The anger is getting raw at Republican rallies and John McCain is acting to tamp it down. McCain was booed by his own supporters Friday when, in an abrupt switch from raising questions about Barack Obama's character, he described the Democrat as a "decent person and a person that you do not have to be scared of as president of the United States."

Jailed political fundraiser Antoin "Tony" Rezko, the Chicago real estate developer who helped launch Barack Obama on his political career, is whispering secrets to federal prosecutors about corruption in Illinois and the political fallout could be explosive.

Democratic Gov. Rod Blagojevich, whose administration faces multiple federal investigations over how it handed out jobs and money with advice from Rezko, is considered the most vulnerable.

A newspaper report Thursday said tens of thousands of eligible voters have been removed from rolls or blocked from registering in at least six swing states. Election officials lined up to defend their registration procedures and said they had done nothing wrong.

The New York Times based its findings on reviews of state records and Social Security data, and said it had identified apparent problems in Colorado, Indiana, Ohio, Michigan, Nevada and North Carolina.

The steel mills and coal mines of western Pennsylvania helped fuel the nation's economic engine. Today, old factory shells and boarded-up storefronts stand as bleak reminders of those once-prosperous times.

But the voters in working-class enclaves such as this still are a sought-after prize in presidential politics, and many are belatedly coming around to Democratic nominee Barack Obama.

Conservative Republicans regularly accuse liberal Democrats to trying to solve problems by throwing money at them. The Federal Reserve has been throwing billions into the banking system to stabilize the credit markets and no one has been complaining about it.

This week the Fed participated in an unprecedented global rate cut: An orchestrated cut in interest rates with 20 other nations in an attempt to encourage financial institutions to borrow from their central banks and begin making loans to credit-starved businesses.

Bathed in the hot air over Sarah Palin's pores, Barack Obama's neighbor, 1960s radical William Ayers, and John McCain's ties to disgraced financier Charles Keating, we seem to be in danger of forgetting what is at stake Nov. 4.

Yes, yes, I know that in the last days of a hotly contested election, the campaigns typically get even nastier.

The fact is, folks, that neither of the two contenders for the presidency of the United States has any experience in dealing with the worsening financial crisis. Actually John McCain has considerably more than Barack Obama but that isn't saying much.

Divisive, negative, and shameful campaign tactics are nothing new. But divisive, negative and shameful campaign tactics focused on race and sex is a vicious new twist this election year.

Barack Obama's candidacy and eventual nomination brought racial politics in America to the fore like never before. Hillary Clinton's failed Democratic primary bid and Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin's nomination as John McCain's vice presidential candidate injected sex and gender into the race.