"Democrats should support President Obama's effort to call out FOX. Please stay off FOX for as long as he does."

So reads a petition created and disseminated by MoveOn.org Tuesday.

I kid you not.

Full text of this abomination is below the fold (h/t Michelle Malkin):

Hard-left "anti-war" protesters – so far to the left that they’re protesting Barack Obama – were awarded the top left of The Washington Post on Wednesday. This "event" protesting the eighth anniversary of war in Afghanistan not only topped page one, it covered about 75 percent of page A6, including four color photographs.

The headline was "For Antiwar Protesters, the Cause Isn't Lost: But Will D.C. Rally Spark Groundswell?" Post reporter Eli Saslow softly implied it wasn’t going well, that "this time the organizers believed they could revive the beleaguered anti-war movement, once such a force in U.S. policy. The next 48 hours would put their optimism on trial."

If there was a journalistic award for beating around the bush, Saslow and the Post could win it. After 25 paragraphs, Saslow finally revealed that the Post’s idea of news judgment isn’t based on numbers: the reporter counted...176 protesters.

On Tuesday’s Situation Room, CNN anchor Wolf Blitzer used a left-wing talking point on the health care debate during a brief about a web ad made by comedian Will Ferrell and other celebrities: “One of the most famous comedians joins some of your favorite actors to promote health care reform. So why are they defending health care...executives making billions of dollars at your expense?” [audio clip available here]

Blitzer devoted three news briefs during the 5 pm Eastern hour of the CNN hour to the ad, all the while omitting how Ferrell and his group made it in conjunction with the leftist organization MoveOn.org. After playing a clip from the web ad during the first brief, which came 10 minutes into the hour, the CNN anchor highlighted how the celebrities were “using comedy to make some serious points about health care. This video [is] getting a lot of attention out there.”

For eight years in America, protest was in and all the cool kids did it. We had flamboyantly dressed Code Pinkers demonstrating at conventions and in sessions of Congress, calling Marine recruiters “traitors” and protesting wounded soldiers at Walter Reed Army Medical Center. Then there were the crazies from Acorn stalking Wall Street executives at their homes. And anti-war lefty Cindy Sheehan got so much news coverage from the major networks and top newspapers that they practically had to create a bureau to handle her antics.

Through it all, the left whined that President George Bush was a fascist – with “BusHitler” a common term among the foam-at-mouth Birkenstock set. (Google Bush and Hitler and you’ll get more than 1 million hits including a bunch of Photoshopped images of Bush in a Nazi uniform with a Hitler mustache.) We were supposed to bear with it. Dissent was patriotic we were told. Those hate-spewing anti-war activists really loved our soldiers – especially when they were mocking the war right outside a veteran’s hospital. And the endless stream of Nazi comparisons were just free speech, after all.

Blogger Jane Q. Republican has been reporting over at the blog for the Asheville, North Carolina, TEA Party about a local newspaper reporter who was slated to appear last Thursday evening at a local MoveOn.org rally pushing for ObamaCare.

The reporter, Leslie Boyd of the Gannett-owned Asheville Citizen-Times, ended up cancelling her scheduled appearance at the July 23 rally in front of Rep. Heath Shuler's (D-N.C.) district offices, but as Jane Q. notes, Boyd's plan to attend the rally as a participant violated specific provisions of the Gannett chain's code of conduct for journalists:

George Soros is a superhero along the lines of Batman and Superman? That's the comparison correspondent John Berman made on Thursday's "Good Morning America." The ABC journalist was reporting on a closed door meeting of billionaires that included liberals such as Soros, Ted Turner and Oprah Winfrey. The purpose of the meeting was to discuss charitable giving, leading ABC to feature a graphic with Turner as Superman and Winfrey as Wonder Woman. [audio for download here]

And while well known arch-liberal Soros, financier of groups such as Moveon.org, wasn't featured in the silly illustration, he was discussed in the piece, with no mention of his hard-left positions. (Billionaire/Mayor Michael Bloomberg was relegated to being portrayed as a lesser hero, Aquaman.) Soros, who once compared the Bush administration to Nazis, was simply referred to this way: "Together with others in the meeting, including George Soros, Ted Turner, David Rockefeller, they're worth more than $125 billion."

Some groups on the left may have it out for anti-tax tea party movement, but according to one of the movement's biggest proponents - it is because they don't understand it from a hierarchical perspective.

Although there are reports that ACORN, The Huffington Post and the Daily Kos wanting to infiltrate the rallies, or crying foul for other reason - Beck, who appeared on Fox News Channel's April 9 "Your World with Neil Cavuto," explained that the left has difficulty understanding it's not a top-down movement, but a bottom-up one.

"It is a fundamental misunderstanding of the left," Beck said. "They don't get it. They think that these tax rallies - because they are so into their ‘.org's and their ACORN movements, where you have to have these coordinators. These are regular people and they are regular people that were hacked off at George W. Bush. They were angry at the spending of the Republicans."

Since former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean stepped down as the chairman of the Democratic National Committee, he has ventured into other opportunities.

One of those opportunities was to be a business pundit for the financial news channel CNBC, even though Dean's background prior to politics was in medicine. But just over a week later, in an e-mail dated April 2 to MoveOn.org mailing list subscribers, Dean wrote he was leaving Washington to hit the campaign trail "to help President Obama win health care for all."

The Washington Post's Friday and Saturday front-page reports by Karen DeYoung on President Obama's escalation of war in Afghanistan are curiously missing one political element: objections from the strident anti-war groups on the left. Whatever happened to the protesters that treated Bush as a reckless warmonger?

Answer: they're either being marginalized, or they were more interested in getting a Democrat in the White House. The real story wasn't unearthed on the front of the Post, but in liberal blogger Greg Sargent's post on Friday at the Post-operated website WhoRunsGov.com:

Don’t look now, but President Obama’s announcement today of an escalation in the American presence in Afghanistan is being met with mostly silence — and even some support — from the most influential liberal groups who opposed the Iraq War....

More and more people are starting to take notice of CNBC's dramatic shift to the left and the liberal groups promoting it.

On Fox News Channel's March 27 "The O'Reilly Factor," host Bill O'Reilly and Bernard Goldberg, author of "A Slobbering Love Affair: The True (And Pathetic) Story of the Torrid Romance Between Barack Obama and the Mainstream Media" took a look at trends pointing to this shift that started after the feud between "Mad Money" host Jim Cramer and "The Daily Show" host Jon Stewart.

O'Reilly cited a column written by NewsBusters Associate Editor Noel Sheppard on March 26 for The Washington Examiner that noted some of the things indicating CNBC's leftward swing.

On the far left, MoveOn.org has been instrumental in energizing its members to organize, protest, and vote for liberal causes and candidates. They were vehement opponents of George W. Bush and vitriolic protesters of both of Bush's wars.

The media might not let you know it, but MoveOn's e-mails to members now sweetly boast of Barack Obama and his new proposals as "ambitious, amazing, and unapologetically progressive." It quotes a New York Times columnist for emphasis:

Dear MoveOn member,

Want to see what change looks like? Real change?

Well, here it is. Last week, President Obama unveiled his budget -- his blueprint for America – and it's ambitious, amazing, and unapologetically progressive. As Paul Krugman said, it will set America on a "fundamentally new course."

President Obama called his budget "a threat to the status quo," and trust me, the status quo noticed. Oil companies, big banks and insurance companies are already mobilizing to stop it.2

Unfortunately, most folks don't realize how far-reaching and progressive the plan is – that's where we all come in.

Being an outspoken conservative in the media has proven dicey lately, as the Democrat-controlled Congress and White House are working toward seeing an $819 billion stimulus bill signed into law.

According to Ann Coulter, there has been a double standard applied to those outspoken conservatives. Coulter appeared on the Fox News Channel's "America's Newsroom" on Jan. 30 to promote her new book, "Guilty: Liberal ‘Victims' and Their Assault on America" currently second on The New York Times Bestseller's list in only its second week.

"I think it's just another reminder of how the left hates free speech," Coulter said. "It really is strange how they go after speakers like this. I mean, there is no campaign by conservatives to shutdown Keith Olbermann. In fact, I wish more Americans would listen to him - to see the face of the left, the only 57-year-old woman trapped in a man's body to host his own TV show."

Ever since the financial services industry totally melted down in September, anti-free market media have pointed an accusatory finger at deregulation as the primary cause of bank, brokerage firm, and insurance company failures.

Yet, as press outlets across the fruited plain deal with declining revenues and layoffs, some believe a looser anti-trust environment could be the solution.

Even more delicious, one such advocate, Variety's Brian Lowry, used to be a deregulation opponent as evident in his Wednesday column: 

While other liberal musicians have taken to publicly whining about the McCain campaign using their songs at rallies, the songwriter behind Martina McBride's "Independence Day" -- which conservative radio host Sean Hannity uses as his radio program's theme song -- has decided to take royalties from the song to donate fund abortion provider Planned Parenthood in the Arizona senator's name.

Singer/songwriter Gretchen Peters has donated royalties from Hannity's air play of the McBride hit to liberal activists groups such as MoveOn.org and Parents, Families & Friends of Lesbians and Gays (PFLAG).

From her Web site:

Thursday’s Washington Post featured a splashy front-page Style section article headlined "MoveOn Grows Up." Reporter Jose Antonio Vargas lapped up MoveOn’s claims that it’s much more powerful and effective than the National Rifle Association, employed euphemisms to mask that MoveOn opposed any "violence" in response to the 9/11 attacks, and waited 18 long paragraphs to arrive at that "stumble" known as the roundly condemned "General Betray Us" ad.

Over a large picture of MoveOn executive director Eli Pariser at a Brooklyn "Call to Change" party is his apparently inspirational quote: "You can say things that inspire people and get lots of people to contribute just a little bit...Then instead of being accountable to a small set of rich donors, you’re accountable to a large set of everyday donors."

The piece began by explaining how Pariser swooped in on two women who started a Women Against Sarah Palin blog and offered cash and technical support. Vargas doesn’t quote from the blog, to give you a taste of its hateful flavor. From Wednesday came this harsh language:

As NewsBusters reported earlier, the Associated Press's Ron Fournier published a surprisingly accurate analysis of presumptive Democrat presidential nominee Barack Obama's decision to tap Joe Biden as his running mate.

Not surprisingly, the far-left organization MoveOn -- never happy when a mainstream media outlet has the nerve to actually say anything bad about a liberal -- has posted a strongly-worded rebuttal at its website that repeatedly asks readers to send e-mail messages to the wire service warning that "the public's faith in the 160-year-old AP will be gone if Ron Fournier is allowed to continue his slanted articles against Democrats and for McCain."

I kid you not:

How entwined is the Democratic Party with the nutroots nation? It would seem that they are now getting their campaign slogans directly from them.

Despite their efforts to pretend that they have nothing to do with such radical organizations as Moveon.org (one only need look so far as the Petraeus ads), the Dem's do indeed appear to be getting their talking points and campaign ideas from them. Why hasn't the media noticed?

In recent days, the Democrats have launched a new campaign known as ‘Exxon-McCain '08.'

Democrats will be holding ‘press conferences' in key swing states to promote the supposed GOP ticket. Some Democrats themselves have tried to promote the campaign tactic through the media, as can be demonstrated at PolitickerNJ.com, where U.S. Rep. Steve Rothman (D-Fair Lawn) and state Sen. Loretta Weinberg (D-Teaneck) can both be seen referencing ‘Exxon John'.

The call to arms is emotional: ‘We need a President who will stand up to Big Oil!’

The impact is nationwide: ‘National Day of Action for an Oil Free President… At gas stations across the country…’

The movement is massive: ‘American people need an Oil-Free President!’

And the Albany Times Union took a photo-op to demonstrate the fury of the numerous protestors – all 7 of them.

Making the photo even more priceless is the second gentleman from the left, who had to hold up two signs at once, because an 8th protestor was not available.

Now, I had a good 10-12 people at a cookout last weekend, and a majority of them were protesting my overcooking of their burgers. Worse, I was probably wasting untold amounts of gas by serving well-done burgers to the guests - a costly mistake. Yet the Times Union was nowhere to be found.

At what point did it become newsworthy when 7 people gathered for a nationwide protest? You know the answer… When it promotes a liberal cause.

- Photo by James Goolsby/Albany Times Union

The general election season is under way, and the leftists are already displaying their hypocrisy. They’ve launched pre-emptive warnings against a Republican "swiftboating" of Barack Obama at the same time they’re making up wild allegations about the villainous ultraconservative plots against goodness planned by John McCain. The supposed civility police in the media are emphasizing the Obama warnings of a right-wing onslaught, but not the nasty leftist attacks on McCain. Once again, Republicans are painted as the agents of character assassination, while Democrats are angels whose style is sweet civility and whose substance is the refreshing truth.

Obama’s campaign is putting up its dukes with a new website called "Fight the Smears." It’s topped by an inspirational quote from Obama’s June 3 victory speech. "What you won’t hear from this campaign or this party is the kind of politics that uses religion as a wedge or patriotism as a bludgeon." In the words of the Almighty Barack, Team Obama pledges to steer clear of negative personal attacks, and avoid seeing their opponents "not as competitors to challenge, but enemies to demonize. Because we may call ourselves Democrats and Republicans, but we are Americans first. We are always Americans first."

By now you may have seen press coverage of a new viral video entitled "I'm Voting Republican" in which numerous people give facetious reasons for voting GOP this November, all of them echoing liberal memes about conservatives and Republicans.

But checking the credits, I came across something that caught my eye, the "Special Thanks" portion of the video credits. One thing in particular stood out, a note of thanks to "All Saints' Episcopal Church." The name appearing above that credit lists one "Shelley Dudley" as another person thanked for her help. Since SyntheticHuman Pictures, the company that produced the "I'm Voting Republican" video hails from Phoenix, I quickly found the Web page for the church in question and that Ms. Dudley is the church's financial administrator.

One of the scenes in the video features an actor named Jason J. Baker portraying one Rev. David Madison saying, "I'm voting Republican because women just can't be trusted to make decisions about their own bodies. Never, ever, ever." Behind Baker is a stained-glass window.

Given the partisan nature of the video and the advice the company gives in a "Get Involved" section of its Web site for concerned viewers to join liberal groups like MoveOn.org, it may be worth someone in the mainstream media asking if it's appropriate for a church to let its facilities be used for the filming of a partisan video.