How did they do it? How did Barack and Michelle sit there calmly, with so much class, while Meredith Viera raised one fake controversy after another during their interview this morning on the Today show? Her face frozen, her back stiff, her tone of voice stern, Meredith smiled coldly and unleashed a barrage of questions challenging Obama's handling of the Wright controversy and charges of elitism, issues that have been covered already and have no bearing on the everyday concerns of Today Show viewers, who are dealing with high prices for gas and groceries, low wages and expensive healthcare.
How to explain Clinton's nine or ten point victory in the primary yesterday? There are surely a number of factors, but with Team Hillary playing the race card relentlessly, it may have ended up being key.
From Booman today:
What really cost Obama was what happened in the northern suburbs of Bucks and Montgomery Counties. Obama simply got crushed in Bucks, giving up 29,000 votes. I think most people expected him to poll well in Bucks, perhaps even winning it. I also expected Obama to win Montgomery County easily. Instead he lost it 51-49. In Delaware and Chester Counties he won 55-45, but he wound up losing the suburbs decisively because of the lopsided result in Bucks. No one predicted this. The exit polls showed Obama winning the Philly suburbs with 57% of the vote.
(And outside of the Philly suburbs) ... the bulk of the loss came from one rural county after another giving Clinton over 65% of the vote.
... we can try to find explanations for the results, but these are the areas where Obama underperformed. He did worse than the exit polls suggested he would do, and I have no easy answer for that either.
I just received an email from a friend who recently met with Congressman Rush Holt (D-NJ). It's a glimpse into the mindset of Congressional Democrats, and it's one that must change if there is going to be a move to impeach.
We can sit at our computers and write diaries on impeachment and add scintillating comments until our fingers are bloody stumps, but we haven't accomplished squat until we make a dent in the thick-skulled Democrats who condescendingly look down on us, the masses out here in American-Idol land who don't know a stinking god-damn thing.
Does anyone seriously believed this banner would have caused a ten-day suspension from school? The perpetrator would have been perhaps scolded for a drug reference. But mixing recreational drug use with the founder of the Christian religion? The offending student had better prepare to get nailed.
Hey Americans, listen up. Five Supreme Court justices has decided US citizens' right to free speech is subject to vague restrictions. If these guys decide your sophomoric attempt to get on TV constitutes advocacy of drug use, you're out of luck. Especially if you throw in a religious reference bound to trigger a conscious or unconscious desire to punish the blasphemer.
Alito and Roberts, whose confirmation Democrats who rejected "partisanship" so helpfully enabled, are now proceeding to whittle away at the Bill of Rights, as well as legal precedents on a number of issues, stare decisis be damned.
Or as the dissenting justices put it, "That the court believes such a silly message can be proscribed as advocacy underscores the novelty of its position, and suggests that the principle it articulates has no stopping point."
When will we get our message across to the media that they lose by showcasing so-called "conservative" talk show personalities, who engage in hate speech and incitement to violence? Here at Daily Kos we diary over and over, email over and over, but the trend worsens.
On the flip is an email I sent this morning to MSNBC. It's the strongest I've ever sent, and I meant every word of it.
UPDATE: Evidently Coulter got to use her bullhorn again on the Today Show this morning, the highest rated show on television. MSNBC seems to feel putting on dangerous extremists will bring in viewers. We need to tell them they're wrong.
Picture this. You're at work one day and your phone rings. It's the principal at your teenager's school. You need to leave work and come to the school right away. When you arrive, there is your son, two policement and the principal waiting. Your son is about to be expelled for making terrorist threats. Your mind reels. Your son is a good student, well liked by everyone, an athlete and a musician. The two of you are close. This can't be true. You ask for an explanation.
Senator Feingold will be the featured guest tonight on The Daily Show, that airs tonight at 11:00PM Eastern. This probably doesn't rate a diary entry but I know lots of you would want to know so you can tune in. This should be a really good venue for him to get his message out. Go Russ!
(Just heard it following a Daily Show rerun this AM, when they announce the upcoming guests for this evening.)
For the second time in a week, Katie Couric illustrates the right-wing bias in the media. This AM in her interview with Howard Dean, she adamantly repeated Rove & Co.'s assertion that Democrats as well as Republicans have taken Abramoff money. When Dean protested, she got tense and said it would have to be looked into and shared with all the Today Show viewers.
Write to Today and tell them that they need to do that, fairly and objectively, and present the truth on the air, along with her retraction and apology for slandering all the Democrats with charges of corruption. Contact her at msnbc.msn.com or Today@NBC.com. Or you can call 212-664-4249. (You can also watch a video clip at msnbc.msn.com.)
