My thoughts exactly. It's someone who wants to discredit Glenn by making the comments in his blog seem to be full of antisemitism and racism, thus impugning Glenn's completely above-board posts.

It's a despicable tactic, but what else is new: Neo-cons by definition rely on lies and deception to get their ends. It's a founding tenet of the ideology: the "noble lie" and "some truths are suitable for children."

Whoever you are though, you're pathetic and transparent and not fooling anyone.

Once again though, we'll find some right wing blog linking to Anon's despicable comments as if this is typical of Glenn's readers. The right wing likes interlocking and self-reinforcing webs of lies, and the best part is this doesn't require a conspiracy or any coordination. One neo-con simply posts all kinds of anti-Jewish filth here, and the next comes along and says "Ahh, perfect, now to make glenn look like an antisemite"

The House passed an immunity free bill, and that should be given more credit, and more weight in strategic deliberations towards preventing immunity from becoming law.

First off there's every reason to believe the key House figures would have the same pressure from the Telco lobby and yet they managed to resist it and pass a decent version of the bill (we can't forget immunity isn't the only thing wrong with the SIC version of the bill (pun not intended, but it does fit).

So I do think every effort is worthwhile to bolster Dodd, Feingold and Kennedy and the few others who were willing to act materially to stop immunity, pressure should also be on the House to oppose immunity and for Pelosi to promise not to pass a conference bill that contains immunity.

Cynically, I fear that the House's clean version was just a showpiece, and then when the soiled conference version arrives, they'll quietly acquiesce, but I'm not prepared to conclude that out-of-hand and simply give up. The House's version is a stake in the ground that should be defended.

Every time a conservative uses some subtle phrase or dog whistle code to pass along an insidious or objectionable message, I'm amazed at the number of "fair minded" "benefit of the doubt" apologists that come out of the woodwork. You credulous morons, of course Noonan, a veteran speech writer and communications expert knew damn well about the homosexual connotations of the word.

You're the same people who saw nothing racist in Willie Horton and "Call Me, Harold" which is only possible by an act of deliberate cultural ignorance and sheer force of will to remain in denial of reality.

I mean:

I will hold you to a high standard of writing and thinking. Just accept the fact that Noonan MAY not have had homosexual overtones when she used the word poof. Remember, sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.

"Oh look, I found someone on the internet using 'poof' in a non-gay hair related way, it's now remotely possible Noonan only meant it this way, so we must assume this!"

These people are professionals. They choose words very carefully. This was an editorial in the WSJ, not some throwaway comment on a live-TV segment or in some live-chat session. She pondered this essay. She's a professional writer.

And "poof" as gay slang is not obscure in British terms which a professional writer like Noonan would be well aware of.

Hell, she wrote for the West Wing, and that show is rife with scenes of speech writers for the President agonizing over the possible interpretations of every phrase and nuance.

Don't be obdurate, she was calling Edwards a faggot, plain as day. Overt bigotry from a famous conservative bigot.

Conservatives have been using feminizing language and homosexual insinuations on Democratic men since at least Dukakis now.

This is what they do. Every Republican is a big manly man. Every Democrat is a girly man. Arnold was just a little too linguistically unsophisticated to make it as coy as Noonan does.

Digby has been writing about this for some time, I'd invite anyone curious about this subject of subtle gender politics to read some of her writings on it.

Particularly with Edwards, who has been the "breck girl" a number of times because they won't repeat the mistake they made with Clinton: They attacked him as a womanizer, which made it impossible to feminize him, since dudes who get chicks are inherently immune from being called fags or girlie.

They do it to Democratic women too by masculinizing them. Hillary is a "robot" and wears too many pantsuits and so forth. It doesn't work as well against women, as they tried very hard with this stuff against Pelosi pre 2006.

Way back some anonymous person alleged that Al Gore first brought up Willie Horton to the public attention in 1988.

This is false. Another conservative lie designed to evade responsibility for their bigotry. Al Gore did ask about weekend furloughs to Dukakis in a debate, but he never mentioned Horton by name (nor by race, which the Republicans most definitely did!)

http://www.slate.com/id/1003919/

I'd let it slide, but that's how these lies continue.

I really like this:

Horton told Playboy magazine in 1989 that a woman who identified herself as working for "an organization affiliated with the Bush campaign" phoned him and wrote letters to him up in prison trying to get him to endorse Dukakis.

Yes, yes, I can see how that bad man Al Gore started all this. George H Bush was totally innocent in the Willie Horton affair!