My friends over at 2political Junkies have a post about a right-wing radio host in Pittsburgh furthering a smear against Barack Obama. This got me thinking about just how batshit crazy someone has to be to believe this junk. Yet this crap is treated "seriously" by the "news" media.

Congratulations, Congressional Democrats.  Today you've managed to pass a bill so outrageously offensive to the Constitution that even the wingnut crazies at Free Republic know it's bad news.

I do have to credit even our nutty blogger friends on the other side of the aisle: we bloggers do have the ability to see past the next electioneering challenge, lobbyist threat or potential attack ad to survey the damage a Constitution-gutting bill would do in the wrong hands.  Sure, they're silly enough to believe that the Libs/Commies will use this expanded Executive power to round up all the guns and make Spanish the official language--but give them credit for knowing when too much Executive Power is a really, really bad idea.

It had been about a month since I'd checked out Free Republic, and was pleased to see that the unity and morale of the freepus Erectus continues its death spiral unabated.

Today's gnashing of teeth was in response to the latest brass-balls, Bizarro-Bush statement on the economy:

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President George W. Bush reiterated on Wednesday that his administration believed in a strong dollar, and said the currency would reflect the relative strength of the economy.

"We're strong dollar people in this administration, and have always been for a strong dollar, and believe that the relative strengths of our economy will reflect that," Bush told reporters at a news conference ahead of his trip to Japan for a meeting of the Group of Eight rich nations.

Inflation is expected to be high on the G8 agenda next week. Some countries have blamed the weak dollar in part for pushing up prices for oil and other commodities.

Bush and Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson have repeatedly expressed their belief in a strong dollar, only to see the currency fade. The euro hit a two-month high against the dollar on Wednesday.

Join me below the fold for teh comedy.

Cross-posted by Will Bunch at my Philadelphia Daily News blog, Attytood. Like most newspaper blogs, sadly, a lot of right-wingers camp out there, so I urge you come to come over and join the battle.

Lara Logan used to cover Baghdad for CBS News at the peak of the fighting in Iraq, then became the natwork's chief foreign correspondent, and just a few days ago it was announced that she'll be coming to Washington with a new title as chief foreign affairs correspondent. She has clearly been an up-and-coming star on CBS, where she sometimes appears on the flagship show "60 Minutes." She's been described in profiles as resourceful, certainly ambitious and seemingly fearless.

Free Republic has been rather dull lately.  They hate our candidate, they hate their candidate and they hate Chimpy.  Of course, all of this is for different reasons than we hate our candidate, hate their candidate and hate Chimpy, but that's politics.

Today, I clicked on three articles, looking for something new and diary-worthy.  "Move-On calls on Obama to keep his word," "Most Whites say Obama a 'risky' choice," and "Obama Bows to Muslim Demands."

Thank Jeebus I did because I've discovered who the most dangerous people on the planet (besides Barack and Michelle Obama) are.  And you won't be surprised!

Ran into a pretty entertaining link on freerepublic yesterday, lots of frothing and ranting about a sinister "computer-generated image...posted on an Islamic extremists' website". It's a post-apocalyptic shot of the Capitol, after a nuke attack: image here

The image was posted on a British news site, the Daily Mail, which has some lurid prose to accompany it:

Washington is laid to waste. The Capitol is a blackened, smoking ruin. The White House has been razed. Countless thousands are dead.

This is the apocalyptic scene terrorists hope to create if they ever get their hands on a nuclear bomb...It appeared as rumours swept the Internet that the FBI was warning that an Al Qaeda video was about to be released urging militants to use weapons of mass destruction to attack the West...
So far that is only a dream... or, as this picture suggests, a nightmare.

I don't know if it counts towards (or subtracts from . . .) my alloted 15 minutes of fame, but I have been personally mischaracterized and insulted on Free Republic and Debbie Schlussel today - and I'm just so proud - it feels like I've finally arrived.

Find out what I did, and why the freepers seem to hate me for it, after the break.

Let's not say that the Freepers were idle on this holiday weekend.  In fact, freeper kdun came up with a sure-win campaign ad for McCain.  Here it is:

Ad Idea for the general election, but don't really know how to pass on the idea.

Have a picture of Hussain Obama on one side wearing the turbine(the turbine picture) and to the right of that have a picture of John Mccain as a younger man in his uniform or after he was freed. Have the pictures side by side and on top either of the following

1. "What part of this don't you understand" or

2. "The choice is clear"

A great ad idea that goes right to the core of peoples fears. How do I get this idea to the powers to be or can you just do it for me?

Sure, kdun I can whip that right up with the GIMP.

I do not have a solid three paragraph opening.  In fact, I don't really have a diary, just some poems culled from the litterati at Free Republic just now.  Sure it's old hat, but I thought several of their posts about the "California Homosexual Incident of Late" made for some nice "found" poetry.  I just respaced and titled.  You can find them all in different threads in the Homosexual Agenda section at that fine Republican blog thing place.

I'll start with my favorite in the next section.  Did you know South America and Mexica is a country?  I sure didn't!

Feel free to poeterize your favorite Republican Bog Quote!

So I'll admit it, I am a reader of many-a-right-wing-blog; probably the top three would be WhatReallyHappened, Drudge, and Free Republic.  I don't know why I read these, maybe to make an informed decision regarding politics and whathaveyou, maybe to make my blood boil, and maybe because when I toke I become one hell of a flamer/troll/pissant.  Nevertheless, as I was lurking around F.R. recently, I couldn't help but notice the dwindling number of freepers out there.  Just for instance ... at 12am on 20 May, the number of replies to their equivalent of front page diaries from top to bottom goes as follows: 7, 2, 8, 8, 7, 2, 3, 1, 15, 1 17, 10, 13, 7, 4, 5, 30, 0, 10, 11, 13, 1, 14, 11, 8, 5, 3, ... wow, 30, ... DREAM BIG.  Most articles get fewer than 10 comments, and the ones that elicit more are mostly just unabated vitriol on the order of what Bill'O would have you believe exists on this site ... times a factor of ten.  Honestly, the number of comment responses would not be embarrassing, and possibly respectable for the Melanie's Stories About My Cat Blog .... but this is supposed to be the right-wing counterweight to a site such as this.

::jump::

Senator Kennedy's condition, which appeared from early indications to be doubtful, seems much more promising as of several hours later.  Reports that he himself made a phone call canceling a luncheon event are encouraging as is the report that he suffered "seizures" that may or may not have actually been stroke-related.  Clearly, whatever the events of this morning were, they do not at this moment appear to be life-threatening.

It is in this more positive moment that I wish to reflect on an aspect of this morning that truly saddened me even as my heart was warmed by news that suggested recovery.  I was heartened by the response of even some of the conservative media, as people like Pat Buchanan spent time praising the Senator for his decades of service to this country.  Unfortunately, this positive aspect was more than overbalanced by the outpouring of hatred on the part of the FReepers who, on their own website, expelled such atrocious levels of bile into cyberspace that their own moderators had to shut down and expunge entire threads.  

What makes people act this way?

This is going to be my last Freepology post on the horrid HillaryIs44 blog.  Really, anything that can (and should) be said about this cesspool is being said here.

Meanwhile, there is a lot of anxiety about Hillary supporters voting for McCain in November if Barack wins the Democratic nomination.  Recent exit polls reveal large percentages of Clinton's supporters pledging to vote for McCain over Obama.  In other news, two women in Columbus, Ohio, have launched a movement for women to boycott Obama:

Ruccia tells ABC News that she believes "millions" of women share her group's views, though they have only begun to make contact with like-minded women.

Are there really millions of women?  Should we really believe anything posted on Jake Tapper's blog?

One of the emblematic "net roots" sites for people who hate Obama more than they hate McCain is HillaryIs44.  In this diary, I run some numbers and the results show that while Big Pink may be plenty pink, it's nothing close to big.

I periodically wander over and peer at the cesspool that is Free Republic. I know it's a morbid fascination, like a trainwreck that I just can't look away from. Tonight someone there put up an article from the Jerusalem Post, citing a recent poll of American Jewish voters. They noted 61% of Jewish voters prefer Obama, while 32% supported McCain.

So what did the denizens of Free Republic have to say about American Jews? See after the fold.

Reading Free Republic is disturbing, but as unsettling as it is to think that people like that exist, there is always comfort in the knowledge that they're not like us; we're better than them and we don't belong to their gang.  This is not quite the case with sites like "Hillaryis44.com," the rabidly pro-Hillary site.  These are supposedly progressive partisans who support a Democratic candidate that many of us would also unhesitatingly vote for in November.

Still, there is no getting around the nauseating similarity between the comments on the two sites.  Freepers were beside themselves with glee making fun of Obama's "57 states" gaffe — as were the denizens of HillaryIs44.  The shared dislike of Obama is no surprise, but does it end there?  Seriously, the Freepers call Senator Clinton names like "Hildabeast" and "Hitlery" (oh, how clever).  How similar could the viewpoints of these two groups of people possibly be?

You tell me.

What follows are quotes from the two sites.  Try to guess which site each quote came from.  The answer key will be in a comment below the post.

I read these sites so you don't have to.

Free Republic just posted a Townhall article, "McCain Finds His Own Radical Friend" on McCain's relationship to G. Gordon Liddy. (The connection was posted on DKos by Cedelson 2 weeks ago)

The Townhall article points out that the relationship between McCain and Liddy appears closer than that between Obama and Ayers, and that Liddy continues to make inflammatory statements, including:

Now if the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms comes to disarm you and they are bearing arms, resist them with arms. Go for a head shot; they're going to be wearing bulletproof vests. ... Kill the sons of bitches."

What are your plans for Saturday, April 12th, 2008?  Lazy day watching hockey?  Going out to enjoy the Spring weather?  Perhaps working the second job you need to afford food and fuel in Bush's America?

Well, whatever you do, take a few moments to ridicule Mark Steyn.  In case you are blissfully unaware of this internationally-famous wanker, he's a Canadian, living in Britain who writes godawful neo-conservative opinion columns that make Ann Coulter look like the Oracle at Delphi.

Five years ago, Saturday, Steyn's column was entitled, "Movers and shakers have moved on to the next 'disaster'."  It contained 10 cautionary predictions made by various knowledgeable anti-war analysts and addressed each one with a breezy, "That's not going to happen" contradiction.  Here's an example:

3. "Iraqis Now Waiting for Americans to Leave" (AP, April 10). MBITRW: There will be terrible acts of suicide-bomber depravity in the months ahead, but no widespread resentment at or resistance of the Western military presence.

Well, it's almost to be expected.

Should any 'liberal' or 'progressive' blog make mention of Heston's politics in a blog that was titled from his passing, the Right is going to eat this up like there's no tomorrow.

more predictability after the flip ------>

Today was the 40th anniversary of the murder of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.  The blogosphere was abuzz with reminiscences of Dr. King's life and legacy, stories about the man behind the legend, and perspectives on how the racial landscape has changed since his death.

Over on Free Republic, however, we get this:

DMZFrank:
While King himself was not a communist, he did business with communists and was influenced by them. This delicate subject, made more so given the martyrdom and subsequent lionization of King, should nevertheless be broached as a means of providing insight into some of the darker forces that worked their way into what was essentially a pro American, conservative, Christian civil rights movement.

That's right, the same pro-American, conservative, "Christians" who brought you the Klan were also behind the civil rights movement — that is until MLK got cozy with Marxists and then it became evil and all good Americans had to oppose it!  To paraphrase the immortal words of Eric Cartman (South Park), "I don't hate black people, I hate commies!"

Yeah, right.

You want more?  There's more, but you'll wish you hadn't read it.