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Obama was elected thanks to the media. They're the ones who refused to cover anyone except Obama, they're the ones who forced the Democratic Party to skip the part of their convention where they count delegates' votes, they're the ones who completely ignored Ron Paul's existence and went out of their way to paint McCain as a senile old man and Palin as a crazy country bumpkin.

Obama owes the media, and you'll bet they'll collect.

Some problems with your storyline. First, remember the months the media spent wringing their hands over Rev. Wright, then google John Hagee. Then there's the fact that John McCain was an incompetent flip flopping machine throughout the campaign.

The media only loved Obama until the moment he passed Clinton in the primaries.

Pri. Mary.

As in the drawn out Democratic primary last year, which went on months after McCain had the Republican nomination sewn up. Of course the press would have talked about Obama more than McCain last year.

Two other parts you conveniently fail to mention: the two months of non-stop concern trolling Obama faced over Rev. Wright and "white working class voters", and how the press bent over backwards to ignore McCain's incompetence and flip flopping.

McCain, with all his supposed foreign policy experience, confused Iraqi Shiites and Sunnis six times, and kept (falsely) claiming that Shiite Iran was training Sunni Al Queda agents. The media would have torn Obama half a dozen new assholes over this, but CBS went so far as to edit the video to cover up for McCain.

And what if Obama had mistakenly called Petraus the chair of the joint chiefs. Opps, new asshole. Or if he talked about the Iraq-Afghanistan border. Whoops, another asshole. Or if Obama had sought the endorsement of John Hagee, who had previously called the Catholic Church "the great whore", a "false belief system", an "apostate church", and that it would be "devoured by the anti-Christ".

Anyone who whines that Obama recieved favorable media coverage next to McCain needs to to drink a nice, warm cup of STFU.

Bloggers just cherry pick other peoples' hard work...

Just like Maureen Dowd is constantly having her hard work stolen by TPM. Wait...you mean it's the exact other way around? Hrm. That's some pretty professional research.

I didn't realize anyone thought of Maureen Dowd as a "journalist".

Bloggers just cherry pick other peoples' hard work...

Just like Maureen Dowd is constantly having her hard work stolen by TPM.
Wait...you mean it's the exact other way around? Hrm. That's some pretty professional research.

Yeah, don't forget his "magic negro" song: http://crooksandliars.com/2007/04/27/breaking-limbaughs-barack-the-magic-negro-on-air-song-has-staffers-up-in-arms

That sure doesn't seem racist to me.

I'll pick a few here:

Teh GAYS are coming to steal yer marriages!!!!11

Never heard this from a Republican

You are a liar. Bush's "re-election" (his first actual election) was won primarily because they snuck so many anti-equality laws on the ballots. The bigoted wingnuts came out of the woodwork and voted for Bush while they were there.

We're the party of fiscal responsibility!

I would have agreed with this last year. But since the current party has tripled the deficit, it turns out that it's true!

Yes, I am absolutely certain that Obama, in 100 days, managed to triple the deficit, compared to 8 years of Bush spending like a drunken frat boy.

I totally believe that, because, apparently, I am an idiot.

They're not prisoners of war, so the Geneva Convention doesn't apply!

Were any of these guys wearing a uniform? No? then the Geneva Convention does not apply. Why is this so hard to understand?

Because I have a soul, and the idea of shoving flashlights up little kid's asses in front of the kid's mother is abhorrent to me.

Oh, and here's a POW being waterboarded:
http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2009-05-13/cheneys-role-deepens/

Iraq had something, anything to do with 9/11!

I have never heard a Republican say this, yet it keeps getting repeated over and over as if it's true. And what do you know, many of the exceedingly ignorant and borderline retarded believe it.

Liar.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/3119676.stm

http://thinkprogress.org/2006/08/21/bush-on-911/
http://crooksandliars.com/jon-perr/bush-team-peddles-911-iraq-link-torture
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/chris-durang/lieberman-peddles-the-old_b_77198.html
http://www.csmonitor.com/2003/0314/p02s01-woiq.html
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/10164478
http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0511/S00247.htm
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/0321-02.htm

Not only that, it turns out we were torturing people to death and shoving flashlights up children's bums specifically to try and GET a fake link between Iraq and 9/11. Whoops!

I wish you were right about this. After all evidence is building that the US torture policies have lead to many well documented deaths and have been authorized at the highest level. Yet, that doesn't mean that Bush wasn't elected president (although technically the first time around he may not have been).

Will be interesting to see if there are enough hardcore dead-enders still around on /. to get this modded as flamebait.

That depends what you mean by "reporters". What about Guido Fawkes? HuffPo? Crooks and Liars? None of these are newspapers and yet they all contain hard hitting journalism and telling the truth to power. They link to newspapers, yes, but this is only a small portion of their source content.

For the sake of argument, what are their non-newspaper sources?

That depends what you mean by "reporters". What about Guido Fawkes? HuffPo? Crooks and Liars? None of these are newspapers and yet they all contain hard hitting journalism and telling the truth to power. They link to newspapers, yes, but this is only a small portion of their source content.

Colbert came up with oinkmageddon

http://crooksandliars.com/david-neiwert/colbert-reports-oink-mageddon

I'm not gonna be some MSM conspiracy kook here, but seriously - you really think that 48% or whatever of Americans are anti-intellectual xenophobic racist apes? Citation needed!

Why else would they vote for the most incompetent flip flopper in politics?

There are a lot of people left in the Republican party who are a whole lot closer to those old time conservatives than you think, and if they don't get noticed, it's only partly their own fault and largely the media's fault.

If they are, they're staying put because of inertia and party loyalty only. Today's Democrats are more conservative than Nixon.

although at least the left-leaning media does focus on their own moderates once in a while.

The HuffPo is a drop in the media ocean.

it's that they somehow get branded as the fringe element. Maybe the Dems are just better at branding?

The GOP has done it's own job branding itself as a batch of insane idiots.

and Cheney isn't as diabolical

Other than planning warrantless wiretapping *before* 911.

Obama's overdoing the spending

Only in the Treasury department. The stimulus was short a good $2 trillion.

overdoing the apologies

Such as?

and proving to be far less centralist/consensus building/corruption free than his words promised

Hardly. When he first came into office, he put bipartisanship ahead of legislation, and look where it got him - only three votes and only in the Senate. Obama's been far too accommodating to the right wing.

I'm gonna go ahead and forecast the filibuster will be back next election cycle

Fat chance, and that's with Obama making some moronic picks from a strategic perspective: Napolitano for DHS, when she was probably the only Democrat in Arizona capable of beating McCain next year. And he picked Sebelius over Howard Dean, eliminating the best chance of having a Democratic senator from Kansas for the first time in 70+ years.

forecast the filibuster will be back next election cycle (which I think will be healthy).

The filibuster is great, as long as it means the senators are breaking out the cots and the phonebooks. The current, painless filibuster needs to go.

I'm definitely pro-small government

Wanting a small government for the sake of a small government is as sensible as wanting a big government for the sake of a big government.

I think most Americans are for their own comfort - when the economy is chugging along, that means pro-big-business (Republican)

Except of course that you want Democrats at both times though.

And my point is that the media should be digging at least a little bit below the stage persona

Too bad our media sucks so bad. They're obsessed with glittering trivialities, reporting he said/she said while leaving out the facts, and covering up their support of the Iraq war.

> Where are the posts comparing Obama to Hitler?

I'll get you started:

And don't forget Glenn Beck, et al.

You have a unconstitutionally elected president doing what liberal fascists have always done ... take away our rights to further their power and control over the people.

You OBVIOUSLY know nothing about fascism (or here). First of all, you have to be right wing to be a fascist, BY DEFINITION!

Please stop using words without knowing what they mean! Just because you say it means one thing doesn't make it so!!!

Oh, and the Constitution doesn't elect the President, it gives the power to the people to do so ... and we did! You really should read more, a lot more!

I actually do know what "fascist" means, and here's the Merriam-Webster definition:

a political philosophy, movement, or regime (as that of the Fascisti) that exalts nation and often race above the individual and that stands for a centralized autocratic government headed by a dictatorial leader, severe economic and social regimentation, and forcible suppression of opposition

Note that it says nothing about "left" or "right", but the central characteristics is a dictatorial leader and forcible suppression of opposition ... what does that sound like?

The people may have "elected" Obama as the president, but he may be unconstitutionally qualified to be the president. You have to meet some pretty basic qualifications like 1) at least 35 years old, check
2) be a natural born citizen ... well let's see, the most "transparent" administration refuses to allow his birth certificate and any records of his personal life to become part of the public discourse. Yes, I've looked at his purported on-line certificate ... doesn't look real to me.

Try reading the Constitution some time. You might learn something.

You have a unconstitutionally elected president doing what liberal fascists have always done ... take away our rights to further their power and control over the people.

You OBVIOUSLY know nothing about fascism (or here). First of all, you have to be right wing to be a fascist, BY DEFINITION!

Please stop using words without knowing what they mean! Just because you say it means one thing doesn't make it so!!!

Oh, and the Constitution doesn't elect the President, it gives the power to the people to do so ... and we did! You really should read more, a lot more!

From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fascist_(epithet) I found a definition of fascist as "...the word fascist has been applied mainly to a broad range of people and groups on the extreme right, but also to groups on the far left and at points in between..."

Maybe you should look a little closer before accusing other people of things your OBVIOUSLY guilty of!

You have a unconstitutionally elected president doing what liberal fascists have always done ... take away our rights to further their power and control over the people.

You OBVIOUSLY know nothing about fascism (or here). First of all, you have to be right wing to be a fascist, BY DEFINITION!

Please stop using words without knowing what they mean! Just because you say it means one thing doesn't make it so!!!

Oh, and the Constitution doesn't elect the President, it gives the power to the people to do so ... and we did! You really should read more, a lot more!

Unfortunately, most news sources in the US are biased, and the number of mainstream media outlets with liberal leanings appear to outnumber the conservative ones.

Except of course that is demonstrably false. Conservative writers dominate editorial pages and conservative commentators dominate TV.

On the national level: CNN, which has lost all credibility as a news source, is mostly iReporters and Hollywood gossip, and engage in constant concern trolling on Democrats

Fixed that for you.

Does 'attempted obstruction of justice' by refusing to answer their questions until you can obtain legal counsel count?

Not likely, our country may have gone pretty far down a dark road, thanks to the "War on Drugs" and the "War on Terror"; however, we're not quite that far gone, yet.

And since police are allowed to lie to you [transformcolumbusday.org], what's to keep them from lying that the undercover policeman that just entered the room is in fact an attorney, a public defender, and is there to help advise you on your rights? The police could lie at that point and say this 'attorney' can fill in for your attorney until yours actually gets there. Of course, anything said in confidence to this 'attorney' probably wouldn't be covered by any attorney-client priviledge since the 'attorney' is really a cop.

Again, we've gotten bad, but not likely that bad. While I don't doubt that this type idea has crossed the minds of some of the worst of the police, I think they realize the absolute smack down which a judge would hit them with for it. There isn't much which still pisses off judges enough to throw out evidence, but I have no doubt that this would fall well within that realm.

Are you paranoid enough yet?

Being careful is not being paranoid. The police, in this country, have become so emboldened with the War on Drugs that they are willing to Kick in a mayor's door and kill his dogs based on very thin pretenses. They are also willing to gun down elderly ladies in their homes, and plant evidence to cover up their crime.

You can call me paranoid all day long, if you like. It's a free country after all, and everyone is entitled to their opinion, no matter how stupid. But until we stop seeing botched drug raids on a regular basis, I am going to continue to assume that the police are not my friend.

The Clinton people were drunk on greed

On what, exactly? Where were the multi-billion dollar no-bid contracts for Al Gore's former company?

Pelosi all but said everyone who is objective knows Bush and Cheney are criminals, and those who don't will never be convinced. So why waste tax payer money and other limited resources dredging up the past.

Why did prosecutors go after O.J. Simpson, it's not like a conviction would have brought back Nicole or Goldman. Glenn Greenwald has a nice series on how there's one standard for the plebeians, and another for the aristocrats:

What you have is a two-tiered system of justice where ordinary Americans are subjected to the most merciless criminal justice system in the world. They break the law. The full weight of the criminal justice system comes crashing down upon them. But our political class, the same elites who have imposed that incredibly harsh framework on ordinary Americans, have essentially exempted themselves and the leaders of that political class from the law.

Smoke some pot and you're going to serve some nice time in a PMITA penitentiary. Torture a few hundred people, trash 4 constitutional amendments, treaties, habeas corpus, and it gets covered up.

You pick a well thought out, moderate view

There is only one moderate view: it's none of your damn business if gay couples decide to get married, anymore than it is your business that inter-racial couples get married, which also used to be illegal.

Every time someone professes to be an Obama supporter, ask them to name/describe three of his policies. Out of several dozen people I've asked, every one of them tells me he's the new hope, that he's a stable guy, that he's not old... and ONE has been able to actually name three policies. Obama has perfected saying absolutely nothing and all indicators imply he's going to win because of it.

Then you're an idiot that hasn't talked to very many people. Quick, name all of Woodrow Wilson's cabinet members. If you can't do it right now, off the top of your head, it means they didn't exist.

McCain pisses off the liberals by being a conservative, the conservatives by being a free thinker and made the mistake of picking a VP who keeps having opinions about everything, whether they fit the platform or not... and is on course to lose because of it.

More garbage. McCain pisses people off because he's an incompetent flip flopping hot head who can't make a single attack on Obama that doesn't blow back into his hypocritical face.

And Palin? She makes George W. Bush look like a knowledgeable, experienced polititican.

"Joe" was a plant. I have little sympathy for him. He was brought up by McCain to try to be the example he couldn't actually find for some 'small guy' being screwed over by Obama's plan.

Don't you think it's just a tiny bit strange that the one person McCain uses as an example in the last presidential campaign, someone he brings up over and over, lied about everything about his situation? And out of the thousands and thousands of constituents Obama has talked to during the past two years of campaigning, this one guy just happens to be related to Keating, of the Keating Five Scandal?

Somehow I doubt his lies are due entirely to daydreams. He is related (by marriage) to Keating, of the Keating Five scandal. And old buddy of McCain's, and one of the skeletons in his closet. He was a plant.

I hint for the knowledge deprived: First Lady I'd Like to ....

http://www.crooksandliars.com/2007/10/30/is-america-ready-for-a-flilf/

As some on above here pointed out... that type of action doesn't look to be garnering this type of response. http://www.crooksandliars.com/2008/08/31/scant-coverage-of-obama-assassination-plot-irresponsible-or-cautious/ Or maybe its just party politics at play again? I hope to god that its not, and its just stupid people. Party politics is destructive enough, when you take it to this level, its not about the party overall, its about how long you can abuse until you have a revolution.

...you get dismissed as a crackpot druggy even when you have guns, bullet proof vests, disguises, fake IDs, walky talkies etc. http://www.crooksandliars.com/2008/08/31/scant-coverage-of-obama-assassination-plot-irresponsible-or-cautious/#more-32351 Just think if those were African Americans on crack admitting they wanted to kill McCain???!!! Or god forbid MUSLIM.

Crookandliars.com has some interviews and coverage on these raids.

story #1
story #2

Crookandliars.com has some interviews and coverage on these raids.

story #1
story #2

this idea seems to give credibility to the idea that they don't care if a few innocent people die.

There's much more to this story than that, from Crooks and Liars

"Controller John Chiang is standing up to Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger -- refusing to comply with the devastating Executive Order the Governor signed last Thursday -- despite 28,016 petitions Courage Campaign, CREDO Mobile and True Majority members sent to his office."

The moment you accept killing one innocent person is OK to save many more innocent people, then how do you propose we weigh their lives?

... do you watch the steven colbert show? (lol) ... The funny part? It is true..

" I honestly don't care if he wins the election now or not."

You get the government that you deserve.

Paul Weyrich has you by the short and curlies:
http://www.crooksandliars.com/2007/06/07/paul-weyrich-goo-goo-syndrome/

It's not just FISA, there's also the death penalty for child rapists (is that "progressive"?), pulling out of public financing, and even being inflammatory on abortion despite being pro-choice in the past.

I think I agree with the Huffington Post. Is this the guy everybody got excited about?

Rove seems to be involved in McCain's campaign.

Crooks and Liars? Really?

I mean, look at a few carefully cherry-picked blog posts from there:

http://www.crooksandliars.com/2008/06/11/would-mccain-want-cheney-in-his-cabinet-hell-yeah/
http://www.crooksandliars.com/2008/06/12/john-mccain-wont-let-the-war-stop-him-from-golfing/
http://www.crooksandliars.com/2008/06/11/new-moveonorg-ad-featuring-john-cusack-take-the-bushmccain-pop-quiz/
http://www.crooksandliars.com/2008/06/11/mccain-showcases-his-foreign-policy-expertise/
http://www.crooksandliars.com/2008/06/11/mccains-evangelical-problem/

I didn't have to hunt far to find those, and I knew I'd find them even before looking, having seen a few posts from C&L in the past. Maybe McCain's old friend Putin, the president of Germany, tipped them off about that site.

Crooks and Liars? Really?

I mean, look at a few carefully cherry-picked blog posts from there:

http://www.crooksandliars.com/2008/06/11/would-mccain-want-cheney-in-his-cabinet-hell-yeah/
http://www.crooksandliars.com/2008/06/12/john-mccain-wont-let-the-war-stop-him-from-golfing/
http://www.crooksandliars.com/2008/06/11/new-moveonorg-ad-featuring-john-cusack-take-the-bushmccain-pop-quiz/
http://www.crooksandliars.com/2008/06/11/mccain-showcases-his-foreign-policy-expertise/
http://www.crooksandliars.com/2008/06/11/mccains-evangelical-problem/

I didn't have to hunt far to find those, and I knew I'd find them even before looking, having seen a few posts from C&L in the past. Maybe McCain's old friend Putin, the president of Germany, tipped them off about that site.

Crooks and Liars? Really?

I mean, look at a few carefully cherry-picked blog posts from there:

http://www.crooksandliars.com/2008/06/11/would-mccain-want-cheney-in-his-cabinet-hell-yeah/
http://www.crooksandliars.com/2008/06/12/john-mccain-wont-let-the-war-stop-him-from-golfing/
http://www.crooksandliars.com/2008/06/11/new-moveonorg-ad-featuring-john-cusack-take-the-bushmccain-pop-quiz/
http://www.crooksandliars.com/2008/06/11/mccain-showcases-his-foreign-policy-expertise/
http://www.crooksandliars.com/2008/06/11/mccains-evangelical-problem/

I didn't have to hunt far to find those, and I knew I'd find them even before looking, having seen a few posts from C&L in the past. Maybe McCain's old friend Putin, the president of Germany, tipped them off about that site.

Crooks and Liars? Really?

I mean, look at a few carefully cherry-picked blog posts from there:

http://www.crooksandliars.com/2008/06/11/would-mccain-want-cheney-in-his-cabinet-hell-yeah/
http://www.crooksandliars.com/2008/06/12/john-mccain-wont-let-the-war-stop-him-from-golfing/
http://www.crooksandliars.com/2008/06/11/new-moveonorg-ad-featuring-john-cusack-take-the-bushmccain-pop-quiz/
http://www.crooksandliars.com/2008/06/11/mccain-showcases-his-foreign-policy-expertise/
http://www.crooksandliars.com/2008/06/11/mccains-evangelical-problem/

I didn't have to hunt far to find those, and I knew I'd find them even before looking, having seen a few posts from C&L in the past. Maybe McCain's old friend Putin, the president of Germany, tipped them off about that site.

Crooks and Liars? Really?

I mean, look at a few carefully cherry-picked blog posts from there:

http://www.crooksandliars.com/2008/06/11/would-mccain-want-cheney-in-his-cabinet-hell-yeah/
http://www.crooksandliars.com/2008/06/12/john-mccain-wont-let-the-war-stop-him-from-golfing/
http://www.crooksandliars.com/2008/06/11/new-moveonorg-ad-featuring-john-cusack-take-the-bushmccain-pop-quiz/
http://www.crooksandliars.com/2008/06/11/mccain-showcases-his-foreign-policy-expertise/
http://www.crooksandliars.com/2008/06/11/mccains-evangelical-problem/

I didn't have to hunt far to find those, and I knew I'd find them even before looking, having seen a few posts from C&L in the past. Maybe McCain's old friend Putin, the president of Germany, tipped them off about that site.

Have The White House AND Congress swap places with the current Gitmo prisoners. On second thought, impeach The White House AND then send them to Gitmo.

Cheers,
Kilgore Trout

I have a theory, and it's not a conspiracy theory. Conspiracy implies conscious intent, and intent requires awareness which such jokers, and indeed many regular people simply don't posses. That theory goes like this. . .

The state of communications technology is mirrored by public awareness. --That is, the more aware people are, the more likely it is that they'll have at their disposal tools like the Model 100 with which to communicate. Over the last decade, the portable writing tools available to us have been seriously limited. Small, awkward keyboards and small, awkward screens represent a very choked up conduit for thought. We've made huge gains in terms of connectivity in the other direction, through distributed 'experience', but that's about telling people what to think rather than giving people the ability to report on their own thoughts and experiences in a useful manner. (A cell phone conversation is not a good way to get an article to press, or to update your blog).

When you're out in the field and you want to express your findings and thoughts to the world, the available devices became next to worthless despite the fact that we are capable of making stunningly effective and easily affordable machines using today's technology. The Iraq war and the public perception of it is an excellent example of the mirror. People were very, very ignorant, wanting information served to them, (like poor Bill O'), and invested very little into actually trying to divine the truth for themselves. The communication devices broadly available mirrored that head-space perfectly. i.e., there weren't any.

But things are changing! Many more people today DO want to find out the truth for themselves; they are becoming increasingly fed up with the nonsense fluff offered up by the traditional channels. And just look at the mirror. . . We've got a slew of new portable devices coming down the pike.

The Asus eee 1000 has a 10" screen, a full laptop keyboard and the new Atom chip offering up 7 hours of battery life. And it's around the same size, if not smaller, (and certainly lighter), than the Model 100. All for $550, half the price of the original Model 100 of yore.

While I do like a text-only machine for strict writing, the shape of knowledge collection and dissemination today has grown to include the internet. Today, real journalism requires access to the web in a meaningful way. You need to be able to check facts and current events, compare notes with your peers, and update your blog or whatever from the field, and now you can. The Model 100 was an excellent conduit for knowledge in a time when knowledge itself was less robust. The light was dimmer, had less octane. My opinion, and please remember that this is an OPINION, is

otherwise Lincon would have had no recourse to lock up captured southern military soldiers as individual rebels

there was no concept of "enemy combatant"

succeeding

Nobody votes for parties in this country. You vote for individuals who are representatives of a party, and not two are alike. Do you think Mike Huckabee and Mitt Romney were on the same page? How about Dennis Kucinich and Hillary Clinton? No party is going to fit your laundry list of pet issues, some of them quite obscure, so you better start your own.

I want marijuana legalized. Which party should I vote for?

Easy: Barney Frank.

I want the PATRIOT act repealed. Which party should I vote for?

Jon Tester.

I want the Bono act repealed and copyright terms scaled back to 20 years. Which party should I vote for? I want the DMCA repealed. Which party should I vote for?

I don't know offhand of any politicians advocating for scaling back copyright laws. But this falls under the "primary crappy Dems, get better Dems elected" category.

I want it illegal to accept contributions from anyone who isn't eligible to vote for you. Which party should I vote for?

So not only will Puerto Rican's not be able to vote in the presidential election, they wont be able to support candidates? In any case, quibbling over the minutia of campaign finance laws is a distraction from the real solution: have public financing for all campaigns, for there will always be loopholes for other contributions. And if that gets your Libertarian streak all hot and bothered, which really costs you more: a few million for elections, or hundreds of billions in pork spending that rewards contributors?

I want it illegal to contribute to more than one candidate in any given race. Which party should I vote for? I want federal laws to expire after 5 years. Which party do I vote for?

Look, TJ was one of the pillars of this country, but he was a bit nutty to want the Constitution to be rewritten every 20 years. And you want federal laws to expire after 5? That is the craaaaazy and will just waste time. If it ain't broke, don't fix it. Wanting to limit contributions to a single candidate doesn't make much more sense.

In the context of Chinese history, the Tiananmen Square incident was a blip.

Is that smaller than a comma?

Quote: "This man's problems were caused not by ID theft, but by suspicion of crime."

So many things have been happening like that, I wonder if there is an intent to overthrow the U.S. and U.K. governments. For example, former Minnesota governor Jesse Ventura said yesterday that he thinks the attack on the World Trade Center was a controlled demolition.

The U.S. Senate voted against Habeus Corpus, which provides legal protection from unlawful detention.

The U.S. government has been building prisons.

http://www.spiegel.de/international/0,1518,437087,00.html

I also like this story:
http://www.crooksandliars.com/2007/10/07/wwii-veteran-nazi-interrogators-denounced-bushs-torture-techniques/

I find it astonishing that this McCain guy is even being talked about. Is everybody really so easily led by the nose?

That is, of course, a rhetorical question. American politics is like watching a bloody car accident in slow motion.

Not that any of it really matters. --With the totally ignored cries that the call girl agency which did Spitzer in was long known by U.S. Intelligence to be a Mossad front, and that he was fed to the lions to get a wall-street watchdog like Spitzer out of the way before the shenanigans with the Fed and JP Morgan and Bear Stearns which broke a week later, shows again that if you are clean, you aren't allowed to come to power of any sort. They must have some impressive dirt on Obama, (either that, or they'll just shoot him if Fox fails to do its job.) The Clintons are dirty as hell. But McCain? COME ON PEOPLE! That's just sick.

-FL

Ad's like this one remixing the heinous Republican terrorist ad.

Now there's an ad that shoves telco Republicans' nose in the crap they laid with their ad. An even more powerful remix of their terrorist's dream ad.

you are criticizing Rush Limbaugh because you think he insults people, and you chose to do that by... insulting him?

Hey jackhole, get a clue. When a bloated gasbag spews lies about an advocate for people with a debilitating disease, you're goddamned right he gets insulted. And when Rush mocks the disease's effects , shaking his body spastically around on camera to mimic Fox's illness, oh holy crap does he deserve to be insulted. Shakespeare didn't write enough insults for sick bastard whores like Rush Limbaugh.

But guess what? Rush was right. Fox later admitted that he purposely skips his medication before public events like this so people will see his worst case symptoms. Here is a video clip of him admitting this.

Guess what, you brain-dead moron? In that video clip Fox denies what he supposedly admitted, saying explicitly -- listen to your own video clip --

"It isn't as if I didn't take it deliberately, as some kind of theatrical thing."

Which of course pustulent corpse-raper Rush Limbaugh quotes as:

FOX: I didn't take it deliberately as some kind of theatrical thing...

Here, as usual, Rush listeners learn their facts about the world exactly backwards. It's the price you pay for giving a fat, impotent, parasitic slug-worm an invitation into your living room. Lend credence to the sneering ringmaster of a national freakshow and what happens is that you become stupid. Let me give you another example. If you'd bothered to learn something instead of lazily gulping down Limbaugh's diarrhea, you might have known that the visible tremors Rush was mocking come from the medication:

In fact, at the time he was over-medicated for his Parkinson's disease, Fox said Thursday in an exclusive interview with CBS Evening News anchor Katie Couric.

"The irony is that I was too medicated. I was dyskinesic," Fox told Couric. "Because the thing about ... being symptomatic is that it's not comfortable. No one wants to be symptomatic; it's like being hit with a hammer."

His body visibly wracked by tremors, Fox appears in a political ad touting Missouri Democratic Senate candidate Claire McCaskill's stance in favor of embryonic stem cell research. That prompted Limbaugh to speculate that Fox was "either off his medication or acting."

Fox told Couric, "At this point now, if I didn't take medication I wouldn't be able to speak."

I'm not the president of the Michael J. Fox fan club or anything. But the guy has to take his meds in order to be able to talk and move and interact with the world with some kind of normalcy. Without the medication, Parkinson's patients' muscles become rigid, their movements slow, and they even become unable to move at all. At the start of the filming day, Fox doesn't know if he's going to nail the ad in one take or is going to be there all day, so you can only imagine how carefully he plans out how much medication he's going to take and when, to ride the tightrope between his disease's wracking paralysis and the cure's tremors. Did he guess exactly right? I don't know, maybe not. Is Rush Limbaugh the biggest hate-smeared asshole the world has ever seen for second-guessing a prescription for someone he's never met, someone who is just trying to help a cause he believe

and in France the violence has turned to urban warfare

But I'll come back to that later. First:
It's people like you who are responsible for the rise of Sadam, Hitler, Bush and other despots. You justification is: there are "good" reasons to persecution. Hitler shared your point of view.
Instead of going after the people who failed to act (or juts let things happen that 9/11 to get the convenient war propaganda), you let your rights burn, you justify your own oppression, you take the lies about terrorism in Iraq as granted (the only terrorists active in Iraq were backed by the US and were acting to replace Sadam by a more cooperative dictator, just like in the very well documented coup against Mohammed Mossadegh which led to the current Iranian situation). You support the american terrorism. You can't recognise a failed leader when you see one, Bush speaks in YOUR name, he acts in YOUR name.

they have developed a reputation for it.

Americans have developed a reputation: a short summary of things done in YOUR name: You call others nations terrorists if they don't support in your holly war, you invade a country under false pretexts, plan the chaos (disbanding the government and army http://www.cfr.org/publication/7853/iraq.html) which will justify the presence of your army in the country. You steal all the oil you can while people argue about the effectiveness of your strategy. You kill people at random (just for fun, a video) and you create laws to avoid being prosecuted... You kill more people cause it's fun It's bad you broke rules but no laws, because killing people is not a crime (the killers will walk free and proud in your streets). You have a strong tendency of acting like criminals at every level of the state and you make your own law how and where it pleases you; As Bush said "He tried to kill my dad". And so you bombed a nation with radioactive waste (twice http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/95178_du12.shtml, http://www.csmonitor.com/2003/0515/p01s02-woiq.html). Also, giving false evidence about mass destruction weapons to bring other nations into your jihad is another strategy in you sick failed-state. And this reputation of being christian fanatics who create your own private (out of the law) saint armies http://www.blackwaterusa.com/ counts for something... Your leaders are a reflection of yourself.

I think there are valid reasons for millions of people around the world to seek vengeance against the US. So stop complaining, having a 1984 like system at the airports and having your laptop stolen by greedy TSA officials is a low price to pay for your own security when you are too lazy to act responsibly. You don't deserve freedom if you can't fight for it... It's up to you as a citizen of a country to watch where your freedom goes... You are just like russians, happy to give away your rights by fear of loosing some of this daily comfort. At the airport you are treated like cattle, because you are... Your country and its officials (from top to bottom TSA agents) consider you as such... it gives you

Surely you've heard Jon Stewart's explanation of the use of question marks? .wmv and .mov formats.