[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yda8AQ8fC6Y[/youtube]

I like Barack Obama, and I can appreciate how much he means to so many African Americans in our country. We came up in two different worlds, and were raised very differently, so I can respect that he has a different worldview than I do. For much of this campaign, at least until the last week, I have tried to stay away from attacking him directly.

… but I’d never vote for the guy.

Look at these two articles below:

Associated Press Article from 10/23/08:

McCain volunteer claims attacker cut ‘B’ into face
By RAMIT PLUSHNICK-MASTI

PITTSBURGH (AP) — A campaign volunteer for John McCain told police she was robbed at knifepoint at an ATM and knocked down by a man who then carved a “B” in her face after noticing a sticker for the presidential candidate on her car.

Police said the woman, 20-year-old Ashley Todd of College Station, Texas, refused medical attention. An officer saw the injury, but the police report did not describe its size or severity, a police spokeswoman said.

Todd reported the attack late Wednesday. She was to be reinterviewed by investigators late Thursday.

“We’re looking at all angles at this point,” said Diane Richard, a spokeswoman for Pittsburgh police.

Todd told police she was withdrawing money just before 9 p.m. Wednesday when a man approached her from behind, put a knife to her neck and demanded money, police said. She said she gave him $60.

The robber then noticed the bumper sticker, punched her in the back of the head, knocked her down and used the knife to carve a “B” on the right side of her face, the woman told police.

It was unclear what the “B” was meant to symbolize, Richard said.

Richard said the woman was unfamiliar with her surroundings and was unable to tell police which way the attacker ran.

McCain spokesman Peter Feldman confirmed that the woman is a campaign volunteer but declined to comment further.

The Republican candidate and his running mate, Sarah Palin, called Todd on Thursday afternoon to express their concern, the campaign confirmed.

Allison Price, a spokeswoman for Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama’s campaign in Pittsburgh, said: “Our thoughts and prayers are with the young woman for her to make a speedy recovery and we hope that the person who perpetrated this crime is swiftly apprehended and brought to justice.”

Police said no police photo had been taken of the woman Wednesday, but by Thursday afternoon a purported picture of a woman with a “B” scratched into her cheek was circulating on the Internet.

Associated Press Article from October 11, 2008:

McCain booed after trying to calm anti-Obama crowd
By PHILIP ELLIOTT and BETH FOUHY, Associated Press Writers Philip Elliott And Beth Fouhy,

LAKEVILLE, Minn. – The anger is getting raw at Republican rallies and John McCain is acting to tamp it down. McCain was booed by his own supporters Friday when, in an abrupt switch from raising questions about Barack Obama’s character, he described the Democrat as a “decent person and a person that you do not have to be scared of as president of the United States.”

A sense of grievance spilling into rage has gripped some GOP events this week as McCain supporters see his presidential campaign lag against Obama. Some in the audience are making it personal, against the Democrat. Shouts of “traitor,” “terrorist,” “treason,” “liar,” and even “off with his head” have rung from the crowd at McCain and Sarah Palin rallies, and gone unchallenged by them.

McCain changed his tone Friday when supporters at a town hall pressed him to be rougher on Obama. A voter said, “The people here in Minnesota want to see a real fight.” Another said Obama would lead the U.S. into socialism. Another said he did not want his unborn child raised in a country led by Obama.

“If you want a fight, we will fight,” McCain said. “But we will be respectful. I admire Sen. Obama and his accomplishments.” When people booed, he cut them off.

“I don’t mean that has to reduce your ferocity,” he said. “I just mean to say you have to be respectful.”

Presidential candidates are accustomed to raucous rallies this close to Election Day and welcome the enthusiasm. But they are also traditionally monitors of sorts from the stage. Part of their job is to leaven proceedings if tempers run ragged and to rein in an out-of-bounds comment from the crowd.

Not so much this week, at GOP rallies in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Florida and other states.

When a visibly angry McCain supporter in Waukesha, Wis., on Thursday told the candidate “I’m really mad” because of “socialists taking over the country,” McCain stoked the sentiment. “I think I got the message,” he said. “The gentleman is right.” He went on to talk about Democrats in control of Congress.

On Friday, McCain rejected the bait.

“I don’t trust Obama,” a woman said. “I have read about him. He’s an Arab.”

McCain shook his head in disagreement, and said:

“No, ma’am. He’s a decent, family man, a citizen that I just happen to have disagreements with (him) on fundamental issues and that’s what this campaign is all about.”

He had drawn boos with his comment: “I have to tell you, he is a decent person and a person that you do not have to be scared of as president of the United States.”

The anti-Obama taunts and jeers are noticeably louder when McCain appears with Palin, a big draw for GOP social conservatives. She accused Obama this week of “palling around with terrorists” because of his past, loose association with a 1960s radical. If less directly, McCain, too, has sought to exploit Obama’s Chicago neighborhood ties to William Ayers, while trying simultaneously to steer voters’ attention to his plans for the financial crisis.

The Alaska governor did not campaign with McCain on Friday, and his rally in La Crosse, Wis., earlier Friday was much more subdued than those when the two campaigned together. Still, one woman shouted “traitor” when McCain told voters Obama would raise their taxes.

Volunteers worked up chants from the crowd of “U.S.A.” and “John McCain, John McCain,” in an apparent attempt to drown out boos and other displays of negative energy.

The Secret Service confirmed Friday that it had investigated an episode reported in The Washington Post in which someone in Palin’s crowd in Clearwater, Fla., shouted “kill him,” on Monday, meaning Obama. There was “no indication that there was anything directed at Obama,” Secret Service spokesman Eric Zahren told AP. “We looked into it because we always operate in an atmosphere of an abundance of caution.”

Palin, at a fundraiser in Ohio on Friday, told supporters “it’s not negative and it’s not mean-spirited” to scrutinize Obama’s iffy associations.

But Kathleen Hall Jamieson, director of the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania an author of 15 books on politics, says the vitriol has been encouraged by inflammatory words from the stage.

“Red-meat rhetoric elicits emotional responses in those already disposed by ads using words such as ‘dangerous’ ‘dishonorable’ and ‘risky’ to believe that the country would be endangered by election of the opposing candidate,” she said.

While the AP article about the Pittsburgh incident is treated skeptically, the article referring to the “kill him” remarks is treated with none, when in fact there have been disputes to the original claim. The problem here is the ridiculous double standard that the media is playing.

At the same time, I am becoming worried about the tension that this election cycle is causing. I don’t personally blame Barack Obama for the alleged attack, if it is true. To the contrary, I blame the whole ridiculous spectacle that this race for the White House has turned into. Both sides have their extremist supporters. I have a problem with idiots like Jerome Corsi, just like I have a problem with a windbag like Keith Olbermann. It sickens me when some one the right spreads rumors that “Obama might secretly be a Muslim” to try and scare off white voters. At the same time, it sickens me to even open the paper in the morning because I know that some hitjob about John McCain or Sarah Palin will probably be reported as fact by the mainstream media.

As if that weren’t enough… how could I neglect to mention ” the CFR is secretly trying to sell the USA out to the Mexicans and convert our money to ameros” crowd or the “9/11 was an inside job masterminded by Dick Cheney’s remote control airplanes” crowd?

I own a wifi internet radio, and many a night I turn it on to find some extremist nutjob call in show that talks about Armageddon, Revolution, and the evils of some little group that meets in a secret place to plot the takeover of the entire world as though it were undisputed fact.

The internet, the new media, and the mainstream press have all ignored facts, conventional wisdom, and common sense, and has given extremism and extremist ideas the power to grow, and fanning the flames of hatred on both sides of the isle, and it makes me sick.