Lizz Winstead, former co-host of Air America’s mid-morning program, Unfiltered, is missing. The first I found out about it was when I tuned in for a bit today and the tag said, “Unfiltered, with Rachel Maddow and Chuck D.” Then I noticed Rachel was hosting the show by herself. I checked the Unfiltered blog tonight and someone mentioned that the NY Daily News had a short blurb announcing that an Air America rep said “We wanted to take the show in a different direction, [and] we thank Lizz for her service and dedication.”

Ouch!

Unfiltered was an acquired taste for me, but over the past few months it has become one of the three shows I listen to regularly on Air America, the other being the Al Franken Show and the Majority Report. Unfiltered always has excellent guests, and thoroughly covers stories not covered elsewhere. Also, Lizz was definitely one of the funniest radio hosts ever and gave a giant spark to the show. That said, I have the totally unsubstantiated feeling that the higher ups at Air America wanted to split the two up, much as a teacher will split up a couple kids who are having a little too much fun joking around in the back of the class. The show sounded much more professional this morning, more like a livelier NPR, but I certainly will miss Lizz. I have a feeling Rachel (and her sometimes co-host, Chuck D) will be more than able to hold her own though, as she’s always right there with the right questions to ask her guests.

Of course, I could be totally wrong, and Lizz might just have said something to piss someone off at the flagship station or elsewhere. The curtness of her departure might lend more credence to that explanation.

In any case, I’m looking forward to hearing the new Unfiltered over the coming months, and I really hope that the parties involved spill the beans as to what happened.

So much for all the right-wing whining about how Rush Limbaugh’s medical records were illegally obtained. The Smoking Gun has the search warrant which was used to obtain the records after several arrests were made in the case and two informants spoke up about Limbaugh. Now you too can see exactly what types and massive amounts of drugs Rush was high on all the time.

Interesting that Media Matters also notes that as recently as March 3rd, FOX News had a legal analyst on who claimed there was no warrant and that “[the government] just went to his doctors and grabbed the records.” Gee… Small credibility issue with FOX News? What a surprise!

In yet another example of how liberals in this country can be honest and reasonable, Air America currently has a poll on its homepage asking, “Do you think U.S. troops targeted Italian journalist Giuliana Sgrena?” In case you haven’t heard the allegations, there are apparently some (including the journalist herself) who believe that the recent killing of an Italian intelligence officer who was accompanying the journalist after she was released by hostage-takers in Iraq was a deliberate action by U.S. troops. Supposedly, they would’ve been targeted because the Italian government paid a ransom in return for the safe release of Ms. Sgrena, and the U.S. did not approve of Italy’s negotiation with the kidnappers.

Out of over 7000 votes so far responding to the poll, more than 80% say U.S. troops did not target Ms. Sgrena.

A bunch of folks off the HVAC board (not all of them obviously, just the ones whose daily reading consists only of the Hannity and Coulter “Talking Points Of The Day”) continue to get on my case even though I have honored their request to “pack up” (as James 4789432 put it) and I have now left them to wade in their own lies. So this guy sysint from the HVAC board won’t let up (see comments under “Conversation Cut Off”). This is just too funny to believe. I mean, I couldn’t make this stuff up. He writes:

Read your own rhetoric and maybe you will understand. Apparently you suffer the same ?blindness? of your accusers. Isn?t Ad Hominem a personal attack? You haven?t made personal attacks?

So I do him the courtesy of a reply and note the following:

Look up Ad Hominem sometime. Or here?s a definition for you from www.dictionary.com: ad hom?i?nem adj. – Appealing to personal considerations rather than to logic or reason: Debaters should avoid ad hominem arguments that question their opponents? motives.

So no, I have not made ?ad hominem? attacks. In post after post, I appealed to people?s logic and reason. And time and time again, all the Neo-Cons over there could muster were ?appealing to personal considerations rather than logic or reason.? We?re talking out and out name-calling and baiting (which I have detailed here). No doubt about it. And before you take any of my words from that site or this site out of context, please remember that I have posted links here to that site (which I do not visit anymore) so the whole public record is there. I stand by what I said 100%. You haven?t a leg to stand on.

So he comes back with what appears to be a well thought out explaination of how he already understood what ad hominem meant, but in a typical display of intellectual dishonesty, doesn’t note that his ENTIRE COMMENT comes from this website
He writes:

An Ad Hominem is a general category of fallacies in which a claim or argument is rejected on the basis of some irrelevant fact about the author of or the person presenting the claim or argument. Typically, this fallacy involves two steps. First, an attack against the character of person making the claim, her circumstances, or her actions is made (or the character, circumstances, or actions of the person reporting the claim). Second, this attack is taken to be evidence against the claim or argument the person in question is making (or presenting). This type of ?argument? has the following form:

1. Person A makes claim X.
2. Person B makes an attack on person A.
3. Therefore A?s claim is false.

The reason why an Ad Hominem (of any kind) is a fallacy is that the character, circumstances, or actions of a person do not (in most cases) have a bearing on the truth or falsity of the claim being made (or the quality of the argument being made).

?so I do understand Ad Hominem.

At any rate, so you understand I am discussing your summary on this web page, not at the HVAC web site. I don?t see much difference between you and them except that your nose is perched somewhat higher.

Classic. So classic. But perhaps the FUNNIEST bit, as well as the most telling of how the Neo-Cons slur the truth (or lie by omission) is the fact that he didn’t include with the quote the example that was listed on the page from which he lifted:

Bill: “I believe that abortion is morally wrong.”
Dave: “Of course you would say that, you’re a priest.”
Bill: “What about the arguments I gave to support my position?”
Dave: “Those don’t count. Like I said, you’re a priest, so you have to say that abortion is wrong. Further, you are just a lackey to the Pope, so I can’t believe what you say.”

Let me just rephrase that just a little bit:

Vols: “I believe that the death penalty is morally wrong.”
GOPHack: “Of course you would say that, you’re a flaming lib!”
Vols: “What about the arguments I gave to support my position?”
GOPHack: “Those don’t count. Like I said, you’re a flaming lib, so you have to say that the death penalty is wrong. Further, you are just a lackey to Fat Teddy who is a killer anyway, so I can’t believe what you say.”

Classic. Perfect. QED.

This is precious. Bill O’Reilly, the #1 blowhard on the FOX News network, consistently calls liberals “cowards” for criticizing conservatives and then not having the courage to meet fact-to-face with those they criticize. However, it seems that O’Reilly, in an oh-so-typical case of “do as I say, not as I do,” has refused to allow David Brock of Media Matters to appear on his show to respond to the spineless and numerous attacks ol’ Bill has leveled not only on the Media Matters website, but on Brock’s personal character.

Lots of great O’Reilly quotes on cowardice at the link above too, including:

• “If you attack someone publicly, as these men did to me, you have an obligation to face the person you are smearing. If you don’t, you are a coward. Wise up, sir.” – 1/5/04
• “…cowards who make these erroneous statements and won’t back them up by coming in here…” – 12/19/03
• “I mean, this Dan Golden was a coward. We tried to get him on. He hid under his desk.” – 8/26/03
• “[Congressman Henry] Waxman wouldn’t come on this program, by the way. He’s gutless.” – 2/8/01

Don’t hold your breath, David. I’ve finally let it sink in that these guys don’t want a fair fight. They want to either gang up on you and then run, or they don’t want to face you with facts. They’d rather hurl insults at you from where they feel safe. Gutless, indeed.

A new NY Times poll shows that President Bush (and I use the term loosely) is largely out of touch with the American public when it comes to many issues, particularly his push to privatize Social Security.

Despite using the bully pulpit for weeks now to push his SS agenda forward, it has dramatically stalled, with most people surveyed claiming that the nation faces greater issues at the moment than a Social Security system that won’t go insolvent until well after 2050. In a surprising display of extreme common sense, a majority of those surveyed said that they supported raising the $90K cap on contributions as a quick fix to the “problem,” and four out of five people surveyed also noted that it was, in fact, “the government’s responsibility to assure a decent standard of living for the elderly.” Hmmm. Sounds remarkably like something I said recently that was attacked by many. Let’s see. Four out of five people. For you mathematicians out there, that’s 80%. Fully 80% of those surveyed believe it is government’s responsibility to assure a decent standard of living for the elderly. Signs of a nation that respects its aging. Imagine that.

Other encouraging findings? Given five different domestic issues, Social Security reform came THIRD, behind jobs and health care. Hmmm… Jobs are still #1? What happened to the millions of new jobs that the president promised us would emerge if only we went along with his huge tax cuts to the richest 5% of the country? Also, “nearly 50 percent said Democrats were more likely to make the right decisions about Social Security, compared with 31 percent who said the same thing about Republicans.” Interesting. Also quoted in the article is a Missouri Republican who claims that two other immediately pressing issues are the national debt and the environment. The pendulum swinging back…

A full fifty-eight percent of people surveyed also said Bush did not share the foreign affairs priorities of most Americans. I guess they preferred the old Governor Bush, who claimed in October of 2000 that:

“I’m not so sure the role of the United States is to go around the world and say this is the way it’s got to be. We can help. And maybe it’s just our difference in government, the way we view government. I mean I want to empower people. I want to help people help themselves, not have government tell people what to do. I just don’t think it’s the role of the United States to walk into a country and say, we do it this way, so should you.”