A heartbeat away from giving hockey a bad name

I have developed a terrible tendency to read some of the comments left after a news article or opinion piece, mostly on political news (I'm an election junkie). I guess I picked the comment-reading up in blogland. It's "terrible" because a lot of the people who leave comments on news articles are apparently UTTER MORONS. Also, the comments are often trolled by... well... trolls.

But what gets me is how the trolls fervent defenders of the Republican ticket have a problem with spaces and capitalization (let alone reason, logic, and that other thing... what was it again... oh yeah: spelling). I mean, who in the world has the ability to put a space between two words, but can't be bothered to include one between the end of one sentence and the start of the next? Here's a relatively mild example from the comments of a Christian Science Monitor overview of last week's Republican funnies (I love Tina Fey!).

There is no prof anyone can find of him changing to Obama.Go look it up not one news person can find anything on it.Why did it take him 20 years to leave his church. A church that promotes hate. You don’t think he took a little of that hate with him. 20 years of being told to hate. give me a brake.If he wasn’t running for president he would still be there.He voted against money for the military and said we need to get out because we would never do good there. now he says we have done good. he can’t make up his own mind how can we let him tell us whats good for us?Mccain might be the best choice but he is really our only choice.

I've seen worse than this. Worse by far. And almost always pro-Republican, or rather, anti-"Liberals." Quite often distinctly racist as well. So what's up with that? Is this some kind of proof they're anti-elitist or something?

On a separate (but related) note:

I am really, really tired of "a heartbeat away" now. Can we use another cliche, just to mix it up, maybe? Palin would be "very close," maybe even "next in line." Can we find something other than "a heartbeat away"? It's just got to the point that everybody says it, and it's icking me out.

That is all.