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The right-wing media -- particularly Fox -- are stumbling all over themselves to castigate anyone who dares suggest that the ugly rhetoric that's been unleashed in the wake of the passage of health-care reform is anything but a bipartisan affair. Indeed, this has been the standard talking point on Fox for the better part of the past several days.

It continued Saturday on Fox News Watch, when Jon Scott's assembled panel -- Judith Miller, James Pinkerton, Ellis Henican and Cal Thomas -- chewed over why the librul media are so intent on making the threats out to be a right-wing affair. Miller, to her credit, tried to inject some sanity into the discussion, but she was knocked down by a lying (par for the course) Pinkerton:

Scott: Back to the issue of those threats, though, Judy, the broadcast networks led with the stories of threats against, you know, Democrat supporters of the health-care bill. It seemed like it was very much driven, you know, from the Democratic side of the equation.

Miller: Well, because most of the threats seemed to come the Right. I mean, the bullet through the window, which now turns out to be somehow unrelated to any anger, an accident, that was a --

Pinkerton: Now, Judy, you're a skilled reporter. Just think of the two things you said, that the threat -- the bullet through Eric Cantor, a Republican's window, seems to be unrelated. But most of the threats seem to come against -- to be made by Republicans, neither of which you can prove, and your saying them is helping to feed the narrative, which is that Republicans are the bad guys again.

Bzzzzt!!!! Sorry, Jim, but just like you did when you tried to claim you had nothing to do with the Willie Horton ads, you're lying. Because Miller's claims are both easily proven, and you know it:

A: Local police have declared that the shot that hit Cantor's window was "random gunfire" -- it was, in fact, a spent round falling to earth, which means it could not have been intentionally fired through Cantor's window.

B: Any kind of tally will demonstrate that the overwhelming majority of threat and actual violence are being directed at Democrats by angry right-wingers. Besides the well-reported threats against Bart Stupak and Louise Slaughter, probably the most prominent instance of this involved Alabama ex-militiaman Mike Vanderboegh's call for angry Tea Partiers to smash Democratic Party office windows -- after which there was a spate of such smashings.

But that story, in fact, has never been reported on Fox.

Cal Thomas, however, came up with the most novel attack on Democrats for having let themselves be the subject of such violent rhetoric and behavior -- essentially a variation on Glenn Beck's theory that Obama and the Democrats are intentionally trying to provoke a violent response from the extremist right:

Thomas: Look, when Nancy Pelosi walked through those Tea Partiers, it was like -- what should analogize this to? Ah, the march through Skokie, Illinois, by the Nazis? It was deliberately provocative! They wanted a reaction!

Lessee ... Pelosi and the Democrats were making what was a normal, everyday trek from the floor of the House to their offices, and were confronted by angry Tea Party protesters. Imagine if they had turned back and found another route to their offices; then Cal Thomas would be declaring that they were "running and hiding" from the protesters, wouldn't he?

Instead, they're just like nasty neo-Nazis trying to provoke a crowd.

Sigh. These people simply occupy a Bizarro Universe full-time now.

The 'Great Unraveling' continues. There are lightweights in the pundit field and there is a class of them I am now calling "Pinkertons". And I don't mean the people that chased down Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. This guy is the lamest of the lame. I've written about him a few times, most notably when he said this on FOX News Watch about the media:

Pinkerton: The media typically come at the Bush administration from the left. They say the Iraq war is a terrible idea. The idea of going after the administration from the right as it were, that they're not supporting the troops enough, not body armor enough, not Humvee enough, not helping at Walter Reed enough. That is an angle that reporters don't naturally think of when they're waking up in the morning...(see video here)

Anyway, after attacking Obama over Bill Ayers relentlessly, he's found a new connection that will shift the election back to McCain in his new column "The Devil Is In The Details: Another Obama Connection You Ought to Know About.

Could Lucifer play a role in this presidential election? It may sound crazy, but one of the candidates in this race has publicly praised, even emulated, a writer-activist who himself paid tribute to Lucifer. That’s right, Lucifer, also known as the Devil, Satan, Beelzebub—you get the idea.

{snip}

Do you think that admiring a Lucifer-admirer would make a difference to some voters? So why hasn’t he highlighted the Alinsky-Lucifer connection?

John McCain hasn't brought this up because it's idiotic and borders on outright lunacy. Of course he's got a nice gig with FOX News to peddle this insanity to. Even the FOX commenters on his post are a bit stunned with his column. As commenter RC says:

This article is a joke, right? Seriously… it’s a joke? RIGHT?

And there's more hyjinks in the comment section....

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James Pinkerton makes the laughable observation that the media failed to report about the scandal at Walter Reed because they are liberals who normally don't worry about the troops so why would they care about the conditions at Walter Reed.

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Pinkerton: The media typically come at the Bush administration from the left. They say the Iraq war is a terrible idea. The idea of going after the administration from the right as it were, that they're not supporting the troops enough, not body armor enough, not Humvee enough, not helping at Walter Reed enough. That is an angle that reporters don't naturally think of when they're waking up in the morning...

To him, supporting the troops is only allowed by the right wingers who send them into battle with little care of their needs. That's a slap in the face to many fine reporters, but I doubt they'll complain. Ask him how many stories FOX News produced looking at the cuts Bush has proposed to veteran benefits, bad equipment and extended tours of duty. He has no basis of fact, nor does he cite an example in his silliness.

Email him at pinkerto@ix.netcom.com and ask Pinky to justify his statement...