They treated you with kid gloves, you should see what they write about people like David Horowitz, Michelle Malkin, and Hugh Hewitt.
Vile, Mean, Disingenuous, hate-filled, sophomoric,
traitorous, wrathful, elitist, and contemptuous.
This describes the modern day American Left. Its really sad.

Annika, some folks wouldn't know class if it bit 'em in the ass.

You rock.

"Tom"
just a schmo in a choir

Fuck. Old Skool and I aren't even influential enough to get a write-up. Truth hurts.

"A website whose purpose is to direct trolls to right wing blogs"

So that's where these guys come from. Ever so often these trolls act like Messerschmitt 109s to come out of the blue and take their best shots on the blogs I read.

I like to shoot them down with my P-51 comments by pointing out the poverty, despair and desperation the left have brought to minorities around the world.

Remember that any publicity is good publicity. Plus they give your readers some war game fun.

My dear, NEVER run for public office. You are far too thin-skinned. As Kipling said, more or less, the only way to deal with lies or hating is not to deal in kind. These people are mere pimples on one's virtual ass, who with proper hygiene will not become anything worse. It is after all an imperfect world.

"...it takes a heck of a lot for me to ban any troll, or to interfere in the comments section at all. Sometimes i think i should be more strict, but i truly believe in Ronald Reagan's precious ideal, 'the marketplace of ideas.'"

That was the first thing that I ever noticed about you. You have the strength to allow things to stand of their own merit so that others may decide. It is a very rare quality.

And why in the world would she WISH to go into politics?!

Been there, done [with] that. I find music composition infinitely more rewarding, sane and, honest, honest.

Keep your thin skin, Annika. Heart and sensivity still matter.

Tom
aka a schmo in a choir

I'm not sure it's real productive, but I feel the need to point out that lying is not the exclusive province of the left. For example: President Bush went around for a long time talking about how he had said in a Chicago speech that he'd preserve the budget deficit except in case of war, recession or national emergency. He then joked that he never imagined he'd hit the trifecta.

It was a great laugh-line, and he repeated it for months, even after The New Republic, among others, had asked the White House to document the speech the President was quoting. They'd searched -- speeches of Presidential candidates are pretty well documented -- and came up empty. The White House press office never could find a specific citation. The President's story was, in a word, a lie.

It's not a big lie -- certainly not on the scale of condensing "fasion disaster" to "tacky"-- but it's the kind of thing that the President and his people do all the time.

The current administration's respect for the truth is exemplified by Condi Rice's explanation of the yellowcake uranium glitch in the SOU; she said it was "technically true," because the President hadn't said it was true, he'd said that the British said it was true.

Uh, OK, I guess. True, but hardly honest.

My point is that hyperbole and outright slander are not isolated on the left. You're more sensitized to bad behavior on the left because you're on the right. I'm on the left, and I just lived through an election where a war hero was smeared with charges that he had earned his decorations with self-inflicted wounds, and where self-declared patriots mocked wounds suffered in combat by decorating themselves with Purple Heart Band-Aids. You might remember that the right made a lot of money selling videotapes that accused President Clinton of Murder.

Empty invective is a hallmark of American politics these days. Everyone does it. The fact that you can only hear it coming from one side doesn't mean the other side isn't doing it. It just means you aren't an honest listener.

There you go lyin', "war hero". I can see how draft dodging fucktards could paint him as such in their romantic fantasies, however those who served in any real combat arms capacity know the type, medal hunter. Lots of real heroism goes unrecognized everyday, shooting the wounded and writing up your own "heroic" acts aint it.

You can lie to your wife. You can lie to the IRS, but don't lie to yourself.

TOM, I will concede to you that there was a lot of Clinton hate, and some Kerry hate (not that he didn't deserve it after slamming combat vetrans before congress). But the Bush hatred is several orders of magnitude greater. And one thing that makes it worse is that back in the Clinton days, the people calling him a murderer and such were mostly talk show hosts and some fringe elements. Republican politicians critisised him but were much more circumspect.
But now, you have high ranking democrats including the head of the DNC accusing Bush of the most insane conspiracy crap. Also, at no time in the 200+ year history of our country has any other sitting President had his foriegn policy slammed by a former president, on foreign soil at that!
Its reprehensible.

The carefully reasoned argument of Casca would seem to demonstrate my point: Viciousness knows no party or political orientation. Casca: We can debate Kerry's war record all we want, but one thing is undeniable. He volunteered twice for service in Vietnam. That's two times more than the combined total of President Bush, Vice President Cheney, John Ashcroft and Paul Wolfowitz.

One might imagine, as a patriot, that you would afford Senator Kerry the same respect you'd afford any combat veteran. But no: In the world where you, Casca, exist, patriotism and heroism are the sole property of Republicans. I give you as futher examples Max Cleland and the marvelous moment when Ollie North lectured Daniel Inouye, who lost an arm in World War II, on the nature of patriotic sacrifice.

As for Kyle, the main profiteer on the Clinton/Murderer front was Pat Robertson, who was at the time much more than a "fringe element" in the Republican Party.

You dismiss Clinton hatred as if it were some minor media fuss. Were you alive during the Clinton years? Do you remember Tom DeLay condemning Clinton on the floor of the house while American troops were in harm's way, saying that the only reason they were dying was to distract the country from the really, really important issue of Monica Lewinsky? Way to cheapen the sacrifice of the troops, Mr. DeLay!

You want 100 more examples? I'll give them to you. As a Christian and a family man, I can't turn on the TV at night without hearing how I'm against God (because I don't want prayer in schools) and anti-family (I don't believe reproductive decisions should be made by government) and unpatriotic (I think the President ought to get his facts straight before he drags us into a war -- a war which, by the way, I supported). I'm pretty familiar with the slurs of the right. I'm sure you're familiar with the slurs of the left.

I don't think it's productive to argue about which side is worse; they're both bad. Our political culture right now stinks. But for every Kos you revile, I'll give you one Little Green Footballs. We can pile up the list of offenses all night and accomplish absolutely nothing.

The point is that neither side is in a position to display the kind of no-self-awareness sanctimony in Annika's posting, blaming one side and one side only for something that is endemic and threatening to our political culture. It offended me when I first read it and it still does.

But somehow, lefty liar that I am, I've managed to get through this without callling anyone a "fucktard." Must have been some horrible oversight.

Is that windy ass Strawboy posting here under another nom de plume? Let me tell you Tommyboy, you have stumbled in where angels fear to tread. I won't waste my time fisking your dumbass, but will simply state that the only sailors who were ever in "Harms Way", were the corpsmen with the Marines, the Seals, and those stupid fucking naval aviators. They rest are a bunch of phony poseurs. That's why that weak ass Borda blew his brains out in the CNO's garden. They caught him with a combat V for valor on his Navy Commendation Medal, and someone had the temarity to ask, "How the fuck did a sailor get that?" It was his bravest act. Too bad Kerry doesn't have those kind of stones.

PS, I don't parlay with fucktards, fucktard. Now get your ass out of my beachfront community.

I think we all realize that neither the Communists nor the baby seal clubbers have a corner on Truth and Goodness. And anyone who believes that one party is Good and one is Evil must be a...a Communist. (I'm trying to call everyone Communists, including Annika, so that I can qualify for the Lefty List.)

But, on to more important things...why didn't the Lefty List say anything about the hot tub? A glaring omission!

Simple answer: Besides being Godless, they're also unwashed.

We own you Nazi bastards!

We will crush you like the cRapitalist racist shit you are!

Tee-hee. Like you crushed those Klansmen in Greensboro in '79? Hell, at least those assholes deserved your hate.

Yikes. I prefer Hugh Hewitt's testimonial on the sidebar, and I say that as a consistent critic of you, albeit an affectionate one.

I must have made a mistake when I put the word "tacky" in quotes, and I will change my description. But you did say his look was "cheesy" and "Man that dude's got a big ass." Your quoting yourelf as saying "fashion disaster" is deceptive. You said "What a fucking fashion disaster." I jumped off a descriptive cliff by using 'tacky' as a way of summing up words like "cheesy" and "fucking fashion disaster." But making a leap like that is not lying - intentional deception, as you do, is lying.