Jingoism 101, by Michele Bachmann

On Friday, Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN-06) appeared on Chris Matthews' show Hardball to talk about the presidential election, specifically about how Sarah Palin's Website talks about all of the wonderful "pro-American places" in the US. When Matthews failed to get her to name some of those places, he took another approach, and the following dialogue ensued:

Matthews: How many Congresspeople, members of Congress are in that anti-American crowd you describe?

Bachmann: [Deer in the headlights]

Matthews: How many Congresspeople you serve with - I mean, there's 435 members of Congress...

Bachmann: ...Well, right now...

Matthews: ...how many are anti-American in that Congress right now that you serve with?

Bachmann: You'd have to ask them, Chris, I'm focusing on Barack Obama and the people he's been associated with...

Matthews: But do you suspect that a lot of the people you serve with...

Bachmann: ...and I'm very worried about their anti-American nature.

Matthews: Well, he's the United States Senator from Illinois, he's one of the people you suspect as being anti-American. How many people in the Congress of the United States do you think are anti-American? You've already suspected Barack Obama. Is he alone, or are there others?

Bachmann: [Deer in the headlights]

Matthews: How many do you suspect of your colleagues do you suspect of being anti-American?

Bachmann: I would say, what I would say is that the news media should do a penetrating expose and take a look - I wish they would. I wish the American media would take a great look at the views of the people in Congress and find out, are they pro-America or anti-America? I think the people would love to see an exposé like that.

After Bachmann's ridiculous nationalistic rant, The Nation's Katrina vanden Heuvel hit the nail right on the head:

Chris, I fear for my country. I think what we just heard is a congresswoman channeling [Sen.] Joe McCarthy, channeling a politics of fear and loathing and demonization and division and distraction. Not a single issue mentioned. This is a politics at a moment of extreme economic pain in this country that is incendiary, that is so debased, that I'm almost having a hard time breathing, because I think it's very scary. Because this is a country I love, and this woman had no sense of the history of this nation, which is one of struggle, of trying to fulfill the great ideals of this nation, of movements that have brought about the civilizing advances of this country, and she doesn't even know who Saul Alinsky is - a community organizer who channeled the views of the people from below.

I think Barack Obama is going to win, and he's going to have a lot of work because there is an extremism unleashed in this nation which you just heard on this program, which could lead to violence, and hatred, and toxicity. And against the backdrop of the Great Depression we're living through, it could lead - and I don't use this word lightly - to a kind of American fascism, which is against the great values of this nation, and which people like that are fomenting.

It doesn't get much better than that - vanden Heuvel couldn't possibly have been more spot on, and by the way, it's just one more reason (did you need another?) why all progressives and liberals should be subscribing to and reading The Nation Magazine (vanden Heuvel is a part owner).

However, there's more you can do. A Website has already been established to censure Bachmann in Congress, and you can also leave some kind words on her Facebook page. She's also in a very competitive race for reelection, so any contribution can make a difference. The only way we're going to stop this hateful, absurd language is to get these hatemongers out of Congress.

Update: I've read reports that ActBlue has raised over $100,000 for her opponent, Elwyn Tinklenberg following Bachmann's nauseating appearance on Hardball on Friday. Sweet - let's keep it going. Even if you give $5, your contribution can make a difference and send Bachmann back to Minnesota in disgrace, right where she belongs.

Update, Part II: I just visited her Facebook page, and it appears that you have to become a "fan" or supporter of hers on Facebook to leave a post on your Wall. I'll pass. I found something pretty interesting on her page, though - her contact e-mail is listed as "repmichelebachmann@gmail.com" - pretty interesting that a Representative in the U.S. Congress has a gmail e-mail address listed in her Facebook page. Just wondering if that has anything to do with subpoena power regarding government e-mail addresses. Anyway, you can certainly drop her a line at her e-mail address, at least. Please, keep it courteous and respectful, but let her know in no uncertain terms that her language, behavior and demeanor and completely reprehensible and unacceptable.

Major hat tip to Crooks & Liars for the video and transcripts. (Just another reason why I've been consistently saying for years now why C&L is the best liberal blog on the Web.)

Pat Buchanan is a laughingstock

As if there was any doubt about Pat Buchanan's credibility, his behavior since right after the vice presidential debate has left little doubt.

I remember laughing out loud right after the debate when Buchanan appeared with Rachel Maddow on MSNBC, when Buchanan said with a straight face, "Of all the four candidates, Biden, Obama, McCain and Palin, Palin is the most attractive of the candidates." Words fail me on that point.

Anyway, his absurdity reached new heights when he played stand-up comedian last night on Hardball as he cited non-scientific polls from The Drudge Report and AOL as "evidence" that Palin won. Bob Shrum also joined in the fun.

Buchanan: "Well, I mean Drudge found it 70-30, AOL found it 500,000 split.”"

Matthews: But those aren't polls. Those are people emailing in on conservative blog sites. We can do those! [Laughter]

Shrum: "For Pat to be citing, like, the AOL poll or the Drudge poll which is set up, shows us how much he wants to do cartwheels because she didn't commit a pratfall on stage."

Pat Buchanan must really hold viewers in contempt for suggesting that people would be stupid enough to believe a poll put together by GOP hack Matt Drudge.

h/t Crooks & Liars

O'Reilly attacks the Daily Kos... again

Here's another piece of entertaining footage - Bill O'Lielly again going after Markos Moulitsas, the founder of The Daily Kos, an excellent liberal blog that's doing a great deal of important work.

The bottom line here is that O'Reilly can't handle criticism, and when prominent liberal blogs go after him for his lies and distortions, he gets his dander up, labeling them "hate sites." Of course, BOR can never get through a criticism of anything or anyone liberal without a Nazi or KKK reference - in this case likening Moulitsas to David Duke - which is pretty hilarious.

I got a good laugh out of O'Reilly and Mary Katherine Ham coddling each other about how disgusting the pictures are of Iraqi War casualties. Yes, they are disgusting, but it's violence that this administration has caused, period. So, I get a kick out of conservatives expressing horror and disgust whenever a liberal Website has the temerity to publish unpleasant images of the War in Iraq. Too damn bad - this is violence that your president has caused.

And Ham and O'Reilly, as usual, can't get through a criticism about a liberal blog without mentioning the comments section in any Website, either, be it the Daily Kos or The Huffington Post. Too bad O'Reilly allows many hate filled comments on his site, too, as detailed by some great work on the part of Crooks & Liars.

Bill W over at C&L probably makes the best point of all:

Somehow Newsweek shouldn't have hired Kos because of what other people say in the comments or post in their user blogs, but of course [O'Reilly's] okay with [Fox News] hiring Rove who has been involved in scandal after scandal. Who's more like David Duke? Kos, or the guy behind the robocalls [who] said McCain had an illegitimate black child? I'm just sayin'.

Sweet. I couldn't have said it better myself. More on Rove's role at Fox, as well as his status as a McCain consultant, in a bit.

CN8 Host fired for criticizing Bill O'Rielly

I got this from Crooks & Liars the other day, so I'm getting most of my information about this story from that site, which, by the way (as I frequently mention) is arguably the best liberal blog and information site on the Internet (along with HuffPo & Think Progress). The people over at C&L do tremendous work, and liberals owe that site a debt of gratitude for the hard work they put in by bringing us spot-on commentary and raising and highlighting issues that otherwise wouldn't get the attention they should. I get lots and lots of my video clips from that site, too. I don't always remember to post h/t's (hat tips) to C&L for providing video clips, but I try to remember. Anyway, if you haven't visited that site, 1. Where have you been? It's the best, and 2. Please spread the word and support C&L, a site that I hope CMB is 1/8th as good as, some day. Anyway, moving on...

This is the most stark example I've seen in quite some time as to why our corporate media needs to be broken up - now. More on that point in a minute.

Barry Nolan of CN8 in Boston, Comcast's news channel, has been fired for daring to criticize the fact that Bill O'Reilly, of all people, was being honored at the Emmy Awards.

I am appalled, just appalled," [that O'Reilly was being honored] Nolan told the Track. "He inflates and constantly mangles the truth... and his frequent target is the 'left-leaning' media - the ones who do report the news fairly. And those are the same people who will be sitting in the room honoring him."... More Here.

It's pretty refreshing to see someone have the balls to put his job on the line for daring to oppose this blowhard:

"Their take is that I was insubordinate," Nolan told us yesterday. "They wanted me to sit down and shut up." The host of "Backstage With Barry Nolan" had argued that O'Reilly, the volatile Fox News host and former Channel 7 anchor, was unworthy of the Governor's Award. (Past recipients include the likes of Mike Wallace, Ken Burns, and Natalie Jacobson.) "The idea of honoring someone who does their job with constant factual errors, name-calling, and mangling of the truth... It's ridiculous," said Nolan...

We're told Nolan was warned by his bosses at CN8 to pipe down, but at the May 10 dinner honoring O'Reilly he handed out a six-page document listing some of O'Reilly's wackier errors, utterances, and information about the talk-show host's sexual harassment settlement. Seems Comcast was concerned that Nolan's actions could harm the network's relationships with the academy and Fox. He was immediately suspended without pay for two weeks and then fired over the phone Tuesday.

One particular instance that I find incredibly nauseating is how O'Reilly goes after crime victims (or victims' surviving family members, like when he attacked the son of a man killed in the World Trade Center on his show, an then threatened him with violence). John Amato over at C&L has thoroughly documented and written about how O'Reilly went after Shawn Hornbeck, an 11-year old who was held captive for over four years by Michael J. Devlin in Kirkland, Missouri. Devlin is currently serving 74 life sentences, and if there's any justice in this world, a prisoner where he is incarcerated will test out a new shiv on him. (Posted above is video O'Lielly discussing attacking Hornbeck during a discussion with Greta Van Susteren, the princess of plastic.) Take a look at the video - it's just plain sickening and revolting. By the way, O'Lielly's attack on Hornbeck got him uninvited to a speaking engagement to the National Center for Missing Kids. (Due in part to the efforts of Amato over at C&L; predictably, no comment from BOR.)

This is just one example of the kind of sewage and filth that O'Reilly continually spews forth to his listeners. The truly frightening thing is that people listen and believe a great deal of it.

As Amato succinctly put it over at C&L the other day (and I whole-heartedly agree) - it's worth considering whether Rupert Murdoch is now going after anyone who criticizes O'Reilly, his networks or their executives? After all, he's not above going after NBC over Keith Olbermann's criticisms of Roger Ailes, the head of Fox Noise Channel.

As Howard Kurtz of WaPo has reported, last summer Ailes threatened to go after NBC if Olbermann didn't cease going after him and Fox, using BOR and The New York Post.

This is exactly why our corporate media conglomerates must be broken up. I find it outrageous that any CEO of a corporate media entity would see fit to going after a critic by using TV stations, commentators and newspapers as cudgels. But, that's exactly what Murdoch has been doing for years. Phew! Thank GOD his corporation was permitted to buy The Wall St. Journal!

I'm very thankful (and hopeful) that if Barack Obama gets elected, he will reverse this troubling trend in our press. He recently stated that if elected, he feels it's time the U.S. government start enforcing the Sherman Antitrust Act, a law that is still in the books (if you can believe that) that would break up these multi-media giants. I don't care if we're talking about liberal or conservative media conglomerates - they all are a threat to destroying our free press. (I do wonder and worry that Obama may have incurred the wrath of these multi-media giants by saying he would like to bust them up, before he wins the election. God only knows what lengths these companies will go to in order to get McCain elected now. We've always known that our corporate media is on McCain's side - Obama's recent comments did nothing to ameliorate this worrisome concern.)

In the meantime, O'Reilly goes on as one of the loudest mouthpieces for Murdoch's News Corporation, the parent of Fox News, carrying out his marching orders from the abominable Murdoch.

Shouldn't we call it "O'Reilly's Law"?

Every once in a while, I run across something on another liberal blog that I just simply want to share, and occasionally I can think of nothing to add. (Often, I find stuff on my two favorite blogs, Crooks & Liars and Think Progress.) This is one of those times.

Take a minute and watch the video above - it's a pretty good montage of O'Lielly's Nazi fetish, or put another way, Goodwin's Law. Seems like it's all he can think to call liberals and progressives who disagree with him.

How original.

C&L said it best, too, when the video was posted over there earlier this week:

"This video ought to be placed in a museum somewhere so we can marvel at it 20 years from now. And this is what should be inscribed on the plaque beside it: Bill O'Reilly, a.k.a The 21st Century [sic] Father Coughlin."

That's about as apt description of O'Lielly I've heard in quite some time.

Laura Ingraham has ego to burn

This is a pretty telling piece of audio, courtesy of Jesus' General, of conservative talk show host Laura Ingraham getting all out of sorts because a guest had the temerity to have never heard her show. Listen to the audio, and you be the judge. Ingraham has a point that a guest should prepare to be on a show, but seriously, get over it.

My favorite part is after the interview is over, during a commercial break, as Ingraham is still raging to her sycophants in the studio:

"...First all, don't piss off [Emphasis Hers] one of the biggest talk show hosts in the United States!"

Ingraham's over-inflated opinion of herself is downright nauseating. She seriously needs to get over yourself. Keep in mind that this is the same Laura Ingraham who spends lots of time talking, writing and bitching about "Hollywood liberals" and their self-important lifestyles and opinions. Practice what you preach, Laura.

A quick aside - I love how in the YouTube clip above, she slowly changes color. Well done, Jesus' General - I love it. It would have been better if she grew horns and fangs as the clip progressed, though. Maybe next time - one thing we know for sure - with Ingraham, there will be more opportunities.

I'd actually love to hear the inside scoop about how this audio hit the Internet in the first place. I have no proof of this, of course, but it's probably from a closet liberal who works on her show who is sick of her rantings and ego. Here's hoping this audio bugs the living daylights out of her.

For those of you unfamiliar with Ingraham and her anti-democracy views, I take great joy in reminding people how she encouraged her listeners to flood the Democratic National Committee's phone lines on election day in 2006, which were set up to field complaints about voting irregularities, suppression tactics, polling place problems, etc. One used to be able to read about this unseemly incident on her Wikipedia entry, but of course that's been scrubbed clean, no doubt by either her or the sheeple who listen to her. That's okay though - you can read and hear about her '06 election day antics Here (for the audio) and Here.

I hear complaints from conservatives I know all the time about liberal talk show and TV hosts, and also the so-called liberal "bias" in the mainstream media. Funny though - I never hear liberals advocating jamming the RNC phone lines, or anything of the like, on election day. Democrats try to win elections, not throw them. For a party that supposedly wants to bring Democracy to any country with lots of oil the world, it certainly has a way of suppressing true democracy at home. But, I digress.

Thanks for keeping it real, Laura, and showing the world on a consistent basis how you feel about yourself, and democracy.

h/t Crooks & Liars and Think Progress, in my view, two of the very best liberal blogs on the Internet. If you're not reading them every day, you should be.

Lou Hannity loses his cool over immigration

Lou Dobbs, a guy I used to respect a great deal, seems to be a little past his prime these days.

On a recent show, he was discussing the immigration problem with several guests, including Air America's Laura Flanders. When she has the temerity to bring up the use of the term "illegal aliens," Dobbs blows his stack.

I think Flanders makes a pretty important point here. Not all of the people at these protests are "illegal aliens," and it's patently unfair to paint them that way.

From the transcript:

DOBBS: Well, I appreciate it. Thank you, Joe. Laura Flanders, let's talk about Mitt Romney at ...

LAURA FLANDERS, AIR AMERICA: I wanted to come back for a minute to the L.A. story, the last two stories. I think if Dr. King were alive today, he would be talking about what happened on L.A. on May 1st. When you talk about abuse, 240 rounds of rubber bullets and tear gas.

We've gone from legal punishment of illegal aliens to physical punishment, and it's not helped by language like yours, Lou, talking about these [marchers] as being illegal aliens...

DOBBS: Laura, Laura, Laura, that's ridiculous.

FLANDERS: They're not aliens, they're people. And the vast majority of people at these marches are utterly legal. They're not aliens, Lou. They're people, and you're dehumanizing them with that language.

DOBBS: And you're absurd to suggest such a thing.

FLANDERS: I don't think so.

DOBBS: You're being absolutely absurd.

Dave Neiwart has written an excellent and thought-provoking piece on the Dobbs dust-up.

I immediately thought of Sean Hannity when watching this clip - Dobbs behaves just like him (or BOR) by shouting over Flanders. It seems that CNN is leaning further and further right, by the hour. Dobbs' faux Fox grandstanding, as well as the ridiculous and absurd Glenn Beck are merely the latest examples. As the saying goes, if you can't beat 'em, join 'em.

Hat tip to C&L for the story

Billy - serial slime and smear machine

This is one of the best things I've seen on the Internet in quite some time. BOR is yet to learn the one cardinal rule about an entity or group of people who continuously try to needle you - IGNORE THEM. The more O'Lielly melts down on the air about it, the more groups are only going to keep putting coins in the machine to watch you dance, Billy.

Anyway, this is BOR's response to a study by a group of Indiana University researchers who discovered that BOR likes name calling. (We need a study for that?) But, they concluded that he does it even more than probably most liberals thought possible.

The researchers found that BOR calls a person or a group a derogatory name once every 6.8 seconds, on average, or nearly nine times every minute during his nightly screeds that begin his show, "The O'Reilly Factor."

"It's obvious he's very big into calling people names, and he's very big into glittering generalities," said Mike Conway, assistant professor in the IU School of Journalism. "He's not very subtle. He's going to call people names, or he's going to paint something in a positive way, often without any real evidence to support that viewpoint."

Sweet. But, there's more...

Using analysis techniques first developed in the 1930s by the Institute for Propaganda Analysis, the researchers, Conway, Grabe and Grieves, found that BOR employs six of the seven propaganda devices nearly 13 times each minute in his editorials. (This includes his editorials on his hilarious Website, and in his newspaper columns.)

BOR's response to all of this - it's all Media Matters and George Soros. The people over at Media Matters must really take glee that they are getting so much free publicity. And Soros is simply doing what many other millionaires on both sides of the aisle have been doing for decades in this country - trying to influence political opinion. I'm not saying it's right, but until we finally get the real, concrete campaign finance reform this country so sorely needs, the political left has just as much of a right to do it as the political right does. I don't even have enough time (nor the willingness right now) to type all of the people who paid to smear President Clinton in the 1990s, and who have contributed millions to President Bush this decade. (Richard Mellon Scaife or Ken Lay, anyone?)

For those of you who have never visited the Media Matters Website, I have two thoughts: 1) What are you waiting for, and 2) the site is not overly political, other than to point out the wild inconsistencies in what the Republican right prints and broadcasts. I'm quite certain that Billy is just angry that there is an organization dedicated to pointing out his infinite lying and distortions. I guess if an organization were affecting my livelihood and ability to distort my propaganda that my network pays me to put out, I'd be upset, too.

Seriously though - Media Matters is a must click for any political aficionado who wants a daily dose of the facts behind the right's spin.

Here's the glaring stat that I found scariest of all: According to the 2005 Annenberg Public Policy Center survey, 40 percent of respondents consider BOR to be a journalist.

A real journalist!

Bill O'Reilly - giving hope to hacks everywhere.

Hat tip to C&L on this story.

A Bush veto advertisement

This ad will start running in Washington, D.C. this weekend in response to President Bush's certain veto of the war funding bill that just passed both houses of Congress. When Bush vetoes this bill, it will prove once and for all that we have a president who will let Americans and Iraqis die to try to prove a political point. It's tragic that we have so few political leaders in our nation who will admit to a mistake.


Video from Americans United for Change via C&L

Another beautiful Fox News screenshot

I'll never tire of pointing out the hypocrisy and idiocy of Fersatz News. One never has to look very far, either. The only problem is deciding which pieces of disinformation to comment on. But, here at Count Me Blue, I'm the decider, and I'll decide what Fox News pieces are most worthy of scorn. And this one is right up there with the best of them.

Obama's original quote was "I think that nobody wants to play chicken with our troops on the ground."

As C&L rightfully points out, even including the word "nobody" would have been better than this blatant, intentional distortion of Obama's quote. Considering the network's track record, it's undeserving of the benefit of the doubt.

But, then again, Obama attended a madrassa in Indonesia, HIS MIDDLE NAME IS HUSSEIN, and he smokes!, so he must not be fit for the White House.

A blatant distortion?

I retort, you decide.

The dog ate White House's e-mails

Senate Judiciary Chairman Patrick Leahy has reason to be angry.

The Bush Administration is expecting us to believe that it's simply "lost" e-mails the Senate Judiciary Committee is demanding to see? No one puts that one better than Leahy himself: it really is the 21st century's version of "the dog ate my homework," and this smacks of the Nixon Administration's attempts to willfully lie and deceive Congress. It didn't work in 1973-1974, and it won't work now.

Leahy rightly points out that e-mails go through too many servers - if one looks hard enough, they can be found. The bad news for the Bush Administration is that the Judiciary Committee is looking.

The Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) reports that the Bush Administration "has lost over FIVE MILLION e-mails in a two year period... generated between March 2003 and October 2005." You can read the whole report CREW Report Here.

It should be crystal clear to anyone even passively following what is happening up on Capitol Hill that this administration is willfully breaking the law.

The case is slowly being made, step by step.

Hat tip to C&L about this story.

Michelle Malkin is wack

Every once in a while, I run across something so good, I just have to copy/paste it to my blog and bring it to you with simply a few comments, and this is one of them.

Michelle Malkin is one of the premiere right-wing fear and hate mongers in America today, but this piece from her Website is one of her "best" pieces of work yet. Take a read...

Dear Muslim Terrorist Plotter/Planner/Funder/Enabler/Apologist,
You do not know me. But I am on the lookout for you. You are my enemy. And I am yours.

I am John Doe.

I am traveling on your plane. I am riding on your train. I am at your bus stop. I am on your street. I am in your subway car. I am on your lift.

I am your neighbor. I am your customer. I am your classmate. I am your boss.

I am John Doe.

I will never forget the example of the passengers of United Airlines Flight 93 who refused to sit back on 9/11 and let themselves be murdered in the name of Islam without a fight.

I will never forget the passengers and crew members who tackled al Qaeda [sic] shoe-bomber Richard Reid on American Airlines Flight 63 before he had a chance to blow up the plane over the Atlantic Ocean.

I will never forget the alertness of actor James Woods, who notified a stewardess that several Arab men sitting in his first-class cabin on an August 2001 flight were behaving strangely. The men turned out to be 9/11 hijackers on a test run.

I will act when homeland security officials ask me to "report suspicious activity."

I will embrace my local police department’s admonition: "If you see something, say something."

I am John Doe.

I will protest your Jew-hating, America-bashing "scholars."

I will petition against your hate-mongering mosque leaders.

I will raise my voice against your subjugation of women and religious minorities.

I will challenge your attempts to indoctrinate my children in our schools.

I will combat your violent propaganda on the Internet.

I am John Doe.

I will support law enforcement initiatives to spy on your operatives, cut off your funding, and disrupt your murderous conspiracies.

I will oppose all attempts to undermine our borders and immigration laws.

I will resist the imposition of sharia principles and sharia law in my taxi cab, my restaurant, my community pool, the halls of Congress, our national monuments, the radio and television airwaves, and all public spaces.

I will not be censored in the name of tolerance.

I will not be cowed by your Beltway lobbying groups in moderate clothing. I will not cringe when you shriek about "profiling” or "Islamophobia."

I will put my family’s safety above sensitivity. I will put my country above multiculturalism.

I will not submit to your will. I will not be intimidated.

I am John Doe.

##

Now, take a read at what Jesus' Patriot put on his Website as a response to Malkin. I wish I could say that I authored this piece, because it's simply brilliant:

Michelle Malkin
Out Lady of Concentration Camps

Dear Mrs. Malkin,

Although I enjoyed your (Jesse's?) "I am John Doe" piece, I think you held back a little bit. I reworked it to make your point a little more clearly.

Dear traitorous Brownislamunistofascist, Homoislamunistofascist, Femislamunistofascist, Poorislamunistofascist, JehovahWitnessislamunististfascist, Hebrislamunistofascist, and/or Libislamunistofascist,

You do not know me. But I am on the lookout for you. You are my enemy. And I am yours.

I am Michelle's hood.

I am tucked away in your neighbor's sock drawer, your boss's personnel files, and your Republican National Committee's campaign playbooks.

Talk radio hosts wear me in their studios. Columnists stroke my soft white cotton for inspiration. Pundits use me in lieu of Viagra.

I'm part of the official uniform of the Washington Times and the unofficial uniform of the National Review, Fox News, and ABC Radio. Mickey Mouse wears me to Disney board meetings.

I am Marty Peretz's muse and Lou Dobbs's raison d’etre.

I am Michelle's hood.

My owners will never forget the shame they felt when a brown man was promoted over them, when a homosexual tricked them into arousal, when a feminist convinced their wives that they were equals.

They will never forget that Jews don't love Jesus, that Jehovah's Witnesses are cultists, that the poor are just lazy, and that liberals are traitors.

I am Michelle's hood.

I serve as a symbol of conservative values.

I motivate Republican voters.

I inspire Rush, O'Reilly, Hannity, and Michelle.

I am Michelle's hood.

I will be with those who racially profile.

I will be with those who torture.

I will be with those who spy on our citizens.

I will be with those who lynch homosexuals.

I will not be censored in the name of tolerance.

I will not submit to your concepts of decency. I will not be intimidated.

I am Michelle's hood.

Well, that's it. I think it makes your point much more clearly. I hope you'll consider using it.

Heterosexually yours in a chaste and biblically appropriate kind of way,
Gen. JC Christian patriot.

So, there you have it, straight from Jesus' General. If you haven't checked out his Website, get there when you have a spare half hour. You'll need it, because you won't be able to visit it for just a few minutes.

It's people like Malkin who make me frightened for the future of our country. Not her specifically, because she's simply a hysterical lunatic, but people who follow and listen to her and actually believe this garbage. She must have some sort of following, or she wouldn't have the fame and notoriety she enjoys. I'm guessing her followers are just like Ann Coulter's - horny, white male Republican sheep who can't think for themselves, watch Fox News like it's some sort of religion, and who blindly utter "Support the Troops" and have bumper stickers that read "As for me, I stand with my President, George W. Bush."

Like Coulter, it's frightening to me that someone with these messages can gain any traction in American, but so it goes. Malkin is the hotter Coulter, but they are both ugly lepers on the inside.

Her blatant, overt jingoism and xenophobia add nothing to our political discourse, other than to stir up hate.

I quote retired General Tommy Franks, who said following 9-11:

"If terrorists succeeded in using a weapon of mass destruction against the U.S. [again] or one of our allies, it would likely have catastrophic consequences for our cherished republican form of government. If the United States is hit with a weapon of mass destruction that inflicts large casualties, the Constitution will likely be discarded in favor of a military form of government. The Western world, the free world, would lose what it cherishes most, and that is freedom and liberty we've seen for a couple of hundred years in this grand experiment that we call democracy."

I'll take the word of Tommy Franks over the shrill voice of a Republican hack like Malkin.

Should we be vigilant? Absolutely. But, if Malkin were so concerned with Homeland Security, she'd be writing letters to the leaders of this administration and Congress, who have seen fit to sell the American people short when it comes to protecting us. All one has to do is walk around any large American city to see where the deficiencies lie, and there are many.

Any American who wants to discriminate against a foreign national in the name of homeland security is easily duped; these are probably the same people who readily concur that individual Welfare is a big problem in our country, all the while ignoring corporate welfare, which costs the U.S. Treasury hundreds of billions every year.

Malkin tries to tap into the collective psyche of hateful, narrow-minded people who would rather be angry at an Arab (these people probably call them rag heads) than at our government, which, it bears repeating, has done appallingly little to protect us.

But, Dick Cheney wouldn't have you believe this - he's constantly on television, bragging that there hasn't been another attack since 9-11. Honestly, I attribute that to luck more than anything else.

Our enemies sure must be stupid, we have so many flaws and holes in our homeland security.

Heaven help us if they ever wake up and get smart.

***
Major hat tip to Crooks & Liars and Jesus' General for Malkin's letter, Jesus' response, and the pictures in this post

Another example of our LIBERAL media

I have to confess, I got this from Crooks and Liars, an awesome Website where I find many issues that I blog about. So, I'm cribbing a lot from C&L about this post, so I wanted to give proper attribution. Here goes...

A Reuters story that appeared on Yahoo's Website last Friday carried this headline:

Bomb kills 15, Bush critic Pelosi visits Baghdad

Really? You've got to be kidding me. It's bad enough that the news stories about Pelosi have ranged from blatantly male chauvinist "Pelosi, dressed in Armani..." to the completely irrelevant (too many to list here), but this could be one of the worst headlines I've ever seen on the Web for a news story.

As Crooks & Liars rightfully points out, someone couldn't even write "California Congresswoman"? Or, here's a radical idea -- how about "Speaker Pelosi"?!?

Can anyone imagine, when Newt Gingrich was speaker, if this headline appeared? -- "Clinton hater Gingrich slams health care plan."

Imagine the outrage that would have followed that one. Bill O'Lielly would have declared a War on Irresponsible Journalism.

Hey conservatives, keep complaining about the liberal media. And when you get a chance, drop by Earth and let us know how the weather is in your parallel universe.