Need help responding to RW morans in comments section. I know some of you say it's not worth the

[lib_wit_it]

energy expended in trying to talk to idiots, and you're probably right, but still, I got in over my head, let my anger take over, and got into it on this web site where I am apparently the only liberal. I was working on researching and trying to write unimpeachably fact-based rebuttals to the RW "rebuttals" of my earlier sloppy and over emotional rants and, on the advice of my doctor, eventually decided just drop it due to the stress it was causing me. (I have a hard time dealing with these things calmly.)

However, a newly posted (and unfortunately emailed to me, or I wouldn't have seen it) attack on me has got my ire up again and makes me want to respond to it and the previous stuff I had given up on.

I know these jerk-offs are wrong (denying Cheney's secret Energy Commission, for example), however I have a very poor retention of the details. I'm hoping a few DUers, especially any from in or around Huntington, Long Island, will either summarize some specific pertinent facts I can use to rebut the RW BS, or sign up and post themselves in response. I can't believe that every other poster on the site seems to be a freakin' teabagger, so their lies are predominating the comments on not just these two, bur every political issue on the site.

The "discussions" are here:http://huntington.patch.com/events/2010-tax-day-tea-party
and here:http://huntington.patch.com/articles/tax-day-tea-party-conservative-society-for-action

The Libby Colbert postings are mine.

Also, while I didn't get involved in this one, some of you may be interested in this *all Hispanics are evil illegal immigrants" screed:http://huntington.patch.com/articles/nicholas-wieland-funding-the-day-laborer-hiring-site-is-illegal#comments

Sorry for the lonnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnng post!
http://huntington.patch.com/articles/nicholas-wieland-funding-the-day-laborer-hiring-site-is-illegal#comments

The site is growing, and really needs some liberal representation, so even if no one wants to help untie me from the railroad tracks, I hope more liberals will become involved in expressing opinions on Patch, in Huntington an in the growing number of other local versions across the country. It's a shame to see Huntington represented as little East Coast Arizona!

[mrcheerful]

1. You know I tried everything your doing for a few years at a blog that was supposedly fair and

balanced on right left issues guess what, I ended up dropping the site from my list of places to post my opinions. You are dealing with right wing nit wits that have ego's so big it's unbelievable. There was one nit wit that bragged 3 things in almost every post 1) she was a self made business woman 2) using loop holes in tax code allowed her to pay 0 taxes 3)her business was the highest paying business in the state.

Then facts started coming out about her, self made business woman = she is the second wife of a guy who owned a business who sent her to school to learn about the business before that she was on welfare, you would think she would have stopped her welfare rants and self made bragging right/ wrong she then made up stories about a first hubby that was an illegal from South America and she knew what poor people were because she bought the ex's family farm and saw real poor people unlike the free loaders in America that had a computer and cable TV.

0 taxes = she had a right to say where her tax dollars went, when it was pointed out that she said she paid no taxes she then claimed it was her birth right to say where tax dollars were spent.

Her big business riches = the business she's in averages $40,000 a year, there are well over 300 business that provide the same services her business provides just in the 3 counties around her home county. The top business that provides the same services in the state averages $60,000 a year and that business isn't in the county her business is located in.

You would think that would have been enough to shut her up right? Now mind you these are things she posted about herself, yet whenever anyone mentioned her history and questioned her BS statements she cried they were making personal attacks and would have that person banned. Yet she personally attacked anyone she couldn't win a debate with and not one word was ever said about her attacks nor was she banned.

The point is you will not stop the nit wits nor change their minds on anything, they are right the rest of the universe is wrong and by trying you only end up looking like an angry left wing nut no matter how civil you are in your posts and in the end you end up stressed out and angry, why put yourself through all that when nothing you say will be heard?

[lib_wit_it]

2. Hi. and thanks for your response! I tend to think you're right, except where I think you're wrong.

That is, as I wrote in one of my posts on that Patch site, most of the RWers are just as you say--hypocritical, deceitful, deluded, vicious, and thin-skinned whiners. However, on any discussion online there are many, often more, people reading than commenting. Some of those people are bound to be undecided. At least a few can be convinced by a good debunking of the claims of the RWers.

I don't always do a great job because of the nature of the beast. The RWers, that is. It is difficult to remain civil and level-headed while dealing with these beasties! However, allowing their disinformation campaign free rein is a mistake.

What if we progressives (a large number of us) began responding to each instance of the lies and distortions with dispassionate, factual rebuttals? Perhaps not even engaging them personally--just listing the facts that disprove their assertions? I've actually gone through periods of doing just that, and I end up feeling far more at peace.

Whereas either engaging in a direct dialog (either working very hard to remain calm or allowing myself to lose my cool in a heated back and forth and ending up regretting it), or just letting the lies sit out there out there unchallenged both leave me feeling like I've neglected or screwed up an important duty or at least an opportunity.

If only we had an index of current RW talking points with our own well-written, cogent rebuttals to draw on, it could allow for a bit of distributed activism any of us with a little free time online could engage in. While RWers seem perfectly comfortable parroting one another to the word, we tend to balk at such conformity. However, that lock-step sort of controlled messaging does seem to be more effective.

Another case in point: the massive forwarded email dissemination of RW squawking points. I believe this has been an extremely successful strategy for the RW. I'd bet that a ginormous number of Americans get a heck of a lot of what they believe to be political news or facts from these massively distributed emails. I can't tell you how many times I've had people who don't know me very well send me that crap, yet I don't know if I've ever received a progressive-friendly message from anyone who wasn't already close enough to already know darn well I was a liberal.

If my theory is correct, then many "Undecideds" are getting fed propaganda from the right, but nothing from the left. This seems a situation in need of addressing by our side.

I would love to see a poll or study to get some details on how much impact these emails have and where they originate. I'd bet anything it's a coordinated effort.