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Bill O'Reilly has been on a mission to first destroy the credibility of Rolling Stone, that fine upstanding DFH mag, which includes the author of the piece that brought down Gen. Stanley McChrystal, Michael Hastings. And secondly, he's now attacking liberalism in general and blaming McChrystal's downfall on the idea that he's a liberal, so he deserved his fate.

And you know BillO hates Michael Hastings -- who once upon a time ran some scathing pieces on Bill O'Reilly's sexual peccadiloes -- so as usual he brings on Bernie "I hate Liberals" Goldberg to attack Michael Hastings and call him a weasel. He's blaming Hastings for ruining General McChrystal, which is absolutely ridiculous. Hastings didn't make anything up and the general and his staff have not refuted anything at all about the article.

BillO has not been able to prove that the general is a flaming treehugger -- he says so in this segment -- but that doesn't stop him from promoting the idea anyway. BillO uses Lara Logan's opinion about how the military grants access to journalists. She is shocked that there were no rigid ground rules.

UPDATE: Read Glenn Greenwald's piece on Lara Logan's response to Hastings.

That in itself is meaningless since Rolling Stone has said from the beginning that they were granted access to write their piece in its entirety. Bernie says she knows what she's talking about, but he can't prove that Hastings sandbagged the general and a reporter is not there to do PR for the military. Good for Bernie. Then Bill delves into liberal-conspiracy-land with Bernie happily along for the ride.

O'Reilly: I don't know his ideology, but when I heard that her's an avowed liberal who turned off FOX News in his office, which as you know is the most widely watched network on all the army, marine and naval bases, all over the globe by far...FOX NEWS,FOX NEWS, FOX NEWS. When he did that and I heard that,"OK, maybe his own ideology brought him down. I wonder if general McChrystal is as liberal now today as he was today before the Rolling Stone article? So I think you live by the liberal sword, you die by the liberal sword.

Goldberg: Exactly, exactly, God created irony. If you're a liberal military man and you take a liberal journalist into your confidence and then he turns around and screws you, I mean that's what we call ironic.

Ahhh, it's all so ironic, Bernie. Well, BillO and Bernie get to their own warped version of what it means to be a liberal and how the media will treat you. You see you stupid liberal military men. All liberals in the media will bring you down in a cloud of shame if you talk to them. Beware, only the halls of the NRO are worthy for you because they will protect you no matter what you say. That's real journalistic integrity. Then Bernie says in a fit of hubris that if Hastings pretended to like McChrystal to win his confidence and he knew he was going to screw him before he did the interview, then Hastings is dishonest. It's killing these wingnuts that General McChrystal might actually be a lefty. The man dubbed the savior of Afghanistan even hates FOX News.

Bill's proof that he must be a liberal is found in Marc Ambinder's piece, which says he is a liberal and banned FOX News from his office. I like him a little more if this is true, but O'Reilly's idea that he got the axe because he was a liberal is absurd as usual.

Today there's a report in CNN which has a military spokesman saying that Hastings didn't fact check some of his quotes.

But days after his ouster, one military official who worked for McChrystal in Afghanistan has told CNN that many of the controversial quotes in the article were never meant to be used on-the-record. But at no point did the official dispute the accuracy of comments about the president or other key administration officials that appeared in the article.

If you have access as a journalist to do an article then he/she is not going to refrain from including controversial comments because you suddenly realize that you made a mistake in making those comments for the record for the fact.

Bill O'Reilly then defends his own "ambush" tactics by calling it "eye to eye' and 'face to face' with someone you want answers from directly.

O'Reilly: ...This Hastings is a weasel, Bernie. He's a weasel. You know he's a weasel. This is a weasel with a capital "W"

Goldberg: I suspect he is...

And there you have it, Michael Hastings must be a weasel and McChrystal is a liberal and deserved his fate.

I started this series using Doughy Pantload as the first example of how the conservative movement supports their authors. They make sure that even if they write pure fantasy accounts devoid of reality that it sells as non-fiction, the better to persuade the less-engaged out there of their warped point of view.

Is there a bigger recipient of wingnut welfare out there than Dinesh D'Souza? He's been at the trough of wingnut welfare his entire life, writing book after book for Regnery Publications blaming everything under the sun on liberals, secularism or godlessness, and gays. At least Beck isn't trying to make believe his new book is covering historical events. Okay....maybe HE is. Bad example.

Dinesh wrote a book that blames Liberals for 9/11 and claims that Bin Laden and I have the same agenda.

Timothy Noah makes Dinesh look like fool in Slate, if you need more. Dinesh D'Souza's Mullah Envy: A leading conservative thinker blames 9/11 on liberalism.

David Neiwert and I have written a book that isn't guided by the arrogance that we are part of a superior religion guiding us into the grace of Heaven and all you non-believing gays are destroying the culture of the world. Unlike Dinesh, we prefer to write a book based on facts.

Just a few other reasons out of a gazillion to support real authors...

And buy this book.

Our friend Rick Perlstein had an interesting interview on Big Think that is a good morning starter. He opens up with a really important point:

Question: Has Obama succeeded on his promise of being a “post-partisan” President?

Rick Perlstein: Well, the problem with Obama’s post-partisan agenda is that he came into it. He came into his presidency at a time when millions of Americans, perhaps even tens of millions of Americans don’t consider a Democrat president legitimate. Don’t consider liberalism legitimate. Don’t consider the idea of the state forming new programs to help people legitimate. So, he’s in a situation a lot like, you know, Abraham Lincoln faced in 1860 when you had millions of Americans who didn’t even consider what was going in Washington to have anything to do with them.

Yep. And the mainstream right-wing media is explicitly promoting the view that Obama is not a legitimate president.

Incertus: How anti-choice really equals forced pregnancy

The NonSequitur: The bold, feudal "moral imagination" of the Wall Street Journal on health care

Zaius Nation: Barack Obama's evil master plot revealed!

Lawyers, Guns and Money: Liberalism's favorite laboratory, and the costs of inaction.

distributorcap,ny: Dear Mr. Sponsor, about your ads in Glenn Beck's show...

Dana Milbank's Mouthpiece Theater was all Lance Mannion's fault

Guest post by Batocchio. Temporarily e-mail tips to batocchio9 AT yahoo DOT com

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Out here in the Pacific Northwest, we're well acquainted by experience with Bill O'Reilly's utter cluelessness about the cultural and political geography and climate of our region. But last night on The O'Reilly Factor, he really reached comedic heights.

His big scoop, warranting a full Team O'Reilly Investigation, was the news that the University of Oregon in Eugene is a boiling, roiling hotbed of liberalism -- so much so that only eight people out of the 186 professors surveyed identified as Republicans.

Actually, the survey is a somewhat peculiar clumping that only includes the schools of political science, law, economics, sociology and journalism -- which have a tendency towards liberal-arts profs anyway. Excluded from the survey were profs in the business, engineering, chemistry or math fields. One assumes the numbers would look somewhat different with their inclusion. So this is what has outraged O'Reilly?

Calling it an "appalling situation," O'Reilly sicced his ambush camera teams on the hapless provost of the school while he was en route to his car in a parking garage. Then he spent the next several minutes bashing Eugene and the UofO, with the help of Portland radio host Lars Larson, who was happy to bash his fellow Oregonians.

That's because, of course, Eugene has for many years been one of those cultural meccas for the hippie/Deadhead/peace/love/understanding crowd. The UofO campus has long attracted liberals and liberal-minded people, and the cultural climate is the kind that tends not to be very attractive to conservatives.

But then, that's just the way the Northwest is; there's a diverse array of people and cultures out here, and they each have their niches. The gamut runs from Eugene to Hayden Lake.

One wonders what O'Reilly might find if he were to do a similarly selective survey of the business and engineering schools at Washington State University in Pullman, where the cultural climate runs decidedly in the other direction. Bet we won't see Jesse Watters out there anytime soon.

In other words, O'Reilly is not breaking any news here. Nor is it anything to get particularly worked up about. But it is amusing to watch O'Reilly make a complete fool of himself, anyway.

No More Mister Nice Blog: South Carolina has a dishonest hypocrite for a Governor because of liberalism

Roger (the good one) Ailes: Another randy Republican having trouble keeping his pants on

Calculated Risk: How bad is the recession? Check new home sales

Liberal Values: God and Science

mandroppings: Fox News has won a court ruling that holds that broadcasters have a 1st Amendment right to deliberately distort news or outright lie on the air.

Coal Tattoo: Blockbuster studies describe Mountain Top Removal impacts 

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Ohio State University did a study on The Colbert Report and found something very interesting.

Additionally, there was no significant difference between the groups in thinking Colbert was funny, but conservatives were more likely to report that Colbert only pretends to be joking and genuinely meant what he said while liberals were more likely to report that Colbert used satire and was not serious when offering political statements.

Conservatism also significantly predicted perceptions that Colbert disliked liberalism. Finally, a post hoc analysis revealed that perceptions of Colbert's political opinions fully mediated the relationship between political ideology and individual-level opinion.

As the Political Wire put it: Many Conservatives Don't Think Colbert is Joking

I guess they really do live in an alternate reality.

Glenn Greenwald wrote a very fine piece earlier this week about a major difference between liberals and conservatives outside of policy.

Whenever I would speak at events over the last couple of years and criticize the Bush administration’s expansions of government power, extreme secrecy and other forms of corruption, one of the most frequent questions I would be asked was whether "the Left" -- meaning liberals and progressives -- would continue to embrace these principles with a Democrat in the White House, or whether they would instead replicate the behavior of the Right and uncritically support whatever the Democratic President decided. Though I could only speculate, I always answered -- because I believed -- that the events of the last eight years had so powerfully demonstrated and ingrained the dangers of uncritical support for political leaders that most liberals would be critical of and oppositional to a Democratic President when that President undertook actions in tension with progressive views.

Two months into Obama’s presidency, one can clearly conclude that this is true. Even though Obama unsurprisingly and understandably remains generally popular with Democrats and liberals alike, there is ample progressive criticism of Obama in a way that is quite healthy and that reflects a meaningful difference between the “conservative movement” and many progressives...read on

Glenn provides plenty of examples of right-wing Bush worship that is hard to refute. In Obama's short time in office, many progressives (including this blog) have written about many of the differences we have had with the Obama administration up to this point, and to me that's not surprising. That's kind of the point, and that's something that we can do quite well. Keeping our eye on what I feel should be the agenda moving forward is not something C&L takes likely and neither does the rest of the left-wing blogosphere, but what I find fascinating is that if we do break from the Obama administration, the media act like it's a major source of news.

Liberals are growing increasingly nervous –- and some just flat-out angry -– that President-elect Barack Obama seems to be stiffing them on Cabinet jobs and policy choices

And this one: Liberals Angry at Obama for Rick Warren Pick

And this one: Liberals Angry Obama Isn't Moving Further Left

I've found that if a blogger writes a negative post about something President Obama has done they almost immediately get an invite to go on TV or be quoted in print. We saw that quickly with his Cabinet choices. How shocking it must be to them that we would ever question the will of our leader.

It appears that the media has been so beaten down by the right wing kool-aid drinking whiners who have targeted the "librul press" for about three decades that they now instinctively believe we would repeat the same behavior that conservatives engaged in and who were slavishly enthralled with the Bush administration and all their decisions. If a terrorist attack occurs, start profiling middle easterners and round up all the brown people and send them where they came from, with or without their kids. Torture is good because they are now Luntzified and named "enemy combatants." Wiretapping our transmissions is wonderful because although Bush promoted "freedom for all" as his foreign policy center piece, giving up some of ours is for the greater good.

Don't like a law enacted by Congress, then the president can issue hundreds of signing statements to ignore them and that's fine too. Want some legal cover for excessive power, just fill the OLC with your flunkies to give their stamp of approval.

Need to fill job vacancies in government? Hire as many Regent/Pat Robertson University religious ideologues as you can without qualifications.

Need people to go overseas to rebuild a country that we invaded, staff them up with loyalty-oath babies. The major requirement is that you have never voted Democratic.

Lose 9 billion dollars in that country and who cares? What's a billion here and a billion there? They were nice new bills, by the way.

If the economy tanks with conservatives in charge, well, you know. Stuff happens.

This has been the mentality of the right since 2000 because they need their man in charge. Purity rings are preferable more than responsible criticism. After Paul Krugman disagreed with Tim Geithner's banking plan, Chuck Todd told us that he's always hated Obama. Now, I met Paul when he came into LA for a speaking engagement and we chatted about Obama during the general election. We talked about the differences of opinion Paul had with Obama's health-care plan. If I were a Villager I would have thought Krugman would have been depressed that Obama was the Democratic nominee, but Paul thought that Obama could accomplish great things and was very optimistic. Wow, who knew.

So here's a memo to the press: We ain't the right. We think for ourselves, but know that this country is better off with adults in charge instead of Jesus-worshipping, traitor-calling, fearmongering conservatives, but will still be a vital voice of what we feel should be done. Oh, by the way: I kinda like Jesus.

The Opinion Mill's Sunday Bookchat: 1968 revisited — "What journalists have forgotten about covering political conventions! What wingnuts need to learn about Winston Churchill! What George F. Will needs to learn about book reviewing!"

Daily Howler: Remember a key rule of "liberal" journalism — praise McCain's honesty and honor, especially while reporting his dishonesty and dishonorable conduct.

Lance Mannion: A key concept of liberalism explained in seven sentences (well, really five, but you'll see).

Tom Dispatch: Changing the world, one camera shot at a time. Myanmar/Burma: Why the U.N. and the U.S. should invade Myanmar (but can't), why we shouldn't, and why such actions shouldn't be taken lightly.

The Neocons: Neither honesty, nor reason, nor shame, shall keep them from their self-appointed rounds of starting another unnecessary war.

Guest roundup by Batocchio. That's it for me for now! Next up is Media Bloodhound. Please send your tips and suggestions to mediabloodhound at yahoo dot com. Thanks!

Obsidian Wings: These people are lower than dirt.  A deeply disturbed killer's actions are the fault of a "PC university"!  This is on par with the despicable Newt Gingrich blaming “Liberalism” for the massacre and the usual 'blame Hollywood' horse exhaust.  Apparently, the liberal jackboot failed to destroy Cho's sister or his Christian parents. Sadly, No! discovers more people who should not be paid to express their opinions.  Understandably, the Virginia Tech Student Government has asked our peerless press corps to leave the campus.

PERRspectives Blog: GOP quotes of the week

The Mahablog: Is Gov. Haley Barbour one of the most craven hypocrites on the planet? Or is he just oblivious to the suffering he is causing?

skippy the bush kangaroo reads Ezra regularly and normally finds him thoughtful and informative, but...

Jon Swift: Alec Baldwin's daughter is a disgrace

The Sardonic Sideshow: I report, you decide...