Too Progressive

Commonwealth Snapshot is a new daily (or semi-daily) post I’m going to try out here offering a quick snapshot of some of the “hot topics” and latest news across Virginia and the Virginia blogosphere. Enjoy!!

Senator John Warner hospitalized with heart ailment. [Raising Kaine]

Conservatives say McCain could be “doomed” if he doesn’t go negative on Obama. [Swac Girl]

Thelma Drake facing toughest election yet. [Daily Press via RK]

Karen Thomas Kolber of Virginia Beach and “fundraiser extraordinaire” will head up fundraising for Netroots Nation 2008 (formerly known as YearlyKOS). [VB Dems]

State Senate to vote on expanding arrest powers. [Democratic Central]

List of endorsements for Leslie Byrne continues to grow. Byrne for Congress via Bryan J. Scrafford]

This is absolutely hilarious! Looks like the craaazy Ron Paul followers have gotten so upset over a blog posts from a school teacher that they’ve posted his name, telephone number and even his address on the Ron Paul forums on his web site of defeat. Check out the teacher’s blog post:

This week my math students are working on graphs and charts. Since Virginia held its primaries on Tuesday, I decided to work a little social studies into the lesson by using election figures as the data. I’d have liked to use Virginia’s figures but since people were still voting here that wasn’t possible. Instead I used national delegate counts for both parties and made bar graphs and pie charts to show visually how Clinton and Obama were neck and neck (with Edwards way on the bottom) and McCain was kicking everyone’s ass.

Then I talked about how those were national results but every state voted on its own and every state was different. I talked about how Obama crushed Hillary in Illinois and Hillary stomped Obama in New York and Delaware was more or less even and how all the states that voted so far combined added up to an even race. Then I posted the results of the most recent primary then available (Louisiana) to show how different statewide and national races could be, showing a big Obama win there and a narrow Huckabee victory even though he was getting squashed nationally.

Then we talked about line graphs showing change in a single measure over time and I used what I could remember of Republican polls going back to last year to show the rise and fall of candidates’ fortunes. I made up my data, but made sure it followed the general trends. Giuliani’s lead in the polls disintegrating as the months went by, McCain’s free-fall and revival, Huckabee’s rise, and Ron Paul’s Ron-Paulitude.

That was actually the best part for me — getting to make fun of Ron Paul and getting all the students to join in. Didn’t even have to attack his assinine policies, just showed him on the bottom of the GOP opinion polls month after month, and every time I added a new month’s worth of Data and talked about the other candidates rising or falling, and extending the lines on their graphs, I’d end with “and Ron Paul stayed flat” and add another segment to his straight line near the zero marker. The kids loved the running gag. They started to join in, chorusing “and Ron Paul stayed flat!” Some of them even got a little impatient as I talked about the rest of the candidates: “and what about Ron Paul?” “He stayed flat.” Cheers. “And Fred Thompson dropped out of the race, dropping his numbers to zero, so Ron Paul finally got ahead of someone.” Laughter. It was sweet.

My biggest regret was that one of my students asked me what the difference between the two parties was, but since it was technically a math lesson I couldn’t switch over to civics entirely and fully answer that — or answer at all at the time, really. I did get to talk to her about it a little in the hallway later, but didn’t get to lecture the whole class. Ah, well, can’t have everything.

And what did the Ron Paul losers have to say in the comments?

Shall we? 1 socialist parasite + The Internet = Another worthless article on the internet that nobody cares about.
Have a nice day!

There is a very good reason that what you are doing with your graphs is not only wrong, but unethical and illegal. I see no problem with using polls as a teaching aid, but when you interject opinion, you are serving these children a personal agenda. That is wrong. Unfortunately, you have spoiled a good opportunity to teach by coloring your project with your personal preferences. You now need to select a subject for your graphs that is objective and stop teaching in a subjective manner. I am a taxpayer and it is not up to you to try to politically influence the young impressionable minds of children at my expense.

You are absolute SCUM!! Making “fun” of Ron Paul? The only honest candidate in the race, who is not bought and paid for like the other hacks. The only candidate with REAL solutions to our massive problems. Shame on you. Unbelievable!!

Another ideologue educator destroying young minds. You are hateful and stupid. Sad.

HAHA they’re so silly. What this teacher did was neither illegal nor dishonest, you know, since he used actual numbers from the election to teach the graphs and all. I’m so sorry that facts pain Ron Paul supporters so much.

The teacher even edited his blog post to add the following:

Edit: in response to the spamming by mostly anonymous Paultards I’ve reset the comment status on this post to friends only.

Read more:
[Ron Paul supporters are lunatics!!]
[Ron Paul is [still] insane]
[Ron Paul supporters are nuts (Part 3!!)]

[h/t Wonkette]

Day two of the Paultard assault on my blog over this post where I re-posted a letter from Ron Paul to his supporters where it seemed as though he was preparing to drop out of the race. Yesterday we took a look at some of the inane comments and even death threats I received. Today, I’ll re-post some of the more hilarious ones I’ve received since then:

Anonymous said…
First of all Ron Paul is no lunatic, the lunatics are Hillary Clinton, and Mr 100 years in Iraq, John McCain. I don’t know what is so lunatic about following our constitution, trying to help our country not collapse economically, whats so wrong with letting us keep our money, no income tax, bringing our troops home from insane wars. Look at our National Debt, our children have to life with this. Ron Paul Supporters are not fringe lunatics, all the people I know that support Ron Paul, love this country, serve in our military, work hard, and just want our country back from the corrupt powers that be, what a crazy dream huh? Actually going back to our roots. I wonder would people be calling George Washington a lunatic, if he was running, would George Washington be ignored by the Press, sadly I think he would. I respect all opinions, good or bad about Dr Paul, but to call him a lunatic, thats absurd.

Ha ha, “I respect all opinions good or bad, as long as they’re good”
says the Paultard.

FreedomFighter said…
Fuck off you brainwashed moron.

And then there’s this:

Anonymous said…
I agree with Freedom Fighter.

Fuck off.

Lunatic? WTF???

A man who wants to end the war, restore sound money, follow the Constituion, and reduce the size of our over-bearing, liberty-stealing, government….

that’s a lunatic????

You sir… are a moron.

And you are a moron who can’t read. You posted this to say that he’s “dropping out” and nowhere in that letter does it say that.

Are you too stupid to read?

I don’t normally like to attack people personally in blogs… but you started it… RETARD.

I really wish the Paultards would learn the advantages of PARAGRAPHS. Also, what is up with their overnight online jihads? Ever since I made the initial post two days ago, yes it’s true that the majority of my hits have been from Paultardians searching “Ron Paul” in Google search, but most of them always come between the hours of 2am and 4am.

Trolling the internet making threats and inane comments wherever their “Ron Paul” Google search takes them!! In response to this post yesterday they flocked here to hurl juvenile insults and even make death threats because I speculated that it appeared Ron Paul was dropping out of the race (and I still maintain that he is). Let’s have a look at what some of the PAULTARDS had to say!

Anonymous said…
Are you living in a box go back to watching fox news with all the other cows ron is going all the way to the convention get your finger on the pulse and quit paying attention to the MSM.

Click here to read all of my posts on Fox News. Doing actual research before they speak is something Paultards don’t specialize in.

Paul said…
Maybe Ron Paul supporters would not be so hostile towards you if you did not call them “retards” and “paultards”. Frankly making comments and generalizations like that is downright ignorant.

Apparently speculating makes you ignorant according to Paultards!

Californian said…
It’s really sad that the likes of Terry Carter do not and possibly will never get it.

Posting false announcements “for the fun of it” is juvenile and frankly sad a little. It doesn’t make you one to respect or be taken seriously…

Apparently re-posting a letter from Ron Paul to his supporters is a “false announcement.”

Anonymous said…
You are an idiot who can’t read.

And my favorite of them all, one PAULTARD actually makes a death threat when PAULTARDNATION becomes a reality (or they just launch another fantasy “march” on World of Warcraft):

Anonymous said…
The only reason that some bloggers make false posts like the one here declaring Ron Paul is withdrawing, is to get their hit count increased on their site.

Paulistinians should note the few pieces of crap among the blogger community who are resorting to this tactic and publish a banned blogger list on the Paulistinian websites and in meet-up groups.

Stop visiting sites such as this one where the guy is obviously lying and just baiting the Paulistinians in order to boost his readership.

As of today, The Colette is banned as far as I am concerned. I won’t visit here or post here again, and neither should anyone else who hopes for a blogosphere where truth is presented to the People.

When the revolution comes, the Colette/blogger will be one of those bodies hanging from the court house tree, so don’t associate with him and don’t blog on his site or help enable his lying.

Oh Ron Paul, this is why you’ll never be President of anything except fantasy land World of Warcraft and a bunch of ignorant internet trolls.

Wow! Just wow!!

UPDATE: OVER $6 MILLION IN 24 HOURS!!

A bit of Sunday morning humor courtesy of our bumbling-idiot-in-chief:

Also, what the hell is the woman behind him doing?

I know I haven’t been posting much in the past few months, mainly because I’ve been interning at the Human Rights Campaign five days a week since August, while also taking five classes last semester. Needless to say, I didn’t have much time to post too often much less do anything else. The internship was over right before Christmas and I’m getting ready to start another one at Buzzlife Productions as a public relations & marketing intern. However, I’m only taking four classes this semester, and will only be at Buzzlife three days a week, so I’m going to “resolve” to post more often than I have been lately, especially with the presidential elections coming up this year!

Regardless, I’ll be around more often than I have been and I hope every one has a great 2008!

So, so far during my three and a half months here in the Imperial District the only “famous-for-DC” type I had seen was John Aravosis of AmericaBlog walking down Connecticut Avenue. But! Friday morning on my way to work, I was walking down 17th street past Farragut and here comes Robert Novak lookin’ a frighteningly hot mess. Now, I realize the man is something like 232 years old now, so it’s only appropriate that he look like a corpse, but damn!!

So of course, the first thing I did when I sat down at my desk in the office Friday morning? Emailed Wonkette for some “voyeuristic fun” at the expense of the grand dragon of the walking dead, and some speculation as to where he may have been coming from too!

Just saw Robert Novak walking near 17th and K around Farragut. His eyes were red and as per usual he looked really pissed off about something (some one’s not putting out in the McDonald’s bathroom, maybe?).

[Read more: Wonk’d! Please Wash]

For the record, Fox is the same network that airs shows such as Family Guy which feature much “harsher” language than the phrase “god damn war” which Fox chose to censor at tonight’s Emmy awards show:

UPDATE: CNN has been broadcasting the FULL video (no censoring!) all day long. Take that, Fox!

September 11 is National Rudy Giuliani Day! To celebrate, the owner of 9/11 will make a speech at the September 11 memorial service in NYC this morning!!

And the nominees are:

Option 1: This duo of quotes from the office of Senator Larry Craig (R-ID) regarding his arrest on “lewd conduct” charges inside a men’s restroom:

I could hear several unknown persons in the restroom that appeared to use the restroom for its intended use.

Also:

Craig stated “that he has a wide stance when going to the bathroom and that his foot may have touched mine,” the report states. Craig also told the arresting officer that he reached down with his right hand to pick up a piece of paper that was on the floor.
“It should be noted that there was not a piece of paper on the bathroom floor, nor did Craig pick up a piece of paper.”

Option 2: This picture of George Bush with AG Alberto Gonzales taken Sunday at the Bush ranch in Texas (Gonzales submitted his resignation on Friday, FYI):

Option 3: This shot of Michael Chertoff side-by-side with something from Lord of The fucking Rings:

Remember how Pat Robertson and other crazy religious fundies are always running around touching themselves, starting pretend universities, and claiming that natural disasters are the work of God to punish gays, and blacks, and Democrats, and Muslims, and Jews, and the like? Yeah? Well, Texas isn’t doing so hot these days with all the recent flooding, and now it’s about to get worse as Tropical Storm Erin makes landfall along the Texas coast! Hooray for punishing the state that brought us George Bush (or at least the state he likes to pretend he hails from).

Here’s a list of all the things super sexy retailer Wal Mart wants (or doesn’t want?) you to know about their fabulous company!

So Wikipedia has implemented some sort of spy machine sort of like the one the government (or more specifically, the NSA) uses to spy on Americans. Except this time, it’s catching some pretty stupid employees at Fox News, the DCCC, the CIA, and even the Vatican in some pretty hilarious acts of vandalism!

The new Wikipedia scanner thing has revealed what we pretty much always suspected: The world’s political, religious and media leaders are about seven years old, on average. By matching anonymous edits to Wikipedia entries back to the office computers where they originated, the scanner is able to match up particular changes to particular organizations. For example:

Somebody at the CIA repeatedly added “Wahhhh!” to the profile of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

The CIA also made some helpful edits to, uhm, Oprah Winfrey’s profile.

At the Vatican, they fucked with the entry about the Catholic Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams, removing “links to newspaper stories written in 2006 that alleged that Adams’s finger prints and hand prints were found on a car used during a double murder in 1971.”

Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee computers added color commentary to the Rush Limbaugh profile, describing him as an idiot, racist and bigot, while noting this about his listeners: “Most of them are legally retarded.”

Diebold employees removed references to Diebold CEO Walden O’Dell being a loyal stooge of the Bush Administration.

People at Fox News fucked with Al Franken’s profile.

Fox News staffers also “de-loofahed Bill O’ Reilly, posted false information about the ratings of Fox News shows, accused Keith Olbermann of making light of Peter Jennings’ death and deleted rating info for MSNBC programs.”

Somebody at the NYT added the very clever insult “jerk” to Bush Junior’s entry, while others are editing the Wall Street Journal’s entry for some reason.

A computer at the New York Times was also used to call Tom DeLay a “grand dragon,” which is pretty good but not quite as good as Robert Byrd’s actual title, “Exalted Cyclops.”

[h/t Wonkette]

UPDATE: More sexy Wikipedia edits! Via Ana Marie Cox:

Condoleezza Rice trained to become a “concert penis“? That’s Gutfeld territory, people. (Maybe they meant Mr. Penis…)

Oh hey there! It’s me, Bill Kristol. Don’t mind me, I’m just going to continue to tell lies and pick my nose.