When a few unruly McCain-Palin supporters show their anger at campaign rallies, it's national news. It's an epidemic of "Weimar-like rage" and "violent escalation of rhetoric," according to New York Times columnist Frank Rich.

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It's the "re-emergence of the far right as a power in American politics," according to Washington Post columnist E.J. Dionne.

It's a mass movement of GOP crowds "gripped by insane rage," according to newly minted Nobel Prize winner Paul Krugman.

Too bad they don't give out global awards for the Blindest Eyes in Punditocracy. We've just hit a trifecta.

Speaking of "violent escalation of rhetoric" you never hear about:

•Obama supporters in Philadelphia sported "Sarah Palin is a (disgusting vulgarism referring to female genitalia)" T-shirts and yelled, "Let's stone her, old school" over the weekend.

•An Internet artist has designated Palin an "M.I.L.P." — "Mother I'd Like to Punch" —and published a drawing of a man's fist knocking a tooth out of the Alaska governor's mouth and the glasses off her face.

•"ABORT Palin" graffiti has sprouted on the sidewalks of Seattle, and "Abort Sarah Palin" bumper stickers are spreading in Web stores.

•Palin-bashing Madonna performs before an audience of thousands, screeching and threatening to "kick her a**."

•Getty Images publishes a photo of a man pointing a fake gun at the head of a cardboard cutout of Palin on display at the Brooklyn Waterfront Artists Coalition building.

And no one blinks. Not a peep from the Obamedia. But when Palin simply spotlights Obama's longtime relationship with Weather Underground terrorist Bill "We Didn't Do Enough" Ayers?

"Inciting violence," frets NBC reporter Ron Allen. "Concerned... for Sen. Obama's safety," agonizes ABC reporter Terry Moran. "Beyond the pale," cries Obama campaign manager David Plouffe. As if the no-holds-barred Obama campaign has ever had a rhetorical pale to stake.

Remember "Election Day," when you actually had to show up on the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November and prove who you were? Making it easier to vote made it easier to cheat.

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What it has increased is voter fraud, inviting activist groups to inundate election boards with bogus and multiple registrations that bog down the system.

This November may make us long for the good old days of hanging chads.

You used to have to provide as much identification to vote as you do to get a library card. Now in some jurisdictions you can show up with an old electricity or phone bill, not necessarily your own. In at least one state, voter "turnout" is an anachronism and you don't have to show up at all. Oregon has done away with polling places entirely. All voting there is by mail.

Registering in person with a photo ID or getting to the polling place once a year is not too much to ask of voters who can get to work or school every day or to the grocery store once a week.

They can get their backsides off the couch to attend rock concerts and sporting events, so why not the local polling place? If it's still too hard, make Election Day a national holiday.

Since Bill Clinton signed the Motor Voter Act, registering to vote in many states has been as complicated as just showing up on Election Day. Eight of the 19 Sept. 11 terrorists, including Mohammed Atta, could have registered to vote in Florida and Virginia while planning their attacks.

Efforts to ensure ballot integrity, to have our elections as honest as the Iraqi elections where millions proudly held up purple fingers, have met with resistance from liberals and Democrats. They claim that verifying identity is racist and an attempt to intimidate the poor and minorities.

Photo IDs are already required for a host of activities from applying for Social Security to getting food stamps and cashing checks at the bank. In Georgia, photo IDs are made available to residents who don't have driver's licenses.

Disgraced Rep. Tim Mahoney is the perfect Democratic Party mascot. Barack Obama's promises today of tax cuts and Speaker Pelosi's promises of ethics ring just as hollow as Mahoney's 'family values.'

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On election day if the voters give the Democrats the White House and larger majorities in Congress [the approval for Congress, the last I saw it was lower than President Bush] then they deserve what they are going to get.  Higher taxes, the ruin of our health care system, pull back of our military and slowdown of any buildup, no missile defense, and on and on but just read my other posts to see the other points.  At least the next two years will see our government lurch really to the left.

Krauthammer: Racism “last refuge of the liberal scoundrel”

Last night, Charles Krauthammer and Fred Barnes ripped the Barack Obama campaign and its supporters for the repetitive, unsubstantiated charges of racism against John McCain’s campaign and Republicans in general.  Krauthammer in particular excoriated those tossing this rhetorical bomb, at length.  However, Barnes summed up exactly why they keep doing it:

When John McCain runs an ad with a white woman, Paris Hilton in it, he is accused of racism. He runs an ad with Franklin Raines, the former head of Fannie Mae in it, who is African-American, and that’s racist. And then he runs an ad with William Ayers, who is a white male in it, and that’s racist.

If it weren’t so comical, these promiscuous accusations of racism, it would be tragic. …

And to accuse preemptively McCain of racism even before there is any evidence of it, and there has not been any evidence of it before or since, is scurrilous.

They say patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel. Accusations of racism is the last refuge of the liberal scoundrel, and it has been used again and again on the part of the Obama campaign.

So why do they do it?  It works.  And why does it work?  Barnes explains:

Right, because when they use it, it neutralizes an attack, and then you don’t have to answer it.

Rick Moran made the same point yesterday.  It’s a particularly vicious smear, simply because it attacks presumed motives, not actual actions.  Somehow mentioning Ayers, who is white, is racist not because of Ayers himself but because the critic supposedly operates from hate and therefore every possible criticism is racist.  And because it’s racist, the criticism requires no answer.

Nuance: Ohio Secretary of State sitting on 200,000 “mismatched” voter registration forms

Ace is all over it. Does that mean all the forms are fraudulent? No. Does it mean the ones that are fraudulent are necessarily going to be converted into fraudulent votes? No. Does it mean the Democrats are rather curiously incurious about hundreds of thousands of problem forms on the rolls, especially given their perennial shrieking about elections being fixed and especially in light of all the media attention devoted to ACORN lately (Ohio ACORN in particular)? Why, yes, it does. And the best part is Brunner insisting on the one hand that there’s not enough time to check all these mismatched forms while on the other fighting tooth and nail in court to drag out the litigation and give the county election boards as little time as possible to comply.

I’m still skeptical that there’s a mechanism in place capable of converting bogus registrations into bogus votes, especially on a mass scale, but the boss is doing her level best to change my mind.

For years, liberals in Congress pushed government-sponsored mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to achieve their policy ends even as they avoided fixing the organizations' abuses. Now that the financial markets are unsteady, they want to pin the blame not on these government-sponsored enterprises but on free enterprise.

The Left is looking to spin the economic crisis to their own advantage, Heritage Foundation expert Ernest Istook argues on Human Events Online. They know "that whoever shapes public understanding of what caused today's economic crisis can shape America's politics -- and its future -- for a great many years to come. Thus, they're pushing the notion that too little government regulation was at fault.'

In fact, lack of regulation is only part of the story. It wasn't too little regulation of private financial firms that's to blame—if anything, laws like the Community Reinvestment Act went too far, Istook says—but too little regulation of government-sponsored companies like Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

Despite early and prescient warnings from experts including Heritage's Ron Utt, liberals collaborated with Fannie and Freddie to avoid taking responsibility for their failure. Heritage president Ed Feulner explains how they achieved this:

Fannie and Freddie evaded attempts to regulate them. A big reason is that they cultivated powerful friends in Congress, such as Sen. Christopher Dodd, D-Conn. As chair of the Senate banking committee, he pocketed more than $165,000 in campaign contributions from people associated with Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

Over in the House, the GSEs also enjoyed vocal support. "These two entities -- Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac -- are not facing any kind of financial crisis," Rep. Barney Frank, now head of the House Banking Committee, said in 2003. "The more people exaggerate these problems, the more pressure there is on these companies, the less we will see in terms of affordable housing."

Today, these same liberals who for so long resisted doing anything about Fannie and Freddie are now crying out for a Congressional investigation. "Clearly, these gentlemen cannot credibly lead an investigation into the collapse of the very companies they championed," Feulner argues.

To get at the real root of the financial crisis, Feulner proposes a "Financial Crisis Commission," independent of the Congress. And what might this commission find? Feulner says that "a fair and complete investigation seems likely to confirm that wisdom by revealing that many of today's problems were triggered by our elected officials -- not by a failure of the free market."

The issue isn't when Ayers bombed. It's the radical education agenda he's pushed with Obama.

The Plumber vs. The Messiah: A blue-collar worker asks why Obama is going to raise his taxes. Obama says he just wants to take the man's money and "spread it around."

HA: Obama Redistributionism

NYP: Obama Fires a "Robin Hood" Warning Shot

Warning: Check your credit card statements for fraudulent donations to Obama.

Obama’s “soak the rich” tax rates will do widespread economic harm. “Obama’s Tax-Plan Disaster”

Here’s an unusual campaign promise: I pledge to take action as president to drive down stock prices, discourage investment, and deepen the recession. Who has promised this? Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama, albeit not in so many words.

With the stock market in crisis mode and the economy in a pronounced slump, would any economist — even the most extreme liberal Keynesian — advocate increasing taxes? Of course not. But contrary to economic commonsense, Obama is proposing to do exactly that by raising tax rates on America’s small businesses and investors.

Specifically, Obama wants to raise taxes on income, capital gains, and dividends for families earning more than $250,000 annually.  Under his plan, the top two marginal tax rates will increase from 33 to 36 percent and from 35 to 39.6 percent, while both the capital-gains tax and dividend tax will rise from 15 to 20 percent. According to the plan, the extra revenues generated by these tax increases will be redistributed to lower- and middle-income people through a hodge-podge of refundable tax credits. In the meantime, these “soak the rich” tax rates will do widespread economic harm.

First, Obama’s tax-rate increases on income will fall heavily on small businesses, which create the majority of net new jobs. Here’s why:  According to Internal Revenue Service data, half of all business income is taxed at individual rather than corporate tax rates, and about two-thirds of all flow-through business income is earned by small-business owners with annual incomes exceeding $200,000.   The bottom line: Up to one-third of all business income is taxed at the two marginal rates Obama wants to raise.

To be fair, Obama is not calling for a full repeal of the 2003 tax cuts on income and investment, but the tax hikes he has in mind are toxic enough. His tax plan has even drawn a rebuke from the editors of the New York Times, who wrote that with “the economy tanking … it’s hard to imagine how [Obama] could prudently [raise taxes on the wealthy].” And while Obama has hinted that he would consider delaying his proposed tax increases if the economy is in recession, who really thinks a President Obama and a Democratic Congress will prioritize lower taxes over new spending?

The Times is right and Barack Obama is wrong. Now is precisely the wrong time to hike taxes — especially on entrepreneurs and investors.

First Jesse Jackson Jr. had to distance himself from his father over his father's offer to perform free surgery on Senator Obama and now he's distancing himself from dear-old-dad's comment on Israel: "I know that under a Barack Obama presidency, the United States of America's relationship with Israel will remain rock-solid, . . . Go

If Sen. John McCain is asked in tonight's debate about his position on the issue of homosexuals in the military, what will he say?  His answer should be easy, unless he creates needless controversy by saying something similar to his rival, Barack Obama.   As I wrote last week, Obama gave disingenuous answers in . . . Go

ABC: Mahoney may have directed federal money to boost second mistress

Just two days after the blockbuster revelation of an office affair, Rep. Tim Mahoney (D-FL) now faces allegations that a second affair may amount to an abuse of power.  ABC News reports that Mahoney, who replaced disgraced Republican Mark Foley after his sexual scandal, got millions in pork for a county while conducting a sexual affair with one of its officials

This would be more significant than the affair exposed on Monday.  That only involved Mahoney’s own money, as far as anyone could determine.  If Mahoney spent taxpayer money to boost the career of his paramour, that amounts to a flagrant abuse of power — exactly the kind of corruption that Nancy Pelosi and Tim Mahoney made their biggest issue in 2006.

The culture of corruption appears to thrive in Pelosi’s Petri dish, and it looks like Democratic leadership knew about this for some time.  Did they intervene to block Mahoney’s manipulation of public funds?  Apparently, no.

Most ethical Congress ever?  Ha!

Surprise: Negative ad that hits Obama on Fannie and Freddie proves highly effective

How long has the righty blogosphere been screaming at the RNC to go nuclear on this? No ad we’ve posted this year got as much grassroots buzz as that “What Just Happened?” dynamo that leveled the Dems on this same subject. Why McCain’s made Ayers the centerpiece of the attacks instead, I’ll never know, especially with Democratic voters reacting almost as well to this spot as Republicans did. Presumably, Team Maverick’s own focus groups are populated with nuts like these, who acknowledge The One will be a terrible president but long nonetheless for the golden days of Reagan in which, er … the government took over Wall Street? No wonder communists are stoked.

I was going to post McCain’s newest ad here too — it’s okay, albeit no world-beater — but reposting the “What Just Happened?” spot is probably a more productive use of our bandwidth so let’s do that instead.

Buzz up!

From the Wall Street Journal, pointing out that Obama serves as a Senator and had the power to draft legislation.

Finally, on the matter of deregulation and the financial crisis, Sen. Obama should consider his own complicity in the failure of Congress to adopt legislation that might have prevented the subprime meltdown.

In the summer of 2005, a bill emerged from the Senate Banking Committee that considerably tightened regulations on Fannie and Freddie, including controls over their capital and their ability to hold portfolios of mortgages or mortgage-backed securities. All the Republicans voted for the bill in committee; all the Democrats voted against it. To get the bill to a vote in the Senate, a few Democratic votes were necessary to limit debate. This was a time for the leadership Sen. Obama says he can offer, but neither he nor any other Democrat stepped forward.

Instead, by his own account, Mr. Obama wrote a letter to the Treasury Secretary, allegedly putting himself on record that subprime loans were dangerous and had to be dealt with. This is revealing; if true, it indicates Sen. Obama knew there was a problem with subprime lending -- but was unwilling to confront his own party by pressing for legislation to control it. As a demonstration of character and leadership capacity, it bears a strong resemblance to something else in Sen. Obama's past: voting present.

The Wall Street Journal readers must know that Obama serves as a Senator and had the power to draft legislation.

If Sen. Obama had been asked for an example of "Republican deregulation," he would probably have cited the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act of 1999 (GLBA), which has become a popular target for Democrats searching for something to pin on the GOP. This is puzzling. The bill's key sponsors were indeed Republicans, but the bill was supported by the Clinton administration and signed by President Clinton. The GLBA's "repeal" of a portion of the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933 is said to have somehow contributed to the current financial meltdown. Nonsense.

Adopted early in the New Deal, the Glass-Steagall Act separated investment and commercial banking. It prohibited commercial banks from underwriting or dealing in securities, and from affiliating with firms that engaged principally in that business. The GLBA repealed only the second of these provisions, allowing banks and securities firms to be affiliated under the same holding company. Thus J.P. Morgan Chase was able to acquire Bear Stearns, and Bank of America could acquire Merrill Lynch. Nevertheless, banks themselves were and still are prohibited from underwriting or dealing in securities.

Allowing banks and securities firms to affiliate under the same holding company has had no effect on the current financial crisis. None of the investment banks that have gotten into trouble -- Bear, Lehman, Merrill, Goldman or Morgan Stanley -- were affiliated with commercial banks. And none of the banks that have major securities affiliates -- Citibank, Bank of America, and J.P. Morgan Chase, to name a few -- are among the banks that have thus far encountered serious financial problems. Indeed, the ability of these banks to diversify into nonbanking activities has been a source of their strength.

Most important, the banks that have succumbed to financial problems -- Wachovia, Washington Mutual and IndyMac, among others -- got into trouble by investing in bad mortgages or mortgage-backed securities, not because of the securities activities of an affiliated securities firm. Federal Reserve regulations significantly restrict transactions between banks and their affiliates.

If Sen. Obama were truly looking for a kind of deregulation that might be responsible for the current financial crisis, he need only look back to 1998, when the Clinton administration ruled that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac could satisfy their affordable housing obligations by purchasing subprime mortgages. This ultimately made it possible for Fannie and Freddie to add a trillion dollars in junk loans to their balance sheets. This led to their own collapse, and to the development of a market in these mortgages that is the source of the financial crisis we are wrestling with today.