Don't let the ghosts and the ghouls disturb you, love.

Today I'm going to share with you a brief moment of outrage in what is really becoming a season of hope, so please bear with me.

Through the last several weeks as the McCain supporters have gotten more and more desperate we've watched their racism come out out into the open. We've all seen pictures of the McCain supporters who've taken stuffed Obama monkeys to his rallies. A couple of weeks ago on a Fark thread I ran across this picture--

The funny thing is the guy that posted that picture through a hissy-fit when he was called out on the racist nature of his little photoshop.

Today we have this horrible story being pushed by FOX in which a white woman was supposedly mugged at an an ATM by an Obama supporter who "carved" a backwards "B" on her face when he found out she supported McCain. Because political discussions are always the first topic of conversation during a mugging.

We can debate until we turn blue whether or not Clinton supporter Geraldine Ferraro's comments in the primaries that Obama was only doing as well as he was because of the fact that he's black was a racist comment, but it seems to me that even at it's worst Ferraro's comment pales by comparison to the racist crap coming out almost daily from the Joe the Racists on the political right.

The themes that come to the surface again and again are that African-Americans can't be trusted with the vote or they pull shenanigans (Acorn,) that African-Americans are savage animals that can't control themselves (monkeys) and that African-American men are a threat to white women. Blacks with political power are a danger to God-fearing, white Americans.

None of this is new. As we've watched this racism expressed at McCain rallies and through the actions of his supporters it's brought to mind a movie I saw many years ago in college. (There's very little with me that doesn't bring a movie to mind as you can tell by my schtick with this site.)

D.W. Griffith's 1915 film "The Birth of a Nation" was considered up until the 1960's to be one of, if not the, greatest American films. This despite it's patent racism and story centered around the idea that the Ku Klux Klan were heroes fighting unruly African-American mobs in the Reconstruction Civil War South. In fairness the regard the film was held in didn't stem from it's racist theme, but from Griffith's innovative use of editing and production technique.

There's much to be offended by in this film but here's the scene from that movie that left me nauseous.

It should be noted that the NAACP protested the film upon it's release and, just like the racists of today, D.W. Griffith was publicly hurt by the criticism leveled his way. Like today's jackasses comparing Obama or his supporters to monkeys he just didn't see why people would be offended by his film.

We've only had a close view of the beginning of what may be the end of us.

Good: I had a dream last night in which I was James Bond.

Bad: I was the Roger Moore James Bond.

I suppose this could be my subconscious telling me I'm not as muy macho as I'd like to believe which is a crazy idea.

Now, if you'll excuse me I have to crawl into my pajamas, mix up a pitcher of Apple Martinis and lose myself in a Bridget Jones Marathon on Lifetime.

We'll begin with a reign of terror, a few murders here and there, murders of great men, murders of little men, just to show we make no distinction!

While we were enjoying the beauty of the Oregon coast the jackasses that call themselves the Editorial Board at the state's one and only news daily the Oregonian were embarrassing themselves again by endorsing Gordon Smith's re-election to the U.S. Senate for a third term.

I assume this goes to the Oregonian's continued warped sense of "balance" since they had endorsed Barack Obama the day before. Objectivity requires splitting the baby right down the middle. They have readers in the blue and the red part of the state after all. Except they really don't...

Like most states Oregon has concentrated population areas around big cities surrounded by larger tracts of rural, sparsely populated counties and towns. The urban area of Oregon stretches down through the Willamette Valley from Portland to Eugene. This is the area of the state viewed with derision by many rural Oregonians because it's generally more progressive and tends to favor Democrats. It also happens to be the area where the bulk of the Oregonian's readership resides.

When the Oregonian pulls one of these bone-headed stunts such as endorsing George W. Bush over Al Gore or, more recently, publishing the anti-Islamic "Obsession" video and now endorsing Smith they're directly insulting their readers. They're saying to their readers that those that run the paper are smarter than those that pay to read it.

What business can survive by insulting it's customers in such a direct manner and on such a regular basis? If you went to a deli where you were told you couldn't have the tuna because "people who eat tuna are morons" would you go back to that place?

As the readership of the Oregonian continues to decline I'm sure they'll have all sorts of excuses as to what's killing their business. They'll blame the rise of cable/ satellite. They'll finger the Internet. They'll claim it's the rise of progressive partisanship made it impossible to sell papers.

The answer will be much simpler. They simply aren't catering to their customers.

Whatever you do don't fall asleep.

We got back last night from a short family jaunt to the Oregon Coast where we stayed at a rental house. The weather was perfect and we had a terrific time.

We had a bunch of relatives from around the country staying with us so I did my favorite thing to do when we've got land-lubbers with us; take them out on the bay crabbing. I've been going to the Wheeler Marina in Wheeler on the Nehalem Bay since I was eighteen. Really inexpensive boat rentals and you always fill up a cooler with Dungeoness crab.

It's about a half-hour boat ride out to the inlet of the bay where the crabbing is good. The area is beautiful. Lots of wildlife. We saw several types of firds including stork. I haven't been out where we weren't checked out by seal or two.

Crabbing is pretty easy. You wire a frozen fish head to the bottom of a ring and then toss it off the boat just about where you think the crab might congregate. Then you just go from ring to ring quickly pulling the rings to the boat so the crab can't jump off. In practice this means you have lots of little crabs running around your boat. This is the part I love because it usually means people who've never picked up a live crab are screaming in terror.

Back at the house we had a crab feast capped by watching the sunset on the beach and hot-tubbing under the stars. It's times like this I love being an Oregonian.