Gawker may have accomplished what no one else could. make people fell sorry for Delaware senatorial candidate Christine O’Donnell. Amanda has it about right in defending O’Donnell against such a blatantly misogynistic smear. And rightly notes this news does not make O’Connell in anyway a hypocrite. What is hypocritical is the Right’s point of view on political smears in general. Michelle Malkin’s headline for her story on Gawker and O’Donnell reads “The Gawker smear machine: A refresher course” which goes on this list what she considers some of the most egregious attacks in our nation’s political history. Who is she kidding. Sure her gullible readers, but that she believes this particular gossip piece rises to the level of the daily smears the right-wing conservative blogs and pundits launch against anyone to the left of Mussolini, is Malkin at her hypocritical heights. Malkin wrote a thin tome of baseless right-wing propaganda called Unhinged: Exposing Liberals Gone Wild in defense of WW II internment camps and interning any Americans the government thought posed a threat. She suggested – without a shred of evidence that Sen. John Kerry a decorated combat veteran, wounded himself. Throughout the Unhinged book and others she has written it is her modus operandi to leave out parts of conservsations and quotes so as to make her argument. Smear by lie, omission and insinuation is what Malkin does. Pundits from right-wing drug addict Rush Limbaugh to Sean Hannity churn out deranged accuzations of treason toward anyone who disagrees with them as regular political discourse. Conservatives only seem to have concerns with unfair gossip pieces when it is one of them at the receiving end. As a matter of moral substance and personal consistency they obviuosly have no problems with smears as such. Smears are part and parcel of the Republican playbook. Lacking ideas and solutions – insults, fake history and friegned outrage are not their last resort, but their first and in most cases defines what they stand for.
Ginni Thomas’ Think Tank Allied With Group That Celebrates Spanish Inquisition
In recent days, the media has turned its attention to Ginni Thomas, wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas — not for her troubling ties to right-wing extremist groups, but for her bizarre demand for an apology from the woman who accused her husband of sexual harassment more than a decade ago. Yet Mrs. Thomas’ Tea Party think tank, Liberty Central, promotes the causes of groups that take pride in intolerance, including one right-wing Catholic group, Tradition, Family and Property, whose founder declared the Spanish Inquisition “the most beautiful page in the history of the Church.”
Earlier this year, AlterNet reported on Liberty Central’s embrace of Gun Owners of America, whose president, Larry Pratt — guru to the militia movement — unapologetically addressed a rally of white supremacists in 1992, and more recently told attendees of a gun owners’ rally in Washington, D.C., that they are “at war” with the federal government. We also looked at Liberty Central’s relationship with the Missouri Sovereignty Project, which threatens armed insurrection against the government. Since then, Thomas has added to the “Friends of Liberty Central” page on her think tank’s Web site a plug for Tradition, Family and Property, a virulently anti-gay, anti-woman, anti-democratic Catholic group founded in 1960 in opposition to Brazilian land reform.
A refresher on the Spanish Inquisition and its reign of terror for those that may have forgotten their major events in world history.
Boehner stumps for Nazi-re-enactor
Why is anyone surprised that John Boehner decided to campaign for Ohio congressional candidate Rich Iott, one of the GOP’s assortment of extremist 2010 candidates, which includes a Marine who killed two unarmed Iraqi prisoners, a guy whose security detained reporters at a public school event and one whose volunteers stomped a MoveOn volunteer?
Iott’s in a category by himself, as someone who admits he’s enjoyed attending Nazi history re-enactments dressed up in an SS Waffen uniform.
Fans of the Spanish Inquisition, admirers of the Third Reich, hired thugs chaining up a reporter and two large Rand Paul supporters committing assault and battery on a small woman. In AAs 12 step program one of the first things one has to do on the road to recovery is to admit you have a problem. In every instance Joan Walsh lists there has been nothing but denials, excuses and deflections. The new improved Republicans – the ones that supposedly gained some wisdom from the disastrous Bush years and were going to return to some real values based conservatism. That was all just yammering nonsense. They’ve doubled down on the madness.
And case in point – Sharron Angle’s energy plan: Deregulate the ‘mining industry,’ as well as the ‘oil and petroleum industry’. Angle demonstrates the uncanny ability of right-wing conservatives not to learn from experience – Tests warned of cement problems before well’s blowout. BP and Halliburton were aware of them but used it anyway, an investigative commission reports.
The Long Goodbye 