So at long last, this is what we've come to.

I'd really hoped -- against hope, surely -- that this wouldn't happen, but happen it has.

First, let me point out that Obama isn't black. He's half-black. He could as easily describe himself as half-white. Just an interesting consideration.

Now go read this.

This is what you can expect to happen when you stir the American cesspool. The first shiny turds to float to the top are always the racists. Hollering "nigger" and telling a black man to "Sit down, boy!"? Shouting "Kill him!"? What's next...are they going to lynch Obama in effigy?

This is where Palin, and by convention McCain, has taken us. Into the slimy sewer of American politics, where the dregs of the 20th century still linger, stewing in their own bile over the fact that blacks are now treated as equals, over the fact that they can no longer publicly call them "nigger" and "boy." It's disgusting enough that these troglodytes still exist, more so that I have to share my air with them, and finally that people like Sarah Palin would stoop to rousing them from under their rocks as a political tactic.

Shame on Sarah Palin. And shame on John McCain for letting her go this route -- in fact, for picking her at all (which was, of course, another plainly political tactic, but that's another discussion). I'd like to think Americans in the main are bright enough to repudiate this kind of race-baiting, but I've heard too many interviews with people who profess to like Obama, then when asked why they aren't voting for him, can't or won't provide a reason. Which makes their reasoning pretty plain, as often as not. Shame on them too -- they'll be the downfall of America, in the end.