…because she's a secessionist! Who plans to turn Alaska into a redistributionist commonwealth!! Using those special vice presidential powers she knows so little about!!!

Cox: What McCain's reacting to, is something that other Republicans are reacting to, iscu the kind of ugliness of the criticisms [towards] Obama. I think McCain in his heart of heart wants to win this fair and square. He wants to win this because he's the better candidate. He doesn't want to win this because people think Obama is a Muslim or is a terrorist or he's not really American. He wants to win this on his own merits. It upsets his sense of fair play — to win — to think that the support he's getting is because of what he thinks are bad reasons. . .

Althouse: But in the last month or so, he's been losing ground, and resorting to this terrorist meme –

Cox: I think that hasn't worked for them. I think they recognize that to the extent that that does work, that's not how McCain wants to win.

I adore the guy. I think he's fantastic in many ways. I respect him, I admire his service to the country. I think ultimately he's very principled and, to coin a phrase, honorable. . . .

I do think that McCain is one of the most unique individuals that I've ever personally met. As I said, I greatly admire him and think he's sort of an amazing person . . .

[The McCain campaign], not out of malice or intent, didn't allow themselves to think through how some of these images would be taken by their audience.

This is from July 31:

“While the U.S. oil industry want access to more federal lands to help reduce reliance on foreign suppliers, American-based companies are shipping record amounts of gasoline and diesel fuel to other countries. A record 1.6 million barrels a day in U.S. refined petroleum products were exported during the first four months of this year, up 33 percent from 1.2 million barrels a day over the same period in 2007. Shipments this February topped 1.8 million barrels a day for the first time during any month, according to final numbers from the Energy Department.”