"Sarah Palin didn't allow press at her speech Friday at a Wisconsin Right to Life fundraising banquet, and attendees were barred from bringing cell phones, cameras, laptops, or recording devices of any kind."
But the tactics of Limbaugh, Palin, Cheney & Fille are more cynical: They spin certainty, ignoring their side’s screw-ups, and they exploit patriotism, labeling all critics as traitors.
Military brass have told the White House that this is the first time in eight years that they have gotten the attention and resources that they’ve needed in Afghanistan.
If W. had gone to Dover in the middle of the night to salute the war dead, Limbaugh and Liz Cheney would have been gushing about his patriotism.
But since it’s Obama who at last showed up there to see the brutal cost of war, they simply have to dismiss the moving moment as a publicity stunt.
The 48-year-old Obama is skinny and getting skinnier, but there’s nothing childish about him. He more or less raised himself and came to terms with his Oedipal demons on his own, and he radiates a hard-won maturity.
W., on the other hand, was like a kid who knew that Daddy’s friends would take care of him; he was always running off to the gym or going biking, leaving the governing to his regents, Cheney and Rummy, or incompetents like Brownie.
"Using his "originalist'' philosophy, Scalia said he likely would have dissented from the historic 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision that declared school segregation illegal and struck down the system of "separate but equal'' public schools."
"When ACORN officials discovered those cases, they informed the state authorities and turned in the miscreants. (That was why the Bush Justice Department's blatant attempt to smear ACORN with rushed, election-timed indictments became a national scandal for Republicans rather than Democrats.) The proportion of fraud is infinitesimal. For example, a half-dozen ACORN workers were charged with registration fraud or other election-related crimes in the 2004 election. They had completed fewer than two dozen false registrations -- out of more than a million new voters registered by ACORN during that cycle. The mythology that suggests that thousands or even millions of illegal registrants voted is itself a fraud.
If only the Republicans who have worked up a frenzy over ACORN's alleged crimes were so indignant about real and damaging voter fraud -- such as the amazing case of Young Political Majors, the firm that ran GOP registration efforts in California, Massachusetts, Florida, Arizona and elsewhere before the authorities in Orange County, Calif., busted its president, Mark Anthony Jacoby, and sent him to jail last year. He had built a lucrative partisan career by teaching his minions to deceive thousands of voters into registering as Republicans rather than Democrats, among other scams. Of course, the only on-air mention of the Young Political Majors scandal on Fox News was made by blogger Brad Friedman -- and the national media, mainstream and conservative, generally ignored it. They were too busy generating "controversy" over ACORN."
"O’Keefe admits that his enmity for ACORN derived from its success helping Democrats win elections, not from any charges of corruption. The Post also points out that in Philadelphia ACORN employees called the police when the duo left the offices there. The videotape of that encounter has yet to be released, and so the prevailing image of ACORN in the mainstream media has been the one that the video makers, with a vendetta against the organization, wanted out there."
"In 2008, when the election was going on, conservative activists and Republican politicians were able to drive discussion of ACORN in the following way: they said that ACORN was aiding and abetting election fraud, and as evidence they gave all these false voter registration forms handed in by ACORN. You had to be an extremely alert news reader, you had to be an extremely informed member of the public, and you had to be very patient to be aware that it was actually ACORN that had discovered the fraud, and that law requires them to turn in every voter registration form they receive, even the ones that are fraudulent. In actual fact, they went above and beyond the law and flagged the ones they believed were fraudulent. So actually they were fighting electoral fraud, not creating electoral fraud."
"Let’s be clear: Those who demanded that America divert its troops and treasure from Afghanistan to Iraq in 2002 and 2003 — when there was no Qaeda presence in Iraq — bear responsibility for the chaos in Afghanistan that ensued. "
"Alright, so that's one school in New Jersey. Obama had nothing to do with it. It occurred during Black History Month just after the inauguration. It was part of a program saluting other presidents as well and parents were notified of the lyrics before hand. And there were no complaints before the show, during the show or after the show. I believe I have said everything up to the appropriate level of panic."
What followed was a montage of FOX news clips showing various crazy FOX people panicking well above the appropriate level - also known as "their normal state of mind" - going on about Hitler, indoctrination and even the Khmer Rouge.
Back to Stewart who then went on to say "If you can brainwash kids to sing a song praising the first African American president you can probably convince them that president Bush and FEMA did a great job during Hurricane Katrina" We are then treated to a video of Laura Bush with the "Katrina Kids" praising another president.
Stewart quotes the lyrics: "Congress, Bush and FEMA people across our land together have come to rebuild us and we join them hand in hand."
So, again, selective outrage grips the right.
I wanted to link to the Daily show clip but, being in Canada prevents me from doing so - thanks a lot Comedy Central. If you too reside in the Home of Evil Socialized Medicine and Geddy Lee, you can see the show here for as long as it's on their site.
