If a politician is lying is it unacceptable discourse to call them a "liar"?

i am perfectly willing to stipulate that i am every bit as angry as the looniest wingnut at a palin rally.

now will stephen hayes stipulate that mccain and palin have been appealing to that anger while obama and biden have been deliberately tamping it down?

the issue isn't how many supporters are angry: the issue is which candidates is doing his level best to play that anger.

There are a couple of ways to look at this.

Yeah, I think it was a set-up.

Speaking of tearing signs up, where's the right-winger who somehow managed to produce tales of bad ol' Dems destroying his kids' protest signs in both 2000 & 2004? He was like the Zelig-- or Forrest Gump, if you prefer-- of conservative victimology. And an excellent interview subject, by all accounts.

The Obama crowds always sound cheery to me but then I am hardly objective. Is there anyway to objectively measure crowd noises?

Plus there is a HUGE difference between brave people shouting challenges to a candidate in the midst of a hostile crowd and what happened last week -- people saying things TO McCAIN ABOUT Obama, and at least some of the time provoked and/or not discouraged by McCain and Palin him and her self. There is really nothing similar about these incidents, thereby confirming the still-valid hypothesis that Stephen Hayes is an utter idiot or a total liar for the powerful to whom he so pathetically toadies.

The description "antiwar gibberish" tends to undermine any objectivity in this report.

I don't know who I despise more: the outright liars like Hayes or the apparently disinterested members of the mainstream media.

I listened to Renee Montagne "interview" (more like sucking Steve Schimdt's dick) this morning as she let him make statements about Obama supporters doing the same sort of thing. She never challenged him to provide examples. Of course, she let him not answer her questions almost all the time as well.

has anyone shown these morons the videotape of what's going on at these rallies, inside and out?

It's a false equivalence. Par for the McCourse.

NPR allowed the claim to go unchallenged.

Imagine my surprise.

If a politician is lying is it unacceptable discourse to call them a "liar"?

That's how the Republicans have survived since at least Eisenhower's time.

(The closest Adlai Stevenson came was by saying something like if the Republicans will stop telling lies about Democrats, we'd stop telling the truth about Republicans.)

it's a side note, but still: gregory just made an important point, one i made myself to my local NPR station just this weekend during fundraising.

there was a time, not that many years ago, when the NPR news brand had some meaning and integrity. that moment is passed and i have reduced my giving to my local npr affiliate accordingly (my exact comment being "i don't care if you can't afford npr news coverage any more becuase i don't listen to it").

the tell for me to return to npr will be the news that cokie roberts and juan williams no longer are npr pundits; i'm not holding my breath.

I stopped listening to NPR a long time ago. They are not much different from the rest of the corporate media - thanks to Congress rolling over when their funding was taken away over the years.

Air America? Who can listen to them with so many commercials!

Resigned to getting my news strictly online, with an occasional watching of Maddow and Olbermann.

the tell for me to return to npr will be the news that cokie roberts and juan williams no longer are npr pundits

I knew something was wrong when Ken Phillips was sounding like the *liberal* commentator on Morning Edition...and then they dropped him.

It seems obvious that this was a plant. Right from the Karl Rove playbook - am sure the media will love to run with it however.

These are staged stunts, pure and simple. Nothing at a Rethug rally is spontaneous.

NPR has devolved into just another propaganda arm, albeit a more subtle one, of the great and thunderous Rethug noise machine. NPR: Nice Polite Republicans. Or if you rather: the National Propaganda Network.

I hardly listen anymore. It's tack to the right is now so obvious and odious that one has to be totally deaf not to notice the change of emphasis to Rethug talking points. They totally favor McShame and the Rethugs, and use all the subtle tricks of propaganda to try and hide their bias.

All my info now comes from the web. I won't give any NPR station a penny.

"Yeah, but look what you did" response to horrific acts seems to be the McCain/Palin utterly pathetic patterned comeback that keeps aiming to distract and distort-- yet only ultimately serves to diminish us all.

Someone on the left is saying it to McCain's face in the middle of McCain supporters. McCain's people only act up when they're in friendly territory. If it's true, the people on the left are at least a hell of a lot braver than those on the right.

I hardly listen anymore. It's tack to the right is now so obvious and odious that one has to be totally deaf not to notice the change of emphasis to Rethug talking points. . . All my info now comes from the web. I won't give any NPR station a penny.
Posted by: rich

I still listen but primarily to independent shows like This American Life and Studio 360. NPR news (and PBS news) is really no different than CNN or the rest anymore (FOX still gets a special ring in Hell). Mara Lia(r)son and Juan Williams are completely in the bag with both appearing regularly on FOX. Anti-public broadcasting Rethugs in Congress have a succeeded (without really trying) in a way their parsimony never could have.

I stopped listening to NPR a long time ago. They are not much different from the rest of the corporate media - thanks to Congress rolling over when their funding was taken away over the years.

That's a factor. One might, however, also note that the Corporation for Public Broadcasting has, under the Bush Administration, been made, not very covertly, an arm of the Republican Party, and has deliberately pushed pro-Republican content in CPB-funded outlets.

Yeah, because yelling insane things in support at a rally is completely the same thing as yelling accurate things in a hostile environment.

Seriously. Conservative rationalization is absolutely bottomless.

Is there video of this incident at the McCain rally? Plant or not, I'd love to see someone call McCain a liar to his face.

You know, after the last 8 years and one tragic fuck-up after another, I might be able to understand Democrats getting this angry. Of course, racists and bigots are always angry especially in the face of diversity so I understand the Republicans too I guess.

who says they were obama supporters? my immediate reaction seeing it live was that they were rnc plants -- afterall this meme about hateful obama supporters was just getting underway. and how convenient that the 'anti-war' couple happened to be positioned right in front of cnn's camera; but inconvenient that mccain's sign-snatching supporters weren't clued in...

I don't see anyone tearing *these* (two, not just one) signs:
http://www.politico.com/blogs/jonathanmartin/1008/Republican_activists_offmessage_at_McCain_rallies_cont.html?showall

On air america radio today a man called to say he had an Obama bumper sticker on his car, and was struck in the head with an object by a McCain supporter. Both got into an unfortunate tussle.
Signs of things to come?
Rovian/Bushie/McCain-Palin have created anger and ill will.
This is recent, and since dogface extremist Palin arrived.

Screw NPR, after listening for 20 years, I stopped almost completely after their horrible and one sided coverage of the 2004 election. I still remember the pathetic interview with John Kerry. Got tired of Cokie belching RNC talking points every Monday morning too. They keep it up today, as if we're not onto them.

The hell with them--not another dime.

David Frum, American Enterprise Institute nutjob, was just now on Rachel Maddow's show repeating the exact same Republican talking point...that there is some type of "equivalency" between the racist, hate-filled, ignorant, assassination-spouting supporters of John McCain/Sarah Palin and what Rachel Maddow truthfully reports on and playfully teases about on her show, without resorting to any race-baiting, hate-talk, or death-threat rhetoric.

David Frum has no honor. David Frum has just proven that he is scum. David Frum must have gotten confused and thought he was on Faux News.

Rachel Maddow, on the other hand, just proved that she can handle a vicious deceitful Republican guest with ease (definitely a class act by a classy lady), just as Barack Obama and Joe Biden have proven that they, too, are the best qualified to help our nation through all of these Republican-created crises.

I fully expect a republican plant at an Obama rally to start yelling inappropriate things.

As for this woman having a sign ripped up...we already know that these rallies have their members pre-screened. Bush perfected this technique. The only way any 'rabble-rouser' got into a McCain rally was through complicity with the compaign operatives.

There is something about McCain rallies that has the air of an angry mob.. and I mean that with all the negative connotations (irrational, wanting to see blood spilled, etc) it might be the anger directed at the cameraman, or it might be the words being used ("kill him").. it's different from the normal anger directed at politicians. It seems to be this realization that there is a real possibility that a black man will be President, and there's this wave of anger.. I wasn't there, but I'd imagine it's akin to a lite version of when desegregation was first introduced.. BTW, I still love my local NPR.. (KPCC in LA)

This morning at a McCain rally here, a bearded young man in the crowd responded to a McCain critique of Barack Obama by shouting: "You're a liar, John!"

A bearded young man? Must be one of them hippies, Lurlene.

Rachel Maddow, on the other hand, just proved that she can handle a vicious deceitful Republican guest with ease (definitely a class act by a classy lady)

She can't be no lady -- she's a (shudder) lesbian!