Media Ignoring Ugly Attacks on McCain-Palin By Obama Supporters?

Now some fresh pickings from the Political Grapevine:

Hostile Territory

Much attention has been focused on ugly comments aimed at Barack Obama from some people attending rallies for John McCain and Sarah Palin.

But consider these incidents that have received little or no media attention. At least four demonstrators at a Sarah Palin rally in Philadelphia Saturday wore t-shirts that referred to Palin as a four-letter word too obscene to quote here.

Friday, vandals attacked the York County GOP headquarters in South Carolina. The Rock Hill Herald reports the culprits stole campaign signs, defaced a McCain banner and spray-painted "Republican means slavery."

The Portland Tribune reports two men were charged with felonies after making a Molotov cocktail and burning down a McCain sign.

And, a YouTube video shows a pro-McCain march in New York's liberal Upper West Side during a street fair in September. The McCain supporters were greeted with middle-finger salutes — sometimes two at a time — and told to "go home" and that they had "no brain." One heckler even likened the marchers to Nazi Germany.

Villain Vote

More than 30,000 felons in Florida who by law should have been stripped of their right to vote are registered to cast ballots on Election Day. The South Florida Sun-Sentinel reports many are faithful voters and Democrats outnumber Republicans more than two-to-one among those felons registered with a party.

Florida Secretary of State Kurt Browning says, "I'm kind of shocked that the number is as low as it is."

He says his staff has failed to remove thousands of ineligible felons from voter rolls because of a shortage of workers and a rush of new registrations. The Division of Elections also has a backlog of more than 108,000 possible felons who have registered to vote since 2006 and have not yet been verified.

Crude Facts

Venezuela's oil production is down by one-fourth since President Hugo Chavez took power.

The Daily Telegraph reports the state oil company produced 3.2 billion barrels a day in 1998 — the year before Chavez was elected. But due to inefficiency, corruption and sub-par infrastructure, output has fallen to under 2.5million barrels a day.

About half of Venezuela's oil is sold at huge discounts around Latin America. Ironically, the United States — which Chavez calls the "Empire" — is the only major customer that buys Venezuelan oil at full market price.

Meanwhile, the state-owned oil company has been forced to grow food after Chavez's price controls emptied supermarket shelves of basic products such as milk and eggs. Another branch now produces furniture and domestic appliances.

Not So Fast

Even though Senator Obama has said he would meet with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and other dictators within a year of taking office, there is no reason to think those meetings will go ahead.

Why? Because Ahmadinejad doesn't want to do it.

The vice president for Iranian media affairs says Iran has preconditions of its own. He tells the Islamic Republic News Agency Americans are in dire need of re-establishing ties with the Iranian people and that Iran will only hold talks if "the U.S. moves out of the Middle East and the U.S. government gives up its widespread support for the Zionist regime."

— FOX News Channel's Zachary Kenworthy contributed to this report.