On page 3 of yesterday's Washington Post, Barack Obama was smeared by a hack who calls himself a staff writer.  His name is Joe Stephens.  If the Washington Post had any journalistic standards, Mr. Stephens would be given a pink slip.

The smear and hit piece appeared on page 3 as if it was a news story.  

The hit piece begins

Shortly after joining the U.S. Senate and while enjoying a surge in income, Barack Obama bought a $1.65 million restored Georgian mansion in an upscale Chicago neighborhood. To finance the purchase, he secured a $1.32 million loan from Northern Trust in Illinois.

Right away all seems legit.  The loan is for more than 80% of the purchase price with a down payment close to 20%.  But that doesn't stop Stephens from trying to pass off smears as news.

In the past 48 hours the following has happened.

1.  John McCain spoke at a company which unlawfully and intentionally failed to pay its workers the prevailing minimum wage.

2.  John McCain admits he doesn't know the price of gas.

3.  John McCain puts up an ad which has a price almost $2 a gallon below the national average.

4.  One of McCain's top fundraisers, John Lindner, supports unrepentant terrorists.

5.  John McCain's camp swiftboats Wesley Clark by claiming Clark said things he never said all while having his surrogates and talk radio show minions attack Clark's service.

But where's are the networks and major newspapers?

Here comes the swiftboating.

You knew it wouldn't take long for the right wing hate machine, the swiftboaters, the Republican Party, the McCain surrogates, right wing talk radio, the conservative bloggers, and the corporate media to make the FALSE CHARGE that the Obama camp or those associated with the Obama camp were somehow attacking McCain's service in Vietnam.  We've done no such thing and neither did General Wes Clark.

And we need to call out every single person, whether they are a media personality, a politician, or an McCain staffer who attempts to unfairly smear Wes Clark and tens of millions of Americans.

This afternoon, in Pipersville, Pennsylvania John McCain will be holding a staged rally that will be a town hall farce, just like this one was in New Jersey.  It is not being held at a public place but rather at the facilities of a right wing corporation called Worth & Company, Inc which supports John McCain.  But somebody didn't do his homework.  This company was cited for breaking the law at least 6 times for paying workers below the minimum wage by the Pennsylvania's Bureau of Labor Law Compliance and this citation was upheld by the Pennsylavnia Wage Appeals Board.  The Company appealed to the Pennsylvania court's.

Here's the case heard by a Pennsylvania Commonwealth Court in June of 2007.  The case citation is 2378 C.D. 2006

While the following blockquoted premise and my diary title is an overstatement, and while it applies to some and not all, (hence the word usually) there is no doubt that the behavioral elements that this diary will discuss is the primary causal factor as to why adults who are right wing conservatives turn out the way they are and how we can prevent future generations from turning out this way.

As a few of you know I have been working for years on what I expect to be about an 800 page political manifesto (98% of it is already written) designed to promote progressives values for decades to come while putting a nail in the coffin of the decrepit philosophy of conservatism.

For the first time in two years, I am going to share an excerpt from that eventual book. (It is copyrighted)

It's about conservatism and the core root of the philosophy.  If you get these two paragraphs, you will see the basis for 100% of all positions and beliefs that conservatives have.  (The next several pages in the book then applies these concepts to specific issues.)

Here goes.

Since we all should have interests in things other than politics and everyday topics of interests are ways to connect with people of all political stripes, I have again ventured into one of my sports diaries

This is for the basketball junkies.  

Wednesday night I wrote up my predictions for the draft but didn't print this diary yesterday.  My predictions and exact wording are blockquoted and were not changed after the fact. (Quite obvious since much is wrong.)

Now with the draft done, I've updated comments afterward.  Generally, if a guy went higher than I said he should I don't like it and if he went lower than I thought, then the team did well.

Starting today and from now until November I intend to edit, revise or mock the right wing vituperative, partisan balderdash that comes from the keyboard of David S Broder.

Broder's excrement of today is titledVoting's Neglected Scandal

Below is an updated version of the 97+ questions that the media should be asking John McCain.  You will note from these questions that they are all fair and I have made the decision to remove some of the more controversial questions that could be asked such as "Why did you call your wife Cindy a trollop and a c*nt in 1992 in front of 5 eyewitnesses?"

There are 3 categories of questions below.

The open ended are designed to elicit information from McCain.  Be prepared to follow them up.

The yes-no questions are simply that, yes-no.  If asking a yes-no question from McCain, insist on a yes-no answer.  Do it calmly.  (Ex:  Excuse me sir you are not answering my question, yes or no.)  Repeat the question if necessary.

The short answer questions require simple answers and have a purpose behind them.

Let's see how many of these questions get asked from now to November.

When the Nazis came for the communists,
I remained silent;
I was not a communist.

When they locked up the social democrats,
I remained silent;
I was not a social democrat.

When they came for the trade unionists,
I did not speak out;
I was not a trade unionist.

When they came for the Jews,
I remained silent;
I wasn't a Jew.

When they came for me,
there was no one left to speak out.

According to Newsweek, Barack Obama has opened up a 15 point lead over John McCain, a margin I and others have predicted for months now that Obama would beat McCain by.

But I say this, beating McCain by 15 points is not enough.  We need to remain involved, enthused, and prepared for the smears and vitriol that will still be coming our way.

It was recently reported that John McCain said that he Didn't love his country.

And just recently, McCain has said that it is
Tough to be proud of America.

But there are two points that need to be made.

I hate chopped liver.  It makes me sick.  The sight, the taste, arghhh.

What I want for breakfast is this.

An omelette
3 fresh eggs
swiss chesse, ham, and mushrooms
well heated french fries (don't like home fries that much)
two pieces of toast, lightly buttered, with strawberry jelly
a medium cup of pineapple juice

Today is the day that I feel it is appropriate to air my Russert grievances.  I air these grievances not out of anger but because some things need to be said and I, flaws and all, can sometimes articulate them better than others.

My observations and thoughts, when parsed line by line, can be considered as individual thoughts and/or as part of a larger context.  I doubt a single person who reads through this diary will agree with every word I say.  I also doubt that a single person who reads through this diary will disagree with every word I say.

As a Sanitized American, I, like the supermajority of Americans, recognizes that drilling in ANWR or off many of our coastlines would destroy the environment AND cause draconian economic damage to the areas that would be affected by this stupidity.

As a Sanitizied American, I, like most of you, recognizes that the reason why oil prices are high today has everything to do with the price gouging, the Big Oil monopolies, the war in Iraq, the Saudis, right wing tax policies, the ignoring of Venezuela, and the longstanding Republican obstruction of greener alternatives.

As a Sanitized American, I, like most of you, realize that if we gutted every last drop out of ANWR that could be there, we'd have oil for 6 months.  I further recognize that drilling on our coastlines would destroy millions of acres of land which would destroy our economy.

On September 17, 1787, a document called the Constitution was adopted by a bunch of Founders in Philadelphia to be soon ratified by enough states to make the Constitution the law of the land.

In 1791 a group of constitutional amendments known as the Bill of Rights were enacted into law.

It is this Constitution and the subsequent Bill of Rights that form the pillars of our nation and our democracy.

Only 17 times since 1791 has the Constitution been amended, with the Civil Rights Amendments most prominent and most necessary for the flourishing of our democracy.

The following is a fictionalized news story written May 23, 2011 and reported by the Disassociated Press, a newswire gathering service of stenographers that specializes in regurgitating right wing talking points while concealing news from the public.  The content expressed does not represent the personal views of the diarist but merely applies the law as four Supreme Court Justices and John McCain seemingly would apply it.

May 23, 2011, Washington, DC,  Disassociated Press, Kendra Sickler reporter.

Unnamed government officials, citing their broad and apparent endless authority of "wartime powers" have arrested Senator Joseph I. Lieberman, and have detained him at an undisclosed location on American soil.  Mr. Lieberman has been labeled an "enemy combatant" and thus pursuant to the Bush/McCain/Lieberman doctrine, Mr. Lieberman was not allowed to contact a lawyer nor challenge his detention in court.

I am going to speak for the Daily Kos community here.  Let me go through the common misperceptions that people have.

1.  I begin by saying that I don't speak for the Daily Kos community here.  This is rule 1.  Am I on the payroll?  No.  If I post a diary that argues that 2 + 2 = 7, that does not mean that Daily Kos is a community of intellectually challenged idiots who can't do kindergarten math.  It simply means that the person writing the diary that 2 + 2 = 7 is an intellectually challenged idiot who can't do kindergarten math.

2. In fact I don't speak for anybody else in the Daily Kos community. I speak for me and me only.  When I post something brilliant, I speak for me.  When I post something stupid, I speak for me.  And the same goes for EVERY other person here.  So when you see a news outlet or news personality who takes a diary here and there or a comment here and there and purports that to be representative of this entire site, you know such a person is either peddling propaganda or is completely clueless.

If you understand these two concepts above, then you have mastered the rudimentary concept of Daily Kos.  But there's much more.