There was a time when Paglia's polemics ticked me off, and I wrote in. After awhile, they became so perfunctory and inane I stopped taking notice. And now, something new; they've started making me laugh.

Thanks Camille, you've brightened my morning.

It manages to paint Obama in a more unflattering light, almost echoing the McCain camp's talking point that he's a liar:

The candidates are long past the fiction that they admire and respect each other. Obama may pay homage to McCain's service and sacrifice during Vietnam, but there is little else he seems to find admirable in a politician who has, over the years, bucked his party leadership on numerous occasions and worked productively with Democrats on the left and in the center.

McCain has talked about his rival as someone whose rise and success are inspirational for all Americans, but whatever measure he took of Obama as a senator has left a more indelible impression on him -- and it is mostly negative. He obviously believes Obama isn't equipped to be commander in chief and doesn't have the toughness needed to get things done.

Got that? McCain hates Obama because his impartial judgment led him to believe that Obama is simply not qualified to be commander in chief, and not tough enough to be a good President. Obama, meanwhile, refuses to acknowledge the Great and Honorable Senator's great and honorable record of service to our Great and Honorable Nation. But that follows because the black foreign guy isn't really patriot, and doesn't put his country first.

I didn't know Balz before, but I sure do now. Shocker that he writes for the Post...

Shooter enlightens:

I don't believe the reporting of said racial slurs. I CAN say with certainty that nothing racial has come from the candidates or the campaign. If so it would be front page news.

And we all know what unreliably dangerous a left wing blogger Dana Milbank is. Anyway, here's a news flash Sagan- McCain's campaign co-chair, fella by the name of Keating, (no relation), just yesterday called Obama, "a man of the street". Is that a sufficiently racially loaded phrase to rotate a rusted broke down cobweb cluttered gear in that cortex of yours, or would nothing short of McCain setting a cross in front of an Obama rally fire up the ol' jalopy? Also btw, just to reiterate the campaign's culpability, there was no retraction from spokespeople being asked to comment on this steaming turd's puke on the Dennis Miller show (as an aside, at least he laid his horse shit soliloquy on a show with a guy who really knows something about blow).

Be that as it may, the issue is less the racism, although there is plenty to be had amongst the God fearin base- good people all... Phleger style- than is the attempt to paint Obama as a terrorist sympathizer that is corruptly, (by way of ACORN and an 'in the tank' media), trying to steal the Presidency. That is- honestly now, and I won't mess with your truly awesome powers of cognitive dissonance so you can believe what you like- what the base appears to believe and "is angry" about. That belief, the one that has caused people to shout out 'traitor' and 'terrorist' in McCain/Palin rallies while their leveling attacks against Obama, is also the one very likely to find the ears of some Jack Ruby style 'patriot' out there, who might just take matters into his own hands.

Let's get down to brass tacks: McCain's vice presidential nominee is saying that Obama "pals around with terrorists". McCain is having peripheral staff doing the introductions at rallies drop the name Hussein twice in a week. This message can be read in no other way: they are calling Obama a terrorist sympathizer and furthermore hoping that people start to believe he is more centrally implicated in nefarious plots to destroy this country than even that. McCain's own ex-staffer has called them on this- said it's a danger to our civil society. But shooter here, boy genius that he is, is here to tell us there's nothing amiss that isn't the creation of left-wing bloggers. After all, he's voting for Obama, and has a cleft cranium with an open puss oozing sore on the inside of the butt crack crevace where most people's face goes.

Whatever shooter. Run along now back to the McCain campaign and collect. I'm sure it pays better than the shoe shining job and is less messy than spending time in the barrel over at young-Republican meetings.

Agreed that Crowley is wrong here, but I've been reading their blog for a while now, and this is a real outlier. It's pretty clear how emotionally invested he is in a big Democratic win this November, and I would put that post down to a contrarian instinct and lack of depth of reflection on the subject rather than to anything more pernicious. Crowley and the rest of them are far to accepting as benevolent of the 'system' that has grown up in the age of Rove, Murdoch, etc.- granted. But I think this economic crisis is seeing the scales drop from their eyes in some sense. It's a validation of the fact that something is deeply wrong with society.