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Rabid

The Right Wing has become increasingly rabid. I become ill, literally, when Sarah Palin comes across the TeeVee screeching her disgusting lies. She really is a piece of work and her bullshit has encouraged the other hate mongers to come out in droves. Here is a small compilation of the hatred that they are spreading.

Click read more to see the disgusting actions of the Right Wing.


Cunningham alleges that Obama wants to “gas the Jews.”

Savage accuses anyone who supports equal rights in CA of being anti-family and anti-God.

Hannity refuses to apologize for his hate spreading.

Rose Tennent claims that the people in Obama’s ad aren’t really struggling.

DHS helps in smearing Obama.

Conyers makes clear that the DHS leak is illegal.

GOP mailer suggests Obama presidency could lead to a second Holocaust.

Anonymous Liberal tells the truth about the “redistributionist” smear. h/t Paradox

Liddy claims that the “welfare class” will elect Obama.

McCainism

Palin’s angry mob rally (yes, another one.)

Another Obama socialist mailer.

Obama repeatedly compared to Hitler.

All of these disgusting tactics are new. They just popped up on websites today. What's worse is that I could have kept going, there were more everywhere that I looked.

How horrible is the GOP to continue this shit? They want to divide us. They want to exploit fear and hatred. They want to kill the goodness in America. When they kill the goodness then what is left?

The contrast between Obama messaging and McCain messaging is so stark. I cannot imagine anyone being pulled into the McCain-Palin mind set. Their hate fests are evil. I just do not understand it.

What I do know is that if we are going to stop this crap in our country, then we absolutely must stop this. We cannot allow these people to be rewarded for their hatred. Every single vote for John McCain rationalizes and legitimizes what they are doing. That alone is enough to vote Obama. Let’s take back our country. Please, America, stop the hatred.

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Major Lost Opportunity

Wow

Just Wow

Holy Fuck, Wow

I had heard that the media needed to “get over it.” Who is it that will not let it die?

Hillary did a phenomenal job last night. It was, by far, the most brilliant speech that I have ever seen her give. She was awesome. I cried and when it was over, I felt unified.

There was the opportunity today to take her lead and the energy that she offered us - all of us Democrats - to move forward and to win this election. She gave us all a mandate to "keep going" and to not look back. She told us what was important and she reiterated that this is not about the primaries, not about her and not about Obama.

And it is certainly not about people's ego based necessity to be right and to spew "I told you so"s all over the Nets.

This is politics goddammit...there will be disappointment and hurt feelings and anger, but all of those feelings do not outweigh the feelings that come as a result of the policies enacted by the politicians once we get them into office.

My principles and my hurt feelings and all of that crap will not help me when the banks fold and the mortgage forecloses and gas is $10.00 a gallon. A McCain presidency will ensure all of that horrible crap and worse. I am worried about those feelings...the ones that I would have to experience under a McCain presidency.

Whatever happened in the primaries, whatever injustices occurred, or personality crap that people want to continue to replay will not save my kid from the draft that McCain will have to enact for his "more wars." My fight is to make sure that I never feel that; not re-hashing anything experienced over these last many months.

Hillary was awesome last night. Lovely. It is a new chapter in this process; we are now in the General Election. It is time to turn the page, take every opportunity afforded us and recognize the chance that we have right now to stop the insanity of the Republicans. No matter what we wanted or who we wanted for our Nominee, Obama is what we've got.

It's General Election time now. I really don’t care who was “right” last week, last month, last year or yesterday. I care about what is right now, and what is right now is to elect a Democrat as President, a Democratic majority in the Congress and a Democratic majority in the State Legislatures. The census and redistricting are coming and we have an opportunity for Democratic majorities for a long time to come.

There is a whole lot of shit to fix in this country. We don’t have time to replay this crap. We have huge opportunities to really get some fantastic Progressive legislation enacted. John McCain is the antithesis of everything that I believe in; to allow some old resentment, that Hillary herself seems to have gotten over, to get in the way of saving our Country is short sighted and selfish.

Let’s not waste anymore opportunities.

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Beelzebub Still Has His Minions at Work

The headline reads: Justice Staffers Won't Be Prosecuted For Illegal Hiring Practices.

Attorney General Michael Mukasey said Tuesday... "not every wrong, or even every violation of the law, is a crime. In this instance, the two joint reports found only violations of the civil service laws."

I'll use that as my defense if I ever get arrested... should work, eh?

Of course those strong armed Democrats were on the ball with a public tongue lashing:

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy said Mukasey "seems intent on insulating this administration from accountability."

The Vermont Democrat said Mukasey's remarks "appear premature based on the facts and evidence that congressional investigators and the inspector general have uncovered so far" in the hiring scandal. "We must continue to pursue the truth and facts, and hold any wrongdoers accountable," Leahy said.

After Leahy's wag of the finger, I could swear I saw a picture of bu$h doing a tex-ass jig... no, that was only in my head, I guess. But Beelzebub did say in his most hideous voice, "I have many more crimes to commit before I leave office!"

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Take that McRube!

Johnathan Martin at Politico got to the bottom of Obama not checking in on the injured troops at Ramstein AFB, Germany.

VoteVets, the pro-Democrat group of retired military personnel, counters McCain's Black Hawk down statement with some outrage from Col. Katherine Scheirman (Ret.), the retired Chief of Medical Operations for United States Air Force in Europe Headquarters at Ramstein Air Force Base in Germany:

"John McCain's new ad is dishonest and shameful, and I say that as the former Chief of Medical Operations. Senators Hagel and Reed confirmed to Bob Schieffer yesterday that Senator Obama visited the Combat Support Hospital in Baghdad as a part of their CODEL, with no media present.

"In Germany, Senator Obama made the right decision to respect wounded troops, and the doctors and nurses doing crucial and time-sensitive work, by not making a visit that was characterized as a campaign event by the Pentagon. Senator Obama should be thanked for putting our military above politics. And, I would hope that John McCain would think in those same terms, the next time he is put in a similar situation.

"Senator Obama has voted for the troops when John McCain has not, most recently on the new GI Bill. I am happy that Senator Obama puts the welfare of our troops above politics."

Also, it's notable that Obama's camp, quick to respond to most every charge and ever-conscious of not repeating the mistakes of Kerry, has yet to go on the air with a spot pushing back against McCain's charge on the troop visit. Apparently, they won't unless McCain puts real money behind his spot and goes beyond just gaming it for earned media.

Once again, Obama doesn't have to lower himself to his opponents level. Will it work through November?

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Circle Jerk or Pissing Match: You Decide

Ioz takes on Greenwald.

Greenwald defends his honor.

Dennis Perrin jumps in the ring.

Greenwald takes on Olbermann.

Olbermann fights back, defending himself with a John Dean.

Mark Crispin Miller piles on, for no apparent reason other than wanting to get in on the action.

Dean says, ‘leave me out of it.’

Greenwald takes last word.

I don’t know if these guys confuse Google hit numbers with penis size or if they really do believe that they rock.

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Bullshit (At Least That is How I See It)

I was simply going to post a response in this thread over at home base but I’ve decided that it merits its own discussion.

Turkana’s premise is that this primary season has taught her that the blogosphere is unfair:

“We all have our biases. We can only try to be honest, and to be as sure as is possible of our sources. But too many bloggers and too many commenters have no interest in fairness. Coming to realize that has been one of the great disappointments of the past six months. And this is a subject about which I will not stop writing.”

Over the last several years of reading [left-leaning] blogs, I have yet to find a post that includes a perspective from the right so that the post can be “fair” to George W. Bush. In fact, this pseudo “fairness” is one of the problems with the corporate media. In their attempt to appear fair, they insist on including an “opposing viewpoint” even where an opposing viewpoint is not necessary.

There are times when reporting demands that only one view be represented, when that view is on the side of truth and justice, law and order, reality and non-reality. When the reporting is on torture what the viewer or reader need know is the truth about what our government is doing - we do not need to know that some right wing tool advocates torture. This supposed fairness mucks up the reality that torture is wrong and that we absolutely do not support torture in the United States of America. Torture is against US law and International Law. Torture is against everything that this Country has ever stood for. However, in the myth of “fairness” on the teevee, the pundit shows do not do strait reporting and instead offer up some asshole who argues in favor of torture.

I am certain that the pundit shows could find some asshole to argue in favor of white supremacy, child molestation, rape and the skinning of puppies. In the theory of fairness put forth by Turkana – this would be necessary, but this avoids the real fairness that we need concern ourselves with; true morality and actual justice.

What Turkana does in her post is to turn upside down the premise of the original article: that ‘bloggers have more freedom to report the truth because they are not dependent on building relationships with their subjects in order to have access to them for reporting purposes.’ She completely ignores what the article is about and instead posts her own [new] view of the Internets based on her feelings. This is why the post is bullshit – not because she does not have a right to feel the way that she does, but because she posts it as fact instead of the subjective feeling that it is:

“Because this primary season saw the collapse of credibility of some major bloggers, as they repeated or invented lies, and engaged in blatant smear campaigns. In many ways, the blogs are now as unreliable as is the corporate media. It's not only a problem when corporate media reporters get too close to their subjects, it's a problem when bloggers get too caught up in their passions, and become mere petty propagandists.”

To “prove” that this is feeling, let’s take one of the supposed Lies and Smears from the primary campaign.

Bill Clinton was making a racist comment when he said, after the South Carolina Primary, that ‘Jesse Jackson won the primary too and Barack Obama’s win was no different.’

Reporting that this was racist or not racist was subjective reporting. Either way was a lie or propaganda. True, unbiased reporting would have reported the quote only and left it up to the reader to determine if there was anything untoward about it. Because there was no memo from the campaign to explain the intent behind what was said, to blog either Yes it was racist or No it was not racist are both unfair reporting.

But that is what blogs do – blogs interpret the multitude of information out there. That is why there are Left Wing and Right Wing blogs; they write on the information from a Left or Right point of view.

To paraphrase something that I heard David Sirota say,

‘The Internet allows people to reality shop. There is no longer any way to have an argument with someone because people are working off of a totally different set of facts.’

I have long argued that I can find enough documentation to argue both sides of any argument. We all can. This simple truth necessitates that we all have the intellectual and emotional honesty to realize that when we read, we are reading through our own particular lens of reality. If this primary season has taught us anything other than it is our own reality that has changed our minds about bloggers who we once trusted, that it is somehow something outside of ourselves, that we bear no personal responsibility for how we see things, then we are in deep trouble.

A whole lot forms our outlook on life, there are as many facets as to how we perceive and relate to reality as there are molecules and atoms in the Universe. Hopefully we can take the knowledge gained from this primary season and realize that we don’t need to find more people who see reality exactly as we do but instead we need to have more compassion and understanding for our fellow human beings.

That is why I call bullshit on the piece over at home base, because it supposes that there is a superior and an inferior way of seeing things. That there is something wrong with the people who do not see it the way that ‘I’ do, rather than the more ‘reality based’ supposition that if ‘I’ have a problem with ‘you’ [especially one that did not exist before, when we saw things the same way] that there might just be something wrong with ‘me.’

(But, that is just my subjective feeling about it; me calling it bullshit does not mean that it factually is bullshit.)

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Tie the Man Up

If Hillary wins the Democratic nomination, Bill's only job should be backroom deals and public handshaker. The typical Wal-Mart greeting, hand wave, a nod and wink smile, a simple hello. NBC News political director, Chuck Todd, made some valid points:

“It’s fascinating: Nobody’s been a bigger victim of the so-called YouTube moments than Bill Clinton,” Todd said. “I think Bill Clinton was woefully unprepared for 21st Century media.”

Actually, Hillary would do herself a favor by locking him in a closet until the election. The repukes will be waiting for Bill to make the slightest error.

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I Thought She Was Gone...

Jeez, just when I thought I'd be free of listening to her, Randi Rhodes gets a new job.

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Let the Balls Roll Where They Fall

It's no secret that this blog and it's mothership have a certain disdain for the echo chamber that passes for a blog at Daily Kos. However, I do read it every weekday morning for one reason - Bill.

I know there are several problems - I'm hetero, he's not. We're both married to our particular spouses already . . etc. But I think you get the idea.

Bill raised a good point today:

I remember hearing back in '04---and the Very Serious People in Journalismland were adamant about this---that "few people really pay attention to the race until after summer vacation." If there's even a shred of truth to that, we can let the primaries play out to their scheduled June conclusion just fine. If Hillary's chances haven't risen to at least 50-50 and she stays in anyway, that's when she'll have jumped the shark and her support will naturally crumble.

What happened to that bit of wisdom about how the American electorate really doesn't pay attention until the fall? Well, it sounds a bit hollow when literally hundreds of thousands of new caucus and primary voters have shown up this year at the polls, setting incredible records and scaring the pants off of the GOP establishment. People are paying attention. And the possibility of a historical landslide election equivalent to 1980, 1976 or even 1932 is exceptional. So is the wisdom still valid? Will there still be the same time after the summer conventions?

Obama, on campaign in PA, went bowling yesterday. Apparently he sucks at it, like most of us, but he took it in stride, focusing on the message and not the gutter balls. But I tell you, the AP photo just looks . . odd.

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