Media Matters had always packaged itself differently than the right’s Media Research Center and Accuracy in Media. It said it was looking for misinformation, not bias. But in 2009, there was a sense that the left was getting rolled and ambushed. (The forced White House departure of Van Jones in September 2009 was seen as the last straw.) Conservatives had always claimed that Media Matters was an attack-dog group, not an accuracy group—so it became an attack group. Conservatives claimed that the group was funded by George Soros when it wasn’t, so in October 2010 it accepted $1 million from Soros, who asked that Media Matters “hold Fox News accountable.” Slowly, Media Matters became what the right claimed it had always been. It was like watching Bruce Banner get picked on until his eyes turned green and he started smashing things.

That’s a really bad metaphor, Dave. If there’s one thing that I know a lot about, it’s the Hulk.

Here’s the thing about Bruce Banner: Once those gamma rays hit, the Hulk was always inside the mild-mannered scientist. By using the above analogy, Weigel is telling us is that Media Matters was always just one perceived slight away from turning into the anti-Fox crusading monster that it is now openly admitting it has become.

Fortunately for Media Matters targets, the organization’s ability to smash is more like its ability to, oh, thump. Or maybe launch a noogie-level attack. Media Matters smash? Shyeah. Not likely.

Oh, look. Another British anti-Israel media event. Yawn. But sure, they’re great friends of Israel. Just ask them.

It’s a rocket shower, just like those “crude, homemade” kassam things: Really, who writes the AP headlines? Seriously? “Gadhafi showers strategic oil port with rockets”? What’s wrong with the word “pounds”?

The new civil tone: Well, if you’re a Republican, apparently, this counts as civil behavior towards you:

Senate Republicans were harried by swarming crowds. “We tried to get out of the building after the vote, because they were rushing the chamber, and we were escorted by security through a tunnel system to another building. But, after being tipped off by a Democrat, they mobbed the exit at that building, and were literally trying to break the windows of the cars we were in as we were driving away,” Republican senator Randy Hopper tells NRO. Such tactics, he sighs, were hardly unexpected. “I got a phone call yesterday saying that we should be executed. I’ve had messages saying that they want to beat me with a billy club.”

Think it got much play in the Times? Imagine if these had been Tea Partiers mobbing Dems. Oh, the humanity!

In Zawiya, 30 miles (50 kilometers) west of Tripoli, an army unit attacked the city’ Souq Mosque, where regime opponents had been camped for days in a protest calling for Gadhafi’s ouster, a witness said. The soldiers opened fire with automatic weapons and hit the mosque’s minaret with fire from an anti-aircraft gun, he said. Some of the young men among the protesters, who were inside the mosque and in a nearby lot, had hunting rifles for protection.

The witness said there were casualties, but couldn’t provide exact figures. He said a day earlier an envoy from Gadhafi had come to the city and warned the mosque protesters, “Either leave or you will see a massacre.” Zawiya is a key city near an oil port and refineries.

“What is happening is horrible. Those who attacked us are not the mercenaries, they are sons of our country,” he said, sobbing. After the assault, thousands massed in the city’s main Martyrs Square, shouting “leave, leave,” in reference to Gadhafi, he said.

“People came to send a clear message: We are not afraid of death or your bullets,” he said. “This regime will regret it. History will not forgive them.”

This is petulance:

The bill sparked massive protests. Last week local teachers called in sick and jammed the capitol building in Madison; by the weekend, the crowd had swelled to 70,000. As unions across the country bused in protesters, AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka showed up to rally the masses, and the Rev. Jesse Jackson arrived to lead them in “We Shall Overcome.”

But — overcome what? Democracy in action? Overcome who? The voters and taxpayers of Wisconsin?

The (baby boomer) presidents of the teachers and public employees unions told Wisconsin State Journal reporters that workers would do “their fair share” to narrow the budget gap. If that were true, though, they’d actually have to contribute far more than the governor has requested:

In the past 10 years, says the Wisconsin Department of Employee Trust Funds, taxpayers paid more than $8 billion for state workers’ health care coverage, while the workers put in only $398 million. And from 2000 to 2009, according to the Legislative Fiscal Bureau, taxpayers spent about $12.6 billion on public employee pensions while the employees contributed only $8 million.

Just wanted to point out the difference.

In this one, “get the bastards” is obviously a prelude for inviting the other side to sit down and have a meaningful dialogue about politics, without any eliminationist rhetoric.

In this example of left-wing civility, a sign proclaiming “The good in this country will prevail” libels half the voters in the nation—but don’t worry, it’s only the half that voted for Bush. (The evil half. Obviously.)

And here, a young woman cleverly assigns to all people who voted for Kerry a hatred for George W. Bush. Because obviously, if you voted for the guy running against someone, you simply must hate his opponent.

This is the civility of the left that pundits like Paul Krugman wish us to achieve. This is the left, the side that never uses hateful language or violent rhetoric. No, only right-wingers use hateful language and brutal imagery when describing the politics of the other side.

Oh. Wait.

These images took me all of five minutes to find. And according to the FAQ, none of the images above violate the rules governing which pictures will be included on the site:

We will reject your picture if it is too hateful or hostile. We are about courtesy and communication, not insults and recrimination. You may hate Bush or think his supporters are idiots; we prefer not to give voice to such sentiments.

Really?

So I guess “hate” isn’t really “hate-hate.”

Big Brother would be proud.

Jared Loughner was batshit crazy. The more facts come out, the crazier he gets. And you can’t blame politicians for crazy. You can’t blame anyone for crazy but the crazy guy. I know this from personal experience.

When I was in my twenties, my then-best friend was five months pregnant and newly married. Her sister S. was starting to act oddly. We both noticed it, but there wasn’t much we could do, or even thought about doing, because we are not mental health professionals and we didn’t recognize her symptoms as evidence of bipolar illness. One day, MJ and I were over her father’s house, and S. came into the room. She was staring at us. Then, with no warning whatsoever, she suddenly grabbbed hold of my hair with a death-grip and would not let go, babbling about how I and all the rest of the world’s Jews have been ruining her life and trying to kill her. She mentioned her ex-boyfriend (Jewish), ex-husband (Jewish, and living in South America at the time), and went on and on while MJ and I tried to get her to let go of me. Words didn’t work. It took several minutes of physical effort (and by “physical effort” I mean “punching”), and even then, it was unbelievably difficult to get me free of her, and yes, I lost quite a hunk of hair in the process. The most eerie thing is that after I was free, she just stood there, staring at us, not saying a word.

After the incident, her sister went into contractions, her husband wanted to kill S., and when we approached their father and told him she was nuts and he needed to have her committed, he wouldn’t hear of it and did everything he could to stop us from getting official help to have her hospitalized. She wasn’t committed, and months later, she tried to kill herself by stabbing herself in the chest 17 times with a steak knife. Since it happened outside of her father’s jurisdiction (he was ex-mayor and current councilman of the city where they lived), she was hospitalized and diagnosed with bipolar disease. She went on lithium, and ultimately came to lead a normal life (and got back to the person I liked before she attacked me).

But she was batshit crazy before she went on lithium, and Jared Loughner is batshit crazy. That’s why he shot Giffords and all those others. Occam’s Razor stands as the explanation here: The guy was nuts.

At a March 3 antiwar forum in Reston, Virginia, outside Washington, Moran talked about why he felt the antiwar movement was not stronger in the United States.

“If it were not for the strong support of the Jewish community for this war with Iraq, we would not be doing this,” said Moran, whose remarks were first reported by the Reston Connection newspaper. “The leaders of the Jewish community are influential enough that they could change the direction of where this is going, and I think they should.”

The Congressman was re-elected this year for another term. Somehow, the Elders never manage to get rid of jerks like him (or Patrick Buchanan).

We get it from the left and the right. One thing that has managed to united disparate groups over the years is their hatred of Jews, covert, overt, subtle, and open:

“When I got involved in politics, I told people I wanted to put Christian conservatives in leadership positions,” he told me, explaining that he only supports Christian conservative candidates in Republican primary races.

“I want to make sure that a person I’m supporting is going to have my values. It’s not anything about Jews and whether I think their religion is right or Muslims and whether I think their religion is right. … I got into politics to put Christian conservatives into office. They’re the people that do the best jobs over all.”

So John Cook is following the playbook known as “In hole, must dig deeper.” And it will be all over the MSM soon, because it’s a Republican making these statements. Hey, moron: While America is definitely a Christian majority nation, it ain’t a Christian nation. That’s why we have the First Amendment.

Oh, the disappointment: Eric Cantor only called me twice, and the second time, he didn’t even say hello. (Because I didn’t. Works for most robocalls. Say “hi” and see what happens.)

Oh, I feel so much safer now: American intelligence officials told the New York Times they think they’ve found the dry run for the Yemen package bombs, which apparently were not directed directly at Jews, after all—they wanted to blow the flights up in the air. Too bad these brilliant officials didn’t figure it out at the time, and lucky for us, the PETN bomber doesn’t seem to be as good as he thinks he is—yet.

Oh, that Obama outreach is going gangbusters! Hezbullah is planning to take over Lebanon if their members are charged in Hariri’s murder. Watch the world stand by and do nothing.

Oh, so many ways to fail. Just look at the lack of enthusiasm by Democrats about how well this plan will work. Will it enable the Dems to keep the House? Probably not. They’re just hoping to limit the losses now—which is the sign of a party already defeated.

White House and Congressional Democratic strategists are trying to energize dispirited Democratic voters over the coming six weeks, in hopes of limiting the party’s losses and keeping control of the House and Senate.

Sounds to me like they’re running quite scared, and with good reason:

“We need to get out the message that it’s now really dangerous to re-empower the Republican Party,” said one Democratic strategist who has spoken with White House advisers but requested anonymity to discuss private strategy talks.

Let’s recap the past year. Last year, during the Summer of Town Hall Rage, the Democrats said that the Tea Party was a tiny minority of fringe voters, crackpots, racists, and just plain mean-spirited people. The result? Scott Brown, Christine O’Donnell, and Joe Miller, to name three. The Tea Party has exploded in numbers, rallies, and influence. The Tea Party, in fact, is on track to become a third party in American politics. The fact that most Tea Party voters favor Republicans is because American taxpayers are tired of endless spending, endless tax hikes, and endless deficits.

So sure, Dems. Go demonize the Republicans by painting them as Tea Partiers. Because that’s worked so well for you in the last year.

What the Democrats still haven’t gotten—and probably won’t get until November 3rd—is that the Tea Party message is not resounding only with a tiny minority of fringe voters. It is resounding with enough Americans to change the face of Congress during the midterms, because the Democrats keep on saying the same thing in varying degrees of loudness. They point to the same failed policies—tax and spend, spend and tax, and tax and spend some more—as the way to bring these monstrous deficits under control. Cutting spending? Only if you can take the Bush tax cuts away from the rich (those making more than $250,000, as defined by the Obama White House).

The Tea Party is about reducing government control over our lives. The Democrat Party is about enlarging it. November will show what Americans want. Scott Brown won in blue, blue Massachusetts. Chris Christie won in blue state New Jersey. You would think that the Dems would have gotten the message already. Apparently, they’re still hard of hearing.

Stephen Colbert-Jon Stewart rally: Might TV duo affect Election 2010?

Seriously. The angle of the article is that the rally could energize young voters to come out three days later and vote for the Democrats.

Nonetheless, the event is set on the doorstep of the Nov. 2 election, which makes its potential impact with younger voters undeniable, says Ari Berman, a political correspondent for The Nation. The younger demographic, which came out so effectively for Obama in 2008, has been noticeably disaffected in this midterm election. It’s possible that a major event hosted by two media figures with such caché among younger voters “could easily help to mobilize action in time for the election,” he says. One thing is certain, “all the media will be there, so it will be sure to get coverage.”

They have yet another analyst insisting that this could even energize Obama. Sure. In three days, Obama will be able to turn around two years of citizen anger at his trillion-dollar deficits, his elitism, his ignoring the will of the people to force Obamacare down our throats, the takeover of the banks and GM, the stimulus that wasn’t, Cash for Clunkers, and all the rest of the programs that have become so unpopular that Democrats won’t even talk about them in their political ads. But yes, one silly stunt by Stewart and Colbert could change the course of history—because the youth vote could be energized.

I think not. And I’m utterly puzzled at this statement by another analyst, Saladin Ambar of Lehigh University:

“Voting is an illogical action,” he adds, “and humor can stir the passions as much as anything.”

Really? Logic and deduction have nothing to do with voting? Analysis of the candidates and their platforms is something that isn’t done before you pull the lever for the one you think has the policies closest to yours?

How is voting illogical? Why, because some people out there vote for the best-looking candidate, or the one with the best hair? Sure, a few people vote like that, but the vast majority of voters choose the candidate with politics closest to theirs.

I think that comment is rather illogical, and elitist—which is par for the course. Another political analyst dismissing the great unwashed (the American voter) as one who votes without thought or logic. In his world, of course the however-many thousands of people who come to the Stewart-Colbert rallies will then change the course of the election.

Thankfully, we live in the real world, where kids from the area and a few die-hard fans will go to the rallies in person, but most people will watch them on TV. Me? I’ll probably be busy that Saturday. I’ll just watch the clips on Hot Air.

“I understand she has promised a ‘smackdown’. That is what she said. And, look, there’s no doubt, I can see how somebody who’s been in professional wrestling would think that they’re right at home in the United States Senate – if they were watching some of the behavior that’s been going on. But the truth is – and Dick understands this – public service is not a game,” said Obama.

“At this moment, we are facing challenges we haven’t seen since the Great Depression. And facing serious challenges requires serious leaders,” added the president.

You are absolutely right, Mr. President. The Senaite is serious business.

When Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell laid out his opposition to Elena Kagan’s Supreme Court nomination, someone in the chamber appeared to be moving around in his chair, gasping and rolling his eyes.

It was Sen. Al Franken.

We can’t possibly have someone using the term “smackdown”. It would lower the gravitas of the Sentate chambers. You know, the place where Franken sits?

Sometimes, these posts really write themselves.