Look people, we've gotten the goat of Mr. Bill O'Reilly because a company such as Jet Blue has dared to have show the chuzpah of hosting this year's Yearly Kos convention?
He says were a "hate site".
He says were "deeply on the left".
He says were the "same as David Duke", and that he would criticize any such "convention of hate."
Bill O'Reilly says a lot of things, but I think the last people that need to be worried about it are the stockholders at Jet Blue.
A lot of things get said on this site, I'm not about to defend every single comment - I don't need to. Part of the wonder of sites such as this which are highly interactive is the fact the if and when someone says something completely nutty, or just a little bit off the rails (even myself) it gets handled and corrected internally.
We actually keep each other on a fairly short leash around here - if you make a claim, you actually have to back it up with something.
Sometimes we do a better job of that than Dr. Sanjay Gupta of CNN.
Sometimes we do a better job than Wolf Blitzer.
Yes, we can at times, be extremely angry. Yes, we get get truly and genuinely pissed off. Yes, we can at times tell and extemely bad, off-color and tastely juvenille joke - usually at your expense - and sometimes we've quite seriously considered whether conservatism is a form of sociopathic disorder.
We can and will drop the F-Bomb like confetti.
So sue us.
No, really - there are about 100,000 users here all with their own voice and their own views. Just try it and see how far that case goes.
Anywho...
The world is a difficult place, in many ways we here are simply reacting to the world around us. In that world Republicans have held control of the Presidency, and up until recently the Congress - and we have admittedly reacted rather badly to that. We can play rough around here, so much so that we actually drove Cindy Sheehan away (for a little while).
But what has really gotten our goat has been some of the pure and unadultered hate that has been projected our way.
Here's an op-ed from Kentucky I wrote about last November where someone - not just a random person on a website, but an actually regular columnist - seriously argued that all the hippes need to die.
America won't win another war until the 1960s flower children are pushing up petunias.
Radicalized, the flower children morphed into lefty loonies who now masquerade as social progressives. No matter what they rename themselves, however, their agenda hasn't changed.
Call me crazy if you will, and I know some of you will, but America actually did win the Bosnian War despite all the hippies and flower children.
America won the Cold War, and much of the influence of Western Culture including "hippies" like the Beatles who exposed peace and freedom had nearly as much to do with it as the B2 Bomber.
With America's help, Northern Ireland has finally found peace.
With America's help, and against the stenuous opposition of the right-wing including then Gov George W. Bush, Kosovo is now a safe and flowering Democracy.
It's not that we oppose all war as a rule per se, we simply oppose fighting the wrong war, in the wrong place for the wrong reasons with the wrong tactics.
When your guys took control they completely ignored warnings about Al-Qeada, started an unneccesary War and absolutely fracked up Iraq, outed a Covert CIA Agent to cover their tracks while letting bin Laden run free and gain a brand new foothold in Pakistan, neglected our troops in the field and at Walter Reed, then messed up the response to Katrina, not to mention the tornados in Kansas, turned the DOJ and the concept of "American Justice" in to a sad joke and have frankly continued with a nearly endless list of complete and total debacles of hubris and willful ignorance from sea to shining sea.
Look, there are even Republicans Senators now saying that "Bush has F-ed Up the [Iraq] War."
No, Really?
But we're not bitter.
You see, we don't disbelieve in the power of democracy to influence people and the potentially change the world into a better brighter place. We simply believe that you have to be practicing democracy to accomplish that.
By the way that Op-ed is just the tip of the iceberg as has been revealed by a reporter for the LA Times from Britain who decided to go on a Conservative Cruise.
I lie on the beach with Hillary-Ann, a chatty, scatty 35-year-old Californian designer. As she explains the perils of Republican dating, my mind drifts, watching the gentle tide. When I hear her say, " Of course, we need to execute some of these people," I wake up. Who do we need to execute? She runs her fingers through the sand lazily. "A few of these prominent liberals who are trying to demoralise the country," she says. "Just take a couple of these anti-war people off to the gas chamber for treason to show, if you try to bring down America at a time of war, that's what you'll get." She squints at the sun and smiles. "Then things'll change."
Execute prominent Liberals for having the temerity of daring to use free speach like they think it's some "protected right" or something?
Yeah, aint that America?
Then there's this exchange.
"To my left, I find a middle-aged Floridian with a neat beard. To my right are two elderly New Yorkers who look and sound like late-era Dorothy Parkers, minus the alcohol poisoning. They live on Park Avenue, they explain in precise Northern tones. "You must live near the UN building," the Floridian says to one of the New York ladies after the entree is served. Yes, she responds, shaking her head wearily. "They should suicide-bomb that place," he says. They all chuckle gently.
Ha ha. ho ho... It's all just so high-lar-ious.
Now, you may think that Kentucky Op-ed and few martini addled vacationers were an anomaly and that we shouldn't take it personally but how about this quote from CNN's Glenn Beck.
BECK: Hang on, let me just tell you what I'm thinking. I'm thinking about killing Michael Moore, and I'm wondering if I could kill him myself, or if I would need to hire somebody to do it. No, I think I could. I think he could be looking me in the eye, you know, and I could just be choking the life out -- is this wrong?
If you don't think the above is wrong, then you really have no right bitching about a couple random nitwits being so insensitive as to wish death on Tony Snow via Colon Cancer. I don't agree with Tony much, I think he's ridiculous, but from everything I hear he's a pretty nice guy and I wouldn't wish death on him ever.
That's the difference between most of us - and more than a few of you guys.
I don't neccesarily feel that Micheal Moore always plays fair. To this day, I still feel that he totally sandbagged Charlton Heston. But y'know what? He doesn't deserve to die at Glenn Becks hands.
However I think you'd have a hard time convincing Neal Boortz of that, even though he's such an open and giving kind of guy.
"[T]his Muhammad guy is just a phony rag-picker." Boortz asserted that "[i]t is perfectly legitimate, perhaps even praiseworthy, to recognize Islam as a religion of vicious, violent, bloodthirsty cretins."
And gee doesn't he sound just like your hero - Billy O'Reilly.
Nancy Soderberg, former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, stated that "the Arab Sunnis are uniting against Iran" and said: "[I]t's going to be the Arab world against the Persian world. And that's a fight we don't want to have played out in Iraq." O'Reilly responded: "Well, I'd like to see that fight with us out of it. That's what I'd like to see." O'Reilly continued: "I want -- let them kill each other."
It's not like Newt Gingrich blamed the shooting at Virginia Tech on Liberals, except that he did. It's not like Pat Robertson said that we should assasinate Hugo Chavez, except - well - y'know.
If you still think this is a "Hate Site" as O'Reilly porports (as opposed to Beck, Limbaugh, Ingraham or Fox News in general) then you should be extremely, seriously afraid.
This site nearly brought down Joe Liberman.
This site helped elect Jim Webb and gave Democrats the majority in the Senate.
John Edwards made one of his first stops after his official announcment for his campaign for President - HERE!
Major players in Washington politics such as Senator Russ Feingold have posted here as recently as yesterday. Senator John Kerry came to dailykos to speak out against the nomination of Samuel Alito. Congresmen such as Steve Kagen, Lynn Wolsey and Chairman John Conyers have come here to speak directly to their constituency and the American people.
We don't always agree, but the fact is - these people listen to us. They care what we have to say, and they often hope that they can solicit our help to influence congress with phone calls, emails and letters and just plain 'ole fashioned getting in their face on any number of issues.
You think Bill O'Reilly worries us?
He's a punch-line around here.
The fact that we've gotten under his skin is probably one of the best affirmations of the effeciveness of this site that I've seen in while. Not long ago he went after Media Matters because they managed to take down Don Imus - figuring he and his pal Limbaugh were next.
Such is the depth of his paranoia. As it turned out, Rosie O'Donnell (who is actually to the far left of most of us) was next.
Meanwhile, Media Matters soldiers on unaffected and unafriad.
Still O'Reilly and Fox News are terrifed of us and frankly, they should be because we (and many many other sites like this one) are an example of True Democracy in action and practice. We are the Citizen Media, and we will and have changed the world for the better.
You can either stand in the way and get run over, or jump on board and help push.
It's your choice.
Vyan