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This one came out of nowhere.  With all the crazy talk out there, former President George H. W. Bush has entered the fray and decided to throw in his two cents.

Former President George H.W. Bush feels that the tone of the national discourse lacks civility. “I don’t like it,” Bush told CBS. “The cables (TV) have a lot to do with it.” Bush said he believes Obama was “entitled to civil treatment” when it comes to his critics. But it was not just those on the right, who presumably make up a majority of Obama’s critics, that Bush felt were responsible for the angry tone. The left was guilty as well. Singling out MSNBC hosts Rachel Maddow and Keith Olbermann, Bush said, “the way they treat my son and anyone who’s opposed to their point of view is just horrible.” Maddow and Olbermann, he added, are “sick puppies.”

Sick puppies?

C’mon.

Here we go again with the saner conservatives quite aware that the radical right is completely out of control but feeling a need to make their criticism more palatable by claiming that there is equal lunacy on the other side. There isn’t. While there are extremists in every group, there is no one among liberals who can match the insanity and nonsense of a Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, Michael Savage, Sean Hannity, Michele Malkin, Sarah Palin, Michele Bachmann and the entire Fox News network. And even if there was, the sheer volume of noise being heard from the right which is based on lies, misinformation and pure hate is unmatched. To then make the claim that Maddow and Olbermann are “sick puppies” is ludicrous.

Yes, Olbermann can be loud, opinionated and at times obnoxious, and while one might disagree with his conclusions, he operates on a solid basis of facts.  He doesn’t make stuff up like a Beck whose ‘facts’ are for the most part delusional and whose logic can be ripped to shreds with the slightest of ease.

And then there’s Rachel Maddow who is by any measure the smartest thing to have happened to cable news in a long time. Openly gay (but never in your face), brilliant, articulate, charming and a recipient of a Rhodes Scholarship, she conducts herself in a gentle, reasoned manner. Never rude and always insightful, she provides analysis of news stories which cannot be found anywhere else. She is everything an Ann Coulter, Bill O’Reilly or a Michele Malkin is not. She is smart, rational and down to earth. To refer to her as a “sick puppy” is so laughable, it makes anything else Bush Senior had to say  irrelevant.

Here is Rachel’s reasoned response.
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