A note to our readers

Hey --
Another Sunday and we've got another edition.

Thank you to Dallas and everyone else who helped out:

The Third Estate Sunday Review's Dona, Jess, Ty, Ava and Jim,
Rebecca of Sex and Politics and Screeds and Attitude,
Betty of Thomas Friedman Is a Great Man,
C.I. of The Common Ills and The Third Estate Sunday Review,
Kat of Kat's Korner (of The Common Ills),
Cedric of Cedric's Big Mix,
Mike of Mikey Likes It!,
Elaine of Like Maria Said Paz,
Ruth of Ruth's Report,
Wally of The Daily Jot,
and Marcia SICKOFITRDLZ.

Here's what we've got:

Best statement of the week -- Hillary got a big laugh from the audience with this joke on ABC's This Week.

Editorial: The Unspeakable Barack Obama -- He's sinkable and he's sinking. Who will tell the people? Not Bill G whose head went soft and mushy when he went to The Nation.

TV: The Beauty & The Grump -- Bill Moyers angling for a nod from Ashton, who knew? Ava and C.I. return to what Moyers returned to Friday, his crime scene. Hard hitting and funny. My favorite line comes is the one that uses "locker room" -- I won't repeat it here in case anyone reads the note first.

Roundtable -- Illustrations by Betty's son. We think in the editing "I" got lost in one of Cedric's statements. We can't find it but we're pretty sure it got deleted. Our apologies.

Bully Boy's Endless Death Machine -- We rip-off C.I. (Jess' idea and C.I. agreed).

The Lies Of Life -- Will there be a part two? Maybe. We were mainly trying to have something completed because Ava and C.I. said, "If we do two pieces, we better not come back to find that everyone else partied while we were working." So we decided to go fictional.

Dear Betsy Reed -- Ava and C.I.'s second piece. Wonderful. We love it. Betsy poses as a 'feminist' and gets called out. She didn't really think she could get away with it, did she? She had to know she'd be called out. She's a lying loser who prevents women from being published in The Nation and now wants to pose as a 'feminist' in order to tear apart Hillary. I'll note that Ava and C.I. really were laughing at her lies. They find her ridiculous. She should be aware that this is them going after her with kids gloves. Next time it will not be so pretty. "Vag" and "vags" is from Juno which Rebecca made them watch late Friday night/Saturday morning. (They say check out Juno now that it's on DVD if you missed it at the movies.)

TV: The candidates quick take -- And we have a third piece. Ava and C.I. were begged, as we were editing, to write this. They hadn't planned to and didn't take notes. They call it a "quick take." "It is not a review, it is not a commentary," states Ava.

Campaigns -- Nader and Clinton. Again, we hope to have a Nader button illustration by next week. Hope.

Breaking Barack news -- While we were editing, Ava and C.I. pointed this out and we wrote it quickly. It's about the Meet The Press interview and we sold them on doing a third piece by stating, "You know come next Sunday, everyone's going to expect you to comment on the interviews otherwise." So to get it out of the way and not have anything to carry over to next weekend, they agreed.

Highlights -- Mike, Kat, Betty, Elaine, Rebecca, Marcia, Cedric, Ruth and Wally wrote this. We thank them for it.


-- Jim, Dona, Ty, Jess, Ava and C.I.

Best statement of the week

In response to George Stephanopoulos comment that Rush Limbaugh telling Republicans to vote for her, "He's always had a crush on me."

Editorial: The Unspeakable Barack Obama

"Obama Faces Test in Asserting His Own Brand of Patriotism" screams the headline to Alec MacGillis' front page story on this morning's Washington Post. You got to wonder what the hell the DNC and the super delegates supporting Bambi are thinking? The Democratic Party is in the midst of a primary to determine who their presidential candidate will be and one of the last two nominees standing has a question mark next to "patriotic." They think this bodes well for the future?



Repeating, page one of today's Post. In today's Boston Globe, Mark Sendor writes in to ask how Barack Obama can be trusted noting: "If Obama has trouble handling the petty demagoguery of Wright, who just has a big mouth, how will he handle the truly dangerous demagoguery of tyrants such as Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who may back up their toxic views with violence and horrific weaponry?"



At CNN, John King analyzes recent polls and finds:



• Six in 10 Americans have an unfavorable opinion of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Obama's former pastor, according to the latest CNN Opinion Research Corp. survey.
• Nearly four in 10 Americans (38 percent) have an unfavorable opinion of Obama in the latest CNN polling, up 10 percentage points from the beginning of the year.
• Half of Americans think a John McCain presidency would bring different policies than the Bush administration.
• And in a new Pew Research Center national survey, Clinton's lead among whites who didn't attend college has increased to 40 percentage points from 10 in March.



Meanwhile Barack's still trying to convince people he's not an elitist. When not insulting voters on campaign stops by propping a foot up on a table they're seated at (and flashing his crotch, we're sure John Nichols drools). And though he rarely misses a moment to insist that Jeremiah Wright is a dead issue (a point he insists upon making and remaking in interview after interview), the fact remains that when on Letterman to poke fun at himself last week, he avoided the topic.



Despite the non-stop slobbering by alleged 'journalists,' despite the non-stop smears against Hillary, Barack can't close the deal. No one's ever had an easier ride in a primary campaign and no one's ever repeatedly blown it so many times. But that's Barack, the L-O-S-E-R who will most likely drag the Democratic ticket down in November.



It really is all about him and you didn't have to catch all the coverage last week to grasp that. An article, the Today interview, his Tuesday statements about Wright, it all made clear that Barack finally broke with the man who damned the country over . . . his comments on Barack. And just think, it only took him twenty years (see Cedric & Wally's "Want an answer? Give him 20 years""THIS JUST IN! SUPERIOR JUDGEMENT?") and a personal insult to finally make a decision!



"How dare he?" was the subtext over and over. Wright said Barack was just a politician and heaven forbid anyone point out the Professional Virgin was in fact a politician of many years. It's easy to forget that fact since Barack's record is so sleight. And also because he still refuses to release his papers from when he was in the Illinois state legislature.



What about that? He claims he didn't have a full staff back then. It's all a mess, he tells the press. But isn't he the fundraiser supreme? Doesn't he have tons of money on hand? Seems like he could have used some of that to pay a few staffers to organize those records and release them, especially after he attempted to build a conspiracy around the Clintons' tax returns.



But that's Barack, holding others to a standard and expecting everyone to hold him to none. This is, after all, the candidate who's always whining about how unfair Hillary's campaign is. And his surrogates/thugs take to their keyboards to say, "She's ruining the race for the Democratic Party!"



They really mean she's risking his coronation.



If they were really concerned that either he or she could be hurt by the prolonged campaign, they'd be calling out Barack's latest comment that Hillary's "phony." You think the GOP won't run with that if she gets the nomination? "Even Barack Obama called her phony!" But his thugs only get their noses out of joint when it has to do with their lover-boy.



Barack's run a divisive campaign. He's nothing but pretty words (screw you, Betsy the Bimbo Reed). At least on top. Underneath, he's just another Chicago politician, raised to fight dirty, raised to smear. Just a new face on the Richard Daley political machine.



Hint, when your patriotism is so much in question that The Washington Post front-pages it, you're really not as electable as your thug machine works to make you appear. The bloom fell off the rose and all that's left are the Claire McCaskill's with their noses up Barack's ass swearing they smell lavender.



It's becoming obvious that the only scent wafting over Barack is failure. The only question left is how loony will the crazed White Mamas and Airy Boys of The Left go when the unspeakable starts getting spoken more loudly?

TV: The Beauty & The Grump

We're eagerly anticipating Bill Moyers appearance on CW's Beauty & The Geek. We can't wait to see the makeover he's given and hear the beauties carping about him. The announcement hasn't been made yet but we're sure it will be shortly. After all, he already willingly took part in Austin Kutcher's Punked. But we'll get to that.



We're envisioning his whines while he's put through some man-scaping, while he's forced to work out and while someone finally takes a pair of scissors to demolish what is basically a chili-bowl haircut. Secretly, we're hoping he's one of the Geeks left out in the cold because the whiners and piners are so much funnier than the ones who can adapt.



Bill Moyers inability to adapt led to his Punked. We wrote about it last week ("TV: Mission Impossible"), his embarrassing stroking of crackpot and hate monger Jeremiah Wright. Bill was on a mission to save Barack Obama's presidential nominee campaign and he was more than willing to look like an idiot in order to do so. Just so you know, what freaked out the Obama campaign about last week's review was bringing up Wright's remarks about Natalee Hollaway. They feared what might happen if Wright's condemning of a missing woman really got amplification. Fortunately for them, that was among the many topics Bill avoided in order to try to convince America that Wright was . . . well, right.



Among the many not sending valentines to Moyers last week were Alessandra Stanley (New York Times) and Howard Kurtz (Washington Post). We wonder if they got the same whining from people at PBS that we did? If so, we'll assume they only had to endure them, as we did, until Tuesday afternoon. After that, PBS friends stopped calling to whine. That's when the chickens coming home to roost started getting counted or, as a friend on the CPB put it to us, "I was planning to gripe but then I heard how many complaints we were getting on the interview."



On Thursday, Michael Getler, PBS ombudsperson, would weigh in:



On the other hand, as ombudsmen often say, this came across to me more as a conversation among theologians than it did as a truly probing interview with a truly controversial person who had said some truly inflammatory things and had become deeply inserted into a tight, hard-fought and historic race for the Democratic presidential nomination.
While I don't endorse the language or the broader criticisms below, I do feel that there were not enough questions asked and some that were asked came across as too reserved and too soft, considering the volatility of the charges. For example, after replaying at length a Wright sermon delivered the first Sunday after 9/11-- in which Wright invoked America's role in slavery, taking the country from the Indians, bombing Grenada, Panama, Libyan leader Gaddafi's house, Hiroshima, Nagasaki and Iraq, plus state terrorism against Palestinians and black South Africans to conclude that the 9/11 attacks were "America's chickens are coming home to roost" -- Moyers asked: "When people saw the sound bites from it this year, they were upset because you seemed to be blaming America. Did you somehow fail to communicate?" As Howard Kurtz wrote in The Washington Post afterwards: "Thought he was blaming America? Where did anyone get that idea?" It would be hard to formulate a more delicate way to put a question to Wright about that sermon without challenging any of its content.
Moyers did seek to draw Wright out about his "G** damn America" statement, and he called Wright to task, still rather gently, about Louis Farrakhan. But others of those inflammatory, and inaccurate, statements that Moyers himself laid out at the top of the program went largely unchallenged and those that did come up didn't really get addressed until well into the hour-long program. Some comments, such as the HIV accusation, didn't get addressed at all, nor were other questions asked about whether, for example, the U.S. should have invaded mainland Japan at the cost of countless lives, American and Japanese, rather than dropping two atomic weapons.
One of the more curious aspects of that sermon right after 9/11, in which Wright clearly blames America's policies, is that he wrapped this whole idea that "chickens are coming home to roost" as something that other people have said. He referred specifically to a former U.S. ambassador to Iraq, Edward Peck, and an appearance that Peck had made on Fox News just a day earlier on Sept. 15, 2001. Wright said: "America's chickens are coming home to roost! Violence begets violence. Hatred begets hatred and terrorism begets terrorism. A white ambassador said that y'all, not a black militant."
Actually, Peck never used the phrase about chickens coming home to roost.





The Peck issue is one we wish we had caught; however, we don't watch Fox "News." But it goes to the larger problem of Wright and people like him. Regardless of race, they stand up in front of a congregation, using the 'moral authority' that's been vested into their role, to proclaim 'facts' that often aren't. Like when Wright smeared Natalee Holloway. Or when he declared AIDS was invented by the US government to destroy African-Americans. They lie and they lie not to fill time but to enrage a congregation. Rage gets the blood boiling and shuts off questions. That's why so many are so comfortable enraging.



So Bill got Punked and the press noticed. It smarted. Smarted so much he had to open his show Friday with it, as if he were picking at a scab, via a lengthy commentary. A lengthy and embarrassing commentary in which Bill tried to justify Wright's post-interview statements and to defend his own embarrassing interview from the previous week.



Insisting there was a "double standard," he then went after John Hagee (a popular target for Bill) endorsing John McCain. McCain's a Republican and we're really not shocked by anything that party does -- seven years and counting of the Occupation of the White House, we lost the ability to be shocked around July of 2001. But it was cute that Bill brought up Hagee's remarks about AIDS, having worked overtime during his interview with Wright to avoid Wright's crackpot talk on the subject. Then Bill was -- apparently reading from Movement publications -- insisting that it was no different from when "Jerry Falwell said the attack" 9-11 "was God's judgement on America for having driven out of our schools and the public square" -- driven what? Bill was so worked up he forgot to include the direct object to his statement.



The Falwell canard is a popular one and a telling one. Falwell made those crackpot statements. The two are not the same. When Falwell and Pat Robertson had that "discussion," they were immediately called out including by the White House. Yes, Bully Boy was quicker in responding to that sort of hate speech than was Barack Obama. They love to leave that detail out. They love to play it as if Falwell and Robertson made those remarks and never got called out when, in fact, they were called out across the political spectrum. The same sort of calling out that Moyers and others attempted to shield Wright from. Who's the hypocrite?



Then, apparently still on "double standards" but it was hard to tell because it was Bill as ornery as a Texas tick on a hound dog in July (or however Dan Rather would word it), he was off to Billy Graham and his deplorable comments about Jews. "Jon Stewart recently played a tape" of the comments, Bill tells you. We're far too busy for basic cable so we'll take Bill at his word and just wonder why that tape was played since it's at least a year old. But, and pay attention because Bill doesn't want you to grasp this, it came out this decade. It was thirty years old. We called it out when the tape surfaced. But comparing remarks from the early seventies to Wright's modern-day tirades is really a stretch.



Bill concludes that this "means it is all about race, isn't it?" What? He leaves out the part that all of his examples have resulted in calling out. He leaves out the condemnation (from all but John McCain, the non-straight shooter) and he does that because he wants to falsely claim the criticism of Wright rests on Wright's race. Give it a rest Bill, you've prostituted yourself out enough for one candidate already. We doubt you even worked up this much defense for LBJ.



But he wasn't done whoring. It was time to meet back up with Dr. Kathy. To get our positive criticism out of the way, Kathleen Hall Jamieson looked professional. She was dressed her best yet and her hair was perfect. (For those late to the party, the program went into crazed mode over one of our critiques of Dr. Kathy and Bill, insisting that we never offered "positive feedback.") We also think Dr. Kathy provided a great service: Reminding Bill Moyers that there were two candidates vying for the Democratic presidential nomination.



If you have comprehension issues and haven't yet grasped whom Bill favors, note that it was always "Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton" out of his mouth when mentioning the candidates. A curious and non-alphabetical listing that never varies. (Though sometimes he words it "Obama and Clinton.") You could also watch the dialogue and notice that, were it not for Dr. Kathy, Hillary might not have come up. There was Bill -- who sees racism everywhere (except in his own hiring practices) -- waxing on about Barack non-stop. He really doesn't enjoy talking about Hillary and he really doesn't enjoy women.



That probably registered best when Bill and Dr. Kathy spoke of Elizabeth Edwards. Elizabeth Edwards is trying to put the focus on issues and has written a column for The New York Times and appeared on a host of programs in order to do so. But stop a minute. Now think. What show hasn't had Elizabeth Edwards on?



Bill Moyers Journal. He's got plenty of time to go slack jawed over Jeremiah Wright -- while insisting that Wright is a non-issue -- but a woman trying to turn the focus to issues? Still hasn't made time to sit down with her.



Did anyone else think Bill squirmed when Dr. Kathy uttered the word "gender"?



Dr. Kathy actually provided a service in her commentary this week by reaching back into the past. She hasn't always done that and we'll rate her critique as superior than in the past. Explaining what Barack's currently attempting, she reached back to 1980 to address how Ronald Reagan did the same thing. In the "issues" debate, Dr. Kathy noted that character has always been a part of American politics and that politicians have always done various things to convince the public that they have the character to be president. If Dr. Kathy was doing that before and we missed it because she didn't offer examples, our apologies to her. But we will praise her for being sharp and prepared Friday night.



It was such a high note that we turned off the TV -- that and we're not fond of lengthy segments that result from favors called in. Mainly, we're just sick of Bill Moyers Locker Room trying to pass itself off as Bill Moyers Journal. It truly is amazing that someone who could probably divine racism in the growth of an onion is so willfully blind to sexism.



Now to note two positives, on Washington Week, Gwen noted the Democratic primary race was a dead heat. We were impressed with her command of the facts. The other?



NOW on PBS. The program was just awarded the 2008 Edward R. Murrow Award for Best TV Documentary for their investigative report "Child Brides: Stolen Lives" reported by Maria Hinojosa.



We're not fans of David Brancaccio (obviously) but we're never hesitant to applaud something worth watching and Brancaccio deserves praise for Friday's show as do guests Willie Brown and Dan Schnur who provided frank insights into the Democratic primary and into the role of super delegates. Sadly, the program doesn't provide transcripts but if you're able to stream online and utilize video or audio, you'll find more of value on the topic than you've gotten in weeks of media coverage (mis-coverage).



But for hours of enjoyment, you'll have to join us in imagining Bill's upcoming appearance on Beauty & The Geek. We were worried that his moniker had already been taken but then a friend with the show put us wise, a previous season featured "The Navy Diva," not "The Nasty Diva." We asked what the chances were of Bill being invited on since he's clearly angling for invite and we were told that "he's a little too old for our core demographic, by like 100 years!" but "maybe he could interview the contestants." Talk about spoiling a perfectly good fantasy. If there's one thing the world doesn't need right now it's more soft ball interviews from Bill and that's before you add in the fact that he'd ignore the women and zero in on the men the way he does each Friday night. "It's just as well," our friend told us. "We'd have to change the title to Beauty & The Geek & The Geezer."

Roundtable

Jim: Hillary Clinton won Pennsylvania and we've got a roundtable. Participating are The Third Estate Sunday Review's Dona, Jess, Ty, Ava and, and me, Jim, Rebecca of Sex and Politics and Screeds and Attitude, Betty of Thomas Friedman Is a Great Man, C.I. of The Common Ills and The Third Estate Sunday Review, Kat of Kat's Korner (of The Common Ills), Cedric of Cedric's Big Mix, Mike of Mikey Likes It!,Elaine of Like Maria Said Paz, Ruth of Ruth's Report, Wally of The Daily Jot, and Marcia SICKOFITRDLZ. Wally and Marcia will be calling in on another line and we'll put them on another speaker phone when they do. This is a rush transcript. The illustration is by Betty's oldest son and, let me say "illustrations," because we're also hoping to include an illustration he did of his mother and Kat in this. If it's in here, we'll include it by Betty and Kat and he did that back in September. As usual, Ty has some e-mails and we'll try to get to as many as we can. I'm still working on revamping the format so that we can do roundtables in a workable time. Last week, Betty and Cedric had a topic that we ran out of time for so let me toss to them.



Betty: Well I waived the topic because I wanted to weigh in on C.I.'s piece and was honestly shocked anyone with a functioning brain could object to it. But the thing on hold was this nonsense about 'racism.' Whenever Barack's in trouble, it's time for the race card to be played and he was obviously in trouble last week so we saw it deployed repeatedly by his surrogates. He's played himself and he's never apologized for that or for the actions of his surrogates. As a Black woman, I'm getting real tired of his campaign screaming "racism" every time he tanks.



Cedric: I would agree with that and the thing Betty and I had wanted to do was provide a heads up last Sunday because we both knew the card was going to get played heavily last week. When he's doing poorly and when he's facing an area concentrated with African-Americans, it's time to play that card. I think it's better that we waited because it allows me to talk about e-mails. Jess may want to talk about this in more detail but I'm going to focus on one of last week's e-mails. I've been doing my own site for several years now. Early on, I largely focused on Vern, who passed away, and Three Cool Old Guys who are, thankfully, still with us. I focused on them because they were interesting and because I got to know them thanks to an outreach my church was doing with older church members. I've been doing joint-post with Wally since at least September 2006 when we were both working on voter registration and getting the vote out for the November 2006 elections. So, since then, we've done humor posts. Prior to that, when I solo-ed, if it wasn't Three Cool Old Guys, I was writing about the wars, Iraq and Afghanistan, or about issues that interested me as an African-American. I say all that to make it clear that I know who I've highlighted and who I haven't. A cadre of what I call White Mamas, after the Bette Davis movie, have been showing in all of our inboxes, claiming that we've highlighted them before, asking us to trade links and suggesting we link to their latest garbage. I call them White Mamas because they're all so terribly concerned about 'racism.' This year. I don't need a White Mama showing up telling my Black ass what racism is. And I'm getting real sick of their lies about racism and their lies that I've highlighted them before. I never have. I'll highlight strong women, and I've done that with Gloria Steinem for years, but these White Mamas are not strong women, they're weak ass writers and I'm getting damn tired of them lying to me in order to get their pro-Barack bad writing highlighted.



Jess: I like it, White Mamas, and they started showing up four weeks ago at the public account of The Common Ills. I'll do a quick fill-in and note that I may or may not reply to them. They are smug and smarmy and depending upon how much they piss me off, I respond or not. When they first started showing up, I mentioned them to C.I. who responded, basically, "Jess, you know the women I respect. If a name pops up that you don't recognize or it's someone you've never heard of let alone met, they're not feminists. They're just women who write and sometimes try to pose as feminists. Ignore them." And I passed that on to everyone. But what Cedric's talking about, to be specific, on Monday another one showed up and she really pissed me off because she's one of the White Mamas trying to play the racism card. I didn't recognize her name and C.I. happened to call so I mentioned her name. C.I. said she was linked twice in 2005 and she's a lousy writer. I should add that they don't quote their writing, they provide you with the link you're supposed to link to. I should also add that these aren't bloggers, these are professional writers. So Monday there were six White Mamas whining and I responded to two. The one who pissed me off the most, and they all pissed me off, was saying her drool over Barack needed to be highlighted because there was no 'balance.' Apparently, she doesn't get MBNBC, The Nation or the many making up the choir of Barack Love. I also loved her "thank you, by the way," for having highlighted her in the past -- C.I. says it was 2005. But there really is an orchestrated effort on the part of the White Mamas to subvert community sites.



Cedric: And they're such liars. I know what I've highlighted and what I haven't. Like Jess was saying, the woman who wrote me just included the link she wanted me to post. I had to google to find out what she was writing in it. White Mama saw racism! White Mama saw racism in the Hillary campaign! She included a bunch of lies to 'back up' her claim. And it was so insulting and I was really furious with her e-mail because (a) I don't like liars, (b) we don't need to lie to create more divisions in our society and (c) this African-American doesn't need a White Mama to tell him what racism is. But that's the card, the lie, the Obama camp wants played and all the usual 'journalists'-for-rent are happy to peddle it. It's offensive.



Dona: I love how they claim, I've seen the e-mails to the public account of The Common Ills, to be feminists while wanting a link to their piece tearing a woman apart with lies. As C.I. said, they are not feminists, they are women writers. Bad writers at that. But this really is an orchestrated event. The woman who wrote Cedric had been shot down two weeks ago when she wrote C.I. Elaine's getting them, Rebecca's getting them, Marcia's getting them, go down the list, it is a very orchestrated scheme to subvert websites that tell the truth about Barack. Lie in an e-mail to the public account and it's no longer private. Jess has been printing those e-mails up and we may go out with them here when this site goes dark. So everyone can laugh at the whoppers these non-feminist White women were telling in private.



Betty: It really is pathetic how many women are working overtime to build up a man and tear down a woman. We've seen it throughout the campaign with a lot of men and some women but now you've got all these White women and, let's be honest, most of them are closeted Communists, showing up with their e-mails crying it's not fair to women that they're not getting highlighted. I've shown the ones I receive to my father and he's identified them as closeted Communists when they are. I thought that was very funny because when I show him one, if he makes that call, we get on the phone to C.I. and open with, "____ ____, closeted Communist?" And every time Dad's guessed correctly. Dad can tell by their talking points. Like Cedric, I know what I link to, who I link to. And these lies of, "You've linked to me in the past, and thank you for that, . . ." If your name isn't Thomas Friedman, you probably haven't been linked to. I mean my cite is about Betinna, married to Thomas Friedman. More than anyone else, I know what I link to and what I don't because it's very rare that I link to anything other than something in The New York Times. So Barack's doing poorly and it's time to play the race card. I find it offensive and am appalled at these White Mamas trying to stoke divisions in this country, trying to create new ones via lies and pretending to give a damn about Black people.



C.I.: Or for that matter, people of color. Let's remember Betsy Reed suddenly cares about race -- 'cares' enough to lie about it, but this is the same woman who has repeatedly shot down articles about race including, most infamously, an examination of the current discriminations Native Americans face. And to be clear, White Mama was a TV movie starring Bette Davis.



Jim: We're hoping Ava and C.I. will take on The Nation's liar supreme Betsy Reed this week so let me ask that comments on her be tabled in the hopes that we'll have that piece. Betty, what is it about the lies that offend you the most?



Betty: Using Black people as props. That's all the White Mamas are doing. They want Barack in the White House and they're willing to lie and cry "racism" where it doesn't exist. They're willing to pretend, for the election cycle, that they care about racism but they don't care and I've examined the writing of every White Mama that's e-mailed me and found that, year after year, they have ignored race. They're also not feminists, reading their body of work makes that very clear. They're women who write and now it's time to pose as something they aren't to try to push their candidate and, as usual, Black people will be the ones lefting hold the bag when it all explodes. I'm sick of it and I'm sick of their psuedo-concern. They're as bad as the young White men trying to sound like rappers because they think it makes them hip. Actually, they are worse because young kids are growing and trying to find themselves. Middle-aged White Mamas should know who they are.



Cedric: And they do, and they hate who they are, that's why they're in the political closet. And the way the e-mails from them have soared -- all pleading for links to their Barack crap -- indicates how badly Barack's campaign is doing. So it's time for another wave of false charges of racism and the campaign went so far as to doctor a video clip of a documentary from 1992 last week. It's past time for the Real Press to start calling this out and to start noting that the race card has been repeatedly played by the Obama campaign throughout this election cycle. And, to get back to Dona's point, there's something really pathetic about White women tearing apart Hillary with lies to prop up Barack -- even before you get to the point where these White Mamas are claiming to be feminists.



Betty: If I could add one more thing before we go on, I filled in for Ruth last Wednesday, and Bud Johnson was airing the usual stereotypical fears as he worried that Condi Rice being John McCain's running mate might mean Black women would dump Barack -- and we're anot all supporting Barack, Bud -- because "sisterhood overrides Black pride." That's the kind of crap Black women have to put up with in the Black community and no White Mama is ever going to tell you that. She's too busy playing like the Black community is kind savages that just need her help. The reality is that the Black community has the same attributes as the White community and that includes positives and negatives. One of the biggest negatives is the misogny. Sexism exists across the board in all communities. And the idea that Bud's going into a panic, and just knowing the Black sisters are going to bolt to the Republican party if Condi gets on the ticket, demonstrates just how vile the sexism is. There is a very real undercurrent of sexism in the Black community and people want to act as if it's just in trash rap where we're called disgusting names and slurs -- one of which is "Hood Rat" which is as offensive as "Welfare Queen" and means the same thing. Those slurs are successful because they go to a very real hatred and anger at Black women. Historically, we have held the community together, Black women, and our thanks for that is a covert hatred that frequently becomes overt. The Black woman is expected to bring home the money, then wait on a man all damn day, then hop on the bed, spread her legs, let him have his two minutes of fun and then rush to the kitchen to fix him dinner. There is little acknowledgement or pride in Black women's accomplishments. Look at the response to Terry MacMillian, our community's Jackie Collins, she ends up married to a closeted gay man and instead of sympathy for her over what was obviously a very shocking development, there's ha-ha and 'she got what she deserved!' 'She got what she deserved' because she dared to imagine a world where Black women mattered. And not every Black male is a sexist. A large number aren't. But that is a very real attitude and the larger, White community amplifies that. Think of Amy Goodman and all her crap 'celebrating' the Black man. Sometimes I wonder if women like her are as threatened by Black women as some Black males?
I have no idea but this Black woman is damn tired of my community's women regularly being insulted, degraded and undercut.



Cedric: And what Betty's talking about is very real. Look what happened to Alice Walker for writing The Color Purple. In terms of the larger culture, look at all the White men penning their love letters to Ike Turner when he died and treating his decades of beating up Tina Turner as something to be overlooked or, worse, suggesting that Tina needs to or has forgiven him. That came from some African-American males and it's sexism, to be sure, but when White men were writing it as well, in my eyes, I saw the same sort of 'logic' that justified slavery for years. Tina, whom my grandmother loves, let me put that in, Tina's her hero, wasn't beaten once, she was beaten before she married Ike and throughout her marriage. But White men show up minimizing that, the same way slavery was minimized. In both cases, it goes to a need to tell youself that one group is less more. In the most recent case, a Black woman is worth so little that who cares if she's beaten for years? It's rooted in a sense of entitlement and a sense of fear and those are the same things that allowed slavery to continue in this country.



Ty: Like Cedric, my grandmother loves Tina and I think that's a really good example because Tina's first and foremost a very talented artist. But she's also a symbol of a strong, African-American woman. One who endured decades of abuse and triumphed. So it really was insulting to see those White men showing up to justify and minimize Ike Turner's crimes. Cedric's correct that these crimes have the same 'justifications' as slavery once had. And I understood Betty's guest post because it is true that an African-American woman who just keeps her head above water, forget succeeding, is going to be targeted by the community at some point as someone who didn't know her place. I see that in the anti-Whitney, pro-Bobby Brown nonsense that's going on currently. How many times has Bobby Brown been arrested now? He was a 'success' before I was in school and he's 'charting' since then has only been on his rap sheet. Smartest thing Whitney Houston could have done was leave him. He's the perfect example of a man who does nothing and expects a woman to pull the weight only to turn around and then slam her for doing so.



Betty: I heard non-stop insults to Whitney on the radio last week. I didn't realize it was a national thing, I assumed it was regional. But, yeah, it is offensive. How many years was Whitney supposed to carry his lazy ass? Just the fact that a Black woman is expected to do so goes to the hatred of Black women. If Julia Roberts' husband wasn't working, it would be a big deal. But how many Black women have to bust their asses, I'm talking celebrities, while their men live off it and no one ever says a word until the woman leaves and then it's a bunch of slurs aimed at the woman. There is no excuse for Bobby Brown. He's the perfect example of a lazy man who is comfortable to live off a woman and you better believe when Whitney was feeling proud of something, he was there to tear her down.



Cedric: I know we've gone on longer than intended but if I could add one more thing, the White people who repeat this, the 'good' folk, are only demonstrating their own sexism. And I think Gloria Steinem and Robin Morgan see it a lot more clearly because they have worked for all women, a lot more clearly than some of these 'helpful' folk. I would say sexism is more prevalent than racism. That may be skewed somewhat by the fact that a lot of people are pretending to care about race because they're for Barack, who is bi-racial and not Black. Another big complaint on Black radio this week was Fred on Saturday Night Live playing Barack and all these whiners saying, "Why can't they have a Black man playing him. It's so offensive." Well, if a White man's playing Barack, they're half-right because Barack's not Black, he's bi-racial. But I hear that, and have heard it all week, and yet when David Spade and Adam Sandler were doing their insulting skits in drag, I never heard people raise objection to that.



Kat: I'm jumping in because I just finished my review that will go up today of Carly's new CD. Absolutely sexism is permitted in this culture. Can you imagine, using just David Spade, if he were allowed to make the kind of jokes about African-Americans as he does about all women in Rules of Engagement? It's considered funny when it's aimed at women. Michael Richards had a racist meltdown and it was news. Comedians spewing hatred aimed at women is considered fair game and not worthy of coverage let alone calling out. If Barack Obama had gotten one half of the discrimatory coverage Hillary has, there would be non-stop protests --



Ty: There would be riots in the streets.



Kat: but it's no big deal when it's sexism. It's 'cute' and 'funny.'



Betty: And, like Marcia's said before, she's been discriminated more for her gender than the color of her skin. I've seen the same thing myself. There's this pot-bellied pig who works in the building next to me. He's all of five feet, two inches, with a big gut hanging out. He talks like Fog Horn Leg Horn. And it seems like anytime I'm going to my car at the end of work, he's rushing after me on his bow legs. "Hey, Pretty Mama, hey Little Sister, slow down. Why ain't you smiling? Smile." I'm not smiling if I see him, for sure. He's the most vulgar, I mean sexual advances, person in the world and he's married and I've told him repeatedly to get lost but he thinks that's 'cute' I guess. So day after day, five days a week, I have to put up with his crap. I'm getting real close to taping him and playing his vulgar words to his wife. I have a professional job, I work in a professional setting and yet I can't even make it to my car these days without having to hear his sexual talk and my father's going to read this and hit the roof. He's going to know who I'm talking about by my description and that's going to be the end of it. He'll put an end to it. But the point is, I have told him to get lost, I have told him not to talk to me, and he still thinks he can. He still seems to think the highlight of his day is going to be talking to me about how "what's between your legs is hungry for me" and that's the nicer thing I can repeat. He's trashy, he's vulgar and, yes, he's married. Why the hell is he talking to me or any woman like that and where the hell did he get the idea that it was okay?



Ty: I'm assuming he's African-American.



Betty: Yes, he is. And that's the sort of crap I have to deal with, in the community, while leaving work and trying to get to my car to pick up my kids. Some disgusting pot-bellied pig who thinks he's God's gift to women and that I'm dying to hear all his graphic talk even though I've told him to stop, even though I have screamed, "Get the hell away from me!" For four weeks, I have had to put up with this. And, after my father sets him straight, he'll move on to some other woman who'll have to endure his verbal assaults. Where in the world did he get the idea that his talk was wanted or desired? A sense of entitlement. And, I mean, we have to put up with this crap, all women but I've been talking about this to women at my church and at work, and Black women have to put up with this crap all the time. I wonder about the movies I grew up on, like Mahogany, where Billy Dee Williams was the ideal and how these days 'breakthrough' has largely meant a bunch of smut merchants plus Denzel. Take away Denzel and Black women aren't left with much on the big screen despite the fact that there are so many more Black males in movies now.



Kat: I'm really sorry that you've had to put up with that. I know it happens to a lot of women. We can make a trip through Georgia next week, if you need.



Betty: I appreciate that but my father will set him straight. The thing that really makes me mad is I've told him not to talk to me that way, I've told him to get lost. But he just ignores it and I don't have the time to really tear into him. I've got three kids to pick up and that's three sets of late charges at daycare if I'm not picking them up by six o'clock. I don't have time to deal with pot-bellied pig on a good day, and shouldn't have to, but to have him turn my trip to the car into an obstacle course each day is really making me sick.



Ava: And it should. It's disgusting. And I'm glad you brought this up because I'm sure many women have dealt with something similar -- I know I have -- in their lives. It's one of those things that really drives home how far from equality we are.



Betty: Well thank you. I really didn't mean to unload on it here.



Jim: Don't complain, it will be the most cited thing from this roundtable in the e-mails. Okay, Ty, e-mail?



Ty: Lori e-mails to thank Ruth for calling out the nonsense of Diane Rehm. Lori writes, "The Diane Rehm Show used to be the one place I could turn to for a semi-intelligent conversation. It was titled to the right, but it was based in reality. I can't believe what's happened to the show in the last weeks and I'm glad Ruth's hearing it as well so I know it's not just me."



Ruth: Like Lori, I loved the show. I have listened for years. But if it does not improve quickly, it probably needs to end. By Friday when Ms. Rehm was offering that the gas tax holiday was a bad idea and that the proof was she had three guests on the day before and they all thought it was a bad idea, it was obvious Ms. Rehm had become trapped in an echo chamber of her own making. Politically, like so many other programs, when addressing the Democratic primary, it operates from the premise that Senator Barack Obama has the nomination and any thing Senator Hillary Clinton does is evil and a threat to his coronation.



Elaine: I find it interesting that he accused Hillary of "pandering" last week and if she had said that about him, the 'left' press would have been in an uproar over it and claiming that the Republicans would use it against him -- if he got the nomination -- in a general election. He can do or say anything against Hillary and it's okay but when she critizes him, the 'left' goes into convulsions. Ruth's exactly right that too many programs act as if a race that is tied is actually his coronation.



Jim: Rebecca, you've been quiet.



Rebecca: I had a lot to say about Betsy Reed but that's been tabled. Also Mike and I are plowing through some queso and chips. In terms of the gas tax holiday, the point appears missed by most commenting. I don't mean in the roundtable, I mean on the radio and in the paper. The point isn't "This will fix the economy!" We need a new economic policy for that. The point is that this will ease the burden on Americans already struggling. People seem to be confusing the point of measure, intentionally, I'd argue, and saying, "This won't fix the economy!" Hillary, or for that matter John McCain, never claimed that it would. It's not a "fix," it's a temporary measure for Americans trapped in a bad economy and already stretched to the limit. I was talking to my friend T about this and we figured out that she would save about ten dollars a month if it was enacted between Memorial Day and Labor Day. Ten dollars isn't a huge amount, another friend who drives more would save close to fifty-two dollars a month, but at a time when people are already stretched to the limit, ten dollars not spent is ten dollars that can help them stay afloat.



Mike: I'll jump in before Jim calls on me and say I agree with Rebecca. I think too many writing and talking on the radio don't have to travel. I don't either. But I'm remembering when we all went to Texas in March 2007 and I'm thinking about how many people have to drive there, how little public transportation there is, and how the people living in small towns are usually traveling forty minutes, an hour, or more to work each morning. I think the coverage has been very elitist and very out of touch and that they have no grasp on what many Americans go through. It's like they live in a different country and can't even relate to anyone who's not like them. I think Ruth and C.I. have done a strong job covering it and didn't touch the subject last week because I really didn't have much to add other than "See what they wrote."



Cedric: I would agree with that and think they did a great job, Ruth talking about seniors, C.I. talking about the impact on the cost of food, etc. But one thing I'd add to that is that my church has several vans. We pick up the elderly Sunday morning, Sunday evening and Wednesday evening, as well as drop them back off. My church isn't going to under without the gas tax holiday, but it will be felt if it's not enacted. Like Rebecca said, this isn't a plan to fix the economy. It's a measure to ease the burden and it's needed. There's not going to be any plan to fix the economy until the occupancy of the White House changes.



Ava: The biggest point being made by everyone speaking is that the proposal is being shot down by some for something it's not so I want to repeat: This is not an economic policy. Like Cedric pointed out, that's not coming under the current White House. This is a temporary measure that will aid a lot of Americans and will come as many would normally be taking summer vacations of some form. Whether an individual saves ten dollars a month or fifty, it is money they are not spending and, being on the road every week, we see a lot of people who are already stretched to the limit. When people are already buying plain label foods and doing without, ten or fifty dollars less a month will be strongly felt. Each year of the Bully Boy economy, Americans have had to tighten their belts and economize. At this rate, what else is there for many? They've stopped buying this or that, and downgraded to something else, and I think it really shows an arrogance to suggest that a gas tax holiday is unneeded.



Jim: One of the talking points is that if a gas tax holiday is put in place, people will just buy more gas.



Ruth: That is just nonsense. A holiday is not putting new money into someone's pockets. It just means that more money will not be leaving their pockets.



Mike: I think we're also seeing the same sort of press reaction we saw with John Edwards' proposals. Notice how many are decrying Hillary's plan for a windfall tax on Big Oil? It's the same sort of pro-business slams that Edwards suffered for his policies. As usual, Barack's on the side of Big Business. But remember, he was for gas tax holidays before he was against it. I think it's also interesting to note the silence that Hillary's call for breast cancer funding received compared to the press' boos and hisses over the gas tax holiday. I guess they thought writing about breast cancer was 'niche' reporting but a gas tax holiday is universal. Goes to the sexism at play in the media throughout this election cycle.



Betty: Well, as a working mother with three kids, let me point out one more thing. The summer expenses are about to leap for me as they do for many parents this time of year because school will be out and my kids will be in day care all day. Ruth's right that it's not money being added to my pocket, it's less being taken out. And for a lot of us, these are the most expensive months. So, yes, any relief at all is appreciated.



Jim: Okay, Ty, another e-mail?



Ty: Jenn writes wondering why Rebecca's not on the road with Ava, Kat and C.I. speaking out against the illegal war? She says, "I thought Rebecca said she was doing that in April."



Rebecca: That was the plan. Flyboy, the baby and I join them next week. We were supposed to have started two weeks ago but Ava and C.I. asked me not to due to the fact that they had caught the nasty cold from Jim. They didn't want to pass it on to the baby. They were still sick at the start of last week. So that's the reason for the delay. I thought I had discussed that at my site but I guess I didn't make it clear so I'll mention it again next week.



Jim: I wanted to note Adolph Reed Jr.'s "Obama No" at The Progressive website. Gillian e-mailed Friday noting it and our "The truth about Panhandle Media" from last week. She writes, "That really did prove the point you were making because The Progressive these days is lucky to get ten comments to an article and Reed's already gotten over sixty." And it does prove the point, it's good business to cover both candidates, it's good business to grasp that in a race that's a tie, you're running off half your potential audience if you're offering only drools for Bambi. Ty?



Ty: I've got two and one is really for Elaine and C.I. and the other's just for C.I.



Elaine: Go with the one just for C.I.



Ty: Okay, I can't figure out the guy's name. He didn't sign his e-mail and his e-mail address is gibberish. But he writes that The Common Ills has dropped the ball on the coverage of Iraq to support Hillary.



C.I.: I've never heard anything more ridiculous. I've been sick for the past two weeks and I'd argue that even with that we still had more Iraq coverage than any other site. We're the only ones covering war resisters regularly, daily. Congress had no hearings on Iraq in the last two weeks. There was a rah-rah hearing, a hearing composed of 'good cripples' -- that's the description a wounded vet used for it -- that we skipped. Other than that, I don't think we missed anything. There's a push in the mainstream media for war on Iran and we're not promoting that which actually eliminates a lot of media stories on Iraq. Did he have a specific complaint because I don't see any problems.



Ty: He used Turkey as one example, noting that it didn't appear in the Thursday snapshot but did in the Friday. He wrote that Hillary coverage prevented that from being addressed on Thursday.



C.I.: He's wrong. Two things on Turkey and northern Iraq. Both regions differ repeatedly on whether an assault took place or not. It's rare that one doesn't take place at least once a week. We're not dealing in hypotheticals so we generally wait for some confirmation -- from Turkey's government or military, from the Kurdish region of Iraq, from the puppet government in Baghdad, any one will do -- before we note an assault. Not only did that confirmation not come until Friday, the assault took place Thursday night. It would be very difficult for it to be included, confirmed or not and it wasn't confirmed at that point, in a snapshot dictated Thursday afternoon. It would have ended around three o'clock in the afternoon EST and it wasn't confirmed and also wasn't being reported. He'll have to find a better example. Last week also saw a lot of 'human interest' feature articles passing for reporting -- I'm thinking of an AP story that hit the wires on Thursday and was being rewritten by several papers on Friday -- and we weren't interested in that either. The snapshot's dictated around two or three p.m. EST. Depending upon who takes the dication, it's either typed as I dictate or taped and then typed. So there's one potential delay. Another is that when it's e-mailed, it doesn't always hit the site right away. Sometimes it takes hours. There are days when I've gone in, four hours after it was dictated, and copied and pasted it into Blogger/Blogspot because it never hit.



Rebecca: I want to add something here, C.I. has said, week after week, this is the week I make the snapshots shorter. I'm hoping that's going to happen this week. Not because I don't enjoy them but because I know how time consuming they are. If and when that does happen, I'm sure someone will feel like the guy who e-mailed feels. But I think C.I.'s given more than enough on Iraq and more than anyone else. Certainly more than anyone participating, but I'd argue more than anyone writing about Iraq.



Kat: I'd agree with that and also add that in the two week period we're talking about, there was one day where Ava and C.I. just slept in the car between every speaking gig. They were that sick. They shouldn't have been on the road, they should have been home in bed. But they were on the road and when C.I. woke up, the first thing was, "I know nothing about what's going on in Iraq!" C.I. was listening to voice mails and returning calls and doing so in a quicker time period, a frantic time period, than usual.



Jim: Well I'll just add that I think we all grasp that the illegal war's not ending in 2008 and that we could offer lies, the way many are doing, and pretend otherwise. But we're not in the mood.



C.I.: I want to bring in Dallas on this to talk about war resisters.



Dallas: Okay. Well, Thursday night, in the roundtable for the gina & krista round-robin, the issue of April is over and the Canadian Parliament never voted on the measure to grant war resisters safe harbor. C.I. said, "I'll call tomorrow to find out what the deal is on that." So I grabbed the initiative and made that call myself Friday morning and then called C.I. with the feedback I received. I spoke with a person at the New Democratic Pary of Canada, which has been the party leading on this issue. I actually spoke with two people. The first referred me to the second guy. I explained I was calling from the United States and trying to figure out what the deal was. He took my number and called me back. I may also get a call on Monday with more information. But what's going on is it's a measure, not a bill. It's not been addressed on the floor of Parliament in April due to a focus on other issues. Immigration being the big one. Everyone should continue e-mailing because it keeps the pressure on and that includes e-mailing the New Democratic Party because they can say, "We've received X number of e-mails on this." After I got off the call, I phoned Kat and gave her the basics so C.I. would be able to include it in the snapshot.



Jim: Did you feel you were getting the runaround?



Dallas: No, he seemed genuinely helpful. I would name him but I'm not sure he was authorized to speak, I would assume he was, but he was helpful and I don't want to get him into any trouble. He was actually very helpful and I wrote a longer thing on this that's in Polly's Brew today.



Jim: Okay. Thank you, Dallas. And note, Wally and C.I. are the only ones that can ever get Dallas to participate in transcript pieces. He helps out every week and we thank him for that. I owe Roland an apology, he and others. Every week, e-mails come in on Ava and C.I.'s TV pieces. Their commentaries are the topic of the bulk of all e-mails. And Roland pointed out that with "Mailbag" not being done, those e-mails never get mentioned. He writes, "There seems to be an attitude in the roundtable that Ava and C.I.'s writing is less important and their writing is not just the first thing I read each week, it's how I discovered your site and why I've always kept coming back." Obviously, I value their writing, we all do. They are our calling card and we all know that. But Roland is right that when topics are being discussed or Ty's going through e-mails before the roundtable, I do dismiss TV things. That's not fair and I apologize to our loyal readers for that. Roland wanted it pointed out that he's disagreed with only one piece Ava and C.I. have ever written." That was "TV: The Urine Stains of David Mamet." He writes that he was a big fan of David Mamet and felt it was unfair for them, as lefties, to treat another so harshly. "Maybe because I really thought Mamet was the man. But last month, he went public with the fact that he'd switched over to being a conservative and watching The Unit now and reading back over the review, I think Ava and C.I.'s call was correct."



Ava: It was obvious that though he hadn't made the announcement, he had already switched over. However, Ty frequently brings up a point from e-mails he's replying to so I'll grab it here. There's a mistaken belief on the part of some that we trash every Republican and praise every Democrat. That's not correct. First off, many aren't public about the politics. Second, we have had kind words for Kelsey Grammar, Shannen Dougherty and Drew Carey who are all public about being a Republican. Believe it or not, it's not like we're saying each week, "What Republican actors can we go after!" In fairness to Rolando, let me note that some Democrats we've gone after have felt as he did, that the last thing we should be doing is critizing someone who's a Democrat. To that, my response is, we write a piece every week and we call it as we see it. We have no idea what we're going to write about tonight, we have about three possibilities, and we're not planning out ahead of time that __ receives praise while __ receives hisses. Our primary criteria, the big test, is can you sit through it and find anything of value? How hard we hit generally depends upon how bad it was. I don't even remember watching The Unit, let alone writing about it, that's how forgettable and what a time waster that show was. I'll assume we hit hard.



Jim: If I can toss out a question that pops up over and over, what's the deal with the entertainment reviews?



Ava: Well, to honor the writers' strike, we moved over to non-scripted fair. We're not fans of reality TV so that left public affairs and 'news' programming. The writers' strike ended but it's only recently that you could tell that on your TV. We did extensive prep-work in the fall so we'd be ready to turn out reviews in the snap of a finger. All that was lost when the writers went on strike. So now, in some cases, you're asking us to go back to month old notes to write a review. It's been that long since we saw the programs. In other cases, there's the fact that very few of the shows we wanted to review are on now. Either they were cancelled or they're being held. Chuck was the best thing on TV last fall and we sounded out friends at NBC in programming to be sure that it had solid support. When we found out it did, it moved to a spring review at the earliest because it wouldn't need the support. Remember too that we've been reviewing since January 2005 and a lot of the shows that have returned, entertainment shows, to broadcasting are ones we've already reviewed. Besides, the most prevalent script has been in 'unscripted' shows, the trashing of Hillary. So that's generally been our focus. And will likely be our focus this week. As two feminists, we can't imagine any TV topic more worthy of exploration. And we're fully aware of how outrageous it has been and how the Barack loving non-feminists are churning out pieces this week claiming they are appalled by the sexism -- sexism they never bothered to comment on before this week -- but -- "But." They're not feminists. They're women writers. Bad writers. Bad women. Gender traitors one and all. They're trying to defuse the very real anger over the sexism targeted at Hillary because they're convinced that's the only reason she remains in the race. As usual, they understimate her. But it's also true that we're pretty sick of all the liars. Jim's mentioned Betsy Reed and if we take her on, we may or may not do a TV piece this week. I know some will be upset if we don't but we've now done about 200 TV pieces, we're still sick and we want to get to bed before noon.



Jim: I thought we'd have Marcia and Wally calling in by now but they haven't. So Ty, why don't you do your e-mail question for Elaine and C.I. and we may wrap up then.



Ty: Okay, Gerry e-mails noting a piece by Susan UnPC at No Quarter on one of the victims of Weather Undergound and wonders what your reaction to that is?



Elaine: I haven't seen the post or heard of. I know Mike and C.I. both think Susan usually nails down everything before she writes so I'm not questioning the accuracy, I'm just stating I need something more to comment. What's Gerry wanting?



Ty: He's pointing out that John M. Murtagh was a victim of Weather Underground because his father was one of their targets, a New York State Supreme Court judge.



Elaine: I wasn't a member of Weather Underground. As C.I. and I explained last week, during that time period, we were on the road speaking out against the war, helping war resisters get to Canada, etc. Either last week or the week before, the point was made, by both of us, that it's one thing to provide context for Weather's actions and it's another thing to pretend that the actions were, as C.I. put it, done by cuddly characters in a Disney animated film. I'm not familiar with the targeting of a judge -- I'm not surprised because a California prosecutor was also targeted -- but that's a reality. And when a victim comes foward, it's a slap in the face to all those who have minimized the actions. A slap in the face that the likes of David Corn need.



C.I.: As Elaine points out -- again, we've gone over and over this topic -- we're happy to put the actions into context. But we're not going to play the game that the likes of David Corn and Diane Rehm do -- and Diane's worse than David on this topic -- which is to act like Weather Underground pulled some pranks. We have never shied from using the term "crime" or "criminal" to describe their actions. It was probably two weeks or three weeks ago, at The Common Ills, that the point was made that when some of the victims start coming foward, it's going to be a lot harder for Obama Lovers to keep treating Weather Underground as if it was a one-year action of pranks. It wasn't. Victims have every right to tell their story and when they're insulted, they will come foward. Treating Weather Underground as hijinx is insulting the victims. I do read Susan UnPC and Larry Johnson and Bud White and others when they're e-mailed and if Susan's writing about something, she's not making it up. Like Elaine, I haven't seen the post but Susan UnPC is a meat and potatoes, down to basics writer. She doesn't get 'creative' with the facts. What's ironic is that David Corn used to fit that category and, like Larry Johnson, he was a law and order type. So to read his minimization of Weather Underground's actions was especially appalling and goes to just how far someone will bend the truth to promote their candidate. Ruth pointed out that Diane Rehm was justifying the Weather Underground and excusing them and she was doing that. I am comfortable sketching out what the government was doing during that period and how Weather Underground was one response to that but I always note that it was a violent response and don't try to minimize it or act as if it was pranks. I would add that members of Weather Underground -- whether they still support the actions they took or not -- also don't try to minimize it. So it's amazing that so many allegedly 'respectable' people such as Corn and Rehm have bent over backwards to create a fantasy version of Weather Underground. I'll also add that when people lie like that, they create a strong backlash and that's something that both Corn and Rehm are old enough to know. What they did was insulting and I know Diane's program heard from police officers complaining about her 'condensed version' of Weather Underground. It's like with Jeremiah Wright who was offensive from the minute Good Morning America aired those videos. You got a lot of liars coming forward to justify his remarks. There's never any justification for crackpots. They thought by all sticking to the same script, they were defusing a bad situation for Barack. All they did was create the makings of a huge backlash that flared up last week. I actually think the response was a healthy one in many regards, primarily in that the people of the United States were saying to all the press that insisted Wright was normal and completely mainstream, no he isn't. They've done the same thing with the Weather Underground. And while I'm perfectly happy to have a discussion of their pros and cons and the context of their actions, you can't vanish their actions, you can't vanish the criminal records. When you do that, you're lying and people grasp that. The backlash on Weather is going to be much more intense than the one on Wright and I don't think one or more victims coming forward last week will even be the tip of the iceberg. "Oven Jew," Bernardine's term back then, was controversial at the time. There are many other actions and words that will dismay most Americans. Suppressing the truth never defuses it, it only creates the stage to launch a huge backlash and, I'd argue, that's the next big thing coming, the next nightmare Barack's going to have to address. I'm sure he'll minimize it and sidestep it but I think it will turn even more people against him.



Elaine: C.I.'s choosing words carefully and I understand that. There's a natural response we'd make right about now but we're both avoiding it because the realities are being hidden and they need to get out. So we won't offer the context now. And, as I've said before, the context wouldn't mean much to some people. I'd argue it would mean even less now because so many have spent the last weeks trying to distort the reality of Weather's actions. Your average person who's not old enough to have lived through that time period has a very distorted picture of Weather thanks to Bambi supporters and when the reality emerges the reactions will be intense because people do not like being lied to. It's equally true that Barack is much closer to Bill and Bernardine -- Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn -- than the press has let on.



Jim: I was hoping that we'd have Wally and Marica with us and, honestly, stalling for time. Any story coming out we should pay attention to.



C.I.: I'll throw this out. A Barack supporter was almost news. The supporter gave money to a school in the US. The lie is that they were helping victims of Hurricane Katrina. If you're helping them, you don't lodge them at a school without a working kitchen. But that's what happened. That was going to be a major story -- a two-parter -- in one daily paper but the man in charge of the school was no longer available for comment and, when the reporter tried to locate him, found that he was at a hospital where his mother was having brain surgery. As I understand it, the tumor burst just as they went in. So that killed the story but it will come back up, the woman's improving. But the point here is that there are many stories being worked on and, if even half run, we'll be seeing a difficult period for Barack.



Jim: Phone's ringing. That should be Wally and Marcia. Hello?



Marcia: We're late. Sorry. We probably spoke for two hours one on one after we were done speaking the last time tonight.



Jim: And you're in Indiana, trying to help the Hillary vote. What issues are playing out?



Marcia: The biggest theme is "Barack's not like us." That's the theme that's been out there all during last week but really came home on Saturday. People keep saying that and they're really adament about it. I know we're late so I'm going to hand the phone to Wally so he can talk.



Wally: I'll try to be brief too. Like Marica said, the feeling is Barack is just too distant from them. His position on the gas tax holiday -- do I need to explain that?



Jim: No, we've talked about it.



Wally: His position on the gas tax holiday is something that's really hurt him because people do see it as something that would provide them some help and he's opposed to it. He's offered nothing to most working class Americans and, with a specific like the holiday, he's loudly against it and that's really created this cycle of feeling that Barack's not speaking for them and doesn't represent them. It was a really bad position to take and, having taken it, it was really wrong to give his speaking down to people answers. I'm passing the phone back to Marcia.



Marcia: And that really does capture it for a lot of people and then they connect it to Jeremiah Wright and how he sat through all those sermons and now wants to act like he's shocked. They're not buying it. They think he's trying to trick them and that he'll say anything to get elected. The most common comment on Saturday was, "He doesn't share our values." Followed by, "He doesn't understand us." That's a huge barrier for a candidate to try to overcome.



Wally: Marcia handed me the phone and I'll just add that there's a lot of anger and frustration over the national media and what people see as them trying to force Barack down their throats. I hate to make predictions but I really think Indiana's going for Hillary. Marcia's nodding so we really think Indiana's going for Hillary.



Jim: Okay and we're going to wrap up on that. To return briefly to C.I.'s point, the story that got killed was on a big Barack supporter with an image of doing wonderful things. Wonderful things were not done and the supporters judgement will be questioned should the story run which would include the judgement to support Barack. If it runs, it's the sort of story that will dominate the cable 'news' due to the scandal and the participants.

Bully Boy's Endless Death Machine

It was five years ago today

Bully Boy dressed up to play

The illegal war keeps dragging on

Increasing the number dead and gone

So may I introduce to you

The war monger you've known for all these years

Bully Boy's Endless Death Machine.

The Lies Of Life

You take the bad

You take the bad

You take it

And then you're had

The Lies of life

The Lies Of Life



Eastland School For Liars.



Donna Brazile stands at the bottom of the stairs of the dormitory.



"Ricie! Johnny! Get down here and give Big Momma's Mouth a great big hug!"



Angry Susan Rice comes clomping down the stairs on a moto-cross bike followed by a scampering John Nichols.



"Girls! Girls! Where is Betsy!"



"Here I am, Mrs. Brazile," Betsy Reed calls out from across the hall.



Betsy pushes out her lower lip, sticks out her ass and poses.



"My heart is in the Soviet Union, but I live in Britania!" Betsy purrs.



"Oh, Betsy, you big Red," gushes John, "you got a new pair of jeans!"



"I shop to drop."



"Let's get some breakfast, I'm famished!" says John, grabbing Betsy hand and hurrying off to the cafeteria.



"Ricie," Mrs. Brazile exclaims, her voice shuddering on every syllable, "why are you so quiet?"



"It's always been a tough life for my people, Mrs. Brazile."



"There, there, Ricie, come give me a big hug and brush up close against my bosom."



Shrugging Susan does just that while Donna nearly rubs her breasts raw up against Susan's face.



Cafeteria where Betsy plays with her food and John plows through three breakfasts.



Betsy shakes her head and reminds, "John, the big dance is coming up. You better lay off the food. You know the saying: Guys don't make passes at gals with fat asses."



"I can't help it!" John replies shoveling more food down. "Ever since Mrs. Brazile gave me this bad Toni home perm, no one's given me a second look! It's so depressing!"



"I think you're just premenstrual," Betsy says flatly. "And what's with all this 'Mrs. Brazile'? I don't think she's ever been married."



A greaser walks up to the table.



"You wanna buy some ammo?"



"Is it talking to us, Johnny?" asks Betsy.



"Hello, I'm John, you must be . . . unusual."



"I'm Sammy. Sammy Power," declares the greaser, grabbing her crotch and spitting on the floor.



"You really are something," giggles a beaming John.



"So you wanna buy some ammo or what?"



"Ammo?" ask Betsy. "No, we're here to get a solid education in lying. We don't have time for your . . . ammo. Come on, Johnny."



Betsy rises and starts to walk off but stops, looks over her shoulder and sees John still grinning at Sammy.



"I said, come on!"



Shrugging and stuffing another cinnamon roll in the mouth, John nods to Sammy and hurries after Betsy.



"Honestly, Johnny, I think you're smitten."



"I just thought she was different . . ." John replies.



Mrs. Brazile's bedroom.



"The girls are gone, it's time to get my girl!"



Donna Brazile sings to herself and hurries to pull a blow up doll out from underneath her bed.



"Did you miss me, Mandy?"



Donna begins blowing up the doll.



Puff.



Puff.



Puff. Puff. Puff.



BOOM!


As the dust and debris settle, we see Donna covered in soot and looking confused.



"Holy crap. Mandy? Mandy?"



Donna searches for her blow up doll.



"Mommy's here Mandy, Big Momma's here! Where are you darling?"



There's a noise outside the door.



Donna stomps the door and rips it open.



She spots a sheepish Sammy Power.



"Who are you?"



"I'm Sammy Power and I thought I was just setting off some charges. I didn't mean to blow up your room."



"You bad, bad girl," clucks Donna Brazile. "Now you just get your ass in here and over my lap. Mrs. Brazile will give you what for. Be sure to take off your pants and blouse."



"My blouse?"



"Oh, Sammy," moans Donna grabbing the young woman tightly to her chest, "you are a bad girl but I bet under all that grease, there's a heart of gold. Just snuggle up to Big Momma and we'll get you a scholarship to Eastland!"



End of part one.

Dear Betsy Reed

You're a fake and a fraud. We'd be furrowing our brows but we're too busy laughing at you and also feel you've got enough creases for the entire world.



As Elaine noted, you wrote a hysterical piece entitled "Race to the Bottom" and our only question was, "Now what will she title her autobiography?"



It was really amusing to watch you pretend to be a feminist as you ripped apart Hillary Clinton. You being the "executive editor" of The Nation. Just another useless vag trying to get male cred and doing it at other women's expense. That describes your scribble, certainly, but it also describes your 'performance' as "executive editor," doesn't it?



It takes a special sort of liar to hop the high horse and talk sister-to-sister after The Nation's appalling record of publishing women in 2007, doesn't it? 491 men, 149 women. That was the byline count, Bets.



We know it because it was dumped into our laps when women writers (actually feminists ones, but let's not force Betsy to leave her stupor) complained about the fact that they were regularly turned down by The Nation, that the same pieces were quickly snapped up by other outlets. But never of interest to The Nation. Betsy, you turned down a large number of them, or have you forgotten that fact?



So we instituted the tracking of The Nation magazine's record on publishing women with "The Nation Stats" when the first issue of 2007 was published. It was never a pretty feature, especially when we were tracking the entire issues of the weekly that managed to NOT PUBLISH even one woman. At the six month mark, the findings were published in "Are You A Writer For The Nation? If so, chances are you must have a penis," "Are You A Writer For The Nation? If so, chances are you have a penis," "Are You A Writer For The Nation? If so, chances are you have a penis," "Are You A Writer For The Nation? If so, chances are you have a penis," "Are You A Writer For The Nation? If so, chances are you have a penis," "Are You A Writer For The Nation? If so, chances are you have a penis," "Are You A Writer For The Nation? If so, chances are you have a penis," "Are You A Writer For The Nation? If so, chances are you have a penis," "Are You A Writer For The Nation? If so, chances are you have a penis," and "Are You A Writer For The Nation? If so, chances are you have a penis."



Of course, two days before that announced study was published, the magazine dispatched Sniffs Own Armpit to e-mail and whine. Remember that, Betsy? The Nation, we were informed (we already knew), had many women in leadership! The Nation was aware of the problem and working on it! And we weren't helpful! In fact, our own writing was apparently so powerful that it had Lakshimi shaking in her booties at the Microsoft start up sound, so traumatized was she by the fact that she could be held to a standard -- the standard would be accuracy.



It was all a bunch of lies, as is to be expected from The Nation magazine. But we took the findings underground. We didn't comment publicly in any way for the remainder of the year so that your crowd wouldn't be able to again try to push the problem off on us. Guess what?



Despite (a) being aware of the problem and (b) working on the problem, nothing changed, now did it, Betsy?



The first six months found published 255 male bylines and 74 female ones. And the 'improved' second half of the year? 236 men and only 75 women. Wow, women increased by one. And that's with the vages in leadership "addressing" the issue.



Can't pin it on us. We held our tongues after the lie that little us were instilling fear in women who might write for the magazine. (Apparently Eric Alterman, Christopher Hayes and other men more regularly called out took it in stride while the shrinking violets withered.) All that 'work' on your part and women only increased by one. How proud you must be.



Repeat it with us, in 2007, your rag published 491 men and only 149 women.



Betsy, we're aware you have a vagina but it takes a lot more than that to be a feminist. You're no feminist.



But weren't you posing as such in your "Race to the Bottom." As you raced to the bottom.



You wanted to grab a pack of smokes and head to the ladies' room, tell all of us, sister-to-sister, what was what.



No woman should be fooled by you. You are a woman who had the power to print women and you decided not to. You are a woman who regularly shot down submissions by women. You're not just a gender traitor, you are the enemy.



You got your own ass lifted up but you didn't do a damn thing to help other women. In fact, you stood in their way, by choice, even when called out on it. You are a disgusting liar and you have a lot of nerve scribbling your crap in which you pose as a feminist.



You open with a listing of some of the sexist things that have been said about Hillary and that may be a shock to many Nation readers since the magazine and its website have regularly ignored the sexism in this primary race. (Katrina vanden Heuvel calling out David Schuster use of "pimping" is the only exception that springs to mind. Added: Katha Pollitt has twice made time between stalkings to weigh in.) You certainly never felt the need to write about it when it was happening and you really don't feel the need to write about it now.



What you're interested in now is trying to trick readers, especially women (most have abandoned your crap-ass magazine, why don't you tell people how low subscriptions have fallen -- and don't include the 'trial' free subscriptions in your figures). You write that "women -- white women, that is" -- are dismayed by the sight of the "brass ring of the presidency slip[ping]" away from Hillary. You really are a sack of sh*t, there's no other better phrase for you, Betsy.



For the record, your stereotype is offensive. It's not just White women who are offended but it is cute of you -- the woman who dismissed concerns over Native Americans -- to try to play like the supporter of women of color. It's all part of the lie that only White women are supporting Hillary. Hillary does have a large number of women supporting her. That's to be expected, the United States has more women than men. Hillary also has a large number of White women supporting her and that, too, is to be expected from the country's demographics.



But we'll note that we were calling out the sexism before we got on board the Hillary campaign. We were still publicly and privately staying out of the race. So for you to LIE and state that women were motivated by the thought that Hillary wouldn't get the presidency is just disgusting. But you're a just a disgusting liar, a vag damned well determined to tear down other women.



It probably helps you sleep nights, to pretend that women calling out the sexism are only doing so because they support Hillary. If that LIE were true, it would certainly excuse the women supporting Barack being silent on the sexism. That would, of course, include you, dear.



You stayed silent and so did John Nichols and so did the Airs, and so did Richard Kim and so did self-loathing lesbian Laura Flanders and just go down the list of all your trashy mouthed staff that overwrote the campaign coverage and never had the time to explore the very real sexism. And put yourself at the top of that list because you earned Best in Show in the dog contest.



Pretending that only women supporting Hillary have called out the sexism allows you to pretend that you EVER did something for women when you never did a damn thing.



"Mainstream feminists" get a special slap from you, don't they?



From the fringes, we suppose the mainstream looks scary as hell to your radical ass. Not "radical feminist," mind you, just crackpot who thinks she can stack the deck and convince people that she's reporting truthfully.



"Mainstream feminists" is really a hilarious charge if you stop to think about how feminism is about equality and equal opportunities and how you, in your position at the magazine, have refused to implement either. Feminism is far too radical for your closeted ass.



You then try to have it both ways. You use "misting over moment" to describe when Hillary's eyes moistened as she was explaining how important it was to turn back the damage of the Bully Boy's years in the White House but you quickly go off into quoting "cry" and never correct that lie, now do you? What a piece of work you are. We couldn't stop laughing at how you, the 'feminist,' avoided noting that no one pushed the false crying claim more than Jesse Jackson Jr. (Obama campaigner) and how he lied and said she cried out of vanity. We think it's real cute how you avoid Fat Boy who went under the knife -- apparently on tax payer dollar -- to get rid of fifty pounds.



You then LIE again and claim that moment aided Hillary when, in fact, that moment wasn't big news in New Hampshire and the most cited reason for those deciding on Hillary at the last moment was the debate. Your so full of lies they probably ooze out of your enlarged pores.



Your disdain for Gloria Steinem and Robin Morgan is both palatable and non-surprising. What else would a self-hating woman feel for two women who've given their lives to fighting for the rights of all women? In your nightmares, we're sure it's big, bad women who scare you and puny ass men who ride to your rescue.



It's really amazing to watch as you go outside your own magazine to cite sexism. But The Nation loves to publish and republish Katha Pollitt's column on how few women The New York Times publishes . . . while ignoring their own imbalance. Finger pointers are rarely up to self-exploration, are they?



"The sexist attacks on Clinton are outrageous and deplorable," you write. Yes, they are. So why is it that they have never been judged worthy of an editorial by The Nation? Because you aren't interested in them. You're not even interested in them enough for an article. You're just offering up your pap smear -- which we're sure you licked -- of how awful Hillary is.



You really are pathetic. You really are destructive. Fortunately, you're self-destructive and you'll realize what we mean by that because it's already taken care of. Enjoy.



You offer up a bunch of lies about the Clinton campaign using racism. You're just a pathetic liar. It's hilarious to read you suggest that Hillary has played "cowboy" but we're aware that you don't get out of your isolated, elitist world too often. (We find the fact that you consider yourself "elite" hysterical. Your world's crashing down, hon, be prepared.) The one playing "cowboy" would be Barack. That's who donned the cowboy hat in Texas, posed for it in a photo-op after photo-op. It's hilarious to watch you try to claim that racism accompanies Jeremiah Wright's coverage when the fact that he's a crackpot is what accompanies his coverage finally. The fact that he, using his 'authority,' told people repeatedly that AIDS was started by the US government and done so to do away with African-Americans makes him a crackpot and, in the past, The Nation has called out crackpots like that, haven't they?



These days they play silent. We don't. We know that homophobia has no place in a feminist world. Oh, homophobia. We might need to explain that to you, Betsy. That's a hatred of gays and lesbians. That's what Barack Obama used in South Carolina to scare up votes. Somehow you must have missed that. Must have missed that human rights groups protesting an announced event, the Obama campaign ignoring it, going through with the event featuring multiple homophobes (including an 'ex-gay') and then bragging that they got what they wanted out of the event.



The Nation stayed silent on that, didn't they. Even Laura Flanders. There was Laura, while this was going on, writing her laughable plea to Barack to break free from Richard Daley. As if Michelle and Barack weren't up to their necks with the Daley machine. As if Michelle's family didn't go way back. What a loser, what an idiot.



We searched in vain for that event in your article, for a sentence possibly reading, "And the Obama campaign's use of homophobia has many crying foul." Of course we didn't find it because you're not a feminist and you're more than willing to toss gays and lesbians under the bus if it gets your man elected.



It's cute to watch you claim that "references by Clinton campaign officials to Obama's admission of past drug use" were racism. Admission? He was joking on network TV with Jay Leno. We're searching our brains for your suggestion that Bill Clinton's pot use being raised in 1992 was somehow evidence of racism. You never made that claim for the obvious reason that it wasn't racism. If Barack writes and talks about doing "blow" and pot, others talking about it is not racism.



Somehow any critique of Barack is registered by your ilk as "racism" against a "Black" man. Barack's bi-racial.



You then move on down your list of 'racism' by noting Hillary's comments about LBJ and MLK, which you term "tone-deaf but historically accurate". What kind of deaf are you if you can't grasp that comments which are "historically accurate" (by your own admission) don't qualify for racism?



Then came the amusing quotes from the Liars and Losers and, note, we said "Liars and Losers" and not "Losers or Liars." First up for your dog show is Lie Face Melissa Harris-Lacewell. Anyone who wanted to give you the benefit of the doubt probably gave up the minute you quoted her as a reliable source.



For those not in the know, Lie Face went on Democracy Now! as an 'objective' professor with no preference in the Democratic primary. She just happened to catch a speech by Barack and weighed in on that. Though both Lie Face and Amy Goodman knew Melissa was part of the Obama campaign, neither felt the need to tell the audience that. It's how you slant the coverage, how you stack the deck. "Why, even someone not supporting Barack is blown away!" It's a lie, it's unethical and, as unethical as it was for Amy Goodman to participate in that little stunt, it's more unethical for Melissa because she went on representing Princeton and they are looking into that now and into other of her little stunts.



Like when she was part of a journalistic roundtable on Charlie Rose and didn't disclose that she was part of the Obama campaign. No other campaign had a spokesperson at the table. And of course Melissa's attitude is always "Why lie a little when you can lie a lot?" Which is how she brought up Tavis Smiley and informed PBS viewers that there were some people angry with him having standards for Barack. Of course the liar forgot to mention that she helped get that ball rolling with her February 15th piece "Who Died and Made Tavis King?" What an amazing one person echo chamber Lie Face is: She leads the attacks on Tavis online and then, a month later, shows up on PBS to reference the attacks without ever disclosing her own role in it.



And you want us to give a damn about anything that Lie Face has to say? Not since her "I'm sitting here in my Black womanhood" statement has she made such a howler as what you quote, Iowa "felt like reconstruction." How the hell would she know what Reconstruction felt like? Just on the face of it, that claim is so laughable, such a reach, that a real writer would have known not to include it. But you are just a scribbler.



Lie Face then claims that Bill Clinton ("that moment") referencing Jesse Jackson's earlier win in South Carolina following Barack's own was "racism" and you rush to agree. As Elaine pointed out, in the modern era there were three people who could be referenced: Rev Jackson, John Edwards or Bill Clinton himself. To reference John Edwards would have been seen as rude since he was still, at that point, a candidate and since he did not win South Carolina. To reference himself would have had everyone calling him vain. That left Rev. Jackson. Who knew that noting his accomplishments was racist? (He certainly didn't. He agreed with Clinton.)



Betsy, you play godless in your writing. You want to quote Wright's damning of America without the context. You want to pretend he'd just stumped his toe and cursed. He was the church's pastor. He stood in front of the church and called on God to damn the United States of America. You minimize that and it's one of the reasons that you're so out of touch with America. The offense wasn't about race, it was about a pastor using their role to call down damnation on the country. You leave out his crackpot science and quickly rush off into racism when it really wasn't the point. Seeing a pastor, of someone who wants to be the president of the United States, standing in front of a church and calling on the Lord to damn the country is offensive.



You reference the nearly 4,000 word speech "A More Perfect Union." It was a bad speech, a really bad speech. It addressed nothing. But it's cute the way you ignore what the press ran with and what Obama ran with days later. "My White Grandmother." Or, as Barack termed it days later, "a typical White person."



For the record, we don't count Deadbeat Dads as fathers. Nor do we consider it to have been necessary for Barack to mention "White" when speaking of his grandmother; however, he wanted to play the race card -- as he so often does.



Barack has only one grandmother. He never met his paternal grandmother. The woman on TV is only one of the many wives his *polygamist* grandfather had and Barack may have met her (briefly) after he was an adult. By contrast, his only grandmother raised him. By contrast, he chose to live with the woman. Now maybe you couldn't mention that because you're so very busy trying to portray Barack as "Black" when he is bi-racial?



Bill Clinton, as Elaine pointed out, speaking about, as you word it, "a potential Clinton-McCain general election matchup" had no reason to mention Barack. But you saw that as "McCarthyism." You try to push that off on others but your context makes it clear. It's not McCarthyism. McCarthyism requires the government. But it's all your pathetic set has to remain in the political closet, now isn't it?



If you can't scream "McCarthyism!" every time a little truth slips out, you might get exposed.



You are aghast that Barack was asked, by George Stephanopolous, about his ties to Bill Ayers. He should have been asked about his ties to Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn. You ignore that and act like it's no big deal for someone who wants to be president to hang out with someone who was wanted by the federal government, someone who would be in a prison right now had the government not committed their own abuses. You lie that "Time after time, Clinton picked up the line . . ." Did you drop acid during the debate? Or was it before?



You go on to write that ABC's "debate has rightly been condemned." You showed no concern about the MSNBC debate, did you? Not now, not ever.



You trot out Kemberle Crenshaw and Eve Ensler and, we'll assume, that was only to add to the laugh factor. No one takes those women seriously and for good reason. If you doubt us, ask Ms. about how they tried desperately to get Crenshaw last article highlighted by the press and how no one was interested in it. Because she's not a writer. Because she appears to inflate her claims and because most of the Real Media judge her unreliable. You've got a curious cast of freaks to 'back up' your argument and we laughed at everyone of them.



You lie and say Obama has never claimed that racism has factored in. We laughed so hard.



We'd encourage you in stand-up but looks appear to be a necessity these days and we think you're already frustrated enough.



As we finished laughing, we realized "sack of sh*t" really didn't describe you. You're a street walker, hitting the corner to do business for your man, your pimp. There you are lying for Barack and trying to pretend you're a 'feminist' because what's more 'feminist' than lying to build up a man and lying to tear down a woman?



Your kind has been around forever. In fact, we picture you cheering on the deaths of other women. "Burn the witch!" we can hear you shout to prove you're not like those women. To prove you're as masculine as any man. (Betsy, you don't have to try so hard to prove that.) It's really amazing to grasp that behind all your inflated and created charges against Hillary, the real thing at work is that you think a woman should run a political campaign as if it were a tea party. Hillary's real crime, in your eyes, is that she's a fighter. You'd be creaming your panties right about now if she had -- as you wrote the "Good race, Hillary" column announcing her resignation.



Hillary fights. She doesn't "fight like a man." She fights like who she is. You're so busy denying your own gender that you're appalled by that fact. You're disgusted that, even with all your magazine and the Roosevelt Institution's conniving, Hillary hasn't been knocked out of the race. So you hit the corner to troll for your man one more time. They say the only thing more shameful than being a dirty joke is being a dirty, old joke. Tell us, Betsy, is it true?



You close by quoting noted 'feminist' Chris Rock. We think that about says it all.



Poor little Betsy, hiding in the shadows, plotting Panhandle Media's take down of Hillary, penning the cover story of yet another attack on Hillary, and she's still standing. She's still fighting, she's still winning. That's because real women know nothing is given. That's because real women know how to fight. It's fight or die. It's fight or be raped. You learned how to backbite and smear, you just never learned how to fight. So, a warning, slink off now, because if this hurts your wittle feelings, know that you have yet to see what two pissed off women could do to you.



Rot in the hell of your own making,



Ava and C.I.