EASY TO BE HARD

Here's a Guardian tale of how the Left took pleasure in smearing Hillary during the primary by using right-wing talking points.

Throughout the course of the Democratic primary, it was neatly repackaged as "wildly ambitious person who will do anything in her voracious quest to win including destroying the Democratic Party while cackling monstrously and whose womanness totally doesn't matter we swear." The classic misogynist charge once used against Clinton by the vast right-wing conspiracy became the rallying cry of large swaths of the erstwhile reality-based community.

Without a hint of irony.

Clinton was suddenly a bitch, a witch, the Queen of Hearts "who has parasitically attached herself to the legacy and record of" her husband, the screech on the blackboard with an elitist trademark laugh. "Hitlery," "Hildebeast," and "Billary" - staples of 1990s criticisms of the feminist First Lady have returned with a vengeance. She was a monster, the devil in a pantsuit, targeted with dehumanizing and eliminationist rhetoric to which liberal bloggers used to object when the right used it against liberals, but apparently now consider okay, as long as it's only directed at a candidate they don't like.

In a spectacular ballet of aggressive misogyny, attacks on Clinton's femaleness masquerading as critiques of Clinton's policies and campaign failures (separate altogether from legitimate critiques of Clinton's policies and campaign failures), and indifference to the former, the liberal blogosphere - once a proud conglomeration of feisty challengers to Republican memes - embraced as its own one of the most pernicious strategies of the 1990s anti-Clinton conservatives.

And they didn't stop there.

But no, Nancy P., no sexism here except the upside. Nothing to see, move on.

UPDATE: Here's Part Two.

BUSHAMA 2.0

So Obama wants to outdo Bush in supporting and funding religious charities with taxpayer dollars.

My boss, the Massachusetts Democrat, just walked into my office with the news, asking, "So is Obama running as a Republican now?"

Folks, Obama is correct in this: "...I came to see faith as being both a personal commitment to Christ and a commitment to my community; that while I could sit in church and pray all I want, I wouldn't be fulfilling God's will unless I went out and did the Lord's work.." But that's a personal commitment, not a commitment you can make on behalf of other citizens and public monies. If Obama wants to serve the nation as pastor-in-chief, all well and good. But our president's chief duty is to protect and preserve the Constitution (not, as both Bush and Obama have said, to protect the people), and this commingling of church and state has got to stop.

Wonder how the Blogger Boyz will receive this one ... and what excuses they'll make for BO this time, after positively eviscerating GWB for doing the same thing. I guess we'll have to start a new acronym for them -- IOKIYO.