Jesse Taylor at Pandagon had a remarkably insightful piece today about the wingnut carping over the Barack Obama speech in Berlin, the media reaction, and his popularity generally.  I really think this is important to understand.  The right has always held a goal of minimizing political participation; normally this is done through voter suppression, onerous voter ID or ballot access laws, and generally disenfranchising those for whom it is hardest to engage in the process.  Now they've taken it a step further, basically planting the seed that ANY participation whatsoever, not just voting but showing up for a rally or working a phone bank or donating money, is toxic and inherently fascistic.  Because their deficit in this election year is enthusiasm, they're trying to make such support and excitement untenable.  Behold:

Wonkette summedup Jonah Goldberg's column today in LATimes as a "paean to the God of shit" and that pretty much sums it up.
Here's how the column starts:

There's a weird irony at work when Sen. Barack Obama, the black presidential candidate who will allegedly scrub the stain of racism from the nation, vows to run afoul of the constitutional amendment that abolished slavery.

And I honestly can't claim that the column gets any better from there on.
Mr Goldberg claims that because Obama's plan for college loans comes with "strings attached", it constitutes "involuntary servitude".
Go figure!

This is dumb enough but it goes further.. much further..

Let me get this off my chest. Jonah Goldberg is Tool. And big, pasty, WATB tool. In an Op Ed in today's LA Times, Goldberg equates Obama's call to service as, I shit you not "Forced Servitude". He even bandies about the "slavery" word, but denies making the comparison. I can't wait for the good folk over at Sadly, No! to get a hold of this.

The Doughy Pantload - known to his "friends" as Jonah Golberg - is bad enough by himself.

Not content with knowing the definitions behind the labels he likes to toss out at people - the latest word that he is throwing around is Facism - he prefers to just make up definitions as he goes along.

Even if well recorded history proves him wrong again, and again, and again, he just keeps it up.

Now, read below the flip on how Golberg's writing has caused one person to completely snap and loose touch with reality ---->

Who says the U.S. doesn't condone torture?

I'm not kidding... well at least many on the right aren't kidding.

Pixar's new animated hit WALL-E has caused outrage amongst some on the right. Glenn Beck said that it was teaching his kids terrible environmental messages. Jonah Goldberg describes it a "Malthusian fear mongering" and the list goes on and on... leading many reasonable people to think "what the ****? this is a kids movie about robots in the future."

Here is a clip of Lars Larson from last night's edition of Verdict with Dan Abrams who defends his fellow right wing colleagues and says that  Pixar's WALL-E is dangerous propaganda for our children. Not only that, but he says that believing this doesn't make him a 'radical right' guy or the equivalent of (gasp) Keith Olbermann. Watch the clip below and weigh in with your own thoughts and opinions:

Summary: After a smackdown by Larisa Alexandrovna (Rawstory journalist) of a Jonah Goldberg piece on Obama and patriotism, I did what I usually do to people I disagree with (Mr. Goldberg, in this case)...I analyzed the crap out of him.

What I intend to do in this diary is show you what happens when you do a few word replacements in discussions of "America".  I'll be looking at Mr. Goldberg and Sean Hannity today.

The latest excuse for our permanent presence in Iraq is: Hey, we still have troops in Germany and Japan. John McCain picked this up and the YouTube video is going viral.

Aided and abetted by the conservative echo chamber, John McCain this week launched a campaign to rewrite his dismal history of faulty forecasts and disastrous predictions on Iraq.  Demonstrating that experience is truly no substitute for judgment, John McCain like President Bush was sadly wrong at almost every turn in promoting the invasion and occupation of Iraq.  From his predictions of a short war and claims U.S. troops would be greeted as liberators to his announcements of mission accomplished, his ongoing confusion over friend and foe in Iraq and so much more, McCain's is an unbroken legacy of error.

But you'd never know it from his ill-fated "green scream" speech on Tuesday.

So it seems that Jonah Goldberg wants your opinion on the legacy of George W. Bush:

http://corner.nationalreview.com/...

Some choice items which I sent him follow below the fold.....

http://www.236.com/...

Here's Max's biography:

http://en.wikipedia.org/...

Lately he had been eying a Tory safe seat. The sex scandal is referenced at the bottom.

this'll make you laugh a bit it's about a Sex Scandal in Britain (you know it's kinky now).  How do conservatives connect Hillary Clinton and fascists (and thus prove the love between fascism and liberalism.)

Take it away Jonah:

"Mosley's (Oswald Mosley, Max's father) sister-in-law Jessica Mitford, one of the Mitford Sisters (natch'), was a committed Communist who wrote The American Way of Death (which by many accounts is a good book I have yet to read). When Hungarian freedom fighters were slaughtered by the Soviets, Mitford said they were "fascist traitors" who had it coming. Jessica married the Stalinist California lawyer Robert Treuhaft (this NYT obit is hagiography), for whom Hillary Clinton worked as an intern."

They are jumping all over Max Moesely's rather "interesting" sexcapade.

And gets what he asked for, though I doubt he'll be happy about it.

In an editorial in the LA Times today, Goldberg called on Barack Obama to use his speech in Philadelphia to distance himself from Rev. Jeremiah Wright, saying:

Obama needs to do two things. First, he needs to make it incandescently clear that Wright doesn't speak for him in any meaningful way. If he won't do that, his campaign is a fraud and he is not qualified to be president.

Second, he needs to explain to black America why Wright's views are so poisonous.

Words have power.  Define the terms of discourse and you make the rules of the game.  A name evokes an emotional response, and right wing propagandists are trying to hang the negative connotations of "Osama" and "Hussein" on Obama.  

Fight fear mongering with humor.  We can have a lot of fun with the words "Barack," "Hussein," and "Obama" and in the process mock the Repuglies, who are incapable of fun, and/or bad taste on purpose, i.e., irony.

Take a break from primary coverage and pick the one you like/hate best/most.  Think of your own.

Boy, this took a lot of courage ... And what prescience!

Move over Nostradamus, there's a new kid on the block ...

Maybe he has a "feeling" on how the Cubs are going to do this season ... Or, does he already know who our next president will be? ... Or perhaps, he's holding high over our guilty pleasures, teasing those around him, smug with the knowledge of who is this season's American Idol winner?

Drum roll, please ...

If facts have a liberal bias, then lies have a conservative bias.

It turns out that it's true, on both counts.

On dispelling Jonah's lies about Hitler and liberals.

On revealing Hitler's deep hate for, and fear of, liberalism.  And Jonah's.  And Burke's.

(This is another Not A Candidate Diary)

So, yesterday my lo-cal newspaper ran Jonah Goldberg's recent column in which he celebrated the use of torture in the war on terror.

As I am wont to do, I decided to write a letter in response. Our lo-cal paper is still family-owned, which is great. That the family makes Goldberg look liberal is, in my opinion, not. Their regular op-ed columnists are Goldberg, falafel-man, Michael Reagan, and a few other wingnuts. I once wrote to them pleading that if they were going to run that kind of stuff, at least carry George Will. So much for the liberal media. Anyway . . .

Nevertheless, I was unprepared for what followed my letter. About an hour after I had sent the letter, I received a call from the guy who edits the opinion section [he's also the son of the owner of the paper]. He spent 10 minutes on the phone haranguing me about being a leftist, about spewing "Nancy Pelosi talking points," and about making assertions without evidence.

Eh? More below the fold.

Much has already been written on the subject of Jonah Goldberg's no-doubt-fantastic tome Liberal Fascism: The Totalitarian Temptation from Something or Other to Something Entirely Unrelated to That Particular Something or whatever title it was that he finally settled on. Thus, I'd like to write on the subject of people writing on the subject of the subject in question. Don't try and stop me. I swear to God that I'll do it.

It's a simple little storefront building that had been the mosque in Columbia TN for many years. Maybe it was a bright and cheerful place, but now it's a gutted shell of a building, The cement block walls were painted white and are still standing, but there are swastikas and white supremacist slogans spray painted on them.

http://www.myeyewitnessnews.com/...

The neighbors are upset; they never had a problem with the mosque. The full details won't be know for a while, so we have no way of knowing what sort of group committed this act.

But it's a good time to reflect that while conservatives talk about "Islamo-Fascists" and "liberal Fascists," that there really are fascists and fascist wannabees in this nation, and I'll bet I can guess who these nimrods voted for in 2004.

For the best treatment of that issue, check out Orcinous

http://dneiwert.blogspot.com/