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So I guess the Official Republican Talking Points™ now include proclaiming that Barack Obama is a socialist who s more liberal than Bernie Sanders. It looks like those Bush/Cheney guys McCain hired are starting to earn their money. Download | Play Download | Play (h/t Heather) CNN.com BLITZER: But Bernie Sanders says he s a socialist. JEFFREY: Well, I think Barack Obama is a socialist, and let me defend that remark. First of all, I would say Barack Obama is the most left-wing candidate that s ever been nominated by a major party for president of the United States. But is he a socialist? This is a man who s campaigning with Hillary Clinton, arguing for who had a better nationalized health care program. A nationalized health care program, Wolf, is socialism. Another thing that Barack Obama BLITZER: Just because it s government sponsored doesn t mean it s socialist. [ ] Do you believe Medicare or Medicaid is socialist? JEFFREY: Well, yes. Actually, I would say that Medicare and Social Security are flat-out socialism. What. A. Clown. If support for universal health care is a litmus test for determining whether someone is a socialist, I got bad news for Terry: 66% of Americans are socialists: Why do they let these idiots on television? And I m not even talking about Jeffrey. Look at how Wolf ended the segment: All right, guys. We ve got to leave it right there, but a good, serious discussion. Thanks for coming in. Geez.

Sure sounds like it. The Kansas City Star s Dave Helling interviewed John McCain after a town hall meeting Thursday in Kansas City and had this little exchange about one of the Republican nominee s stump speech attacks. Download | Play Download | Play Helling: You talked about a little bit about Senator Obama today. You said he was the most extreme member of the Senate. McCain: Yea, that s his voting record. Helling: Extreme? You really think he s an extremist? I mean he s clearly liberal.. McCain: Well, that s his voting record. All I said was his voting record. And it s more to the left that the announced socialist in the United States Senate, Bernie Sanders of Vermont Helling: You really think he s a socialist, Barack Obama? McCain: Oh, I don t know. All I know is his voting record. This is hardly the first time the McCain campaign has tried to distort Obama s record and tag him as some sort of extremist. Joe Lieberman says it s a good question to ask whether Obama is a marxist, Glenn Beck rants about Michelle Obama having a socialist agenda, and Bill Kristol believes the bitter remarks revealed Obama s inner Karl Marx. Steve Benen has already debunked the right-wing claim that Obama is the most liberal member of the US Senate so I won t bother repeating it here, but a look at McCain s voting record during the Bush years reveals just what you would expect: Despite the CW that McCain is a party-bucking maverick, he s voted with Bush 91% of the time including 100% and 95% in 2008 and 2007, respectively. A debates over voting records is not one the McCain campaign should be eager to engage in. Also take note of McCain s blatant lying towards the end of the clip as he attempts to defend himself from flip-flopping charges. Unlike the majority of McCain s Media™, Helling actually confronts the candidate, and gets him on tape denying things that are demonstrably true. Take, for instance, the myth McCain now peddles that he only opposed the Bush tax cuts in 2001 because they weren t accompanied by restraint in spending. Well, if that was the case, why did he say this back then?: I cannot in good conscience support a tax cut in which so many of the benefits go to the most fortunate among us, at the expense of middle class Americans who most need tax relief. It s really a shame that the somewhat-respectable Republican McCain used to be has become possessed by the base-pandering, run-of-the-mill GOP ideologue he is today. Like Jon Stewart once said, McCain has gone to crazy base world. And it doesn t look like he s coming back.

Author: LizzWinstead Added: Fri, 20 Jun 2008 13:16:28 -0800 Duration: 237Emily Rackcheck brings us a check of the morning's news, including a historic Supreme Court decision and the latest from the campaign trail.

Author: LizzWinstead Added: Fri, 20 Jun 2008 13:16:28 -0800 Duration: 237Emily Rackcheck brings us a check of the morning's news, including a historic Supreme Court decision and the latest from the campaign trail.

iPod | Phone | 4:11 Last week Barack Obama launched a new web site Fight the Smears to be able to respond to false attacks and politically-motivated slurs. It reminds of FactCheck.org which is a non-partisan site run by the Annenberg Foundation. In the old days, someone could start a rumor or make a claim and it was very difficult to combat it. Once it made it onto the airways, where media and communication was in the hands of a very few, one bad story could make or break a person. Not anymore. Bloggers and journalists alike can put forth their own view of the "facts" and more than ever we can choose whom to believe and support. I like that. If you are interested in new media, please consider coming to the New Media Expo in August. Shane and I will be speaking there and it is the original annual event for professional podcasting. We have a new embed player for the Flash version on the site. Please give us your feedback on it. To embed this episode on your blog, click the movie and then choose the Share link in the lower bar. Hawaiian word: P wale: vulnerable Join us at The Reef for discussion, Reef Radio, and occasional live streaming. Support us by buying your own copy of our Beach Walks Theme music. Please check out our Blogroll page with many more links to our friends' web sites.

Last week Barack Obama launched a new web site Fight the Smears to be able to respond to false attacks and politically-motivated slurs. It reminds of FactCheck.org which is a non-partisan site run by the Annenberg Foundation. In the old days, someone could start a rumor or make a claim and it was very difficult to combat it. Once it made it onto the airways, where media and communication was in the hands of a very few, one bad story could make or break a person.Not anymore. Bloggers and journalists alike can put forth their own view of the "facts" and more than ever we can choose whom to believe and support. I like that.We have a new embed player for the Flash version on the site. Please give us your feedback on it. To embed this episode on your blog, click the movie and then choose the Share link in the lower bar.Hawaiian word: P wale: vulnerable

Last week we told you about Senator Obama s slightly intimidating confrontation with Joe Lieberman on the Senate floor. Well, now we have video of Barack Obama literally leading Lieberman aside by the hand, and Newsweek provides confirmation of exactly what the two talked about about. Download | Play Download | Play In a brief but animated Senate floor confrontation last week, according to a campaign aide who asked for anonymity when talking about private discussions, Obama told Lieberman he was surprised by Lieberman s personal attacks and his half-hearted denials of the false rumors that Obama is a Muslim. (The aide says Lieberman was strangely muted during the exchange; a Lieberman spokesman says the chat was private and friendly. ) McCain spokeswoman Jill Hazelbaker says Lieberman played a key role in reaching out to the Jewish community in the primary … and you can expect that will continue. Hopefully this little chat persuaded Lieberman to stop issuing those half-hearted denials. If HolyJoe wants to support McCain, that s his prerogative. But that surely doesn t give him license to help passively spread a wholly unfounded rumor.

During a speech in Jerusalem, President Bush jumped head first into the 2008 presidential campaign by taking a shot at Democratic presidential nominee, Barack Obama, by comparing his willingness to hold diplomatic talks with Iran to the appeasement of Nazis in the 1930 s. Download | Play Download | Play President Bush s foreign policy has been nothing short of a disaster and even MSNBC s Pat Buchanan can t help but call this what it is - an unprecedented smear of an American presidential candidate from outside the country. Buchanan and Harold Ford Jr. both agree that Bush has really stepped in it with these comments and the big question now, as it relates the presidential campaign, is how Senator John McCain reacts. McCain has already used the Hamas smear repeatedly against Senator Obama, but will he embrace these farcical statements of President Bush? Senator Obama immediately responds to the attacks: It is sad that President Bush would use a speech to the Knesset on the 60th anniversary of Israel s independence to launch a false political attack. It is time to turn the page on eight years of policies that have strengthened Iran and failed to secure America or our ally, Israel. Instead of tough talk and no action, we need to do what Kennedy, Nixon and Reagan did and use all the elements of American power, including tough, principled and direct diplomacy to pressure countries like Iran and Syria. According to Will Bunch, Bush just committed an act of political treason: And you, Mr. Bush, are the leader of us all. To use a diplomatic setting on foreign soil to score a cheap political point at home is way beneath your office, way beneath your country, and way beneath the people you serve. You have been handed an office once uplifted to great heights by fellow countrymen from Washington to Lincoln to Roosevelt to Eisenhower, and have plunged it so deeply into the Karl-Rove-and-Rush-Limbaugh-fueled world of political destruction and survival of all costs that have lost all perspective and all sense of decency. To travel to Israel and to associate a sitting American senator and your possible successor in the Oval Office with those who at one time gave comfort to an enemy of the United States is, in and of itself, an act of political treason. Read on UPDATE: (Nicole) You knew it had happen. Lieberman has come out with a statement (surprise, surprise!) backing President Bush: President Bush got it exactly right today when he warned about the threat of Iran and its terrorist proxies like Hamas and Hezbollah. It is imperative that we reject the flawed and naïve thinking that denies or dismisses the words of extremists and terrorists when they shout Death to America and Death to Israel, and that holds that if only we were to sit down and negotiate with these killers they would cease to threaten us. It is critical to our national security that our commander-in-chief is able to distinguish between America s friends and America s enemies, and not confuse the two. I bet Holy Joe doesn t want to be reminded that the Bush family knows all about Nazi appeasement.

I m sure by now you heard about the Mickey Kantor smear story from the movie War Room. You can read it through the link. The point of a smear is to get it out there in the ozone no matter if it s right or wrong. Anyway, I woke up to the story like most people and was given the video snippet that has since been pulled to check out by a good friend. My first thought was that since the War Room was released in 1993, why hadn t it been used against the Clintons by the right wing noise machine a long time ago? They would never have let something like this get by their antennas. Rep. Dan Burton from Indiana (who has his own problems) surely would have been all over this back in the day. Remember, this is a man who likes watermelons: Their leader is Watermelon Dan Burton, who of course got his nickname by inviting reporters to his back yard and shooting a watermelon to prove (how?) that Vince Foster did not commit suicide, a wacko theory he still believes, despite at least four investigative conclusions to the contrary. I called a friend who has seen the film many times and he refuted the claim outright so I was getting ready to go down to the video store and rent the movie to watch it for myself. I then found another clip on Youtube to watch and it s still not clear what he was really referring to. And then Ben Smith posted this: Pennebaker: Clip Doctored I just spoke to D.A. Pennebaker, the director of The War Room, who said his film had been doctored to produce a widely-viewed YouTube clip. Now the story has even been pulled off of Drudge and various other sites. My point is that I think there needs to be more responsibility taken by all parties right now on what s happening as the battle continues for the nomination including the blogosphere because this story is so reminiscent of a typical right wing smear tactic. And I m seeing more and more IP addresses on C I know we all have our picks for the presidency and emotions are running high with May 6th primary coming up, but maybe we could take a step back. I know I ve had to. Jack Tapper says he didn t post about the N word clip, but blames his own culpability on the fact that he is traveling and eating a chicken sandwich. Were I not currently eating a chicken sandwich at Liberty East Restaurant in Charlotte, NC, while working on a World News piece about the economy and the candidates, I would go to Blockbuster, rent a copy of The War Room and settle this matter as much as possible. As it is, all I can do is post this to explain why I took down the original blog entry, and re-post it with all the added context above. Not good enough, but the best I can do from Liberty East Restaurant. This is a reporter from ABC News with access to vast resources at his disposal and his reason for not being accurate is a chicken sandwich? And Buzz Bissinger thinks we re the ones full of sh^t? Media Matters: If Tapper had put down his chicken sandwich and rented The War Room, he d know that Mickey Kantor did not call Indiana voters shit [..] Media Matters for America did obtain a digital copy of The War Room and downloaded the relevant section. It is provided here and clearly indicates that Kantor is not saying, Those people are shit ; he is, in fact, saying, Those people are shitting, presumably referring to the Bush campaign s reaction to the poll numbers he was reading. It s sad that smart liberals fall for this again and again. Someone feeds bad information to Drudge and all the mainstream media run with it like he s a reliable source, without doing the basic vetting it needs and then the blogosphere piles on, always assuming the worst.

Download | Play Download | Play Contessa Brewer: On the campaign trail in Raleigh North Carolina yesterday Obama made an unfortunate gesture. [ ] Some think it looks like a flip off. There really is no excuse for anything posing as a news network to claim that the blogs are buzzing about this one and promote it so when any cursory search on the internets would have found numerous examples of just how specious a charge it was like the video shot from the side here. As John Cole put it: Notice something problematic? Like a few extra fingers? What a total joke. As Media Matters notes, this is a story that made the rounds on sites like RedState and FoxNews.com but had already been thoroughly debunked before Contessa gave new life to the ridiculous lie. Speaking of offensive fingers, did I just miss the time any of the major news networks gave any attention at all to the only presidential candidate I can ever recall that actually gave anyone the finger with the video rolling? The liberal media, indeed.

Hannity s laughing at you, George, for making him the only clear winner of last Wednesday s debate. Download | Play Download | Play Hannity: The liberal blogs are losing their minds today in part because I suggested the question to George Stephanopoulos Tues afternoon on my radio show. While we ve had plenty of criticism for MSNBC s and CNN s debate coverage this season, nothing they did came anywhere near to what ABC pulled last Wednesday and Stephanopoulos on-air dumpster diving for gotcha questions on Hannity s radio show will likely go down as one of the dumbest moves by a debate moderator ever. We ve come to expect smear jobs like this from the likes of Hannity, and the Dems have rightly refused to attend any debate on the GOP/Fox News Channel because of it, but now we have ABC News s Chief Washington Correspondent and former Democratic presidential political adviser openly seeking their advice and unapologetically emulating them. How is it that Stephanopoulos, of all people, thought this was a good move? Josh Marshall offers this depressingly valid observation: I was mulling over the ABC debate this morning and the moderators claim that knocking Obama with a more or less uninterrupted stream of Swift Boat gotchas was justified by focusing the debate on electability . And it occurred to me that we have now crossed an important threshold where the Republican operative cadre has sufficiently disciplined and trained the press (and more than a few Democrats) that their own role may simply be redundant. Thankfully, there are still more than a handful of journalists who aren t GOP pawns who together have penned a letter slamming ABC for its debate debacle.

Download | Play Download | Play (h/t BillW s speech yesterday the media has been dissecting every syllable and nuance. Reactions have been mixed and the right is now trying to portray Obama as the black candidate who just wants to blame whitey. That s why it comes as no surprise that right wing tool, Joe Scarborough, can t stop talking about Obama and Reverend Wright and has now picked up the Free Republic line on the speech how dare he say ANYTHING bad about his grandmother! I really wonder why anybody, why any man would throw his grandmother under the bus during a political speech, regardless of the point he was trying to make. Now that Tucker no longer has his own show, Joe has taken on the role of wingnut concern troll and on this morning s Morning Joe, he was in rare form. He kept saying over and over how Obama s speech was one of the greatest speeches on race ever, then can t shut up about how white folk in Ohio and Pennsylvania will never buy into it. It s true, some people weren t impressed with the speech, but Joe constantly yammers on about how Obama supporters are all latte-sipping yuppies from midtown Manhattan and Georgetown, which is patently false. Will Bunch asks if we re ready for Obama s post-racial politics v.2.0. Given Scarborough s remarks, I m not so sure. Pam Spaulding hopes so: People who know me well are quite aware that I m not one prone to great waves of emotion; I m Ms. Even Keel to most. The emotion was because there I sat, reading elements of wisdom about our desperate need for engagement on the topic of race that I have written about on this blog for years. At times I have almost pleaded with readers to feel safe to open up to discuss the difficult issues of difference putting up posts with a dearth of comments because few were willing to put themselves out there. Sometimes I feel like a tiny, insignificant voice attempting to bridge a Grand Canyon-sized divide. I can t imagine what it felt like for Barack Obama to write and deliver this speech, knowing the audience that would be receiving the message. Because of that, in Obama s speech I was reading the words of a man that gets it, regardless of the fact that he is a candidate for President of the United States of America that resonate with me on this issue. That he is this close to becoming president of this country and to risk it all by cracking open this door on a painful area of this country is something I thought I would never see. He is giving voice to a healthier view on race relations that needs to be embraced from a stage where it s hard to argue that it is not an issue worth tackling.

Nicole posted a clip yesterday showing FOXNews bringing on the wingnuts who are simply apoplectic over past inflammatory statements made by the former pastor of Barack Obama s church, Rev. Jeremiah Wright. It comes as no surprise to anyone that Chris Wallace continued the same line of attack this morning on Fox News Sunday. Download | Play Download | Play Wallace interviewed Senators Chris Dodd and Chuck Schumer about Rev. Wright s comments and he absolutely refused to let go of the notion that people should be scared of Obama because he attended Wright s church for 20 years, and hey, after all the time they MUST agree on everything, right? Dodd calls him out on his veiled assertions: Well, I would certainly disagree with this individual, we ve all been in situations like that, but the idea somehow that this is deeply involved and ingrained, that this is really who Barack Obama is, what you re suggesting, or those who are making these accusations, is this is really who Barack Obama is. Anyone who knows this man, whose worked with him, whose spent time with him would say this is totally unlike him, it s not him at all. And so the suggestion somehow that this is really who this candidate is is really an unfair accusation. Schumer agrees with Dodd that this is a distraction from the real issues that Americans are concerned about, and brings up John McCain s welcomed endorsement from anti-Catholic religious zealot, John Hagee, although he doesn t mention him by name. Regardless of the fact that Obama has rejected Wright s statements and he s no longer a member of his campaign, Wallace never relents from the FOXNews theme Americans should be frightened of Obama because he s really a closeted, anti-American, black militant. If you think about it, this was the only move for Fox. The whole Obama is a Muslim meme isn t working out so well and since they re being forced to report that he really is a Christian, they have no choice but to attack his church.

And you thought it would only be the walkie-talkie type Bill Cunningham s of the Republican Party to smear Obama s name and make lunatic observations about terrorists ruling the world based on it. Notice how comfortable he is with this rant. Is Iowa even embarrassed over his remarks? How many more times will McCain have to refute these childlike diatribes? Download | Play Download | Play Political Punch: Rep. Steve King, R-Iowa, speaking to a local Iowa radio station, said that terrorists would dance in the streets if Sen. Barack Obama, D-Illinois, is elected president precisely because of not only Obama s position on withdrawing US troops from Iraq, but because Obama s middle name is Hussein, his father s Muslim roots, and his appearance or optics, as King put it. I don t want to disparage anyone because of their, their race, their ethnicity, their name - whatever their religion their father, father might have been, King said just before doing just that. I ll just say this that when you think about the optics of a Barack Obama potentially getting elected President of the United States and I mean, what does this look like to the rest of the world? What does it look like to the world of Islam? And I will tell you that, if he is elected president, then the, the radical Islamists, the, the al-Qaida, and the radical Islamists and their supporters, will be dancing in the streets in greater numbers than they did on September 11…. It does matter, his middle name does matter. It matters because they read a meaning into that in the rest of the world, it has a special meaning to them. They will be dancing in the streets because of his middle name. They will be dancing in the streets because of who his father was and because of his posture that says: Pull out of the Middle East and pull out of this conflict. So there are implications that have to do with who he is and the position that he s taken. If he were strong on national defense and said I m going to go over there and we re going to fight and we re going to win, we ll come home with a victory, that s different. But that s not what he said. They will be dancing in the streets if he s elected president. That has a chilling aspect on how difficult it will be to ever win this Global War on Terror.

On Wednesday, Bill O Reilly continued defending his slanderous assault on Arianna Huffington, repeatedly comparing her to the KKK and Nazis after blaming her personally for a handful of cherry-picked comments from readers of her website, The Huffington Post. Download | Play Download | Play What makes O Reilly s phony outrage all the more ridiculous is the fact that his own site has been caught spewing even worse comments from his premium members than the few from HuffingtonPost that he s pretending to get all riled up about. Let s recap just a few of the comments about Hillary Clinton from billoreilly.com: If Hillary wins, I will be respectful of our leader. If you could read my thoughts, I would be on the SS [Secret Service] watch list. As a woman, i would open the door for her ..now, if there was nothing on the other side but empty space and a 50 foot drop into a moat filled leeches and (gulp) rats well, I can t be held responsible. If Hillary wins which I hope she won t. My guns are loaded for the revolt are yours? Pot, meet kettle Why Fox News, or any network, would continue to allow someone with such a long history of racist remarks even before his Sylvia s restaurant rant which gained so much attention, much less the same man who just two weeks ago threatened to go on a lynching party against Michelle Obama, to get away with baselessly and repeatedly calling anyone a racist genocidal murderer on air is shocking. As Media Matters notes, O Reilly frequently attacks those with whom he disagrees, comparing them to the Nazis or the Ku Klux Klan. Last year it was the DailyKos, now it s HuffingtonPost. I m really quite surprised he hasn t set his sights on C s because he knows we re well versed here in the three magic words guaranteed to keep BillO at bay: Malmedy, Mackris, and loofah (and for those of you taking notes, falafel will work just as well).

During the primary coverage on this morning s Morning Joe, host Joe Scarborough attacked Barack Obama on his stance on Iraq. The Scar says that Obama shouldn t be so high and mighty about speaking out against the invasion of Iraq in 2002 because it was easy for him to speak out against the war during a Democratic primary, and if he had been in the Senate at that time, Scarborough knows Obama would have voted for the authorization. Impressive psychic abilities from the guy who also knew Rove had nothing to do with outing Valerie Plame, despite it being in the court records. Download | Play Download | Play Brzezinski: So you re questioning his motives when you say that. Scarborough: I m not questioning his motives, Mika, you re not listening to me. I will tell you again, he spoke his heart, he said what he believed. He did not have the burden, the responsibility of voting on the most important vote in a very long time and I would bet you that if Barack Obama were in the Senate in 2002 he would have voted the way Joe Biden voted, Christopher Dodd voted, John Edwards voted, Hillary Clinton voted, the establishment of the Democratic Party voted. Speaking of pulling facts out of thin air, Joe also gives John McCain partial credit for winning the Cold War and says that this is a winning issue for McCain to beat Obama.

BillO obviously is feeling some heat over his vile words the other day when he compared Hitler and the KKK to some anonymous commenter s on the Huffington Post and attacking Arianna. In his perverted defense, he says that the use of propaganda by the Nazis to murder millions of Jews is an honest comparison to some idiots leaving comments on a blog. Download | Play Download | Play (h/t billw) O Reiily: from the late nineteen twenties to nineteen thirty three when Hitler became chancellor, the Nazis used vile propaganda to demonize Jews and others in the eyes of the German people. The used newspapers, radio, leaflets and rallies to build up enormous hatred towards your family. Today we re seeing the same thing on the net here in America, there is no difference. When Arianna Huffington allows people to say that Nancy Reagan should suffer terribly and then die, that is no different that what doctor Joseph Goebbels and others were putting out way back then. What an ignorant fool. Yea, a few commenter s on blogs are in some way equal to Hitler and his mass rallies that led millions of people to their demise and are as evil as the KKK and the Nazis in O Reilly s world. Right wing demagogues will say absolutely anything to justify their insane actions. Rarely if ever, BillO will take a look at right wing sites to see what they are up to as Steve Young points out. I know you won t because you never have. You ve always said that the Right s smears are minuscule as compared to the Left s. What, you ve never listened to talk radio? You ve never gone through the tons of right wing sites? You ve never watched your show? When you first ripped into DailyKos you admitted you had never even heard of FreeRepublic.com, one of the largest right wing blog sites on the Net. Some crack research staff read on I didn t see BillO repudiate Malkin when I broke the story about her printing the phone numbers of Santa Cruz students who were then inundated with hate calls and death threats. She was repudiated by some of her own over that one. The Santa Cruz students contacted me to help them out when the hate got too much. When I exposed Michelle s conduct where was Bill? Where was Bill when she attacked the Frost family? Where was Bill when the right winger Charles Johnson attacked Jill Carroll after she was released from being kidnapped in Iraq? Where was ahhh you get the point.

Download | Play Download | Play (h/t BillW) The outlook for the Republicans in 2008 is abysmal and it s obvious they re having a hard time concealing it. Bay Buchanan and Dee Dee Meyers appeared on The Situation Room Thursday to discuss the ongoing flap over the juvenile attacks on Senator Barack Obama by accentuating his middle name and how right wing radio hosts are losing their minds over John McCain s rejection of the tactic. Buchanan adamantly states that Obama s middle name should be fair game because it s a real concern for a lot of Americans and that they have the right to know if he has Muslim in his blood. WTF? This is pure xenophobic baiting at its finest (or worst) and both Meyers and Blitzer call her out on it. By the end of the segment Buchanan is reduced to a blithering idiot with Wolf and Meyers laughing and cracking jokes at her expense. This is so refreshing to see on CNN, especially after their inexcusable smear against Obama. We often give Blitzer a hard time at C&L, and rightfully so, but I have to give him credit, this was a shining moment for him.

Jamie covered Republican Rep. Jack Kingston s smearing of Senator Barack Obama for being unpatriotic because he refuses to wear a lapel flag pin all while not wearing one himself. Last night on Live with Dan Abrams, the host calls Kingston out for once again labeling Obama unpatriotic while he himself was NOT wearing a flag pin. Download | Play Download | Play (h/t Heather) Abrams: You re not wearing a lapel pin, are you? Kingston: I will wear one and I have worn one. I ll bring one to your next show. Abrams: But you see my point. I had no idea you were going to show up without a lapel pin, but it seems kind of absurd that you re saying that Barack Obama s patriotism should be questioned because he s not wearing a lapel pin and then you come on the show not wearing one. Kingston: Well Dan, I m not following that at all. Say, what? Kingston glosses right over Abram s challenge, saying it s OK to be a hypocrite on this issue simply because it s a good tactic to use as it gets a rise out of Democrats. He also defends the juvenile use of Obama s middle name, once again justifying the behavior because it pisses of the people on the left. Abrams did a great job of making Kingston look like the nut that he is and shows how ridiculous this whole line of smears really is. I think the GOP is going to find swiftboating a tad more difficult in 08 than in years past.

This isn t the first time BillO has attacked Arianna and obviously it won t be his last. You see, the conservative media is a bit unnerved right now and are acting like fools as is evident by this latest Factor smear. He s upset because some idiots left vile comments about Nancy Reagan which is unfortunate on the Huff Po, but happens on the internet, as all of us know. It s very difficult to get them all. Download | Play Download | Play (h/t billw) O Reilly: I have no respect for the woman. I think that she is hurting the country O Reilly: What s the difference between the KKK and Arianna Huffington? What s the difference? Ham: I think there is a difference,. O Reilly: I don t see any difference between Huffington and the Nazis. It s her, It s her, It s her I didn t say she s a Nazi. Ham: Alright. O Reilly: There s no difference between what the two do. Say, what? OMG. What the heck is he talking about? Yea, Bill, if Arianna actually had a hand in genocide, you poor ignorant fool you might try to say they took similar actions, but let s look at you. O Reilly says Americans should start holding people accountable for what they say, so I think Billo should be fired for saying this about Michelle Obama: O’Reilly: “I don’t want to go on a lynching party against Michelle Obama unless there’s evidence, hard facts, that say this is how the woman really feels And he still has a job? He has the audacity to compare Arianna to the KKK and then want to lynch Michelle Obama if he feels she wasn t jingoistic enough. Jesse Jackson brought up BillO s rant on MSNBC after Tuesday s debate and said that this type of rhetoric can lead to violent episodes in our country. I spoke with Arianna about it last night and she feels he really crossed the line. He s been crossing the line for years now, but nobody ever called him on it before the blogs showed up. Hey Bill, we re not going anywhere. I wonder if he ll go to Sylvia s and discuss lynching Michelle Obama with FOX s Juan Williams. At least Mary Katharine Ham pulls back from this one. You may not agree with all of Arianna s politics, but where she s full of grace and elegance O Reilly is an angry, pathetic, right wing media parasite. Print that, Howard Kurtz. We did an excellent job helping Jane with the letter writing campaign about the AP in conjunction with FDL. It works. (Hint, hint.) He will continually go after the left in this sick, sick fashion. UPDATE: (Nicole) I don t think Billo knows who he s dealing with: Arianna s courage comes from a mother who stood up when others would have run, a single Greek woman who faced down real Nazis, real soldiers with real guns, real Nazis who killed millions of innocent people and came close to destroying our world, not blowhards with a falafel. Fire away Billy, I promise you that Arianna can take all you can dish out, and a hell of a lot more.

Another chapter of: Here it comes Sean Hannity and Rick Santorum attacked Barack Obama s faith and church last night on H t forget) that he defended Mitt Romney s faith and was vehemently opposed to a litmus test being applied to the former LDS Governor. Expect more of this scurrilous behavior from the wingnut base of the GOP. Harold Ford correctly reminded Spawn of this fact. Download | Play Download | Play Ford : even when Mitt Romney, I believe you were supporting for president for a period of time, I mean there were questions about his religion which I thought were completely out of bounds. Hannity: But this is different, this is a little bit different. Ford: The Mormons said I couldn t go to Heaven for a period of time and I believe it s been renounced now. Sure Sean, he s not a Republican so it s A-OK to attack his religion since you re a Christian of some sort which means that I don t know what it means. Is it fair game to dig deep into the beliefs of (CPAC s new hero) Romney s faith? To Spawn Hannity it wasn t. HANNITY: You know, Governor, I ve had many, many friends that are members of LDS, Latter-Day Saints, Mormons, and I know you probably are frustrated, because I know every interview I ve seen you in, this issue keeps coming up. It does not come up for any other candidate. And it s really troublesome to me, because it seems like they are creating for you a religious litmus test. And I will tell you, fundamentally, I view this as unfair. Your thoughts? Bob Cesca says: What he appears to be saying is that we need to take religion off the table in the context of the politics and especially the presidential campaign, and to disregard the religious preferences of the candidates. It s fundamentally unfair, and Mr. Hannity is exactly right. Of course, I would add that it s unconstitutional to mix religion and politics all around, but you know baby steps onto the elevator...read on

Download | Play Download | Play C s shameless smears of Senator Barack Obama s patriotism and Monday on Countdown, Keith Olbermann talks with Air America Radio s Rachel Maddow about how quickly the MSM has picked up on the dirtiest stuff of the far reaches of right wing media and shamelessly ran with it, treating it as legitimate news. Maddow gets it right, just because someone makes a nasty claim about a candidate doesn t make it newsworthy, but apparently the media doesn t get that. We ll continue to call them out on it all the way through November. On a related note, check out this image search of John McCain how many lapel flag pins do you see? (h/t Jamie) TRex has a perfect example of one GOP Senator who never leaves home without his pin

Download | Play Download | Play OK, this is beyond the pale, but just the beginning of the smears that will befall Sen. Obama as the campaign continues. Sullivan stated the caller wasn t calling Barack Obama Hitler. He was just talking about how Hitler got the crowd all excited, and Barack Obama got the crowd all excited. Sullivan then stated that he would do a side-by-side comparison of a Hitler speech and an Obama speech. Sullivan then introduced the comparison by stating: So, ladies and gentlemen, from the past, a little archive, a little walk down Der Fuehrer s memory lane. Here he is, the one, the only, Adolf Hitler! Are you creeped out yet? The idiot known as Sullivan tries to justify this walk on the dark side and compares Obama to Hitler because one of his caller s brought it up and Hitler got people fired up too. OK, sure. Good for the caller (who identifies as a Republican) who isn t standing for this garbage. And to think Hugh Hewitt believes right wing talk radio is sensible. All right, we won t play Hitler any more, then. But Sullivan then pleaded: One time oh, come on, one more time? Can I, please, one more time? Just one more time? Then I won t do it again. He then added: Until the next time. Get your seat belts on because the next time will be right around the corner.

SUZANNE MALVEAUX, CNN: I'd like to follow-up with Senator Obama. It was just a few days ago that Senator Clinton asserted that she was the strongest candidate when it comes to fiscal responsibility. She says that the new programs that she proposes she essentially can pay for. She says that you have failed in that regard in the tune of some $50 billion worth of new programs that you cannot account for. How do you respond to that charge? OBAMA: What she said wasn't true. We account for every single dollar that we propose. Now, this, I think, is one of the things that's happened during the course of this campaign, that there's a set of assertions made by Senator Clinton, as well as her husband, that are not factually accurate. And I think that part of what the people are looking for right now is somebody who's going to solve problems and not resort to the same typical politics that we've seen in Washington. (APPLAUSE) That is something that I hear all across the country. So when Senator Clinton says -- or President Clinton says that I wasn't opposed to the war from the start or says it's a fairytale that I opposed the war, that is simply not true. When Senator Clinton or President Clinton asserts that I said that the Republicans had had better economic policies since 1980, that is not the case. Now, the viewers aren't concerned with this kind of back-and- forth. What they're concerned about is who's actually going to help the get health care, how are they going to get their kids... Keywords: SC, South Carolina, Democratic Debate, Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, Democrats, campaign, lies, attacks, smears, negative, politics, Washington (APPLAUSE) ... going to college, and that's the kind of campaign I've tried to run. I think that's the kind of campaign we should all try to run. (APPLAUSE)

the smears take an unfortunate trip through an aging train wreck where they are one by one hunted and imprisoned by a crazy old train conductor.

Download (2518) | Play (2783) Download (1361) | Play (1170) You know you re doing something right when FOXNews attacks you and apparently, Keith Olbermann s recent ratings boom has them scared to death. Keith makes a point of raking FOXNews and their talking heads over the coals for their lies, propaganda and shoddy journalism, and now they re going after him personally.The nutty gang on Fox s Journal in which the interviewer quotes an unnamed MSNBC executive as saying that due to his ratings boom, Keith Olbermann is now running the network. It s safe to assume it was a figure of speech, but the Fox morning crew, in an attempt to create a faux scandal, twisted the story around to give the impression that Keith actually runs the news departments for both NBC and MSNBC and that Countdown is an partisan, opinion show, not a news show therefore, it s unethical for him to run a news department. Why, you ask, is this so? Because FOX has people like Sean Hannity on their network who also does an opinion show, but he s never been a part of their real news programs. I hate to break it to them, but it doesn t matter who s mouth it comes out of, nobody considers anything aired on FOXNews to be real news.

(graphic via The Washington Note) Bill O Reilly rules the world! The king of the sandbag technique tries to hassle Obama. Bombastic Fox News host Bill O Reilly got into a confrontation with an Obama aide after O Reilly started screaming at him as he tried to get Barack Obama s attention following a rally here. The incident was triggered when O Reilly with a Fox News crew shooting was screaming at Obama National Trip Director Marvin Nicholson Move so he could get Obama s attention, according to several eyewitnesses. O Reilly was yelling at him, yelling at his face, a photographer shooting the scene said. O Reilly grabbed Nicholson s arm, said move and shoved him, another eyewitness said. Nicholson, who is 6 8 said O Reilly called him low class. Secret Service agents came after O Reilly pushed Nicholson and the agents flanked O Reilly read on O Reilly blows his stack and acts like a jackass which is typical for him to do on his show. He s just lucky he wasn t a left winger at a Republican event or he would have probably been arrested and locked up for the rest of the weekend. Hope08 has a diary up at Kos. I was watching CPAN live event in Nashua and after the rally when Obama was shaking hands I noticed he got into a conversation with this man who seemed to be insisting on something. Jane Hamsher says: Jonah Goldberg predicted it. Glen Reynolds nodded in sage assent. The campaign of Barack Obama will inevitably lead to violence on the campaign trail. I seriously think certain segments of American political life will become completely unhinged, said Goldberg. We scoffed. And yet it has come to pass. Obama has pretty much shut out FOX news ever since they started to smear him with this phony Madrassa story that CNN did a little reporting on and debunked it. Download (5439) | Play (3506) Download (2466) | Play (2038) Conservative Insight magazine runs an unverified story that the minions at FOX News then cite to smear politicians they don t like.

Download (2559) | Play (3508) Download (2223) | Play (1590) h/t Jamie On Wednesday s Tucker, the hopefully soon to be unemployed host gets riled up because Democratic presidential candidate, John Edwards, had the nerve to mention homeless veterans and those less fortunate in his holiday ad. Tucker calls it the Scrooge ad, and then attacks Edwards for not being Jesusy enough, and mocks him for being wealthy. Tucker, as usual, is offensive, annoying and wrong. As a favor to those of you who can t stomach Tucker, I have posted Edwards holiday ad below. Enjoy

Forbes on FOX had a deplorable moment on Hillary and the money she raised. I m not supporting one candidate over another, but when these guys start throwing out the Goebbels analogies I need to address it. Not only that, but he also lies himself when he says Hillary is lying about the Drug companies. Are you dizzy yet? Play (1095) Play (560) MICHAEL OZANIAN (SENIOR EDITOR): hey look, Goebbels who was chief of propaganda for Hitler said if you repeat a lie often enough it becomes the truth. that s Hillary s premise for a campaign. The more money she has, the more it will allow her to get out her lies and keep repeating them and people will begin to think that guess what? Hillary can run the drug industry, she can run the energy industry, she can run the military from Washington. I see money as only being able to help her obtain office. Read this piece called: The Truth about the Drug Companies, and you will understand that she s right about them OZANIAN: everybody has people giving them money and everybody is trying to get as much money as possible which is why I m saying getting more money will help Hillary. it will help her get her message out. but look, her message is one big lie and if she continues to do is repeat the lie over and over and over again, and pretty soon people will start to think, you know what, being like Venezuela is a good thing . KNEALE: mike, earth to oz, your haircut is looking fantastic, you have more credibility. but i want to hear from you. tell me two lies that Hillary is now OZANIAN: she said that the drug industry doesn t reinvest enough money to produce new drugs. KNEALE: that s not a lie. OZANIAN: come on, the leading drug company ASMAN: number two, quickly. OZANIAN: she said that the energy industry has windfall profits that its cheating everybody when an investigation looked into that and found it wasn t true. KNEALE: please.