Hello? Ray?

Ray LaHood is a hard Republican to figure out. He works with Dems. He backs the quasi socialist agenda of the president. He believes in earmarks. He likes public transport. And now he thinks there's too much trash talk coming from the right wing noise machine. But is that him or just a talking point?

OK he has a point, the right wing sometimes does go too far. Sometimes Hannity is so filled with koolaid his eyes turn red and sprouts a handle. But this is America. As he indicated, radios and TVs have that little knob for a reason. Mathews, Maddow, and Olby spent the last half decade trash talking the previous president every friggin night. People keep listening to the talking heads only because they have something pertinent to say. The noise machine is not inventing stuff out of whole cloth, nor did LaHood say they were.

It's as if he thinks it's OK to lie or misdirect if done civilly. That sort of goes towards his boss hiring Van Jones, hardly a paragon of civil discourse, while berating the right for being uncivil. Jones would still be employed if not for that very same noise machine. Same goes for the guy at the NEA. There's some meat on dat bone.

The real problem--the thing that is irking the crap out of the left right now--are the DINOs. Even Rush Limbaugh can't stop a Congress with a super majority, but he can affect outcomes when a large number of conservative Dems owe their very congressional existence to Bush fatigue, not leftist ideology.

Those farmers (ex-constituents) LaHood berated don't usually make a habit of getting all wee wee'd up over a bunch of claptrap nothing. Amazingly, some probably have electricity in their homes and even the internet, and have noticed that the stimulus tracking website Obama promised doesn't even work. Or maybe they just heard some of the president's rhetoric during the half-hour news blip on country AM-1200.

After all, if the administration really wanted a more placid electorate maybe they wouldn't have promised change then delivered a pack of distortions, lies, and misdirections while calling their fellow citizens unruly teenagers just for living their daily lives. Stuff like that.