By Jwilkes from Eyes on Obama:

John McCain has some serious trouble with his own party, particularly large swaths of voterswhom he has offended with his temper, attitude, legislative work, and lack of conservative credentials. A look at five of the most notable groups.

Hey DK, I need some assistance on this one.

Very few of you may remember my previous diary about getting smear emails forwarded to me from my boss.  She decided to respond to the list with my responses and one guy decided to email her back.

He responded with the picture of Barack Obama without his hand on his heart and Bill Richardson, Hillary Clinton, etc. in the background with their hands over their hearts.

My boss then responded back to him with pictures of Barack Obama with his hand over his heart.  He then responded thusly:

It's been a tough campaign. I've been upset and angry with how Clinton and her supporters have handled things quite a few times.

But, we won. Obama is a gracious man. Many of his supporters are gracious too. But, many are not. It's understandable. But, it is not right.

Joan Walsh was on Hardball Wednesday. She had not quite distilled her thoughts. But, today in a Salon article she laid out a well-thought-out case for what Obama and his supporters need to do.
(http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2008/06/05/obama/)

Obama is already taking care of business. His speech did a fine job giving respect to Hillary. The meeting in Minnesota after the speech he had with Clinton supporters is another excellent example of Obama showing the way.

Too many of his supporters are still in fight mode vs. Hillary.  That's wrong.

This diary takes that position that we Obama supporters should talk to Hillary supporters. I don't now how to do that effectively when speaking to the hard-core Hillary-ites. So, that's why I listened to Joan.  She would know. How good is the advice she has given? Is she asking too much of Obama supporters and not enough of Clinton supporters?

There's been a LOT of acrimony from the (formerly known as) "Lefty Blogs" that support Hillary. One of the worst has been Larry Johnson's. Now Larry did a lot of great work getting us the details and background to the Plame outing, and he deserves a lot of props for that.

When it comes to supporting Hillary, his site finally (in my opinion) jumped the shark.

A call for a "Mutiny for All True Patriots"

As roughly 50% of recent Kos posts have been dedicated to trashing one candidate or another, we'd like to ask everyone to save bandwidth and your own time by using the following form for your future diaries.  Please circle the appropriate choice in each bracket:

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It's obvious to anyone with a brain that [Clinton/Obama/Edwards/Kucinich/Yogi Bear] is the ONLY candidate who can POSSIBLY win in November and run the country for the next four years.  [Clinton/Obama] has proven, through their stance on [the war/health care/pic-a-nic baskets] that they have utterly betrayed the Democratic party.  [He/she] is supported by [moderates/corporate donors], and has [praised Reagan/fundraised with Rupert Murdoch], so [he/she] is clearly a GOP stooge, who the Republicans secretly want to win the nomination because they think [he/she] won't match up well against McCain in November.

In the late 1990s, back in the old days of message boards and email, I worked online with a group of people from around the world in support of the Good Friday Agreement in Ireland.  I later served in Northern Ireland as an international observer during marching season.  I was surprised when I started getting hate mail in the same vein as Kos posted, from Loyalists who wanted to keep things exactly the way they were, and didn't want people from the U.S. supporting the power-sharing agreement. Most of it was incoherent profanity-filled rants, others were specific, saying that I deserved to be killed like Rosemary Nelson.

But I did strike up an ongoing correspondence with a non-violent Loyalist voter, and asked him what percentage of Loyalists are the real hard-core haters.  I asked the same thing of a local numbers-crunching junkie, a Democratic Party judicial candidate.  How many Republicans are the real Fox-viewing, Limbaugh-loving, O'Reilly-believing hard core haters?

Amazingly, they both came back to me with the exact same number...

I'm going to vomit the next time I hear someone say "Where's the beef?" or "There's no there, there" in reference to Senator and Presidential Contender Barack Obama.

I'll grant you this, Barack Obama's experience is not conventional. He hasn't spent the better part of a decade in Washington D.C., he was never the President's wife, and he missed the opportunity to authorize Bush's pet project in Iraq.

I find it difficult to believe that the well-read posters and lurkers at DKos are not aware Barack Obama's rich background, but allow me to remind you, as it seems you may have forgotten...

My take on the recent Spocko-KSFO radio station dustup:

Try pointing out to haters of their hate and they offer up more hate.

Point out this hate to advertisers supporting the specific medium of the haters and the haters up the hate.

'That's hurting me' the haters cry, oblivious to the irony. Their hyperventilating honor code: "Whatever I want to hate, I should be able to hate whenever I want to hate, and wherever I want to hate, without any hateful repercussions."

Right wingers often try to defuse criticism of The Leader by accusing critics of being "Bush Haters." Talking heads of the O'Reilly, Krauthammer, and Jacobyilk hurl the term like a thunderbolt from Olympus. I guess to them (and all "right-thinking" people like them) hating Bush is on par with hating apple pie, Blessed Virgin Mary, Mother Theresa.

I ALWAYS confuse that song with "Memo From Turner":

When the old men do the fighting and the young men all look on.
And the young girls eat their mothers meat from tubes of plasticon.
Be wary of these my gentle friends of all the skins you breed.
They have a tasty habit - they eat the hands that bleed...

and still can't figure out what Keef was doing in that coconut tree!!!

OK - after the lovely "Israel is a POS roach in the salad of America" - and the troll-bashing recipie-fest that ensued - someone asked: why can't we talk about Israel in a mature way on this site?

What does it take to address real concerns about Israeli policies without killing each other and troll rating?

I tried to outline my thoughts on Israel, as an American Jew, who lost (yes, obligitory Holocaust reminder) about half of my family to very real anti-Semitism. But that lovely diarly got killed before I could post my response below.

But I'm an American way, way, way before anything else, and I don't just automatically jump to the defense of Israel all the time....More after the jump >>

The current twisted logic keeping the few remaining intelligent supporters of Bush going is that they don't have to pay any attention to Bush's critics: they are irrational, emotionally disturbed people who are consumed by Bush hatred. This, of course, is the same useful brainwashing technique used by cults to keep their members faithful. Anyone trying to tell you that what you believe is not true is crazy or has ulterior motives. In order to break down this logical fallacy, I would like to point out WHO loves Bush and WHO hates him:

Bush Haters: PhD scientists and researchers, teachers, engineers, IT professionals, artists and entertainers of all stripes, gays, atheists, pro-choicers, pacifists/diplomats

Bush Lovers: People with less than a college education, racists, creationists, pro-gun folks, blue collar workers, Evangelical Christians, pro-lifers, imperialists

C'mon, people!  Sing along with me!

People...  
People who hate people...
Are the luckiest people...
In the world...

I love the haters, cloaking themselves in religion and/or righteousness, wishing death upon those with whom they disagree.  Seems to be an increasingly popular activity these days...

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