Daily Kos

Does the hatred in the Netroots know no bounds?

In 2006, one of their leaders posted a picture of Sen. Joe Lieberman (D-Conn.) in black face.

On Tuesday, one of the "Recommended Diaries" at Daily Kos featured a picture of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia in a Gestapo uniform (right) under the headline, "Today's Worst Person in the World" (h/t NBer Gat New York).

After some quotes from an Associated Press article about Scalia's views on "so-called torture," the DKos piece elaborated (with seemingly requisite vulgarity I might add while cautioning readers before they proceed):

NewsBusters readers should recall that in September, as many in Congress condemned the "General Betray Us" advertisement placed in the New York Times by George Soros's MoveOn.org, Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-UT) said on the Senate floor:

Now, all of America understands MoveOn.org and other groups like it are called the nutroots of our society. These people are nuts and they don't care who they hurt, they don't care who they smear they don't care who they libel.

On Wednesday, during a conference call with bloggers, Hatch once again lashed out at these far-left leaning entities that are unduly influencing Democrats in order to block key legislation concerning FISA (27-minute audio available here):

A firestorm of leftwing outrage erupted on Friday on the heels of an announcement by the Hillary Clinton campaign that morning that she now wants the Michigan and Florida Democrat delegates to be seated at the convention this summer despite the fact that those delegates had been stripped by the DNC because those states had moved their primary dates up:

I hear all the time from people in Florida and Michigan that they want their voices heard in selecting the Democratic nominee.

I believe our nominee will need the enthusiastic support of Democrats in these states to win the general election, and so I will ask my Democratic convention delegates to support seating the delegations from Florida and Michigan. I know not all of my delegates will do so and I fully respect that decision. But I hope to be President of all 50 states and U.S. territories, and that we have all 50 states represented and counted at the Democratic convention.

Imagine for a moment Fox News's Brit Hume or Chris Wallace regularly contributing to a popular conservative website like Captain's Quarters, Little Green Footballs, or Michelle Malkin.com.

Do you think the media would have a field day with a supposedly "fair and balanced" anchorman being so intricately connected to such a rightwing entity?

If the answer is "Yes," then why does MSNBC's Keith Olbermann get a pass for his posts at the far-left website Daily Kos, and the appearance that this is becoming a regular gig?

Consider that on Friday, Olbermann published his third posting at DKos in less than two weeks:

On Tuesday, in a report concerning MSNBC's Keith Olbermann publishing his first article at the liberal website Daily Kos, NewsBusters pointed out that the "Countdown" host certainly "knows exactly who his audience is, and exactly what they want."

This observation was demonstrably confirmed by Olbermann himself on Friday when in his second posting at DKos, he actually apologized to readers for having Lawrence O'Donnell on as a guest the night before.

I kid you not.

To set this up, as NewsBusters reported last Friday, O'Donnell had written an article at the Huffington Post harshly critical of Democrat presidential candidate John Edwards.

This didn't sit well with the Kos Kidz, nor, according to Olbermann, did O'Donnell's appearance on "Countdown" Thursday evening (emphasis added, h/t NB reader Thomas Stewart and Inside Cable News):

It really was just a matter of time before one of the most hate-filled and vitriolic press members, whose material relies so strongly on reports from Clinton front organizations Media Matters for America and Think Progress, would start posting articles at one of the most hate-filled and vitriolic liberal websites on the Internet.

In fact, it's really a perfect fit, dontcha think?

As such, when MSNBC's Keith Olbermann posted his first blog at Daily Kos Monday, it shouldn't be surprising that he took the opportunity to bash Fox News's Bill O'Reilly.

After all, what would this man be without Bill, and those who hate him (h/t NB reader Thomas Stewart and Inside Cable News):

Just how far to the left is ABC's George Stephanopoulos?

Well, on Sunday's "This Week," while discussing the presidential campaign with former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, the former Clinton aide actually cited the liberal website Daily Kos.

I guess we now know what George is reading while he's prepping for the show.

To set this up, Stephanopoulos and Gingrich were discussing how wide open the GOP presidential race looks, and the possibility of a brokered convention, when the host actually said with a smile on his face:

How much do you have to hate your country, Christianity, and the military to actually believe that religious United States soldiers are similar to Hamas homicide bombers?

Regardless of the answer, such was the case made by Truthout Senior Editor Jason Leopold Friday, as well as in a recommended diary at the liberal website Daily Kos Sunday.

*****Update at end of post: Daily Kos FAQ section cautions readers against recommending diaries sourced from Jason Leopold articles!

Readers are warned to proceed with caution, for the following contains pictures and text that will certainly be offensive to many (emphasis added, h/t NB reader Francine):

CBS News has discovered a dire new dirty political tactic. It is called "bundling." No, not the bundling of campaign funds as was performed by Norman Hsu for Hillary Clinton. This new bundling reported by CBS involves allowing ballot petition initiatives to be "bundled" together by signature collectors. CBS has presented the fact that signature collectors in California are collecting signatures on the initative to allow district allocation of that state's Electoral College votes simultaneously with the collection of signatures for other ballot iniatives as some sort of dirty trick. They even have a video showing this "sneaky" practice that has been used for decades when collecting signatures for ballot initiatives. The bundling section of this video was provided to them by a member of the Daily Kos named E Love who made his own laughable video about this newly discovered dirty trick.

Typical of CBS, this video highlights this "dirty trick" of both "bundling" ballot initatives and attempting to make the electoral votes in California more proportional to the popular election results while allowing only a brief one sentence response by a Republican in this report. Some unintentional humor in this report comes to us via the hysterical melodramatics of Rick Jacobs the head of the Courage Campaign who opposes this iniative. He apparently thinks it is outrageous for an initiative to increase funding for childrens hospitals to be allowed to be "bundled" together with the electoral college initiative:

A report on Thursday’s "The Situation Room" tried to make an issue out of the fact that President Bush’s name was only mentioned a few times at the Republican presidential debate that they organized with YouTube. CNN correspondent Carol Costello compared the President’s name to a curse word in her introduction to the report. "It sure seems like Bush has become a four-letter word you don't want to mention if you are a Republican running for office. They've taken to talking about him in code, not daring to say 'Bush,' but not shy about promoting his agenda."

During the report, which aired at the bottom half of the 5 pm Eastern hour, Costello went on to say that "the Bush moniker [was] uttered just four times in two hours." This is indeed the case if you look at the CNN transcript of the debate. But this doesn't tell the entire story.

It's certainly safe to say that conservatives rarely agree with anything written by liberal bloggers.

However, on Saturday, not only was there a prominent posting at Daily Kos entitled "Clinton News Network = CNN," which received 631 comments in only seven hours, but the website's proprietor, the esteemed Markos Moulitsas, wrote an article of his own that was highly critical of Clintonista James Carville's role at the cable network.

In the end, the hypocrisy was so thick you could cut it with a knife.

But before we get there, the first piece voiced displeasure with the recent shenanigans by CNN during Thursday's Democrat Presidential debate:

Here's something you don't see every day: a well-known liberal journalist slamming the owner of Daily Kos, Markos Moulitsas.

Yet, that's what happened on Wednesday's "Hannity & Colmes" when NPR's Juan Williams was invited on to discuss the recent hiring of Moulitsas by Newsweek.

In a rather stunning turn of events, Williams seemed absolutely disgusted by the announcement (video available here, relevant section begins at minute 3:37):

When Newsweek announced Tuesday that it was hiring Markos Moulitsas of Daily Kos to be a contributor during the 2008 presidential campaign, Kos told his readers, "Newsweek is ‘balancing' me out with someone that should make heads on our side explode."

As reported by the Washington Post moments ago, Moulitsas was quite prescient:

Newsweek has signed the president's former deputy chief of staff [Karl Rove] as a commentator who will turn out several columns on the 2008 campaign through inauguration day.

The Post continued (emphasis added throughout, h/t NBer Right2thePoint):

It seems appropriate that the person who wrote the following will now be writing for Newsweek (HT to NB's John Stephenson, who posted on this Tuesday evening):

Yes, Markos Moulitsas Zuniga ("Kos") apologized the next day; you can decide for yourself whether it suffices.

It appears the good folks at HBO must have been extremely concerned that "Real Time" host Bill Maher was going to lose many of his viewers as a result of his tossing 9/11 truthers from the audience two weeks ago.

After all, Maher even admitted at the opening of the discussion segment of Friday's program, albeit almost apologetically, "I'm not going to pretend that we have ideological balance on this panel."

Ideological balance? Are you kidding?

Here were Maher's attendees this fine Friday evening in no specific order:

Hillary Clinton will have a hard time triangulating her way out of the thanks the Daily Kos gave her for suggesting that General David Petraeus was a liar. There is no doubt about their appreciation of her "services" as can be seen in the very title of the Daily Kos thread, "Thank you Hillary for calling Petraeus a liar!" Appreciation for the "services" rendered by Hillary was duly noted by Daily Kos blogger, gopher747:

Thank you Hillary for calling out Petraeus for what he is, a liar and a distorter of facts.

While I still prefer an Edwards/Obama ticket, I just wanted to show some progressive blogosphere love here for Hillary for her calling a spade a spade here, and subsequently setting the right wing howling.

This sounds like a job for South Park's Eric Cartman.

The vaunted e-elite of the Left, the so-called Netroots, aren't quite what they and the media would have us believe. Far from a mostly middle-class Gen X and Gen Y coalition, blogger Joshua Trevino reminds us the data show Kossacks tend to be rich, areligious, aging hippies forever mentally mired in their glory days of Vietnam protests and Nixon-hating:

DailyKos.com, the Left's most popular website and a key source of fund-raising for Democrats from coast to coast, says Osama bin Laden and Ronald Reagan have a lot in common:

So is Osama bin Laden truly "evil?" Most people who lost family members at the World Trade Center on 9/11/2001 would probably consider him to be evil. Was President Ronald Reagan evil? Most residents of Beirut who lost family members when the USS New Jersey rained 2,700 pound Mark 7 shells on residential neighborhoods in 1983 during the Lebanese Civil War probably considered Reagan to have been evil. Bottom line? Bin Laden is no more evil than other revolutionary leaders in other times or even than ordinary national leaders who propel their countries to war for "national honor," or to acquire the resources of others, or even to "do good."

To translate Kos-speak: Osama bin Laden isn't a terrorist, he's a freedom fighter. And Reagan wasn't a freedom fighter - he was a terrorist.

Whether or not one agrees with the political views of Markos Moulitsas, there's no getting around the fact his website has become not just a powerful force in the blogosphere, but is also shaping the Democrat Party.

This raises an important question: Why isn't there a conservative website like Daily Kos?

Providing some answers this week were Dean Barnett at the Weekly Standard and David Weigel of Reason.

Barnett accurately frames the issue (emphasis added throughout):

How pathetic are the posters on a large blog when its own founder berates them for being gullible fools for being easily scammed by an obviously phony story? Such was the case with the posters on the favorite "progressive" blog of the MSM, the Daily Kos, when its founder, Markos Moulitsas, tore into them for being suckers because they fell for a story about a supposed imminent U.S. invasion of Iran based on the fantasies of a blogger with a history of fabulist tall tales. To add insult to injury, Moulitsas even cited a "rightwing" blog to discredit the thread posted by Daily Kos blogger Maccabee who originated the Iran invasion fantasy:

Seriously, just because something online confirms your own viewpoint or prejudices or whatnot, it does not mean it's true.

Skepticism is a virtue.

Now the right-wingers are laughing at the gullibility of those who recommend Maccabee's diaries.

Whether it’s comparisons between the United States and the Soviet Union or George Bush and Saddam Hussein, the far left has always specialized in false moral equivalence.

In the latest example of this, Daily Kos proprietor Markos Moulitsas has been trying to shift the spotlight that’s now being shined on the numerous vulgar and hateful remarks for which his site is famous over to conservative sites, implying that the right is just as full of hate as his followers.

Trouble is, that’s just not the case. As NewsBusters pointed out earlier, left-wing blogs and their commenters are much more likely to use profanity than conservative blogs.

Brushing aside those pesky facts, Moulitsas launched a false attack on Maine senator Susan Collins today implying that “Arthur Frain,” a commenter on Maine Web Report, a site run by her online communications director was speaking for Republicans when he/she wrote the following:

Folks that watched Sunday's "Meet the Press" debate between former Rep. Harold Ford Jr. (D-Tennessee) and Daily Kos founder Markos Moulitsas might have witnessed the final transformation of the Kossack leader from Netroots chief to Democrat Party operative.

In fact, you could almost hear Emperor Palpatine cackling in the background.

Ignoring the actual lack of substance in the discussion, one thing was made impeccably clear: Markos is now fully ensconced in today's Democrat Party, while Ford and his centrist DLC are persona non grata.

By no means does that validate Moulitsas' absurd claims that Kossacks and Netroots members represent the center of American politics as reported here and here. However, the inanities and hypocrisies uttered by Moulitsas Sunday could easily have been stated with a straight face by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-California) and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nevada).

For instance, read the following nonsensical assertion made by Markos if you have the stomach for it, and ask yourself how many of the current Democrat leaders and presidential candidates could have said the exact same thing (video available here):

Let's say you are a scandal-ridden governor looking for some love. Where would you find it? Well, if you are New York Governor Eliot Spitzer, aka Steamroller Spitzer, immersed in a scandal that threatens to destroy your political career, you go looking for love in the Daily Kos with a divorced from reality "Happy Talk" blog post that makes no mention any pending unpleasantries. Spitzer's "Happy Talk" love fest on the Daily Kos will have no effect in stopping the scandal investigations but perhaps it is temporarily therapeutic to brag about himself to his fellow leftists in his blog post titled, Congratulations on a Great Weekend :

While we are seeing a mounting reform movement at the national level, I would also urge you to be aware of some of the important developments that are occurring in statehouses across the country. There are some exciting things happening, demonstrating that your activism is also paying dividends at the state level.

I wanted to go to the YearlyKos event but circumstances did not permit. Thankfully, at least one sane person did go. Rick Moran gives this account:

I can assure you that they are at least as similar to us as chimpanzees – except chimps are cuter and don’t constantly interrupt you when you’re speaking and trying to make a point. However, all that aside, liberals are pretty normal. They have a different sense of humor of course. And they may not laugh as much as conservatives although I wonder who will be doing the chuckling on election day 2008? [...]

One observation I would never have dared put in a piece for PJ Media or anywhere else I write is that for a movement and party that prides itself on inclusion, the gathering appeared very white. There were definitely more people of color than there would be at a conservative or Republican event. But as I scanned the faces of attendees to the Presidential Leadership Forum where almost all YKos was gathered, my rough estimate was 75% white – perhaps larger.

As the folks at Daily Kos scramble to explain what transpired at their convention in Chicago Friday morning when a soldier in uniform tried to speak at a breakout session called "The Military and Progressives: Are They Really That Different," it has been revealed that Markos Moulitsas supports such attired military members attending anti-war rallies.

In fact, so do many Kossacks.

Quite fortuitously, Moulitsas posted on this very subject on June 2, 2007 (emphasis added, h/t Charles Johnson):

As NewsBusters reported Monday, a writer named Corey Mitchell posted an amazingly disgraceful blog at the liberal website Daily Kos Thursday stating that the United States armed forces were creating serial killers and mass murderers.

USA Today's "On Deadline" blogger Mike Carney spoke with Mitchell on Monday about this matter (emphasis added throughout):

"It's not my intention to denigrate the troops," Corey Mitchell says. "It's to help them when they get back."

Imagine that. He wants to help them by misrepresenting a connection between honorable men that put their lives on the line serving this nation and serial killers. I get it:

Updated with video below:

Following on the heels of the Daily Kos' anti-military “Killitary,” former Air America host and “Saturday Night Live” alum A. Whitney Brown vlogged about our “idiot” murderous troops who are “crapping in their pants” in Iraq and the Republican zombie-drones who “support” them.

In the comment thread, Brown confirmed this wasn't satire, stating it was “all about anger, not humour” and offered a sarcastic (non) apology to an offended Koz Kid, “It was not my intent to defame or offend anyone who might sign a piece of paper saying they are available to kill whoever their marginally superior officer tells them to, wherever they are sent, for 1200 dollars a month.” That's nice. Enjoy (bold mine):

Hello, I’m A. Whitney Brown, and I support our brave troops overseas. We all do and we all should. But what about those troops who are not so brave? Perhaps they just signed up hoping for some extra money for college, for the medical insurance, or even some hot gay military sex.
(...)
But do I still support the individual men and women who have given so much to serve their country?
(...)
I think they’re a bunch of idiots. I also think they’re morally retarded. Because they sign a contract that says they will kill whoever you tell me to kill. And that is morally retarded.
(...)
To to sum up, I don’t like our troops, I don’t like what they’re doing, I don’t like their fat, whining families...

Is Daily Kos founder Markos Moulitsas growing weary of the vitriol being expressed at his blog?

It appears so, as without explaining what incidents precipitated the need for such, Moulitsas posted a warning to his readers Monday referring to "nasty rhetoric" that is "rampant in the primary war diaries."

Maybe Charles Johnson was prescient Sunday when he wrote, "Just doesn't look right to be dissing the military when Kos is trying so hard to be the voice of the Democratic Party."

With that in mind, Markos began his "With Us or Against Us" posting (emphasis added throughout):