Your two lips are dripping honey, ah

How can you tell Dick Morris is lying? He writes an editorial:

As the suicidal Democratic congressmen proceed to rubber-stamp the Obama health care reform despite the drubbing their party took in the '09 elections, the president trotted out the endorsements of the AMA and the AARP to stimulate support.

Um, yeah. Say, Dick. Go ahead, say Dick, because you are. Seriously, I appreciate the concern trollphrase "suicidal Democratic congressmen", but first, some of them are women, and I do agree with you, some of them are suicidal but for far different reasons that you propose. And "drubbing their party took..."? Yes, we lost 2 Governors, which has NO Federal impact, but gained 2 Congresspersons, which does. Say Dick.

Sadly, Dick goes on:

•The American Medical Association (AMA) was facing a 21 percent cut in physicians reimbursements under the current law. Obama promised to kill the cut if they backed his bill. The cuts are the fruit of a law requiring annual 5 percent to 6 percent reductions in doctor reimbursements for treating Medicare patients. Bravely, each year Congress has rolled the cuts over, suspending them but not repealing them. So each year, the accumulated cuts threaten doctors. By now, they have risen to 21 percent. With this blackmail leverage, Obama compelled the AMA to support his bill ... or else!

So Congress was brave when they refused to let physician reimbursements be cut, but when Obama does it, it's blackmail. I see, Congress good, Obama bad. Say Dick.

But President Bush-43 passed the Medicare Advantage program, which offered a subsidized, lower-cost alternative to Medi-gap. Under Medicare Advantage, the elderly get all the extra coverage they need plus coordinated, well-managed care, usually by the same physician. So more than 10 million seniors went with Medicare Advantage, cutting into AARP Medi-gap revenues.

Presto! Obama solved their problem. He eliminates subsidies for Medicare Advantage. The elderly will have to pay more for coverage under Medi-gap, but the AARP – which supposedly represents them – will make more money. (If this galls you, join the American Seniors Association, the alternative group. Contact sbarton@americanseniors.org.

Not so fast, Sparky. Medicare advantage offers exactly the same coverage Medicare offers, with a few extra meaningless perks, yet bills the government higher rates. And has higher overheads. Who wins? Blue Cross, Blue Shield, Aetna, that's who. So when Morris et al complain about cuts in Medicare to scare seniors, what they're talking about is stopping the taxpayer support for insurance companies profiting on what Medicare gives seniors for free.

Oh, and about the American Seniors Association? From Avenging Angel's diary at Kos:

A little digging into Stuart Barton's 60,000 member American Seniors Association would have made that clear. Founded in 2005 by Barton's father Jerry as the National Association for Senior Concerns (NASCON), the group targeted the "radical agenda" of the AARP. Topping its program is Social Security privatization, hard-line opposition to immigration reform, and an overhaul of Medicare, which Barton deemed "the most abused and wasteful of all federal programs that could be bankrupt even before Social Security." As its press page shows, the ASA is a right-wing talking point regurgitation machine:

"On page 425 of the bill, a person must go to counseling every five years to basically learn how to die," Barton says. "As I read this and hear about no preventative care, it dawned on me that Obama's plan is to let all these baby boomers die quicker so we don't have to care for them in old age."

The ASA's "Four Pillars," also extolled by former Hollywood Squares game show host and honorary chairman Peter Marshall, are a hardliner's dream and a senior citizen's nightmare:

Medicare Reform: This most abused and wasteful of all federal programs could be bankrupt before the Social Security System runs dry!
Social Security Reform: Voluntary personal accounts safe from government meddling must be approved providing senior citizens options and keeping the system solvent.
Illegal Aliens: Lawbreakers do not deserve Social Security payments intended for you and your family who are citizens.
Tax Reform: An easily understood and simplified tax code in the form of the Fair Tax.

Swell. Remember Little Red Riding Hood? Granny, meet fox (pun fully intended).

But you get the idea. Dick Morris will lie, say anything anyone wants him to, as long as he has toes to suck:

On the eve of the Democratic Convention in September 1996, Morris was forced to resign as head of Pres. Clinton’s reelection campaign after Sherry Rowlands, a call girl with whom he had a long-term for-pay relationship, sold her story to the supermarket tabloid “The Star” for around $50,000. In the article, Rowlands revealed that Morris had a fetish for toe sucking, a fact that will always have a place in the TMI hall of fame.

She also offered a glimpse into Morris’ marriage that may have some saliency today, if his phone number does appear on Palfrey’s list:

Asked about Morris’s wife, Rowlands said: “I’m sure this is hurting her, and was not meant to hurt her. He’s the one who hurt her, not me. . . . He loves his wife — that’s why he would pay me . . . to come see him. That makes him feel he is not cheating on his wife. This is business as long as he’s paying for it.”

Shorter: It isn’t adultery if you pay for it.

Since the Clintons kicked him out, Morris has earned millions as a professional Clinton hater inside the GOP noise machine. He bloviates regularly on the Fox News Channel, writes a syndicated column for the Fox aligned New York Post and has authored several books trashing the senator and ex-president.

He also converted to Catholicism.

Bastard.

After all the bad Dick, here's some good Dick: Dick Dale

Mommy don't worry now teddy boys here

We've lost the one sure vote for health care reform in the Senate:

Senator Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts, a son of one of the most storied families in American politics, a man who knew triumph and tragedy in near-equal measure and who will be remembered as one of the most effective lawmakers in the history of the Senate, died late Tuesday night. He was 77 .

Teddy wasn't perfect, clearly no one is. Yet he chose to leverage his family's wealth and position into a career of public service. And while he had many flaws and missteps, he had found his stride in recent years, being a champion of health care reform in the truest sense, so that the 46 million or more Americans with no access to health care might join in the American dream.

As usual, the far right Free Republic loves them some Liberal death:

Ted Kennedy is dead
____________________
The bar is open!
Drinks on the house!
Its PARTAY time


This damn traitor lived far to long.


Mary Jo: “Hey Teddy. See this button? It has only one direction: DOWN! Step right in!”


It appears that as long as a murderer of millions of people is an American, he is “great.” The glowing tribute from George H.W. Bush is stomach-turning.

The death of Ted Kennedy is no more an occasion for mourning and tributes than the death of Hitler, Lenin, Stalin, Mao.

There is no indication of repentance for his career of lies, murder, theft, and oppression.

His funeral will almost certainly take place at St. Stephen’s Catholic Church in Boston, from where Rose Kennedy was buried, unless for some reason the family desires a “state” funeral in Washington. In any case, the orgy will be broadcast, hundreds of pro-abortion Catholics will slither forward to receive Communion on camera. Archbishop Sean O’Malley will crouch in a linen closet for a week, until the funeral is over.

You get the idea. this is why bipartisan debate is impossible. As usual, the signal-to-noise ratio for the right-wing drops below intelligible levels.

Bastards.

Addendum by The Sailor:>"the signal-to-noise ratio for the right-wing drops below intelligible levels."

Interesting, but understandable, you would phrase it that way.

My current work is in processing noisy images acquired thru translucent membranes in the retina via slightly fluorescing parts of the retina. Each image is dark. But when I align them, register them, and average them, I can clearly see the pathology. It takes time and many samples.

I've applied the same algorithms to the republican reaction to Ted Kennedy's death.

Each image is dark, but after processing them the hate shines thru. Oddly enough I thought it was just noise too, turns out the signal is loud and clear.

Noise always cancels out over time, the same frequency just amplifies.

BTW, their 'facts' are always wrong, Kennedy's service won't be at St. Stephen’s, it will be at the Basilica of Our Lady of Perpetual Help. That's where he went to pray when his daughter, Kara, was undergoing treatment for lung cancer at Dana-Farber Hospital.

Baby you're a rich man

Oh for God's sake: Amity Shlaes is at it again, pimping out Atlas Shrugged as the owner's manual for Glibertarians trying to find their way through the awful Obama years:

Some assumed the late libertarian philosopher would fall from view when the Berlin Wall fell. Or that at least there would be a sense of mission accomplished. One Rand fan, former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan, wrote in his memoir that he regretted Rand hadn't lived until 1989 or 1990. She'd missed the collapse of communism that she had so often predicted.

But "Atlas Shrugged" is becoming a political "Harry Potter" because Rand shone a spotlight on a problem that still exists: Not pre-1989 Soviet communism, but 2009-style state capitalism. Rand depicted government and companies colluding in the name of economic rescue at the expense of the entrepreneur. That entrepreneur is like the titan Atlas who carries the rest of the world on his shoulders – until he doesn't.

Thankfully Libertarians are a distinct minority today, and tend to actually be Right-wingers who carp about big-government unless it's helping line their pockets.

But then Shlaes actually, well, lies by misdirection and illogic:

In 1986, a year when "Atlas Shrugged" sold 60,000 to 80,000 copies, the top 1 percent of earners paid 26 percent of the income tax. By 2000, that 1 percent was paying 37 percent, and "Atlas Shrugged" sales were at 120,000. By 2006, the top 1 percent carried 40 percent of the burden.

Yet President Barack Obama has made it clear he would like to see the rich pay a greater share. Anyone irked at that prospect can find consolation in Rand's fantasy, in which the most valued professionals evaporate from the work place because of such demands.

Going Galt, as it's called today. Yes, such producers of goods and services as hedge fund managers and Wall St. buffoons going Galt will be disastrous . . . for hedge fund managers and Wall St. buffoons.

Here's the real story on taxes and wealth in the USofA. It's a fairly long piece from the Univ. Ca. Santa Cruz (likely a communist front), but it spells out just where our tax burden is. (Hint: it's really not the über-wealthy!):

In the United States, wealth is highly concentrated in a relatively few hands. As of 2004, the top 1% of households (the upper class) owned 34.3% of all privately held wealth, and the next 19% (the managerial, professional, and small business stratum) had 50.3%, which means that just 20% of the people owned a remarkable 85%, leaving only 15% of the wealth for the bottom 80% (wage and salary workers). In terms of financial wealth (total net worth minus the value of one's home), the top 1% of households had an even greater share: 42.2%. Table 1 and Figure 1 present further details drawn from the careful work of economist Edward N. Wolff at New York University (2007).

. . . Here are some dramatic facts that sum up how the wealth distribution became even more concentrated between 1983 and 2004, in good part due to the tax cuts for the wealthy and the defeat of labor unions: Of all the new financial wealth created by the American economy in that 21-year-period, fully 42% of it went to the top 1%. A whopping 94% went to the top 20%, which of course means that the bottom 80% received only 6% of all the new financial wealth generated in the United States during the '80s, '90s, and early 2000s (Wolff, 2007).

. . . A key factor behind the high concentration of income, and the likely reason that the concentration has been increasing, can be seen by examining the distribution of what is called "capital income": income from capital gains, dividends, interest, and rents. In 2003, just 1% of all households -- those with after-tax incomes averaging $701,500 -- received 57.5% of all capital income, up from 40% in the early 1990s. On the other hand, the bottom 80% received only 12.6% of capital income, down by nearly half since 1983, when the bottom 80% received 23.5%. Figure 5 and Table 7 provide the details.

Figure 5: Share of capital income earned by top 1% and bottom 80%, 1979-2003 (From Shapiro & Friedman, 2006.)

So no need for worrying about the tax burdens on poor Donald Trump or George Soros. They're doing quite well, thank you.

And Shlaes will continue receiving wingnut welfare and deluding the already delusional.

Here's Warren Buffet on the American taxation system:

just a little bit of spanish castle magic

Byron York, right-wing hairstyle that walks like a man, attempts to rain on the Sotomayor parade and invokes the sainted name of Miguel Estrada, who, like Sotomayor, seems to be Latino. But there, all resemblance ends.

York in the Washington Examiner:

In 2001, President George W. Bush nominated former Justice Department lawyer Miguel Estrada to a seat on the federal courts of appeals. In that instance, as today, the nominee was was a Hispanic with a compelling story and impressive qualifications. And some of the very people who are today praising Sotomayor spent their time devising extraordinary measures to kill Estrada's chances.

His "dark-and-stormy-night" goes on to describe furtive meetings with shadowy liberal groups like the NAACP and People For The American Way, who issues marching orders to Dick Durbin and other senators:

"They also identified Miguel Estrada as especially dangerous," the staffer added, "because he has a minimal paper trail, he is Latino, and the White House seems to be grooming him for a Supreme Court appointment. They want to hold Estrada off as long as possible."

Yeah. About that. Dahlia Lithwick unpacks the story further:

But the most vocal objections come from the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, a group of 20 House Democrats who, unable to evaluate Estrada based on his judicial experience (he has none) or legal writings (which are not being produced) met with him for an hour last June, in the basement of the Capitol. Their conclusion? According to Rep. Robert Menendez of New Jersey, Estrada "shares a surname" with Latinos but has done little to help them. Menendez complains that Estrada had not set up internships or mentorship programs specifically aimed at helping young Latino lawyers, and he told Democrats that his ethnicity would be irrelevant to his day-to-day work as a judge.

Armando at Talk Left adds more criticism of York:

What Byron York will not acknowledge is that unlike Democratic opposition to Estrada, which was based on his ideology, not once did a Democrat or progressive say that Estrada lived a "privileged" life filled with "preferential treatment." Yet that is precisely what York's conservative cohorts have done to Sotomayor. When York confronts Michael Goldfarb, Fred Barnes, Bill Bennett, Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, Tom Tancredo and the rest of the despicable racialists in his Party, then come back and talk to us.

An old Source Watch post (with broken links) describes Estrada according to the DOJ where he worked:

Miguel Estrada is a Federalist Society member and former clerk for Justice Anthony Kennedy. He is also a partner in the law firm that represented President George W. Bush before the Supreme Court during his post-election legal fight with Al Gore. Estrada is a strong supporter of capital punishment whose judicial philosophy has been compared to that of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia.

Maybe it's just me, but that's plenty of reason to filibuster Estrada. And none of it applies to Sotomayor.


Note the very cool quote from "The Breeze and I" in Jimi's solo. Nice.

And it's one, two, three, What are we fighting for ?

1, 2, 3 what are we fightin' for...



Twenty, twenty, twentyfour hours to go, I wanna be sedated.



25 or 6 to 4..



Only numbers, right. Well how about 61 or 18? To some, 6118 means a great Gretsch guitar. But for today's lesson, 61 is a number being tossed around by Republican politicians, right-wing pundits, and lazy traditional media types instead of the likely more correct 18:

On the January 25 edition of NBC's Meet the Press, host David Gregory allowed House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH) to repeat the falsehood that, in Boehner's words, "we've already found" that 61 detainees released from the detention facilities at Guantánamo Bay are now "back on the battlefield." In fact, the figure, which comes from the Pentagon, includes 43 former prisoners who are suspected of, but have not been confirmed as, having "return[ed] to the fight." Moreover, even the Pentagon's claim that it has confirmed that 18 former Guantánamo detainees have returned to the battlefield has been questioned by experts.

Jeebus, do you have any time to do, you know, research to look into actual, you know, facts? When you're not too busy dancin' with rapper K-Ro:

Finally, the part that gives us the willies: They had Karl Rove come up (who, by the way, is looking very trim. Wow). Then they had him rap. As "MC Rove." This is on video, see it for yourself here. NBC's David Gregory, provided back-up dance moves, as he does.

The Media Matters piece continues:

Additionally, Seton Hall University School of Law professor Mark Denbeaux -- who has written several reports about Guantánamo detainees, including some challenging the Pentagon's definition of "battlefield" capture and published detainee recidivism rates -- has disputed the Pentagon's figures, asserting: "[The Defense Department's most recent] attempt to enumerate the number of detainees who have returned to the battlefield is false by the Department of Defense's own data and prior reports." He added that in "each of its forty-three attempts to provide the numbers of the recidivist detainees, the Department of Defense has given different sets of numbers that are contradictory and internally inconsistent with the Department's own data."

Gregory also failed to challenge Boehner's assertion that the detainees at Guantánamo "are terrorists who have attempted to kill Americans." As Media Matters documented, a February 8, 2006, study authored by Denbeaux and a lawyer representing Guantánamo detainees analyzed Defense Department data on 517 Guantánamo Bay detainees, finding that more than half "are not determined to have committed any hostile acts against the United States or its coalition allies."

Actually, I think we should use the 61 number. We on the left are simply saying that the Bush Administration so badly botched everything about Guantanamo and its hearing process that they held people with no actual charges for years, while letting 18 actual terrorists go. Their own rhetoric makes it look much worse. If the actual number were 61, that would make the Bushies vastly more incompetent at combating global terrorism than we previously believed.

Bastards.

Trickery, the unconscious power

We had some interesting political discussions around the old Thanksgiving table. One long-time friend, a thoughtful conservative, said he wondered if Obama/Clinton, had enough real world foreign policy experience to be President/Sec. of State.

I offer this in reply:


Another person bemoaned the Big 3 auto manufacturers plight, having to pay all those fabulous pensions to those selfish and lazy retirees.

To him, I offer this:

DETROIT, Sept 28, 2007; Kevin Krolicki and David Bailey writing for Reuters reported that General Motors Corp. agreed to keep 16 union-operated plants through 2011 in exchange for a cost-saving deal on health care and other concessions, according to the terms of the top U.S. automaker's tentative labor contract with the United Auto Workers union.

Under the deal, GM would shift a retiree health care obligation, estimated at over $50 billion, to a new trust in exchange for initial payments of $30 billion, a step analysts have said could save the automaker some $3 billion per year.

In another cost-cutting move, GM will offer more buyouts to UAW workers, creating room for new hires at reduced wages and benefits.

And the myth of UAW workers making over $70 per hour was raised. Read this:

Question: Is the press just being sloppy on this issue of supposedly pampered autoworkers, or are there other elements in play? Because honestly, I've had trouble escaping the not-very-subtle elitist, get-a-load-of-this tone that has run through the media's misinformation on the topic; i.e., "These autoworkers get paid that?!"

Answer: No, they don't, so please stop reporting it. (And why has the press been so reticent to note that Big Three autoworkers recently made significant concessions to management?)

And it's funny, because I don't remember hearing much coverage in the press about AIG workers' six- and seven-figure salaries when the U.S. government announced it was bailing out the insurance giant. And I haven't seen or heard a single press reference to the annual salaries pocketed by Citigroup employees, even though the government has moved in quickly to bail the banking giant out of a hole its executives dug.

Happy post-Turkey day!

Well, the race is on

It's Official ... McCain Campaign Fed The Hoax Racist Assault Story:

John McCain's Pennsylvania communications director told reporters in the state an incendiary version of the hoax story about the attack on a McCain volunteer well before the facts of the case were known or established -- and even told reporters outright that the "B" carved into the victim's cheek stood for "Barack," according to multiple sources familiar with the discussions.

John Verrilli, the news director for KDKA in Pittsburgh, told TPM Election Central that McCain's Pennsylvania campaign communications director gave one of his reporters a detailed version of the attack that included a claim that the alleged attacker said, "You're with the McCain campaign? I'm going to teach you a lesson."

The campaign tried to walk back, but the damage was already done: the reporters had their notes.

Most people's instant reaction to Ashley Todd's awful stunt was distaste, followed by "Clearly she needs help". Perhaps she does, although she seemed confident and in control while she was enacting her stupid prank.

But Oliver Willis has a good take:

I’ve seen some folks on the left say that they hope to see Ashley Todd, the race-baiting fabulist volunteer for the McCain campaign, seek mental help. Excuse me? She knew what she was doing. She’s done what College Republicans have often done - like affirmative action bake sales - they provoke racial discord in order to further the Republican cause.

Its no coincidence that this knuckle dragging moron went into the same well as baby killer Susan Smith by claiming that a black man was the provocateur.

She knew just what she was doing and a large part of the conservative movement was more than willing to shovel her excrement for her.

Harsh, but if the shoe fits . . .

Here's George Jones singing the tile song:

I'm an asshole

Breaking news:

Pat Buchanan is an asshole.

All of you fascists bound to lose

Update: Someone has created this great website with a petition to Congress: CensureBachmann.com:

Tell Congress to Censure Michele Bachmann

On the October 17 episode of MSNBC's Hardball, Rep. Michele Bachmann of Minnesota claimed that Barack Obama and other members of Congress share anti-American views.

Bachmann thinks that anyone who disagrees with her personal political agenda is unpatriotic. But she is the one who has a lot to learn about what it means to love America.

Her fellow members of Congress need to take a stand and tell Michele Bachmann that her disgusting accusations have no place in our country. Tell Congress to censure Rep. Bachmann.

Go there, do it. Thanks.

---

Following Michele Bachmann's (R-MN should be ashamed) appearance on Hardball, Katrina Vanden Heuvel responds:



I love Katrina.

Pat Buchanan has finally started unleashing his inner fascist. Bachmann has clearly found her core of hate.

To Hell with them both.

Some folks are born made to wave the flag, Ooh, theyre red, white and blue

I've never been big on gratuitous swearing here. for two reasons: 1. I feel that most points can be made without swear words, and 2. I always felt that Mom wouldn't approve.

Mom isn't reading here anymore, and I'm convinced that the following point can best be made by swearing, so here goes:

Fuck John McCain

You see, after whining about negative campaigning last night, he's running this robo-call:



But McCains' terrorist ties are OK, as he appears on G. Gordon Liddy's show:



where he describes Liddy as an "old friend," praises Liddy's "adherence to the principles and philosophies that keep our nation great," and said he was "proud" of Liddy.

G. Gordon freakin' Liddy? A true American Bastard:

In 1971, after serving in several positions in the Nixon administration, Liddy was moved to Nixon's 1972 campaign, the Committee to Re-elect the President (officially known as "CRP" but to opponents known as CREEP), in order to extend the scope and reach of the White House "Plumbers" unit, which had been created in response to various damaging leaks of information to the press. At CRP, Liddy concocted several plots, some far-fetched, intended to embarrass the Democratic opposition. These included firebombing the Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C. (where classified documents leaked by Daniel Ellsberg were being stored), kidnapping anti-war protest organizers and transporting them to Mexico during the Republican National Convention (which at the time was planned for San Diego), and luring mid-level Democratic campaign officials to a house boat in Baltimore where they would be secretly photographed in compromising positions with call girls. Most of Liddy's ideas were rejected, but a few were given the go ahead by Nixon Administration officials, including the break-in at Daniel Ellsberg's psychiatrist's office. Ellsberg had leaked the Pentagon Papers to the New York Times.^[4] At some point, Liddy was instructed to break into the Democratic National Committee offices in the Watergate Hotel.

. . . For his role in Watergate, which he coordinated with Hunt, Liddy was convicted of conspiracy, burglary and illegal wiretapping, and received a 20-year sentence. He served a total of five and half years in prison, including over 100 days in solitary confinement, before his sentence was commuted by President Jimmy Carter and he was released on September 7, 1977.

Liddy is noted for controversial advice to his radio audience, including on one occasion in 1994, after the federal raid on the Branch Davidian compound in Waco, Texas, Liddy advised his listeners: "Now if the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms comes to disarm you and they are bearing arms, resist them with arms. Go for a head shot; they're going to be wearing bulletproof vests. ... Kill the sons of bitches."

This sick son-of-a-bitch would break Federal laws and kidnap and possibly kill people to protect his beloved President, damn the country and the Constitution. That's Country First™ we can believe in.

McCain has nothing to give except crap to offer, so that's what we get.

Forget "war hero". Forget "great man". Forget "years of service to country." Forget it all.

John McCain is a ruthless prick would would sell Cindy's ass at a Tailhook convention for a few votes.

Nothing left of honor or reputation.

Nothing.

John McCain is nothing.

Unleashing the hounds

Gandhisxmas of Pygalgia has a frightening quote from Noam Chompsky: (my bold)

McCain is supposed to be a specialist on national security issues. Why? Suppose that some Russian pilot was shot down bombing heavily populated areas in Kabul and tortured by Reagan's freedom fighters in the l980's. Well, we might feel sorry for him, but does that make him an expert on National Security? But McCain is an expert on national security because he was shot down bombing heavily populated urban areas in Hanoi and he was tortured by the Vietnamese. Well, we feel sorry for him, but he is no expert on National Security. But you can't say that. These elections are run by the public relations industry. The intellectual community goes along. Issues are marginalized. The focus is on personalities, on Jeremiah Wright's sermons, Sarah Palin's pregnant daughter, or whatever it may be. In that terrain, the Republicans have a big advantage. They also have a formidable slander and vilification machine which has yet to go into full operation.

And here it comes, via Morse at Media Needle, Greg Sargent of TPM, and especially Dana Milbank of the Washington Post:

Sen. Lindsey Graham, a McCain confidant, told The Post's David Broder that the campaign would "go down in history as stupid if they don't unleash" Palin. Well, the self-identified pit bull has been unleashed -- if not unhinged.

Barack Obama, she told 8,000 fans at a rally here Monday afternoon, "launched his political career in the living room of a domestic terrorist!" This followed her earlier accusation that the Democrat pals around with terrorists. "This is not a man who sees America the way you and I see America," she told the Clearwater crowd. "I'm afraid this is someone who sees America as imperfect enough to work with a former domestic terrorist who had targeted his own country." The crowd replied with boos.

McCain had said that racially explosive attacks related to Obama's former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, are off limits. But Palin told New York Times columnist Bill Kristol in an interview published Monday: "I don't know why that association isn't discussed more."

Worse, Palin's routine attacks on the media have begun to spill into ugliness. In Clearwater, arriving reporters were greeted with shouts and taunts by the crowd of about 3,000. Palin then went on to blame Katie Couric's questions for her "less-than-successful interview with kinda mainstream media." At that, Palin supporters turned on reporters in the press area, waving thunder sticks and shouting abuse. Others hurled obscenities at a camera crew. One Palin supporter shouted a racial epithet at an African American sound man for a network and told him, "Sit down, boy."

(pic via JJ of Unrepentant Old Hippie copying Victor Juhasz's illustration in Rolling Stone)

crossposted at Rants from the Rookery