In one of the most incendiary columns ever written, "Race And The Presidential Election," Bill O'Reilly sets the race-bait bar to record-breaking...depths. Short of saying that Barack Obama wants to sleep with your pearly-white daughter, O'Reilly uses just about every button meant to alarm his white fans to the fact that Barack Obama is BLACK and that just his running for, let alone becoming, president, could set off race-laced fireworks.

While there's no question, as he did on his TV Factor Friday night, Bill will say it's not race-baiting if you're just reporting the facts (despite the brilliant Prof. Dr. Marc Lamont Hill's protestations), here are just a few comments from Bill's column...

In a shock to those who were present at a press conference in North Carolina this week, ABC's George Stephanopoulus asked Barack Obama if he would continue the No Child Left Behind program as president.

"At first we thought he asked whether he would denounce something Jeremiah Wright said about how America hates children ," said one bewildered reporter, "but when we realized that he was asking a substantial question on an real issue, it pretty much threw us all off."

Stephanopoulus admitted that he hasn't been on Sean Hannity's show for the last week. "I was pretty much left to make up my own question," claimed the former Clinton staffer. "And David Shuster had already asked about the flag pin."

Think No Child Left Behind is working? It is if your definition on "No Child" equates to 70% of our children.

War has nothing on our failing education system when it comes to extinguishing the futures of our young.

Last month's report by America's Promise Alliance concluded that nationwide, nearly 1.2 million students drop out of school every year and that about seven out of ten of students graduate on time. While these alarming statistics may only seem a problem for failing schools and the children they affect, the loss of potential along with the economic burden on society as a whole should be of immense concern for all of us.

Well, I'm guessing the Clinton campaign feels pretty swell getting the Bill O'Reilly fair and balanced treatment during her interview last week.

Wonder if Bill happened to mention to her staff that on the same show they would bring on Dennis Miller to eviscerate her (what, wasn't Dick Morris available?), something a caller on Monday's Radio Factor accused Bill of?

Of course, BillO chastised the caller...

Bill said that all Dennis was doing was critiquing Bill's approach.

"I would not allow anyone to be eviscerated - not Hillary Clinton, not John McClain, not Barack Obama - after they were on. So, you're not telling the truth. Bad on you."

by Steve Young and a Bevy of Beautiful...Minds.

The right wing echo chamber (right wing radio and Fox News) is a junkyard dog. It grabs on to an issue, a soundbite, a rumor, sometimes (oh, my) even a fib - anything that might damage the image of an opponent - and doesn't let go until it rips it - and the Democrat intended to smear - into unrecognizable shreds.

I give you Jeremiah Wright. Actually, it is the ALL the media that has given the story to us. And has regifted it to us, over and over, and if I may, over.

The real question is not Wright, but why has that junkyard dog become a credible source of news for, what used to considered, credible news outlets? The so-called mainstream media

Washington - On the 5th anniversary of President Bush's heroic landing on the USS Abraham Lincoln and speech before the Mission Accomplished banner, the White House has admitted that the banner could have been "more specific." To mark the anniversary, spokesperson Dana Perino announced that the White House will be holding a contest for families and friends of the over 4,000 soldiers who have perished, and the more than 50,000 who have been maimed since the original Mission Accomplished banner was unfurled, asking them to come up with a more specific banner.

"President Bush has always been a lemons into lemonade guy," said spokesperson Dana Perino. "He sees the contest as a way to comfort those in the military who might have thought the banner meant their lives would be safe and they would be returning to their families whole."

After weeks of badgering from the mainstream media as well as right wing talk radio, Republican nominee, Sen. John McCain (R, AZ), summoned reporters to say he was outraged by the President George W. Bush's "divisive, destructive, and frankly, grammatically incorrect" remarks. Scrambling to contain the flare-up in a controversy that has dogged him since clips of some of Bush's most objectionable remarks began circulating on TV and the Internet, McCain finally repudiated Bush's long history of inane rambling and nearly unintelligible comments have been swirling around YouTube and OMGDidYouHearWhatThePresidentSaidToday.com for years now.

Last month, replicating what's been tossed incessantly across the media, MSNBC political analyst Steve Adubato wrote about Jeremiah Wright's comments and Barack Obama's reaction to them.

"...it's not simply about race, but about judgment and the courage to stand up and confront a longtime friend and supporter who is prominent and influential, and who has also been divisive and dangerous. Wright may have done good things for many poor people in Chicago, but this in no way excuses or explains what I and every other person in the media, as well as every interested American, saw on tape from his disgraceful sermons. It's inexcusable. It's unacceptable. While Obama isn't responsible for those comments, his feigning ignorance that he wasn't in the pew listening to Wright on a particular day, or that he didn't know how bad Rev. Wright's hateful rhetoric was makes him look very un-presidential."

Hillary Wins! Hillary Wins! Hillary Wins!

Down for the count, going in to the bottom of the ninth, she picked herself off the mat and kept swinging the racket, finally kicking the winning field goal on her way to a big time victory, said the mixed metaphor pundits.

But after being left for dead, just how did she come out on top?

Was it because of her pluck or her luck?

Was it Bill? How about Stephanopoulus?

Nupe. Not even close.

The man who swung the big bat that produced the winning margin in Pennsylvania, sending the Obama crowd home dejected was one of Clinton's former worst nightmares. None other than that horrid vast right wing conspiracy all wrapped up in one hunk of Fox manhood.

During a New Hampshire visit to a Barack Obama rally, Fox News host, Bill O'Reilly, followed his "Don't block the shot" moment (and imminent t-shirt blurb), by asking the candidate if he would come on to his Factor show. Obama told Bill he would consider it AFTER the primaries.

While some might take putting off the visit until after the primaries as something of a snub, O'Reilly considered it a coup. That coup just might have run out of ammunition.

Just before last week's debate, O'Reilly said on his TV Factor that Obama goes to Reverend Jeremiah Wright's church for only one reason - political expediency.

I wrote earlier about Wednesday night's debate, and never one thought once about who I thought won the debate, a question that normally comes to mind first.

Obviously the loser was the American voter.

But who won?

The answer is usually comes after figuring out who made the most inroads.

Barack? Certainly not. Hammered all night about blah-blah-blah, how could he be?

Then it would have to be Hillary. Nope. She circled so many answers before landing with anything close to an answer she might end up with more frequent flier miles, but not a victory.

I sat at my press seat at the Philadelphia Kimmel Center checking my watch. It was either running fast or I had been swept into a space time-continuum that was about to swallow up any semblance of a learning experience.

Unfortunately, it was the latter.

It took fifty-two minutes before ABC anchor and debate moderator, Charlie Gibson, decided to ask an actual policy question. The fifty-one minutes prior were filled with questions concerning verbal gaffes, personal associations and whether each candidate would select each candidate as their Vice President (which anyone with half a moderator's mind would know how the candidates would answer).

RuPaul would be so proud.

It may look and sound like Democracy, but if you look behind the talk radio curtain, you'll find Rush Limbaugh duck-taping Karl Rovian junk back between the thighs of Republican partisanship.

In the spirit of our forefathers who forged out country and our soldiers who have fought and died heroically over the centuries, the loudest of the Lords of Loud has created a campaign to corrupt the presidential primary into a Machiavellian game of pretend.

It's no longer voting for whom you'd like to win, nor even voting against who'd you like to see lose. It's now come down to voting FOR whom you'd like to lose...or as Limbaugh puts it...Operation Chaos.

Ever since Barack Obama appeared to be a real presidential possibility, the far right conservative talk show hosts, along with far-right independent, Bill O'Reilly, have said that Obama is about platitudes with no real policy.

I realize that the crack research teams on these shows may have not yet figured out the secret code for finding Barack Obama's website, but after months of trying out endless combinations of letters, numbers and symbols, or what we in the decoding biz call "sipherin'," I discovered that if you key in the letters, "B-a-r-a-c-k-O-b-a-m-a" (all in that order) followed by a "." and the designation, "com", you'll be transferred to a website which purports to hold the key to understanding Obama's policies, all of which are portrayed as words within structured sentences.

During the 2000 presidential election, candidate Bush called Al Gore's economic figures, "fuzzy math."

Seems like the White House is still using the same arithmetic.

"We'll look at the circumstances and assess," said U.S. Iraq Ambassador Stephen Crocker speaking "battlefield geometry" and "political-military calculus."

Yet yesterday, with General Petraeus or Crocker unable to define success to senators, Sen. John McCain said it all added up to mean that "success is within reach."  

If General Petreaus or the White House cannot even determine what success is, how does McCain know it's in reach? 

USO to Send Al Franken, Tim Robbins and Ludacris To Entertain His Combat Riddled, Tortured Logic?

Once again, Bill O'Reilly used his weekly column to skewer Hollywood for not visiting our troops nor making the kind of movies the Folks want.

"...[M]ost [stars] whom will not even visit our troops in the field even though the USO will pay for the trip. Scarlett Johansson and Robin Williams are exceptions, but many movie people are roughing it in Malibu, happy not to think about Islamic fascism."

Oh, Bill-O's played this gambit before. Last year, preening that he visited the troops in Afghanistan, he felt it necessary to demean the USO .

Last week I wrote of the sad sight of watching poor Jane Hall, Bill O'Reilly's weekly whipping girl in the "Weekdays With Bernie & Jane" segment on his Factor.

After watching the humiliating treatment heaped on her last night by the fair and balanced BillO, it seems she still doesn't realize how horrifying watching her tortured existence is. You get the idea that waterboarding is just around the corner.

Last night in discussing the difference between MSNBC and NBC news, Bill quickly knew that Jane wasn't going exactly where he wanted her to (condemn NBC et al, sending them to hell in a Keith Olbermann hand basket). With an embarrassing split screen and without even allowing her a word, BillO started railing into NBC AND Jane, scolding her for not condemning NBC for not being appalled. Besides the fact that Bill's argument made no sense - "(NBC is) doing it solely to make money," then, believe it or not, immediately followed that up saying what "a financial disaster" they are - the shame is the pathetic image of Hall having her face on camera while being browbeared by the Fox News President of the Womes Hater's Club.

Did you ever wonder how the pundits of talk radio got so smart? Stop wondering. They didn't.

Dictionary.com defines a pundit as "a learned person, expert, or authority." No where does it say they must be "honest." The level of factual content fights a never ending battle with the level of integrity for the bottom rung in the import of punditry

The top of the chart is always certainty. Sounding like you know what you're talking about far outweighs what it is you are talking about.

Rush Limbaugh pulls in the top spot with about 15 million dittoheads, most of which will admit that they needn't listen watch or read anything but El Rushbo for their information. And what information do they get? Rush claims that if you look at the legislative record of Barack Obama, "you won't find a Senate bill with his name on it," and that "He's never reached across the aisle as a senator in legislation."

Today is a somber reminder, a commemoration of the men and women who have died in military service to this country. Not numbers. Men and women.

4,000 souls lost. This President has assured us that their sacrifice was not made in vain. Vice President Cheney reminded us that they were all volunteers. In vain or volunteer, I'm sure the parents of these 4,000 heroes are relieved by the President and his boss's willingness to sacrifice their sons and daughters. I'm sure the parents of the 4,000 lost in Iraq are heartened by the President's words.

I had contemplated many headers for this column.

My favorite was "Jane Hall: O'Reilly's Ashley Alexandra Dupré"

But you don't screw a good woman when she's down...unless you're willing to fork over $4500 an hour.

And...for the humiliating liberties O'Reilly takes with Hall on The Factor I would hope she receives plenty, though with Bill, it rarely lasts more than five minutes.

See. It works on so many levels.

But it's also so mean and Jane Hall seems a decent sort.

If she wasn't she wouldn't appear to be in so much pain...though who wouldn't be under the weight of an abusive bully who obviously delights in demeaning his paid trysts.

"War critics can no longer credibly argue that we are losing in Iraq,
so now they argue the war costs too much."

Read that again. He's saying it today, the fifth anniversary of a war
that in his own words means we were losing four out of those five years.

"War critics can no longer credibly argue that we are losing in
Iraq..."

He now admits that those who questioned what he and his cronies had been
touting for at least the first four years - that things in Iraq were
going swimmingly - were right. Those who talk show Lords of Loud had
called Defeatocrats and underminers of the military were, in fact,
"credible."

WE WERE LOSING.

The President says so...now

Dear Sort of Dr. Laura,

For years I thought you were a jerk. Okay, you had a few hot pictures on the Internet -- please don't click here and link onto this site -- but you always remained to me, one of those, "yeah, just wait until she opens her mouth" turnoffs.

That is until this week.

That is when, on the Today Show and later on Hannity & Colmes, in reference to the Eliot Spitzer dalliances, you blamed wives for their husbands' behavior, saying that the wives of "most men who cheat" "haven't been respecting" their husbands.

"Because I think it's funny."
-- Ann Coulter explaining why she uses Barack Obama's middle name (May 6, MSNBC Live)

Why are all you liberals so upset with using Barack Hussein Obama's middle name?

Isn't Barack Hussein Obama proud of it?

Franklin Delano Roosevelt dealt with it and he had polio. Are you saying that Barack Hussein Obama can't deal with something a guy stuck in a wheelchair had no problem with?

Thomas Alva Edison didn't care if people used his middle name. What's the matter? Is Barack Hussein Obama afraid people will think he couldn't invent the light bulb?

I could go on and on, but I don't have to because the talk radio Lords of Loud already do.

"It's pretty pathetic."
-- Hillary Clinton, 3/3/08, describing her appearance on the Daily Show the day before the most important primary of her life.

"It's pretty pathetic."

What an opening for a pundit to slam Senator Clinton. Except that they'd be slamming a great political maneuver.

Hillary has spent a year pushing her experience; the last three months ripping into the hollowness of Barack Obama's speeches. She even sent out a surrogate to make sure everyone knew that Barack's middle name rhymed Saddam's last name. And the only thing that fortified were her unfavorable ratings. In fact, most every time she tried the tried (tired?) and true it not only blew up in her face, but it also seemed to give Obama great grist for a simple return volley that, in comparison, made her sound all the more shrill.

Bill Cunningham got punked.

At least that how the story's been sold.

Backstory...

Cincinnati talk show host Bill Cunningham was booked last Tuesday to warm up the McCain crowd at a rally in Cincinnati. True to his 700 WLW radio chops, Cunningham incited the crowd with a good ole, pull no punches rip of Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, using the same screed he uses five days a week on his radio show.

Some of his remarks included calling Barack Obama a "hack, Chicago-style Daly politician" and "At some point in the near future the media, the stooges from the New York Times, CBS (The Clinton Broadcasting System), NBC (The Nobody But Clinton Network), The All Bill Clinton Channel (ABC), and the Clinton News Network at some point is going to peel the bark off Barack Hussein Obama..."