If you think that’s something, wait until you read some of Spengler’s description of the atmosphere at Invesco Field on the night of Obama’s Greco-Roman Oration. Rush says that what Spengler has written confirms what an unnamed friend of his relayed to him from another final-night attendee:

Senator Barack Obama’s acceptance speech last week seemed vastly different from the stands of this city’s Invesco Stadium than it did to the 40 million who saw it on television. Melancholy hung like thick smog over the reserved seats where I sat with Democratic Party staffers. The crowd, of course, cheered mechanically at the tag lines, flourished placards, and even rose for the obligatory wave around the stadium. But its mood was sour. The air carried the acrid smell of defeat, and the crowd took shallow breaths. Even the appearance of R&B great Stevie Wonder failed to get the blood pumping.

Again, I apologize for the language, but: Bullshit. How do I know? Well, the mood of a room is clear to see for any of the millions of people who watched on air or you can look for yourself right here. But furthermore I can personally say that this is crap for one simple reason: I was there.

There was no sour mood. There was no “mechanical” cheering. There was heartfelt emotion from the very top of the stadium up in the nosebleed section right down to the delegates on the floor. I saw old ladies cry in joy. I bonded with folks right next to me who had nothing in common with me rather than a desire to right our country. I saw “the wave” spontaneously start, then roll around the stadium on all three levels because people were so giddy with excitement.

And I felt the floor of the cavernous stadium literally rock when speakers like Vice President Gore, Governor Richardson and especially Sen. Obama came out on the stage. I heard people squeal with joy and saw a crowd of people rush to the railing when Michelle Obama walked from the ABC tent to the CBS tent to be interviewed.

The mood was the opposite of sour. The mood was electric, like nothing I have ever seen in my thirty years.

If you’ve ever wondered what is one of the things that drives people like me to despise conservatism and its practitioners so much, it is stories like this that they try to circulate. It isn’t an opinion piece, trying to say what they didn’t like about the event. It is opinion masquerading as fact, attempting to replace actual history with made up right-wing fantasy. It is a tactic they use on a small scale and on the largest stories of all, about this nation’s history and beyond. They make up and shovel along swill like this as easy as the rest of normal Americans breathe.

They are trying to pass off what by the accounts of the thousands of people in attendance was a joyous event into the sort of cynical showpiece conservatives find so central to their phony patriotism.

When I was walking out of the stadium on the way to the shuttle bus that would take me back to the hotel, thousands of people were still streaming out of the stadium from the upper level. Spontaneously people began.

“O-BAMA! O-BAMA! O-BAMA!”

It was thunderously loud, the event had ended, the fireworks were gone, and the VIPs had long since left the venue. Yet, here normal everyday Americans were, excited about the possibility of a new more idealistic day for their country.

So Newsbusters, Rush Limbaugh, and the rest of the right can take their made-up stories and take a long walk off of a short pier. We’ll all be better of for it.

(Oh, and people were out of their seats and rocking for Stevie Wonder)

“One of the things Wallace credits with FNC’s success is separation. ‘We’ve been very careful to keep our opinion separate. Our news division takes care of that,’ he says. ‘That’s done us well and I think that’s why you see these numbers. See, when Brit or Shepard Smith are on, that’s our news division talking. That’s the way we’ve always done it.’”

[NEEDLE SCRATCH]

Oh, Really?

Brit Hume Dismisses McCain’s Iran/al Qaeda Confusion As A “Senior Moment”

Hume falsely claimed Obama “contradicted what he wrote in his book” about town hall meetings

Hume, discussing Michelle Obama comment: “[T]here is this feeling” that Dems “are kind of embarrassed by patriotism”

Brit Hume attacks Democrats on terrorism issue: “They do not treat it particularly seriously”

Hume: Democrats “often” seem “invested in our losing” in Iraq

On Fox News Sunday, Hume falsely asserted that Al Qaeda in Iraq “was there before we got there”

Hume cherry-picked Constitution to attack Murtha’s view of congressional role in war debate

Hume said Democrats investigating U.S. attorney firings are like “a dog with a new bone”

Hume also wrote for the very right-wing American Spectator during one of it’s kookiest periods.

The article linked above was about Fox News getting great ratings for the RNC convention. It isn’t surprising. Here in the DC area a lot of people tune in to Sonny Jurgenson and Sam Huff on the radio when they’re doing Redskins games. Why? Because you like to hear the announcers who are in the tank for the home team.

Same thing.

In a story from Memphis on the 40th anniversary of the assassination of Martin Luther King in that city, ABC’s Steve Osunsami acknowledged great economic progress for black citizens with “a definable black middle class,” but warned “there are still large disparities.” He then featured a man at the anniversary events who insisted “we’re waiting for progress” followed by Jesse Jackson using the solemn occasion to complain about the Iraq war and tax cuts.

The Reverend Bill Kyle, who was with King when he was murdered, rued that “now that we have the right to go to a school, we need the money to pay the tuition,” before Osunsami concluded by agreeing King’s dream of equality remains unfulfilled: “Not quite what Dr. King had dreamed. But some dreams take a mighty long time to realize.”

Of course, both Jackson and Kyle were there the night Dr. King was murdered. It’s not as if they crashed some sort of event randomly. These are people who worked alongside Dr. King and were actually there when he was killed. Furthermore, this is another part of the con whitewash Rick Perlstein has been discussing, trying to de-politicize Dr. King’s work. He was against income equality and unjust war as much as he was against racial injustice. For him, the issues were not separate, not in different boxes. Newsbusters wants you to think that every thing is just okey-dokey with race and poverty in America. They want you to be as stupid as they are in every way possible.

When even the Washington Post publishes an article entitled, “Obama’s Abortion Extremism”, you know that something astonishing is going on here.

Wow! The Washington Post published that in an article? Golly, that’s a mighty loaded description for a straight news article, especially in one of the country’s leading newspapers. I wonder…

Oh, yes, here it is in the Post: “Obama’s Abortion Extremism”.

What’s that you say?

What kind of article is it? Let’s see. Hmm. It’s in the “Columns” section of the paper, and it’s header says “op-ed columnist”. So, that’s an opinion piece and not a straight article as Gallagher made it seem. That’s awful deceptive.

And what’s that?

Who wrote it? Well, it says here that the author is a Michael Gerson. I wonder what sort of political connections he might have, surely he’s an independent thinker, a maverick like John McCain?

He served as President George W. Bush’s chief speechwriter from 2001 until June 2006, and as a senior policy advisor from 2000 through June 2006.

Oh, well eff that.

So Mike Gallagher pretends as if a straight news article said something, when in fact the article was written by a conservative hack former member of the Bush administration. Even worse, the Gerson op-ed itself contains falsehoods about Sen. Obama.

Washington Post columnist Michael Gerson suggested that Sen. Barack Obama should “come out strongly for policies that would reduce the number of abortions — support for pregnant women, abstinence education, the responsible promotion of birth control.” In fact, Obama has advocated the policies Gerson mentioned: “education” that “include[s] abstinence” and “information about contraception.”

This has been another edition of “How Conservatives Lie”. I will never run out of material for this.

Stupid presidents, other moronic leaders who initiate and encourage retarded policies and encourage illegal wiretapping and surveillance contrary to 200+ years of U.S. moral authority… and the right-wing pundits, spinners, writers and media “analysts” who get down on their knees and provide comfort.

Islamic terrorism has had no greater friend to its growth and lethality than the Republican party, the conservative movement, and their policies.

* (Ezra Klein)

This reminds me of that scene in the Lion King where Scar is trying to explain his planned coup to the hyenas but they’re too stupid to understand that the plan is not to destroy the office of the king, but to install Scar as king in Mufasa’s place.

Only, Scar is a lot smarter than George W. Bush will ever be. Bush surrounds himself with this echo chamber in order to hear good things about himself, and not hear a single critical word about his failed presidency.

Hugh Hewitt:

President Bush invited ten talk hosts into the Oval Office for an hour of conversation today –Glenn Beck, Bill Bennett, Neal Boortz, Scott Hennon, Laura Ingraham, Lars Larson, Mark Levin, Michael Medved, Janet Parshall and me.

Instapundit claims that Nancy Pelosi hasn’t accomplished anything, and thus shouldn’t write a memoir. Clearly, the guy who’s a law professor who writes a hackish weblog is far ahead of a woman who has been elected to congress 10 times, served as the first female House Minority Whip, first female House Minority Leader, and first female Speaker Of The House (in the entire history of the country we’ve only had 60 Speakers).

Oh yeah, she also raised five children.

Yes, Nancy Pelosi hasn’t done a thing. Why does anyone take Glenn Reynolds remotely seriously?

The political and chattering classes now have to respond to with similar honor. Offering platitudes about “winning” just isn’t satisfactory at this point, unless an explanation of precisely what winning means accompanies the platitudes.

Hugh Hewitt from Feb. 16, 2007:

Today The Victory Caucus is seeing tremendous traffic for a site that is five days old, and an impressive commitment of resources from virtual volunteers around the country.

I should also point out the clear trajectory of the “Victory Caucus”, an organization that Barnett sits on the “board of governors” for.

Sometimes you get the sense that they’re playing dress-up with their parent’s clothes.

I’m sworn to secrecy.

It reminds me a lot of what happened with Terri Schiavo when the MSM took their usual cues from talk radio and insisted that the nation was “divided” on the issue. If Rush Limbaugh said it, it had to be true, right? No.

I don’t think that the left wants to lose the war on terror, exactly — they just want Bush to lose the war on terror.

This is the kind of crap why I will always attack Reynolds. The left attacks Bush specifically because he is losing the war on terror and making us less safe, and he’s being aided and abetted in that propaganda action by right-wingers like Instapundit.

UPDATE: As Kevin Drum notes, this is the latest in the right’s “stabbed in the back” revisionist history.

UPDATE 2: Reynolds, once again showing how much of a panty-waist he is, launders a rebuttal to this link saying that we’re “defensive” for pointing out his bullshit. Or, if you use Occam’s Razor we’re correcting a highly trafficked media outlet for printing a blatant falsehood. Reynolds & Co. spend endless bits accusing the mainstream press of bias, but call him out for bullshit and he’s got to send a link off to one of his asshat pals to proffer a response for him that he’s afraid to do himself. (Also: How am I supposed to be the “blog bitch” of someone I’ve never heard of? If someone has pwned me, I should know their name – it’s only common courtesy.)

Shorter Oliver: When I think Glenn Reynolds is an asshole, I say it right here. When he thinks I’m an idiot it takes him 4 emails to get to it! (And you should know, even in email he tries to use other people’s words to say what he wants to – he’s that much of a coward)

Matt Yglesias: “Note also the hilarious idea that something might happen “if things go badly in Iraq” as if at the moment everything’s going swimmingly.” Indeed.

MORE: You should also know, this is part of why Reynolds is rarely ever front and center with his own opinions. He cannot take any sort of criticism.

Conservative heavyweight Matt Drudge has all but retracted a story about Democratic National Committee chairman Howard Dean after receiving a letter from the DNC’s lawyers, RAW STORY can report.

Saying he took the DNC at their word — and declining to mention the fact he had received a letter from a DNC lawyer asking him to take the story down — Drudge posted an update to a story claiming that Chairman Dean had intervened in the New Orleans mayoral race. His update noted that the DNC had vehemently denied the report.