The Service Employers International Union has vowed to help stand up against the GOP backed Astrobirthers who are being sent in to disrupt the town hall meetings of Democratic members of Congress. Since the union announced it's intentions, well-funded right wing groups and media outlets (see Fox News) have orchestrated call in campaigns accusing them of plotting violence against them -- one of the calls (audio and transcript in the video above) contained a not-so-veiled threat of armed violence:

One of the country's largest unions has been hit by a wave of hostile calls and even death threats from people upset with its involvement in town-hall health care debates.

The Service Employers International Union was, as one aide put it, "deluged" with calls on Friday after several conservative media outlets accused the organization of trying to assault demonstrators who had showed up to protest Obama's health care agenda. Making it even scarier for union employees, the address of the union's St. Louis headquarters was mentioned on air by conservative talk show host Rush Limbaugh.

Callers who reached both the front desk and the communications department compared the union officials to Nazis, union aides say. On Twitter, organizers of the town hall protest urged people to take pictures and write down the license plate numbers of attending SEIU officials. More alarming than anything else, angry callers and protesters pledged to take up arms against the union. Read on...

I believe the time has come for Attorney General Eric Holder to get involved. Right wing violence is on the rise in America and the threat of bloodshed at the hands of a Fox News/GOP inspired extremist at one of these town hall meetings is real possibility.

If the president was more passionately engaged in the fight to achieve the goal (instead of announcing he's rather have something bipartisan than legislation that, you know, actually gets the job done), and Congressional leaders were more focused on actually getting us affordable health care instead of placating the insurance lobby and other members of Congress, this would be a moot point.

But they're not.

And if the Democrats had shown they're actually looking out for us, and not their powerful sponsors, we wouldn't be having this discussion.

What the president doesn't seem to understand is, to us, this is an economic Hurricane Katrina. The water is rising and we're stranded on the roof, praying and waiting for help. Seems to us that you're more interested in looking bipartisan than getting us off the roof. Don't you know how scary it is, watching the water rise? Are you actually telling us to wait on the roof and mind our manners?

Mr. President, will you help us - or the insurance lobby? History has shown that you can't do both.

President Obama, strategizing yesterday with congressional leaders about health-care reform, complained that liberal advocacy groups ought to drop their attacks on Democratic lawmakers and devote their energy to promoting passage of comprehensive legislation.

In a pre-holiday call with half a dozen top House and Senate Democrats, Obama expressed his concern over advertisements and online campaigns targeting moderate Democrats, whom they criticize for not being fully devoted to "true" health-care reform.

"We shouldn't be focusing resources on each other," Obama opined in the call, according to three sources who participated in or listened to the conversation. "We ought to be focused on winning this debate."

Specifically, Obama said he is hoping left-leaning organizations that worked on his behalf in the presidential campaign will now rally support for "advancing legislation" that fulfills his goal of expanding coverage, controlling rising costs and modernizing the health system.

Remember when candidate Obama's campaign was urging big donors and other contributors to give directly to his campaign instead of liberal activist groups? I didn't trust it then, and I don't trust it now. I'm not all that interested in allowing what is far too often a corporatist, right-leaning agenda to go unchecked.

That said, there's a legitimate case to be made that we should focus on positive goals rather than negative attacks. I'm not saying I agree (certainly not in all circumstances), but we could at least have a reasonable discussion about that. (In fact, I just had one the other day from a friend who's working in health care reform, and she said the same thing. But see, I trust her.)

In the call, leaders of both chambers expressed optimism that they will hold floor votes on legislation to overhaul the $2.2 trillion health system before Congress breaks in early August.

For his part, the president vowed to use his strong approval rating with voters to continue making the case for sweeping reform, according to one congressional staffer with knowledge of the conversation. Obama also hinted that efforts are under way to discourage allies from future attacks on Democrats, according to the source, who did not have permission to speak on the record about the discussion.

"Sweeping"? I think that word does not mean what he thinks it means. Because until we sweep greedy insurance companies out of their seats at the right hand of the throne, this will be a reform in name only, just like Massachusetts.

I wonder how they're going to "discourage" us? Cut off our internet access?

Photo by Thomas Neff.

You gotta love it when a long shot wins - and it wasn't even close. Creigh Deeds took 50 percent of the vote in a three-way primary. [Note for political junkies: McAuliffe beat Deeds in only one district, the 3rd - where he sent Bill Clinton to campaign for him in the African-American community.] Deeds, a well-liked and personable guy, is also moderately conservative. Watch as the Democratic-consultant lemmings everywhere decide this means he won because he's a conservative, not in spite of it, and start yanking candidates ever rightward:

R. Creigh Deeds, a longtime state legislator from rural Bath County, won a stunning come-from-behind victory in the Democratic primary for Virginia governor last night, overwhelming a pair of better-funded and better-positioned opponents.

Deeds beat Brian Moran and Terry McAuliffe in every region of the state, including vote-rich Northern Virginia, despite a pro-gun stance and relatively conservative positions that are out of line with many of the area's voters. His victory was so dominant that he captured 10 of the state's 11 congressional districts, including the one held by Moran's brother, U.S. Rep. James P. Moran Jr.

All three campaigns and state political experts had agreed that Deeds was coming on strong in the final days of the race, but no one expected him -- or the other candidates -- to come close to winning the 50 percent of the vote that he captured. In an e-mail sent to supporters less than two hours before polls closed, McAuliffe's campaign predicted that "this thing could come down to the wire." McAuliffe came in second, with 26 percent of the vote, followed by Brian Moran with 24 percent.

Deeds, 51, will face Republican Robert F. McDonnell in a general election battle that amounts to a rematch of the race for attorney general four years ago, which McDonnell barely won after a late surge by Deeds.

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Chris Wallace--like the rest of the Fox News world--wants the world set up in easily definable terms: Liberals vs. Conservatives, Patriots vs. Pinheads, Red States vs. Blue States. The Barack Obama presidential campaign is clearly crossing those boundaries and I think that Wallace doesn't know how to cope with that. Obama has taken Howard Dean's 50 State Strategy and shown that Democrats can be competitive in traditionally red states. In fact, so much so that Obama is actually within the margin of error in McCain's home state of Arizona. But for Wallace, it's arrogant of Obama to advertise in states that Republicans have traditionally dominated.

Obama Campaign Manager David Plouffe argues (and I believe correctly) that it is more the arrogance on the part of the McCain campaign to think they didn't need to set up a ground game in these states than it is for Obama to simply believe that there were enough voters seeking change to make these states competitive:

WALLACE: First, let’s talk about the thing I brought up with Rick Davis, the fact that you have decided to make a late push in North Dakota, in Georgia and even in McCain’s home state of Arizona. Is it there a touch of arrogance here? I mean, wouldn’t it make more sense to focus your resources, focus your advertising and everything on the states that you need to lock up 270 electoral votes?

PLOUFFE: Well, Chris, we’re doing everything we can in the core battlegrounds: Ohio, where Sen. Obama will be today; Florida; Virginia; North Carolina; Indiana. All of those states we’re doing everything we think we need to do to try and win. In these three states, we’ve been organizing for some time, the reason Georgia is so competitive right now is all the organizational groundwork we’ve put in, why you’re seeing early vote numbers in such large measures. So, in North Dakota, Georgia, Arizona, we think all three of those are going to be close and there’s benefit to having the playing field to yourself. One of the reasons we’re so strong in states like Indiana, North Carolina, Virginia, even in Florida, is the McCain campaign was arrogant. They were asleep at the switch and thought those states would not be competitive. So we had two-three months headstart, advertising, organizing. So in North Dakota, Georgia and Arizona, we think we have the playing field to ourselves, we think all three will be close, and we’re going to give it a shot to see how…now I think John McCain should be favored in all three of those states, but we think they’re going to be very close and if you look at Georgia, the early vote there—similar to North Carolina – is just striking in terms of its composition. And we think we’re heading to a very close finish there.

Finally, is it me or is the whole term "arrogant" a codeword for "uppity"? How dare that Democrat think he's going to get Georgia or North Dakota? Doesn't he know that those are America-loving red states?

Huffington Post:

In his efforts to attack Barack Obama, John McCain appears to have turned to the same political consulting firm that was responsible for spreading vicious smears about the Senator during the 2000 South Carolina GOP primary.

In recent days, the Huffington Post and other outlets have reported on the McCain-funded nationwide robocall campaign charging that Barack Obama "worked closely with" former 60s radical William Ayers. Another RNC/McCain campaign call states that Obama is a "celebrity" politician who was fundraising in Hollywood during the financial crisis.

BRILLIANT tactics. Polls show your campaign losing traction as your "pitbull with lipstick" running mate goes negative out on the campaign trail, so what do you do? Stay negative, and use the company that perpetuated the "John McCain fathered an illegitimate black baby" story that sank your campaign. That's putting country first, Johnny.

But wait, there's more:

(T)here's more to this story than just a fishy and misplaced robocall. FLS-Connect is owned by political operative and lobbyist Jeff Larson, a close ally of Minnesota Republican Senator Norm Coleman. Coleman not only put Larson in charge of the Republican Convention in St. Paul, he rents the basement apartment in Larson's Washington townhouse for below market value. And two of Larson's clients, the US Chamber of Commerce and the National Federation of Independent Business, have spent thousands of dollars running ads against Coleman's Senate challenger, Democrat Al Franken.

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You gotta hand it to Tweety...he shows considerably more monogamous devotion to Rudy Giuliani than Giuliani has ever shown any person in his life.  Chris Matthews found a little news item well hidden in the back pages of the NY Times (that liberal media at work again!) that upon first reading appears to exonerate Giuliani for the creative budgeting of his travel expenses to hide his trysts with then-girlfriend Judith Nathan. In his best "Leave Britney alone" manner, Matthews wants to know why the media isn't being as fair as he is by front paging it.

So I was talking to a Giuliani guy this morning who asked—it was a good question—so are they going to give back those ten points in the polls he lost?  It’s a good question.  Nobody ever said Rudy Giuliani is a day at the beach, but at least when he took those days at the beach, he squared it with accounting. You heard it from the NY Times today and you just heard it here.

I'm not sure that the NY Times article is as clear cut as Matthews makes it out...it's clear that Giuliani was expensing these trips in a different way than previous administrations and pre-paying AmEx accounts, which even the NY Times says is an unusual practice.  The question remains why the Giuliani campaign hasn't brought this stuff forward to aggressively combat the stories as well. But in any event, whatever fudging was done--and there is some--Tweety is willing to let it slide.  Even the infidelity, so destructive to the Office of the President when Clinton was in office doesn't even play into Tweety's man-crush of Giuliani.

Not so with Mitt Romney.  Watch him shake his head in exasperation with Romney spokesperson Kevin Madden tries to parse Romney's serial exaggerations and inane lies in order to appeal to the electorate.  

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Gosh, Tweety, wasn't you who said that "Life is a Campaign"?   Seems to me Romney is just following your own philosophy.