Totally rational NRA spokes-asshole Ted Nugent suggests that liberals should be shot like "rabid coyotes."

Ted Nugent showing his penis on stage.

Courtesy of Media Matters:  

TED NUGENT (NRA BOARD MEMBER): Don’t ask why. Just know that evil, dishonesty, and scam artists have always been around and that right now they’re liberal, they’re Democrat, they’re RINOs, they’re Hollywood, they’re fake news, they’re media, they’re academia, and they’re half of our government, at least. So come to that realization. There are rabid coyotes running around. You don’t wait till you see one to go get your gun. Keep your gun handy, and every time you see one, you shoot one.

What did that survey say about the number of gun owners suffering from mental illness again?

Because I think we are looking at Exhibit One right here.

I actually think that if you took Ted Nugent's guns away he would simply roll up into the fetal position and die.

That's an experiment that I would like to witness first hand.

Red states preach family values, but blue states are better at putting that into practice.

Courtesy of the New York Times: 

According to the Youth Risk Behavior Survey of 32 states, those with the highest percentage of high school students who say they have had sex are Mississippi, Delaware, West Virginia, Alabama and Arkansas. All but Delaware voted Republican in the last presidential election. 

Meanwhile, the five states with the lowest proportion of high school students who have had sex were New York, California, Maryland, Nebraska and Connecticut. All but Nebraska voted Democratic. 

When evangelical kids have sex, they’re less likely to use birth control — and that may be a reason (along with lower abortion rates) that red states have high teen birthrates.

Nine of the 10 states with the highest teen birthrates voted Republican in 2016. And nine of the 10 states with the lowest teen birthrates voted Democratic. 

“Red regions of the country have higher teen pregnancy rates, more shotgun marriages and lower average ages at marriage and first birth,” Naomi Cahn and June Carbone wrote in their important 2010 book, “Red Families v. Blue Families.” 

The liberal impulse may be to gloat: Those conservatives thunder about “family values” but don’t practice them. But there’s also perhaps a measure of hypocrisy in the blue states. As Cahn and Carbone put it: “Blue family values bristle at restrictions on sexuality, insistence on marriage or the stigmatization of single parents. Their secret, however, is that they encourage their children to simultaneously combine public tolerance with private discipline, and their children then overwhelmingly choose to raise their own children within two-parent families.

”Liberals, in other words, may be wary of strict moral codes, but they want to make damn sure that their own kids don’t have babies while in high school. It helps that they believe in comprehensive sex education and reliable birth control.

If this surprises anybody then you simply have not been paying attention. 

These same conclusions have been reached by a variety of studies over the years.

Preaching at kids that sex is wrong and that they should never partake of the forbidden fruit, did not work in the Garden of Eden and it does not work in modern times.

And demonstrating the family values of love, respect for others, and personal responsibility, is far more effective than calling somebody a sinner for engaging in normal human interactions.

Progressive states are just better, that is why I am working to turn mine into one.

Co-founder of California secessionist movement issues statement welcoming Julian Asssange's support from his cozy home in Russia.

Courtesy of Business Insider:  

The cofounder of the California separatist group Yes California said in an interview Monday that the group welcomes "the vocal support" of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, who recently began tweeting about the California independence campaign known as "Calexit." 

"Ultimately the Calexit vote and its preceding debate will be up to Californians to decide but we welcome the vocal support of Julian Assange, as we would for any individual with the courage to stand up against and defy the powers that be in order to affect positive change in this world," said Louis Marinelli, the cofounder. "That's what our campaign is all about." 

Marinelli, a 31-year-old activist, announced in a 1,600-word statement on Monday that he would return to California after spending just over a year in Russia's fourth-largest city, Yekaterinburg, with his wife Anastasia.

Let's see, cozy with the Russians, and being supported by Julian Assange, does this seem eerily familiar to anybody else?

I really thought this Calexit bullshit had died in its sleep after the Brexit fiasco blew up over in Britain. But apparently somebody is attempting to resuscitate it and get it back on its feet again.

Now ask yourself which political party would stand to benefit the most from California seceding from the United States?

And which country would love to sew the seeds of discontent in the most influential liberal state on the planet?

Keep in mind that though overall significantly more intelligent than their conservative counterparts, there are still some easily manipulated members on the liberal side as well.

This is clearly an attempt to cause friction among California voters, and to undermine the effectiveness that California wields as a political force in this country.

Only an idiot would support this.

Or a Russian operative of course.  

Is the new NRA ad suggesting that their members fight back against liberal protesters with bullets? Sorta looks that way.

Here is the transcript, just to spare your ears from this woman's poison: 

They use their media to assassinate real news. They use their schools to teach children that their president is another Hitler. They use their movie stars and singers and comedy shows and award shows to repeat their narrative over and over again. And then they use their ex-president to endorse “the resistance.” 

All to make them march. Make them protest. Make them scream racism and sexism and xenophobia and homophobia. To smash windows, burn cars, shut down interstates and airports, bully and terrorize the law abiding. Until the only option left is for the police to do their jobs and STOP THE MADNESS. And when that happens, they’ll use it as an excuse for their outrage. The only way we stop this, the only way we save our country and our freedom, is . I’m the National Rifle Association of America, and I’m freedom’s safest place.” 

Holy shit! This is a level of paranoia that is even shocking coming from the NRA.

For one thing nobody waited for singers, Hollywood stars, or even the ex-president for that matter, to go out and protest this vile, disgusting occupant of the White House.

Here was Wonkette's take on his ad:

As ridiculous as this is, it’s also scary as hell. Because, you know, holy crap these people literally want to kill us. They’re trying to create some kind of otherworldly scenario in which we are an actual violent threat to them. That our ONLY purpose is to, uh, protest things for literally no reason, and march and smash windows and “terrorize the law abiding.” That we somehow force nice police officers to murder black people (like Philando Castile!) in order to have “an excuse” to be mean to them and protest more. 

Which is all kinds of ass-backwards. 

Do protesters sometimes get out of hand? Sure! But like, suggesting that the entire Left is a serious violent threat to the Right because of every so often a window gets broken? Well, it would be like us insisting that they were all Timothy McVeigh. Or Eric Rudolph. Or Dylan Roof. Or a heck of a lot of other people I could name. 

As a rational person, I assume that no, not all conservatives want to bomb buildings or shoot up black churches. However, the NRA seems dead set on pushing them to do so.

Exactly! This is a gun lobby, so when they suggest that their members   need to "to fight this violence of lies with the clenched fist of truth" what are we to believe is clenched in those fists?

Yes I concur with Wonkette, this IS scary as hell. 

Bill Maher has a message for liberal purists, "Go f**k yourself!"

Courtesy of Raw Story: 

“That begins learning the difference between an imperfect friend and a deadly enemy,” Maher said. He went on to quote Jill Stein, who famously said both candidates were like being murdered just in different ways. “Well, I’m sure with Trump in charge and a racist attorney general there will be a lot more of both.” 

Before the election, Edward Snowden tweeted “2016: The difference between Donald Trump and Goldman Sachs.” Maher noted that Trump has actually hired Goldman Sachs executives and former staffers to work for him. “The only people he hasn’t hired from Goldman Sachs is Goldman and Sachs.” 

He then cited Cornell West who called Trump a neofascist and Clinton a ‘neoliberal disaster.’ “I don’t even know what a neoliberal disaster even means but whatever it is, isn’t it better than a fascist one? Have you people lost your f*cking minds? 

“If Hillary was president now, would we be turning the clock back on the one issue on which there is no more time: climate change?” Maher asked. “Would we have to wonder if our president’s fascination with dictators is foreshadowing a coup here? Would we ever have to wonder if she was Putin’s b*tch? And instead of trying to kick millions off health care to pay tax cuts for herself, she would be trying to raise her own taxes to get more people covered. She wouldn’t be complaining, ‘It’s complicated! Who knew?’ She knew.”

At the end of his rant Maher suggests that the liberal purists who refused to recognize the clear and obvious differences between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton should go fuck themselves with "a locally grown organic cucumber."

That's a little crude for my tastes, but I certainly agree with the sentiment.

Our country would be in such better shape if these idiots had not allowed themselves to be manipulated by the Russians into believing that Hillary was winning because she was "the anointed one," and had put on their big boy pants and cast their vote for the good of the nation instead of pouting like children because they did not get their way.

Reverend Sarah Palin warns parents to "arm" their children with a Christian worldview. You first.

Sarah Palin flaunting her Christian values.

Courtesy of Sarah Palin's Holy Mother of Hypocrisy: 

Sing for joy to God our strength; shout aloud to the God of Jacob! Begin the music, strike the timbrel, play the melodious harp and lyre. Psalm 81:1-2 

Let these two quotations wash over you: 

“I am the art in your arthouses, the ideas in your institutions, the laws in your land, the message in your movies, the thoughts of your teachers, the values your kids value. I affect you. Do you affect me? – Culture 

And also this one, from the fifth-century BC Greek musician Damon of Athens: 

Give me the songs of a nation, and it matters not who writes its laws. 

I wish more of us especially our politicians – realized that ideas have consequences in the real world. When we embrace certain ideals in our movies and songs (sex without restraint, for example, which happened during the “free love” 1970s), it affects our culture in ways that rules and regulations can’t undo. (You mean like having several grandchildren born out of wedlock? That kind of "affect?")

Today, don’t let movies, songs, and the arts be dominated by liberals. Instead, arm your Christian children and grandkids with a solid worldview and encourage them to enter these areas boldly and with excellence.

Palin then attempts to hawk her own never selling book as, I suppose, an example of the kind of Christian worldview that she believes children should wield against a culture which may inflict those damn liberal facts upon their tiny little brains.

Methinks in this case Palin doth protest too much.

After all her own children's alcoholism, infidelity, and hooliganism could hardly be blamed on a culture that they were supposedly restricted from sampling.

However it could be that they learned those behaviors from that so-called "Christian" upbringing inflicted on them by their parents, which featured knock down drag out fights, multiple affairs, worship of the all mighty dollar, and of course heaps of hypocrisy.

On the other hand I know dozens of well adjusted adults who were allowed to enjoy the liberal culture as children who are NOT philanderers, drug addicts, or wife beaters.

I'm just saying.

For those who got worked up over Obama's $400,000 speaking fee, congratulations you were played by the Right Wing media yet again.

Courtesy of Washington Monthly:  

When it comes to the story about Obama accepting speaking fees, it is important to note that the story was launched by Fox Business News. All of the sudden what previous presidents – both Democrat and Republican – had been doing for years was scandalized because we’re now talking about Obama. Our current so-called “populist” president once even bragged at a rally that he used to be paid a lot of money for speeches (as much as $1.5 million for a single speech). 

Of course the folks at Fox knew this would trigger a dust-up on the left because of the fact that Hillary Clinton’s speaking fees had become such an issue in the 2016 primary. And of course, an awful lot of liberals took the bait. 

I’m not saying that all of the arguments about speaking fees are without merit. Perhaps Democrats should have a proactive conversation about whether former presidents should continue to do so. But taking the bait Fox served up and using it to suggest that a particular former Democratic president is threatening our democracy is akin to the kind of circular firing squad for which Democrats have been famous over the years.

The article goes on to point out that before there was ever any mention of this speech that the former  President had already spoken, for free, to young people in Chicago about gang violence, job  skills, and employment opportunities.

Also from the article:  

For the people who think that accepting fees for a speech indicates an erosion of our democracy, they should at least acknowledge that former President Obama is actually spending the majority of his time working with young people on civic engagement as well as reducing violence, poverty and unemployment around the country. Otherwise they are simply getting played by Fox News.

Personally I found it troubling that both Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders allowed themselves to get played by Fox News.

Warren said she was "troubled" by this news, however Sanders went much farther saying he found it "distasteful."  

Do you know what I find distasteful, so called "liberal leaders" who allow the conservative media to pull their strings so effectively.

Remember this is the same thing the Russians did to split the Democrats during the primary, and to convince the so-called "Bernie Bros" that the nomination was stolen from their candidate, which led to many of them skipping the general election in frustration.

A bit of information that was tragically under reported about this so-called Wall Street speaking engagement is that the speech is being given at a health care conference.

How could we possibly expect the President who passed such an expansive health care reform, which was not in such danger of being undermined or repealed, NOT to show up something like that?

No the criticism directed at President Obama concerning this speech is completely unwarranted, and worse yet it is another indication that even the liberals are easily led around by the nose.

Elizabeth Warren discussing how motivated the Democrats are to fight back against Donald Trump and how she is energized by the protesters is exactly the shot in the arm we need today.

There is just something very therapeutic about listening to Elizabeth Warren talk about the state of liberal politics in this America today, and her hopes for the future.

And yes Sarah Palin she did once again tell that anecdote about the little female protester with the sign that said "I fight like a girl," and unlike when you screeched it out at a conservative rally it was in fact inspiring.

For my money Elizabeth Warren is the face of liberal politics right now and whether she runs for President or not, I am positive she will continue to bravely stand up to the policies of Donald Trump and continue to be a strong voice for progress.

A little sampling of stupidity from Sarah Palin's Facebook page.

Source

I bring this to your attention not simply as a reason to Mock Palin (Though feel free to do so.), but also as a reminder that this ignorance is something that she, and those like her, actually believe to be true.

There is really no negotiating with those who believe that you are inherently evil.

House Republicans have become terrified of their own town halls.

Courtesy of Politico: 

House Republicans during a closed-door meeting Tuesday discussed how to protect themselves and their staffs from protesters storming town halls and offices in opposition to repealing Obamacare, sources in the room told Politico. 

House GOP Conference Chairwoman Cathy McMorris Rodgers invited Rep. David Reichert, a former county sheriff, to present lawmakers with protective measures they should have in place. Among the suggestions: having a physical exit strategy at town halls, or a backdoor in congressional offices to slip out of, in case demonstrations turn violent; having local police monitor town halls; replacing any glass office-door entrances with heavy doors and deadbolts; and setting up intercoms to ensure those entering congressional offices are there for appointments, not to cause chaos.

“The message was: One, be careful for security purposes. Watch your back. And two, be receptive. Honor the First Amendment, engage, be friendly, be nice,” said Republican Study Committee Chairman Mark Walker (R-N.C.). “Because it is toxic out there right now. Even some of the guys who have been around here a lot longer than I have, have never seen it to this level.” 

He later added: “For those of us who have children in grade school and that kind of thing, there’s a factor in all of this, saying: How far will the progressive movement go to try to intimidate us?” 

The conference discussion comes as Democratic activists around the nation ramp up protests against Republican efforts to repeal Obamacare. Protesters have disrupted town halls and other public events, jeering and yelling at Republicans just as conservatives did to Democrats when they were writing the law eight years ago. Conservative protesters in 2009 and 2010 were accused of spitting on and hurling racial epithets at Democratic lawmakers ahead of their votes to pass Obamacare. Republicans denied the accusations at the time.

Yeah like the article says Democrats have already been through all of this in 2009 and 2010. 

And now it is time for the Republicans to learn the meaning of "What goes around, comes around."

The one part of the article that really  bothered me was this chairman suggesting that the children of these Representatives might be endangered or that there was a fear of violence concerning the passion coming from the Left.

We, all of us who attend these town halls, must take great pains in making sure that our justifiable anger and frustration does not present itself, or seem to present itself, as violent in nature or as anything that should be feared.

Yes we can be loud,

Yes we can be insistent.

Yes we can demand answers to questions from our Representatives in Congress.

But no we cannot threaten or harm these people, or their families, in order to further our agenda.

After all we are liberals, and liberals use facts to bludgeon our opponents into submission.

Let's just make sure we have plenty of facts in our arsenal.

Prominent liberal groups demand that Senate Democrats block every one of Trump's nominees.

Courtesy of Vox: 

Several prominent progressive organizations are demanding that the Democratic Party’s senators do whatever they can to block Donald Trump’s nominee to the Supreme Court. On Tuesday night, Trump picked Neil Gorsuch, 49, to fill the seat. 

“As long as the president is in flagrant disregard for the basic underpinnings of our republic, it is no time to consider a Supreme Court nominee,” said Ben Wikler, the Washington director of MoveOn.org, in an interview. “The next election is a while away, but what Senate Democrats do here and over the next few months will be seared into the memory of every Democratic voter.” 

The core of the progressive groups’ argument is that Senate Democrats have dramatically underestimated the scale and depth of their voters’ anger toward Trump’s administration. (Only one Senate Democrat, Oregon’s Jeff Merkley, has announced that he’ll filibuster Trump’s nominee.)

“We want to see our leaders in Congress standing up as strongly to the Trump administration as we are in the streets and in airports across the country,” said Charles Chamberlain, executive director of Democracy for America. “Anything less than a complete and utter rejection of Trump’s Cabinet appointees and of their Supreme Court appointees is absolutely unacceptable.”

I would typically be against tactics like this because I think being oppositional for the sake of opposition hurts the country.

However Donald Trump is a special case and he NEEDS to be stopped, or at the very least slowed down, every step of the way.

I would argue that these same tactics should have been used to stop the appointment of Rex Tillerson and Ben Carson, but they most certainly need to be used to stop Secretary of Education nominee Betsy Devos (Who they are now getting help with by the way.), Supreme Court nominee Neil Gorsuch (Who is much worse than we have been led to believe.), DHHS nominee Tom Price, Secretary of Energy nominee Rick Perry, and well essentially the whole kit and kaboodle.

And I would also support threatening those that don't recognize the outrage of the American people over having Putin's puppet running our country with primary challenges in the upcoming elections.

We are at war people, and it is high time that the progressives demonstrated that they can kick butt with the best of them.

Sarah Palin is really pissy that liberals are not kowtowing to Cheeto Hitler.

From the dumbest part of the internet, Sarah Palin's website: 

Unhinged! 2016 Presidential Candidate Says UNTHINKABLE About Trump 

Sadly, we have seen the liberal left become absolutely unhinged following Donald Trump’s election victory. (It's funny how she confuses the word "unhinged" with "patriotic.")

Celebrities have threatened to leave America. Riots have erupted across the country. Politicians have tried to delegitimize Trump’s victory. The media has blamed the election results on Russia. (And your point?)

It has been a mess. 

The list of liberals who have said outrageous things about Trump seems to grow by the hour. (Actually there are a number of conservatives on this list as well.)


Then Palin references this tweet from Martin O'Malley.

Now is not the time for reconciliation. Dietrich Bonhoeffer didn't reconcile with the Nazis. MLK didn't reconcile with the KKK. Now we fight pic.twitter.com/BoQNl0on1N

— Martin O'Malley (@MartinOMalley) January 15, 2017

Seems perfectly reasonable to me.

Okay back to the bitching.

Embarrassing. 

Can’t we do a little better than that? (Yes we can, we are already organizing protests all over the country.)

Nothing Donald Trump has ever done is even remotely comparable to the Nazis. (Let's see, target one group of citizens as being the cause of all our problems, rallying white supremacists to follow him, having a private secret security force, attacking the press, using totalitarian language, yep nothing comparable to he Nazis.)


It’s foolish to even try to make the comparison. (Foolish = Patriotic.)

Martin O’Malley didn’t gain any traction in the 2016 race and statements like this are part of the reason why. 

No he lost because he was up against Hillary Clinton, the same Hillary Clinton that her candidate needed the Russian government and FBI's help to defeat.

You know after all of these years of arguing about preserving American values and standing up to authoritarianism you would think that Sarah Palin would be on the front line in fighting against Donald Trump, and his Russian puppeteer.

But instead, like many conservatives, she has allowed her partisanship to interfere with her patriotism.

Which of course is not surprising since that patriotism was completely false to begin with.

A visual aid to help avoid fake news sites.

I think it is a little simplistic but basically on point.

For those wondering where IM would fit on that graphic I would think we were somewhere between Skews Liberal and Hyper-Partisan Liberal.

I make no apologies for being a proud liberal but I do work hard to present the facts to back up my point of view.

Mother Jones reporter slams liberals for failing to defend Hillary Clinton during the witch hunt over her private e-mail server.

Much of what is in this article I have pointed out on this blog repeatedly.

Seeing it laid out in a time line is however rather revealing. (There are also a number of editorial comments so take note.)

Here we go: 

So here's a timeline of the email server affair. FAIR WARNING: It's not a complete timeline. Google has plenty of those for you. It's a timeline that highlights a few very specific things that I think even a lot of liberals never quite understood. Let's start: 

March 2009: Two months after being confirmed as secretary of state, Hillary Clinton makes the fateful decision to host her unclassified email on a private server. 


THIS IS IMPORTANT. Everybody at the State Department has an unclassified email account. In the aughts, most used state.gov alone, but lots of people also used Gmail or another commercial email service. These accounts are used routinely for day-to-day business, but only for unclassified material. There is an entirely different system for classified communications. The only way that Clinton's email account differed from a state.gov account is that it was hosted on a private server. 

September 12, 2012: The American consulate in Benghazi is attacked. Even though Clinton is literally faultless in this,1 conservatives begin a four-year campaign of investigations, subpoenas, and conspiracy theories that are plainly little more than partisan attacks designed to smear Clinton. 

February 2013: Clinton steps down as secretary of state. 

September 2013: The National Archives updates its regulations on the handling of email and other public records. October 2014: After yet another records request in the Benghazi affair, the State Department asks all former secretaries of state for any official records in their possession. 

December 2014: After removing her personal emails, Clinton delivers all her official emails to the State Department. Her staff asks Clinton what they should do with the personal emails, and she tells them she no longer needs them. The hosting company in Colorado, Platte River Networks, is instructed to delete Clinton's existing email archives and to thenceforth preserve new emails for 60 days before deleting them. 

March 2015: The New York Times reveals that Clinton's emails were hosted on a private server. The Benghazi zealots immediately subpoena her email server. 

March 2015: A Platte River tech discovers that he never deleted the email archives. At this point, even though Clinton's staff has notified him not to make any changes (due to the subpoena), he deletes the old archive. 

THIS IS IMPORTANT. It is now six years since Clinton began her tenure at the State Department and two years since she left. In that entire time, there was never any concern over the possibility that Clinton sent or received classified material over unclassified channels. In fact, I don't think there has ever been any official concern about any secretary of state sending classified information over unclassified channels. 

March 2015: Republicans in Congress ask the inspectors general of both the State Department and the intelligence community to review Clinton's email practices. Their letter states, "We are concerned that diplomatically sensitive, and possibly classified, information may have been transmitted and stored in an insecure manner." 

July 2015: The IC inspector general tells Congress that it found classified information in a small sample of Clinton's email that it reviewed. Both inspectors general ask the Justice Department to review all of Clinton's email for a "potential compromise of classified information." This is the start of the FBI investigation. 

THIS IS IMPORTANT: Although the referral came from both IGs, the underlying issue is an ancient feud between the State Department and the CIA. The CIA basically wants to classify everything. The State Department, which has to work in the real world, takes the pragmatic view that classified information sometimes has to be discussed over unclassified channels. It just has to done carefully and circuitously. 

July 2016: After a full year, the FBI finally concludes its investigation. Normally, FBI officials merely turn over their recommendations to prosecutors at the Justice Department, but this time FBI Director James Comey decides to host a detailed press conference about the investigation. He says Clinton did nothing illegal, a conclusion that he later describes as "not even a close call." However, he also declares that Clinton was "extremely careless" with her email. 

August 2016: The FBI releases its interview notes, which make it clear that Comey exaggerated wildly in his press conference. Clinton's archives contained only three trivial emails that were marked classified. A couple of thousand more emails were retroactively classified. Should they have been? The CIA says yes. Clinton says no: They were carefully worded discussions between professionals who knew perfectly well how to conduct conversations like this. Comments from other State Department officials back up Clinton's view. There was, it turns out, little evidence that anyone was careless, let alone "extremely careless," but since the emails are now classified, no one will ever know for sure.2 

October 2016: Two weeks before Election Day, Comey writes a letter announcing that the FBI has discovered records of emails between Clinton and her aide, Huma Abedin, on the computer of Abedin's estranged husband, Anthony Weiner. There is nothing unexpected about this. All of Clinton's aides probably have copies of emails from her, and as we now know, the FBI had no reason to think Abedin's emails were anything they hadn't already seen. But Comey declines to say any of this in his letter and the press goes nuts. 

November 6, 2016: Comey announces that the investigation is over and none of the Abedin emails were relevant. 

November 8, 2016: Donald Trump is elected president of the United States.

This is how the article ends:

The bottom line is simple: There was never any real reason for either the IG investigations or the FBI investigation. And in the end, the FBI found nothing out of the ordinary—just the usual State-CIA squabbling. Nevertheless, under pressure from Republicans, Comey spent a full year on the investigation; reported its conclusions in the most damaging possible way; and then did it again two weeks before the election. Because of this, Clinton lost about 2 percent of the vote, and the presidency. 

Liberals should have defended her with gusto from the start. There was never anything here and no evidence that Clinton did anything seriously wrong. And yet we didn't. Many liberals just steered clear of the whole thing. Others—including me sometimes—felt like every defense had to contain a series of caveats acknowledging that, yes, the private server was a bad idea, harumph harumph. And some others didn't even go that far. The result was that in the public eye, both liberals and conservatives were more or less agreeing that there was a lot of smoke here. So smoke there was. And now Donald Trump is a month away from being president.

I find myself in almost total agreement with everything that is said here.

What the e-mail probe, the Wikileaks dumps, and the Comey letter did was to create the shadow of a doubt that they talk about during criminal trials.

However typically the shadow of a doubt is what keeps somebody from being convicted, in this case it kept Hillary from being completely exonerated.

No matter how many investigations failed to prove criminality, or how many accusations failed to amount to anything significant, it all still hung around her like a fog which continued to create just enough mistrust, for Putin and his puppet to do their thing.

So you may ask why is this important to get on the record now?

Simple, history is written by the winners, and those winners despise Hillary Clinton. So you can bet they are going to trash her reputation at every opportunity and impugn her character constantly until those who read about her in the years to come will wonder how such a completely flawed individual ever even came close to winning the presidency.

However in reality Hillary Clinton was a fierce warrior who fought off her attackers and dictators at every turn. A woman arguably more prepared to be President of the United States than every man who came before her. And a person who it took the combined efforts of Wikileaks, the Russian government, the Republican witch hunters, and the FBI to finally defeat.

That is what history needs to remember about the woman who should be our leader for the next four years, NOT the garbage that the Right Wing will be slinging in her direction to destroy her legacy until her name fades into the darkness.

As liberals we should have completely ignored the right wing mudslingers and defended her more effectively. The least we can do now is to defend the truth about her campaign.

We fucking owe her that.

New website targets college professors that they feel are advancing "leftist propaganda." Welcome to Donald Trump's America.

Courtesy of New York Times:  

A new website that accuses nearly 200 college professors of advancing “leftist propaganda in the classroom” and discriminating against conservative students has been criticized as a threat to academic freedom. 

The site, Professor Watchlist, which first appeared Nov. 21, says it names those instructors who “advance a radical agenda in lecture halls.” 

“We aim to post professors who have records of targeting students for their viewpoints, forcing students to adopt a certain perspective, and/or abuse or harm students in any way for standing up for their beliefs,” wrote Matt Lamb, an organizer of the site. 

The Professor Watchlist is a project of Turning Point USA, a nonprofit organization that says its mission is to educate students about “true free market values.” Charlie Kirk, its founder and executive director, wrote in a blog post that “it’s no secret that some of America’s college professors are totally out of line” and that it was time to expose them. 

Yep a website that targets teachers for teaching facts, instead of upholding "conservative values."

Nothing troubling about that, right?

Why do I get the feeling that this is just the beginning?

Bernie Sanders launches "Our Revolution." What's it called when the missile disintegrates on the launchpad?

We're launching Our Revolution tonight with 2600 events across the country! Find one near you and RSVP right now: https://t.co/sATmaCY8Bp

— Our Revolution (@OurRevolution) August 24, 2016

Courtesy of the Washington Times:

Wednesday marks the debut of Sen. Bernie Sanders‘ reinvention. The former presidential hopeful is launching “Our Revolution”, a new activist outreach to his many fans, in an online broadcast to 2,600 “watching parties” in every state — as far flung as Fort Yukon, Alaska; Gouldsboro, Maine; Brownsville, Texas; Naalehu, Hawaii, and Minot, North Dakota. The address begins at 9 p.m. ET. 

In addition, Mr. Sanders will publish a book titled “Our Revolution: A Future to Believe In.” The work is due on book shelves Nov. 15, primarily recapping his campaign trail experiences and underscoring his progressive ideas for America.

Oh so Sanders is helping to launch a grassroots organization for the Democrats just like that Tea Party "grass roots" organization for the Republicans.

One and he's writing a book too?

(Don't make comparisons to Sarah Palin, don't make comparisons to Sarah Palin, don't make comparisons to Sarah Palin!)

Oh that's nice.

However I understand there might be some problems already plaguing this fledgling campaign.

Courtesy of Politico:

The revolution is already tearing itself apart. 

Less than a week before its official launch on Wednesday, Bernie Sanders’ new political group is working its way through an internal war that led to the departure of digital director Kenneth Pennington and at least four others from a team of 15, and the return of presidential campaign manager Jeff Weaver as the group’s new president. 

“Kenneth chose to leave the organization. He’d worked on the campaign from the very beginning … he decided to do something else I guess,” Weaver said Monday evening, but “we’re very happy to be putting the A-team back together.”

And here's more from NBC News:

The dispute is both strategic and personal. The staffers who quit had clashed with Weaver on the campaign, calling him domineering and questioning his judgement, and they joined Our Revolution only on condition he would not be involved. 

They say they envisioned Our Revolution as a small-dollar-funded group that would use grassroots organizing to help elect progressive candidates, along the lines of Democracy for America, which grew out of the 2004 Howard Dean presidential campaign. 

Weaver has other ideas. He wanted to supplement the group's organizing and online fundraising efforts with independent expenditure TV advertising and larger checks from major donors. Internal critics say that contradicts the spirit of Sanders' movement, which was built around fighting big money in politics. 

The shakeup reflects a long-running rift in the Sanders campaign between its older leadership, like Weaver, and its younger staffers, who saw themselves as more ideologically committed to the revolution and thought the consultants at the top were using the campaign to line their pockets.

To be fair there have been plenty of very successful enterprises that started off a little shaky.

However I think we can all breathe a sigh of relief that this is happening to some bodunk, doomed to fail Tea Party ripoff, and not happening to a campaign that is actually on the glide path to taking up residence in the White House.

Bernie Sanders predicts a "messy" DNC convention, wants to exercise more control over the Democratic party moving forward.

Courtesy of The Big Story: 

Bernie Sanders predicted Monday that the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia could be "messy" as he pushed the party to adopt his progressive agenda, but added, "Democracy is not always nice and quiet and gentle." 

The Democratic presidential candidate said in an interview with The Associated Press that his supporters hoped to see a platform at the July convention that reflects the needs of working families, the poor and young people as opposed to one that represents Wall Street and corporate America. 

The Vermont senator said he will "condemn any and all forms of violence" but his campaign was bringing in newcomers to the process and first-time attendees of political conventions. He said the Democratic Party could choose to be more inclusive. 

"I think if they make the right choice and open the doors to working-class people and young people and create the kind of dynamism that the Democratic Party needs, it's going to be messy," Sanders said. "Democracy is not always nice and quiet and gentle but that is where the Democratic Party should go." 

Asked if the convention could be messy, Sanders said: "So what? Democracy is messy. Everyday my life is messy. But if you want everything to be quiet and orderly and allow, you know, just things to proceed without vigorous debate, that is not what democracy is about."

So the question to be asked is "How messy will it be?"

Part of the answer to that question might be suggested by this Jake Tapper tweet from yesterday.

Reporter: Sanders wants say over Clinton cabinet picks https://t.co/VWi0gkPKFq - @jmartNYT & @JFKucinich on #TheLead

— Jake Tapper (@jaketapper) May 23, 2016

Okay well I think we all know that there is NO way that Hillary is going to give Bernie Sanders any say over who she appoints to her cabinet. And demanding that she do so is guaranteed to cause conflict.

Of course the pressure that Bernie wants to apply to Hillary to get her to bend to his will is the promise of endorsing her and sending his army of supporters to cast their votes for her in the general.

However as it turns out that support may be nontransferable.

Courtesy of the New York Times:

Mr. Sanders has drawn enthusiastic support from young people, a common pattern for outsider candidates. But here, too, the impression of ideological commitment is mostly illusory. While young Democrats in the January survey were more likely than those over age 35 to call themselves liberals, their ideological self-designations seem to have been much more lightly held, varying significantly when they were reinterviewed. 

Moreover, warm views of Mr. Sanders increased the liberalism of young Democrats by as much as 1.5 points on the seven-point ideological scale. For many of them, liberal ideology seems to have been a short-term byproduct of enthusiasm for Mr. Sanders rather than a stable political conviction. 

Perhaps for that reason, the generational difference in ideology seems not to have translated into more liberal positions on concrete policy issues — even on the specific issues championed by Mr. Sanders. For example, young Democrats were less likely than older Democrats to support increased government funding of health care, substantially less likely to favor a higher minimum wage and less likely to support expanding government services. Their distinctive liberalism is mostly a matter of adopting campaign labels, not policy preferences.

The illusory progressive ideals of Sanders' supporters combined with the rabid anti-Hillary rhetoric that permeates his movement, and their absolute certainty that the system is rigged against their candidate, means that counting on their votes in November may be a waste of time and resources.

The Bernie supporters who are actually Democrats will vote for the Democrat in the race, but the ones who showed up only for the revolution, well those folks will be the ones outside arguing with the cops and screaming that the whole system is rigged.

So if Sanders has really nothing to bargain with, why bargain?

By the way for those still clinging to the idea that Sanders had this nomination stolen from him, you might want to read this post from Kos.

Starting to really love the Liberal Redneck.

"Crazier than Michele Bachmann on bath salts."

Oh yeah, this guy's going places.

With the Bernie Sanders campaign now defined by anger, frustration, and defiance many feel it is doing more harm than good to Democratic hopes in 2016.

First CNN would like to clear something up about the aggression shown by Sanders' supporters in Nevada. It was planned: 

Sanders officials say that the Democratic Party should embrace the senator's supporters, not repel them. While they say they don't condone the behavior of some of their supporters at the Nevada convention, they blame leaders of the Nevada Democratic Party for shutting out Sanders' backers, prompting the chaos. 

But new audio obtained by CNN shows a senior Sanders aide -- on the eve of the Nevada convention -- encouraging the senator's supporters try to "take over" the convention, change party rules and continue the "revolution" that Sanders has long campaigned on. 

"You should not leave," Joan Kato, the national delegates director, told Sanders supporters in a meeting last week at the Rumor Boutique Hotel. "I'm going to repeat that, unless you are told by someone from the campaign ... that you can leave, you should not leave."

I am not sure what the Sanders' campaign thought would happen when they instruct their supporters to "take over" and refuse to leave, but clearly they should have expected anger, disruption, and death threats directed at the party chair. Because that is what happened.

Josh Marshall over at TPM now realizes that the problem with the Sanders campaign come from the top:

For months I'd thought and written that Sanders campaign manager Jeff Weaver was the key driver of toxicity in the the Democratic primary race. Weaver has been highly visible on television, far more than campaign managers tend to be. He's also been the one constantly upping the tension, pressing the acrimony and unrealism of the campaign as Sanders actual chances of winning dwindled. 

But now I realize I had that wrong. 

This should have been obvious to me. The tone and tenor of a campaign always come from the top. It wasn't obvious to me until now.

If you think that losing a staunch liberal like Josh Marshall is bad get a load of what Markos Moulitsas wrote over on the Daily Kos yesterday: 

Bernie Sanders lost the delegate battle at the Nevada State Democratic convention this past weekend, which only makes sense since he lost the state when voters voted. However, that didn’t stop one of the biggest explosions of outright crazy in Democratic politics in … forever.

Moulitsas then goes on to list all of the harassment directed at   State Democratic Party Chair Roberta Lange by Sanders supporters and sums the whole thing up thusly: 

This is no longer a presidential campaign. I don’t know what it is, but that moment has passed. 

They say when, as a liberal, you lose Kos. You have pretty much lost your progressive credibility.

But not to worry Bernie has at least somebody on his side.

Bernie Sanders is being treated very badly by the Democrats - the system is rigged against him. Many of his disenfranchised fans are for me!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 18, 2016

Oh yeah Donald Trump is LOVING this constant talk of the Democratic party being unfair and claims of corruption coming from the Sanders supporters. He could not have asked for a better scenario going into the general.

I think it is now obvious to just about everybody who is not a rabid Sanders supporter that the campaign is over and whatever Bernie hoped to accomplish has now been tainted.

In fact the campaign itself seems to have recognized the writing on the wall as well, they just don't want to the people who are still blindly following them and sending them their beer money.

Courtesy of Politico:

A handful of high-level staffers have left Bernie Sanders’ campaign in recent days, including his director of technology and three of the four members of his original senior leadership team in California — a state his team has said is critical to his bid for the Democratic nomination. 

The moves come at a time of contraction for the campaign, which let go of hundreds of field staffers earlier this month amid slowed fundraising. 

There are ways to end a political campaign with some dignity, but it really seems at this point that moment has passed for Bernie Sanders.

Which is too bad because I really feel that many of the issues that Sanders brought up were very important to have been included in this campaign season. However they have now been discussed, the Democratic party has taken note, and Hillary has included some of them in her platform.

So for Bernie Sanders to drag this out until the July convention, where his supporters will undoubtedly disrupt the proceedings and cause mayhem, seems completely unnecessary and even potentially harmful.

No the Clinton campaign will NOT call for Sanders to end his campaign, they can't since it would scandalize his supporters and likely anger them into skipping the November elections entirely.

But he needs to.

And do you know what? On some level I think he knows that.

Well, at least he should.

Bill Maher reminds conservatives that they can't blame liberals for Donald Trump.

Courtesy of Salon:

“Conservatives can blame liberals for a lot of things,” Maher said during his “New Rules” segment. “The one thing you’re not gonna get to blame us for is Donald Trump.” 

“If we have to own the man-bun, you have to own The Donald,” he added. 

The logic behind the theory is that left-wing PC policing led to the oppositional rise of Trump and his rabid voter base. 

“That is their theory, that Trump voters are perfectly nice if left alone,” Maher said. “Like raccoons, they just want to eat garbage and crap in your hot tub.”

Yeah Trump is not our fault, can't blame us.

But do you know who we can blame?

 And whose fault were they?

Once again, certainly not ours.