I write about a matter of great urgency and seriousness. A casket with a picture of Sen. Barack Obama on it was conspicuously within the sight of voters entering an early voting polling place in Craven County yesterday. State Representative William Wainwright along with local NAACP President Alfred Barfield were alerted to the dangerous situation by their respective constituents, and they were able to convince the Craven County Sheriff to remove the vicious display. The obvious attempt was to use the image of death as a way of demeaning a particular candidate as well as intimidating voters.

This is not subtle people. Everyone knows the past history of the South where African Americans were routinely intimidated and even lynched for trying to exercise their any of their rights, much less their right to vote. Yet I doubt we will hear any denunciations of this coffin coming from the McCain campaign. McCain won't rebuke supporters at his campaign rallies who call Obama a terrorist and worse. No, he's proud of them and their hatred.

Hell, McCain freely makes the charge that Obama is a socialist who wants to turn the IRS into a welfare agency. His robocalls are relentlessly negative and misleading regarding Obama, and yesterday his Vice Presidential choice, Sarah Palin, continued to harp on Obama as being unpatriotic and failing to support the troops.

What is readily apparent is that McCain has sold what little soul he has left to Karl Rove and his acolytes in order to slime his way into the Presidency. However, his unclean" campaign is a disease whose symptoms will linger long after McCain himself is relegated to the political graveyard of failed Presidential candidates. He, and he alone, has made it mucg harder for Obama to unite this country in the face of the numerous crises we face with our economic situation, our relations with other countries, the wars we are fighting, peak oil and global warming. He has stained not only his reputation, but in his wake left behind a foul pestilence of hatred and anger among his supporters, dividing American from American, family member from family member. He has raised the specter of racism and sown the seeds foir racial and ethnic violence. Remember the 90's, a period of prosperity which nonetheless saw the worst domestic terrorist attack in our history, all because of the relentless mainstreaming of extremist views by conservatives in Congress and the media, especially talk radio? We face a far more volatile situation today should Obama, as most predict, win the election.

As more people lose their jobs, as more foreclosures occur, as more hatred wells up from the bowels of conservative talk radio and Fox News, the stage is being set for violence against those whom McCain and his supporters have scapegoated -- Latinos, Gays and Lesbians, African Americans, Muslims and liberals. John McCain, had he kept his promise to run a "clean and respectful" campaign, could have done much to prevent the danger of civil strife, and calm the hatred of so many on the right. Instead he choose, out of raw political ambition, to stir up that hatred, and to further the lies and discord in our society which Karl Rove and Lee Atwater and Joseph McCarthy so willingly exploited in their day. It was a telling choice.

No hell is good enough for you Senator. You deserve more punishment for your sins against this nation than anything I can imagine.