Oh, come on now.  As politicians, McCain-Palin don't choose their supporters; and, in any event, how is this different from the ugly, sexist and anti-American name-calling directed at Dear Lead-, I mean, Dear Sarah?  Pox on both their houses I say.*

*Brought to you by the "Journalists have to be neutral and balanced" society.

*Brought to you by the "Journalists have to be neutral and balanced" society.

I thought they were supposed to be fair and balanced...

That guy was certainly channeling George Wallace. It's sickening to see someone so comfortable with airing his racism publicly. You'd think someone in that line would take him to task for that. Waving around a stuffed monkey named Hussein? Ick.

MSNBC had great footage of a lynch mob, I mean a rope line in PA. It struck me that phones were ringing and the other end someone was shouting, "Hurry up and turn on the TV. Yer dad is on the news."

Yeah, I'm guessing most of these people have family who hear this all the time. Maybe they should stop and think people have to go to work on Monday and face the shame. "Hey Bob, I saw your dad on TV. Does he really think that ______ ?"

If that guy doesn't have either 1) a teenage girl chained up in his windowless basement, or 2) eight corpses buried in his backyard, I'll eat icarsr's hat.

I think that guy is better explained as someone who has just lost it.  There seems to be a subgroup of folks out there who just cannot handle the fcat that they have been just dead wrong and are losing.  The look on that guy's face tells me he is just not all there right now.  I have more pity than anger.

Actually, the word that comes to mind is Republican.  This is the inevitable result of forty years of racially-tinged rhetoric.

Now, imagine if an Obama supporter carried around a stuffed bitch or a mutilated Transformer, with a "Palin" sign or a "Sidney" dogtag?  Can you picture the fury?  Governor Fuckme from Massachusetts, Bill and Sean, the entire Republican Armada would be out there, demanding that Obama renounce and deject, or reject and denounce, or deface and defecate, or whatever, this ugly display of "disrespect".

We're officially in Looney Tunes land.

Oh, and don't forget that McCain was a POW.  Everything he does and says is permitted.

"Look, Chris, I think we have to take this very seriously," Davis told Fox News Sunday host Chris Wallace. "And the kind of comments made by Congressman Lewis, a big Obama supporter, are reprehensible. The idea that you're going to compare John McCain to the kinds of hate spread in the '60s by somebody like George Wallace is outrageous. Where was John McCain when George Wallace was spreading his hate and segregationist policies at that time? He was in a Vietnam prison camp serving his country with his civil rights also denied."

Maybe that guy has lost it, but I get the feeling that he has held his vile views for a long time. One day he looks out from his porch and sees that some biracial guy (maybe an Arab) might run the country, so he reaches for his granddaughter's stuffed monkey, renames it Husseini, gets his pitchfork, loads into his pickup, cranks up the volume on the Rush Limbaugh show, and heads for the nearest Republican hatefest where at least he can watch the sun set on his empire with his fiends and neighbors. I bet he thinks of himself as a patriot. That is why, in a weak moment, I might pity him. Someone needs to read this guy the Declaration of Independence.

The guy's Nazi prison camp guard material.

the-uptake.groups.theuptake.org/.../933

The McCain ground campaign is intentionally inciting these kinds of people.

I think this guy is going to enjoy the next 4-8 years -- plenty of time to play with "Little Hussein". And McCain has taken ownership of these nuts.

"The word that comes to mind is 'thug.' Well, that and 'racist.'"

No, the word that comes to mind is "asshole".

of course you dont choose your supporters but they choose you.  yes, the kill him shouters are there too.  of course, the entire zoo comes as a package.  we watch and we laugh.  this election has exposed these idiots .  mccain is to blame with his lovely running mate.  and clinton is to blame for all the  prep work she did with this class of people.  i think white trash is a lovely designation and should be used more often.  but this gent with his animal puppet is a gem.  remind me to laugh when i vote against every republican on the slate this november. local and otherwise.  

Unfortunately, there is too much of this on both sides of the aisle.  Politico recently reported similarly disgusting Obama supporters: one who tried to torch the home of a McCain supporter with some kind of Molotov cocktail, 4 that wore t-shirts referring to Palin as a c*** trying to crash a rally, and graffitti on a GOP state hq asserting that Republicans are slave owners (as I recall, that party freed the slaves, hmmm.)

What I would most like to see is Obama show up at the debate on Wednesday, hold up a copy of that monkey and say, "Senator McCain, this is your base."

We sure don't want to justify ugly behavior & name-calling on our side because it's being done, or condoned on the other side.  And I don't like the white trash term.  Besides being a put down based on economic & educational status, the word "white' in their implies that the default race of trashy people is black.  So it's a racist term as well, at least in its origins.

Any evidence, or at least the link, for 1 and 2 above (3 is silly but it's hardly violent, threatening, or vicious)?

Unfortunately, the phrase that comes to mind is economic dead end.

PA is bleeding its young and college educated human capital as if they're staging a "great escape" from that guy's basement and in a very real way, they are. If I were running Iowa or New Mexico or Colorado's workforce recruiting effort, I'd drop that moron in an ad.

Thanks for bringing some well-needed balance to this issue, cal.

"as I recall, that party freed the slaves, hmmm."

You know that's completely irrelevant. The parties have undergone radical transformations since the Civil War. Today's GOP would run Abe Lincoln out of town on a rail. A race-mixing, commie pinko who might be queer!

Oops, hit Submit too soon ...

Anyway, cal, when you read of Obama, Biden or a state or local Democratic Party official fueling the fire for that sort of behavior, let us know.

@cal180  Could you please link to this Politico report?  I can not find it.  Thank you in advance.

No, this is not on both sides of the aisle cal.  Sure there are crazy, reprehensible Obama supporters, but Obama isn't out there riling them up in speeches and having his ground campaign disseminate character attacks that are based on nothing but fantasy to fuel the fire.  You haven't seen Joe Biden up there hinting that John McCain pals around with slave owners, to take your example.  We have seen the GOP in Virginia go door to door trying to convince people that Obama is somehow linked to Osama Bin Laden. You obviously didn't look at the link I posted above about the McCain ground strategy in Minnesota. Take your BS elsewhere - folks around here aren't buying it.  Independents aren't buying it either.  And yes, I just dropped 'folks' in an argument.  Are you going weak in the knees?  

BTW if something happens to Obama, enablers like you and Sarah Palin will be responsible.

Oops, didn't proofread, it's 'there' not 'their'.

I am not going to address my comment to anyone in particular, because I'm not looking to argue or engage in some kind of nasty dialogue that does nothing but irritate the hell of people.

But the bottom line is that this post includes footage of man engaging in racism of the most vile kind.  I'm not much interested the historical context of this, or who did what to whom in the past, or which party is worse or better or so forth.

The fact is that you watch that footage and you see a human being - a potential voter - engaging in an act for which there is absolutely no reasonable defense.  It is inhumane.  Period.

I am no historian, I am no poly sci academic, but I think I can speak on behalf of decent people with morals and values who consider this unconscionable.  And there is absolutely no defense or argument for that.  None.

So what? I don't like McCan and I hope he loses, but what does this have to do with isolated supporters like this one. I am a committed liberal, yet I will not forget that we have our truly evil and demented individuals. Look no further than Michael Moore, a true Communist or Nazi if there ever was one. His movies are all liesm of the kind Sovie propaganda or Leni Riefenstahl. Hs movies are well-liked and sell well. Does this invalidate liberalism? No it doesn't. But that's true for seeing a supporter of the right too.

After a good weekend of lots of fun activities, intellectual and artistic stimulation and generally positive vibes, this is what I come back to after not visiting tnr.com for a couple of days.  Wow.

If there is anything positive of all this, it is that folks who might have been tempted to think that this kind of person doesn't exist anymore, they have been disabused of this notion.  The job ain't done yet, folks, not by a long shot.  The best thing Obama can do is get elected and be a good president for eight years.  Such people can't be taken seriously anymore if that happens; they get laughed out of society.

cspensf - On the contrary, people like this will have to be taken even more seriously after an Obama victory.  It's when they feel impotent and powerless to stop what they fear most that they become more prone to violence.

But Noam, you're being redundant now.

wayne--it's not the loud people you have to worry about after the election; it's the quiet one, standing nearby, saying nothing but nodding silently...that's your threat.  The loud ones can't shut up long enough to do something truly dangerous.

"At McCain-Palin rallies, the raucous and insistent cries of “Treason!” and “Terrorist!” and “Kill him!” and “Off with his...

My reaction is a mixture of disgust and embarassment for this man who has proudly humiliated himself by pretending Senator Obama is a monkey.