In LasVegas, videographer Matt Toplikar captured footage of McCain/Palin supporters as they came out from a rally featuring an appearance by Sarah Palin.

One camouflage-capped fellow captures the spirit of the event:

Obama wins, I'm gonna move to Alaska.

... Haven't you ever heard that the United States is gonna be taken down from within? What better way to get taken down from within than haveing the President of the United States be the one that's going to do it?

It seems they became especially aggravated when they encountered anti-McCain protesters outside. The same Alaska-bound supporter started leading a chant in front of them:

Vote McCain, Not Hussein!

Then there's the Pam Atlas wannabee:

This country needs to wake up! Obama is dangerous! This man is a tyrant to this country. I mean, he has connections to Arabs! His education was paid for by Arabs! He's an abomination.

And of course, the obligatory racist:

Don't be afraid of me! Be afraid of Obama! Obama bin Laden, that's what you should be afraid of!

... Yes, I am a racist. If you consider me a racist, well [unintelligible]. Those Arabs are dirtbags. They're dirty people, they hate Americans, they hate my kids, they hate my grandkids. And people like him [points to another supporter], more power to them.

McCain and Palin have somewhat ratcheted back their rhetoric, but the fuse has been lit.

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To hear Brian Williams and Chuck Todd talk, as they did last night on Hardball, you'd think things were perhaps not so peachy these days over at Camp McCain, after they spent the afternoon interviewing John McCain and Sarah Palin together:

Well, Chris, and this something that I -- I wouldn't blame Brian for not wanting to say this, but -- there was a tenseness between -- first of all, between the two -- there's no chemistry. I couldn't see chemistry between John McCain and Sarah Palin. It was -- I felt as if we grabbed two people and said, 'Here, sit next to each other, we're going to conduct an interview.'

There wasn't -- they're not -- you know, they're not just ... comfortable with each other, uh, yet. The other thing about it is that you can tell they know that they're losing. They just have -- there's an intensity there, they're drained, the entire campaign staff is drained. The two candidates are guarded, they seem on edge. It's not as if they were rude or anything, it's not as if they weren't trying to be forthcoming, it's just, they seemed -- it's a negative intensity. I don't know how else to describe it.

But you'll see, when you see the two of them together, the chemistry's not all there. You do wonder, is John McCain starting to blame her for things, blaming himself? Is she blaming him? You just wonder what's going on inside their heads. Are they upset with how the other has treated them, and is that why her numbers are low? But whatever it is, it's a negative vibe that you get in that room.

This happens to echo the recent New Yorker piece (which Todd in fact cites a little later in the discussion), which described how much McCain wanted to name his favorite fellow Mavericky Senator, Holy Joe Lieberman himself, and as many of us suspected, strongly preferred Joe as his running mate:

By the spring, the McCain campaign had reportedly sent scouts to Alaska to start vetting Palin as a possible running mate. A week or so before McCain named her, however, sources close to the campaign say, McCain was intent on naming his fellow-senator Joe Lieberman, an independent, who left the Democratic Party in 2006. David Keene, the chairman of the American Conservative Union, who is close to a number of McCain’s top aides, told me that “McCain and Lindsey Graham”—the South Carolina senator, who has been McCain’s closest campaign companion—“really wanted Joe.” But Keene believed that “McCain was scared off” in the final days, after warnings from his advisers that choosing Lieberman would ignite a contentious floor fight at the Convention, as social conservatives revolted against Lieberman for being, among other things, pro-choice.

“They took it away from him,” a longtime friend of McCain—who asked not to be identified, since the campaign has declined to discuss its selection process—said of the advisers. “He was furious. He was pissed. It wasn’t what he wanted.” Another friend disputed this, characterizing McCain’s mood as one of “understanding resignation.”

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Normally, the story of John McCain's black family -- the ones who are planning to vote for Barack Obama -- might elicit some modest interest in terms of what it says about the complexity of race relations in America.

But what's been even more interesting has been how John McCain has responded to the story ever since it surfaced.

Initially, back when he first was doing the "Maverick" schtick in the 2000 primaries, he actually denied that the aristocratic Southerners from whom he was descended were slaveholders. But it really became impossible for McCain to deny their existence after a 2000 report in Salon in the course of which reporters showed him photographs and birth records in person and he had to concede to their existence.

One account, In the South Florida Times, describes how McCain has handled the connection publicly and privately:

White and black members of the McCain family have met on the plantation several times over the last 15 years, but one invited guest has been conspicuously absent: Sen. John Sidney McCain.

“Why he hasn’t come is anybody’s guess,” said Charles McCain Jr., 60, a distant cousin of John McCain who is black. “I think the best I can come up with, is that he doesn’t have time, or he has just distanced himself, or it doesn’t mean that much to him.”

Other relatives are not as generous.

Lillie McCain, 56, another distant cousin of John McCain who is black, said the Republican presidential nominee is trying to hide his past, and refuses to accept the family’s history.

“After hearing him in 2000 claim his family never owned slaves, I sent him an email,” she recalled. “I told him no matter how much he denies it, it will not make it untrue, and he should accept this and embrace it.”

She said the senator never responded to her email.

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The video from that Sarah Palin rally in Ohio last week probably said it all -- that not only are racists herding in John McCain's direction, but that previously obscured racism among mainstream conservatives is now bubbling up at an increasing rate.

A New York Observer report from Florida tells a similar kind of story:

“I don’t believe these polls,” said America Blanca, a 44-year-old small business owner from Miami who wore a red dress and was visibly pumped up by the rally. “Not one of them. Because it’s the kids answering the polls on the computers. Their parents are not home and they are answering and they will not be voting. I think if he is losing, it is only by a little spread. Very little.” She held the tip of her pointer finger about two inches from the tip of her thumb.

Asked if her business made more than $250,000 a year, the cap under which Obama has proposed cutting taxes, she said it did. Told about Obama’s proposal, she answered, “I don’t give a shit. I will never vote for a black man.”

I half-expected to hear the same thing from "Joe the Plumber" last week when it was pointed out to him that he would actually get a tax cut under Obama's plan.

It's clear that the campaign to defeat Barack Obama -- which is what the McCain campaign has rapidly devolved into, ever since it became self-evident that McCain himself couldn't give us a single good reason to vote for him, beyond his moose-in-the-headlights running mate -- is in fact creating an environment in which these kinds of sentiments not only are encouraged, but are now considered normal.

Sure enough, the neo-Nazis and white supremacists are reporting that they're making big inroads these days:

Jeff Schoep, head of the National Socialist Movement, says the government classifies his group as a domestic group of interest, not domestic terrorists. The FBI would not comment.

Interest in the group "has really spiked up," says Schoep, who would not say by how much.

"Historically, when times get tough in our nation, that's how movements like ours gain a foothold," he says. "When the economy suffers, people are looking for answers. … We are the answer for white people.

"And now this immigrant thing in the past couple of years has been the biggest boon to us," Schoep says. "The immigration issue is the biggest problem we're facing because it's changing the face of our country. We see stuff in English and Spanish. … They are turning our country into a Third World ghetto."

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As McCain's henchman Rick Davis was trying to label as "Secret Donations" amounts that are under the disclosure limits of the bill McCain himself wrote on campaign finance, and suggesting that Obama is taking in illegal foreign donations...

... the worst-run presidential campaign in history was rolling into another blunder.

John McCain's presidential election campaign has solicited a financial contribution from an unlikely source -- Russia's U.N. envoy -- but a McCain spokesman said on Monday it was a mistake.

In the letter, McCain urged Russia's U.N. Ambassador, Vitaly Churkin, to contribute anywhere from $35 (20 pounds) to $5,000 (2,912 pounds) to help ensure McCain's victory over Democratic rival Sen. Barack Obama, currently ahead in voter preference polls. "If I have the honour of continuing to serve you, I make you this promise: We will always put America -- her strength, her ideals, her future -- before every other consideration," McCain assured Churkin.

Moscow's mission to the United Nations issued a terse statement on the Republican presidential candidate's letter, saying that the Russian government and its officials "do not finance political activity in foreign countries."

Yes, it was almost certainly a database error, and more than a few people as finding it amusing as hell. But it also undermines the McCain campaign's narrative in the most embarassing way.

It also leaves some questions open. The FEC's notes on public financing say:

A major party nominee who has accepted public funding for the general election may not accept any contributions to further his election. You may, however, help a publicly funded nominee by contributing to the candidate's compliance fund. A compliance fund is a special account maintained by publicly funded nominees solely for paying legal and accounting expenses incurred in complying with the campaign finance law. You may contribute up to $2,300 to the compliance fund of a major party nominee.

$5,000 dollars is over the limit set for the FEC. The campaign still was sending out to ask for money even though it has accepted public finance so was it clearly asking for a contribution to the compliance fund?

Time for an FEC audit of McCain's finances. That's what FOX and the rest would be baying for if this was an Obama campaign letter.

Sarah Palin breaks with John McCain, telling CBN's David Brody that she would support a "Federal Marriage Amendment" effectively banning gay marriage:

I am, in my own, state, I have voted along with the vast majority of Alaskans who had the opportunity to vote to amend our Constitution defining marriage as between one man and one woman. I wish on a federal level that that's where we would go because I don't support gay marriage. I'm not going to be out there judging individuals, sitting in a seat of judgment telling what they can and can't do, should and should not do, but I certainly can express my own opinion here and take actions that I believe would be best for traditional marriage and that's casting my votes and speaking up for traditional marriage that, that instrument that it's the foundation of our society is that strong family and that's based on that traditional definition of marriage, so I do support that.

This is how the McCain campaign is using Palin to keep the religious right on board even as he stages a supposedly "moderate" agenda in pursuit of suburban votes. Palin's sending a signal to the Dobson faction that was responsible for her ascension that their agenda is in play.

The folks at WhirledView have a bit of a scoop. Career diplomat Victor Tomseth was one of the 50 Americans held hostage at the U.S. embassy in Tehran in 1979. It's thus particularly significant that he should be one of over 300 former diplomats who have backed Barack Obama, and that he should have written an op-ed for the Register-Guard of Oregon and for WhirledView specifically backing Obama's Iran policy of negotiation.

As McCain’s friend Sen. Lindsey Graham, when asked by Goldberg to name something unusual about McCain, put it: McCain believes that “some political problems have military solutions.”

...Obama’s comments demonstrate a more sophisticated understanding of Iran’s relative power than the McCain view that Iran poses an existential threat. According to the Central Intelligence Agency’s World Factbook, in 2006 Iran spent approximately $7.35 billion on defense... Even tiny Israel has a military budget more than half again as large as Iran’s.

Granted, the possession of nuclear weapons is a qualitative advance in military capacity (provided it is accompanied by a capability to deliver such weapons). At the moment, however, it is highly doubtful that Iran possesses either a nuclear weapon or the capacity to deliver one against even Israel, let alone the United States.

Could that change? Obviously it might at some point. However, it does not appear that day has arrived or that it soon will (see the November 2007 National Intelligence Estimate key judgments, “Iran: Nuclear Intentions and Capabilities.”

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Amy Goodman talks with Nir Rosen about his Taliban embed.

Nir Rosen imbedded with the Taliban for his latest report on Afghanistan, out now in Rolling Stone. His experiences included almost being executed by a fanatical Taliban local warlord, but he came away with the conclusion that adding more troops to Afghanistan won’t work, and that we should prepare an exit strategy.

Simply put, it is too late for Bush's "quiet surge" — or even for Barack Obama's plan for a more robust reinforcement — to work in Afghanistan. More soldiers on the ground will only lead to more contact with the enemy, and more air support for troops will only lead to more civilian casualties that will alienate even more Afghans. Sooner or later, the American government will be forced to the negotiating table, just as the Soviets were before them.

"The rise of the Taliban insurgency is not likely to be reversed," says Abdulkader Sinno, a Middle East scholar and the author of Organizations at War in Afghanistan and Beyond. "It will only get stronger. Many local leaders who are sitting on the fence right now — or are even nominally allied with the government — are likely to shift their support to the Taliban in the coming years. What's more, the direct U.S. military involvement in Afghanistan is now likely to spill over into Pakistan. It may be tempting to attack the safe havens of the Taliban and Al Qaeda across the border, but that will only produce a worst-case scenario for the United States. Attacks by the U.S. would attract the support of hundreds of millions of Muslims in South Asia. It would also break up Pakistan, leading to a civil war, the collapse of its military and the possible unleashing of its nuclear arsenal."

In the same speech in which he promised a surge, Bush vowed that he would never allow the Taliban to return to power in Afghanistan. But they have already returned, and only negotiation with them can bring any hope of stability.

John McCain's strategy - following the Bush administration in handing policymaking to General Petraeus - isn't going to work any better. Talking our way to an exit from the doomed adventure in Afghanistan really is the only way out of that grim trap.

Spencer Ackerman calls Rosen's report an instant classic of war reporting and I totally agree. Just read it, ok?

Crossposted from Newshoggers

Just as surely as night follows day, violence is being directed at ACORN offices and officials in the wake of the flood of right-wing demagoguery about its vote-gathering efforts:

An ACORN community organizer received a death threat and the liberal activist group's Boston and Seattle offices were vandalized Thursday, reflecting mounting tensions over its role in registering 1.3 million mostly poor and minority Americans to vote next month.

Attorneys for the Association of Community Organizers for Reform Now were notifying the FBI and the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division of the incidents, said Brian Kettenring, a Florida-based spokesman for the group.

Republicans, including presidential candidate John McCain, have verbally attacked the group repeatedly in recent days, alleging a widespread vote-fraud scheme, although they've provided little proof. It was disclosed Thursday that the FBI is examining whether thousands of fraudulent voter-registration applications submitted by some ACORN workers were part of a systematic effort or isolated incidents.

Kettenring said that a senior ACORN staffer in Cleveland, after appearing on television this week, got an e-mail that said she "is going to have her life ended."

A female staffer in Providence, R.I., got a threatening call from someone who said words to the effect of "We know you get off work at 9," then uttered racial epithets, he said.

John McCain has played a leading role in whipping up this frenzy of hatred. In Wednesday's debate, he charged:

We need to know the full extent of Sen. Obama's relationship with ACORN, who is now on the verge of maybe perpetrating one of the greatest frauds in voter history in this country, maybe destroying the fabric of democracy.

This is consistent with the hateful language being spewed from the right by the likes of Lou Dobbs, who has taken to routinely characterizing ACORN as a "radical left-wing activist group" as well as "a Democratic Party adjunct".

In fact, the hysteria's being generated across a broad spectrum of the Right, from Outer Malkinite Wingnuttia to Inside Beltway Villagers, from McCain and Palin to the frothiest freepers.

And we can see what's coming, too: We're being set up for a running yammer from the right after Obama wins questioning his legitimacy because of a supposedly "tainted" vote. Conspiracy theories and talking points from the right will circulate, driving up the temperature and feeding the right-wing populist frenzy.

And they're not even waiting until Election Day to begin.

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It seems Glenn Beck has a solution for all that ails John McCain: He wants McCain to take off the kid gloves and start calling out Obama and "all of these guys" as Marxists:

He's bringing up these topics in the wrong way. Not as a political strategist or a politician or anything else, just as a guy who says, OK: The problem with all of these guys is they're all Marxists -- they're all Marxists. They're all spread the wealth. So look, I'm not going to tie you to these people any more than they have to, but -- but -- I mean, all the way from Frank Marshall Davis to your Reverend, they all preach Marxism. Now, you say to Joe the Plumber, I'm going to take some of your wealth and give it to somebody else, that's Marxism.

Well, no that isn't Marxism, unless your understanding of it is at about fifth-grade level. But that's beside the point, isn't it?

We've already graduated from wingnuts calling Obama and the Democrats "socialists" to "Marxists." Next: "Pinkos" and "Commies."

We're not just living in Nixonland. We're living in McCarthyville. I guess the next step in the devolution of the right is for the white hoods to come out.