Smells like smoke

I used to read The Gun Toting Liberal although other than for the title that describes me fairly well, it's slant is hardly liberal or even "slightly left of center" lately, and I haven't read much 2nd amendment debate there. I used to read them, but it's all over now and I'm through wishing I could quit them; I'm finished.

I'm aware that the title of "liberal" has become meaningless through decades of tendentious definition, but what kind of Liberal claims that Barak Obama is a Muslim, Caroline Kennedy is his daughter and the New York Times commits treason? Actually, the antic internet smear campaign against Obama is more comical than the usual swashbuckling swift boat stuff I've seen used against John Kerry, his wife, Max Cleland and even against John McCain in previous elections. It ranks with the little remembered and less effective campaign to insinuate that Dwight Eisenhower was Jewish.

Leonard Pitts comments in today's Miami Herald about the strangeness of a country that accepts Shaquille O'Neal and Mohammed Ali and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar who are Muslims and worries about whether Obama, who is not a follower of the Prophet, is secretly the Baghdad Candidate. I would actually dismiss the effort as being so puerile as to be ineffective but for the e-mails that pour into my mailbox with indignant comments about Barak Osama refusing to salute the flag or say the pledge of allegiance and taking his oath of office on the Koran. Apparently there are people looking for some reason to tear him down that distract from their real reason and then there are always those who will fall for the "where there's smoke, there's fire" fallacy. Of course, where there's smoke there's often a smokescreen and what smells like smoke to some, smells like bullshit to others.