liberals

The right refuses to buy the fact that Anthony Weiner's Twitter account may have been hacked in order to send out a lewd photo. As matter of fact the entire incident revealed a huge vulnerability in yFrog, the photosharing service the image appeared on, and the right still refuses to accept it.

Their reason for not accepting the hack story? Because Wiener hasn't contacted the FBI about the hack. But how about this story of a Twitter account being hacked?

Aides to the Republican speaker of the Ohio House say his Twitter account was hacked by a person who tweeted support for liberal causes.

The Columbus Dispatch reports that in other phony posts Speaker William Batchelder appeared to criticize Republican Gov. John Kasich or promote former Democratic Gov. Ted Strickland.

House Republican caucus spokesman Mike Dittoe says someone who follows Batchelder on Twitter noticed the tweets Monday night. A GOP attorney had the company eliminate the messages.

So a Republican's Twitter account was hacked, a lawyer has handled it and there is no word about the authorities investigating yet I don't hear the right crying b.s. on the hack story. I'm sure the wingnuts and media will totally buy the story that his account was hacked and not question anything about it.

However this story does prove something - Twitter accounts can be hacked! Of course the right will say "sure they can, only when it's nasty liberals hacking the accounts of god loving Republicans!".

Good:

Dear Mr. Breitbart,

We have spent the past several days trying to make clear to you your limited role as a participant in our digital town hall to be streamed on ABCNews.com and Facebook. The post on your blog last Friday created a widespread impression that you would be analyzing the election on ABC News. We made it as clear as possible as quickly as possible that you had been invited along with numerous others to participate in our digital town hall. Instead of clarifying your role, you posted a blog on Sunday evening in which you continued to claim a bigger role in our coverage. As we are still unable to agree on your role, we feel it best for you not to participate.

Sincerely,

Andrew Morse

This was a bad decision from the get go, but Breitbart has no one to blame but himself:

But now, in an utterly predictable twist, the brawling has become internal, as it were, with Breitbart battling ABC reps over what exactly his role will be and what he claims it was supposed to be. (He's published private emails to state his case.)

So I was reading this over at Power Line:

Whenever President Bush talked about immigration, his approval ratings went down. It was like clockwork: liberals never understood that the fatal decline in Bush's popularity during his second term had at least as much to do with his advocacy of "comprehensive immigration reform" as with war-weariness. Now President Obama has entered the lists, urging Congress to take up immigration. One can only wonder what Congressional Democrats make of this. Maybe they figure their own approval ratings can't possibly get any lower. But Obama's can, and they will if he keeps talking about immigration.

Yes Bush’s approval rating went down when he talked about immigration, but why? Well let’s think about it for a minute.

From the start of the Iraq War on, Bush’s approval rating was dropping. Most of that was coming from a loss of support amongst Democrats. In 2007, when Bush finally took up immigration, his approval rating was already in the low 30’s. His support amongst Democrats was down to single digits. Once Bush’s immigration plan came out his approval rating dipped into the 20’s, but his approval rating amongst Democrats stayed the same.

So while what John stated has some truth, the potential outcome he proposes is totally false. President Obama already has a dismal approval rating amongst the right, but if he pushes comprehensive immigration reform, he would see a boost from the left, increasing his approval rating.

One of the things the right has constantly done is tried to claim ownership of the phrase “immigration reform”. When they see polls reporting 60% wanting immigration reform, the right instantly believes that means they want THEIR immigration reform. But let’s look at a poll from last year:

Let’s face it – there’s tons of problems with the current health care reform package, but it beats the alternative, which would be the status quo. Liberals are realizing that:

Dennis Kucinich's flip on the health care vote this morning is symbolic of a broader shift among liberals. Last month 73% said they supported the plan with 19% opposed. Now 89% say they support the plan with only 3% opposed. Whether it's because of the President's increasing visibility on the issue or because liberals finally decided the current bill is as good as they're going to get and better than nothing, there's been a big rise in support since early February.

I’m waiting to hear from certain “progressive bloggers” how we are all wrong in wanting this bill instead of nothing.

As much as I hate to have to link to the Weekly Standard, they have posted what I was trying to say yesterday – that there is a very uncertain fate of the bill in the House. One thing I never really thought about yesterday was the 60 House liberals who vowed to vote against any bill that didn’t include a public option.

It sounds like Howard Dean really got under the skin of some people:

Liberal Sen. Jay Rockefeller denounced Howard Dean’s call for the Senate healthcare bill to be axed as “nonsense and irresponsible.”

Rockefeller (D-W.Va.) and the White House both fired back at Dean on Wednesday for saying that liberals should kill the Senate bill.

[SNIP]

“I don’t know what piece of legislation he’s reading,” White House press secretary Robert Gibbs told reporters Wednesday. “I don’t think any rational person would say killing a bill makes a whole lot of sense at this point.”

Rockefeller and the White House sure didn’t go after Lieberman this hard, and Lieberman is the one who has hurt healthcare the most. Now why is that?

Earlier today Joe Lieberman said he changed his stance on the Medicare buy-in because liberals like Anthony Weiner liked it. Now Anthony Weiner has responded:

This afternoon The New York Times and other news outlets reported that Senator Lieberman was backing away from his own health care proposal, in part because I liked it.

If this wasn't so sad, it would be amazing. Here you have the most important legislation for millions of Americans' health and welfare, and apparently Senator Lieberman backs away from his own proposal. Why? Because I and a professor at Yale like it.

All I can say charitably is I hope Senator Lieberman looks into his heart and does the right thing. This is not the time for anyone to act for politics, but to do the right thing. Let's be clear, this is an idea Senator Lieberman has proposed, repeatedly. That others embrace it should not be the criteria for leaders to make decisions. It would be tragic if this is what it appears, a decision based on hurting proponents of reform not helping the millions who need affordable health care coverage.

Some may say reformers should never have praised this measure. But that suggests we all agree to live in an Alice in Wonderland world of saying the opposite of what we mean. Now is the time to talk and act on the merits of an issue. Now is the time for leaders to make the right choices, not political calculations.

The Progressive Change Campaign Committee has launched a new 60-second ad targeting Rahm Emanuel:

Rahm is a good target, but I think we should also look at Obama, who is ultimately in charge. We didn’t blame a lot of the stuff that happened under Bush solely on Karl Rove, so we can’t do the same today.