HEY – where’d you learn how to treat a dog???? Jeez.

[Palin and McCain] are ginning their crowds up into spiraling gyres of right-wing delirium — a ready-made Lord of the Flies (and let’s admit that’s a gentle allusion, given the tone of these barnburners) if Obama happened into one of the auditoriums at the wrong moment.

~ The Cowardice Issue, by Josh Marshall

Those who press this Ayers line of attack are whipping Republicans and conservatives into a fury that is going to be very hard to calm after November. Is it really wise to send conservatives into opposition in a mood of disdain and fury for a man who may well be the next president of the United States, incidentally the first African-American president? Anger is a very bad political adviser. It can isolate us and push us to the extremes at exactly the moment when we ought to be rebuilding, rethinking, regrouping and recruiting.

~ Obama in the Corner, by David Frum

21st-century, “American[?],” “presidential[?],” political rallies in which participants are incited to clamor for the death [???!!!] of the opposing candidate?

My outrage-meter has been red-lined and pegged full-tilt these last, long, horrible eight years. But this is a new obscenity; another scurrilous, low depravity. Civic- and civil-minded citizens should, in effect, scoop this snarling mutt up by the scruff of his stiff, brittle neck — like a hapless pup that has crapped on the carpet — and rub his sorry nose in this shit until he yelps.

My mind goes to a scene in the 1982 epic film, Gandhi. Gandhi is engaged in a “fast to death,” attempting to quell the carnal upheaval in the wake of the partition of Pakistan. Nehru arrives to visit Mohandas K., and, as he is pushing through the gathered throng, someone shouts, “Death to Gandhi!”

“WHO!,” he cries out, launching himself into the crowd. “WHO would dare say such a thing!”

Ah, the good old days.