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If the Rays lose the World Series tonight–and they probably will–it will be because they have been playing like a team completely unworthy of being there.  I hate to say that.  But Peña just lead off the second inning by trying to bunt his way on, and the ball went right to the Phillies’ first baseman.  Meanwhile, Kazmir just gave up two runs to Philadelphia in a 15 minute first inning in which be walked and hit batters, and gave up extra base hits.  Joe Madden’s unwillingness to pull pitchers who are obviously shaken and doomed to throw the game away is probably going to cost the Rays another game.

On another note, it’s 42 degrees in Philadelphia right now.  That’s cold for baseball.

Tonight the World Series is being held in my home town.  Bizarre!  Go Rays!

Last night was the third and final presidential debate this year, and it was probably the most interesting, and best moderated.  Tom Brokaw seemed powerless to maintain any control in the second debate; Jim Leherer was decent, but didn’t seem to demand answers.  (Gwen Ifill allowed Sarah Palin to get away with declaring she wouldn’t answer the questions asked, and did nothing when Governor Palin proceeded to use her response time to make unrelated talking points.)  Last night, Bob Schiefer was pretty good.  He did the best job maintaining focus, which is a tough task considering how rambling politicians can be.

John McCain was finally animated.  I think he did much better for himself sitting at a table than he did in the “town hall” format that was supposed to be his strong suit.  But I think for all his fustiness, he didn’t do himself much good.  He constantly brought up “Joe the Plumber”, and criticized Senator Obama, declaring that under Senator Obama, Joe would pay more taxes, and have a tougher life.  The papers are all over this story today, and it’s amazing how quickly Joe’s actual circumstances have been brought to light, and how incorrect Senator McCain was.  Even if Joe owned the business he would like to own–and that isn’t probable any time soon, since he doesn’t have the money, and apparently isn’t licensed–given the annual revenue of that plumbing business, Joe would do better under Senator Obama’s proposed tax plan than he would under Senator McCain’s.

Now, I know that Senator McCain and Republicans like to protest that it isn’t fair that people should be “punished” for doing well, and have their taxes raised.  I understand that, on first glance, this seems punitive.  But, I look at it this way: the middle class–which drives the American economy–needs the break more than those making over a quarter-million dollars.  And, in any event, for those making more than $250,000, their taxes only go up for the portion above $250,000.  So, if Joe the Plumber did make $275,000, he might pay a couple hundred more dollars (it’s much less than $1,000) in taxes, but those extra taxes will allow the government to pay for things like bank bailouts that rich investors seem to be demanding, and will give the middle-class a break, which it needs.  Real wages have gone down over the last eight years.  Food any gas are much more expensive than ever before.

The argument that businesses create jobs when they pay lower taxes is wishful thinking, in my opinion.  Businesses exist to make as much profit as they can.  A business paying lower taxes–especially if it’s a small business that–isn’t going to hire more people simply because they saved a couple thousand dollars on the tax bill.  That’s just more profit for the owner.  Decades of experience have shown supply-side economics do not work they way advertised by Republicans.  All it does is leave massive budget deficits.  But, if you give the middle-class the tax break, the vast majority of people will have a little extra money in their pockets, and, unlike the rich, the middle class will actually spend that money, and small business will reap the rewards, and the entire economy does better.  That is so much more logical.

And, as for the argument that this is all class warfare, I say that’s phony.  Taxes are the price of civilization.  Joe the Plumber apparently doesn’t agree: he owes Ohio back taxes.  Maybe he wouldn’t had Senator Obama been president.  In Joe’s present circumstance, he’d pay less under Obama’s plan.  I’d bet you would, too.  And if you’re one of the people who would pay more, congratulations on all your success.  I’m sorry that you’re paying a little more, but I’m confident you’ll get by.  And some soldier in Iraq will have body armor thanks to you.

I was pleased to hear this morning that my favorite columnist, Paul Krugman, is the winner of this year’s Nobel Prize for economics.  Obviously, I am no economist, and I cannot understand half of what Dr. Krugman writes in his academic papers (he’s a professor at Princeton), but his columns in the New York Times are enlightening, and I try to never miss them.  Three years ago he saw that there were bad economic times on the horizon.

There has been a lot of talk lately about the hostility to Barack Obama displayed by the crowds at rallies of John McCain and Sarah Palin. Indeed, some of the comments shouted by members of the audience have been very ugly at best, and, in some cases, borderline threatening.

It isn’t difficult to imagine why this is happening. McCain is substantially behind in the polls, and his supporters surely are aware of the long odds they now face with the election drawing ever nearer. A dying bull kicks the hardest, and the McCain campaign’s lackluster performance is causing its surrogates to resort to more extreme measures to try and even the field.

I don’t know the degree to which the most extreme of these shouted comments reflect the opinions of the average McCain supporter. The words “traitor” and “terrorist” are two of the more outrageous examples. I know that McCain himself was caught off guard in one instance, because you can see in the replay that he immediately recoiled. I don’t know if the same can be said for Sarah Palin at her rallies. I think she is naturally a more divisive figure. Perhaps the majority of McCain’s supporters are offended by the notion of someone accusing a sitting United States senator of treason. That’s a capital crime, after all, and no reasonable person, however conservative in ideology, has ever suggested that Senator Obama has ever betrayed the Constitution.

I am glad to see that Senator McCain is now correcting some of his supporters’ more absurd allegations and innuendo. He admonished some in a crowd recently by saying that Barack Obama is not someone that they should fear. That word, “fear”, is significant. I have heard McCain supporters recently saying that Obama “scares” them. I am very reluctant to attribute anyone’s opposition to Senator Obama to racism. But these comments seemed odd. It wasn’t “Obama’s proposals scare me”, as I might say “Bush’s foreign policy scares me”. And when you consider how many people are under the false impression that Senator Obama is Muslim, I cannot help but think that some of the people who say Obama “scares” them really aren’t misinformed.

And tonight I saw a woman addressing McCain at a campaign appearance. She was speaking into a microphone and said that she opposed Obama because “he’s an Arab”. McCain was again visibly disconcerted by this. To his credit, he corrected this woman, and again said that Senator Obama is a good American.

I am a little dissatisfied by some of the coverage of this I have been seeing at some of the websites I generally enjoy. Talking Points Memo has been hammering–a little too hard, I think–the McCain campaign on the trash talk. They have a point that the rhetoric has gone too far, and by saying nothing initially the campaign appeared to be tacitly condoning it. And while I do feel that Senator McCain has sunk a great deal in my esteem during this campaign, that is merely by virtue of his surrounding himself with advisers whom I consider sleazy. I appreciate that he’s now trying to correct some of the misrepresentations of his supporters. I know that must seem like a great distraction. I don’t want him to win, but I can at least say that it is because I disagree with his politics, and not his personality.

UPDATE: As I wrote above, I think that Governor Palin has done more than McCain to fan the flames at rallies, and Frank Rich writes about that in his column today.  One important excerpt that I feel goes to the heart of what I dislike about the whole McCain/Palin campaign:

No less disconcerting was a still-unexplained passage of Palin’s convention speech: Her use of an unattributed quote praising small-town America (as opposed to, say, Chicago and its community organizers) from Westbrook Pegler, the mid-century Hearst columnist famous for his anti-Semitism, racism and violent rhetorical excess. After an assassin tried to kill F.D.R. at a Florida rally and murdered Chicago’s mayor instead in 1933, Pegler wrote that it was “regrettable that Giuseppe Zangara shot the wrong man.” In the ’60s, Pegler had a wish for Bobby Kennedy: “Some white patriot of the Southern tier will spatter his spoonful of brains in public premises before the snow falls.”

I have no doubt that this text was inserted into her speech by some staffer who probably, like Ann Coulter, thinks Joseph McCarthy was right.  It was probably even the same staffer who gave her the Ronald Reagan quote about losing freedom she used in the debate.  She didn’t mention it then–because I doubt she knew–but that quote was from a speech Reagan made long before his presidency, when he was protesting social security.  All this goes to show why I would not consider voting for John McCain.  It isn’t because he is a bad person.  It’s because, for all his mavrick-ness, he is still surrounded by people who do not represent the American ideals I treasure.  I know John McCain isn’t some racist reactionary.  But he has in his campaign people whom I do not trust.  And if the Bush administration has taught us anything it is that when a president is surrounded by crooked or incompetent people, you get bad government.  One of McCain’s economic advisors is Kevin Hassett, who wrote Dow 36,000, which argued that stocks aren’t as risky as pessimists would have us believe, and that the Dow would soon be at 36,000.  Hassett also said around 2005 that there was no housing bubble, and people like Paul Krugman were just ignorant naysayers.

Nobody expects the president of the United States to be an expert on everything.  That’s what the cabinet and advisors are for.  But if McCain would appoint people like Hassett or Phil Graham to solve our problems, I have a pretty good sense that we’d be looking at another “Heck of a job, Brownie”-type scenario.