DAMNED BY FAINT PRAISE: How nice! Only one person shouted "Kill him!" in Scranton

"At least one male supporter shouted 'kill him' about presidential candidate Barack Obama during a Republican rally Tuesday in Scranton," reported the local newspaper here.

"The remark was heard above the general 'boos' of the crowd when Republican congressional candidate Chris Hackett mentioned Mr. Obama while warming up the crowd for Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin," it continued.

"Such violent sentiments at other McCain-Palin rallies had campaign officials worried about potentially turning off moderate undecided voters. The majority of attendees, while passionately anti-Obama, were less vehement."

"Mrs. Palin also called up the region’s coal-producing past by jabbing at another Scranton native, Democratic vice presidential nominee Joe Biden, for once being critical of clean-coal technology as an alternative energy source," reported another piece in the newspaper.

The coal industry, what's left of it, is exhausted in Pennsyltucky's hinterland. DD discussed clean coal in January of this year at el Reg here.

A millionaire local to Schuylkill County, southwest of Scranton, has been trying to bring a clean coal pilot plant on-line for years.

The project has stalled, probably because of irregularities in cost assessments and retractions made by the Bush administration's Dept. of Energy environmental impact statements. In other words, the plant -- as planned -- can't deliver what was originally promised. (For more, including specifics on how it relates to the PA hinterlands, see here and here.)

Without following the linkage, the short version is that Barack Obama has generally supported clean coal. The Democratic position is virtually the same as the GOP's.

In yesterday's Los Angeles Times, the editorial board condemned John McCain in one of a series of opinions entitled "Position Pieces for the Next President."

"McCain then unleashed Palin to tear down Obama, and she responded by suggesting that Palin liked to 'pal around' with terrorists," it read. "Palin's boast that 'the heels are on, the gloves are off' is just too embarrassing to warrant response.

""McCain since has tried to cool off his supporters, but he lit this fire -- he and no one else is responsible for those who shriek at Palin's rallies, who proclaim that Obama is an Arab and who wish him harm. This campaign is more crass and virulent because McCain made it so."

"On the question of who best can reunite us, however, we cannot put our faith in a man who has done so much to drive us apart," it concluded.

This, in contrast to the Allentown Morning Call, which continues to devote its letter pages to stupid cranks insipidly arguing that the use of Obama's middle name at GOP rallies isn't incitement, but just the way things have always been.

Considering the source, it's difficult to be too hard on the clowns running the newspaper. While the Call is a small part of Tribune Co., which is the parent of the LA Times, a third of its staff was recently fired in a chain-wide downsizing. And it's not in a position where it can afford to lose any subscribers by formally reproaching Lehigh Valley GOP nutcases.

Today's letters include one on narrow minds. The Sidewalk to Nowhere video rates a mention.

The Call's featured letter writer insists Obama is too smooth. Then it runs through the standard laundry list of GOP talking-point character assassinations.

The what's-wrong-with-using-his-middle-name sham, here and here. The writer of the second thinks he's being clever. It's transparently so but the Call editors let him get away with the funny business for the sake of a good laugh, anyway.

Here's another one with an amusing twist. "Bigotry has to go!" it claims.

Another letter comes from one of the pro-Obama picketers shown in the Sidewalk to Nowhere video. Get a job! And other flavors, sipped previously, of the pure milk of human kindness.

And what would the letters section be without a taxpayers-are-going-to-take-it-in-the-shorts warning about what will happen when the socialist Obama becomes president?

Finally, the Lehigh Valley Conservative, one of the Call's featured blogs, teaches us all something about the nature of equality. And it's this:
The Democrats are giving away money to the "non-working class" just to get votes. If Barack Obama, ACORN and the rest of the corrupt win the election, we'll be destroyed because those people don't cotton to Judeo/Christian belief.

"Billions have been given away to the 'underprivelaged' [sic] and 'disenfranchised,' it gently chides.