Now that the Death to Cheney campaign has been such a resounding success, can we get back to our strategic planning for the War on Christmas? I'm organizing a battalion of dedicated yarmulkah-wearing far-leftists in my home town to chant Happy Holidays! in our Wal*Mart Super Center parking lot this November. If all you other heroic liberals would do the same, the war would be over in no time,and we could bring all the boys home by New Year's, confident that no one would ever dare utter Merry Christmas again anywhere in our fair America.

I am a long time commenter at Huffington Post. I was on the thread when those comments were being made, and when commenting was disabled for that article. There were a few (maybe 4 or 5) names I recognized as legitimate liberal posters. The rest I had never seen before, and I have been commenting there since the site's inception in '05. I will acknowledge that there are plenty of whackjobs on the left, but I am skeptical that all of those posters who suddenly came out of the woodwork to post on that thread were actual liberals. They're definitely not Arianna's bread and butter, that's for sure.

I read back through the pdf of all the comments last night, and they weren't even really that bad, anyway. There were a number of liberals (posters who have been posting there for a long time) who were condemning the posts, and plenty of other reasonable comments being put up. In fact, the right wingers who post there (clearly for the purpose of beating up on liberals) say the most vile, disgusting things on a daily basis (such as, "if I could work a deal with the terrorists where only stupid liberals would be killed, I'd take that in a heartbeat," from the guy who Townhall was holding up as a bastion of civility on the Cheney thread). They couldn't do this with the Huffington Post every day, because they'd have to admit to their own whackjobs. The whole thing has been completely blown out of proportion.

But, Kevin Drum is right - this is all the Malkins of the world can come up with. Comments that are the same (or better) than the things I regularly hear come out of Ann Coulter and Michelle Malkin's mouth. (And a bunch of neocon trolls posting "gotcha" comments and expressing no worry whatsoever about Cheney's safety.)

That all being said, besides being distasteful, those comments were plain stupid. This is what's splashed all over the MSM, and Joe Schmo America never gets the flip side explained to him.

But only if we can burn flags and spit on soldiers. Maybe kick a puppy or two.

Too many to count really. But the main one is that, since everyone who still supports Bush/Cheney is a "conservative," that means that anyone who is critical of Bush/Cheney is therefore a "liberal." I don't think I need to get into how ridiculous that assertion is. But that's how they think. They cannot get beyond this "team sports" mentality.

The next is that since their fealty to Bush/Cheney drives their ideology, that means that the "liberals" "hatred" of Bush/Cheney drives our thought process. Which, again, betrays a complete ignorance regarding how a "liberal" mind comes to a conclusion.

The last thing "we liberals" do is derive our conclusions from an initial hatred of anyone or anything. It's quite the opposite, in fact. We look at the situation, digest the facts, and then come to a conclusion about the matter.

I can't speak for anyone else, but the conclusion I keep coming to is that of contempt for those who still support Bush/Cheney. I've made my peace with those two men. I mean, they wake up every morning as the same person. How is Bush NOT going to be a Bush supporter? But his supporters wake up every morning and make the choice to support him no matter how bad things get, no matter how reckless his policies, or how destructive the consequences of those policies are. THAT is why my contempt is focused on them.

I wish people could get it straight that there's a difference between a Bush-hater, and a Bush-supporter-hater.

Why would Kurtz so prominently tout and condemn the meaningless and unrepresentative remarks of 200 or so anonymous blog comments, while ignoring the equally perverse behavior and ideas of some of his best-est friends on television, detailed here, here, here, and today by Arianna Huffington here?

Because he's a partisan who's in love with Malkin?

Because he wouldn't know truth if it kicked him in the groin?

Because ignoring right-wing bias and disgusting comments will get him more interview opportunities with right wingers?

Because he was repeatedly dropped on his head as a child?

Perhaps there's something else I missed ...

Of course, I still want to know about this whole thing is how in the holy hell Malkin and Limbaugh got the comments so quickly -- unless they had someone reading every thread and waiting for any comment they could use, the speed with which they noticed the comments is questionable.

I'm really, really not one for conspiracy theories, but having moderated a few sites myself (bulletin boards and blogs) I know for a fact that there are people who leave horrific comments just to paint the other side as evil, corrupt, etc. Whether it's politics or sports, I saw it happen. A LOT.

Not saying that's what happened in this case, but one has to wonder ...

In addition to she who must be obeyed ( http://fourthestatestrategies.com/html/biography.html ), there's a more significant conflict of interest in a CNN employee being a "media critic".

What's next? Will the Washington Post hire restaurant employees to be restaurant critics, and movie studio employees to be movie critics? No, of course not. Those are areas where ethical standards still apply.

the comments were inappropriate Glenn.

I'm absolutely shocked, shocked to my very foundations, by the tone of all the letters here, violently attacking the upstanding Mr. Kurtz. It reads to me as if every letter writer so far wishes that Howard Kurtz was the target of the Taliban blast. In fact, I've begun writing a new column entitled: "Outrage! Salon Readers Sick Fantasies: Death Wish for Mr. Kurtz!"

There, now that I've established my biased slandering credentials, can I have one of those well-paying right-wing blowhard jobs like Kurtz and his cronies?