New Republic’s Dana Goldstein describes the war between Clinton and Obama supporters in the blogosphere.

These people are not pretty when they’re angry.

As anybody with high-speed Internet knows, MyDD and Daily Kos sit at the top of the liberal Netroots movement, which over the last five years has made astonishing strides in its campaign to transform the Democratic Party into a hard-fighting, proudly liberal, and, most importantly, victorious entity. Though their websites offer distinct communities and commentaries, and though they have very different personalities, MyDD founder Jerome Armstrong (a former astrologer) and Kos’s Markos Moulitsas (a former Army man) have always gotten along–the two co-authored a 2006 book, Crashing the Gate, about the rise of their movement. Their bond has been rooted mostly in common foes: Republicans, namby-pamby Democrats, the Iraq War, divisive “identity politics,” and the centrist Democratic Leadership Council. But the harmony that existed between MyDD and Kos since the birth of the Netroots no longer exists today, and a bitter internecine struggle within the progressive blogosphere is to blame. Just as bilious in tone as previous fights with Republicans or Joe Lieberman, it has revealed fault lines in the movement that will be tough to cover back up. There have been charges of misogyny and of bullying, and some longtime members have walked away from their cause altogether. And what’s at the heart of it all is that most loaded of questions: Barack or Hillary?

The Netroots have been arguing about the 2008 campaign since the day after John Kerry lost, but the debate turned ugly when Armstrong revealed his vote in the February 12 Virginia primary. “In the end, what compelled me to vote for Clinton was looking at someone that seemed practical about the battle we have on our hands and looking ready to engage in the fight,” Armstrong blogged that day. “I’d rather be part of the fight than be told to stay on the sidelines because I’m too partisan.”

Armstrong had long voiced concerns that Obama’s campaign was too personality-driven and too reliant on the votes of Independents and Republicans. But his official endorsement made readers go ballistic. “Voting for the DLC candidate makes you part of the fight? Come on,” wrote one commenter. Another suggested, “If you aren’t a part of her campaign, you really oughta try to sign up and get some of those $$$ while you can”–a dig at Armstrong’s past campaign work for politicians like Howard Dean, Jon Corzine, and Mark Warner. A group of far nastier comments were deleted.

At Daily Kos, commenters were ripping Armstrong to shreds. One user wrote, “MyDD isn’t even a pro-Clinton site these days. It’s just a toxic waste dump dedicated to throwing slime at Obama and hoping it sticks. … I know that Kos and Jerome are friends and partners, but it’s perhaps time for Kos to reconsider linking to MyDD from the DK blogroll.”

Clintonites and Obamabots were ferrying between the two sites, “recommending” posts sympathetic to their favored candidate (thus ensuring more prominent placement on the page), and brutally attacking one another in the comment sections. In late March, Armstrong, upset by name-calling between Clinton and Obama supporters on MyDD, barred new user accounts on the site for a week. The sense of betrayal among fellow Netrooters after his Clinton endorsement was palpable. Armstrong was backing a candidate who, as Chris Bowers, another leading lefty blogger, wrote on Open Left, hadn’t fully rejected the DLC, hadn’t opposed the Iraq war from the start, hadn’t offered overwhelming support for Net Neutrality, and hadn’t campaigned in small caucus states.

Jeffrey Lord comments on Obama’s resignation under fire from his long-term spiritual home, Chicago’s and the Reverend Jeremiah Wright’s Trinity Church.

He ran.

After twenty years of sitting with apparent acquiescence in the pews of Trinity United Church of Christ, after doing a slow-motion backslide from the Reverend Jeremiah Wright when the campaign spotlight flickered on, a backslide that eventually ended in an open break, Senator Barack Obama has now officially cut his ties with Trinity UCC altogether. Faced with a choice between bringing change to his own congregation, or simply turning his back, Obama chose the latter.

As he would do in Iraq, so he has now done with Trinity. …

As both the Reverend Thomas and Senator Obama are all too well aware, even if the media is not, the very heart of UCC doctrine is that the members run the church. At any time in the last twenty years Barack Obama had the complete authority to say to Reverend Wright and his fellow parishioners at Trinity: “I don’t think this is a good idea. I think we have to stop wallowing in black victimology. The things I am hearing from our pulpit sound racist, divisive, hateful.” And then he could have begun an effort to remove Wright from the pulpit, something every UCC member has the ability to do.

He did not do it.

Obama froze. Or he chose — to do nothing. To give Wright his “old uncle” a pass. Was it because he was afraid to damage his political base? Was it because he was afraid he would anger Wright? Or most interestingly of all — was it because he actually agreed with what Wright was preaching? For that matter, since we now know Obama was such a great friend to not only Wright but Father Pfleger as well, is there any record of Obama objecting to Pfleger’s activities in Chicago? Whatever the reason, the harsh and very plain fact is that when it came to having the courage to bring change to Trinity, to exercise good judgment, Barack Obama displayed, as Theodore Roosevelt once said of William McKinley, “the backbone of a chocolate eclair.”

Senator Obama has decided that the White House in Washington, D.C. is worth a small sacrifice.

Senator Barack Obama has resigned his membership in Chicago’s Trinity United Church of Christ, which he attended for nearly two decades, following months of controversy about pastors and their political views.

Mr. Obama said he and his wife, Michelle, wrote a letter on Friday to the church’s pastor, the Rev. Otis Moss, explaining that their estrangement from Trinity took root in controversial remarks by the church’s former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr., who once was Mr. Obama’s spiritual guide.

“Our relations with Trinity have been strained by the divisive statements of Reverend Wright, which sharply conflict with our own views,” they wrote. “These controversies have served as an unfortunate distraction for other Trinity members who seek to worship in peace, and have placed you in an untenable position.”

But at a news conference after a town-hall-style meeting here on Saturday, Mr. Obama sounded pained as he confirmed his decision to leave the place he had considered his spiritual home. A sermon by Mr. Wright, a longtime pastor at the church, even provided the phrase — “the audacity of hope” — that became Mr. Obama’s campaign theme and the title of his latest book.

“I make this decision with sadness,” said Mr. Obama, speaking in subdued tones as he stood before a bland background. “This is where I found Jesus Christ, where we were married, where our children were baptized. We are proud of the extraordinary works of that church.”

Good thinking! B. Hussein. Now nobody can possibly criticize you on the basis of the ethnic chauvinism and racial hatred routinely preached there in the course of your twenty year membership.

An Obama-packed rules committee, operating behind closed doors, first ejected a number of unhappy pro-Clinton demonstrators (see videos below), then cut the votes of the Florida and Michigan delegations in half. They then proceeded to divide Michigan’s votes (where Obama did not appear on the ballot) between Hillary and Obama > 69 (halved to 34.5 votes) – 59 (halved to 29.5 votes), conceding Hillary a slightly larger number. The slight concession secured Obama’s team a whopping 19-8 Rules Committee majority.

Dana Milbank describes how it all went.

Clinton campaign advisor Harold Ickes expressed indignation.

I rise in opposition, but I’ll sit. … We find it inexplicable that this body that is supposedly devoted to rules is going to fly in the face of, other than our affirmative action rules, the single most fundamental rule in the delegate selection process, that is fair reflection. …

I am stunned that we have the gall and the chutzpah to substitute our judgment for 600,000 voters. …

Hijacking four delegates is not a good way to start down the path of party unity.

Ickes argued that the principle of “fair reflection” should guarantee that delegate allocation reflect the actual vote tally.

Under the Rules Committee’s “compromise,” the state shifts four delegates to Barack Obama without justification, Ickes said.

Hell, why not take 10 of them, take 20 of them,” Ickes said. “Just keep on going.

Ickes threatened to take the fight to the August Convention.

———————————–

Deborah Foster was roughed up & ejected: 1:33 video

Harriet Christian of Manhattan is very angry, and promises McCain will be the next president of the United State 1:44 video

Hat tips (video 1 and video 2) to Jane Hamsher.

Does anyone really want somebody who attends a church where this kind of thing is standard fare to be president?

We hear all the time in the MSM about how racism is alive and well in today’s America. But, of course, in ordinary conventional American society even the least hint of racial animosity toward minorities would be looked upon as disgraceful. Who knew that this kind of rhetoric and this kind of paranoid thinking was served up regularly at prominent black urban churches, including churches attended by presidential candidates?

The ranting lunatic is a Chicago-based “social activist” (read: Bolshevik) named Michael Pfleger.

3:45 video

Hat tip to Big Tent Democrat, who is absolutely wrong, by the way. This is the church Obama attends. This is where he was married, and where he baptized his children. It is impossible to say that the crazy racial hatred which is routinely spouted from its pulpit has “nothing to do with Obama.” On the contrary, this shows exactly where Obama originates politically.

Fidel Castro joins Hamas in endorsing Obama. (Hugo Chavez only said he was against McCain.)

Fox News:

In a presidential race in which unwanted, damaging endorsements seem far more plentiful than endorsements that actually could help, Barack Obama has had the unfortunate distinction of being a magnet for such well-wishers.

The latest unsought praise for the Democratic front-runner came from Fidel Castro, who wrote in a column for Cuba’s Granma newspaper Monday that Obama is “the most progressive candidate to the U.S. presidency.” …

In mid-April, Hamas adviser Ahmed Yousef told WorldNetDaily that “We like Mr. Obama, and we hope that he will win the elections.

“I hope Mr. Obama and the Democrats will change the political discourse,” he said. “I do believe [Obama] is like John Kennedy, a great man with a great principle.”

The Republican National Committee observes that Obama’s Memorial Day speech featured a really big problem with historical fact.

I had an uncle who was one of the — who was part of the first American troops to go into Auschwitz and liberate the concentration camps. And the story in our family was is that when he came home, he just went up into the attic and he didn’t leave the house for six months. Right, now, obviously, something had really affected him deeply. But at that time, there just weren’t the kinds of facilities to help somebody work through that kind of pain.”

0:41 video

As Wikipedia explains: Aushwitz was liberated by the 322nd Rifle Division of the Red Army on January 27 1945.

But, his making mistakes on these kinds of details was understandable, after all, as he notes at the very opening of his Memorial Day speech, on Monday Obama was seeing dead people, so he was naturally a bit agitated.

On this Memorial Day, as our nation honors its unbroken line of fallen heroes — and I see many of them in the audience here today — our sense of patriotism is particularly strong.

9:20 video

Fox News Contributor Liz Trotta tops Hillary.

Editor and Publisher:

Appearing on Fox News today, Liz Trotta, a former editor with the Washington Times and reporter the Chicago Tribune and Newsday, was asked by the host, Eric Shawn, about the Clinton controversy and the 2008 race. This led Trotta to refer to the Clinton misstep, in which she mentioned the RFK killing to show (the candidate later claimed) that previous campaigns, like the current one, went into June.

Trotta, according to video, replied, “And now we have what some are reading as a suggestion that somebody knock off Osama, uh Obama. Well, both, if we could.” She laughed.

The host, Shawn, clearly understanding how far she had gone, quickly commented: “Talk about how you really feel.”

Then he continued: “But do you really think that–she didn’t mean that she thinks that he going to get assassinated, and she apologized–

Trotta: “Well, that’s beside the point, whether she meant it or not.”

Shawn: “And she’s just using it in a historical context?”

Trotta: “She’s tone deaf, because it’s a radioactive word. And the whole question of the first black man becoming a candidate for presidency of the United States has all kinds of overtones and all kinds of caveats that really have to be considered in this thing. And his security has been a real issue. He’s had bodyguards earlier than anybody else. Surely this woman had to know that that was a third rail to say ‘assassination.’ And it’s hard to argue for her on this, because it isn’t the first time she’s made this step.”

3:23 video

Early this month, Barack Obama said that, over 15 months, he’d campaigned… (thinking about it)… in all 57 states.

A week later, he confused Sioux Falls (South Dakota) with Sioux City (Iowa).

Last Friday, Obama continued his pattern of confusion, repeatedly referring to the name of the Florida city, Sunrise, he was visiting, as “Sunshine.”

Also, in Florida on the same Friday, while addressing the Cuban American National Foundation,

Since the Bush Administration launched a misguided war in Iraq, its policy in the Americas has been negligent toward our friends, ineffective with our adversaries, disinterested in the challenges that matter in peoples’ lives, and incapable of advancing our interests in the region. No wonder, then, that demagogues like Hugo Chavez have stepped into this vacuum.

Hugo Chavez was, of course, elected president of Venezuela December 6, 1998, while William Jefferson Clinton was in the White House.

32:15 video (Chavez comment appears at 2:50)

Earlier in his Miami speech, Obama cast his own background (17th century WASP colonist plus politically-prominent Kenyan) as similar to that of Cuban refugees from Castro’s tyranny, his Kenyan father as a poor immigrant seeking the American Dream of Freedom and Opportunity.

0:33 in the video:

Miami’s promise of Liberty and opportunity has drawn generations of immigrants to these shores, sometimes with nothing more than the clothes on their back. And I was talking to Jorge
about his father, and the story… the immigrant story that he embodies, and his family embodies, and the extraordinary success… That is the story of America. It was the similar hope that drew my father across an ocean in search of the same promise.

Barack Hussein Obama, Sr. didn’t come to America seeking Liberty and Opportunity. He was sent to America as part of a program created by Kenyan Black Nationalist leader Tom Mboya
to obtain Western educations for future Kenyan government leaders and officials. After he attended the University of Hawaii, bigamously married Stanley Ann Dunham, abandoned her and his son and went to Harvard, he returned to Kenya with yet another American wife, where he took up an economist’s position in a government ministry.

Obama Senior had obviously never intended to work or settle in the United States, so he was hardly an immigrant “drawn across an ocean” by the Land of Opportunity. And Obama Sr. was hardly an admirer of Liberty, being a Marxist. His government career in Kenya stalled and he grew bitter, it is reported, after he published an incendiary paper taking the pro-Communist side against the Kenyatta government.

Compare the absence of coverage the MSM of all these errors and an impressive falsehood, with the microscopic and obsessive coverage of the public statements of Hillary Clinton and John McCain.

H/t to Noel Sheppard and Charles Johnson.

Michael Novak puts B. Hussein Obama in his place.

Candidate Obama, like so many lefties, seems to believe anything bad about the United States, without even submitting it to critical thinking. He said on May 19, 2008, for example, that 3% of the world’s population (i.e., in his calculation, the United States) accounts for 25% of the greenhouse gases put into the atmosphere. In the 1970s, the lefties used to talk about 6% of the world’s population using 25% of the world’s energy. Even before Obama, they were blaming America first.

The left’s figures depend on what is meant by “energy.” Before the founding and development of the United States, “energy” meant the human back, beasts of burden, windmills, waterwheels, burning wood, coke, and coal, and the like. The United States is certainly not using 25% of the energy generated by those means today. I don’t think so, although it might be. The darn country is just so efficient.

But if we mean by “energy” only the modern sources of energy – electricity, the Franklin stove, the steam engine, the piston engine propelled by gasoline (and now by electric and/or hydrogen batteries), the processing of crude oil into gasoline, nuclear energy, the jet engine, the development of ethanol and other fuels derived from plants, and other devices – all of these except one were invented by the people of the United States, as their gift to the world. (The exception was the steam engine, invented by our cousins in Britain, and further developed here as well as there.)

In other words, the United States has invented nearly 100% of what the modern world means by “energy.” And it has helped the rest of the world to use 75%.

Mark Steyn parses Obama’s best-known recent quote.

BO: We can’t drive our SUVs and eat as much as we want and keep our homes on 72 degrees at all times, whether we’re living in a desert, or living in the tundra, and then just expect that every other country’s going to say okay, you guys just go ahead and keep on using 25% of the world’s energy, even though you only account for 3% of the population.

MS: The very next line he said was that’s not leadership. In other words, Barack Obama’s definition of American leadership is you should find out what the European Union prime ministers want, and then you go ahead and do it. So he’ll go and ask them, he’ll go and ask these foreign countries what temperature would you like America’s thermostat to be set to. You can’t eat as much food as you want. We’re going to ask the foreigners how much food you think you ought to be eating. So he’s ceding McDonalds drive-thru sovereignty to the European Union. And what it cumulatively comes across as is basically the 21st Century version of Jimmy Carter malaise, that it’s the opposite of what America is – optimism, progress, and more and more bountiful good for the country and for the planet. He’s saying no, the good times are over, we’ve got to tighten our belts, even though you fat layabouts can’t actually do that.

Sandy Rios, a pro-family talk radio personality from Chicago, expresses the typical kinds of concerns ordinary American will have about the latest democrat party idol’s candidacy.

What are you so afraid of?” a caller to my Chicago radio show asked. “…

If Barack Obama is elected President of the United States, I fear our enemies will smell the blood of weakness and rise in retaliation here and abroad. While Obama makes sweeping promises to end the war in Iraq, he never projects the consequences. Radical Islam is waging a holy war against us—and they have no intent on ending their war against the West. Withdrawal will be perceived as surrender and the election of a president sympathetic to their cause will embolden them like nothing else. Iraq will recede into bloody, sectarian retaliatory violence. Iran will take advantage and wield new power in the region. Our military families will have the sacrifice of their loved ones rendered meaninglessness. And our enemies will come here.

Israel will find itself alone. Europe and the British Isles, already too overrun with Islamists, will provide little defense. A future President Obama, championed by members of Hamas in Gaza, endorsed by one of their leaders—a dear friend to PLO sympathizer and Yasser Arafat apologist—Rashid Kalidi, will, I fear, not lift a finger to defend them. It is, after all, this same future president who has sat for 20 years (until recently without objection), listening to Dr. Jeremiah Wright praise Hamas and the famous Israel despiser, Louis Farrakhan.

I fear Iran will continue to develop nuclear weapons and breathlessly rush to the annihilation of Israel which will bring war to the Middle East. Iran will gladly make these weapons available to terrorist groups who will use them in the same way they currently show their contempt for life in smaller ways with suicide bombs. President Barack Obama will be powerless to stop this. He is a man full of words, but lacking in resolve. …

I fear universal healthcare, a system that will run like Cook County Hospital in Chicago where patients wait for hours, get lousy care and—if and when they are seen—they have little recourse for the way they are treated. Government healthcare puts you at the mercy of government: no alternative if medicines or procedures are denied and no recourse if doctors botch a surgery. I fear “equality” in a system like that—we will all get equally marginal care. Managed care and HMOs will look like heaven compared to this.

I fear the loss of free speech. I am concerned talk radio and independent news sources will be regulated to the point that they are effectively silenced. I fear more cases like that of Crystal Dixon, Associate Vice President for Human Resources at Toledo University, who was recently fired for writing a column as a private citizen, making the case as an African American that homosexuality cannot be equated to race in a civil rights debate. Barack Obama has been heralded by award-winning gay journalist, Andrew Sullivan, because he embraces expanded homosexual rights through ENDA and the punishment of those who would be “intolerant” to this lifestyle through hate crimes legislation. I fear those who oppose the homosexual moral and political agenda will be further punished. I fear his embrace of homosexual marriage and the consequences to children and society.

I fear the influence of radicals like William Ayres, formerly of the Weather Underground. I fear that, in addition to his desire to violently overthrow the United States Government, his endorsement of “Queering Elementary Education” will become more prevalent in public schools. I fear children will become further prey to the sex education agenda that exposes our kids too early and too often to materials at odds with the convictions of a great majority of Americans.

I fear racial vengeance. I don’t believe Barack Obama has sat at the feet of the hate-filled black racial bigot Jeremiah Wright without having sympathy for his poisonous diatribes. He may agree that white America deserves some sort of payback.

I fear economic collapse from a talented orator but inexperienced politician who does not love the free market, but socialism, who seeks justice and “fairness” that, translated, means taking from some and giving it to those he perceives deserve it more. I am concerned that the poor will be poorer and that “equality” will mean all will be poorer—regardless of effort or merit.