politicians wonder why we can't trust them?” Palin demanded on Facebook on Sunday before including Alaska’s two U.S. senators-- Democrat Mark Begich and Republican Lisa Murkowski. “Campaign flip-flops like this and carve-out bribes in the Amnesty Bill for politicians like Begich and Murkowski to exempt Alaska seafood workers.”

The ad up top is being run-- and run heavily-- by the very far right U.S. Chamber of Commerce, as a reward to Rubio. The Chamber isn't interested in humanitarianism or racial equality; their only interest in the immigration fight is cheap labor. Can they make up for the damage Palin and the teabaggers are doing to Rubio's reputation inside his own party? Not a chance. Just listen to Lindsey Graham (from Fox News Sunday) explaining how his party has to be bigger than just the backward racists in his own state and Utah:

The Wreck That Is Sarah Palin-- And Her Secessionist Followers

Alaska has a small state legislature, the smallest bicameral legislature in the U.S., in fact-- 40 House members and 20 Senate members. The Republicans have a majority in the House and the Senate is evenly split. But just as the state's ex-governor was getting ready for another hilarious and raucous episode of Palin Livin', the bicameral legislature did a very bipartisan thing: they overrode Palin's veto of $28 million in federal stimulus money for energy cost relief. To over turn a veto in Alaska, you need 75% of the two chambers, almost an impossibility, especially when the governor's own party has a majority. But they did it, 45-14.

Supporters argued Palin badly overstated the "strings" attached to taking the money, and that frigid Alaska could use the assistance.

"Instead of being the last state in the union to take this money we should have been the first," said Bethel Democratic Sen. Lyman Hoffman. "We live in the coldest state in the union and we should be setting the standard in efficiencies and how energy is being used throughout this state."

Anti-U.S. radicals and secessionists, basically the last of Palin's political support, came flooding in from Wasilla and the rest of the meth belt to demand her veto stand "with signs like 'Fed $=Tyranny' and 'Override=You're fired.' Others urging legislators to override the veto mixed in with their own signs like 'Efficiency Makes Cents.' There was arguing between the two camps and legislators had to walk a gantlet through the protesters to get into the Egan Center, where the special session was being held.

Palin's political exile-- headquartered on her Facebook page-- bleated out a message yesterday warning of the dire consequences of... Alaska being part of the United States of America.

"As governor, I did my utmost to warn our legislators that accepting stimulus funds will further tie Alaska to the federal government and chip away at Alaska's right to chart its own course. Enforcing the federal building code requirements, which Governor Parnell and future governors will be forced to adopt in order to accept these energy funds, will eventually cost the state more than it receives. There are clear ropes attached."

Now that that's done, Palin can get back to lying about President Obama and fomenting trouble among the lunatic fringe that takes her seriously with talk about death panels (not the real ones that do exist, the made up ones she dreams about) and euthanasia and competing with Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck and Michael Savage for who can do the most damage to America.

Roger Simon skewers what he calls the GOP's "rabid" responders -- i.e. Sarah Palin, Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck. On Palin's death panel claim, Simon writes, "In olden times, Palin might have made this claim at a speech or during a news conference where reporters might have asked questions like: 'What proof do you have?' or 'Aren’t you just trying to scare people?' But Palin does not risk that. She takes no questions. She has done her duty as a rabid responder. She has rung the tocsin, sounded the alarm, lit the signal fire. Truth? Accuracy? Responsibility? Not her territory… Glenn Beck is a rabid responder on race… Rush Limbaugh is a rabid responder on Nazis and swastikas. He knows a lot about swastikas. He sees them everywhere."

This could all end very tragically for this country. It's almost as though we're on the verge of another Ft Sumter. As Jeff Cook pointed out at The Gawker today, there are plenty of reasons to be very worried. "There are always people who want to kill the president. Generally speaking, they are politically marginalized, insane, and/or too incompetent to come close to achieving their ends. But in the past six months, people who would be inclined to do violence to our political leaders have been affirmatively embraced by the Republican Party and its messaging operation. It's as if there had been a 24-hour cable news channel in 1981 devoted to coverage of Jodie Foster, and what it would take for someone to get her attention."

Poor Sarah

by Mags

Poor Sarah. She has no clue about the definitions of words or the reality of the political world. Even though I have heard over and over how politically savvy she is, this woman from the hinterlands of the great frigid north is so isolated that she is not even aware that she is woefully ignorant. When you go to 6 colleges in order to get your journalism degree... well maybe you miss something essential in your education. When you are a big fish in a small pond, there is no way to measure yourself and your accomplishments against the mainstream. When you get to the lower 48, people will not be so supportive of you.

The other day Sarah and others on the right revealed their ignorance by criticizing Barack Obama calling the Constitution a document of “negative rights.” One must wonder why there was no one on the McCain band wagon who had even a smattering of knowledge regarding legal definitions. What the term means is that the Constitution tells us what the government may not do rather than to tell us exactly what our rights are. Pretty simple right? It would seem so, but for those who are helplessly lost in the right wing spin machine, it is muddy. They think that Obama was saying the Constitution was a negative. Never mind that Barack Obama is a Constitutional Scholar and that he taught Constitutional Law. Small detail? I think not.

Now comes Sarah Palin complaining that we must not call the smears she is slinging, the accusations of being a pal of terrorists and being a secret PLO lover, negative campaigning. If we do so, we might be violating her 1st Amendment rights. What? Sarah, Sarah, Sarah, why must you continually open your mouth to show just how ignorant you are? Seriously, I enjoy it since I have no respect for you as a person or as a woman, but it sets my brain on fire to think that someone who is so, may I say it, stupid to speak in public at venues that will be broadcast to the entire nation? Come on, what are we going to tell our children?

Sarah, negative campaigning means that you are campaigning by smearing your opponent rather than talking up the positives that you will achieve. Positive campaigning is telling people what you will do. It is selling your own plan. I realize people with pea sized brains and big egos such as your self cannot elevate themselves without getting into the gutter to take someone else down, but honey, it is possible to campaign and to have freedom of speech without lying. Ya, you betcha.

So often have you criticized the “gotcha media” that you cannot see yourself as the “gotcha” vice presidential dispenser of lies. If all of these pronouncements are your idea, then you are doubly repulsive, but if you are spewing these lies merely at the behest of campaign managers, then you are a mere actor reciting a script. Neither possibility explains the relish with which you seem to throw this red meat to the crowds. Nor does this recommend you as a public official. The look on your face is full of self-righteous self-serving satisfaction. These rallies are an exercise in self-gratification of the baser natures in us all, the baser natures which we fight to keep in check. This is self-indulgence at its worst. You hold all that is good in contempt. It is written on your face.

Your flaws are legion Sarah, but most of them you have revealed yourself. It makes an observant person shake their head in disbelief that you do not even understand how you undermine your own credibility. I mean really, it would make me embarrassed for you if I did not already despise all of your politics and your methods. Can you express yourself without being snide and attacking others? Is it possible? I doubt anyone of your belief system and your political persuasion can any longer make any meaningful statements in the public sphere. It is all attacks and hate.

Your bitter and snide nature is caught again and again in your facial expressions and in your tone. It is clear that you hold yourself in high regard, you think you are better than the rest of us. It is clear that you disrespect those who display integrity and intelligence.

Everything you say is meaningless and ill logical. If it is not obvious to you, it is obvious to us. This is the thing that has been making us crazy for 8 years. We know what is said again and again by the right wing does not make any sense, but night after night the media has on supposed experts to dissect the statements as if they made perfect sense.

Poor Sarah, you have begun to think this is about you. I am so sorry dear. This is not about you. This is not about how “cute” you are. Cute does not get real power Sarah, besides on camera and in the bedrooms of the GOP. Cute gets you nothing, but attention. The election is not about you. No one of any position takes you seriously. I am sorry that your illusions of a 2012 run for the presidency will end in flames, and trust me, they will. If you had not been a user and an opportunist for your whole life, I would be tempted to feel sorry for you. But, I don’t.

Here is the one thing for which American women can be grateful. We can be grateful that despite your celebrity status, your $11,000 per week make-up artist, and your $150,000 wardrobe that any of us who are intelligent and able to speak in well measured and cogent sentences might now be taken seriously in political circles. Your candidacy has made Hillary Clinton look like a lioness in comparison. Frankly, Sarah, I would make a better VP than you would, and I have never held public office. If nothing else, you helped us to appreciate the women in Congress who serve with intelligence and distinction that is well-earned.

As for you Sarah, poor Sarah, we hope you go back home. And, when you get there I hope the citizens of your own state will hold you accountable for your abuses of power, your lapses of judgment, and your deceptions in governing. You have shown us that women such as yourself are fully capable of being as corrupt and greedy as any man in any political office. Go home Sarah. Study the Constitution of these United States. It was never about you. It is about the country, America, first... remember?

See more funny videos at Funny or Die

McCain Having Buyer's Remorse Over Palin Already?

Some McCain staffers, though certainly not Steve Schmidt, who wouldn't think twice about ripping apart the social fabric that binds the country together if it got "him" 3 electoral votes, are already talking about McCain accepting an "honorable defeat" and not further destroying his reputation and dragging his own integrity through the sewers of right-wing extremism that the GOP has become.

I don't know if they make this stuff up or get inside dope from McCain ally Lady de Rotheschild, but this morning's London Times is reporting that McCain wants Palin to stop acting as if her campaign appearances were KKK rallies.

McCain has become alarmed about the fury unleashed by Sarah Palin, the moose-hunting “pitbull in lipstick,” against Senator Barack Obama. Cries of “terrorist” and “kill him” have accompanied the tirades by the governor of Alaska against the Democratic nominee at Republican rallies.

...Palin, 44, has led the character attacks on Obama in the belief that McCain may be throwing away the election and her chance of becoming vice-president. Her supporters think that if the Republican ticket loses on November 4, she should run for president in 2012.

A leading Republican consultant said: “A lot of conservatives are grumbling about what a poor job McCain is doing. They are rolling their eyes and saying, ‘Yes, a miracle could happen, but at this rate it is all over.'

“Sarah Palin is no fool. She sees the same thing and wants to salvage what she can. She is positioning herself for the future. Her best days could be in front of her. She wants to look as though she was the fighter, the person with the spunk who was out there taking it to the Democrats.”

She's been second-guessing campaign decisions-- like pulling resources out of Michigan-- and she has been publicly complaining that the campaign isn't using enough of the good old fashioned GOP smear and fear, let alone too much of it. And although normal Americans have an unfavorable view of Palin and she isn't helping him attract women or independents to the ticket, she is much, much more popular with what's left of the Republican base. McCain "regularly has to endure the spectacle of members of the audience leaving for their cars when it is his turn to speak at joint rallies." If she isn't the ultimate example of bad judgment on his part, I don't know what is. She's exactly the kind of choice that would have made an earlier version of John McCain say he couldn't support this ticket! Or some of the kooks and nuts who are running it.


UPDATE: PALIN ON THE ICE

Scott Ostler summed up Sarah Palin's disastrous foray into the Philly ice hockey world-- without even ever mentioning the word "booed":

-- Sarah Palin, what a great idea having her drop the first puck at the Philadelphia Flyers' home opener Saturday. I hear the fans loved it when she chased the Zamboni and tried to bite the tires.

-- Palin was the Flyers' second choice. Their first choice was to have John McCain drop his dentures.

-- Palin is a hockey expert, of course, because she can see Canada from her backyard.

h/t: Harry

Smear, Smear, Smear-- It's All They've Got

I'm downstairs at the computer but I left the TV on in my bedroom and I hear the singsong musings of Palin's fingernails on chalkboard voice whipping a crowd of out-and-out bloodthirsty fascists into a frenzy. The whole ugly scene is abetted and encouraged by Republican Party TV's viciously anti-Obama biopic, “Obama & Friends: The History of Radicalism,” which was hosted by Josef Goebbels Sean Hannity. Whipping up fear and loathing for Obama won't have much of an impact on normal Americans but the hate-obsessed, low-IQ Republican base eats it up and gets itself into a lather and frenzy of bigotry and self-righteous rage.

As Dana Milbank pointed out in today's Washington Post fascism is alive and well at Palin rallies. Obama has pulled ahead of McCain in Florida polling but that doesn't mean the KKK is dead and buried-- and they're all coming out for the Sarah Palin Show. The McCain has "let Sarah loose" and Republican racists have taken this as a signal that they're free to scream racist epithets and give voice to the hatred that drives their lives.

Palin's routine attacks on the media have begun to spill into ugliness. In Clearwater, arriving reporters were greeted with shouts and taunts by the crowd of about 3,000. Palin then went on to blame Katie Couric's questions for her "less-than-successful interview with kinda mainstream media." At that, Palin supporters turned on reporters in the press area, waving thunder sticks and shouting abuse. Others hurled obscenities at a camera crew. One Palin supporter shouted a racial epithet at an African American sound man for a network and told him, "Sit down, boy."

And it isn't just rednecks who are susceptible to the blandishments of Hannity and Palin. The extreme right GOP front group, the Republican Jewish Coalition (RJC) has been trying to trick Jews into thinking Obama is anti-Semitic with ads screaming: "Barack Obama's Friends: Pro-Palestinian. Anti-Israel. Hostile to America." Spending over a million dollars the RJC has:

- Linked Obama's name and picture to Mahmoud Ahmedinejad, Ayatollah Khomeini, and Pat Buchanan among others.

- Not so subtly threatened "tragic outcomes for the Jewish people" in a headline over a photo of Obama speaking in Berlin.
 
- Called Obama advisors "anti-Israel" and "pro-Palestinian" for arguing for American diplomacy intended to achieve Middle East peace.

These ads play on the deepest fears and worst prejudices of the Jewish community-- and they are everywhere. They're running in local Jewish newspapers in places like Miami, Philadelphia, and Columbus, Ohio where they can have maximum electoral effect.

More and more observers are aghast at how viciously the McCain campaign-- mostly via Palin-- has been inciting the right-wing faithful, who don't need much incitement-- to scream for the assasination of the Democratic candidate! So on the day a veterans group has reported McCain's real record on the troops and on vets-- it ain't pretty-- Palin is shouting about Obama not being one of us and inciting violence. Anything to change the subject away from McCain's ghastly record on things that are important to normal Americans. And it is clear, that by watching how McCain and Palin react to the vicious, racist behavior of their base, these are two people utterly unfit for national office.

A true leader would stop their politicking for a moment to remind the crowd that we are all Americans, that a sitting U.S. Senator is not a terrorist, that calls for murder have no place in a democracy because we work out our differences through debate and argument and law.

A true leader would recognize the pain ripping through his or her people and would seek to comfort them and then inspire them. A true leader would empathize with his or her people and then ask the nation to rise above our baser instincts, to come together as we’ve done before.

A true leader would lift his or her people up, not prey on their fears, their insecurities, their ignorance and their anger.

McCain's Allies Deserting Him-- Soon Only Palin's Terrorist Buddies Will Be Willing To Pal Around With Him

Turns out the only difference was a muzzle, not lipstick

McCain and his pet pit bull (with the lipstick) like to say they represent business. In McCain's case, marrying a rich gangster's pretty daughter certainly paid well but unless you want to count that as "business," the only relationship McCain has had with business is taking bribes, millions and millions of dollars in bribes, conveniently defined as "contributions" by the Congress in which he and hundreds of other crooked pols serve. Meanwhile, business has had a look at his so-called healthcare plan and can barely keep from choking on its own vomit.

[O]fficials, with [staunchly Republican] organizations like the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the Business Roundtable and the National Federation of Independent Business, predicted in recent interviews that the McCain plan, which eliminates the exclusion of health benefits from income taxes, would accelerate the erosion of employer-sponsored health insurance and do little to reduce the number of uninsured from 45 million.

That is largely the argument made in recent days by Mr. McCain’s opponent, Senator Barack Obama, who has revived a dormant campaign debate over health care with an intensified attack on the McCain plan. Conscious that the issue plays well with swing voters, Mr. Obama devoted a speech on Saturday to characterizing Mr. McCain’s plan as “radical” and a “Washington bait and switch,” and he has reinforced the message in four television advertisements.

McCain's once devoted allies in the media, his base, are, for the most part-- though not the part from Fox nor people who make believe David Broder isn't terminally senile and long past his trip to the glue factory-- disillusioned that their hero turns out to be the biggest scumbag in the history of contemporary American politics. Gee, did they get it wrong! Time Magazine's Joe Klein is so disgusted with McCain's "descent into ugliness" that he's reticent to cover all the "manure" the campaign is farting out in every direction.

It is appropriate that the prime vessel for this assault is Sarah Palin, whose very presence on a national ticket is an insult to your intelligence. She now has "credibility," we are told, because she managed to read talking points off notecards in the debate last week with unwitting enthusiasm.

Over the weekend, she picked up on an article in the New York Times, which essentially says that Barack Obama and the former terrorist Bill Ayers have crossed paths in Chicago, served on a couple of charitable boards together, but aren't particularly close. To Palin-- or her scriptwriters-- this means that Obama has been "palling around" with terrorists.

...[T]his is rather rich coming from Palin, who is married to a man who belonged to a political party-- the Alaskan Independence Party-- that wanted to secede from the union.

Watch and judge for yourself who's palling around with our nation's enemies:

McCain Campaign Refuses To Address Palin Lies About Obama "Palling Around With Terrorists"

CNN bends so far over backwards to present all sides, that they often-- very often-- will state completely made up propaganda from the GOP and give it an equal footing to objective reality. It's part of the reason I bade my longtime station adieu and migrated to MSNBC earlier this year. But today CNN did yeoman's work in debunking the Lipsticked Pitbull's latest Obama smear, the Bill Ayer's nonsense. Keep in mind that Obama was 8 years old when Ayer's was a member of the Weather Underground and that he long ago denounced Ayers' violence.

Ace McCain, of course, is too chickenshit to repeat this whopper himself so he sends the hapless Mooselini of Wasilla out to repeat it while he hides away in one of his dozen homes and refuses to respond to questions from the press about why his campaign is rolling around in the gutter after promising the nation not to. Palin should still be in her remedial campaign classes learning basic geography so she stops mixing up Afghanistan and Mexico instead of running around the country spreading her lies, poisonous racism and divisiveness on behalf of Senator Chickenshit's increasingly hopeless and desperate campaign to capture the White House.

Harold Meyerson makes a good point in tomorrow's Washington Post about McCain's new all-negative all the time campaign strategy:

... [I]f the McCain people want to rummage through presidential candidates' associations, real or imagined, to turn up figures who threaten to pull down this proud republic, they should begin in-house. Chief among those to whom responsibility attaches for the financial crisis that is plunging the nation into recession is former Texas senator Phil Gramm, McCain's own economic guru.

Gramm was always Wall Street's man in the Senate. As chairman of the Senate Banking Committee during the Clinton administration, he consistently underfunded the Securities and Exchange Commission and kept it from stopping accounting firms from auditing corporations with which they had conflicts of interest. Gramm's piece de resistance came on Dec. 15, 2000, when he slipped into an omnibus spending bill a provision called the Commodity Futures Modernization Act (CFMA), which prohibited any governmental regulation of credit default swaps, those insurance policies covering losses on securities in the event they went belly up. As the housing bubble ballooned, the face value of those swaps rose to a tidy $62 trillion. And as the housing bubble burst, those swaps became a massive pile of worthless paper, because no government agency had required the banks to set aside money to back them up.

The CFMA also prohibited government regulation of the energy-trading market, which enabled Enron to nearly bankrupt the state of California before bankrupting itself.

The problem with this exercise, of course, is that Gramm's relationship to McCain is not comparable to the relationships that Ayers or Wright have with Obama. The idea that either Ayers or Wright would have any impact on the workings of an Obama administration is nonsensical. But Gramm and McCain do have an enduring political and economic alliance. McCain chaired Gramm's short-lived presidential campaign in 1996; Gramm is co-chair of McCain's current effort. McCain has called Gramm one of his leading economic counselors and has not repudiated reports that Gramm is on the shortlist to become McCain's Treasury secretary if he's elected.

CNN hoping viewers want to see the actual truth about Palin's lies and smears:



UPDATE: AND WHAT ABOUT PALIN'S PALLING AROUND WITH SECESSIONISTS?

The McCain campaign, through their happy fool Palin, has accused Obama, who was 8 years old when Bill Ayers was a Weatherman, of "palling around with terrorists. McCain himself actually has palled around with terrorists-- right wing kooks and criminals like G. Gordon Liddy-- and Palin more than palled around with terrorists; she has been heavily involved with a militia group and even married one! Would she and McCain pardon Terry Nichols, the right-wing Oklahoma City bomber? He has the same world view they do. Dave Neiwert brings up a great point at Orcinus this morning: Palin is throwing stones from a glass house.

Notably, she nominated one of her local militiamen/John Birch Society types in Wasilla to serve on the city's planning board. This is a big deal to "Patriot" folks, who consider local planning and zoning ordinances to be among the chief signs of creeping socialism, and fight them tooth and nail. Had the Wasilla Council not balked at her nomination, the man no doubt would have wreaked havoc with the city's planning laws and their enforcement.

She also fired the city's museum director at the behest of this character.

And then there were Palin's notable and extended dalliances with the radical secessionist Alaskan Independence Party. In 1992, its members largely supported former militiaman James "Bo" Gritz for president. It has over the years been associated with promoting paranoid "New World Order" conspiracy theories.

You Want Four More Years Of Lies And Divisiveness?

All week the Blue America candidates have been telling me that their opponents have been going increasingly negative. From coast to coast the Republican Party has decided to follow John McCain into the gutter... or he's decided to follow them into the gutter-- or, more likely, they're all just going along with Karl Rove who knows better than most that when you have nothing positive to run on, you just better make stuff up. You could see the controlled outrage in Oklahoma Senate candidate Andrew Rice's face yesterday when he addressed the overflowing sewer of lies that James Inhofe has opened up against him with a series of viciously negative ads.

Mean Jean Schmidt didn't get her nickname because anyone thought she was one of the good guys, so no one was expecting her to change her ways in this campaign. But a friend in Blue Ash, Ohio was still shocked by a mailer he got from her campaign accusing Dr. Victoria Wulsin, who has dedicated her entire life to health care and public policy regarding health care, especially for children, of experimenting-- "grotesque medical experiments"-- on human beings. Even the Cincinnati Enquirer reporter Malia Rulon, a quarter inch shy of being part of the Schmidt campaign, points out that Schmidt's mailer was filled with lies; I think she called it "stretching the truth."

In Minnesota brand new polls show that both Obama and Franken have leaped significantly ahead of McCain and Coleman. And the Star Tribune, the biggest paper in the state, attributes it to Minnesotans disgusted reaction to the Republican negativity.

For Coleman, there is little good news in the poll. The number of voters who view him unfavorably continues to grow, the number who see him favorably is falling, and his job-approval rating has slipped to 38 percent-- his lowest ever in the Minnesota Poll.

...The new poll suggests that one reason for Franken’s gain is voters’ reaction to the abrasive advertising in the campaign.

The survey shows that 56 percent of poll respondents consider ads criticizing Franken to be “mostly unfair personal attacks.” Only 42 percent said the same about ads criticizing Coleman.

Some of the ads by the Coleman campaign and national Republicans show Franken when he was an entertainer, cursing and ranting on political subjects. Others stress the tax and accounting mistakes of his private corporation when he was living in New York.

McCain and the Republicans have decided to spend the rest of the campaign going negative-- no, I mean really negative... negative like you've never seen before. If they can't get people to vote for them, they hope to get voters to just stay away from the polls altogether, since the uber-motivated Greed and Selfishness voters always vote and, of course, mostly vote for the Party of Greed and Selfishness. Take a look, for example at this column by a McCain campaign official in Virginia. This is what we'll be seeing, especially in the battleground states from now until November. This is the racist trash we warned would be coming last night in McCain Unleashes The Republican Smear Machine. He accuses Obama of wanting to paint the White House black, supporting reparations, changing the national anthem to the "black national anthem," teaching "black liberation theology in all churches," and replacing the flag with a "star and crescent logo."

Yesterday Michael Shear warned Washington Post readers that McCain plans a 24/7 Rovian type smear campaign against Obama. Today Frank Rich writes that McCain's vicious little pitbull with lipstick is doing more to hurt him than help him. Palin, unable to talk intelligently about any issues, domestic or international, has found her ultimate role in the McCain campaign-- everything dishonorable and filthy. The trashy crooked hack from Alaska is now on auto-repeat wherever she goes, warning voters that Obama is palling around with terrorists. It's good that they found something worthy of her character to do between now and November when she returns to her view of Russia in disgrace.

Even Rove, the mastermind behind the faltering McCain campaign, admits if the election were held today, Obama would be elected president, having clinched all the electoral votes he needs. Rove, McCain, Palin, and the whole menagerie of slimy Republican candidates for Congress, plan to create as much filth and negativity as they can to change that. But Rove's negative strategy, especially in the hands of an imbecile like Palin, may well backfire on McCain.

'Our opponent... is someone who sees America, it seems, as being so imperfect, imperfect enough, that he's palling around with terrorists who would target their own country,'' Palin told a group of donors in Englewood, Colo. A deliberate attempt to smear Obama, McCain's ticket-mate echoed the line at three separate events Saturday.

''This is not a man who sees America like you and I see America,'' she said. ''We see America as a force of good in this world. We see an America of exceptionalism.''

...Palin's words avoid repulsing voters with overt racism. But is there another subtext for creating the false image of a black presidential nominee ''palling around'' with terrorists while assuring a predominantly white audience that he doesn't see their America?

In a post-Sept. 11 America, terrorists are envisioned as dark-skinned radical Muslims, not the homegrown anarchists of Ayers' day 40 years ago. With Obama a relative unknown when he began his campaign, the Internet hummed with false e-mails about ties to radical Islam of a foreign-born candidate.

Whether intended or not by the McCain campaign, portraying Obama as ''not like us'' is another potential appeal to racism. It suggests that the Hawaiian-born Christian is, at heart, un-American.

...[T]hough she may have scored a political hit each time, her attack was unsubstantiated and carried a racially tinged subtext that John McCain himself may come to regret.

If the poll in Minnesota is any indication, and if the Republican attacks on Democrats using Obama's association with Rev Wright earlier in the year-- in three red district races where favored Republican congressional candidates backed by McCain were defeated-- are any indication, it isn't only something McCain will come to regret but something the entire Bush-McCain Party will come to regret. Today's polls from Ohio, an absolute must win state for McCain, show it slipping irretrievably out of his grasp. As McCain said himself, if all you do is run a bunch of attack ads, it shows you have no vision for the future. John McCain, more than any candidate I have ever seen in my life, has no vision for the future. I like the way Obama is answering back:

Sarah Palin--The Package Looks Better But The Poison Will Make You Just As Sick

Remember Monk?

I usually try to avoid right wing propaganda. But for some reason I forced myself to listen to the St. Paul HateFest last night. If you thought Giuliani was supposed to be the creature from the black lagoon dug up to infect everyone with his poisonous venom... well that was just an appetizer for what close McCain family friend Tucker Eskew had cooked up for his little Heatherish protege from Wasilla.


I had noticed that all day there was this buildup that the monster was about to turn on Dr. Frankenstein. I mean if ever in my lifetime a worthless hack was built up into something created out of pure hype it was what the media did for McCain. And yesterday he repaid their kindness by loosening the hounds of right wing hell on them. Time Magazine's Joe Klein reacted like a lover cruelly spurned. He's not happy that Rove's man in the campaign, Steve Schmidt, has decided to use his profession as a punching bag and a symbol of what's wrong with America (other than 8 years of disastrous Republican misrule, more often than not abetted by the media).

The story of the day out here in Minneapolis is the McCain campaign's war against the press. This has been building for some time. Those of us who have criticized the candidate--and especially those of us who enjoyed good relations with McCain in the past--have been subject to off-the-record browbeating and attempted bullying all year. But things have gotten much worse in recent days: there was McCain's rude, bizarre interview with Time Magazine last week. Yesterday, McCain refused to an interview with Larry King, for God's sake, because Campbell Brown had been caught in the commission of journalism on CNN the night before, asking McCain spokesman Tucker Bounds what decisions Sarah Palin had made as commander-in-chief of the Alaska national guard. (There was an answer that the unprepared Bounds didn't have: she had deployed them to fight fires.)

So what's going on here? Two things. McCain is just plain angry at us. By the evidence presented in the utterly revealing Time interview, he's ballistic. This is a politician who needs to see himself as the man on the white horse, boldly traversing a muddy field...any intimations that he's gotten muddied in the process, or has decided to throw mud, are intolerable.

The second thing is more insidious: Steve Schmidt has decided, for tactical reasons, to slime the press. He wants the public to believe that there is an unfair--sexist (you gotta love it)--personal assault going on against Palin and her family. This is a smokescreen, intended to divert attention from the very real and responsible vetting that is taking place in the media--about the substance of Palin's record as mayor and governor. Sure, there are a few outliers--and the tabloid press--who have fixed on baby stories. That was inevitable....the flip side of the personal stories that the McCain team thought would work to their advantage--Palin's moose-hunting and wolf-shooting, and her admirable decision to have a Down Syndrome baby. And yes, when we all fix on the same story, whether it's a hurricane or a little-known politician, a zoo ensues. But the media coverage of the Palin story has been well within the bounds of responsibility. Schmidt is trying to make it seem otherwise, a desperate tactic.

There is a tendency in the media to kick ourselves, cringe and withdraw, when we are criticized. But I hope my colleagues stand strong in this case: it is important for the public to know that Palin raised taxes as governor, supported the Bridge to Nowhere before she opposed it, pursued pork-barrel projects as mayor, tried to ban books at the local library and thinks the war in Iraq is "a task from God." The attempts by the McCain campaign to bully us into not reporting such things are not only stupidly aggressive, but unprofessional in the extreme.

The Republican convention, which was overwhelmingly male and overwhelmingly white (93%), was a horrible scene of self-righteous anger, greed and self-entitlement. It was a dark place filled with ignorance, fear, empty bravado and hatred, That came alive only when red meat dripping with blood was tossed their way. They snoozed through speeches about helping people and went apeshit when something was mentioned about cutting their taxes. When Huckabee said something about the disgrace of racism, you could have heard a pin drop-- or maybe people waiting for a punchline. But he saved himself by turning on the internal hate machine and going after Obama, having made sure in advance everyone knew he wasn't attacking him for his race. But why not? This was a crowd that accepted at face value Mitt Romney-- a man who has pocketed at least $400 million as a predatory vulture capitalist and serial outsourcer-- denouncing "eastern elites." This was the worst of what America has to offer-- and they're damn proud of it. And they were just waitin' for their gal Sarah, or at least for whatever the speechwriters had put in her mouth. No one in the hall was disappointed.

And America? We'll soon see if the country embraces a message of nastiness, hatred, extremism... and abject failure... or one of hope and unity. Last night Sarah Palin and her writers made Mean Jean Schmidt seem almost moderate. Her speech was devoid of anything put political attack, almost entirely baseless attack. But whoever wrote it for knew exactly who the audience was. They ate it up-- especially the meanest and most hate-filled parts.

My friend Adam made this video. There isn't anything Sarah Palin said tonight to make anyone feel more comfortable about its message: