I’ve been following the stories about the racist undercurrent at the recent McPalin rallies (from both the candidates and audience members). A week later, after universal condemnation from the media and a continued drop in the polls, McCain decided to do what he should have done instantly — ask for respect for his opponent as a human being and a candidate. But now he’s surprised by the response of his ignorant followers when they boo him. What does he expect after encouraging it for a week?

I’m ashamed of both McCain and Palin. I never agreed with them on the issues and I never planned to vote for them, but at least they did not thoroughly disgust me as human beings. In the 21^st century, two political candidates for president should not have tried to distract the public from a serious economic crisis (for which they have no plan to help) by insinuating and outright (and falsely, as proved) accusing their opponent of being a terrorist and allowing racist, dangerous, and murderous reactions from their crowds.

The socialist charge has been the most innocent, due to Obama’s plan for government-aided health care. Call me whatever you want but, as we can plainly see in Canada, making sure its citizens are alive and healthy seems like a pretty good move for any government.

Obama the terrorist. Is this the attitude a politician should encourage? That if he’s black, he must be a terrorist? If he has an unfortunate middle name (over which none of us have control and which is completely meaningless), then he’s a terrorist? If he is well traveled and educated, a terrorist?

And the William Ayers connection? Once again, proven to be exaggerated by the McPalin campaign and now irrelevant. From The New York Times:

"The suggestion that Ayers was a political adviser to Obama or someone who shaped his political views is patently false," said Ben LaBolt, a campaign spokesman. Mr. LaBolt said the men first met in 1995 through the education project, the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, and have encountered each other occasionally in public life or in the neighborhood. He said they have not spoken by phone or exchanged e-mail messages since Mr. Obama began serving in the United States Senate in January 2005 and last met more than a year ago when they bumped into each other on the street in Hyde Park….Since 2002, there is little public evidence of their relationship.

From CNN:

CNN’s review of project records found nothing to suggest anything inappropriate in the volunteer projects in which the two men were involved… There is no indication that Ayers and Obama are now "palling around," or that they have had an ongoing relationship in the past three years. Also, there is nothing to suggest that Ayers is now involved in terrorist activity or that other Obama associates are.

Now, if we’re going to insist that past social associations have bearing on someone’s presidential abilities, let’s take a look at the new Salon article linking Palin with "violent…right-wing…successionists" of the Alaska Independence Party who were once sponsored by Iran. The AIP is described as:

…rubbing shoulders and forging alliances with outright white supremacists and far-right theocrats, particularly those who dominate the proceedings at such gatherings as the North American Secessionist conventions, which AIP delegates have attended in recent years. The AIP’s affiliation with neo-Confederate organizations is motivated as much by ideological affinity as by organizational convenience.

Apparently this isn’t the first time Palin has taken part in bigotry for political gain:

While Palin played up her total opposition to the sales tax and gun control — the two hobgoblins of the AIP — mailers spread throughout the town portraying her as "the Christian candidate," a subtle suggestion that Stein, who is Lutheran, might be Jewish. "I watched that campaign unfold, bringing a level of slime our community hadn’t seen until then," recalled Phil Munger, a local music teacher who counts himself as a close friend of Stein.

Nor was Troopergate the end of her ethics violations and abuses of power:

When Palin won the election, the men who had once shouted anti-government slogans outside City Hall now had a foothold inside the mayor’s office. Palin attempted to pay back her newfound pals during her first City Council meeting as mayor. In that meeting, on Oct. 14, 1996, she appointed Stoll to one of the City Council’s two newly vacant seats. But Palin was blocked by the single vote of then-Councilman Nick Carney, who had endured countless rancorous confrontations with Stoll and considered him a "violent" influence on local politics. Though Palin considered consulting attorneys about finding another means of placing Stoll on the council, she was ultimately forced to back down and accept a compromise candidate…

…Emboldened by his nomination by Mayor Palin, Stoll later demanded she fire Wasilla’s museum director, John Cooper, a personal enemy he longed to sabotage. Palin obliged, eliminating Cooper’s position in short order. "Gotcha, Cooper!" Stoll told the deposed museum director after his termination, as Cooper told a reporter for the New York Times. "And it only cost me a campaign contribution." Stoll, who donated $1,000 to Palin’s mayoral campaign, did not respond to numerous requests for an interview. Palin has blamed budget concerns for Cooper’s departure.

And this is not ancient history for her:

When Palin ran for governor in 2006, marketing herself as a fresh-faced reformer determined to crush the GOP’s ossified power structure, she made certain to appear at the AIP’s state convention. To burnish her maverick image, she also tapped one-time AIP member and born-again Republican Walter Hickel as her campaign co-chair. Hickel barnstormed the state for Palin, hailing her support for an "all-Alaska" liquefied gas pipeline, a project first promoted in 2002 by an AIP gubernatorial candidate named Nels Anderson. When Palin delivered her victory speech on election night, Hickel stood beaming by her side. "I made her governor," he boasted afterward. Two years later, Hickel has endorsed Palin’s bid for vice president…

…Just months before Palin burst onto the national stage as McCain’s vice-presidential nominee, she delivered a videotaped address to the AIP’s annual convention. Her message was scrupulously free of secessionist rhetoric, but complementary nonetheless. "I share your party’s vision of upholding the Constitution of our great state," Palin told the assembly of AIP delegates. "My administration remains focused on reining in government growth so individual liberty can expand. I know you agree with that … Keep up the good work and God bless you."

CBS News has also covered Palin’s association with the AIP. Less than 24 hours after the Troopergate verdict, Palin stoked another non-economic fire at a rally in Pennsylvania:

Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin charged into the culture wars Saturday in Pennsylvania, painting Sen. Barack Obama as a radical on abortion rights.

"In times like these with wars and financial crisis, I know that it may be easy to forget even as deep and abiding a concern as the right to life, and it seems that our opponent kind of hopes you will forget that," Palin told a crowd in Johnstown. "He hopes that you won’t notice how radical, absolutely radical his idea is on this, and his record is, until it’s too late." (Translation: "Gosh-darnit, I have no idea how to fix your economy, so I’m gonna stand here all folksy and talk to ya straight about the beauty of life, and repeat how wonderful America is, and how mean reporters are to me with their questions.")

Now she’s no longer claiming that Obama will let domestic terrorists blow you to East Chuck and dare to actually hold diplomacy talks with foreign leaders, but get this — the big scary black man will kill your babies!

You want to talk about radical:

Palin opposes abortion in all cases, including rape and incest, except when a mother’s life is in danger, and said she believes Roe v. Wade should be overturned and the decision given to the states.

McCain voted for the Prohibit Partial Birth Abortion bill in 2003 and "yes" for Prohibiting Funds for Groups that Perform Abortions amendment in 2007. He believes Roe v. Wade is a flawed decision that must be overturned, and also supports the Supreme Court ruling upholding the Partial Birth Abortion Ban Act.

Palin also talked about a remark Obama made about sex education while campaigning in Johnstown in March, when he told a voter he didn’t want his daughters "punished with a baby" or "punished with an STD" if they were not educated about sex and made a mistake.

"So I listened when our opponent defended his unconditional support for unlimited abortions and he said he said that a woman shouldn’t have to be ‘Punished with a baby,’ " Palin said as the audience jeered at Obama. "Ladies and gentlemen, he said that right here in Johnstown. ‘Punished with a baby.’ It’s about time we called him on it."

I wonder if Bristol feels "blessed?"

I’m sure you all will soon hear about Obama supporting "infanticide" by voting against a bill that was supposed to protect fetuses born alive (a hysterical pro-life nurse and Fox News/Bill Donohue favorite, Jill Stanek, claimed, falsely, that late-term abortions were being performed at a Chicago hospital, and the still-living babies were left in soiled linen closets to die) but in actuality chips away at abortion rights. Obama’s reasoning for his nay vote — that sanity, common sense, and a doctor’s Hippocratic Oath dictate that A) obviously measures would be taken to keep any such fetus alive and B) if such measures are not taken, those actions violate already existing laws. He was backed by the Pro-Life-run Illinois Attorney General’s office.

Fun extra tidbits about Jill Stanek — she sponsors billboards in Africa that read: "Faithful condom users die." She posted, as fact, an urban legend about the Chinese eating aborted fetuses. "She works with Eric Scheidler and his father Joe Scheidler who [are] violent anti-abortion activist…" And she believes that birth control should be outlawed — not just abortion.

Eric Zorn of The Chicago Tribune and Obama’s website can provide further details. Or you can listen to Palin shoot her mouth off some more.

To all this, the ever-calm, thoughtful Obama responded:

"They can run misleading ads, and pursue the politics of anything goes, they can try to change the subject. They can do that what they want to do because the American people understand what’s going on — but it’s not going to work. Not this time."

I sure hope not.

Jennifer Leblanc

The train screeches into the 7th Avenue station while I am descending from the street. By the time I swipe my Metrocard and take the stairs two at a time down to the platform, I hear the annoying bing-bong sound of the doors closing, and I am left standing by while the train gathers speed to the next stop. I wonder how little events could have transpired or conspired so that I would have been able to make the train. If I had made the green light at Lincoln Place on my walk to the station…If I hadn’t gotten the “too fast—swipe again at this turnstile” message (which honestly only makes me swipe faster in frustration)…If I hadn’t changed my clothes twice…This last one is less about a vain concern for my appearance and more about a subconscious ploy to procrastinate going to work.

Now that I have the time, I walk toward the back of the train. For all of the stations I frequent I am well aware of the location of the exits. If I’m going to work, I want to be at the back of the train because when I arrive at West 4th Street the stairs to the street are closest to that end. When I go to the gym, I get in the very first car with the train operator. In other cities where the trains and platforms aren’t as long, this probably is not common practice. I figure right now while I’m waiting for the next train, I’m on the MTA’s time. But when I get to West 4th Street, I’m on my clock and I don’t want to waste precious minutes walking the length of ten train cars to get to my exit.

The Q train arrives and I’m waiting for the B, so I step back to give those now running down the stairs for their train a wide berth. I have a friend from Atlanta who refused to run for the train when she was visiting. I understand this. She’s on vacation and there will be another train along in a few minutes. Though, let’s be honest, even then I have to fight the urge to sprint to the waiting train. I mean, if I can get where I’m going five minutes faster, why wouldn’t I hurry? She clucked that I had become too “New York minute,” always rushing, and I should ease my pace before I have a heart attack. This is the same person who will breakneck down I-85 twenty miles per hour above the speed limit, weaving in and out of traffic, to shave a minute off her commute. But I digress.

During the day, when trains come every few minutes, my friend’s philosophy is fine, but not at one a.m. when time between trains can be twenty to thirty minutes. Then I turn into Jackie Joyner-Kersee. I’ll hurdle garbage cans, sleeping homeless people, and small rats to be on that train before the doors close.

This has led me to another interesting point. New York’s subway is the only major subway system in the world to operate twenty-four hours a day. In more civilized places, the local government expects people to be deep into slumber by midnight when their trains stop running for the night. So when my friend refused to run for the train as the clock struck one, I knew we were in for a long wait and in terms of subway creepiness, there is a big difference between 1:00 a.m. and 1:30. Why were we even in the subway at that hour? (Note to my mother: Please stop reading here.) The answer is simple: money. At the time I was an assistant to the assistant and, weighing the fifty dollars it would have cost us to take a cab versus the then-$1.50 to ride the train, there didn’t seem to be a contest. As we walked from the train station to my apartment after 2 a.m., I could see the headline: "Foolish Women Should Have Taken Cab." (Or if it was the Post: "Hacked for 50 Smacks.")

Not long ago an eighteen-year-old girl was struck and killed by a train because she had jumped on the tracks to retrieve her new cell phone. The train operator, who watched helplessly as he saw her struggling to get back onto the platform but couldn’t stop in time, will probably be in therapy for the rest of his life, as will the two men who tried to pull her up from the tracks but instead had her ripped from their hands as the train barreled into the station. The cost of the phone? Fifty dollars. People who weren’t there shook their heads at how stupid she was to risk her life for that amount of money.

Jacquelin Cangro