Seriously, who thought it was a good idea to have Sarah Palin drop the puck at a Philadelphia Flyers game? (Of course, there’s also the question of why she’s spending so much time in Philadelphia, but that’s an issue for another day.)

Philadelphia sports fans are legendary, and not in a good way. They booed — and threw snowballs at — Santa Claus, for God’s sake. Santa Claus. They celebrated when Dallas Cowboys star Michael Irvin was injured. Their own mascot couldn’t escape fans’ wrath when he dropped a foul ball recently.

So it seemed sort of inevitable that something would happen to make this photo op less than perfect. And now one Web site, PuckYouPalin.com, has stepped in to try to make sure that happens — they’re encouraging fans to chant the name of the site when she gets on the ice.

She just better hope fans don’t remember that she almost jogged around their city recently while wearing New York Rangers gear.

One might expect Republicans to have a little more shame about bringing up Bill Ayers to tarnish Barack Obama, in light of the fact that John McCain himself has hardly let a public appearance go by without effusive praise for a man who lately called American soldiers “thugs.”

Of course, it helps McCain’s case considerably that the person who said this was an American soldier himself. And not just any American soldier, but Gen. David Petraeus, who made the crack Wednesday in a speech he gave to the conservative Heritage Foundation.

Petraeus, naturally, was sort of joking, and he was talking about the Revolutionary War. But the point is still significant. The headline after Petraeus’ talk was that, intentionally or not, he seemed to echo Obama on the necessity of negotiating with hostile nations.

“You have to talk to the enemy,” the general said, and pointed out that the British “sat down with thugs throughout their history, including us, I suspect.” While the notion that one country’s thug is another’s revolutionary isn’t exactly new, it’s difficult to imagine who else could say such a thing to the Heritage crowd and avoid being crucified for cowardice and moral relativism. If an associate of Obama had said the “thugs” line, I imagine we’d be hearing about it from Sarah Palin right about now.

If you live in Rensselaer County, N.Y., and you’re looking to mark your absentee ballot for Barack Obama, you may be out of luck, at least for now.

Officials mailed out approximately 300 absentee ballots that list not Obama but “Barack Osama,” the Albany Times Union reports. The paper also says that officials on both sides say it was just a mistake.

“No question this is an honest mistake innocently done,” Edward McDonough, the Democratic commissioner, told the paper. “We catch almost everything.”

Thus far, three voters have reportedly called in to report the error — new ballots are being mailed to them.

Joining the steady drumbeat of conservative pundits giving up on John McCain today is Christopher Buckley. Unlike, say, David Brooks or Charles Krauthammer, Buckley doesn’t merely lament the nasty turn McCain’s campaign has taken, or predict a Republican defeat. Instead, he goes so far as actually promising to vote for Barack Obama and offering praise for the Democrat.

To demonstrate the magnitude of this heresy, a bit of background: The son of modern conservatism’s patron saint, the late William F. Buckley, Christopher remains a columnist for the National Review, his father’s magazine. He announced his endorsement in Tina Brown’s Daily Beast, however. Buckley wrote:

Having a first-class temperament and a first-class intellect, President Obama will (I pray, secularly) surely understand that traditional left-politics aren’t going to get us out of this pit we’ve dug for ourselves. If he raises taxes and throws up tariff walls and opens the coffers of the DNC to bribe-money from the special interest groups against whom he has (somewhat disingenuously) railed during the campaign trail, then he will almost certainly reap a whirlwind that will make Katrina look like a balmy summer zephyr.

Obama has in him — I think, despite his sometimes airy-fairy “We are the people we have been waiting for” silly rhetoric — the potential to be a good, perhaps even great leader. He is, it seems clear enough, what the historical moment seems to be calling for.

So, I wish him all the best. We are all in this together. Necessity is the mother of bipartisanship. And so, for the first time in my life, I’ll be pulling the Democratic lever in November. As the saying goes, God save the United States of America.

Meanwhile, at the Corner, one of the National Review’s blogs, Andy McCarthy speculates on whether Obama’s sympathies are more Maoist or Stalinist. The American right truly is a many-splendored thing.

With the report on “Troopergate” — Sarah Palin’s firing of Alaska’s public safety commissioner — now complete, the McCain-Palin campaign will be eager to make the probe look like a partisan performance put on by supporters of Barack Obama. With the release of a new Web site, PalinTruthFiles.com, last week, the campaign all but announced its decision to stick with the twofold approach to the scandal that it has employed thus far: claiming that the investigation is an attempt by Obama proxies to influence the court of public opinion while, at the same time, sending its own proxies to various courts of law.

The site’s most prominent feature is a video titled “Big Top” that paints the scandal as a conspiracy theory dreamed up in the fever swamp of the blogosphere. The investigation, the video concludes, “is nothing more than a three-ring circus emceed by Obama partisans.”

Configured to look like the sort of notebook that might belong to a private eye or a roving member of the mainstream media, the site includes a page documenting the “Web of Connections” that attempts to portray the affair as partisan from its very beginnings. A blue line connects a large picture of Obama and a picture of Alaska state trooper Mike Wooten, Palin’s former brother-in-law and the man who puts the trooper in “Troopergate.” (Palin allegedly fired former public safety commissioner Walt Monegan when he wouldn’t do the same to Wooten.)

Accompanying text explains that the “Obama campaign has contacted the union representing Trooper Wooten.” True enough, but then again, not really — the call had nothing to do with Wooten. It was made regarding a potential endorsement.

But some big punches are saved for Kim Elton, who chairs Alaska’s Joint Legislative Council, which voted to authorize the investigation, and Hollis French, the project director of the inquiry.

The video accuses French of “colluding on the issuing of subpoenas” with Steven Branchflower, the former prosecutor who’s leading the investigation (and is, naturally, also targeted by the Web site). Not so much. In fact, French said last month that he decided not to subpoena Palin’s former chief of staff even though Branchflower wanted to question him.

Amid these attempts to attack the legitimacy of the investigation by portraying it as a partisan witch hunt, it’s important to remember one thing: At the time the inquiry was launched, Palin herself gave the council her blessing, saying, “Hold me accountable.”

Alaska legislators now have the report, and are expected to vote Friday on whether to release it. In the meantime, enjoy the pageantry. It may not be the best show on earth, but it’s still pretty good entertainment.

God, I love Betty White. Via Ben Smith, here’s a video of her recent appearance on the “The Late Late Show With Craig Ferguson,” where she cracked wise about the election.

Clearly, Cloris Leachman needs to step up her game. 

Remember when John McCain’s 2000 presidential campaign was derailed by fallacious rumors that he had fathered a black child? You might think that would have caused McCain to avoid smear attacks.

Over the past few days, though, whether referencing Barack Obama’s association with Bill Ayers or using Obama’s middle name of “Hussein,” McCain, Sarah Palin and their campaign surrogates have been steadily turning to more and more vicious personal attacks against Obama.

Thursday came yet another example of this. While on conservative comedian Dennis Miller’s radio show, McCain campaign co-chairman and former Oklahoma Gov. Frank Keating brought up Obama’s admitted former drug use. Calling Obama’s record “very extreme,” Keating went on to say that Obama “ought to admit, ‘You know, I’ve got to be honest with you. I was a guy of the street. I was way to the left. I used cocaine. I voted liberally, but I’m back at the center …’ But he hasn’t done that.”

Keating’s claim that Obama has not been forthright about his drug use is absurd. The reason we know about it in the first place is because he admitted to it in his memoir “Dreams From My Father.”

To his credit, Miller pointed this out to Keating, saying, “Wait, I’ve got to jump in, Frank. He has copped to the blow use, right? I mean, he did so in his own book; he said he did blow.”

Keating replied, “Oh, yes, he did.”

Reached for comment by CNN about Keating’s comments, a McCain campaign aide said, ”We didn’t ask him to do it. He didn’t clear it with us, but obviously he’s read Senator Obama’s books.”

The McCain campaign has now released another ad linking Barack Obama to former Weather Underground member Bill Ayers. This time, though, it says the ad will actually run — “nationally,” the campaign says.

The spot, titled “Ambition,” is below. The odd aside about “congressional liberals” is included because the spot was paid for jointly with the Republican National Committee.

This incident, a question asked at a recent McCain campaign rally, has been going around the Internet today, and for good reason. It seems to sum up, in one neat package, much of the dynamic of the presidential campaign right now. There’s the fear on the right that an Obama administration may now be inevitable — and anger over that prospect — combined with the results of the McCain campaign’s recent tactics and the conversation in conservative media right now.

Here’s the exchange.  A video of it, which you really should watch to fully appreciate this (make sure to note the picture of Bill Ayers that Fox News includes at the right of the screen), is at the bottom of this post.

Question: I’m mad. I’m really mad. And what’s going on won’t surprise you. It’s not the economy. It’s the socialists taking over our country.

[Applause]

Sit down. I’m not done.

[Applause]

Thank you.

McCain: You’re going — you’re going to have to give me …

Question: When I see …

McCain: Go ahead.

Question: Let me finish, please.

McCain: Yes, sir.

[Laughter]

McCain: Excuse me.

[Laughter]

Question: Thank you. I think it’s so important in today’s country what we’re really missing in what’s going on. When you have an Obama, Pelosi and the rest of the hooligans up there going to run this country, we’ve got to have our head examined. It’s time that you two are representing us, and we are mad. So go get them.

Audience: USA, USA, USA.

McCain: Well, I — I think I got the message.

Could I — could I just say the gentleman is right. The Democrats have been in the majority for the last two years. Have you seen any improvement? The point is — but Americans are angry, sir. They’re angry and frustrated. And that’s why we’ve got to act, and we’ve got to act together because all of us are Americans first.

Earlier today, Alex posted about a video making its way through the blogosphere that shows McCain supporters outside an Ohio rally alleging that Barack Obama is a terrorist. In yet another sign that these last few weeks before the election could turn increasingly ugly, Chad Livengood, of the Springfield, Mo., News-Leader, writes today of a disturbing billboard in West Plains, Mo (thanks to reader fightthetheocracy! for the tip). The billboard shows a cartoon of a turbaned Obama and reads “Barack ‘Hussein’ Obama equals more abortions, same sex marriages, taxes and gun regulations.” According to a local newspaper, the West Plains Daily Quill, no one has come forward to claim responsibility for the sign.

And in a microcosm of the tensions underlying this presidential race, on Monday, the Daily Quill published a letter to the editor that said in part: “This is a message for those responsible for the offensive, scurrilous billboard south of Mustion Creek on the west side of U.S. 63 — Shame on you! Have you no honor? Such a tasteless display merely reinforces the wide-spread belief that Ozarkers are ignorant country bumpkins. What must travelers think of us?” Another reader responded to that letter on Wednesday, writing, “To the person who sent the ‘letter to the editor’ in the Monday edition of the Daily Quill: What was erroneous about the message on the sign?”