Author Archives: NewsBusters.org

CBS and the rest of the MSM have decided the Tea Party movement is racist and hostile to non-whites, and it’s a mantra they’re going to illustrate whenever they see an opportunity. Reporter Nancy Cordes saw a “nearly all-white crowd” at Glenn Beck’s “Restoring Honor” rally in Washington, DC, as she (at least an off-camera female voice) demanded of two black women who weren’t afraid to attend: “I’m noticing that there aren’t a lot of minorities here today. Why do you think that is?” One of the women shot back: “They’re probably over there with Al Sharpton.”

In her story for Saturday’s CBS Evening News, Cordes had a very specific attendee number: “According to a tally commissioned by CBS News, roughly 87,000 people gathered here at this event today, thronging both sides of the reflecting pool, stretching all the way to the World War II memorial. That’s the largest gathering here on the mall since President Obama was inaugurated.”

NBC anchor Lester Holt was more generous with his crowd guesstimate (“tens, perhaps hundreds of thousands”) before he described the Beck rally as “steeped in patriotism, rooted in the nation’s cultural divide and greeted by suspicion.”

Holt opened the August 28 NBC Nightly News:

Good evening. Tens, perhaps hundreds of thousands, of people from all over the country gathered at the foot of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington today for a rally steeped in patriotism, rooted in the nation’s cultural divide and greeted by suspicion. It was organized by provocative conservative talk show host Glenn Beck who was joined on stage by Sarah Palin. And if that wasn’t enough to trigger reaction from activists on the left, the timing and place of the rally certainly was – the anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr’s “I Have a Dream” speech delivered from those same steps 47 years ago today.

Flashback to April: “White NBC Reporter Confronts Black Man at Tea Party Rally: ‘Have You Ever Felt Uncomfortable?‘”

Back to the CBS Evening News and Cordes, a little of what led into the exchange quoted above:

NANCY CORDES: Beck, who is a converted Mormon, likes to call himself a clown, but today he played the role of ring-master, preaching racial tolerance to the nearly all-white crowd. A change in tone from the Fox News host who notoriously called President Obama [Beck: “a racist.”]

CORDES (or at least a female voice) TO TWO BLACK WOMEN: I’m noticing that there aren’t a lot of minorities here today. Why do you think that is?

WOMAN: They’re probably over there with Al Sharpton.

(There was no World News on ABC on Saturday night, at least in the EDT and CDT zones, because of the Little League World Series Texas v Hawaii playoff game. Hawaii won.)

I watched just about every major political talk show on television this weekend, and the funniest thing I heard was a comment by David Boaz of the libertarian think tank the Cato Institute.

In the predictions segment of "The McLaughlin Group," the Kentucky native spoke of the hotly contested race for Senate in that state between Tea Party candidate Rand Paul and Democrat Jack Conway.

What ensued left the entire panel laughing – except, of course, Newsweek’s Eleanor Clift (video follows with transcript and commentary):

DAVID BOAZ, CATO INSTITUTE: In Kentucky, the Democrats are calling Rand Paul an extremist. Rand Paul is responding by calling his opponent a Democrat. In the end, the voters will be more scared of a Democrat.  

Hehehehehe. 

Picking up on a nugget (my tweet) surprisingly included in a Wednesday Boston Globe article, on Thursday night FNC’s Bret Baier reported in his “Grapevine” segment: “President Bush is apparently more popular than President Obama on Martha’s Vineyard – at least when it comes to clothing.” Baier relayed the day the First Family arrived on the Massachusetts island:

When the First Family vacationed there last year, Obama-themed trinkets were flying off the shelves. Now, the owner of a store called the Locker Room says this summer’s best-selling shirt features Mr. Bush. And even Democrats are buying it. It reads: “Miss Me Yet? How’s that Hopey-Changey Thing Working Out for Ya?”

In an August 18 Globe story, “Vineyard buzzes less for Obamas’ second visit,” Milton J. Valencia reported on the Oak Bluffs store:

…One barometer of the plunge in excitement has been the sale of Obama-themed T-shirts, which designers had been banking on after the craze of last year. Clothing labeled with the president’s name sold by the thousands, helping to salvage a tough economic year for the island.

But this year’s T-shirt sales are much less brisk, merchants say.

“Last year, Obama gave you goose bumps, but I don’t think you’re going to see that this year,’’ said Alex McCluskey, co-owner of the Locker Room, who sold more than 4,000 “I vacationed with Obama’’ T-shirts last year. But so far this year, he said, his hot item is T-shirts of former President Bush asking, “Miss me yet?’’…

Seriously: is Bill Richardson trying to wreck John McCain?  

Ask yourself: what would be the one thing most likely to undermine McCain with Arizona Republican Senate primary voters? Surely it would be the possibility that if re-elected, born-again immigration hawk McCain would revert to the squishiness that led him to collaborate with Ted Kennedy on a "path to citizenship" for illegals. Yet on this evening’s Ed Show, that’s exactly what the New Mexico governor—twice—imagined McCain might do.  

Schultz set the stage, describing McCain’s recent adoption of a hard line on immigration as "the biggest flip-flop of the year."

Then came Richardson, imagining a McCain re-reversal . . .

BILL RICHARDSON: My view is that he is in a tough re-election, in a primary against J.D. Hayworth, and this is such a hot issue in Arizona. My hope Ed is after he gets re-elected that he will come back to his old position, which was as you said the Kennedy-McCain bill which has increased border enforcement but also has a path to legalization, a guest-worker program, cracking down on illegal hires, but most importantly a path to legalization.

And later . . .

RICHARDSON: If you’re going to get into immigration reform, you got to have some Republicans, and right now it doesn’t seem we have any.  Maybe Lindsey Graham. Maybe John McCain after he gets re-elected.

So what was Richardson up to? Offering honest analysis, or slipping the shiv into McCain by suggesting his new-found harder line on immigration is a farce?

A liberal panel led by MSNBC anchor Chris Matthews injected sexism into the Kagan confirmation hearings on Tuesday morning, suggesting that Republican senators should curtail the tenacity of their questioning because the Supreme Court nominee happens to be a woman.

Invoking the Clarence Thomas hearings, which focused on the testimony of Anita Hill, who accused Thomas of making inappropriate sexual comments, Matthews asked, "Am I wrong in hearing flashes here of the Anita Hill testimony way back when in the Clarence Thomas confirmation hearings?"

Despite the absence of a sexual scandal, Matthews persisted with the bizarre analogy: "Are we past the sensitivity about a male member of the Senate grilling a female?"

The "Hardball" host failed to clarify exactly who in 2010 is sensitive about male senators posing tough but legitimate questions to a woman nominated to the nation’s highest court.

"I don’t think we are, Chris. I don’t think we are," answered Sherrilyn Ifill, a law professor who teaches a seminar on "Reparations, Reconciliation, and Restorative Justice," who appeared eager to respond to Matthews’s condescending question.

Continuing to patronize female viewers who don’t believe that men and women should be treated differently in congressional hearings, Matthews asked Ifill, a woman, to flesh out the "rules of engagement" for handling female nominees.

"So male-female interrogation has to be done more, what would you say?" probed Matthews. "Give me the verb [sic]?"

"I think it has to be done with care, with care, with care," explained Ifill. "We saw it last summer with the Sotomayor hearings where both race and gender were at play. I think some of the most uncomfortable moments that many of us experienced was when some of the Republican senators crossed that line."
            
Like Matthews, the University of Maryland law professor failed to elucidate who specifically felt uncomfortable with Republican senators’ questions during the Sotomayor hearings.

MSNBC anchor Andrea Mitchell echoed Ifill’s sentiment on handling female nominees "with care," proclaiming, "The Senate Judiciary Committee is being very careful, with the exception perhaps of Jeff Sessions in his opening comments yesterday, in his opening statement. They’re being very careful about a female nominee."

David Corn, Washington bureau chief of the left-wing magazine Mother Jones, was the only panelist to duck Matthews’s sexist questions.

"I’m not weighing in on this one," he joked.

A transcript of the segment can be found below:

MSNBC
News Live
6/29/10

10:54 a.m.

CHRIS MATTHEWS: Let’s bring in our panel right now on the Supreme Court confirmation hearing. NBC News Chief Foreign Affairs Correspondent Andrea Mitchell, Susan Page, USA Today Washington Bureau Chief, David Corn, Washington Bureau Chief of Mother Jones, he’s also a blogger on PoliticsDaily.com, and Sherrilyn Ifill, who’s a professor of law at the University of Maryland Law School. Let’s go around the panel in that order, your thoughts about this whole topic here is so hot in terms of partisan politics. Traditionally the Republican Party does not like any restraint on spending, the Democrats like to see restraints because they’ve always believed that, somehow, the other party has an advantage in money. Andrea?

ANDREA MITCHELL, NBC News chief foreign affairs correspondent: This was the case that she lost before the Supreme Court, and so this is positioning by both sides. She clearly has a very good handle on the details of this case, but she was on the losing end of this argument and there’s no way that Orrin Hatch and other would ever agree.

MATTHEWS: The "Hillary" movie was a very tough partisan movie put out for general commercial distribution and it was perceived to be a political document by the Democrats.

MITCHELL: It was perceived to be a political document and that was the argument, that it should not be permitted.

MATTHEWS: That it could not be financed by corporate purposes.

MITCHELL: By corporate purposes.

MATTHEWS: Right, David?

DAVID CORN, Mother Jones Washington Bureau Chief: But as we know, the 5-6 justices on the Supreme Court took this case and they expanded it even more so which is what got President Obama and other people riled up and they took a bigger swing at the McCain-Feingold bill, which had been passed by the Senate, which now Solicitor General Kagan is appearing before. And it was decried as judicial activism by people on the left and liberals and The New York Times. So I think Hatch’s main political point here is to try and stop that narrative because I think it’s really been absorbed that Citizens United went too far as a court decision.

MATTHEWS: And this came out in the president’s State of the Union where he took a swipe at the Supreme Court with Samuel Alito and other justices there and they didn’t like it.

SUSAN PAGE, USA Today Washington bureau chief: They didn’t. You know, it’s interesting since Kagan argued this case she feels pretty comfortable with it and you see, I think, a more free-flowing exchange between the Senator and the nominee there then we’ve seen on some others. Kagan famously called these hearings "vapid and hollow" in the past but we’ve seen some flashes of humor here this morning. And interestingly, Kagan said that she thought it would be a terrific idea to have TV cameras in the Supreme Court. If she gets confirmed that’s an issue where she’ll have some real issues with her colleagues.

MATTHEWS: Am I wrong in hearing flashes here of the Anita Hill testimony way back when in the Clarence Thomas confirmation hearings? Orrin Hatch has to be very careful. Most voters are female. This is a female nominee, right? They must have that memory. That political memory and almost their intellectual muscle.

MITCHELL: They have learned the lesson. The Senate Judiciary Committee is being very careful, with the exception perhaps of Jeff Sessions in his opening comments yesterday, in his opening statement. They’re being very careful about a female nominee. You’re seeing her personality. She has done this before. She’s been on the coaching side of previous nominees. And you’re seeing that she’s engaging with Orrin Hatch. She’s very comfortable in the setting.

CORN: But she’s not just female. She’s probably smarter than any of them and she certainly knows the details better. So they really go at her at their own peril because I think she could twist them or turn them very quickly.

MATTHEWS: I think this is fascinating because I (inaudible) Dick Durbin, the senator from Illinois, the number two Democrat, Susan. And I said have we past the sort of the feminist era – I shouldn’t call it the feminist era, the feminist reality. Are we past the sensitivity about a male member of the Senate grilling a female?

(Laughter)

MITCHELL: No!

PAGE: No!

CORN: I’m not weighing in on this one.

(Inaudible)

IFILL: I don’t think we are, Chris. I don’t think we are.

MATTHEWS: So male-female interrogation has to be done more, what would you say? Give me the verb? Give me the adverb?

IFILL: I think it has to be done with care, with care, with care. We saw it last summer with the Sotomayor hearings where both race and gender were at play. I think some of the most uncomfortable moments that many of us experienced was when some of the Republican senators crossed that line. And so you still have to be careful.

MATTHEWS: Okay give me the ground rules, give me the rules of engagement, professor. Is there a different rule? Let me ask you this: obviously the question of a political role here is relevant because this nominee is a Democrat – has been a Democratic appointee – has voiced views on issues like "Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell" as a citizen. Where’s the line? How hard can they get in the questioning?

IFILL: Well I find this quite astonishing because of course, you know, Justice Scalia was a political part of the Ford administration. Chief Justice Rehnquist came right from the Nixon administration into the Supreme Court. Clarence Thomas was so political that he had to promise to strip down like a runner. So this is not unprecedented that someone with a political background gets nominated to the Supreme Court and it’s a little interesting to see the wide-eyed Republicans, you know, talking about her being too political. I think they can’t push too far lest she just say, "I’ll strip down like a runner, you know, like Clarence Thomas."

–Alex Fitzsimmons is a News Analysis intern at the Media Research Center. Click here to follow him on Twitter.

A liberal panel led by MSNBC anchor Chris Matthews injected sexism into the Kagan confirmation hearings on Tuesday morning, suggesting that Republican senators should curtail the tenacity of their questioning because the Supreme Court nominee happens to be a woman.

Invoking the Clarence Thomas hearings, which focused on the testimony of Anita Hill, who accused Thomas of making inappropriate sexual comments, Matthews asked, "Am I wrong in hearing flashes here of the Anita Hill testimony way back when in the Clarence Thomas confirmation hearings?"

Despite the absence of a sexual scandal, Matthews persisted with the bizarre analogy: "Are we past the sensitivity about a male member of the Senate grilling a female?"

The "Hardball" host failed to clarify exactly who in 2010 is sensitive about male senators posing tough but legitimate questions to a woman nominated to the nation’s highest court.

"I don’t think we are, Chris. I don’t think we are," answered Sherrilyn Ifill, a law professor who teaches a seminar on "Reparations, Reconciliation, and Restorative Justice," who appeared eager to respond to Matthews’s condescending question.

Continuing to patronize female viewers who don’t believe that men and women should be treated differently in congressional hearings, Matthews asked Ifill, a woman, to flesh out the "rules of engagement" for handling female nominees.

"So male-female interrogation has to be done more, what would you say?" probed Matthews. "Give me the verb [sic]?"

"I think it has to be done with care, with care, with care," explained Ifill. "We saw it last summer with the Sotomayor hearings where both race and gender were at play. I think some of the most uncomfortable moments that many of us experienced was when some of the Republican senators crossed that line."
            
Like Matthews, the University of Maryland law professor failed to elucidate who specifically felt uncomfortable with Republican senators’ questions during the Sotomayor hearings.

MSNBC anchor Andrea Mitchell echoed Ifill’s sentiment on handling female nominees "with care," proclaiming, "The Senate Judiciary Committee is being very careful, with the exception perhaps of Jeff Sessions in his opening comments yesterday, in his opening statement. They’re being very careful about a female nominee."

David Corn, Washington bureau chief of the left-wing magazine Mother Jones, was the only panelist to duck Matthews’s sexist questions.

"I’m not weighing in on this one," he joked.

A transcript of the segment can be found below:

MSNBC
News Live
6/29/10

10:54 a.m.

CHRIS MATTHEWS: Let’s bring in our panel right now on the Supreme Court confirmation hearing. NBC News Chief Foreign Affairs Correspondent Andrea Mitchell, Susan Page, USA Today Washington Bureau Chief, David Corn, Washington Bureau Chief of Mother Jones, he’s also a blogger on PoliticsDaily.com, and Sherrilyn Ifill, who’s a professor of law at the University of Maryland Law School. Let’s go around the panel in that order, your thoughts about this whole topic here is so hot in terms of partisan politics. Traditionally the Republican Party does not like any restraint on spending, the Democrats like to see restraints because they’ve always believed that, somehow, the other party has an advantage in money. Andrea?

ANDREA MITCHELL, NBC News chief foreign affairs correspondent: This was the case that she lost before the Supreme Court, and so this is positioning by both sides. She clearly has a very good handle on the details of this case, but she was on the losing end of this argument and there’s no way that Orrin Hatch and other would ever agree.

MATTHEWS: The "Hillary" movie was a very tough partisan movie put out for general commercial distribution and it was perceived to be a political document by the Democrats.

MITCHELL: It was perceived to be a political document and that was the argument, that it should not be permitted.

MATTHEWS: That it could not be financed by corporate purposes.

MITCHELL: By corporate purposes.

MATTHEWS: Right, David?

DAVID CORN, Mother Jones Washington Bureau Chief: But as we know, the 5-6 justices on the Supreme Court took this case and they expanded it even more so which is what got President Obama and other people riled up and they took a bigger swing at the McCain-Feingold bill, which had been passed by the Senate, which now Solicitor General Kagan is appearing before. And it was decried as judicial activism by people on the left and liberals and The New York Times. So I think Hatch’s main political point here is to try and stop that narrative because I think it’s really been absorbed that Citizens United went too far as a court decision.

MATTHEWS: And this came out in the president’s State of the Union where he took a swipe at the Supreme Court with Samuel Alito and other justices there and they didn’t like it.

SUSAN PAGE, USA Today Washington bureau chief: They didn’t. You know, it’s interesting since Kagan argued this case she feels pretty comfortable with it and you see, I think, a more free-flowing exchange between the Senator and the nominee there then we’ve seen on some others. Kagan famously called these hearings "vapid and hollow" in the past but we’ve seen some flashes of humor here this morning. And interestingly, Kagan said that she thought it would be a terrific idea to have TV cameras in the Supreme Court. If she gets confirmed that’s an issue where she’ll have some real issues with her colleagues.

MATTHEWS: Am I wrong in hearing flashes here of the Anita Hill testimony way back when in the Clarence Thomas confirmation hearings? Orrin Hatch has to be very careful. Most voters are female. This is a female nominee, right? They must have that memory. That political memory and almost their intellectual muscle.

MITCHELL: They have learned the lesson. The Senate Judiciary Committee is being very careful, with the exception perhaps of Jeff Sessions in his opening comments yesterday, in his opening statement. They’re being very careful about a female nominee. You’re seeing her personality. She has done this before. She’s been on the coaching side of previous nominees. And you’re seeing that she’s engaging with Orrin Hatch. She’s very comfortable in the setting.

CORN: But she’s not just female. She’s probably smarter than any of them and she certainly knows the details better. So they really go at her at their own peril because I think she could twist them or turn them very quickly.

MATTHEWS: I think this is fascinating because I (inaudible) Dick Durbin, the senator from Illinois, the number two Democrat, Susan. And I said have we past the sort of the feminist era – I shouldn’t call it the feminist era, the feminist reality. Are we past the sensitivity about a male member of the Senate grilling a female?

(Laughter)

MITCHELL: No!

PAGE: No!

CORN: I’m not weighing in on this one.

(Inaudible)

IFILL: I don’t think we are, Chris. I don’t think we are.

MATTHEWS: So male-female interrogation has to be done more, what would you say? Give me the verb? Give me the adverb?

IFILL: I think it has to be done with care, with care, with care. We saw it last summer with the Sotomayor hearings where both race and gender were at play. I think some of the most uncomfortable moments that many of us experienced was when some of the Republican senators crossed that line. And so you still have to be careful.

MATTHEWS: Okay give me the ground rules, give me the rules of engagement, professor. Is there a different rule? Let me ask you this: obviously the question of a political role here is relevant because this nominee is a Democrat – has been a Democratic appointee – has voiced views on issues like "Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell" as a citizen. Where’s the line? How hard can they get in the questioning?

IFILL: Well I find this quite astonishing because of course, you know, Justice Scalia was a political part of the Ford administration. Chief Justice Rehnquist came right from the Nixon administration into the Supreme Court. Clarence Thomas was so political that he had to promise to strip down like a runner. So this is not unprecedented that someone with a political background gets nominated to the Supreme Court and it’s a little interesting to see the wide-eyed Republicans, you know, talking about her being too political. I think they can’t push too far lest she just say, "I’ll strip down like a runner, you know, like Clarence Thomas."

–Alex Fitzsimmons is a News Analysis intern at the Media Research Center. Click here to follow him on Twitter.

The conservative newspaper recently made a list of the "Eight Most Irritating Liberal Celebrities." They were in order, from the top: Roger Ebert, Rosie O’Donnell, Michael Moore, Joy Behar, Janeane Garofalo, Al Gore, Matt Damon, and Robert Redford. Gore’s not quite a match, since he’s not an entertainer. You wouldn’t call his doom-laden slide-show documentary "entertainment."

This list inspired "King One Eye" at the Daily Kos to match that effort with "The Eight More Irritating Conservative Celebrities." The writer, Mark Howard, also cross-posted at his vicious media-criticism website called News Corpse, where he posts with the byline of "Mark." He suggested conservative celebrities are all unemployed, no-talent losers: "They ought to think twice before provoking a “Battle of the Irritating Stars.” when they have a far more annoying roster of vexatious celebrities. And it is notable that most of their idols are rejects who have no current career opportunities save for appearances on Fox News and at Tea Parties." The list:

Ben Stein

This hybrid actor/pundit’s career was literally built on his being irritating (Bueller?). In the years following that electrifying debut, Stein escalated the breadth of his annoying personality to embrace a free market fantasy that revealed the shallowness of his reputed expertise in economics. Throw in a heap of sexism and a willingness to whore himself out as a spokesperson for disreputable credit schemes and you have a recipe for chronic distemper.

Mel Gibson
Gibson demonstrated his theatrical gifts early in his career. His roles in "The Year of Living Dangerously" and "Mad Max" proved he could tackle depth, action, and humor. Unfortunately, his filmography after that became an almost non-stop succession of vengeance, violence, and scenery chomping as a stand-in for emoting. But what’s worse was his submersion into cultist Christianity and anti-Antisemitism. Nothing is quite as irritating as overt hate-speech.

Chuck Norris
Having to watch this no-talent hack embarrass himself through his atrocious movies is bad enough. But having to endure him on the campaign trail is just cruel. His lame attempts to portray Mike Huckabee as a superhero fell as flat as the notion of himself still claiming that mantle despite his advanced age and decrepitude.

Stephen Baldwin
What can I say? Baldwin was never not irritating. He built on that reputation by starring in unreality shows and begging for donations to "restore" himself from bankruptcy. Clearly Stephen’s brothers hogged all the talent in the family and selfishly left him a miserable loser and a wretched failure. Come to think of it, he may be more pathetic than irritating.

Jon Voight
This one-hit wonder has managed to keep his name in the papers by having a very public feud with his more famous (and more talented) daughter, Angelina Jolie, and by drinking the Glenn Beck Kool-Aid by the gallon. With a prominent ignorance of history and government, Voight still mouths off about socialist conspiracies and Constitutional abuses that exist only his Beck-infected brain.

Dennis Miller
One of the saddest stories in the entertainment world is the tale of the once promising newcomer who winds up a pathetic has-been and resorts to desperately grasping for attention by any means he can muster. Even if it means becoming a toady for the likes of Bill O’Reilly and dressing up as a born again neo-con. Miller’s new persona is devoutly conservative, but he retains his penchant for indecipherably obscure references. Listening to him like sitting through a Xenophanic allocution on Byzantine incandescence.

Ted Nugent
Approaching the nadir of irritatability is the Motor City Jackass himself. Nugent has become a cartoonish proponent of guns and animal massacre. His rants against government spending and social welfare are high decibel testimonials to selfishness and coldhearted disinterest in anyone less fortunate than he is. During the 2008 campaign Nugent brandished machine guns on stage and made obscene threats directed at Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and other Democrats. His behavior crossed the line from irritating to abusive, hostile, and unconscionably grotesque.

He concluded with video of former Saturday Night Live star Victoria Jackson.

The conservative newspaper recently made a list of the "Eight Most Irritating Liberal Celebrities." They were in order, from the top: Roger Ebert, Rosie O’Donnell, Michael Moore, Joy Behar, Janeane Garofalo, Al Gore, Matt Damon, and Robert Redford. Gore’s not quite a match, since he’s not an entertainer. You wouldn’t call his doom-laden slide-show documentary "entertainment."

This list inspired "King One Eye" at the Daily Kos to match that effort with "The Eight More Irritating Conservative Celebrities." The writer, Mark Howard, also cross-posted at his vicious media-criticism website called News Corpse, where he posts with the byline of "Mark." He suggested conservative celebrities are all unemployed, no-talent losers: "They ought to think twice before provoking a “Battle of the Irritating Stars.” when they have a far more annoying roster of vexatious celebrities. And it is notable that most of their idols are rejects who have no current career opportunities save for appearances on Fox News and at Tea Parties." The list:

Ben Stein

This hybrid actor/pundit’s career was literally built on his being irritating (Bueller?). In the years following that electrifying debut, Stein escalated the breadth of his annoying personality to embrace a free market fantasy that revealed the shallowness of his reputed expertise in economics. Throw in a heap of sexism and a willingness to whore himself out as a spokesperson for disreputable credit schemes and you have a recipe for chronic distemper.

Mel Gibson
Gibson demonstrated his theatrical gifts early in his career. His roles in "The Year of Living Dangerously" and "Mad Max" proved he could tackle depth, action, and humor. Unfortunately, his filmography after that became an almost non-stop succession of vengeance, violence, and scenery chomping as a stand-in for emoting. But what’s worse was his submersion into cultist Christianity and anti-Antisemitism. Nothing is quite as irritating as overt hate-speech.

Chuck Norris
Having to watch this no-talent hack embarrass himself through his atrocious movies is bad enough. But having to endure him on the campaign trail is just cruel. His lame attempts to portray Mike Huckabee as a superhero fell as flat as the notion of himself still claiming that mantle despite his advanced age and decrepitude.

Stephen Baldwin
What can I say? Baldwin was never not irritating. He built on that reputation by starring in unreality shows and begging for donations to "restore" himself from bankruptcy. Clearly Stephen’s brothers hogged all the talent in the family and selfishly left him a miserable loser and a wretched failure. Come to think of it, he may be more pathetic than irritating.

Jon Voight
This one-hit wonder has managed to keep his name in the papers by having a very public feud with his more famous (and more talented) daughter, Angelina Jolie, and by drinking the Glenn Beck Kool-Aid by the gallon. With a prominent ignorance of history and government, Voight still mouths off about socialist conspiracies and Constitutional abuses that exist only his Beck-infected brain.

Dennis Miller
One of the saddest stories in the entertainment world is the tale of the once promising newcomer who winds up a pathetic has-been and resorts to desperately grasping for attention by any means he can muster. Even if it means becoming a toady for the likes of Bill O’Reilly and dressing up as a born again neo-con. Miller’s new persona is devoutly conservative, but he retains his penchant for indecipherably obscure references. Listening to him like sitting through a Xenophanic allocution on Byzantine incandescence.

Ted Nugent
Approaching the nadir of irritatability is the Motor City Jackass himself. Nugent has become a cartoonish proponent of guns and animal massacre. His rants against government spending and social welfare are high decibel testimonials to selfishness and coldhearted disinterest in anyone less fortunate than he is. During the 2008 campaign Nugent brandished machine guns on stage and made obscene threats directed at Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and other Democrats. His behavior crossed the line from irritating to abusive, hostile, and unconscionably grotesque.

He concluded with video of former Saturday Night Live star Victoria Jackson.

New York Times reporter Sheryl Gay Stolberg reported this tidbit Tuesday from the opening day of confirmation hearings for Elena Kagan, Obama’s nominee to replace Justice John Paul Stevens on the Supreme Court.

Democrats described her as a brilliant thinker with what Senator Charles E. Schumer of New York called "unprecedented practical experience."

Stolberg had expressed the same feelings about Kagan the day before, roughly two minutes into the Monday edition of TimesCast, a brief news preview that airs every weekday at nytimes.com.

Kagan is so "brilliant," gushed Stolberg, that she didn’t even need help from White House staffers in preparing to face her Republican critics. Stolberg was confident the GOP would "have a tough time" confronting the "very funny and warm and witty" Kagan.

They will try to paint her as a partisan, as a political lawyer, as someone who is more interested in a politically driven agenda than in applying the law in an even-handed way to judicial cases. And they’ll take her to task for never having been a judge. But I think they’ll have a tough time.

Let’s not forget that Elena Kagan has been an academic. She is a brilliant woman. She’s somebody who is also very funny and warm and witty, and I think Americans will see that when they-when she comes before the Senate today. They will see somebody who has studied and thought deeply about the law, and it’s interesting. Many Supreme Court nominees go through the process known as ‘murder boards,’ where the White House will stage kind of a mock hearing, and people will play the role of senators, and they’ll grill nominees on how would you answer this or that. Elena Kagan has done some of that, White House officials tell me, but in fact she’s also spent a lot of time preparing for these hearings just on her own, just thinking about the issues and thinking about what she wants to say. White House officials say that that’s how she wanted to prepare, and frankly she doesn’t really need the kind of murder boards that other Supreme Court nominees have needed.

Despite referring to it as "landmark" and "huge," the network morning shows on Tuesday mostly ignored Monday’s Supreme Court ruling, which declared the Second Amendment a fundamental right that cannot be violated by state governments. Good Morning America, The Early Show and Today devoted just two minutes and 34 seconds to discussing the important decision.

ABC’s GMA offered 21 seconds with a single Juju Chang news brief during the two hour program. This didn’t stop the show’s hosts from covering crucial topics, such as spending eight and a half minutes dissecting whether Michael Douglas’ ex-wife deserves residuals from his upcoming Wall Street sequel.

CBS’s Early Show allowed 25 seconds for Jan Crawford to explain the significance of the decision. Host Chris Wragge rushed, "Now what’s the importance, if you can just tell us, quickly, of this 5-4 decision?"

Crawford exclaimed, "Chris, this was a huge ruling that basically extended gun rights nationwide." Apparently, it wasn’t as compelling as the five minutes and 15 seconds the same show devoted to cooking flank steak for the Fourth of July.

NBC provided the most coverage, one minute and 48 seconds. This included an anchor brief by news reader Nancy Morales and a full report by Pete Williams. Morales described the decision as "landmark." Williams actually included a brief clip of NRA Vice President Wayne LaPierre promising more lawsuits against cities and states that don’t follow the court’s instructions.

The lack of coverage follows the same pattern from 2008 when the Supreme Court overturned Washington D.C.’s gun ban. On June 27, 2008, all three morning shows gave a total of three minutes and 33 seconds to the story. Early Show, instead, focused four minutes on the extremely relevant subject of how to Feng Shui your house for pets.

A transcript of the coverage can be found below:

GMA

06/29/10

7:14

JUJU CHANG: Chicago’s mayor is vowing to rewrite the city’s ban on handguns, after a Supreme Court decision made it unenforceable. The high court ruled Americans have a basic right to own a handgun for self-defense, wherever they live. Chicago may instead demand that gun owners buy insurance, register guns with local police and equip them with traceable bullets.

Today

06/29/10

7:17

NATALIE MORALES: Major cities across the U.S. are bracing for new challenges to their gun control laws. On Monday the Supreme Court’s ruling on Chicago’s handgun ban said an individual right to keep and bear arms is among the fundamental rights necessary to our system of ordered liberty.

8:02

NATALIE MORALES: Some big cities in the U.S. are bracing for new battles over gun laws, following a landmark ruling Monday by the Supreme Court. NBC’s justice correspondent Pete Williams has more. Pete, good morning.

PETE WILLIAMS: Natalie, for the first time in the nation’s history, the court said the Second Amendment, the right to bear arms, limits what state and local governments can do in restricting gun ownership.

POLICE VIDEO: We have got shots fired over here.

WILLIAMS: The ruling means the end of a 38-year-old Chicago law strictly banning handguns, challenged by city residents who wanted to have a gun at home for self-defense. By a vote of 5-4, the Supreme Court said the nation’s founders considered the Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms among the fundamental rights necessary to our system of ordered liberty. Chicago officials said they might now try requiring gun registration or training courses. But, advocates of gun rights vow to fight any city that tries to raise barriers to gun ownership.

WAYNE LAPIERRE (NRA): I think the action goes to wherever the politicians make it so hard for average citizens to qualify, make the process so intimidating, so restrictive, citizens never get the guns.

WILLIAMS: The next legal battles are already brewing over carrying guns in public or taking them into bars and restaurants. But advocates of gun control say the court’s ruling applies only to the right to keep a gun at home for self-defense.

PAUL HELMKE (Brady Handgun Control): It doesn’t mean anybody can have any gun any place, anytime. You are allowed to have reasonable restrictions in the middle on who gets guns.

WILLIAMS: Local governments can still impose some restrictions on owning a gun but this ruling sparks a new round of legal challenges on what’s reasonable, Natalie.

Early Show

06/29/10

7:15

CHRIS WRAGGE: And quickly, on a separate note here, I want to talk about this Supreme Court ruling. They ruled that had state and local governments cannot ban guns. Now what’s the importance, if you can just tell us, quickly, of this 5-4 decision?

JAN CRAWFORD: Chris, this was a huge ruling that basically extended gun rights nationwide. It said cities and states across the country cannot flatly outright ban handguns, that you have a fundamental right to own a gun in your own home to protect yourself.

While ABC’s Good Morning America and NBC’s Today spent little time on the confirmation hearings for Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan on Tuesday, the CBS Early Show featured a report from legal correspondent Jan Crawford, who cheered Kagan finally being able respond to Republican "attacks" in a "very agile" way.

Good Morning America devoted only a single news brief early in the 7AM ET hour to the hearings as news reader JuJu Chang noted how Kagan "will be questioned by Republicans who say she is too liberal and too political." Chang added: "Kagan promised to take a modest approach to judging."  

On Today, correspondent Kelly O’Donnell offered only a brief 7:09AM report on the hearings: "Weeks after her nomination, seated in silence for hours, finally Elena Kagan gets to make her case….[she] describes herself as a daughter of the American dream." O’Donnell described the arguments from both sides of the aisle: "No surprise, Democrats praised her intellect and the chance to broaden the Supreme Court….Saying they would be respectful, Republicans did not hesitate to get tough. From abortion rights to immigration, they found various ways to call her liberal." In an 8:04AM news brief, news reader Natalie Morales declared: "Republicans portrayed Kagan as a liberal activist with no judicial experience. Kagan promised an even-handed approach to the law."

In contrast, the Early Show devoted a full 7:10AM segment to Kagan, as fill-in co-host Chris Wragge proclaimed: "Day two of Elena Kagan’s Senate confirmation hearings get underway this morning and the gloves are expected to come off." Crawford began the report that followed by observing: "After nearly two months of public silence while Republicans attacked her, Elena Kagan was sworn in and answered back. She vowed to uphold the law fairly."

Crawford previewed Tuesday’s hearings: "…today the questions and the fireworks begin. Republicans say the questions won’t be easy, as they try to paint her as a liberal activist." Wragge asked about the tone of the hearings: "…every word yesterday from Elena was just so measured and so deliberate. Can we expect more of that today with every response from the questions she’ll be fielding?" Crawford replied: "No, it’s going to have a very different tone today….they’re really going to start pressing her on all these issues….what we’ll see today is how agile and how effective she is at answering those and responding to those, engaging these senators without saying anything that can be held against her."

Wragge concluded the segment by asking Crawford to predict Kagan’s performance. Crawford responded by gushing: "I think she’s going to do, actually, very, very well. I’ve seen her argue before the Supreme Court. She’s very agile, she spars with those conservative justices very well, so I don’t think these Republicans are going to have too much of an easy time, you know, pressing her on some of these issues."

Here is a full transcript of Crawford’s June 29 report:

7:10AM

CHRIS WRAGGE: Day two of Elena Kagan’s Senate confirmation hearings get underway this morning and the gloves are expected to come off. CBS News chief legal correspondent Jan Crawford is on Capitol Hill with a look at today’s session. Jan, good morning.

JAN CRAWFORD: Good morning, Chris. Well, you know Elena Kagan really stayed out of the public eye for two months and Americans finally got a glimpse of her, but today, she’s going to face a lot of questions from the Republicans on this side of the aisle and they’re going to see if she can handle the heat. After nearly two months of public silence while Republicans attacked her, Elena Kagan was sworn in and answered back. She vowed to uphold the law fairly.

ELENA KAGAN: I will listen hard to every party before the court and to each of my colleagues.

CRAWFORD: And she told a bit of her life story.

KAGAN: My parents lived the American dream. They grew up in immigrant communities. My mother didn’t speak a word of English until she went to school. But she became a legendary teacher and my father a valued lawyer.

CRAWFORD: Kagan sat stoically for hours while senators gave their opening statements, but today the questions and the fireworks begin. Republicans say the questions won’t be easy, as they try to paint her as a liberal activist.

JEFF SESSIONS: It’s not a coronation, as I’ve said, but a confirmation process. Serious and substantive questions will be asked.

CRAWFORD: But Democrats will be ready to come to her defense.

CHARLES SCHUMER: She is brilliant, she is thoughtful, and I think she is straight out of central casting for this job.

SESSIONS: But proving that to the senators is what Elena Kagan is going to have to do and it all starts, Chris, in just a couple of hours.

WRAGGE: Jan, the last thing I would ever do is sit here and say this has got to be pretty easy on someone, but every word yesterday from Elena was just so measured and so deliberate. Can we expect more of that today with every response from the questions she’ll be fielding?

CRAWFORD: No, it’s going to have a very different tone today, Chris. You know, yesterday, her face – I mean, she really showed no expression all day, she just sat there and listened to these senators deliver these long opening statements. So today they’re really going to start pressing her on all these issues that they’ve got ready. So what we’ll see today is how agile and how effective she is at answering those and responding to those, engaging these senators without saying anything that can be held against her.

WRAGGE: And quickly, on a separate note here, I want to talk about this Supreme Court ruling. They ruled that had state and local governments cannot ban guns. Now what’s the importance, if you can just tell us quickly, of this 5-4 decision?

CRAWFORD: Chris, this was a huge ruling that basically extended gun rights nationwide. It said cities and states across the country cannot flatly outright ban handguns, that you have a fundamental right to own a gun in your own home to protect yourself.

WRAGGE: Can I ask you real quickly, you know Elena Kagan very well. How do you think she’ll perform today?

CRAWFORD: I think she’s going to do, actually, very, very well. I’ve seen her argue before the Supreme Court. She’s very agile, she spars with those conservative justices very well, so I don’t think these Republicans are going to have too much of an easy time, you know, pressing her on some of these issues.

WRAGGE: Alright, Jan Crawford, thank you very much. We look forward to your report later on today.

CRAWFORD: Thanks, Chris.

All three network evening newscasts on Monday downplayed the start of Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan’s confirmation hearings, with NBC Nightly News squeezing in just 24 seconds for Kagan at the tail end of a story about the Supreme Court’s ruling in favor the 2nd Amendment. For their part, CBS and ABC offered full stories outlining Kagan’s first day before the Judiciary committee after packages devoted to the gun rights’ ruling.

Only CBS’s Jan Crawford suggested the hearings were more than a ritual leading to Kagan’s inevitable confirmation: “When President Obama nominated her in May, her confirmation was considered a sure bet. But Republicans are emboldened by what they see as a weakened president and sense that support for Kagan in the country has dropped.”

Both Crawford and ABC correspondent Jonathan Karl included Republican criticisms of Kagan’s lack of experience and the hostility to the military she displayed at the Harvard Law School. As for NBC, they mentioned none of those issues, and only included a brief soundbite of Kagan promising to be “impartial.”

Here’s the entirety of NBC’s brief discussion of Monday’s hearing:

PETE WILLIAMS: This was the last day on the bench for John Paul Stevens after 34 1/2 years. He told the court, "If I’ve overstayed my welcome it’s because this is such a unique and wonderful job." In tribute, many in the courtroom wore bowties, his neck wear of choice. And across the street the Senate began confirmation hearings for Elena Kagan, nominated to replace him.

ELENA KAGAN: I will do my best to consider every case impartially, modestly, with commitment to principle and in accordance with law.

PETE WILLIAMS: And the senators begin asking their questions tomorrow. Brian:

BRIAN WILLIAMS: Pete Williams with all the news from the Supreme Court in Washington tonight. Pete, thanks.

Compare and contrast that with ABC’s World News (transcribed by MRC intern Rachel Burnett) and the CBS Evening News (anchored by Harry Smith from the Gulf Coast):

# ABC World News:

DIANE SAWYER, after discussion of Steven’s last day on the bench: And, speaking of Justice Stevens, that other drama playing out nearby was the new nominee for the court, Elena Kagan. Walking into the arena to be questioned about her qualifications to replace him, qualifications of the job, and John Karl is on Capitol Hill tonight. Jon?

JON KARL: Diane, right from the start, it was crystal clear that Kagan faces a Senate deeply divided over her nomination, with Democrats overwhelmingly supporting her and Republicans, for the most part, on the attack. After weeks of the silence imposed on all Supreme Court nominees, Elena Kagan at last had a chance to speak, promising that if confirmed –

ELENA KAGAN: I will work hard, and I will do my best to consider every case impartially.

KARL: Kagan once criticized past nominees for turning hearings into ‘a vapid and hollow charade’ by refusing to say anything specific. But now, as the nominee, she stuck to generalities.

KAGAN: The court must also recognize the limits on itself and respect the choices made by the American people.

KARL: Kagan had to sit through more than three hours of opening statements, trying to keep a poker face. But it didn’t work. Just watch her expression as Republicans call her a political partisan, or when Democrats praise her real-world experience.

SENATOR CHARLES SCHUMER: She is the right person at the right time.

KARL: The top Republican on the committee suggested she is unqualified.

SENATOR SESSIONS: Miss Kagan has less real legal experience of any nominee in at least 50 years.

KARL: And condemned her decision as Dean of Harvard Law school to ban the military from the campus career office.

SESSIONS: Her actions punished the military and demeaned our soldiers as they were courageously fighting for our country in two wars overseas.

KARL: But Republican Lindsey Graham said he believes Kagan is qualified and offered her some advice:

SENATOR GRAHAM: Good luck. Be as candid as possible. And it’s okay to disagree with us up here.

KARL: There will be some fireworks tomorrow as the Senators get a chance to question Kagan. But Democrats are even more confident she will be confirmed than they were with the Sotomayor nomination last year, and that she may actually get fewer votes, Diane, because all but a handful of Republicans are already poised to oppose her nomination.

# CBS Evening News:

HARRY SMITH: It didn’t take long for today’s gun decision to come up at Elena Kagan’s confirmation hearing in the Senate. She’s been nominated to succeed Justice John Paul Stevens on the Supreme Court. Let’s go back now to Jan Crawford. Jan?

JAN CRAWFORD: Harry, Elena Kagan has spent the past two months getting ready for these hearings, but it was just a matter of minutes before the ranking Republican brought up today’s gun ruling.

SEN. JEFF SESSIONS (R-AL): The personal right of every American to own a gun hangs by a single vote.

CRAWFORD: Elena Kagan sat stoically while Sessions and other Republicans began describing her as a liberal activist. But after hours of opening statements, she was sworn in –

ELENA KAGAN: I do.

CRAWFORD: – and finally answered back.

KAGAN: I will do by best to consider every case impartially, modestly, with commitment to principle and in accordance with law.

CRAWFORD: When President Obama nominated her in May, her confirmation was considered a sure bet. But Republicans are emboldened by what they see as a weakened president and sense that support for Kagan in the country has dropped. Today, they outlined their attack. They seized on her lack of judicial and courtroom experience.

SESSIONS: Miss Kagan has less real legal experience of any nominee in at least 50 years.

CRAWFORD: And her decision while Dean at Harvard Law School to limit military recruiting because of the Pentagon’s "Don’t Ask/Don’t Tell" policy.

SENATOR JON KYL (R-AZ): A surprising number of things in her relatively thin body of work do raise substantive concerns.

CRAWFORD: The battle lines drawn, Democrats painted a starkly different picture. They praised Kagan’s intellect and took shots at the conservative Roberts’ court.

SENATOR SHELDON WHITEHOUSE (D-RI): Things are looking good for your confirmation.

CRAWFORD: The Republican worry is that Kagan could serve a generation on a court that often divides 5-4 on key social issues. Harry?

SMITH: Jan Crawford, thanks for all your help tonight.

NBC’s Matt Lauer, on Tuesday’s Today show, blamed America’s "appetite for oil" as the reason for the spill in the Gulf and asked former NBC Nightly News anchor Tom Brokaw if the country will finally "take away the proper message" from the mess? For his part Brokaw responded that he hoped "young people who are coming of age" and entering public service and the corporate world will view the spill as a "defining moment" and warned if they didn’t make the needed changes "we’re gonna have these kinds of ecological disasters in waves coming year after year."

The following exchange was aired on the June 29 Today show:

MATT LAUER: Yeah I want to touch back on this oil spill as, before I let you go. You know we’re, we’re seeing the blame game. A lot of blame going around. We’re seeing the villainization of a major corporation. We’re seeing the limit of our technology-

TOM BROKAW: Right.

LAUER: -played out in front of our eyes. But on that live camera, right there, we’re seeing something else. We’re seeing our appetite for oil. And do you think at the end of all this Americans are gonna take away the proper message?

BROKAW: I hope so. I really believe that younger people are gonna be much more affected by all of this than people of a certain age, that includes you and me. Because we’ve grown up used to the idea of having oil and relying on it. I think young people who are coming of age who may want to go into public service at some point or go into the corporate world, this is a defining moment in their lives and they’re going to be thinking about this in a much different fashion than the rest of us might. And I think if anything good comes out of that, that might be the case. A new generational wave of determination to find an alternative to fossil fuel. I think that the oil blow-out is a metaphor for our times. It’s complex. It’s everything that we’ve been told has turned out not to be true and it really is a signal to the rest of us that we’ve got to do something about energy and the future or we’re gonna have these kinds of ecological disasters in waves coming year after year, decade after decade.

Don’t look now, but it seems the media have suddenly discovered a respect for states’ rights. All it took was a Supreme Court ruling affirming the Second Amendment’s role in protecting gun owners’ rights from state or local infringement.

Newsweek called the ruling "bad news" for gun controllers because "the right to ‘keep and bear arms’ in the U.S. Constitution’s 2^nd Amendment restricts state and local power to impose gun controls."

The ruling found that local and state governments cannot simply ban gun ownership. It left the door open for some restrictions, but the extent of those restrictions remains largely untested.

CNN declared the ruling "a potentially far-reaching case over the ability of state and local governments to enforce limits on weapons."

MSNBC’s Morning Joe contributors were devastated by the court’s ruling.

"Gun owners win. Gun rights win. Big cities lose. I mean, any time you make it easier for guns to be on the streets of big cities or any city, actually, we lose as citizens," Mike Barnacle said.

Richard Haass said there was a "gap" between "the theory that the Court is deciding on about a fairly broad interpretation of Second Amendment rights and the realities as mayors see it." He bemoaned that "this is obviously going to have repercussions in every city and every state across the country."

A recent MSNBC report, however, found that gun ownership has increased over the years while gun homicides have decreased.

Like this article? Sign up for "Culture Links," CMI’s weekly e-mail newsletter, by clicking here.

Libtalker Randi Rhodes can’t hold a candle to conservative radio host Mark Levin when it comes to constitutional law. 

But Rhodes remains unrivaled in doling out gratuitous insults to divert attention from the issue at hand.

Here’s Rhodes on her radio show Friday, describing the reaction of Levin and Washington lawyer Cleta Mitchell to the so-called Disclose Act narrowly passed by the House (click here for audio) –

RHODES: But anyway, they’re freaking out because the NRA is exempt and so now, they’re attacking the NRA. The conservatives have lost their minds, over disclosure. Losing their minds. In fact, Mark Levin, this, oh he’s such an angry little mushroom man. Oh his penis must be just so inadequate. He is on the air literally, I mean, losing his mind, talking to a lawyer from a very large K Street law firm here in DC who’s advising, she says she’s thinking about advising her clients to disobey the law.

How can you be a member of the bar and an officer of the court and say on a radio show that you’re thinking of advising your clients to disobey the law? It’s gone crazy, they’ve gone nuts. And I’m wondering, when was the last time they ever did a show for an audience, not for a corporate interest? I mean, when was the last time they did a show that actually helped you do anything, instead of being corporate shills? Even disclosure makes them scream so that their spleen comes out of their nose.

This is one of the ways that liberals differ from conservatives — a liberal sees a conservative criticize the NRA and attributes this to insanity. A conservative sees a liberal criticize teachers’ unions and attributes this to sanity. Perhaps Rhodes might eventually learn to take yes for an answer.

Here is one of the clips Rhodes played of Levin talking about the Disclose Act with Mitchell on June 24, interspersed with insipid ad libbing from Rhodes  (here for audio) –

RHODES: Let me give you a little glimpse into the world of them. This is Mark Levin and Cleta Mitchell, who works at a giant K Street law firm, OK, a giant K Street law firm. And she and Mark are discussing that if you have to say who you are when you advertise to the American people, if you have to actually put your name on an advocacy ad or an ad slamming somebody, that would be taking away your freedom to apparently, you know, be anonymous. 

LEVIN: I mean, this is so thuggish, it is so crude. I mean, do you realize in some respects people are freer in Russia today than they are in this country? I mean, they’re criminalizing speech right now by some of us, by some entities that they don’t like …

RHODES: NRA?

LEVIN: …and on the other hand, groups that they do like, that support them are much freer to speak. You know, I never thought I’d see this in our country …

MITCHELL: You know, it’s pretty outrageous. 

LEVIN: And then Obama puts out a statement praising this?

MITCHELL: Well this is, this is the kind of thing that he and Rahm Emanuel and, you know, David Axelrod, this is the kind of thing they love. They love to try to basically turn everybody who opposes them into some sort of criminal. That’s their, that’s the way they operate.

LEVIN: Now, are there criminal provisions in this statute?

MITCHELL:  Of course there are. Of course there are.

LEVIN: So if you violate it you can go to jail.

MITCHELL:  Of course there are. I mean, I’ve literally been thinking about the fact that this is so contrary to law, to the law and the Constitution and the Supreme Court’s decisions that, you know, I, my job, as I advise people of how they can participate in the political process without running afoul of the law and I’ve just been thinking in the past week, if this becomes law how can I tell people, gee, you have to abide by this even though I know it’s completely unconstitutional? I’m almost not certain we shouldn’t plan for civil disobedience and tell people, you know …

LEVIN: Defy it. Defy it and ignore it.

MITCHELL: Defy the law.

RHODES: How can an officer of the court, she works for a giant K Street law firm, a giant one, Foley & Lardner, OK? Giant K Street law firm, I mean, global, and she’s sitting there saying, you know, I advise my clients on lobbying and ethics law and I advise the, she was the legal counsel to the National Republican Senatorial Committee, the National Republican Congressional Committee, she’s co-counsel for the National Rifle Association, who by the way is exempt from this, they don’t have to disclose, but they’re just so upset  about disclosure, having to put your name on the ad, like who spent the money for it, that they say that that’s like commie stuff, you know, and she, this is what got me. She’s an officer of the court, she’s admitted to practice in front of the Supreme Court, she’s admitted to practice in Oklahoma. How can an officer of the court say, I’m thinking about advising my clients to defy the law? You know, this is kind of what Jack Abramoff did. You make problems for your client and then you make your client spend more money to solve the problem that you created.

Rhodes’s scattershot indignation aside, here is a far more coherent description of the Disclose Act from Levin and Mitchell on Levin’s radio show June 24 (audio here) –

LEVIN: First of all, I want you to remind people what this Disclose Act is all about and what it really is intended to do.

MITCHELL:  Well, people may remember that in January the Supreme Court after much effort on the part of a number of people who believe in free speech and the First Amendment handed down a decision that said that it was unconstitutional under the First Amendment for Congress to prohibit corporations from making candidate-related expenditures that are independent of a candidate. So that a corporation, and you know, the Democrats went crazy, they went crazy, because they all of a sudden are afraid that small business around the country will hand things out to their customers and vendors and that conservative issue organizations will be able to criticize them in the fall elections.

And so they have, they have been hyperventilating since January over this decision which really just unshackles small business and the citizens’ groups who happen to be incorporated. I mean, let’s be honest, we’re not going to see the Coca Cola ads supporting or opposing candidates, because I’ve always said any corporation big enough to have a vice president for government relations isn’t really conservative.

LEVIN (laughs):  That’s a good point.

MITCHELL: And so, you know, that’s what they say they’re fearful of  but what they’re really afraid of is the citizens’ organizations, the grassroots organizations. And if you can believe this, they put in this bill, they say oh it’s just disclosure. Well, no it’s not. If you want to run an ad that, say you’re a 501C4 citizens’ organization, you know, that’s what grassroots organizations are, you want to run an ad or hand out materials about a candidate that’s just independent of the candidate, just as we don’t like this person,  we want to tell him they voted for Obamacare and we need to get rid of him, and you get a contribution from a corporate entity, the head of that corporation has to be listed, you have to list everybody who’s given money to your organization over a certain amount going back for two years. And then they put together these carve outs. They’ve carved out the unions, they’ve carved out the NRA and other organizations …

LEVIN: Let’s take a step back, let’s take a step back.

MITCHELL: This is terrible, terrible.

LEVIN:  Basically what we have here are liberals parsing out speech, who gets to speak and who doesn’t, before an election. Isn’t that basically what’s going on here?

MITCHELL: That’s exactly what’s going on. And in fact, it’s like Congress is handing out speech licenses. You can have one, you can …

LEVIN: What’s a great way to put it. And I’m going to tell you something. This really is a direct assault on the Bill of Rights and the First Amendment and it’s going to receive minimal coverage and notice, Cleta, how they twist this, that this is disclosure when in fact what it’s intended to do is smother speech.

MITCHELL: Right.

LEVIN:  You run these ads right before an election …

MITCHELL: Well, it’s very Orwellian to call it disclose.

LEVIN: Well, you run an ad right before an election, the CEO, it’s my understanding, you have to have his face on the ad, the CEO has to speak …

MITCHELL: Oh yes. The top five donors, if you receive corporate contributions, you have to put them in the ad and they have to say they approved this ad. Well, then there’s no, there’s no time left to say your message. The government is telling you what to say in the time period that you’ve paid for.

None of which apparently matters to Rhodes, with her firm situational belief in the First Amendment.

Rhodes, not incidentally, who would have her listeners believe she knows more about law that Levin, a constitutional lawyer and best-selling author, and Mitchell, a partner at Foley & Lardner with three decades’ experience in politics and public policy. (Mitchell elaborated on her objections to the Disclose Act in a June 17 op-ed in the Washington Post).

Based on what can be found on Rhodes’s radio Web site and her Wikipedia page — or more specifically, what can’t be found, namely anything on her education — her alleged expertise in law is laughable.

Earlier: Randi Rhodes Street Assault Story Mocked by Gawker Gossips as Rhodes Mugged by Alcohol Bottles

It goes without saying that Monday’s media coverage of Sen. Robert Byrd’s (D-W.V.) death was predictably sycophantic on a disturbing number of levels.

However, the award for most disgraceful use of a politician’s passing to further one’s agenda has to go to MSNBC’s Chris Matthews who ended last night’s "Hardball" memorializing a senator he had great esteem for by attacking former President George W. Bush.

"Let me finish tonight with a tribute to a U.S. senator who shared my deep American objection to the Iraq War," he began.

Readers are cautioned that where Matthews went from here was offensive in the extreme (video follows with transcript and commentary): 

CHRIS MATTHEWS: Let me finish tonight with a tribute to a U.S. senator who shared my deep American objection to the Iraq War. I love this country and believe in its historic greatness. I don`t know how those Founding Fathers found themselves in Philadelphia in the late 18th century but they did. And we are incredibly fortunate for that.

And I love the symbol of the Gadsden flag that, coiled rattlesnake against a field of yellow. "Don`t Tread on Me` — it warned our enemies, and that included especially the British government and London.

This morning, a man died who treasure this country and that flag. For those reasons, Senator Robert Byrd opposed both wars — both wars with Iraq.

Here`s what he said in the fall of 2002: "For the first time in the history of the republic, the nation is considering a preemptive strike against a sovereign state. And I will not be silent."

And on the eve of that second Iraq War, he said, quote, "We proclaim a doctrine of preemption which is understood by few and feared by many. We saw that the United States — or we say that the United States has the right to turn its firepower on any corner of the globe which might be suspect in the war on terrorism. There is no credible evidence to connect Saddam Hussein to 9/11."

I was personally stunned and remain in awe that a president of George W. Bush`s abilities was able to take the attack on us of 9/11 and upturn two-plus centuries of American doctrine "Don`t Tread on Me." We don`t attack but if you attack, we attack back. We oppose aggression. We are not the aggressors.

Stop the tape!

A president of George W. Bush`s abilities? What kind of nonsense is that?

A man you admire dies, and that’s the occasion to mock a former President?

How utterly disgraceful. But it got worse: 

President Bush and his cohorts in and out of the government were able to construct a new doctrine: If we don`t like you or your policies we attack. If you cause trouble in your region, we attack. If we think you have WMD, we attack.

Well, couldn’t that therefore apply to Woodrow Wilson and World War I? America was never attacked.

And maybe Franklin Delano Roosevelt should be similarly excoriated for getting involved in Europe during World War II, for Germany never attacked us. Neither did Italy. 

As such, using the Matthews Doctrine, we should only have attacked Japan after Pearl Harbor. And we never should have gone into Korea, Vietnam, or Iraq in 1991 for none of those countries attacked us either.

Taking this further, Clinton never should have sent troops to Somalia in 1993, or Bosnia in 1995, or Kosovo in 1999. And he certainly shouldn’t have bombed Iraq in 1998.

Add it all up, and in the past almost 100 years, Presidents Wilson, Roosevelt, Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Reagan, Bush 41, and Clinton have all gone against the Matthews Doctrine.

Yet, on the occasion of Sen. Byrd’s death, this so-called journalist chose to once again attack George W. Bush. And he wasn’t finished: 

And millions went for it, hook, line and sinker. Senator Byrd did not. That he was so alone out there makes the swooning of America generally Bush`s war so frightening.

If someone of Bush`s ability can make America forget its most basic, most time-honored standards, then imagine what a gifted demagogue could do. It`s one thing to send us off to Afghanistan, the base of those who hit us. Bush was able to then drive the entire country off to an altogether different direction. That`s what Bush did.

Bush’s war? Didn’t the Founding Fathers give Congress the sole responsibility to declare war?

Why is it that shameless liberals like Matthews forget that in October 2002, both chambers of Congress debated giving Bush the authorization to invade Iraq if Saddam Hussein didn’t accede to various United Nations demands?

And why is it that shameless liberals like Matthews forget that on October 10, 2002, the House approved the Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Iraq Resolution by a vote of 296 to 133? 81 Democrats voted "Yea" including Dick Gephardt, Jane Harmon, Steny Hoyer, John Murtha, and Henry Waxman.  

And why is it that shameless liberals like Matthews forget that on October 11, 2002, the Senate approved the Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Iraq Resolution by a vote of 77 to 23? 29 Democrats voted "Yea" including Max Baucus, Evan Bayh, Joe Biden, John Breaux, Maria Cantwell, Max Cleland, Hillary Clinton, Tom Daschle, Chris Dodd, Byron Dorgan, John Edwards, Dianne Feinstein, Tom Harkin, John Kerry, Mary Landrieu, Joe Lieberman, Blanche Lincoln, Ben Nelson (Neb.), Bill Nelson (Fla.), Harry Reid, Jay Rockefeller, and Chuck Schumer. 

As such, quite frankly, Americans like me are SICK AND TIRED of people like Matthews calling this Bush’s war!!! 

And to use the occasion of a Senator’s death to do so is disgusting to say the least.

The folks at General Electric must be so proud to not only have an employee like this, but a television network that encourages and celebrates such un-American behavior.

Yes, I said un-American, because the Iraq War Resolution was passed with overwhelming bipartisan support in both chambers of Congress, and 75 percent of this nation approved of the invasion five months later.

As such, WE THE PEOPLE went into this fight TOGETHER no matter how liberal media members like Matthews continue to shamefully depict it now.

Will it ever stop? 

It’s hard to imagine an economist being provocative, but Paul Krugman, a Nobel Prize winner, has managed to do so.

In his June 28 New York Times op-ed, Krugman argued that since governments around the world aren’t willing to double-down on Keynesian policies meant to stimulate the global economy, the United States and the rest of the world are facing a third depression. But on CNBC’s June 28 "The Kudlow Report," host Larry Kudlow asked if Krugman’s premise were true, how come none of the measures being applied, which Krugman advocates more of, have failed to have any effect on the current economy.

"Steve Forbes, I want to focus this, coming out of G-20," Kudlow said. "Paul Krugman’s remarkable op-ed today in The New York Times – he says, we are already in the early stages of a depression. He calls it the third depression in U.S. history. He says that it’s primarily a failure of policy. But, Steve, the so-called spending cuts or tax increases or deficit reduction hasn’t happened yet. In the last two years, we’ve had gargantuan spending and ultra-easy money which is what Professor Krugman has been advocating the whole time. And he still thinks we’re in a depression. So I need to ask you, maybe his policies are what threaten the depression."

Forbes magazine CEO Steve Forbes argued the pro-growth approach was the proper means – a stronger dollar and low tax rates. 

"Well, it’s like the old physicians who continue to bleed the patient and wonder why the patient isn’t getting better and then bleeds the patient even more," Forbes explained. "What we should be doing, yes, we should be cutting back spending because it takes money from productive citizens. But as you know, Larry, two other things have to be done, reducing tax rates or at least not increasing tax rates and stabilizing the dollar. So people can trust it again. Sound money, low tax rates, that’s the cure."

However, Dean Baker, a liberal economist and the co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research in Washington, D.C. argued the U.S. dollar was strong enough, because as investors flee from other currencies, they are seeking safety in the U.S. dollar and treasuries. But against gold, as Forbes pointed out, the U.S. dollar has taken a dive.

"Well, Steve must have not been following things very closely because people have a lot of faith in the dollar," Baker said. "That’s why it’s been rising so much."

"Not against gold, which is the best barometer of the dollar," Forbes fired back.

Nonetheless, Baker continued to make Krugman’s case – that this was analogous to a forest fire with only a few buckets of water to put it out, which aren’t working meaning there was a need for more so-called medicine from the government.

"That’s fine, every other currency in the world," Baker said. "Interest rates are at near-record lows, so that’s not keeping people from investing. Low tax rates – well, tax rates were higher back in the 90s when the economy was growing at a record pace. So none of that really fits. Krugman’s on the mark here. And the point here is that it’s sort of like if we had a big forest fire and we got a few buckets and you go ‘hey that didn’t put it out.’ Well, water’s not going to work. I mean we lost over a trillion dollars a year in annual demand. We tried to replace it with the stimulus that it came to from the federal sector about $300 billion a year, you subtract out the cuts at the state and local level, that’s $150 billion a year. Where I come from $150 billion isn’t going to make a loss of a trillion. That’s simple arithmetic."

Yesterday’s landmark Supreme Court decision overturning the blanket handgun ban in Chicago continues the legacy of the civil rights movement, some commentators argue.

Within the text of the 214-page Supreme Court ruling on gun rights is a history lesson on how Americans’ right to keep and bear arms was a major issue in the struggle for black civil rights in the South after the Civil War. To wit, Southern resisters, black codes and lawless lawmen attempted to disarm freedmen (usually in order to make them more vulnerable to racist terrorism), and the federal government came to their rescue by protecting their 2nd Amendment rights.

The quotations and detailed references leave absolutely no question that Congress and the ratifiers of the 14th Amendment viewed it — and accompanying post-war civil rights legislation — as a safeguard against state infringement of the 2nd Amendment right of the people to keep and bear arms. It’s not a part of our history that the Left has much stomach for, but fewer people argue against the obvious now that the Democratic Party has all but conceded the gun issue.

What do you think? Is gun control a civil rights issue, or is this blogger muddying the waters? Follow the link above for a more complete history lesson.

Because of some things we have to live with, long after they are out of office.

Did you know that calling attention to an area where a Supreme Court justice nominee is from, which happens to be a well-known bastion of liberalism, is bigoted? 

If you didn’t, you want to take a look at the wisdom of Salon.com’s Joan Walsh. In her June 28 post "It’s not even coded bigotry anymore," Walsh argued that references to SCOTUS nominee Elena Kagan’s Upper West Side of Manhattan roots are bigoted -since the neighborhood has Jewish features, references to it are anti-Semitic and as she puts it, "not even coded."

"That said, Republicans on the Senate Judicial Committee are trying to make the case she’s outside the mainstream of American jurisprudence, by attacking her clerking for (and admiring) legal giant Thurgood Marshall, the first African American Supreme Court justice, while singling her out as a denizen of ‘Manhattan’s Upper West Side’ – you know, the neighborhood known for Zabar’s and bagels and, well, Jews," Walsh wrote.

Walsh wasn’t clear about what she thinks these Senate Republicans are trying to accomplish. Conventional wisdom suggests Kagan will be easily confirmed, but pointing out the neighborhood she is from, with documented evidence of having an ideological liberal leaning, is going to accomplish what?

She also took a stab at ranking Senate Judiciary Committee Republican Sen. Jeff Sessions, with her own efforts to be coded – by invoking his middle name, "Beauregard." (Remember when liberals hemmed and hawed over using President Barack Obama’s middle name, "Hussein," as if that were a coded effort to suggest he was Muslim?) Her beef with Sessions was that he voiced his disapproval of judicial activism.

"Sen. Jefferson Beauregard Sessions of Alabama, who wasn’t crazy about Sonia Sotomayor, you’ll recall, denounced Kagan having ‘associated herself with well-known activist judges who have used their power to redefine the meaning of our constitution and have the result of advancing that judge’s preferred social policies,’ and he cited Marshall, the NAACP Legal Defense Fund leader who argued Brown vs. Board of Education," Walsh wrote.

Therefore with that evidence, Walsh declared any GOP senator that opposes Kagan a bigot.

"So there you have it. Unable to find any personal statements by Kagan they can use to prove she’s beyond the pale, so to speak – no ‘wise Latina’ moments on her transcripts – they deride her for coming from the Upper West Side, and admiring one of the heroes of American justice, who happens to be black," Walsh wrote. "Stay tuned for more not-so-coded bigotry from the GOP."

Jon Stewart on Monday asked David Axelrod a truly extraordinary question: has this government proven itself competent enough to regulate industry?

Speaking to President Obama’s senior advisor on "The Daily Show," the Comedy Central star was in the middle of a rather interesting discussion when he surprisingly said, "It’s clear that this administration believes that government can have a stronger hand in regulating Wall Street, in regulating energy, in doing these things."

"But, has government during this time proved itself competent? And are our only two choices sort of an incompetent bureaucracy that doesn’t quite regulate properly or free market anarchy?" he asked.

When Axelrod predictably tried to blame all the problems in the country on the previous administration’s supposed lack of regulation and oversight, Stewart wasn’t having any of it (video follows with transcript and commentary, relevant section at 1:50): 

JON STEWART, HOST: It’s clear that this administration believes that government can have a stronger hand in regulating Wall Street, in regulating energy, in doing these things. But, has government during this time proved itself competent? And are our only two choices sort of an incompetent bureaucracy that doesn’t quite regulate properly or free market anarchy? Before you can make the case that this administration and government can effectively regulate shouldn’t they, you know, the MMS case makes a pretty clear point that the regulatory system is somewhat broken, and you guys had a chance to…

DAVID AXELROD, SENIOR OBAMA ADVISOR: The answer Jon is not to abandon the notion that there have to be rules and oversight. The answer is to make it, to make it work better. There’s a long legacy there at MMS, and frankly at other agencies of government because the last administration wasn’t really interested in regulating.

STEWART: But why then, why not then go in and really, with the urgency? You know, the fear is the government is not agile enough, is not urgent enough to deal with things like a catastrophic oil spill.

AXELROD: There is, there is no doubt that in retrospect we would have liked to move faster on the MMS situation, but understand that we were also dealing with the economic crisis, and, and, and, and, and the wars, and a whole range of issues, and we, that was, that was a defect that we’re correcting and moving aggressively to correct now. But the answer isn’t to walk away from it. I think we tested the proposition of what no regulation means. What you get, you get the leak, you get the mine disaster in West Virginia, and you get an economic crisis. And everybody recognizes that government has to play a role. It shouldn’t be an oppressive role, but there has to be some firm oversight and some rules of people respond to. These, you know, it’s pretty clear the oil industry is not going to regulate itself.

STEWART: But do you think, I guess my point is before you have the opportunity, before you can earn the ability to go in and, and, and do that, don’t, don’t we have to show a certain baseline level of competence.

Wait until you hear what Axelrod used as an example of the Obama administration’s competence: 

AXELROD: Yeah, well I mean, I would argue that we have shown a baseline level of competence. The thing is that when you show a level of competence, it doesn’t become a story. It only becomes a story when there are problems. Take the H1N1 flu for example. We jumped on that quickly. Some people criticized us for being too aggressive on it, but I think we averted a larger public health disaster.

Yeah, they sure did a GREAT job with that swine flu scaring the heck out of people over what turned out to be nothing just like in the 70s.

If that’s what this White House considers competence, we’re REALLY in trouble.

As for Stewart, that’s one heckuva good job by a comedian. Makes the clowns at MSNBC look like the real jokers, doesn’t it? 

What really made this so marvelous is that he went in a direction most journalists today would eschew at all costs.

Consider that today’s liberal media members view industry as the enemy that needs to be vigorously constrained by government, but they never ask if government is competent enough to do it. 

Obviously this oil spill has to raise some uncertainty in this regard, and Stewart marvelously challenged a senior administration official to explain why this White House is up to the task.  

On the other hand, he better be careful with this line of questioning or he just might get thrown off the liberal reservation as Keith Olbermann recently was when he dared criticize Obama. 

Maybe that would be a good thing for Stewart who then would really be free to ask the questions of this administration most so-called journalists won’t.

A man can dream, can’t he? 

Over the weekend, Dave Weigel resigned as WaPo’s house chronicler of conservatives after revelations of his antipathy toward the people he was covering. Tonight brings us the spectacle of Ross Douthat, an ostensibly conservative columnist at the New York Times.  Appearing on MSNBC’s Ed Schultz show, Douthat proffered precisely zero criticism of anyone or anything liberal.  But he did manage to mock Mike Huckabee as "passive-aggressive."  For good measure, Douthat suggested that "right-wing" people who question Barack Obama’s place of birth are too dense to realize that Hawaii is a state of the union.

The Nation’s Chris Hayes, subbing for Schultz tonight, didn’t have to strain to elicit criticism of conservatives from Douthat.  After playing a clip of Huckabee stating the apparent fact that he polls better than other Republicans against Obama, Douthat opined.

View video here.

ROSS DOUTHAT:  I think that’s classically Huckabee. It’s sort of charmingly passive-aggressive.

In the clip, Huckabee criticized no one.  What’s "passive-aggressive" about observing that one’s leading in some polls?

Later, Hayes invited Douthat to riff off a poll that showed 24% of Americans don’t think Pres. Obama was born in the U.S.

DOUHAT: There are two ways to read it, right?  Clearly on the one hand it’s illustrative of a certain kind of paranoia among many Americans, right-wing Americans about Barack Obama. On the other hand, I really think you can overstate the importance of these polls.  There are polls every year that show 42% of Americans believe in UFOs.  

HAYES: Also disturbing!

DOUTHAT: Also disturbing. But I also wonder, if you took that 21% [sic] and polled them and said what percentage know that being born outside the US –

HAYES: Disqualifies –

DOUTHAT: Is a disqualification for the presidency. Or if you polled them and said, what percentage know that Hawaii is actually a state?  That sounds like a joke, but– that sounds like a joke –

Douthat was interrupted, but his point was clear.  Right-wingers: too thick to realize that Hawaii’s a state. Ross sounds like the quintessential NYT/MSNBC "conservative": one most interested in ingratiating himself with his liberal masters.

Since I’ve been accused of leading "something of a crusade" against former Post blogger Dave Weigel, how could I resist this announcement? Weigel, who left the Post amidst a controversy where he bashed tons of conservatives, has joined the leftwing convention at MSNBC (video right).

According to a Tweet from "Countdown" host Keith Olbermann, Weigel has come on board as a contributor. "And confirming, @DaveWeigel is now MSNBC contributor @DaveWeigel Welcome aboard and my condolences, uh, congratulations!" wrote Olbermann.

Now Weigel has joined the team of Rachel Maddow and Ed Schultz. This from the guy who just today told the world of his wonderful career saga that started out as editor of a campus conservative paper at Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism. "Was I really that conservative? Yes," he wrote, somehow expecting readers to believe him. While he admitted some of his troubles came from "hubris," much of what he wrote most already knew, that he was no friend to the right. "At Reason, I’d become a little less favorable to Republicans, and I’d never been shy about the fact that I was pro-gay marriage and pro-open borders."

Throw in Weigel’s parade of assault on conservatives, prominent figures on the right from Rush Limbaugh to Matt Drudge and Newt Gingrich and the bigger question becomes, does he agree with the right on anything? The answer is: it doesn’t matter anymore. He’s gone from an organization fighting to keep its credibility to one fighting to lose what little it has.

Weigel, who had blocked me on Twitter, responded to my comments about the move with this: "Folks of every ideology are ‘contributors.’ Pat Buchanan and Ezra Klein, for example." Weigel, who had been rumored to be heading to Huffington Post, managed to land even more in left field.

This is a good place to remind everyone this issue has never been about Weigel. This was about the Post which claimed to be a neutral and respectable news organization and then filled its website with lefties like Ezra Klein and Weigel. That’s fine if they balance that out and they didn’t. They revel in the left and bash the right, making themselves more blatantly liberal and tossing out the window their claims of objectivity.

There isn’t a news outlet around that has figured out the web effectively. They shouldn’t let that confusion turn into a cheap excuse to rationalize filling their staff with open lefties and those who bash the right. Hopefully, the Post learned its lesson here.

The networks Monday night skipped lightly over the late Senator Robert Byrd’s segregationist and racist record, devoting as much time to the Democrat’s fiddle-playing prowess as his years in the Ku Klux Klan, which CBS’s Chip Reid excused as “an effort to help his political career.”

Leading into file video of Byrd playing his fiddle, ABC anchor Diane Sawyer declared “Byrd was a powerhouse and old-fashioned crowd-pleaser on the stump, whipping out his fiddle.” Though Byrd is the only Senator to have voted against both Thurgood Marshall and Clarence Thomas, Cokie Roberts asserted that “as the country changed, Robert Byrd changed with it. He readily endorsed Barack Obama for President.”

After touting how by “writing several volumes of Senate history” Byrd had followed in Caesar’s “footsteps,” she concluded: “Like the Constitution and the bible, Robert Byrd will be a permanent fixture of the Senate.”

On CBS, Reid also stressed the fiddle-playing: “Byrd grew up in poverty in the coal fields of West Virginia where he learned to play the fiddle. For decades, he used it to entertain audiences on the campaign trail.” Reid later recalled:

His life was not without mistakes. He joined the Ku Klux Klan as a young man, an effort to help his political career — a decision that haunted him all his life. He also participated in the historic filibuster against the Civil Rights Act of 1964. He later apologized for both actions and became a strong advocate of civil rights.

Since he’s a Democrat, all is forgiven.

The full coverage on the Monday, June 28 World News on ABC:

DIANE SAWYER: An historic passing to note. On the same day Alaska became a state, Robert Byrd of West Virginia was sworn in as a U.S. Senator. Byrd died early today at the age of 92, the longest-serving member of Congress in history. His Senate desk draped in black bunting. Byrd was a powerhouse and old-fashioned crowd pleaser on the stump, whipping out his fiddle. [video of Byrd playing fiddle] Our Cokie Roberts remembers an icon now.

COKIE ROBERTS: Though most politicians tout their humble beginnings, Robert Byrd was the real deal. An orphan raised dirt poor who never went to college, but went to Congress. In early days, he was a member of the Ku Klux Klan and filibustered against civil rights. He later apologized for his Klan membership.

ROBERT BYRD: It was a mistake and one that I have greatly regretted over the years.

ROBERTS: And as the country changed, Robert Byrd changed with it. He readily endorsed Barack Obama for President. And though he had supported the Vietnam war he became a forceful voice against the Iraq war.

BYRD: Why is war being dealt with not as a last resort but as a first resort?

ROBERTS: He never forgot the voters of West Virginia who saw more than $3 billion in federal funds come their way. It was, however, the United States Senate that mattered most to Byrd. He lauded the institution and often lectured it.

BYRD: Caesar showed himself at this time to be also a historian.

ROBERTS: Byrd followed in the Roman’s footsteps, writing several volumes of Senate history, reminding his colleagues and the country that the institution is more important than politics or Presidents. That’s why he always carried the Constitution, which names Byrd’s beloved Congress as the first branch of government.

BYRD: I say we ought to read the Constitution more.

ROBERTS: And, like the Constitution and the bible, Robert Byrd will be a permanent fixture of the Senate.

Is there any limit to the hatred liberal talk radio host Mike Malloy is willing to express on the air about conservatives?

Have we as a nation really degraded to a point that it’s acceptable to verbalize over the airwaves one’s hope that a fellow American dies?

Such questions naturally arise when one hears the kind of unhinged invective that came out of Malloy’s mouth on Friday after it was announced that former Vice President Dick Cheney was back in the hospital with heart troubles.

As a courtesy to our readers, the audio and partial transcript of this abomination have been intentionally placed after the break due to the despicable nature of their content (h/t Radio Equalizer):

MIKE MALLOY: Cheney has had five heart attacks, and history of heart trouble. Well, I guess they’re one and the same. The cause of his latest health problem is not clear. I think I know, but (long pause) he’s done too much cannibalism, drunk too many cups of blood! Cheney’s in the hospital. Ah, the first good news all day.

Malloy then read an e-mail from a caller asking, "What will it make him to lie still and actually die? He has more lives than a cat. I’m beginning to believe he really does need a stake through the heart."

After finishing this disgusting letter and laughing, Malloy continued:

MALLOY: No, I’m not going to feel anything but intense gratitude that this miserable bastard has stepped off this earthly coil! Really! And I’m sure on a much lesser scale when I die, there will probably be some of you right-wing flip tops who will feel the same way – I frankly don’t give a damn!

But no – Cheney is responsible. Cheney is a murderer. He’s a killer. He’s a torturer. He is evil personified! He is a walking mass of horror and when he’s gone, this planet will be cleaner!

Honestly, what causes all this hatred from folks on the left?

Conservative talkers might dislike President Obama and Vice President Biden, but they don’t go on the air hoping our political leaders die.

Makes you wonder when the Department of Homeland Security is going to issue a warning about all this hate-speech on the left inciting acts of violence from domestic terrorists, although I wouldn’t hold my breath waiting for that report. 

Now please excuse me – I have to wash my hands and keyboard of this detritus.  

From the morning to the evening Chris Matthews, during MSNBC’s coverage of Elena Kagan’s hearing on Monday, berated what he saw as GOP mistreatment of Barack Obama’s Supreme Court nominee, calling their performance at times, a "brutal assault" and even evoking strange imagery of Kagan having pins stuck in her by Republicans. Early in the day the MSNBC host complained that Republican Senator Jeff Sessions engaged in "a brutal assault on this nomination" by calling her "pro-terrorist" and "anti-military." Matthews also claimed today’s hearing reminded him of how Anita Hill was treated by Republicans during Clarence Thomas’ hearings as he asked Democratic Senator Dick Durbin:

Some Republicans paid a heavy price for being tough with Anita Hill when she came to testify in the Clarence Thomas hearings. Have we gotten past that era of sensitivity about a bunch of guys going after a single woman here just bashing her?…Can these guys like Jeff Sessions just go at her like this without any fear of rebuke?

Then finally, in the evening, on Hardball, Matthews charged the GOP had turned Kagan "into a voodoo doll, and they keep putting pins in her, as a way of getting at President Obama."

The following exchanges are from live MSNBC coverage (as transcribed by MRC intern Matthew Hadro) of the Kagan hearings and the June 28 edition of Hardball:

CHRIS MATTHEWS: Andrea Mitchell, I’ve got to get your reaction. Very tough opening statement by Jeff Sessions.

ANDREA MITCHELL: Well, he has laid the Republican line against her. And it was tough, and he is the ranking Republican. He said earlier today that he would not even rule out a filibuster, which has not happened, as Ron Brownstein pointed out earlier, when the same party controlled the Senate in a Supreme Court case. This is a very tough, particularly on the issue of the military, on the terror law. He went through all the top talking points from the Republicans. And she’s going to have a tough time defending that.

MATTHEWS: …she’s anti-military, pro-terrorist, pro-illegal immigrant, and a socialist. It’s pretty tough. And by the way, I’ll go back to it – infelicitous reference – but she is being used as Barack Obama…

EUGENE ROBINSON, WASHINGTON POST: This is throwing stuff against the wall, seeing-

(Crosstalk)

ROBINSON: -trying to create an atmosphere and an image that goes beyond her that also envelops the President and the whole administration. He’s trying to say this is an elite, Ivy League, out-of-touch-

MATTHEWS: Well, it’s a strong cultural shot at her, and she does represent, if you will, academic excellence of the highest degree, coming from the best schools, dean of Harvard Law, it’s hard to get above that, to a person out in the country, from Alabama, like Jeff Sessions represents, that is probably a pretty rich target.

…

MATTHEWS: Now take a look at, what I think so far has been the toughest attack on this nomination. This is Sen. Jeff Sessions, the ranking Republican. He is from Alabama. He was especially tough, as I said, in his opening statements. Let’s look at a montage of his toughest shots at the nominee.

(Clip)

SEN. JEFF SESSIONS: Ms. Kagan has less real legal experience of any nominee in at least 50 years, and it’s not just that the nominee has not been a judge. She has barely practiced law, and not with the intensity and duration from which I think a real legal understanding occurs. Her actions punished the military, and demeaned our soldiers as they were courageously fighting for our country in two wars overseas. Ms. Kagan has associated herself with well-known activist judges who have used their power to re-define the meaning of words of our Constitution and laws in ways that, not surprisingly, have the result of advancing that judge’s preferred social policies and agendas.

(End Clip)

MATTHEWS: Joining us right now is Sen. Dick Durbin, Democrat of Illinois. He’s the Senate Majority Whip. Senator Durbin, if you listen to Jeff Sessions, your colleague, it’s a brutal assault on this nomination. She’s pro-terrorist in a sense, she’s anti-military, she’s a socialist, she’s for expansion of the government. He just about hit her on every cultural, political, ideological issue you can, and basically said he is definitely voting against her. He may lead a filibuster, based on his tone.

SEN. DICK DURBIN: I can just tell you, my Alabama colleague did not surprise me. He dismissed Elena Kagan out of hand and didn’t really get into the whole question of her role in Supreme Court. And then came the bill of particulars for the election in November. This was the Republican National Committee bill of particulars, all of the things they want to accuse the Obama administration of. Socialism, secular humanism, you name it, went through the long litany. You get an idea of what this hearing is going to be all about.

MATTHEWS: Well, do you think it’s really a hearing or is it something else? Is this going to be like a political convention on the right?

SEN. DURBIN: Well I’m afraid it looks, from Senator Session’s statement, that there are going to be political overtones. And it’s not surprising, Chris, let’s be honest. If the shoe were on the other foot, and a nominee came along, we would be making points on our side of the aisle, too. But in fairness to Elena Kagan, At the end of the day, you have to look at what she has done, how she’s been cleared by this committee to be Solicitor General of the United States, her own achievements, and where she stands.

MATTHEWS: You know, back not too many years ago, some Republicans paid a heavy price for being tough with Anita Hill when she came to testify in the Clarence Thomas hearings. Have we gotten past that era of sensitivity about a bunch of guys going after a single woman here just bashing her?

SEN. DURBIN: Well I think so. But I tell you, the record shows –

MATTHEWS: Wait a minute. You think we have gotten past we’re that insensitive? Can these guys like Jeff Sessions just go at her like this without any fear of rebuke?

SEN. DURBIN: I think it’s fine. Jeff has raised issues, and that’s important. I may disagree with the issues. But it is not personal. I don’t see it reaching the level that would cause that kind of a backlash. And I think we’re learning. Just remember, this is our fourth time in history to entertain a woman as a Supreme Court justice – four times, out of 111, this is the fourth. And I think there were lessons learned in the past. We do know that women nominees tend to get tougher questions. Think of what Sonia Sotomayor went through over one phrase, "Wise Latina." You would think that the woman had declared that she was a traitor, treason on the United States. And instead they made that one phrase the focal point, they just went overboard on it.

…

MATTHEWS DURING HARDBALL: This is, this is pretty rough stuff. I’ve been saying this morning, watching the hearing. It’s almost to use an old, crude phrase. They’ve turned this nominee into a voodoo doll, and they keep putting pins in her, as a way of getting at President Obama.

According to liberal economic Paul Krugman, a "third depression" will occur if nations tighten their belts and attempt to balance their budgets.

Forget about the riots in Greece over a social welfare system the government couldn’t maintain or a $1.4 trillion annual U.S. budget deficit. Krugman claimed that the threat of deflation supersedes both of those results of runaway government spending – that is higher taxes in the long run and a debt to future generations.

In his June 28 column for The New York Times, Krugman wrote: "We are now, I fear, in the early stages of a third depression. It will probably look more like the Long Depression than the much more severe Great Depression. But the cost – to the world economy and, above all, to the millions of lives blighted by the absence of jobs – will nonetheless be immense."

At the G-20 meeting in Toronto last week, European leaders encouraged fiscal discipline from the United States, while President Barack Obama pushed an opposite approach. That disappointed the Times columnist.

"And this third depression will be primarily a failure of policy," Krugman continued. "Around the world – most recently at last weekend’s deeply discouraging G-20 meeting – governments are obsessing about inflation when the real threat is deflation, preaching the need for belt-tightening when the real problem is inadequate spending."

Krugman has rarely been concerned by government debt, unless it was for a war or could be used to bash former President George W. Bush. Maintaining his spendthrift perspective, he insisted the concerns raised over government spending have nothing to do with a genuine concern for the financial insolvency of the government or the threat of runaway inflation, but were part of an irrational "orthodoxy."

"So I don’t think this is really about Greece, or indeed about any realistic appreciation of the tradeoffs between deficits and jobs," Krugman wrote. "It is, instead, the victory of an orthodoxy that has little to do with rational analysis, whose main tenet is that imposing suffering on other people is how you show leadership in tough times. And who will pay the price for this triumph of orthodoxy? The answer is, tens of millions of unemployed workers, many of whom will go jobless for years, and some of whom will never work again."

For 2010, the federal deficit, as a percentage of U.S. gross domestic product is a whopping 10.64 percent, the highest since 1945 in the midst of World War II – an imbalance that worries many people, just not Krugman.

Over the past couple years, Krugman has been an outspoken advocate of government stimulus spending, criticized a $775 billion stimulus plan for being too small, called for a second stimulus, and even claimed in 2008 that "we probably have $10 trillion of running room" when asked how much the government could spend to turn the economy around.

MSNBC’s Chris Matthews framed Sen. Jeff Sessions’ criticism of Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan as a "brutal assault," during MSNBC’s live coverage of the Senate hearing Monday afternoon.

"It’s a brutal assault on this nomination," Matthews complained about the Alabama Republican’s remarks.

Matthews also seemed to cast Sessions as an unsophisticated country bumpkin challenging Kagan’s prestigious Ivy League background.

"It’s a strong cultural shot at her, and she does represent, if you will, academic excellence of the highest degree, coming from the best schools, dean of Harvard Law," Matthews crooned. "It’s hard to get above that, to a person out in the country, from Alabama, like Jeff Sessions represents. That is probably a pretty rich target."

He accused Sessions of describing Kagan as pro-terrorist and tried to get liberal Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) to say that Sessions’ "assault" would whip up a storm.

"You know, back not too many years ago, some Republicans paid a heavy price for being tough with Anita Hill when she came to testify in the Clarence Thomas hearings," Matthews insisted. Have we gotten past that era of sensitivity about a bunch of guys going after a single woman here, just bashing her?"

"Can these guys like Jeff Sessions just go at her like this without any fear of rebuke?" Matthews later asked.

Durbin tempered the debate by saying that, although he might not agree with Sessions, his colleague was doing his job in raising issues with Kagan.

"I think it’s fine," Durbin replied. "Jeff has raised issues, and that’s important. I may disagree with the issues. But it is not personal. I don’t see it reaching the level that would cause that kind of a backlash."

The transcript of the two segments, which aired at 12:53 p.m. and 1:07 p.m. EDT, respectively, are as follows:

MSNBC

June 28, 2010

12:53 p.m. EDT

CHRIS MATTHEWS: Andrea Mitchell, I’ve got to get your reaction. Very tough opening statement by Jeff Sessions.

ANDREA MITCHELL: Well, he has laid out the Republican line against her. And it was tough, and he is the ranking Republican. He said earlier today that he would not even rule out a filibuster, which has never happened, as Ron Brownstein pointed out earlier, when the same party controlled the Senate in a Supreme Court case. So this is a very tough – particularly on the issue of the military, on the terror law – he went through all of the top talking points from the Republicans. And she’s going to have a tough time defending that.

MATTHEWS: (Garbled) …she’s anti-military, pro-terrorist, pro-illegal immigrant, and a socialist. It’s pretty tough. And by the way, I’ll go back to it – maybe an infelicitous reference, but it is a voodoo doll – she is being used as Barack Obama in that chair-

EUGENE ROBINSON, Washington POst: This is throwing stuff against the wall, seeing –

(Crosstalk)

- trying to create an atmosphere and an image that goes beyond her that also envelops the President and the whole administration. She’s trying to say this is an elite, Ivy League, out-of-touch –

MATTHEWS: Well, it’s a strong cultural shot at her, and she does represent, if you will, academic excellence of the highest degree, coming from the best schools, dean of Harvard Law, it’s hard to get above that. To a person out in the country, from Alabama, like Jeff Sessions represents, that is probably a pretty rich target.

# # #

MSNBC

ANDREA MITCHELL REPORTS

June 28, 2010

1:07 p.m. EDT

CHRIS MATTHEWS: Now take a look at, what I think so far has been the toughest attack on this nomination. This is Sen. Jeff Sessions, the ranking Republican. He is from Alabama. He was especially tough, as I said, in his opening statements. Let’s look at a montage of his toughest shots at the nominee.

(Clip)

Sen. JEFF SESSIONS (R-Ala.): Ms. Kagan has less real legal experience of any nominee in at least 50 years, and it’s not just that the nominee has not been a judge. She has barely practiced law, and not with the intensity and duration from which I think a real legal understanding occurs.

Her actions punished the military, and demeaned our soldiers as they were courageously fighting for our country in two wars overseas.

Ms. Kagan has associated herself with well-known activist judges who have used their power to re-define the meaning of words of our Constitution and laws in ways that, not surprisingly, have the result of advancing that judge’s preferred social policies and agendas.

(End Clip)

MATTHEWS: Joining us right now is Sen. Dick Durbin, Democrat of Illinois. He’s the Senate Majority Whip. Senator Durbin, if you listen to Jeff Sessions, your colleague, it’s a brutal assault on this nomination. She’s pro-terrorist in a sense, she’s anti-military, she’s a socialist, she’s for expansion of the government. He just about hit her on every cultural, political, ideological issue you can, and basically said he is definitely voting against her. He may lead a filibuster, based on his tone.

Sen. DICK DURBIN (D-Ill.): I can just tell you, my Alabama colleague did not surprise me. He dismissed Elena Kagan out of hand and didn’t really get into the whole question of her role in Supreme Court. And then came the bill of particulars for the election in November. This was the Republican National committee bill of particulars, all of the things they want to accuse the Obama administration of. Socialism, secular humanism, you name it, went through the long litany. You get an idea of what this hearing is going to be all about.

MATTHEWS: Well, do you think it’s really a hearing or is it something else? Is this going to be like a political convention on the right?

Sen. DURBIN: Well I’m afraid it looks, from Senator Session’s statement, that there are going to be political overtones. And it’s not surprising, Chris, let’s be honest. If the shoe were on the other foot, and a nominee came along, we would be making points on our side of the aisle, too. But in fairness to Elena Kagan, At the end of the day, you have to look at what she has done, how she’s been cleared by this committee to be Solicitor General of the United States, her own achievements, and where she stands. 

MATTHEWS: You know, back not too many years ago, some Republicans paid a heavy price for being tough with Anita Hill when she came to testify in the Clarence Thomas hearings. Have we gotten past that era of sensitivity about a bunch of guys going after a single woman here just bashing her?

Sen. DURBIN: Well I think so. But I tell you, the record shows -

MATTHEWS: Wait a minute. You think we have gotten past we’re that insensitive? Can these guys like Jeff Sessions just go at her like this without any fear of rebuke?

Sem. DURBIN: I think it’s fine. Jeff has raised issues, and that’s important. I may disagree with the issues. But it is not personal. I don’t see it reaching the level that would cause that kind of a backlash. And I think we’re learning. Just remember, this is our fourth time in history to entertain a woman as a Supreme Court justice – four times, out of 111, this is the fourth. And I think there were lessons learned in the past. We do know that women nominees tend to get tougher questions. Think of what Sonia Sotomayor went through over one phrase, "Wise Latina." You would think that the woman had declared that she was a traitor, treason on the United States. And instead they made that one phrase the focal point, they just went overboard on it.

Liberal director Oliver Stone revealed his anti-American bent on Monday’s Good Morning America, praising the rise of mainly left-wing leaders across South America and even went so far to support Brazilian President Lula da Silva for "trying to strike to deal with Iran," wildly predicting "it’s going to be like North Vietnam again" if the U.S. pursued sanctions against the country.

Anchor George Stephanopoulos interviewed the Oscar-winning director 44 minutes into the 8 am Eastern hour. Stephanopoulos referenced how Stone has "tackled war, Wall Street, and the Kennedy assassination" and is now "taking on South America. He says our neighbors to the south haven’t gotten a fair shake from the American media, and, armed with a camera, he’s set out on a road trip to try to change that."

Before asking about Chavez, Stephanopoulos played a clip from Stone’s documentary "South of the Border," which included a sound bite from CNN’s John Roberts that gave the impression that the anchor was condemning the Venezuelan leader: "He’s more dangerous than Bin Laden, and the effects of Chavez, his war against America, could eclipse those of 9/11."

Actually, Roberts, in the January 15, 2009 segment from his American Morning program, actually was reading a quote from a book by his guest, Doug Schoen: "Right off the bat, in the very front of the book, you quote Otto Reich, who was the former ambassador to Venezuela back in the 1980s, as saying that he’s more dangerous than bin Laden and the effects of Chavez, his war against America could eclipse those of 9/11."

Earlier, the ABC anchor asked, "Why take this on?" The director characterized the left-wing trend in leaders in South America as a "march towards reform" and praised these favorite leaders on the continent without naming them:

STONE: They have democratically-elected leaders who look like the people who elected them. They have a priest in Paraguay. They have a woman in Argentina. They have an Indian leader- the first Indian- in Bolivia. They have an economist in Ecuador and they have a soldier who’s poor- comes from a poor family- who was elected three times in Venezuela- that’s Hugo Chavez. These are good people. When you look in their eyes, you see it, and you see it on film. That’s why you have to do a  film because on paper, it sometimes it didn’t come across, you know?

The leader of Paraguay, Fernando Lugo, is actually a former Catholic bishop who admitted that he fathered a child with a woman in her 20s when he was still a bishop. Lugo led a mainly left-wing coalition into office when he was elected in 2008. Argentina’s president, Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner, nationalized $30 billion in private pension funds late in 2008. Bolivian President Evo Morales and Ecuador’s executive, Rafael Correa, are both avowed socialists.

The ABC anchor later pressed the director on his endorsement of his Venezuelan "soldier:"

STEPHANOPOULOS (live): Do you believe Hugo Chavez is a good person?

STONE: Yes, I do- absolutely.

STEPHANOPOULOS: But even the United Nations has said that Hugo Chavez has not been a paragon of free speech- his crackdown on the media in his own country.

STONE: I have not seen that report. I know that- you know, there’s no pattern of censorship in this country. I’ve been there. So, you can see it. You can go down to South America, spend three days, and you’ll see the most vibrant opposition in the world.

STEPHANOPOULOS: One of the reasons the United States has put a lot of pressure on Chavez is over oil, you believe, and there was particular opposition from the Bush administration. How do you think the relationship may change, now that President Obama is in office?

STONE: Well, I hope it changes because America seems to want to control every oil-producing nation in the world, whether it’s Iraq or Iran or Venezuela.

Since Stone named Iran, Stephanopoulos mentioned how "the president of Brazil [is] trying to strike a deal with Iran, counter to what the Obama administration is looking for." The director replied that this move as a "good thing." When the anchor asked why, Stone made his "North Vietnam" comparison:

STONE: Because- well, the march to sanctions in Iran. We want sanctions. We want- it seems to me, once they start intercepting their ships, we’re going to be in a- it’s going to be like North Vietnam again. We’re going to get into a position where we’re going to get closer to war. There’s no reason for to us go to war in Iran, any more than there was a reason to go in Iraq-

STEPHANOPOULOS: Even if they want to build a nuclear weapon?

STONE: Hmm?

STEPHANOPOULOS: Even if they want to build a nuclear weapon?

STONE: I think that has to be discussed.

So the Oscar winner not only acted as a left-wing apologist but also vouched for inaction against a nation who has nuclear ambitions and has made threats against its neighbors.

Stephanopoulos and Stone concluded by briefly discussing how the director was also releasing a sequel to his acclaimed 1987 movie, "Wall Street." After thanking his guest, the ABC anchor noted that "’South of the Border’ is open in New York now" as a title graphic for the movie flashed on screen. But, in a parallel to Stone’s edit of Roberts, the graphic that ABC used for the movie was actually cropped from its movie poster which emulated left-wing propaganda art. Eagle’s talons represented United States’s power in South America on the poster, which were mounted on top of South America which was appropriately painted red.

"The last day of school shouldn’t mean last call for lunch."

That’s how CBS’s Katie Couric melodramatically concluded her June 25 "Notebook" item on her CBSNews.com Couric & Co. blog.

The "Evening News" anchor pointed to a report by the liberal Center for American Progress — without, of course, noting the group’s leftward bent — that found "that nearly 20 million children get free or reduced-price lunch at school. But only one in six of them will receive subsidized meals this summer."

Couric concluded from this that "[n]early one in four children is at risk for hunger" over the summer and called "essential" a bill before Congress to "improve access to summer meals."

Of course nowhere in her Notebook item did Couric weigh whether this might be a matter better left to state and local governments — especially when the federal government is drowning in red ink — or better yet, to parents themselves.

After all, schools provide lunches and breakfasts during the school year for the sake of convenience of students and their parents, not because government has the moral responsibility to feed children.

That’s obviously the job of parents and their failure to adequately do so is grounds for the involvement of local child protective services.

Parental responsibility and restrained spending of taxpayer dollars are not high on Couric’s list of concerns, apparently.

That’s a page from my notebook. 

On Monday’s CBS Early Show, correspondent Whit Johnson reported breaking news of the death of West Virginia Senator Robert Byrd and proclaimed: "By all accounts, he was one of the hardest working senators in modern history." Johnson touted Byrd’s "four volume history of the Senate" and described him as the "unequaled master of the Senate rules."

Part of the "hard work" Johnson cited was the massive number of pork barrel projects Byrd secured funding for over his long career: "Byrd said he owed his success to the long suffering people of West Virginia and he returned the favor by steering billions of dollars in federal government projects to the state, dozens of them, named for him." Johnson noted how "Byrd reveled in his success at bringing home the bacon….His critics called him the king of pork. He called that hog wash."

Another aspect of Byrd’s career that Johnson highlighted was the West Virginia Democrat’s opposition to the Iraq war: "A harsh critic of the war in Iraq, Byrd said opposing the war in 2003 was his most important vote ever."

It was not until the end of his report that Johnson mentioned Byrd’s controversial past on race relations: "His life was not without mistakes. He deeply regretted joining the Ku Klux Klan as a young man and participating in a filibuster against the historic Civil Rights Act of 1964. Later in life, though, he became an advocate of civil rights."

Later, in a news brief in the 8AM ET hour, fill-in news reader Betty Nguyen declared that Byrd was "a master politician, an expert on Senate rules, and unrelenting lobbyist for his home state and a powerful force on Capitol Hill."

Here is a full transcript of Johnson’s June 28 report:

7:00AM TEASE

ERICA HILL: Breaking news. The longest serving member of Congress, Senator Robert Byrd, has died. We’ll look back at his remarkable career and tell you how this could impact the balance of power in the Senate.

7:01AM SEGMENT

ERICA HILL: First, though, we do want to get to the breaking news, of course, out of Washington this morning. The passing of Senator Robert Byrd early this morning. CBS News correspondent Whit Johnson is on Capitol Hill with the very latest. Whit, good morning.

WHIT JOHNSON: Erica, good morning. Senator Robert Byrd checked into a hospital late last week. Originally, he was thought to be suffering from heat exhaustion, but doctors found further complications. The longest serving senator in U.S. history passed away this morning at the age of 92.

ROBERT BYRD: The United States Senate, the greatest deliberative body in the whole world.

JOHNSON: Robert Byrd won nine elections to the U.S. Senate. He was the longest serving senator in American history. He grew up in poverty in the hardscrabble coal fields of West Virginia, where he learned to play the fiddle. For decades he used it to entertain audiences on the campaign trail and even performed at the Grand Ole Opry. By all accounts, he was one of the hardest working senators in modern history. He went to law school at night, receiving his degree at age 45 from President Kennedy. He wrote a four volume history of the Senate, became the unequaled master of the Senate rules and climbed to the top of the ladder, spending 12 years as Democratic leader. Byrd said he owed his success to the long suffering people of West Virginia and he returned the favor by steering billions of dollars in federal government projects to the state, dozens of them, named for him. Byrd reveled in his success at bringing home the bacon.

BYRD: Man, you’re looking at big daddy. Big daddy! Rolled up my sleeves, man.

JOHNSON: His critics called him the king of pork. He called that hog wash.

BYRD: This notion that earmark spending is inherently wasteful spending is flat out wrong. W-r-o-n-g.

JOHNSON: A harsh critic of the war in Iraq, Byrd said opposing the war in 2003 was his most important vote ever.

BYRD: How long must the best of our nation’s military men and women be taken from their homes to fight this unnecessary war?

JOHNSON: His life was not without mistakes. He deeply regretted joining the Ku Klux Klan as a young man and participating in a filibuster against the historic Civil Rights Act of 1964. Later in life, though, he became an advocate of civil rights. His great loves included his children, grandchildren, and great grandchildren, a Senate, which he so revered he called ‘the temple,’ and the Constitution, a copy of which he always carried in his breast pocket. But above everything else, there was Erma, Byrd’s high school sweetheart and wife of 68 years. She passed away in 2006. Byrd said she was his greatest love of all. Washington is already reacting this morning to Senator Byrd’s death. He’s being remembered for his fighter spirit. Erica.

HILL: Whit, thanks. Whit Johnson in Washington this morning.

Pop-star and courageous anti-toilet-paper crusader Sheryl Crow apparently has a new political concern: Tea Partiers.

The country crooner told CBS journalist Katie Couric that Tea Party members are uneducated, angry and potentially dangerous in an interview with Glamour magazine this June.

After Crow complained in the interview that Americans have become too blasé about politics, and that nobody has taken to the streets to cause "a riot or a revolution," Couric correctly pointed to the Tea Party as an example of modern day activism.

"What do you think of the Tea Party movement? Because that is the specific sort of group of people who would say we’re out there, we’re getting involved in the process…," asked Couric.

"I appreciate the fact that those people are out there and that they are fired up," responded Crow, before adding that Tea Partiers "haven’t educated themselves…they’re just pissed off."

"My main concern is that [the Tea Party is] really fear-based," said Crow, a cancer survivor and environmental activist. "What’s coming out of the Tea Party most often, especially if you go onto YouTube, and you see some of the interviews with these people who really don’t even know what the issues are, they’re just swept up in the fear of it and the anger of it."

"They’re not sure what they’re angry at," Crow continued. "[T]hey don’t understand what’s happening on Wall Street."

The singer also worried that the "uneducated" and "angry" Tea Partiers could even become dangerous. "[K]nowledge is power, and anything less than that when it comes to anger can be dangerous," said Crow.

But before she snubbed the education level of Tea Partiers again, maybe Crow should have checked out this New York Times poll, which found Tea Party members to be "more educated than the general public."

The Grammy-award winning songstress could also serve to learn a thing or two from the Tea Partiers – in the past she’s come under fire for her own bone-headed remarks. In 2007, Crow was mocked across the political spectrum for suggesting in a Huffington Post column that people should use "only one square [of toilet paper] per restroom visit" in order to conserve trees.

Other ideas in Crow’s 2007 column included using a reusable "dining sleeve" instead of a dinner napkin, and a creating a "greenest lifestyle" contest for aspiring musicians.

Crow later backed away from her statements, claiming they were merely brilliant satire written in order to bring attention to the dire threat of climate change.

Later in her June Glamour magazine interview with Couric, Crow slammed Karl Rove and other conservatives for harping on her toilet paper idea. She claimed this was done "[j]ust to discredit me and to make me look silly."

The New York Times marked the death early Monday morning of veteran Democratic Sen. Robert Byrd of West Virginia, who served a record 51 years in the U.S. Senate, with an online obituary by former Times reporter Adam Clymer. While acknowledging Byrd’s Klan past and his pork-barrel prodigiousness, Clymer’s lead also emphasized Byrd’s proud fight as the keeper of Congressional prerogatives. The obituary headline was hagiographic: "Robert Byrd, Respected Voice of the Senate, Dies at 92."

While Clymer’s opening statement on Byrd wasn’t exactly laudatory, it did not match the paper’s hostile treatment of the passing of two veteran Republican senators accused of racial prejudice: Sen. Strom Thurmond of South Carolina and Sen. Jesse Helms of North Carolina. Clymer’s lead paragraph:

Robert C. Byrd, who used his record tenure as a United States senator to fight for the primacy of the legislative branch of government and to build a modern West Virginia with vast amounts of federal money, died at about 3 a.m. Monday, his office said. He was 92.

The bulk of Clymer’s obituary for Byrd may have been written some time ago, as is customary. Clymer retired from the Times in 2003, after a career of bashing President Bush and prominent conservatives, while defending old-guard Democrats like Sen. Ted Kennedy.

Clymer acknowledged what he called Byrd’s changing perspective, moving from conservative to liberal over the years, and in the 16th paragraph brought up Byrd’s membership in the Ku Klux Klan in the 1940s and his filibuster of the 1964 Civil Rights Act.

Mr. Byrd’s perspective on the world changed over the years. He filibustered against the 1964 Civil Rights Act and supported the Vietnam War only to come to back civil rights measures and criticize the Iraq war. Rating his voting record in 1964, Americans for Democratic Action, the liberal lobbying group, found that his views and the organization’s were aligned only 16 percent of the time. In 2005, he got an A.D.A. rating of 95.

Mr. Byrd’s political life could be traced to his early involvement with the Ku Klux Klan, an association that almost thwarted his career and clouded it intermittently for years afterward.

….

Mr. Byrd insisted that his klavern had never conducted white-supremacist marches or engaged in racial violence. He said in his autobiography that he had joined the Klan because he shared its anti-Communist creed and wanted to be associated with the leading people in his part of West Virginia. He conceded, however, that he also "reflected the fears and prejudices" of the time.

After noting criticism from watchdog groups over Byrd’s reputation as the "king of pork," Clymer followed up:

West Virginians were grateful for the help. Senator John D. Rockefeller IV, Democrat of West Virginia and the state’s junior senator since 1985, said Mr. Byrd had meant "everything, everything" to the state. Mr. Byrd knew, he said, that "before you can make life better, you have to have a road to get in there, and you have to have a sewerage system and all those things, and he has done that for most of the state."

Bob Wise, a Democrat who was West Virginia’s governor from 2001 to 2005, once said that what Mr. Byrd had done for education — "the emphasis on reading and literacy" — mattered even more than roads.

And Clymer’s dubious observation that Byrd "was never a particularly partisan Democrat" would surprise many familiar with Byrd’s non-stop excoriation of Bush over the Iraq War. Byrd authored a 2004 book titled "Losing America: Confronting a Reckless and Arrogant Presidency." Clymer mentions the book but leaves off the provocative subtitle, simply calling it "Losing America."

He was never a particularly partisan Democrat. President Richard M. Nixon briefly considered him for a Supreme Court appointment. Mr. Dole recalled an occasion when Mr. Byrd gave him advice on a difficult parliamentary question; the help enabled Mr. Dole to overcome Mr. Byrd on a particular bill.

In contrast is the Times’s treatment of veteran Republican Sen. Jesse Helms of North Carolina, who died on Independence Day 2008. The headline: "Jesse Helms, Unyielding Beacon of Conservatism, Is Dead at 86." Steven Holmes’s obituary for Helms began:

Jesse Helms, the former North Carolina senator whose courtly manner and mossy drawl barely masked a hard-edged conservatism that opposed civil rights, gay rights, foreign aid and modern art, died early Friday. He was 86.

Clymer’s Byrd obituary didn’t mention that Byrd, like Helms, voted on a measure to bar the National Endowment for the Arts of funding "obscene" or "indecent" work.

Clymer also wrote the obituary for centennial Republican Sen. Strom Thurmond, who died on June 26, 2003. Like Byrd, Thurmond was a former segregationist (he made his mark as the States’ Rights Candidate in 1948 and became a Republican in 1964) who later reconciled with blacks and became proficient in earning pork for his state. The Times’s headline the following day left no room for doubt: "Strom Thurmond, Foe of Integration, Dies at 100," although Clymer’s lead sentence didn’t mention race. (Hat tip Mark Finkelstein of NewsBusters.)

Reacting to colleague Alex Altman’s brief, just-the-facts-styled Swampland blog post "SCOTUS Solidifies Gun Rights," Time’s Michael Scherer responded a few hours later with the following post:

Something tells me Scherer’s observation isn’t that the Chicago gun ban has been a horrendous failure, especially given his attribution of violence in the brief blog post on the guns themselves — "ten people were killed by guns" — not the criminals who used them.

On the syndicated Chris Matthews show over the weekend, Chris Matthews praised Barack Obama for earning another "big feather" in his cap for getting his Wall Street reform bill passed and then went on to ask his panel if all of the other overbearing, big government laws signed in his term would lead to victory for the Democratic Party in the fall. Just before closing his show Matthews posed the following big question to HDNet’s Dan Rather, the BBC’s Katty Kay, CNN’s Gloria Borger and the Politico’s John Harris: "Will the President’s legislative success with the stimulus, with health care, with Wall Street reform and maybe even an energy bill be a net positive or negative for his party this fall?"

The following are their individual responses as aired on the June 27 Chris Matthews Show:

CHRIS MATTHEWS: Welcome back. This week another big feather in Barack Obama’s cap – Wall Street reform. Which brings us to our big question. Will the President’s legislative success with the stimulus, with health care, with Wall Street reform and maybe even an energy bill be a net positive or negative for his party this fall? Dan Rather?

DAN RATHER, HDNET: Slight positive.

MATTHEWS: Katty?

KATTY KAY, BBC: Net positive.

MATTHEWS: Gloria?

GLORIA BORGER, CNN: I’m with Dan, slight positive.

JOHN HARRIS, POLITICO: Positive. Takes away the Jimmy Carter ineffectual argument.

MATTHEWS: Wow! Slight positive. Maybe just solid positive.

Somewhere between 7 p.m. on June 14 and 7 p.m. on June 15, vandals spray painted graffiti, as seen on the top right photo, on the home of Dubuque, Iowa pro-lifer Allen Troupe.

They were most likely incited by a sign in one of the windows of Troupe’s home, as seen on the bottom right photo.

Click both photos to enlarge.

Troupe filed a police report and anticipated the same level of fair and balanced media coverage one would expect were pro-life graffiti to appear on the home of an abortion proponent – i.e., lots.

But not only did the local paper, the Dubuque Telegraph Herald, fail to post a story, it failed to even mention the police report in its daily police blotter. Editorial staff either considered the incident too slight or too unhelpful to their pro-abortion bias.

So Troupe emailed DTH editor Brian Cooper. Following was Cooper’s response….

"Wouldn’t you think a bona fide pro-choice vandal would know how to spell abortion?" The overriding conclusion to draw from Cooper’s rhetorical question is that "bona fide" pro-aborts can’t be stupid. There are thus 3 conspiracy theories Cooper was implying:

1. The vandal spray painting the misspelled graffiti was in actuality a covert but stupid pro-lifer. 2. The vandal spray painting the misspelled graffiti was in actuality a covert pro-lifer attempting to make pro-aborts look stupid. 2. The vandal spray painting the misspelled graffiti was not pro-life or pro-abortion at all but just a simple street vandal who wanted people to think s/he was pro-abortion.

In fact, I could only surmise Conspiracy Theories #1 and 2 until Cooper (pictured right) told me #3 by phone this morning. "I’m not surprised you can’t think of any other conclusion," he said, since I had identified myself as a pro-life blogger. "Not everyone is fervently pro-choice or pro-life. This could have been someone who doesn’t have any opinion on it and wanted to vandalize but seem that someone else was doing it." Well that makes total sense. A vandal into graffiti purely for the joy of it, uninvolved in the abortion battle either way, would know enough to connect a sign opposing Planned Parenthood with "aboration" and "baby killers" and decide to spray paint about it to somehow implicate pro-aborts because… Well, again, I can only come up with the fact the graffiti vandal was either #1 or #2. The Telegraph Herald finally posted a story about the vandalism on June 23, but catch the headline: Troupe "believes" the graffiti on his home was tied to his abortion opposition, but that may not be true? The story’s 1st sentence reiterated the point:

Police are investigating a vandalism case involving a man who believes his house was targeted due to his opposition to Planned Parenthood and abortion.

So Troupe could have been in actuality drawing wild conclusions or hallucinating? These journalists are either utterly biased or totally void of common sense and simple intelligence.

If it were only that simple – that is the way CNBC’s Rick Santelli would have it.

On CNBC’s June 28 "Squawk Box," CNBC’s senior economics reporter Steve Liesman vigorously defended the need for higher tax rates as a measure to cut federal deficits. Others argued that government revenues would increase if tax rates were lower because it would stimulate growth. (h/t Real Clear Politics Video)

"Let me get this straight – all you guys want to cut taxes en route to bringing down the deficit?" Liesman asked.

But according to Santelli, it has nothing to do with taxes, but the role of government in the economy.

"No, I didn’t say anything about taxes, Steve," Santelli shouted. "I want the government to stop spending! Stop spending, stop spending, stop spending, stop spending! That’s what we want, stop spending!"

Liesman continued his defense of higher taxes, arguing they wouldn’t "pay for themselves," but Santelli followed up with a suggestion for Liesman.

"I just keep saying what the data show," Liesman said. "The data show tax cuts don’t pay for themselves."

"You wouldn’t know data if it bit you on the nose," Santelli, the CME Group reporter, said. "Go read some Austrian economists instead of the funny pages."

And Santelli suggested Liesman try a change of venue to get a better understanding of economics.

"Go back to Russia where you understand the state and the citizen," Santelli said.

However, "Squawk Box" co-host Becky Quick said the government is occasionally needed to step and she alluded to the near financial collapse and ultimate passage of TARP in 2008.

"I’m on Steve’s side on this," Quick said. "There are times when the government has to step in. I think probably what happened two years ago was the time."

But that has caused a political backlash, demonstrated by European nations and their lack of willingness to employ government-spending policies.

"Yes they did and a couple of trillion of dollars later they’re [the federal government] done because the taxpayers are the people voting and they’re done, Steve," Santelli said. "Talk all you want, they’re done. Merkel’s done. Europe’s done because the voting electorate has said their done."

Liesman stuck to his line of reasoning argued the deficit was directly correlated to the economy and not as much as the amount government spending.

"I don’t even care, Steve. Our deficit is too big and we need to knuckle under and we need to live too prudently, prudently," Santelli fired back.

The video of journalists mocking Sarah Palin after a speech she delivered Friday is just the latest in a long line of media bias against the former Alaska governor and conservative superstar.

An open mic caught reporters and photographers criticizing Palin following a speech at a fundraising dinner at California State University. "Oh my God," one voice is heard saying, "I feel like I just got off a roller coaster, going round and round, and up and down. S*** flying out … everywhere."

While this video is among the clearest examples of media hatred for Palin, the trend goes back at least two years, according to MRC Vice President for Business and Culture Dan Gainor.

"Back around the vice presidential debate in 2008 there were 37 negative stories on the broadcast networks, just two positive," Gainor told "Fox & Friends" June 27. "It’s been a feeding frenzy ever since. Some of these journalists hate her so bad if she cured cancer they’d complain how many doctors she put out of work."

Gainor credited advances in technology with giving the American public a clearer picture of media bias in cases like the Palin video, Helen Thomas’ anti-Israel comments, and Washington Post blogger Dave Weigel’s anti-conservative e-mails.

"What they’re discovering, and the key point is, their lies, their leaks, their embarrassing moments are going be to be held out there just like they’ve been doing to everybody else for decades," Gainor said. "My parents would say, ‘What goes around comes around.’"

Are the Elena Kagan confirmation hearings an occasion for media explanation…or celebration? The Washington Post Express tabloid ran this headline Monday: "Kagan’s Big Day Finally Arrives." The copy underneath by AP reporter Nancy Benac sounds like a proud mother more than an objective journalist. She suggested "it may be her own words that best explain her success at charting an undeviating course to the front steps of the high court." She elaborated about Kagan’s career, in sympathetic tones: 

She’s excelled by dint of hard work, smarts and what she describes as good "situation sense" – the ability to size up her surroundings and figure out what truly matters, as she put it during confirmation hearings for her last job, as President Barack Obama’s solicitor general, the government’s top lawyer.

It’s what allowed Kagan to channel the thinking of legal giant Thurgood Marshall when she was a "27-year-old pipsqueak" clerk to the justice.

It’s what allowed Kagan to navigate through the land mines of government policy on abortion, tobacco and other contentious issues as an adviser to President Bill Clinton.

It’s what allowed Kagan to thrive as the first female dean of Harvard Law School and even foster detente within its famously fractious faculty.

Now, 50-year-old Elena Kagan stands before the Senate, confident she will be judged ready to join the justices whom she’s calls "fabulously smart, fabulously interesting people."

Only in the last paragraph of the seven-paragraph Express item is there an admission that "Republicans have done plenty of grumbling about her liberal views," but "all sides anticipate she will be confirmed."

Earlier: AP’s Nancy Benac Excited ‘Bold Colors’ and ‘Squiggly Lines Have Arrived’ on Obama White House Walls

The rumor mill concerning Rosie O’Donnell landing a new daytime show heated up Monday when Gossip Cop reported the comedienne is in talks with NBC.

Apparently, the stumbling block is that the broadcasting company wants an out clause in case Rosie implodes like she did on ABC’s "The View" three years ago.

As NewsBusters reported on May 23, 2007, O’Donnell and Elisabeth Hasselbeck got into quite a fight about the war in Iraq that was so caustic it ended up being Rosie’s last day on the show. She and ABC agreed to terminate her contract days later.

With this in mind, according to Gossip Cop, NBC isn’t taking any chances:

The show, as we previously reported, is looking to launch in the fall of 2011, and will be produced by Robert F. Kennedy’s documentary filmmaking daughter, Rory Kennedy, along with TV veterans Dick Robertson and Scott Carlin.

But there’s one sticking point, says our impeccable insider.

According to our source, "NBC wants an out if she implodes like she did on ‘The View.’" 

If this is correct, one certainly can’t blame NBC for wanting to hedge its bet.

On the other hand, if you’re concerned about the behavior of someone you’re entering into a contract with, isn’t the wisest move to NOT put yourself in a position where said individual could end up embarrassing your organization?

As such, why is NBC even considering this risk given O’Donnell’s background?

Maybe the folks at NBC ought to watch this before they sign:

One emerging narrative from the tale of Dave Weigel’s resignation is the extent to which the journalistic left is insulated from opposing views. The two institutions involved, JournoList and the Washington Post, are exemplars of liberal epistemic closure.

Ezra Klein’s now-defunct email list provided a forum for journalists to collaborate, as long as they were, in his words, "nonpartisan to liberal, center to left." No conservatives allowed. The Washington Post, meanwhile, hired Weigel, perhaps two notches left of center, to cover the right, while relying on Klein, a full eight notches left, to cover the liberal movement.

The scarcity of conservative views both on JournoList and in the Post demonstrate the insularity of political conversation among legacy media players. They apply intense scrutiny to conservatives, and fail in the most basic measures of introspection.

That is one element of the whole situation that Weigel’s defenders seem to be missing: the issue is not his personal political views, per se, but rather the Post’s failure to provide balance in its blog-based political coverage.

There is nothing inherently wrong with assigning someone hostile to certain views to cover a movement espousing those views. Indeed, that can be a very healthy way to challenge preconceived notions and political orthodoxy where it otherwise would be taken for granted.

As Byron York wrote at the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential blog,

There’s little doubt that the most interesting coverage of events on the left and right generally comes from journalists on the other side. Much of the time, the right sees things happening on the left, and connects them, in a way that the left doesn’t see, and the left sees things happening on the right, and connects them, in a way that the right doesn’t see. In opinion journalism, it’s a good thing to have each side examining the other.

The Post doesn’t seem to understand that, even though it has jumped into opinion journalism with both feet. The paper hired a bunch of people from the left-wing blogosphere — Ezra Klein, Greg Sargent, Garance Franke-Ruta, and, for a short time, Weigel — who often write about the right, even though Weigel was the only one specifically assigned to it. But they haven’t hired any conservative to write about the left. It’s the worst kind of one-sidedness.

Sure, Weigel could arguably serve a valuable journalistic function by scrutinizing the right more, perhaps, than a conservative would. But the Post did not do the same for the left. Klein is a rank and file liberal.

So if the rationale for Weigel’s employment was that it is healthy to assign political reporters to cover movements they do not agree with or belong to, perhaps the Post should re-hire Weigel, fire Klein, and replace the latter with someone who is demonstrably hostile to, or at the very least openly skeptical of, the political left.

Klein himself seems not to realize just how insular his own political conversations are. In his post-Weigel-resignation piece on his WaPo blog (linked above), he wrote that JournoList was meant to be

An insulated space where the lure of a smart, ongoing conversation would encourage journalists, policy experts and assorted other observers to share their insights with one another. The eventual irony of the list was that it came to be viewed as a secretive conspiracy, when in fact it was always a fractious and freewheeling conversation meant to open the closed relationship between a reporter and his source to a wider audience.

Klein extrapolates a "secretive conspiracy" from what is really just a secretive conversation among the center-left. No one is claiming a conspiracy – the use of the term is probably meant to discredit those skeptical of a forum where liberal journalists collaborate on the latest stories.

That Klein calls JournoList "a fractious and freewheeling conversation" demonstrates his epistemic closure. He considers "fractious and freewheeling" a conversation that necessarily included nobody that openly espoused a conservative position as his or her own. Klein openly discusses his decision to exclude conservatives from the list, precisely so it would not devolve into a "debate society."

Could there have been significant disagreement among even the liberal members of JournoList? Undoubtedly there was. But Klein made a concerted effort to exclude conservative voices. How can such a list possibly claim to be adequately informing its members on the political goings on of the nation while excluding and entire school of American political thought?

Media liberals seems to be trotting happily down this path of epistemic closure. Reporters continue to cover the right, as NewsBusters contributor Dan Gainor put it in discussing Weigel, as if they were "visiting a zoo." Or, as New York Times editor Bill Kellor put it, "We wanted to understand them."

Yes, who are these strange creatures who call themselves conservatives?

Robert Redford, one of the most popular and succesful actors of our age, has joined with other entertainers, including Sir Paul McCartney and Rosie O’Donnell in encouraging the Obama administration to actively politicize the Gulf crisis and use it to push through on energy policy.

In an interview with ExtraTV, Redford said that Obama should "Grab this moment in history and get a decent energy policy." He also said "Here’s a moment in our history where he [Obama] should grab leadership and run with it."

He said that "We blew it in the late seventies," referring to laws like the National Energy Act, National Energy Conservation Policy Act and the Energy Policy and Conservation Act made in the wake of the OPEC embargo and the Three Mile Island nuclear disaster.

Redford has long combined his interest in liberal and environmentalist politics with his career as an actor and film maker, producing The Motorcycle Diaries, based on the memoir by Che Guevara and contributing money to Democratic candidates 58 percent of the time.

He added that the government needs to start planning for the end of oil and sustainable energy now. Apparently, the failure of the plans from the 70’s does not phase his faith in the ability of the government to plan energy policy. He did say that BP is responsible for the spill and the government needs to make them pay.

Meanwhile, unlike McCartney, O’Donnell and Redford who urge political action, Kevin Costner has funded the development of machines which can aid tremendously in the clean up, using centrifuges to separate up to 99 percent of oil from water, despite prohibitive federal regulations preventing them from being developed. Costner has contributed money to Al Gore’s past campaigns and campaigned for Obama in Colorado.

At least one celebrity is doing something useful regarding the spill.

The Monday morning shows on CBS, ABC, and NBC all worked to portray President Obama’s Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan as a moderate and open-minded legal scholar, downplaying her liberal views. All three network programs also minimized her controversial decision to ban military recruiters on campus while Dean of Harvard Law School.

On CBS’s Early Show, legal correspondent Jan Crawford touted Kagan as "an intellectual heavyweight and consensus builder." Crawford noted how Republicans had "several lines of attack" against Kagan and would "try to paint her as a liberal activist." Crawford herself recently described Kagan as having "stood shoulder to shoulder with the liberal left."

On ABC’s Good Morning America, correspondent Claire Shipman did a fawning segment on Kagan in the 8AM ET hour, describing the former Dean as "intellectual" and "full of personal charm" during her tenure at Harvard. Shipman claimed that Kagan had "a determination to be open-minded," despite banning military recruiters from the university’s campus over the ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ policy. On that issue, Shipman explained that despite Kagan’s decision being unpopular "among student military vets….Iraq War veteran Kurt White says they were won over by Kagan’s persistent outreach, another example of her political skills." Shipman failed to mention that White would be testifying on Kagan’s behalf during the confirmation hearings.

Shipman went so far to portray Kagan as open-minded that she touted how "though her political views are quite different than his, she honored conservative justice Antonin Scalia at the law school a few years ago, calling him a great justice." Shipman even argued: " It’s an openness to all voices that worries some liberals, but colleagues argue Kagan’s style is just what the Court needs."

NBC’s Today did not provide quite as strong a defense of Kagan, but a report by legal correspondent Pete Williams did feature a soundbite from Kagan supporter and SCOTUS blog founder Tom Goldstein declaring: "Elena Kagan isn’t a political partisan." Williams, like Shipman, attempted to downplay the military recruiter ban: "Republicans also accuse Kagan of treating the military unfairly when she was dean of Harvard Law….But student military veterans say she made them feel welcome at Harvard and praised them for their service, even though she strongly opposed the policy on gays in the military."  

Here is a full transcript of Shipman’s June 28 segment on Good Morning America:

8:15AM

GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS: Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan is preparing to take the stand for Senate confirmation hearings this afternoon, and they’re meant to tease out the nominee’s judicial philosophy. Well for some clues, Claire Shipman talked to some people who knew Kagan during the most substantial legal job of her career, the first woman dean of Harvard Law School.

CLAIRE SHIPMAN, ABC correspondent: Good morning, George, well that’s right. We decided to look for clues at Harvard Law School where she had a very distinctive style. She was only there for six years, made a large number of changes. She was intellectual, yes, but also full of personal charm, say colleagues, and a determination to be open-minded.

It’s an institution usually resistant to change, some might say an immovable object, until it was confronted with the irresistible force of Dean Elena Kagan.

ELENA KAGAN: This is a wonderful time, and it’s so good to be with you.

LAURENCE TRIBE, Harvard Law professor: I’ve watched Harvard Law School go through lots of transitions, but there has never been anything like Elena Kagan.

MARTHA MINOW, Harvard Law dean: She was going to turn over every stone at this institution and figure out a way to make it better.

SHIPMAN: She thinks big.

MINOW: She thinks big.

SHIPMAN: But she was savvy enough at times to start small, offering perks like free coffee for students. Then bigger battles, fighting to hire more conservative professors like John Manning.
 
JOHN MANNING, Harvard Law professor: She felt that her job as dean was to foster an atmosphere in which all sorts of ideas would be presented.

SHIPMAN: And selling a total curriculum overhaul, the first in a hundred years.

KAGAN: For the most part, a first year curriculum now looks like what it looks like back in 1880.

SHIPMAN: Some say her meteoric rise is impressive, but also suggests a calculating careerism. Two of her best friends, roommates at law school, say she’s just always just reveled in the work.

JOHN BARRETT, friend of Kagan: A visual that I have, a memory, is her sitting at her desk with a cigarette and a pen and a book and a little desk lamp, and she could kind of grind it out for a long time.

UNIDENTIFIED FRIEND OF KAGAN: I think what was clear was that she really loved the law, and reading about it, and thinking about it, and talking about it.

SHIPMAN: Her time as dean wasn’t without controversy. She decided to renew a ban keeping military recruiters from using the career services office because of opposition to the "Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell" policy. Support was high on campus, but not among student military vets.

KURT WHITE, Harvard Law student: It didn’t seem like banning military recruiters from the law school campus was going to be something that was likely to lead to a change in this law.

SHIPMAN: Still, Iraq War veteran Kurt White says they were won over by Kagan’s persistent outreach, another example of her political skills.

WHITE: It was really her showing her appreciation for the military and being very supportive of us.

SHIPMAN: And though her political views are quite different than his, she honored conservative justice Antonin Scalia at the law school a few years ago, calling him a great justice.

MANNING: She as dean was able to recognize his accomplishments and celebrate them without reservation.

SHIPMAN: It’s an openness to all voices that worries some liberals, but colleagues argue Kagan’s style is just what the Court needs.

TRIBE: I think that her ability to find common ground, bring people along, see long-term implications, will make a very large impact on the Court.

SHIPMAN: It’s certainly a good place to start hearings as a potential liberal justice when you have the support of a conservative justice, like justice Scalia. George, but of course the hearings will still be heated, they’ll look at that military recruitment issue, and also try to pin her down specifically on how she might rule on some controversial issues.

STEPHANOPOULOS: That’s right, and in an election year, likely to get a lot of no votes as well. Okay Claire Shipman, thanks very much.

"Supreme Court extends gun rights" a headline on the Web site for the Chicago Tribune erroneously claims today.

The link on the page brought readers to a story entitled "Supreme Court extends gun rights in Chicago case." Here’s the opening paragraph:

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court reversed a ruling upholding Chicago’s ban today and extended the reach of the 2nd Amendment as a nationwide protection against laws that infringe the "right to keep and bear arms."

But that language suggests that the Court invented a right out of whole cloth rather than grounded its decision in the Constitution itself. In truth, what the Supreme Court found in McDonald v. City of Chicago was that the 2nd Amendment’s guarantee of the individual’s right to firearm ownership is incorporated to the states via the 14th Amendment’s Due Process Clause.

"The right to keep and bear arms must be regarded as a substantive guarantee, not a prohibition that could be ignored so long as the States legislated in an even handed manner," Justice Alito wrote for the Court. 

The bottom line: The Supreme Court recognized that the City of Chicago was in violation of the the 2nd and 14th Amendments to the federal Constitution.

A more accurate headline would have been "Supreme Court finds Chicago gun ban violates Constitution."

Of course, that presupposes the liberal media in Chicago are interested in shooting straight when it comes to reporting developments with which they have an ideological disagreement.

Violent protesters set fire to police cars and shattered store-front windows at the Group of 20 economic summit in Toronto this weekend. How did the New York Times, so skittish about the hypothetical threat of non-existent Tea Party violence from the right, react to actual violence committed by political protesters by the left-wing and anarchist groups? With more snort-worthy apologias for left-wing protesters being overwhelmingly "peaceful" in numerical terms

Reporter Randal Archibold made a similar claim in his April 24 story from Phoenix at a protest against Arizona’s anti-immigration law, claiming that "hundreds of demonstrators massed, mostly peacefully, at the capitol plaza." Local news in Phoenix reported three people were arrested during the immigration rally, including two seen throwing water bottles at police, and videos showed more lawlessness on display.

The same defensive tone is present in Monday’s Business section story from Toronto, with the ludicrous headline "Police in Toronto Criticized for Treatment of Protesters, Many Peaceful," by Ian Austen. Austen’s story is illustrated with a photo from the European Pressphoto Agency showing two policemen arresting a woman, but not photos shown elsewhere of burning cars, like the Associated Press photo by Frank Gunn above.

Austen managed to fault the police both for initial passivity and subsequent overreaction:

An escalation of aggressive police tactics toward even apparently peaceful protests at the Group of 20 summit meeting led to calls for a review of security activities.

After allowing a small group of people to burn police cars and smash windows unimpeded on Saturday afternoon, many of the 20,000 police officers deployed in Toronto changed tactics that evening and during the last day of the gathering.

There was a notable increase in both the numbers of police officers who surrounded demonstrations as well as more use of tear gas and rubber or plastic bullets. At the same time, there was a visible drop in the number of demonstrators in the city streets.

As a result, the violence by some demonstrators that marred the opening of the Group of 20 meeting did not reappear on Sunday, and more than 600 people were arrested Saturday and Sunday.

The Times seemed to miss the obvious connection: More police and more arrests = less crime. It’s one the Times has missed before, most notoriously in this headline from September 28, 1997: "Crime Keeps On Falling; but Prisons Keep On Filling."

Unlike Archibold’s Arizona coverage, Austen didn’t ignore the violence on display in Toronto, though he did offer the same ludicrous apologia to this group of left-wing protesters that Archibold did to the ones in Arizona, writing that "the overwhelming majority…were peaceful."

The violence was not exceptional compared with problems at previous international meetings, like the World Trade Organization’s gathering in Seattle in 1999. Toronto’s shopping district sustained the greatest damage but quickly became something of a tourist attraction.

But it was nevertheless extraordinary for Toronto, a city with little history of violent protests. David Miller, the city’s mayor, was among the many who swiftly condemned it. "Does today send signals about Toronto that I wish weren’t sent?" he said on Saturday evening. "Absolutely."

….

William Blair, the city’s police chief, did not respond directly to the widespread criticism over the lack of police response during the period of violence. But at a news conference, he suggested that officers were deliberately held back.

The protesters, the overwhelming majority of whom were peaceful, promoted a variety of causes. Many were challenging the legitimacy of the Group of 20 and proposing that governments work through the United Nations. Others championed specific issues, particularly in relation to human rights and the environment.

Former Washington Post writer David Weigel has attempted to explain away his Journolist e-mails attacking conservatives by claiming he was a trash-talking thoughtless jerk. If you think that self-damnation was bad, at least it was much better than admitting something even closer to the truth which would be that he deviously allowed people to think of him as a conservative. In fact, he is still lamely making that conservative claim in his Big Journalism article but first the jerk confession:

…I treated the list like a dive bar, swaggering in and popping off about what was “really” happening out there, and snarking at conservatives. Why did I want these people to like me so much? Why did I assume that I needed to crack wise and rant about people who, usually for no more than five minutes were getting on my nerves? Because I was stupid and arrogant, and needlessly mean…

Unfortunately, Weigel proved that he still remains a jerk by continuing to claim that he was somehow conservative:

I interned at the libertarian Center for Individual Rights in the summer of 2001. I supported the Iraq War and crashed an anti-war protest on my campus. I voted in Republican primaries in 2002 and 2004. (Since I was in Illinois, I voted in 2004 for Jack Ryan to get the GOP’s nomination for Senate, to oppose Barack Obama. I’m better off than one of those guys.)

Weigel still tries to convince us of his one-time conservative credentials despite the fact that in the three presidential elections since 2000 he voted for Nader, Kerry, and Obama. Gee! What a "conservative!"

Despite his pretend conservatism, Weigel just can’t seem to understand why people think he has misrepresented himself:

Still, this was hubris. It was the hubris of someone who rose — objectively speaking — a bit too fast, and someone who misunderstood a few things about his trade. It was also the hubris of someone who thought the best way to be annoyed about something was to do it publicly. This is the reason I’m surprised at commentary accusing me of misrepresenting myself.

Except that liberal Journolist was supposed to be private and Weigel wrote there in the expectation that it would remain so. Dave’s misrepresentation mode continues. 

When President Bush nominated John Roberts and Samuel Alito to the Supreme Court in 2005, the media did not hesitate to describe both men as "very conservative," but when President Obama nominated Sonia Sotomayor in 2009 and Elena Kagan this year many in the press couldn’t seem to identify any liberal ideology. The Media Research Center has produced a video compilation of examples to further demonstrate the obvious double standard. [Audio available here]

During ABC’s live special coverage of Roberts’s nomination on July 19, 2005, then This Week host and former Democratic operative George Stephanopoulos declared: "This is a very conservative man with a strong paper trail that proves it." NPR’s Nina Totenberg could hardly contain her urge to label, using the word "conservative" several times during a July 23 appearance on Inside Washington: "John Roberts is a really conservative guy…he’s a conservative Catholic….[President Bush] has given conservatives a hardline conservative."

The same labeling followed Alito’s nomination months later. CBS’s Bob Schieffer opened the October 31 Evening News by proclaiming: “Conservatives wanted a conservative on the Supreme Court, and said the President ought to risk a fight in the Senate to get one. Their wishes have been fulfilled.” Later that evening, on a special 7PM ET hour edition of CNN’s The Situation Room, anchor Wolf Blitzer described: "…there is a new nomination and new controversy. A battle shapes up as the president picks a staunch conservative who could help reshape the U.S. Supreme Court."

Compare those characterizations of Roberts and Alito with how Stephanopoulos introduced Sotomayor to Good Morning America viewers on May 1, 2009: "She’s built up a strong centrist record on the court." On the May 27 CBS Evening News, anchor Katie Couric scratched her head when it came to Sotomayor’s political views: "Now pundits usually label judges as either liberal or conservative, but that won’t be easy with Judge Sotomayor." Meanwhile, Totenberg actually remained consistent, arguing Obama’s nominee was actually on the Right: "…she’s more conservative than some members of the Supreme Court, including Justice Scalia, perhaps.”

With Kagan, on CBS’s April 11 Face the Nation, legal analyst Jan Crawford described the broad support the potential nominee would receive: "…she’s got some support among conservatives because she hired a lot of those conservative law professors at Harvard." On the May 10 Good Morning America, ABC World News anchor Diane Sawyer explained how Kagan "is expected to play a role as somewhat of a conciliator, the bridge across the conservative and liberal wings of the Court." Like Totenberg with Sotomayor, on the May 11 CBS Early Show co-host Maggie Rodriguez floated the idea that Kagan was conservative: "she may actually shift the Court to the Right, compared with Justice Stevens.”
    
As evidence of Kagan’s staunch liberalism comes out in her confirmation hearings, one wonders if the media will finally be willing to accurately describe her left-wing views.

Lord have mercy, even when it hits him in the face, the Associated Press’s Mark Sherman won’t concede the obvious:

"Cast doubt"? Is that what court rulings do now?

A USA Today item has it right:

Other sources describing the ruling accurately include: 

• CNN — "Court rules for gun rights, strikes Chicago handgun ban"
• Fox News — "High Court’s Big Ruling For Gun Rights." From text: "Today’s ruling also invalidates Chicago’s handgun ban."
• Reuters, as carried at the New York Times — "Supreme Court Rules Chicago Gun Ban Unconstitutional"

As with the Washington, DC Heller case in 2008, the real outrage is that the ruling was 5-4.

Cross-posted at BizzyBlog.com.

A new talk radio show launched this weekend that will certainly get a lot of attention from producers across the fruited plain if not from listeners.

Called "Both Sides Now," the program pits far-left internet publisher Arianna Huffington against conservative political consultant Mary Matalin.

Unfortunately, there’s a glaring problem with the format: the host is the far-left leaning Mark Green who used to be the president of Air America Radio.

As such, listeners will likely hear twice as many liberal views as conservative ones.

Naturally, Green didn’t admit this in his debut announcement published at the Huffington Post Sunday:

Welcome to the debut audio-blog of Both Sides Now w/ Huffington & Matalin. We’re a new nationally syndicated radio show whose name sort of conveys it all — Both Sides Now will be the first syndicated radio show that presents both sides with two prominent women.

So instead of talk radio just being ideological monologues to the faithful, we’ll have two politically savvy women keeping each other on their toes. My goal as the host is to either clarify differences or bridge them.

Clarify differences?

Well, isn’t that special? Arianna’s got a far-left-leaning referee on the set to "clarify differences."

Readers are advised that Green co-authored 2004’s "The Book on Bush: How George W. (Mis)leads America" with the far-left writer Eric Alterman.

His most recent work of "non-fiction" is "Change for America: A Progressive Blueprint for the 44th President," which was co-produced by the far-left outlets New Democracy Project and the Center for American Progress; both are funded by George Soros.

As such, having Green "clarify differences" between Huffington and Matalin is like having Yankee fans officiate a Yankees-Red Sox game.

Nevertheless, as I am a HUGE fan of Matalin’s, it will be interesting to see how this format works.

Stay tuned. 

"Above a certain level, people are being very well protected," one "senior U.S. official" told the Washington Post. Corruption and bad governance pose two of the largest problems for the American presence there. According to the Post,

Top officials in President Hamid Karzai’s government have repeatedly derailed corruption investigations of politically connected Afghans, according to U.S. officials who have provided Afghanistan’s authorities with wiretapping technology and other assistance in efforts to crack down on endemic graft.

In recent months, the U.S. officials said, Afghan prosecutors and investigators have been ordered to cross names off case files, prevent senior officials from being placed under arrest and disregard evidence against executives of a major financial firm suspected of helping the nation’s elite move millions of dollars overseas…

For the Obama administration, the ability of Afghan investigators to crack down on corruption is crucial. If American voters see Karzai’s government as hopelessly corrupt, public support for the war could plunge. Corruption also fuels the Taliban insurgency and complicates efforts to persuade ordinary Afghans to side with leaders in Kabul. 

What affect will or should this corruption have on the domestic policy debate over the Afghan war? Does it bolster arguments that the US needs to maintain a strong presence there, or those that contend the US cannot take the lead in securing the nation?

On the day confirmation hearings begin for Obama Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan, The Washington Post stresses on the front page that Kagan has been an "elusive GOP target." The Post website summarized: "Republicans have struggled to find a compelling line of attack to take against the Supreme Court nominee. But their efforts have largely failed."

When Republicans nominate a Supreme Court justice, it’s the liberal media that aids their favorite activists in creating "compelling lines of attack." But when Democrats do it, the journalists not only skip over the attacks, they also praise the Democrats for their political skills. Post reporters Anne Kornblut and Paul Kane suggested that the oil spill and the McChrystal hubbub have pushed Kagan out of attention, but also lauded the "skilled operatives" of Team Obama:  

But it is also a measure of how skilled operatives have become at managing the process — and choosing nominees who are notable in part for their political blandness…. 

In part, the attention has been muted because Obama has not chosen outspoken liberals in either of his first two opportunities to influence the makeup of the court. Kagan, who would replace Justice John Paul Stevens, would not tilt the court’s ideological balance. So the stakes are lower than if she had been picked to replace a conservative, participants on both sides said.

She is also an especially elusive target: a politically savvy operator who has no record of judicial rulings and has spent much of her career carefully positioning herself for the next step.

Who else is elusive to the Post? Conservative activists, who are nowhere to be found in the Kornblut-Kane story — unlike a liberal lobbyist for People for the American Way. (Sen. Jeff Sessions is the only opposition figure quoted.)

This claim, that Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor are baronesses of "blandness," too "elusive" to be identified as liberals, is simply bizarre. To say that Sotomayor’s lobbying at left-wing Latino organizations or Kagan’s clerking for ultraliberal Justice Thurgood Marshall isn’t identifiably liberal is counter-factual.

For contrast, please see The Washington Post’s front page story on Bush Supreme Court nominee Samuel Alito on the first day of his confirmation hearings on January 9, 2006. He was a staunch Reaganite. The story relentlessly repeated how conservative he was. "Blandness" was not on the menu. Reporters Jo Becker and Dale Russakoff began: 

The captains of the Reagan revolution at the Justice Department had two big concerns about a bookish new recruit named Samuel A. Alito Jr., who arrived in 1981: his blank slate as a conservative activist and his pedigree from a perceived bastion of legal liberalism.

"I wouldn’t let most people from Yale Law School wash my car, let alone write my briefs," said Michael A. Carvin, a political deputy at the department.

Six years later, the revolutionaries saw Alito as one of them, tapping him to become U.S. attorney in New Jersey in 1987 and eventually, they hoped, a judge. Speaking on a New Jersey public affairs television program, the young prosecutor showcased the philosophy that had won the confidence of his Washington mentors.

Asked his opinion of President Ronald Reagan’s nomination of Robert H. Bork to the Supreme Court, Alito gave a ringing defense of the conservative icon he said had been "unjustifiably rejected" by the Senate in one of the most ideologically polarizing nomination battles in decades.

There weren’t any professional liberal activists in the piece — other than the Post reporters themselves.

PS: The Post also topped the Style section with Alito-as-conservative news: a Marcia Davis profile of Jan LaRue of Concerned Women for America, the "fierce" conservative activist and evangelical Christian and "street fighter" for Alito. There was no liberals-for-Kagan article in Style on Kagan’s first hearing day.

When Republican Sen. Strom Thurmond died, the MSM was quick to stress his segregationist past. The New York Times ran the headline "Strom Thurmond, Foe of Integration, Dies at 100," leaving readers to imagine the South Carolinian had remained an advocate of segregation.  The very first line of USA Today’s story described Thurmond as "the nation’s most prominent segregationist."
 
Strange how the MSM can suddenly become reticent about mentioning someone’s segregationist past when the late politician in question is a Democrat.  On Morning Joe today, Mark Halperin and Mike Barnicle used elliptical language worthy of a State Department dispatch to avoid mentioning that Byrd had been a member and leader of the Ku Klux Klan. H/t NB reader Ray R.

View video here.

MARK HALPERIN: A lot’s happened in America and the world and he was an eyewitness to it, spanning a lot of generations not just as a witness but as a participant.  Early in his career a much different man than he ended his career and his life.

. . . .

MIKE BARNICLE: He was a very interesting man whose life covered so many events, 1958–elected to the Senate.  But I mean, just the transformation in Robert Byrd over the years, it was very interesting to watch.  I know, I’m sure you do Mark, I’m sure you do Joe, know people in public life, United States Senators, who had, you know, some objections to some of Sen. Byrd’s views years ago and saw him grow into his role as he served

"You know, some objections to some of Sen. Byrd’s views."  Right. Like this one.  But of course Mike is a man of such delicate sensibilities that he would never mention just what he had in mind—at least when the recently departed is a Dem.

Update: Tale of Two Times Headlines

In the opening paragraph of this blog item, the NY Times’ headline on the death of Strom Thurmond was noted: "Strom Thurmond, Foe of Integration, Dies at 100".

The Grey Lady’s headline today?   Robert Byrd, Respected Voice of the Senate, Dies at 92

Sen. Robert Byrd died early Monday. Joe Holley of the Washington Post began with a mildly surprising label for a senator who was a Bush-bashing hero of the anti-war left this decade (with a lifetime American Conservative Union rating of 28):

Robert C. Byrd, a conservative West Virginia Democrat who became the longest-serving member of Congress in history and used his masterful knowledge of the institution to shape the federal budget, protect the procedural rules of the Senate and, above all else, tend to the interests of his state, died at 3 a.m. Monday at Inova Fairfax Hospital, his office said.

Mr. Byrd had been hospitalized last week with what was thought to be heat exhaustion, but more serious issues were discovered, aides said Sunday. No formal cause of death was given.

Starting in 1958, Mr. Byrd was elected to the Senate an unprecedented nine times.He wrote a four-volume history of the body, was majority leader twice and chaired the powerful Appropriations Committee, controlling the nation’s purse strings, and yet the positions of influence he held did not convey the astonishing arc of his life.

Holley did include his time in the Ku Klux Klan, in paragraph nine. He also wrote this sentence (perhaps this is his idea of what earned the label "conservative"):

As chairman of the Senate Appropriations subcommittee on the District from 1961 to 1969, he reveled in his role as scourge, grilling city officials at marathon hearings and railing against unemployed black men and unwed mothers on welfare.

But it was hardly in sync with conservatism to trash the war in Iraq and President Bush’s decision to liberate the country from Saddam Hussein:

In addition to his multivolume history of the Senate, he was author of a 770-page memoir as well as "Losing America: Confronting a Reckless and Arrogant Presidency" (2004), a well-received and stinging critique of what he considered President George W. Bush’s rush to war with Iraq.

Well-received by whom? Holley suggested the book had more power since Byrd was seen as a staunch supporter of the Vietnam War.

In his book and on the Senate floor, he was scathing in his contempt for the Bush administration’s doctrine of "preemptive war" and "regime change." He castigated his fellow lawmakers for swiftly delegating to the president the decision to go to war.

On March 19, 2003, he delivered the first of what became regular attacks on the Bush administration’s decision to invade Iraq. "Today I weep for my country," he said in a speech on the Senate floor. "I have watched the events of recent months with a heavy, heavy heart. No more is the image of America one of strong yet benevolent peacekeeper. The image of America has changed."

In fact, in a Time magazine story weeks later headlined "Lionized in Winter," Matthew Cooper  raved that "due to his fierce opposition to the Iraq war, Byrd at 85 has become an Internet icon with a rash of young and liberal admirers, which is ironic given that Byrd fought civil rights in the ’60s and, as is often noted, briefly joined the Ku Klux Klan. Once known as a hawk (‘I was the last man out of Vietnam,’ he says), Byrd has become the Senate’s new Paul Wellstone."

Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner is admonishing the leaders of other countries attending the G-20 summit in Toronto to keep spending like there’s no tomorrow, because if they spend like there’s no tomorrow, there will still be a tomorrow. But in the gospel according to Geithner, if they don’t spend like there’s no tomorrow, there really won’t be a tomorrow.

With such blubbery logic, is it any wonder that America’s stature with the rest of the world is plummeting?

Earlier this evening, Brent Baker at NewsBusters pointed to an ABC report warning that a second recession might be on the horizon if the G20 nations don’t follow the spend-spend-spend recommendations of the Obama administration.

In his attempt to convince the rest of the world of the folly of being fiscally responsible, Geithner has invoked a supposed "lesson" from the 1930s. Back in mid-May, I happened to stumble on the fundamental untruth of his assertion, and will demonstrate it shortly.

The Associated Press’s Jeannine Aversa let Geithner’s contention pass without challenge in her Saturday report on the summit. Here are the three relevant paragraphs from her report:

Asked if the global economy could slip back into another "double dip" recession, Geithner said the answer to that question hinges on decisions made by world leaders. "It is within the capacity of the people who are going to be in those rooms together in the next few days to avoid that outcome," he said.

One of the mistakes made in the 1930s was that countries pulled back their recovery efforts too soon, prolonging the Great Depression, he said.

Geithner said the United States doesn’t want to see that happen again. "What we want to do is continue to emphasize that we are going to avoid that mistake," he said. "It’s only been a year since the world economy stopped collapsing … it will take some time to heal."

What follows is a chart showing U.S. spending and GDP from 1923 to 1940, with a partial list of unemployment rates from roughly the same time frame immediately to its right:

Hoover began the federal spending ramp-up in 1931 and 1932, but Franklin Delano Roosevelt and his New Deal took spending as a percentage of gross domestic product (GDP) to the 9%-11%, well over double the level of the Coolidge years. He kept it there until 1940, after which pre-war and wartime spending kicked in. Despite all of what FDR did and tried, unemployment stayed persistently and unacceptably high.

The gospel according to Geithner, as well as hard-core Keynesians like Paul Krugman at the New York Times, would tell us that FDR held up his end of the bargain by keeping the spending spigots open during the eight years that ended in 1940, and that it was the Europeans pulling back who prolonged the recession (Krugman even believes that FDR didn’t spend enough). One would therefore expect that folks living in countries that didn’t hold up their end of the spend-spend-spend bargain during that decade must have endured even more hardships than U.S. citizens did.

The trouble is, as I discovered quite by accident on May 13, is that this isn’t at all what happened. In a Wall Street Journal column, Daniel Henninger quoted an eminent European economist who had passed away less than two years earlier. In the process of making a point that Henninger used about the mediocre performance of Europe during the 1990s, this historian also, when seen in the context of the graphics just presented, also made a huge point about the Europe of the 1930s:

Angus Maddison, the eminent European historian of world economic development who died days before Europe’s debt crisis, wrote in 2001: "The most disturbing aspect of West European performance since 1973 has been the staggering rise in unemployment. In 1994-8 the average level was nearly 11% of the labor force. This is higher than the depressed years of the 1930s."

Whoa. Maddison’s assertion leads to these key factoids and points:

• Europe’s unemployment during the 1930s seldom if ever topped 11%.
• U.S. unemployment during the 1930s was always above Europe’s level by a few points; another source I found indicates that U.S. unemployment at one point dropped to about 12% in 1937, but the point still stands.
• Europe’s "failure" to spend as Geithner thinks it should have during the 1930s doesn’t seem to have hurt it nearly as much as FDR’s insistence on continued spending hurt us.
• If there’s a lesson here, it’s that, absent contrary evidence, Tim Geithner is wrong and the Europeans of the 1930s were right.
• It would also seem that Europe’s renewed intent to rein in government spending is a wiser course than the spend-spend-spend strategy of the Obama administration (how serious the European countries are about restraining spending remains to be seen; if Europe tries to solve its problem primarily with tax increases, all bets are off).

Jeannine Aversa’s relay of Geithner’s more than likely false assertion about the 1930s deserved much more skepticism that it received.

Cross-posted at BizzyBlog.com.

Andrew Wallenstein at The Hollywood Reporter suggests more than Al Gore’s marriage is crumbling. Gore’s cable channel Current TV is facing a dramatic makeover with an injection of MTV executives. Wallenstein tried to sugarcoat the inconvenient truths:

For all the brilliance he has displayed grasping the meteorological dynamics governing the globe, Gore has miscalculated those of a slightly less complex world: the TV business. The radical ambitions he brought to the environment didn’t pan out the same way in cable; the television will not be revolutionized.

Gore tried to sell off Current to his Google pals for half a billion dollars, but that didn’t take. So they’re taking the content away from small-d democracy and toward the persistent formula of other youth-culture channels, loaded with young-skewing documentaries and "reality" TV:

For much of the past year, Current TV has been quietly undergoing an overhaul that will change just about everything but the struggling channel’s name. Current declined comment for this story.

It’s a revitalization project Gore & Co. embarked on after exhausting a more lucrative possibility: selling the channel. Current’s founding partner, Joel Hyatt, spent much of 2009 shopping the network with a price tag that wildly overestimated the company’s worth, confirmed sources at several conglomerates. Current even had extensive sale talks as far back as 2007 with Google, where Gore serves as a senior advisor.

Now the focus has shifted to fixing Current, perhaps with an eye toward a sale down the road. Last July, Hyatt was replaced as CEO by Mark Rosenthal, the former MTV Networks COO who is rebuilding the channel in the traditional mold Gore avowed to avoid, only to suffer the consequences.

Rosenthal has brought in a crew of colleagues from his MTVN days including an unlikely ringer: Brian Graden, the programming genius who masterminded hit series from "South Park" to "The Osbournes," before leaving last year. He’s on retainer as a consultant.

Graden helped found the gay channel Logo and expressed joy last year at bringing documentaries to MTV with titles like "I’m Changing My Sex" and "I Work In the Sex Industry." So here’s where the format change comes in:

Forget bite-sized clips created by anonymous viewers; the new Current will consist of full-length series from the usual suspects in unscripted production who are getting the word that Current is open for business….

Several senior MTVN colleagues were brought in as consultants to engineer the turnaround including Hank Close, formerly president of ad sales. Several more key full-time hires have been made as well.

But original programming is at the heart of any successful cable network, and for that he’s turned to Graden, who’s known for his knack for hits. Graden and Current make for an unusual combination. A network that has devoted significant time to serious topics ranging from AIDS in Africa to New Age spirituality is in the hands of Graden, who didn’t exactly win Peabodys for shows often criticized for corrupting America’s youth.

Graden did not respond to an email seeking comment.

The MTV infusion at Current is ironic considering the channel is essentially facing the same fundamental problem MTV confronted so successfully in the 1990s: a TV schedule comprised of multi-minute clips is far less advertising-friendly than the half-hours that ensure viewer tune-in isn’t so erratic.

In other words, MTV "so successfully in the 1990s" dumped all the music videos in favor of "The Real World" ad infinitum, et cetera.

[HT: Dan Isett]

Based on the view of a single economist, ABC portrayed the agreement by world powers, at the G-20 summit in Toronto, to pursue fiscal sanity over the accelerated government spending urged by President Barack Obama, as a threat the well-being of the American people. “President Obama lost an argument today with other world leaders, and some economists say that could plunge the world into a second recession,” Dan Harris intoned at the top of Sunday’s World News.

From Toronto, reporter David Kerley agreed: “The President lost the argument and there could be serious consequences. Some economists are saying what was decided in Toronto today could actually lead to a double-dip recession.” A dire Kerley elaborated: “The worry is that by turning off the stimulus spigot the fragile economic recovery could disappear and turn into a double-dip recession.”

ABC’s “some economists” turned out to be a single one, Professor Peter Morici of the University of Maryland, who ominously warned: “It will be very difficult to recover from that. Then we start to get into depression-like conditions.”

Kerley forecast not following Obama’s policies will mean “an unemployment rate that could rise again, this time above ten percent, no recovery in the housing market and an even tighter credit market. And all of this could last another two to three years.”

From the Sunday, June 27 World News on ABC:

DAN HARRIS: Good evening. President Obama lost an argument today with other world leaders, and some economists say that could plunge the world into a second recession. The President went to this weekend’s summit meeting in Canada to convince other wealthy nations to keep spending still stimulate their economies. But they said no, arguing now is the time to start cutting deficits. So, who is right here and what does that mean for your wallet? We’re going to start tonight with David Kerley, who is at the G-20 summit in Toronto. David, good evening.

DAVID KERLEY: Good evening, Dan. You’re right. The President lost the argument and there could be serious consequences. Some economists are saying what was decided in Toronto today could actually lead to a double-dip recession.

Screams and cheers for President Oobama during a photo shoot. But his G-20 colleagues didn’t buy his argument that they need to keep spending to stimulate their economies, rather than turning to cutting deficits.

STEPHEN HARPER, CANADIAN PRIME MINISTER: Advanced countries must send a clear message that as our stimulus plans expire, we will focus can on getting our fiscal houses in order. Specifically, we should agree that deficits will be halved by 2013.

KERLEY: It is a major split for the major economies, which have been on the same page for a year and a half. The President gave in, signaling as much when he met with the new British Prime Minister.

PRESIDENT OBAMA: There are going to be differentiated responses between the two countries because of our different positions, but we are aiming at the same direction which is long-term sustainable growth that puts people to work.

KERLEY: The worry is that by turning off the stimulus spigot the fragile economic recovery could disappear and turn into a double-dip recession.

PROFESSOR PETER MORICI, ECONOMIST, UNIVERSITY OF MARYLAND: It will be very difficult to recover from that. Then we start to get into depression-like conditions.

KERLEY: What does that mean? An unemployment rate that could rise again, this time above ten percent, no recovery in the housing market and an even tighter credit market. And all of this could last another two to three years.

MORICI: What Europe did today would be like taking up smoking. You don’t know when it’s going to make you sick, but it will make you sick.

KERLEY: The weekend meetings here in Toronto were targeted by protesters who took to the streets, burning cars and breaking windows. Canada spent nearly a billion dollars on security. That’s $12 million per hour that the world leaders were here in town. More than 500 protesters were arrested. Dan?

A truly extraordinary thing happened on this weekend’s "The Chris Matthews Show": the host asked his panel if former Alaska governor Sarah is the most important Republican in the country right now.

What made this even more surprising was how his guests – CNN’s Gloria Borger, Politico’s John Harris, the BBC’s Katty Kay, and former "CBS Evening News" host Dan Rather — seemed to feel she was.

Most bullish on Palin was Rather who said, "I wouldn’t underestimate her…If she decides to run, it would be hard to bet against her for the nomination."

For his part, Matthews played a little bit of a misdirection with his viewers by predictably bashing Palin during the program’s introduction (multiple videos follow with highlights and commentary): 

CHRIS MATTHEWS, HOST: She was a governor that couldn’t take it anymore. Ridiculed as a Bozo, all she could do was cash in get what she could on the way off the stage. But a year later, with zillions in her pocket, she’s an even better bet to run.

As the opening segment about President Obama and Generals McChrystal and Petraeus came to an end, Matthews told his viewers: 

MATTHEWS: Before we break, it was a year ago that Sarah Palin called that surprise news conference out there in the lawn in Wasilla to announce she was quitting as Alaska governor. David Letterman had a lot of fun with that.

What followed was one of Letterman’s typically derogatory "Top Tens" about Palin:

After the commercial, Matthews played a clip from Palin’s resignation speech last July:

SARAH PALIN: With this announcement that I’m not seeking re-election, I determined it is best to transfer the authority of governor, to Lieutenant Governor Parnell.

MATTHEWS: Transfer the authority? Well, she quit. A lot of people thought that was a short-sighted move, that quitting would end her career as an elected politician. Well, a year since then Palin’s made well over $12 million. Her first book "Going Rogue" was the year’s number one best-seller, made her $7 million in the advance. She gets $100,000 a speech, and Fox signed her to a TV deal. Besides getting to be rich, has she become, I would ask you open-ended, is she the most important Republican right now in the country?

Kay was the first to answer, making some surprisingly positive comments about the former Governor and her success assisting Republican candidates in recent primaries. 

When Matthews commented that Palin seems to be only backing winners, Borger countered that maybe they’re winning BECAUSE of her support. 

For his part, Harris was a little less enthusiastic, but also gave an uncharacteristically upbeat view of the former vice presidential candidate.

But the best was yet to come when Rather got his turn:

DAN RATHER: Well, she’s not running at the moment for President. But I wouldn’t underestimate her. She’s a version now of a Deacon with four aces. She can go a lot of different ways. She is playing an almost perfect hand. If she wants to stay a power in the Party, make a lot of money and not run, she can do that. I wouldn’t underestimate her even for 2012 for one second. If she decides to run, it would be hard to bet against her for the nomination.

MATTHEWS: Good point. Is she Richard Nixon? Is she going around and picking up chits, proving that she can deliver, carefully selecting winners, avoiding losers when they’re on the right, so that day after this election, like Nixon did in ‘66, "Look what I did for the party, I should be the nominee?"

RATHER: And goes into the convention with maybe thirty percent of the votes.

Imagine that.

For approaching two years, America’s press have been mercilessly eviscerating this woman with every opportunity.

Now, with Obama plummeting in the polls, and Democrats looking like they’re in a lot of trouble in the upcoming midterm elections, suddenly Palin is not only possibly the most important Republican in the country, but is also a legitimate candidate for President.

Is hell freezing over, or is something else at play here? 

Lara Logan, CBS’s chief foreign affairs correspondent, took to CNN’s Reliable Sources on Sunday to accuse Michael Hastings, who was interviewed by Howard Kurtz in the preceding segment, of using subterfuge and Rolling Stone of pushing an agenda in their hit piece on General Stanley McChrystal, both of which unfairly tarnished McCrystal and will lead to more military wariness toward the journalists. Logan castigated Hastings:

The question is, really, is what General McChrystal and his aides are doing so egregious, that they deserved to end a career like McChrystal’s? Michael Hastings has never served his country the way McChrystal has.

As for Hastings’ insistence he didn’t break any “off the record” ground rules, Logan declared: “Something doesn’t add up here. I just — I don’t believe it.”

The subterfuge really infuriated Logan: “What I find is the most telling thing about what Michael Hastings said in your interview is that he talked about his manner as pretending to build an illusion of trust and, you know, he’s laid out there what his game is. That is exactly the kind of damaging type of attitude that makes it difficult for reporters who are genuine about what they do….Clearly, you’ve got someone who is making friends with you, pretending to be sympathetic, pretending to be something that they’re not…”

Taking on Rolling Stone, Logan charged the “magazine put their own spin on this. They said that the greatest enemy for McChrystal is the wimps in Washington. Nowhere in the article does McChrystal refer to ‘the wimps in Washington.’ That’s Rolling Stone magazine, how they chose to cast this, to make it as sensational as possible. And that was with intent.”

(Logan echoed Newsweek’s Evan Thomas, who asserted on this weekend’s Inside Washington: “When they go to bars they…blow a lot of steam off. I don’t think the reporter should have printed that stuff.”)

In the pevious segment, Hastings insisted to Kurtz that he doesn’t have a political agenda: “If Bill O’Reilly is calling you a far-left critic, in my book, no matter what your political persuasion is, that probably means you’re doing a good job.”

(A couple of tweets I sent a few days ago about the political persuasions of McChrystal and Petraeus, starting with banning the wrong outlet:

> Marc Ambinder on McChrystal: A liberal, voted for Obama, “he banned Fox News from the TV sets in his headquarters.” http://bit.ly/cx1t8i

> Petraeus has home in NH where “his personal vehicle sports ‘Live Free or Die’ license plates.” Union Leader story: http://shar.es/mIeUw )

From the Sunday, June 27 Reliable Sources on CNN:

HOWARD KURTZ: If you had been traveling with General McChrystal and heard these comments about Barack Obama, Joe Biden, Jim Jones, Richard Holbrooke, would you have reported them?

LARA LOGAN, CBS CHIEF FOREIGN CORRESPONDENT: Well, it really depends on the circumstances. It’s hard to know — Michael Hastings, if you believe him, says that there were no ground rules laid out. And, I mean, that just doesn’t really make a lot of sense to me, because if you look at the people around General McChrystal, if you look at his history, he was the Joint Special Operations commander. He has a history of not interacting with the media at all.

And his chief of intelligence, Mike Flynn, is the same. I mean, I know these people. They never let their guard down like that. To me, something doesn’t add up here. I just — I don’t believe it.

KURTZ: When you are out with the troops and you’re living together and sleeping together, is there an unspoken agreement-

LOGAN: Absolutely.

KURTZ: -that you’re not going to embarrass them by reporting insults and banter?

LOGAN: Yes.

KURTZ: Tell me about that.

LOGAN: Yes, absolutely. There is an element of trust. And what I find is the most telling thing about what Michael Hastings said in your interview is that he talked about his manner as pretending to build an illusion of trust and, you know, he’s laid out there what his game is. That is exactly the kind of damaging type of attitude that makes it difficult for reporters who are genuine about what they do, who don’t — I don’t go around in my personal life pretending to be one thing and then being something else. I mean, I find it egregious that anyone would do that in their professional life.

And, I mean, I take that to the point of, even when I apply to interview someone about something difficult, and they want to know the areas of the interview, I might not say, well, we’re going to spend the whole interview on this, but I will list that. I will list that controversial issue.

KURTZ: Because you don’t want to blindside them.

LOGAN: Because I don’t believe in that.

KURTZ: But don’t beat reporters — aren’t they nice to people to gain their confidence, and sometimes they have to write things that are not flattering?

LOGAN: Of course. I mean, the military is a good example. I have never been — they never know what to do with me because I’ve never been accused of being right wing. And they want to paint me as left wing because they expect the media to be that way. But, if you look at my body of work, it’s been always been accurate and fair.

Now, Michael Hastings might look at my body of work and say, well, there’s an example of another one of those reporters, unlike me, that didn’t go and tell the truth because they wanted to come back. That’s not the case at all.

KURTZ: He says that all of the things that have been written about Stanley McChrystal have been these glowing profiles. He’s suggesting that he did a job that the regular beat journalists have not done.

LOGAN: I think that’s insulting and arrogant, myself. I really do, because there are very good beat reporters who have been covering these wars for years, year after year. Michael Hastings appeared in Baghdad fairly late on the scene, and he was there for a significant period of time. He has his credentials, but he’s not the only one.

There are a lot of very good reporters out there. And to be fair to the military, if they believe that a piece is balanced, they will let you back. They may not have loved it. They didn’t love the piece I did about hand grenades being thrown in Iraq that were killing troops. They didn’t love that piece, it made a lot of people very angry. They didn’t block me from coming back.

KURTZ: The Washington Post quoted an unnamed senior military official as saying that Michael Hastings broke the off-the-record ground rules. But the person who said this was on background and wouldn’t allow his name to be used. Is that fair?

LOGAN: Well, it’s Kryptonite right now. I mean, do you blame them? The commanding general in Afghanistan just lost his job. Who else is going to lose his job? Believe me, all the senior leadership in Afghanistan are waiting for the ax to fall. I’ve been speaking to some of them. They don’t know who’s going to stay and who’s going to go.

I mean, the question is, really, is what General McChrystal and his aides are doing so egregious, that they deserved to end a career like McChrystal’s? Michael Hastings has never served his country the way McChrystal has.

KURTZ: Is this going to prompt the military, in general, the commanders in Afghanistan in particular, to be more wary of journalists?

LOGAN: Of course, because what you see is not what you get. Clearly, you’ve got someone who is making friends with you, pretending to be sympathetic, pretending to be something that they’re not, and then they’re taking what you say — when you start an article with General McChrystal making obscene gestures, you’re not even using something that he said.

And Rolling Stone magazine put their own spin on this. They said that the greatest enemy for McChrystal is the wimps in Washington. Nowhere in the article does McChrystal refer to "the wimps in Washington." That’s Rolling Stone magazine, how they chose to cast this, to make it as sensational as possible. And that was with intent.

MSNBC afternoon host Dylan Ratigan took to the ramparts of The Huffington Post on Thursday and urged home owners to stop paying their mortgages as a leftist protest against a government too cozy with the bankers. The title was "They Keep Stealing — Why Keep Paying?"  

The crisis was all Wall Street’s fault, and now they’re back to paying themselves bonuses after a federal bailout. So stop paying them. (Notice Ratigan doesn’t suggest you protest Washington and TARP by refusing to pay your taxes.) This piece sounds like a direct-mail letter:

You didn’t cause this mess. They did.

Now you are struggling to make the same payments on this mortgage on your now overpriced home even in light of a crashing economy and massive deflation, all while the government does everything in its power to help Wall St. keep the bonuses coming.

Well, it is becoming time to take matters into your own hands… I suggest that you call your lender and tell them if they don’t lower you mortgage by at least 20%, you are walking away. And if they don’t agree, you need to consider walking away.

It probably doesn’t feel right to you.

That is because you probably are a good person. But your mortgage is a business deal, and it is not immoral to walk away from a business deal unless you went in to the deal with the intention of defaulting.

But somehow, even though the corporations are pumped to exercise their new rights, former bankers like Henry Paulson, current ones like Jamie Dimon and — get this — now even Fannie Mae execs want to keep you from exercising your rights.

But before you let them (or anyone commenting below) force you into paying that $500k mortgage on a $300k house, ask them if they’ll push Jerry Speyer into "honoring his obligation" by breaking into his $2 billion personal piggy-bank to keep paying for Stuyvesant Town?

Or how about asking Hank and Jamie to lecture fellow bailed-out CEO John Mack about how "you’re supposed to meet your obligations, not run from them"? Maybe make him use some of his $50+ million for those buildings he bought in San Francisco?

And before shaming and punishing American homeowners, did they nag Steve Feinberg about helping "teach the American people…not to run away" by writing a check out of his billion-dollar pocket to cover all the stiffed landlords and vendors at Mervyn’s? After all, at least you aren’t single-handedly putting 1,100 employees out of work when you walk on your mortgage.

As part of the deal for your house, your mortgage holder gets interest payments from you and they also use the note to your house for their capital reserves. In return, they take the risk of a foreclosure. In many states, you paid extra to have a non-recourse loan where the lender just gets the house back if you stop paying — your interest rate would’ve been much lower if you were held personally liable like a student loan. But if you still feel bad, then donate the money saved to charity instead of to their bonuses.

Even if you agreed that everyone on Wall Street is a knave and a thief, Ratigan is still preaching that two wrongs make a right. Or, to be more precise, the second wrong helps the populist agitators regain "our captured government" from the financial elite. (Did he clear that phrase with Chris Matthews, because it sounds "dangerously anti-government," doesn’t it?)

Meanwhile, our captured government has made it clear that they want to further reward these banksters because there are clearly better ways to "save" the economy without rewarding those most responsible for the damage.

Instead of claw backs for the past theft and strong financial reform for the future, they choose to cover-up the gross misuse of our tax money, making our country worse by helping the criminals on the backs of the most honest.

But thankfully, in this country we still have the tools to fight back and regain our country. Our vote, our voice, our laws and what we choose to do with every penny we have that doesn’t go to taxes are the benefits of our hard-fought freedom, and in this battle we must use them all to fight back. It’s time for the citizens to once again own this place.

[HT: Jack Coleman]

As pathetic as Joe Biden’s thin-skinned "Why do you have to be such a smart-a**" comment to a Milwaukee-area custard shop manager was yesterday (covered at NewsBusters; at BizzyBlog), it wasn’t even the Vice President’s worst Wisconsin Saturday moment.

A far worse moment, in terms of familiarity with the truth, occurred as Biden rewrote history and unilaterally revised economic growth upward in a speech to Democrats in support of Senator Russ Feingold’s reelection.

In a CBS News online report by Stephanie Condon that I suspect will not make it to the airwaves Biden was dour and downbeat, while misstating economic reality:

Biden: We Can’t Recover All the Jobs Lost

Vice President Joe Biden gave a stark assessment of the economy today, telling an audience of supporters, "there’s no possibility to restore 8 million jobs lost in the Great Recession."

Appearing at a fundraiser with Sen. Russ Feingold (D-Wisc.) in Milwaukee, the vice president remarked that by the time he and President Obama took office in 2008, the gross domestic product had shrunk and hundreds of thousands of jobs had been lost.

"We inherited a godawful mess," he said, adding there was "no way to regenerate $3 trillion that was lost. Not misplaced, lost."

… Biden said today the economy is improving and noted that in the past four quarters, there has been 4 percent growth in the economy. Over the last five months, more than 500,000 private sector jobs were created.

I have no idea how Biden arrived at his $3 trillion figure; I’m guessing Ms. Condon doesn’t either.

One very minor error: The Vice President’s claim that "more than 500,000 private sector jobs were created" is false, but barely. On a seasonally adjusted basis, it’s 495,000, per the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

The big error: GDP growth has been nowhere near 4% during the past four quarters, no matter how you define "the past four quarters" (compounding was ignored for simplicity’s sake):

The 2.5% estimate for 2Q10 is based on the assertion in this Friday Associated Press report that "Economists expect slower growth ahead" from 1Q10’s annualized 2.7%.

Biden’s economic growth assertion is nowhere near true no matter how one interprets it. If 2Q10 growth comes in at an annualized 5.5% or higher, readers can come back and crow that Biden was really right. Good luck with that.

Stephanie Condon should have known better than to blindly relay Biden’s false assertion. Does anyone else besides me think that she would have checked it out if Dick Cheney had said it instead?

Photo at top right is at CBS link via AP.

Cross-posted at BizzyBlog.com.

George Will on Sunday gave a much-needed economics lesson to New York Times Washington correspondent David Sanger that greatly demonstrated the difference between how conservatives and liberals view unemployment benefits.

As the Roundtable segment of ABC’s "This Week" shifted to the G20 summit in Toronto, Sanger said, "Just the day before [Barack Obama] left, Congress could not come to an agreement on a very small extension of unemployment benefits, you know, the most basic stimulus effort that the President tried to push."

Host Jake Tapper asked, "George, why can’t they pass this extension?"

With the ball sitting up nicely on the tee, Will smacked it out of the park (video follows with transcript and commentary, relevant section at 4:10):  

DAVID SANGER, NEW YORK TIMES: The President’s also in the position in Canada of saying, "Don’t do as I do, do as I say." I mean, just the day before he left, Congress could not come to an agreement on a very small extension of unemployment benefits, you know, the most basic stimulus effort that the President tried to push.

JAKE TAPPER, HOST: 1.2 Million Americans are going to lose their unemployment extensions, or unemployment benefits this week.

SANGER: That’s right. So there’s a fundamental stimulus action and the President had to go up and tell the Europeans they were not doing enough for stimulus.

TAPPER: George, why can’t they pass this extension? I don’t understand. The Republicans say, "Let spending cuts should pay for this." The Democrats say, "No, it’s emergency spending." It seems that this is something where there could be a compromise.

GEORGE WILL: Well, partly because they believe that when you subsidize something, you get more of it, and we’re subsidizing unemployment. That is the long-term unemployment, those unemployed more than six months is at an all-time high. And they want, they do not think that it is stimulative because what stimulates is the consumer and the saver’s sense of permanent income. And everyone knows that unemployment benefits are not permanent income.

Indeed.

Unfortunately, much of America’s media have the same misconception that extending unemployment benefits helps the economy. 

Of course, nothing could be further from the truth for those receiving such benefits aren’t going to increase their spending because they don’t know how long they’ll be unemployed. Beyond this, they feel little need to get back into the workforce until their benefits expire.

This means that despite what folks like Sanger believe and write about, extending unemployment benefits has no economically stimulative impact. 

As such, calling this extension an economic stimulus is like calling an ox a bull: he’s thankful for the compliment, but would much rather have back what is rightfully his.

Nice job, George. 

On Sunday’s Reliable Sources on CNN, host Howard Kurtz played a portion of a video montage that was posted both on NewsBusters and on NB’s parent organization the Media Research Center’s Web site showing that correspondents on several broadcast and news networks lavished excessive praise on President Obama by calling his decision to replace General Stanley McChrystal with General David Petraeus a "brilliant" move. The CNN host played the portion of the clip that was shown on Thursday’s The O’Reilly Factor on FNC.

But, as he brought up the montage with guest Lara Logan of CBS News, Kurtz missed the point as he suggested that the MRC/NewsBusters was somehow complaining that the "liberal media are in love with David Petraeus and they’re falling into line," when, in reality, the point was journalistic infatuation with Obama illustrated by so many media figures using the same word, "brilliant," and that since Petraeus is so obviously well qualified for the position it hardly takes genius to name him to the post.

Logan, accepting Kurtz’s flawed premise, responded: "Well, if they had said it was a bad decision, then it would be ‘the liberal media hate David Petraeus and they’re not falling into line.’" She later concluded that the decision was, indeed, "brilliant" on Obama’s part: "The only way he had to ensure, to silence the critics and really to move on, this reassured the troops, this reassured the commanders, this reassured people who were in favor of it – the Afghans, the allies. That’s why people are calling it brilliant, maybe because it was brilliant."

Below is a transcript of the relevant portion of the June 27 Reliable Sources on CNN:

HOWARD KURTZ: Bill O’Reilly, on his Fox News show, played a clip – some clips had been put together by the conservative Media Research Center, the Newsbusters site. I want to show that to you now.

CHIP REID, CBS NEWS : Sounds like a pretty brilliant decision really.

JIM MIKLASZEWSKI. NBC NEWS : This is nothing less than a stunning development, Brian, and, quite frankly, at a quick glance, almost brilliant.

CHUCK TODD, NBC NEWS : Politically, in this town, it’s going to be seen as a brilliant choice by the President-

WOLF BLITZER, CNN: -a very brilliant move to tap General Petraeus-

KURTZ: So the suggestion is that the liberal media are in love with David Petraeus and they’re falling into line.

LARA LOGAN, CBS NEWS: Well, if they had said it was a bad decision, then it would be "the liberal media hate David Petraeus and they’re not falling into line." The one line is it’s very hard to find something wrong with this decision by the President because there was only one general in the United States Army who has the political weight and influence in Washington to survive this. Anyone else going into that position who wasn’t tested, who wasn’t proven, who didn’t have political connections, would have been a lame duck. They would have been able to do nothing. President Obama faced a serious choice here. Was his strategy going to die with General McChrystal? Because there’s a lot of opposition from very powerful people in Washington who want to move to a very different model of counterterrorism and not counterinsurgency. The only way he had to ensure, to silence the critics and really to move on, this reassured the troops, this reassured the commanders, this reassured people who were in favor of it – the Afghans, the allies. That’s why people are calling it brilliant, maybe because it was brilliant.

Karen Nelson of the Biloxi Sun Herald wrote a report picked up by McClatchy Newspapers about the incredible level of frustration felt by the people living along the Gulf of Mexico over the severe lack of skimmers available in that region to combat the BP oil spill. She went into detail explaining the anger felt by the Gulf residents over the fact that few skimmers are cleaning up the oil. However, one thing that seems to be mostly ignored, except in passing, is WHY so few skimmers are currently in the Gulf.

First the frustration felt over by the Gulf residents:

GULFPORT, Miss. — A morning flight over the Mississippi Sound showed long, wide ribbons of orange-colored oil for as far as the eye could see and acres of both heavy and light sheen moving into the Sound between the barrier islands. What was missing was any sign of skimming operations from Horn Island to Pass Christian.

Why?

 U.S. Rep. Gene Taylor got off the flight angry.

"It’s criminal what’s going on out there," Taylor said minutes later. "This doesn’t have to happen.”

A scientist onboard, Mike Carron with the Northern Gulf Institute, said with this scenario, there will be oil on the beaches of the mainland.

“There’s oil in the Sound and there was no skimming,” Carron said. “No coordinated effort.”

Why?

Back on land in Gulfport, Taylor let loose.

“A lot of people are getting paid to say, ‘Look! There’s oil’ and not doing anything about it,” Taylor said. “There shouldn’t be a drop of oil in the Sound. There are enough boats running around."

“Nobody’s in charge,” Taylor said. “Everybody’s in charge, so no one’s in charge."

Why? In the next sentence Congressman Roger Wicker comes close to the truth but the story does not elaborate:

Taylor and U.S. Sen. Roger Wicker, R-Miss., took the morning flight on a National Guard helicopter with representatives of the state DEQ and BP.

After the flight Wicker said he feels it’s not too late for President Barack Obama to accept help from other countries that have offered the services of their large oil-skimming boats.

Wicker blamed bureaucracy and the president, but said, “Mississippi has been a champ from the beginning of this.”

And these brief hints are all a reader can find in this story as to WHY so few skimmers are in the Gulf. We learn about the anger felt over the lack of skimmers but beyond the above hints, it pretty much remains a mystery to the casual reader of this oddly incomplete article as to WHY the skimmers are missing. 

Perhaps a review of the recent comments by Florida Senator George LeMieux on the floor of the U.S. Senate could shed some light on the missing WHY in this story:

Why are there so few skimmers in the Gulf of Mexico? 

Yeah, why, George? The article was no real help in answering that question but perhaps you can provide those conspicuously missing blanks:

… there was a State Department report stating that 21 instances of help have been made and they were refused. Come to find out through discussions with my office that there are still offers and there have been offers from foreign countries and ports for skimmers and that, in fact, those skimmers were refused.

… the state of affairs is that there are only now 20 skimmers off the coast of Florida for. When there were 32 last week, there are now just 20.

While there are 2,000 skimmers available in the United States alone. That number comes from Admiral Allen.

So what was reason for so few skimmers in the Gulf when so many are available?

Now, when I talked to the President and Admiral Allen about this last week, they said, look, some of these skimmers are not available because we may need them for an oil spill. Well, we have an oil spill.

Huh?

And just because they may be required to stand on watch somewhere in case an oil spill happens someplace else, that’s like saying to the people in Pensacola, your home is on fire but we can’t send the fire engine because there may be a fire someplace else.

The rationale by the administration for the lack of skimmers in the Gulf, on top of their initial refusal of skimmers offered by the Dutch, is beyond absurd. And you wouldn’t really know the reason for that lack of skimmers by reading the McClatchy report about…the lack of skimmers.

President Obama’s former spiritual advisor, the Reverend Jeremiah Wright, gave a seminar at the University of Chicago last week in which he made numerous anti-Semitic remarks while once again attacking white people.

According to the New York Post, during the five-day course that cost up to $1,000, Wright claimed "whites and Jews are controlling the flow of worldwide information and oppressing blacks in Israel and America."

"White folk done took this country," Wright said. "You’re in their home, and they’re gonna let you know it." 

Despite the astonishingly racist comments during this week-long event, as well as his former connection to the current President of the United States, not one media outlet besides the Post reported what transpired at the Chicago Theological Seminary on the university campus. Not one!

For those that can stand it, here are some more disgraceful things uttered by the man our President worshiped with for twenty years (h/t Weasel Zippers):

"You are not now, nor have you ever been, nor will you ever be a brother to white folk," he said. "And if you do not realize that, you are in serious trouble."

He cited the writings of Bill Jones — author of the book "Is God a White Racist?" — as proof that white people cannot be trusted. "Bill said, ‘They just killed four of their own at Kent State. They’ll step on you like a cockroach and keep on movin’, cause you not a brother to them.’ "

Wright referred to Italians as "Mamma Luigi" and "pizzeria." He said the educational system in America is designed by whites to miseducate blacks "not by benign neglect but by malignant intent."

He said Ethiopian Jews are despised by white Jews: "And now the Knesset [Israeli parliament] is meeting with European Jews, voting on whether or not these African Jews can get into [Israel]."

The civil-rights movement, Wright said, was never about racial equality: "It was always about becoming white . . . to master what [they] do." Martin Luther King, he said, was misguided for advocating nonviolence among his people, "born in the oven of America."

"We probably have more African-Americans who’ve been brainwashed than we have South Africans who’ve been brainwashed," he said, and seemed to allude to President Obama twice: "Unfortunately, I got in trouble with a fella for saying this . . . All your commentaries are written by oppressors." At the mention of Nation of Islam head Louis Farrakhan — whom Obama disavowed during the campaign — black leaders "go cuttin’ and duckin’," he said.

As media ignore the disgusting things this man says, they are complicit in separating him from the man he once advised spiritually.

It’s as if Obama never sat in the pews of the Trinity Church and his Reverend never existed. 

Matt Drudge is currently linking to the YouTube version (also carried at Real Clear Politics) of Milwaukee TV station WISN’s report on Vice President Joe Biden’s visit to a Greenfield, Wisconsin custard shop. In it, you can hear the following exchange between Biden and the Kopp’s Custard manager:

Biden: What do we owe you?
Manager: Don’t worry. It’s on us. … (inaudible) … Lower our taxes and we’ll call it even.

A more complete version of the station’s report carried at the Freedom’s Lighthouse web site indicates that the comment must have bothered Biden a bit:

Reporter: A few minutes after the Kopp’s manager’s comment on "Lower our taxes," there’s another exchange.
Biden: Why don’t you say something nice instead of being a smart-ass all the time? Say something nice.

A bit touchy there, aren’t we?

The Real Clear Politics post claims Biden made his "smart-ass" remark "jokingly."

I don’t think so, nor did the Kopp’s manager, as seen at the extended Freedom’s House version of the video:

Reporter: Afterwards, the manager said he enjoyed his banter with the Vice President.
Manager: He was very nice. He’s got a great personality.
Reporter: But the manager admits the Vice President didn’t seem happy at first about the "lower our taxes" comment.
Manager: I don’t think he liked it, no, but later he whispered … "Just kidding."

Go to the Freedom’s Lighthouse link and judge Biden’s demeanor for yourself.

Also, doesn’t the manager’s "great personality" comment seem like the kind of thing you might hear about a potential blind date that you would want to avoid?

Cross-posted at BizzyBlog.com.

For general discussion and debate. Possible talking point: Biden calls a Milwaukee custard shop owner a smartass just for asking to have his taxes cut!

Thoughts? 

*****Update: Tom Blumer has more on this latest Biden gaffe here. 

Naturally, Kathleen Parker used her Sunday space on the Washington Post to do what every other Parker column in The Washington Post has sought to do: prepare for the next career step. That would mean proclaiming her humility, shock and/or horror that she would get a nightly prime time hour on CNN, defending/excusing Eliot Spitzer, and declaring that she’s keeping her syndicated column (after all, the ratings might not be promising). Her tender solicitations for Spitzer and his genius in tackling Wall Street are the pink-nausea-pill part:

He was prescient about Wall Street, in other words, long before the recent financial crisis. Who wouldn’t be interested in what he has to say about financial reform today?

I’m not defending Spitzer or condoning his behavior. [Ahem, yes, you are.] Ultimately, I decided that his obvious intelligence, insights and potential contributions outweighed his other record. As far as I’m concerned, especially given that he has resigned from public office, the flaws that brought Spitzer down are between him and his family. Like most Americans, I believe in redemption.

In the Parker career plan, then, this is the motto: I don’t believe in the creepy G-O-D people who are ruining the Republican Party with their “oogedy-boogedy armband religion” of redemption, but I do believe in the redemption of people who can be my meal ticket on CNN at "almost $700,000 a year."

In addition to that number, the New York Post also reported that former CNN host Connie Chung dumped on the new project: "It’s sadly comical…and this is terribly disillusioning. Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert will give you more solid journalism than this program could possibly give." Ouch.

Parker’s Sunday column-slash-commercial has moments that are beyond parody. Mrs. Parker writes from "The Bunker," and she is so writerly and anti-social that "Except when out for interviews and reporting, I mostly keep the company of one tiny blind poodle recently adopted from a shelter." (Please report this to the NutraSweet Toxicity Information Center.) She loves shelter dogs, and those drooling, cheating politician dogs.   

But the commercial continues. You’ll love this CNN show, she promises, because it will be like a "very interesting dinner party" (without the food or drinks). She is overcoming her quiet life with the Bunker and the poodle to be the Republican version of Alan Colmes: 

That relatively quiet life is about to end, and I leave it with a mixture of excitement and trepidation.

The trepidation is no mystery. It is the same for me as it would be for you. The excitement has to do with trying something new and challenging, as well as having resources at my disposal to explore the issues that really matter. For me those are the things we consider on our deathbeds — not who is up or down on a given day but how we have occupied our allotted space. Did we leave it better or worse? Did we cause someone to smile or laugh?

Although the show is still in development, we intend to include regular contributors and guests selected in part from our own Rolodexes. Think of it as eavesdropping on a very interesting dinner party.

It will be "interesting" because it won’t be a "food fight." I’m sure that’s what CNN promised with the last several failed shows in the 8 pm hour. At this point, they ought to promise that watching Eliot and Kathleen fight will be almost as interesting as Mr. and Mrs. Spitzer fighting. If you’re going to build a show around shameless tabloid adultery, you ought to go whole-hog. But Mrs. Parker is above all that. In fact, she’s above the demeaning sphere of television: 

I’m on record about my general dislike of the food-fight mentality of most television programming, which we hope to avoid. I’ve also expressed my kinship with aborigines who believe that the camera steals the soul. I think they’re on to something.

If she really believed her own sales talk, she would have turned down the job, and the embarrassing you’ll-love-Eliot talk that comes with it.

The first time I attacked Parker for selling out the conservative side to get on TV, she e-mailed me protesting that she wasn’t doing this to appear on the Chris Matthews Show, which she then began regularly doing. I would hope she’s beyond pretending now that she’s not selling out to get on liberal TV.

Chris Matthews on Friday said Republicans are like suicide bombers trying to destroy the government for their own political benefit.

In a "Hardball" discussion with Rep. Jim Moran (D-Va.) and Politico’s Jim VandeHei, Matthews said, "Republicans have been able to get up in the morning every day saying our goal is to destroy the government. That`s our job. And somehow its cheering section back home says, ‘Good work. Keep trying to destroy the government.’"

After VandeHei said the strategy might be working because the GOP looks to do well this November, Matthews asked, "Well, what good does it do the country for the Republicans to pick up 30 seats in the House?"

VandeHei responded, "I don`t know if it does anything good for the country…Right now, we have an entire system, we have a media system, we have a culture, we have technology that really I think rewards the incendiary, rewards conflict."

This led Matthews to amazingly say, "Being a suicide bomber is the new political role model. Just kill everything, destroy everything. Blow it up. Nothing gets done. You`re dead, but who cares?" (video follows with transcript and commentary): 

CHRIS MATTHEWS, HOST: You know, what is interesting is the — I don`t how you start this, Jim. It`s not you or my job to do it, but somewhere along the line, it seems somebody has got to say the United States government is based on the idea you have a minority and a majority.

It`s not based on the idea you have got one party trying to do something, the other party trying to kill them.

REP. JIM MORAN (D), VIRGINIA: Right.

MATTHEWS: It`s based on one party being the senior partner, and the other trying to get its oar in and make some amendments and try to change some things its way. The minority`s job is not to destroy the United States government every time it gets up in the morning.

And yet, the Republicans have been able to get up in the morning every day saying our goal is to destroy the government. That`s our job. And somehow its cheering section back home says, good work. Keep trying to destroy the government.

It`s an amazing definition of the opposition.

(CROSSTALK)

JIM VANDEHEI, POLITICO.COM: I don`t know if it`s necessary destroy the government, but it`s definitely they wake up — it`s destroy any policy from Obama. There`s no doubt, Chris, that is the strategy.

(CROSSTALK)

MATTHEWS: Isn`t that new in American politics to try to destroy anything that comes out of the White House?

VANDEHEI: It certainly works.

(CROSSTALK)

VANDEHEI: And part of it — it`s worse now mostly because most of the moderates that used to live inside the Republican Party that lived up in the Northeast were purged out of the party over the last three or four elections.

So, there`s very few moderates per se left. There might be three or four left in the Senate. And those are the ones that Democrats are working over to make sure that they have enough votes to get this financial bill through.

So, the only way you are going to have any Republicans who want to work with Democrats or if Republicans actually pick up a bunch of seats in some of those swing districts and bring in some voices of moderation that want to work with Democrats, but right now there`s no incentive in the mind of Republicans to do anything to help Obama or to help Democrats, because they feel that they have the momentum. They feel that they can easily win 30 seats and quite likely pick up many more if they play their cards right.

So, there`s no way that they`re suddenly going to say, hey, wait a second, let`s work with Obama. That`s just not — that`s not the mind-set for them.

MATTHEWS: To what effect? Well, what good does it do the country for the Republicans — just to ask the question, what good does it do the country for the Republicans to pick up 30 seats in the House?

VANDEHEI: I don`t know if it does anything good for the country.

(LAUGHTER)

VANDEHEI: But it might do…

MATTHEWS: I mean, it`s a reasonable question to ask.

(LAUGHTER)

(CROSSTALK)

VANDEHEI: You might have more people that would be willing to work with Obama, and you might have Obama more willing to work with Republicans.

Right now, we have an entire system, we have a media system, we have a culture, we have technology that really I think rewards the incendiary, rewards conflict. And, therefore, Republicans right now don`t see any incentive to work with him.

And that`s not going to change between now and Election Day. It might not change Election Day. Heck, it could get a lot worse, if you look at some of the senators who might get elected, especially from the Republican side.

(CROSSTALK)

MATTHEWS: Being a suicide bomber is the new political role model. Just kill everything, destroy everything. Blow it up. Nothing gets done. You`re dead, but who cares?

Thank you, Congressman Jim Moran.

Thank you, Jim VandeHei of the Politico, the very hot Politico.

Wow!

The partisanship demonstrated by Matthews and VandeHei here was almost astonishing.

Is this really the state of journalism in America today when two members of the media have a discussion with a Democrat wherein they can’t see any good coming from Republicans winning in an upcoming election and actually refer to elected officials on the right side of the aisle as suicide bombers?

How did we get to this point in our history when so many members of the press are clearly just shills for the Party on the left?

Maybe more importantly, how do we rectify this condition so that such activism in the media is frowned upon rather than celebrated? 

Chris Matthews on Friday said Republicans are like suicide bombers trying to destroy the government for their own political benefit.

In a "Hardball" discussion with Rep. Jim Moran (D-Va.) and Politico’s Jim VandeHei, Matthews said, "Republicans have been able to get up in the morning every day saying our goal is to destroy the government. That`s our job. And somehow its cheering section back home says, ‘Good work. Keep trying to destroy the government.’"

After VandeHei said the strategy might be working because the GOP looks to do well this November, Matthews asked, "Well, what good does it do the country for the Republicans to pick up 30 seats in the House?"

VandeHei responded, "I don`t know if it does anything good for the country…Right now, we have an entire system, we have a media system, we have a culture, we have technology that really I think rewards the incendiary, rewards conflict."

This led Matthews to amazingly say, "Being a suicide bomber is the new political role model. Just kill everything, destroy everything. Blow it up. Nothing gets done. You`re dead, but who cares?" (video follows with transcript and commentary): 

CHRIS MATTHEWS, HOST: You know, what is interesting is the — I don`t how you start this, Jim. It`s not you or my job to do it, but somewhere along the line, it seems somebody has got to say the United States government is based on the idea you have a minority and a majority.

It`s not based on the idea you have got one party trying to do something, the other party trying to kill them.

REP. JIM MORAN (D), VIRGINIA: Right.

MATTHEWS: It`s based on one party being the senior partner, and the other trying to get its oar in and make some amendments and try to change some things its way. The minority`s job is not to destroy the United States government every time it gets up in the morning.

And yet, the Republicans have been able to get up in the morning every day saying our goal is to destroy the government. That`s our job. And somehow its cheering section back home says, good work. Keep trying to destroy the government.

It`s an amazing definition of the opposition.

(CROSSTALK)

JIM VANDEHEI, POLITICO.COM: I don`t know if it`s necessary destroy the government, but it`s definitely they wake up — it`s destroy any policy from Obama. There`s no doubt, Chris, that is the strategy.

(CROSSTALK)

MATTHEWS: Isn`t that new in American politics to try to destroy anything that comes out of the White House?

VANDEHEI: It certainly works.

(CROSSTALK)

VANDEHEI: And part of it — it`s worse now mostly because most of the moderates that used to live inside the Republican Party that lived up in the Northeast were purged out of the party over the last three or four elections.

So, there`s very few moderates per se left. There might be three or four left in the Senate. And those are the ones that Democrats are working over to make sure that they have enough votes to get this financial bill through.

So, the only way you are going to have any Republicans who want to work with Democrats or if Republicans actually pick up a bunch of seats in some of those swing districts and bring in some voices of moderation that want to work with Democrats, but right now there`s no incentive in the mind of Republicans to do anything to help Obama or to help Democrats, because they feel that they have the momentum. They feel that they can easily win 30 seats and quite likely pick up many more if they play their cards right.

So, there`s no way that they`re suddenly going to say, hey, wait a second, let`s work with Obama. That`s just not — that`s not the mind-set for them.

MATTHEWS: To what effect? Well, what good does it do the country for the Republicans — just to ask the question, what good does it do the country for the Republicans to pick up 30 seats in the House?

VANDEHEI: I don`t know if it does anything good for the country.

(LAUGHTER)

VANDEHEI: But it might do…

MATTHEWS: I mean, it`s a reasonable question to ask.

(LAUGHTER)

(CROSSTALK)

VANDEHEI: You might have more people that would be willing to work with Obama, and you might have Obama more willing to work with Republicans.

Right now, we have an entire system, we have a media system, we have a culture, we have technology that really I think rewards the incendiary, rewards conflict. And, therefore, Republicans right now don`t see any incentive to work with him.

And that`s not going to change between now and Election Day. It might not change Election Day. Heck, it could get a lot worse, if you look at some of the senators who might get elected, especially from the Republican side.

(CROSSTALK)

MATTHEWS: Being a suicide bomber is the new political role model. Just kill everything, destroy everything. Blow it up. Nothing gets done. You`re dead, but who cares?

Thank you, Congressman Jim Moran.

Thank you, Jim VandeHei of the Politico, the very hot Politico.

Wow!

The partisanship demonstrated by Matthews and VandeHei here was almost astonishing.

Is this really the state of journalism in America today when two members of the media have a discussion with a Democrat wherein they can’t see any good coming from Republicans winning in an upcoming election and actually refer to elected officials on the right side of the aisle as suicide bombers?

How did we get to this point in our history when so many members of the press are clearly just shills for the Party on the left?

Maybe more importantly, how do we rectify this condition so that such activism in the media is frowned upon rather than celebrated? 

If Janeane Garofalo says something bad about the Obama administration, does that mean she’s a racist redneck?

After all, she’s been telling people almost since Inauguration Day that anyone that disagrees with this president does so because of the color of his skin.

So when she told the A.V. Club Friday, "There are so many things in the Obama administration to be sick over that certainly didn’t change" and "I was surprised how disappointing the Obama administration has turned out to be," there has to be a racist element in play, right?

Not surprising to folks that have followed the career of this shameless left-wing activist, this wasn’t the only glaring hypocrisy in this interview (h/t Big Hollywood): 

AVC: You gave an interview several years back, deep in the heart of the Bush administration, where you said that the reason that you didn’t do stand-up as much then was that you didn’t find anything funny anymore. So can we assume that you’re ready to laugh again?

JG: Yeah, there was so much stuff that broke my heart during the Bush years that I honestly could not do stand-up without going down one of those tangents and getting very strident. But also I was working at Air America five nights a week, so it was very difficult to do stand-up, because I wasn’t leaving Air America until 11 p.m. So there was that. Now, granted, there are still as many heartbreaking things going on. There are so many things in the Obama administration to be sick over that certainly didn’t change. And also our media, if it’s possible, seems to be getting even worse. The alleged news media. And then there are the teabag racists adding insult to injury. But I don’t have that same heartbreak anymore, because it’s not fresh heartbreak anymore. It’s like I’m used to it. I’m sure we all are just used to it.

I have to say I was surprised how disappointing the Obama administration has turned out to be. That did take me by surprise.

Readers should recall what Garofalo said about folks expressing their displeasure with the Obama administration in April 2009:

Which, let’s be very honest about what this is about. It’s not about bashing Democrats, it’s not about taxes, they have no idea what the Boston tea party was about, they don’t know their history at all. This is about hating a black man in the White House. This is racism straight up.

So, when white conservatives express their displeasure with the Obama administration, it’s "racism straight up."

But when she does it, not so much.

Not seeing the hypocrisy, Garofalo moments later reiterated her position about Tea Party members: 

AVC: You did spend last year as a very visible target of right-wing hate because of that comment you made about teabaggers.

JG: But I don’t know if it’s on anybody’s mind. It’s on the teabagger-type mind, but I don’t know if it’s on normal people’s minds. Does that make sense? The teabagger thing and the right-wing thing-they pick easy targets, and a female in the entertainment industry is low-hanging fruit. It’s very easy to mock and marginalize people in general who are in the entertainment industry, for some reason. But then definitely there’s the double standard and the misogyny that goes through it as well. They’ve got no problem with Will Ferrell or Alec Baldwin or Viggo Mortensen, but they tend to take issue when a female says something. It’s just an easier person to bully. And they just love making mountains out of molehills. It’s just a fact. If you don’t recognize the racist element in the teabag movement, you’re either dishonest, or you’ve never seen the teabag movement, or heard of it, or been acquainted with it in any way.

Ah, so the reason folks on the right go after her is because they’re misogynists.

Let’s add up the paranoia at play: when conservatives attack Obama, they’re racists; when they attack her, they’re sexists.

Honestly, this is a woman in SERIOUS need of psycho-therapy.

Regardless, let’s address her misogyny theory, shall we?

Garofalo claimed the right-wing has no problem with Alec Baldwin. Maybe she ought to check our Alec Baldwin page to get a clue, as he’s been the subject of almost twenty reports since NewsBusters’ inception.

We’ve also done pieces about Will Ferrell’s stupidity. 

As for Viggo Mortensen, if he’s said anything you feel we need to address, Janeane, please feel free to send it to our tips line.

But I digress: 

AVC: You’ve also been called out by name and invited to tea parties by people like Deroy Murdock and other African-Americans within the Tea Party-people who probably don’t know you from anything else-ostensibly just so they can prove to you that there are minorities involved, so therefore they aren’t racists.

JG: But not really. They’ve put that out on their side. They have never really invited me. They claim that they have, but they really haven’t. And having said that, I would never go. They will always say, "I invited so and so, and she declined," when they’ve never gotten in touch with me. [Laughs.] But then also, a lot of the things they say I say, I’ve never said. They just make things up whole cloth.

Really? You were never invited?

Well, Garofalo appears to be conveniently forgetting that she was invited to attend the Dallas Tea Party’s gathering on July 4, 2009. They even put the invitation on YouTube:

Did they make this up?

Certainly not. Garofalo just refused to show up!

Too bad, because as the following answer demonstrated, this woman doesn’t know anything about the movement she regularly disparages: 

AVC: Last year, Lou Dobbs accused you of being hypocritical for encouraging people to protest during Bush’s administration, but then dismissing the Tea Party protests. How would you say the situations are different?

JG: First of all, Lou Dobbs is ridiculous. Secondly, there was plenty to protest for the Bush administration. Protesting the color of a man’s skin is not a worthy protest. That’s what the teabaggers are about. The first Tea Party protest was scheduled for Inauguration Day. So what were they upset about? Which part of the job he was doing before he even did it were they upset about? Secondly, if they claim to be upset with government corruption, government takeover, crazy spending, where were they from 2000 to 2008?

The first Tea Party protest was scheduled for Inauguration Day?

Actually, nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, the Tea Party’s roots go back to Florida in 1983. 

According to Wikipedia, there were Tax Day protests associated with the Tea Party throughout the ’90s. 

Furthermore, the modern iteration of this movement is tied to Ron Paul’s presidential campaign when a fundraiser in December 2007 was set up to commemorate the 235th anniversary of the Boston Tea Party. 

As for Garofalo’s claim that there was a Tea Party event the day Obama was inaugurated, Wikipedia lists the first such gathering in 2009 happened on February 10 in Fort Myers, Florida.

As with just about everything this comedian says, whether intended or not, it’s typically a joke not to be taken at all seriously. 

Check out this curious query from MSNBC cable show host Rachel Maddow on her show June 21 while describing a video statement released by Adam Gadahn, the so-called "American al Qaeda" –

MADDOW: I know that al Qaeda is al Qaeda, right? But is it OK to point out that they’re ridiculous, that their propaganda is inadvertently funny, as in ha ha I’m laughing at you?

Consider for a moment what Maddow is doing here — she is asking permission of her audience, which also occupies the fringe left, if it’s "OK" to ridicule al Qaeda, to laugh at them even.

Suffice it to say, the notion of destroying al Qaeda never gets out of committee with this crowd.

Begs the question — why would Maddow even ask? My theory — old habits are hard to break. The same audience watching Maddow has spent most of the last decade blaming Bush, Cheney, et al., for terrorism — instead of the more obvious culprit, al Qaeda.

The fact that Obama’s been president nearly a year and a half doesn’t change this habit of thought. Notice how often liberals and Democrats still blame the Bush administration for all manner of evil coming down the pike, such as the BP oil spill, economic stagnation, massive government debt, etc.

I’d be inclined to give Maddow the benefit of a doubt, but her track record undermines that inclination.

Such as back in December when UN ambassador Susan Rice, not exactly a Tom Delay Republican, interrupted Maddow to point out that the threat from al Qaeda is not "hypothetical."

Or a month earlier after the Fort Hood bloodbath when Maddow questioned whether the mass murder of Americans by a radical Muslim yelling "Allahu Akbar!" while he gunned them down constituted "terrorism." Yet after abortion doctor George Tiller was shot to death in May 2009, Maddow quickly described it as "terrorism."

Or in February 2009 when Maddow oversold a former Guantanamo guard’s allegations of abuse, from a man who promptly returned to well-deserved obscurity and hasn’t been heard from since.

Never let it be said, though, that Maddow doesn’t believe in the presumption of innocence — which she does for captured al Qaeda but not for George Bush and company, as shown in November 2008.

My favorite example of Maddow’s tendency to provide lip service in her condemnation of al Qaeda came in August 2008, back when she was still working for Air America Radio.

One of her guests that month was Jonathan Mahler, author of "The Challenge: Hamdan v. Rumsfeld and the Fight Over Presidential Power" and a writer for the New York Times Magazine.

Mahler was on Maddow’s show Aug. 6 to discuss the trial by military commission of Salim Hamdan, bin Laden’s bodyguard and driver (link here for audio) –

MADDOW: What exactly was he convicted of? I felt like there was a lot of sort of loosy-goosy hinting today in the coverage about the fact that he had these missiles in his vehicle when he was actually apprehended by US forces. As far as I understand it, he wasn’t convicted of anything that had anything to do with those missiles. He was convicted of this material support for terrorism charge.

MAHLER: That’s right, that’s right. He was, in fact, captured with two surface-to-air missiles in the trunk of his car. He had basically, what had happened is that he had just left his wife and daughter, his wife was actually eight months pregnant at the time, and he had left his wife and daughter at the border of Pakistan. They were basically fleeing the al Qaeda compound and he was captured then sort of on his way back into Afghanistan with these two missiles in his car. But they were not really part of the conviction. I think the defense argued that there was a civil war going on in Afghanistan at the time and you can’t say that he was going to be using these missiles against US forces (with mild sarcasm). What he was …

MADDOW (interrupting): Although it should be noted, it’s not like the Northern Alliance or the Taliban had an awesome air force, if they really were surface-to-air missiles.

MAHLER (laughing): Good point, Rachel! Good point!

MADDOW: Unless we’re talking magic carpets here! (laughs) Yeah, all right. Carry on.

MAHLER: But what he was convicted of was material support, so basically what he was convicted of was driving bin Laden around in the aftermath, in particular, of say the 1998 embassy bombings in east Africa, the US embassies that were bombed in east Africa by al Qaeda in 1998. And as bin Laden’s driver, Hamdan presumably helped him elude capture in the wake of those attacks. (emphasis added and again)

MADDOW: So literally what he was convicted of was not quitting his job.

MAHLER (pauses, then laughs): That’s one way of looking at it, certainly.  

MADDOW: Right? I mean, not that they’re saying there was anything criminal about his driving.

MAHLER: They, what they did was, they convicted a driver of driving.

MADDOW: Yeah! 

From Maddow’s perspective, Hamdan was guilty of nothing more than "not quitting his job." A job, not incidentally, that entailed protecting bin Laden as he prepared for 9/11, abandoning his pregnant wife and child on the Afghan-Pakistan border after 9/11, then rushing back into Afghanistan with surface-to-air missiles for use against non-existent aircraft of the Northern Alliance.

And if only John Wilkes Booth had given up acting, he’d never have been in Ford’s Theater that night.

At the end of the same segment on June 21, Maddow thanked her guest, former Petraeus adviser and author David Kilcullen, a native Australian, and alluded to a helicopter crash in Afghanistan that killed three Aussie soldiers and injured seven others.

Maddow comes across as oddly upbeat in mentioning this to Kilcullen, as can be seen in second part of the embedded video. 

While the television networks were doing an Obama Superiority Dance, proclaiming the president’s firing Gen. Stanley McChrystal and replacing him with Gen. David Petraeus was "brilliant," something was missing in the coverage. That was a sense that if Petraeus is universally honored as the savior of Iraq, why do the networks all forget it was Obama and Biden who suggested Petraeus and his surge was a bad idea a few years ago?

On NBC, Chuck Todd was promoting it as a "commander-in-chief moment." Mr. Todd, please read a piece of this Meet the Press interview from September 7, 2008, with appreciation for fill-in host Tom Brokaw actually pushing new V.P. nominee Joe Biden about whether the surge and its architect deserved any credit for improvements in Iraq. Biden didn’t want to cry uncle:

BROKAW: Here you were, just one year ago, on Meet the Press. This was your take on the surge at that time, so let’s listen to that, Senator. "I mean, the truth of the matter is this administration’s policy and the surge are a failure," you said, "and that the surge, which was supposed to stop sectarian violence and – long enough to give political reconciliation, there has been no political reconciliation."

Then you went on to say earlier in the year, "General Petraeus believes that it is a good idea, the surge. He may be the only one who believes that. Virtually no one else believes it’s a good idea." Well, at the time, John McCain did, and all the indications are the surge has worked up to a point. It’s not a victory, as Senator Lindsey Graham said the other night…

BIDEN: Or as John McCain said.

BROKAW: Or John McCain said, but the conditions are in place, and Anbar province, where you have been, where there had been so much difficulty, the Iraqis now have taken over that province. We have brigades that have Sunnis and Shia serving side by side…

BIDEN: Not many.

BROKAW: …fighting the terrorists. But it’s a process, and it’s beginning, and the surge made that possible, did it not?

BIDEN: No. The surge helped make that–what made is possible in Anbar province is they did what I’d suggested two and a half years ago: gave local control. They turned over and they said to the Sunnis in Anbar province, "We promise you, don’t worry, you’re not going to have any Shia in here. There’s going to be no national forces in here. We’re going to train your forces to help you fight al-Qaeda." And that you–what you had was the Awakening. The Awakening was not an awakening by us, it was an awakening of the Sunnis in Anbar province willing to fight.

BROKAW: Cooperating with the Shia.

BIDEN: Willing to fight. Cooperating with–no, they weren’t cooperating with Shiite. They didn’t cooperate with the Shiites.

BROKAW: Once the Awakening got under way.

BIDEN: No, no, no. No, they didn’t cooperate with the Shiites. It’s still–it’s a big problem, Tom. You got–we’re paying 300 bucks a month to each of those guys. Now the problem has been and the, and the promise was made by Maliki that they would be integrated into the overall military. That’s a process that is beginning in fits and starts now, but it’s far from over. Far from–look, the bottom line here is that it’s–let’s–the surge is over. Here’s the real point. Whether or not the surge worked is almost irrelevant now. We’re in a new deal.

This is where the laugh track should have started. "Whether or not the surge worked is almost irrelevant now." Except that you said Gen. Petraeus was a crazy lone wolf in arguing for it, and now Biden was looking silly. But he actually dug a bigger hole, crediting Obama and not Petraeus for successes in Iraq:

BIDEN: What is the administration doing? They’re doing what Barack Obama has suggested over 14 months ago, turn responsibility over and draw down our troops. We’re about to get a deal from the president of the United States and Maliki, the head of the Iraqi government, that’s going to land on my desk as chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee saying we’re going to set a timeline to draw down our forces. The only guy in America out of step is John McCain. John McCain’s saying no timeline. They’ve signed on to Barack Obama’s proposal.

BROKAW: But the surge helped make that timeline possible, did it not?

BIDEN: Well, it did help make it possible. It did help. But it’s not the reason.

It can’t be that hard for Todd and NBC researchers to dig up their own footage and look at it again. Were Obama and Biden "brilliant" back then? Or do good reporters never remember what happened before last week?

It’s well known liberals don’t particularly care for Fox News host Glenn Beck, but wouldn’t be comparing him to al Qaeda be a bit much?

On Sept. 11, 2001, al Qaeda attacks on the World Trade Center claimed the lives of over 2,700 people. So what does that have to do with Glenn Beck? Well according to liberal talker Bill Press, Beck’s plans to hold a rally at the Lincoln Memorial on August 28 are somehow akin to al Qaeda’s worldview. Press demanded the National Park Service revoke permission for Beck to hold a rally where Martin Luther King had given his "I have a dream" speech 47 years earlier. (h/t Outside the Beltway)

"In a slap at both President Lincoln and Dr. King, not to mention the American people, the National Park Service has given Glenn Beck permission to hold a Tea Party rally on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial on August 28 – 47 years to the day after Martin Luther King gave his magnificent ‘I Have A Dream’ speech," Press wrote in a June 16 post on his blog. "If you ask me, that’s like granting al Qaeda permission to hold a rally on September 11 – at Ground Zero. What the hell were those bureaucrats at the Park Service thinking?"

Press made similar remarks on his June 15 radio program, arguing the Lincoln Memorial was sacred and that it should not be "rented out like a cheap suit." But even some of Press’ liberal audience had disagreed with the host, one suggesting if they had Press’ mentality 47 years ago, King might not have had the opportunity to speak at the memorial.

The editor of the Wall Street e-tabloid Dealbreaker on Wednesday actually asked CNBC anchor Trish Regan, "How does it feel to be classified as a MILF?"

For those unfamiliar with the term — as was Regan! — it means "Mom I’d Like to," well, let’s say have sex with.

Nice thing to ask an Emmy-nominated 37-year-old mother of two, wouldn’t you agree?

Yet that wasn’t even the worst of Bess Levin’s questions (Levin in bold, h/t TVNewser):

Question number 2: How do you feel you measured up next to Mandy and her assets?

I think I held my own.

For those that don’t watch CNBC, Amanda Drury was originally brought over from CNBC Asia to fill in for Melissa Francis who was going on maternity leave.

When Levin asked about Mandy’s "assets," she wasn’t referring to her stock portfolio if you catch my drift. As such, Regan was being questioned about how her bra size compared with Drury’s.

Seem a little childish to you? Wait. It gets worse: 

Question number 3: If you had to: Charlie Gasparino or Dennis Kneale? Killing yourself is not an acceptable answer.

I think I would have to kill myself. Or be on life-support.

And then? Who would it be?

You think it would still be appealing for them?

Dennis Kneale and Charlie Gasparino? Yes, one of them would definitely still go for it, if not both.

Question number 4: Just so we can be fair, in that same vein, if you had to get down and dirty with one of the anchorettes on CNBC, whom would you choose?

See this question is just as hard as the last but for the opposite reason. I’m not into women but if I were it would be really difficult. We have a lot of beautiful ladies at CNBC.

Add it all up, and at the end of an interview — with a woman! — besides being questioned about how her breasts compared to a co-worker’s, Regan was asked: how she feels about young men wanting to have sex with her; which guy on her network she’d like to have sex with, and; which woman. 

All of this raises a number of questions such as what is this Dealbreaker, and why would a serious journalist want to have anything to do with it?

Fortunately, fashion magazine Elle did an article on Levin in April offering us some insights:

The 25-year-old editor of Dealbreaker.com, the financial industry’s online tabloid that reports on corporate scandals and insider gossip, some of which she overhears at happy hour in the finance world’s watering holes, has become a mustread on Wall Street. Posting nine times a day, she’s been known to scoop the mainstream business media and retains a fiercely loyal following who seem to have an infinite appetite for her biting, off-kilter commentary about the money business- you don’t see The Wall Street Journal running headlines like "Neil Barofsky Will Cut a Bitch" or "Spotted: Ruth Madoff Getting Her Tan On." [...]

Dealbreaker, which draws 300,000 unique visitors a month, has posted hedge funds’ for-investor-eyes-only marketing materials, which three years ago sparked a lawsuit that named Levin and Dealbreaker’s publisher; they later settled. During the Bank of America and Merrill Lynch merger last year, Merrill employees depended on Levin to report what their company wasn’t telling them. 

The New York Observer recently wrote of Levin:

Because of someone else’s car accident and a physics-class coincidence, Bess Levin is the most important young Wall Street blogger in the country. [...]

But Dealbreaker has a certain crackle-a taste for picking out and serving up the day’s fascinating little nuggets of finance news. It’s a must-read. 

John Friedman wrote about Levin earlier this month:

Levin, at only 25 years old, is reputed to be the scourge of Wall Street. [...]

Clearly, she gets a kick out of poking holes in the pompous image of Wall Street professionals, to the delight of journalists who don’t have the same cleverness — or freedom — to write like her. [...]

The media universe embraces Levin as a symbol of the Really New Journalism (sorry, Tom Wolfe), someone whose job description is to lampoon the establishment and entertain the masses with both biting and good-natured sarcasm. [...]

Levin has a knack for writing irreverent, witty and insightful stuff. But what makes proudly hard-bitten journalists look at her in something approaching awe is her precocious age. Levin is not too far removed from attending Amherst College or, even high school in suburban New Jersey.

That seems like part of the attraction. But Friedman made a more salient observation:

Much of Levin’s success results from the states of the journalism and Wall Street landscapes. The rise of the Internet has attracted a large number of young readers who would sooner dig a ditch than buy a newspaper or a magazine at a newsstand.

This situation has forced the nation’s once-stodgy media companies to dig deep to tape [sic] young, adventurous writers, who are at home on the Web and can communicate with their peers.

Which likely explains the need for the tawdry, but why would someone like Regan, who just gave birth to twin daughters, want to associate with someone who views her website’s approach as "Wall Street torture porn?"

It’s certainly not for the exposure, as despite Elle’s fawning, 300,000 unique reads a month is nothing; NewsBusters typically does over 5 million.

As for the whole peer thing, one doesn’t imagine Regan at 37, and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, views Levin as her contemporary.

With this in mind, although Dealbreaker devotees might have loved these sex-related questions — according to Levin, they came from readers — I’m having a hard time understanding why the seemingly conservative Regan put herself in this position.

Isn’t this degrading to women looking to be taken seriously in the business world and not be treated as sex objects? Or is this the state of modern feminism?  

As for Levin, who clearly must be doing something right given her glowing reviews, one has to wonder why someone of her intellectual capacity feels the need to occasionally wander into the gutter.

If she really has the eyes and ears of hedge fund managers and financial sector CEOs, can’t she keep their attention without the smut? 

As the father of a sixteen-year-old girl, I certainly hope so. 

Geraldo Rivera on Friday excoriated Rolling Stone writer Michael Hastings actually comparing him to al Qaeda terrorists.

Discussing the article that effectively destroyed General Stanley McChrystal’s career, Rivera told Fox News’s Bill O’Reilly, "These guys, particularly the staffers who gave the most damning statements about the civilians in office, including the vice president of the United States, these guys had no idea that they were being interviewed by this guy." 

Rivera then made a staggering analogy (video after the break with full transcript and commentary):  

Two days before 9/11, two al Qaeda terrorists posing as journalists got up to Sheik Massoud, our most valuable ally in Afghanistan. They blew themselves and Sheik Massoud up, a tremendous setback. I maintain historically that the removal of General McCrystal at the hands of this freelance reporter for "Rolling Stone" has almost comparable strategic significance.   

BILL O’REILLY, HOST: "Friday’s with Geraldo" segment tonight, more journalists agree that the "Rolling Stone" writer who did in General McCrystal did not do anything wrong journalistically. The man Michael Hastings, a far left guy, we said. And the general was very foolish to let him into his inner circle.

But FOX News anchor Geraldo Rivera dissents on the journalism front, saying Hastings was wrong for printing provocative quotes from McCrystal and his staff. Geraldo joins us now from upstate New York.

Let’s get to the war of journalism here. You know, I’m trying to put myself in Hastings position, if I’m there, and I’m in a bar and McCrystal and his guys are spouting off about Biden and being a moron and all these other things, and it’s not off the record, Geraldo, you know that when you allow a journalist in, you say, look, this is on the record, this is off the record. But if it’s not off the record, I mean, you know, I’m writing it down. You’re not?

GERALDO RIVERA, HOST, "GERALDO AT LARGE": You know, Bill, this is a situation where you have to put it into the context of war and warriors and honor and the number of privacy that is presumed when it’s not on the record specifically. When you are hanging out at a bar waiting for a plane or a train or an automobile, and you’re stuck together hours and hours, and you’re drinking in a bar, or you’re at an airport lounge, this is not an interview context. These guys, particularly the staffers who gave the most damning statements about the civilians in office, including the vice president of the United States, these guys had no idea that they were being interviewed by this guy.

O’REILLY: I’m not sure about that, Geraldo.

RIVERA: Wait hold on, Bill.

O’REILLY: I’m not sure about that.

RIVERA: This reporter from "Rolling Stone", he was a rat in an eagle’s nest. What he did was to become part of the background, part of the scenery, knowing full well, given his political ideology–

O’REILLY: All right, let’s walk through.

RIVERA: –and everything else, his altitude, he knew what he wanted to do.

O’REILLY: Okay, I’m not disputing, look–

RIVERA: And I disagree with Chris Wallace. This was not a 280- hitter. General Stanley McCrystal is no 280-hitter. If General Petraeus is Babe Ruth, and I agree with that analogy, Stanley McCrystal is Lou Gehrig.

O’REILLY: All right, Lou Gehrig.

RIVERA: He led our special operator.

O’REILLY: He’s been deployed more than any fighting general.

RIVERA: All right, good.

O’REILLY: And I really am so sick over this.

O’REILLY: Geraldo, all right, take a deep breath. All right, you got to walk with me through this interview, okay? Calm down. Number one, I agree with you that Hastings is a hatchet man. All right? All you got to do is look at what he’s done in the past. "Rolling Stone" is a hatchet operation. They hatcheted me. I was stupid enough to let a reporter named Cola Pinto (ph) follow me around. And he gave me a line of B.S. And he hatcheted me.

But, I also told the Cola Pinto what was on and off the record, what he could and could not do. Now, I’m in the business, so I know. So I’m not saying that Hastings did anything wrong. I’m not going to — is he a rat? Yes, he’s a rat. But did he do anything wrong? I don’t know. But you can’t explain to me, I don’t think you can, why a guy as smart as McCrystal, been around a long time, position of power, knows what the press is. They even say that he turned FOX News off in his offices because he’s a liberal guy, McCrystal. So he knows what the press is, why he would even allow this guy to be around, Geraldo. Why we even allow him to be around?

RIVERA: I want to be have clear about this, Bill. The president of the United States was totally within his constitutional right and power to dismiss or accept the resignation of General Stanley McCrystal because it was a lapse in judgment for General McCrystal to let this person that close to him. But I have to go back to my principle point. When someone, who works for the general commanding the war front in Afghanistan, mocks the vice president of the United States, calling Joe Biden bite me, that reporter knows that that statement, if it becomes public, has strategic significance. That the president would be forced to do what he did unless he was magnanimous beyond belief.

O’REILLY: But that’s what Hastings wanted. That’s what "Rolling Stone" wanted.

RIVERA: But when it is a — my point though, Bill, is when it is a strategic issue like that, something of that import, to your country, damn it, then you have an obligation to say was that on the record? Do you really want to say that?

O’REILLY: All right.

RIVERA: You have to put it in context. Let me give you analogy far beyond–

O’REILLY: You’re coming from it an ethical point of view.

RIVERA: You got to go beyond the rat in the eagle’s nest. Two days before 9/11, two al Qaeda terrorists posing as journalists got up to Sheik Massoud, our most valuable ally in Afghanistan. They blew themselves and Sheik Massoud up, a tremendous setback. I maintain historically that the removal of General McCrystal at the hands of this freelance reporter for "Rolling Stone" has almost comparable strategic significance. This was a major deal. And to do it under those rules, where you have to admit your third gin and tonic. You’re frustrated. You’re waiting for the volcanic ash to clear. Everybody is on their most relaxed behavior to get a statement, an utterance like that. An utterance from a — but not the general himself, but by one of his over eager macho staffers is something that you have an obligation, an honorable obligation to check out before you rush to the press, knowing that you have done is removing a fine soldier–

O’REILLY: All right, one more question–

RIVERA: –who has risked his life for his country time and time again.

O’REILLY: OK, I got it, Geraldo. We got it. And I only have 30 seconds here. "Rolling Stone" says it ran the quotes by McCrystal. Do you believe that?

RIVERA: If they say they did, I know Jann Wenner. I assume that it is true. I take him at his word.

O’REILLY: They didn’t run them by me.

RIVERA: And I have to honor General McCrystal for not trying to sleaze away.

O’REILLY: All right, Geraldo, look, I appreciate your passion on the issue. And you’ve given everybody something to think about.

Despite the seemingly over the top analogy, Rivera made what seems to be an important point.

A journalist is with a group of military officials hanging out in a bar. If any of them says anything truly controversial, especially something that could harm careers and/or negatively impact the mission in Afghanistan, should a good reporter confirm that what was said was on the record or just a bit of drunk talk?

Despite my frequent differences of opinion with Rivera, he has been one of America’s leading investigative reporters for decades.

With this in mind, does he have a point, or is he just defending someone he appears to have great admiration for? 

You would think that if there were one thing people could agree on, despite their politics, it would be cheering for the United States in a sporting event. But no, not for Jeremy Scahill.

Scahill, a regular contributor for left-wing The Nation magazine, has dedicated the past several years of his life to an obsession over the defense contractor Xe Services LLC, formerly known as Blackwater. But apparently Scahill can’t overcome his politics and take pride in his country’s World Cup soccer team. In a series of posts on his Twitter account, Scahill vented his frustrations over cheering for the United States in the World Cup:

I hate when people chant U-S-A. #FalseNationalistCrap

If a night raid in Afghanistan was televised, would these drunk asses chant U-S-A, U-S-A when civilians are killed?

I like the US players, I just think it’s gross to chant U-S-A when we are killing people daily #worldcup

Obviously Scahill has a problem differentiating U.S. foreign policy from U.S. athletics, but it could make you question his motives in general as an esteemed member of the liberal media.

Bill Clinton and Mick Jagger at the USA-Ghana World Cup match, June 26, 2010.

Want to talk Round of 16 World Cup? USA vs. Ghana started moments ago.

In the midst of this week’s Gen. Stanley McChrystal controversy, a possibility concerning statements allegedly made by him and his staff has largely gone overlooked: might they have been speaking off the record when they were around Rolling Stone’s Michael Hastings?

This certainly would explain some of the bizarre comments allegedly made by military members knowing full well how the chain of command works and that the President is clearly at the top.

With this in mind, the Washington Post explored this possibility in a front page piece Saturday entitled, "Gen. McChrystal Allies, Rolling Stone Disagree Over Article’s Ground Rules":

On Friday, however, officials close to McChrystal began trying to salvage his reputation by asserting that the author, Michael Hastings, quoted the general and his staff in conversations that he was allowed to witness but not report. The officials also challenged a statement by Rolling Stone’s executive editor that the magazine had thoroughly reviewed the story with McChrystal’s staff ahead of publication. [...]

A senior military official insisted that "many of the sessions were off-the-record and intended to give [Hastings] a sense" of how the team operated. The command’s own review of events, said the official, who was unwilling to speak on the record, found "no evidence to suggest" that any of the "salacious political quotes" in the article were made in situations in which ground rules permitted Hastings to use the material in his story.

The Post elaborated:

A member of McChrystal’s team who was present for a celebration of McChrystal’s 33rd wedding anniversary at a Paris bar said it was "clearly off the record." Aides "made it very clear to Michael: ‘This is private time. These are guys who don’t get to see their wives a lot. This is us together. If you stay, you have to understand this is off the record,’ " according to this source. In the story, the team members are portrayed as drinking heavily. [...]

A U.S. military spokesman in Kabul, Air Force Lt. Col. Edward T. Sholtis, acknowledged that Hastings, like other reporters who have interviewed McChrystal over the past year, was not required to sign written ground rules. "We typically manage ground rules on a verbal basis," Sholtis said. "We trust in the professionalism of the people we’re working with."

So, you’ve got husbands and wives in a Paris bar celebrating McChrystal’s 33rd wedding anniversary, and comments made during the event — which were supposed to all be off the record — became part of Hastings’ piece.

Is that Kosher?

Obviously, Rolling Stone thinks it is:

The executive editor, Eric Bates, denied that Hastings violated any ground rules when he wrote about the four weeks he spent, on and off, with McChrystal and his team. "A lot of things were said off the record that we didn’t use," Bates said in an interview. "We abided by all the ground rules in every instance."

But this isn’t the only beef McChrystal supporters have with this piece:

Officials also questioned Rolling Stone’s fact-checking process, as described by Bates in an interview this week with Politico. "We ran everything by them in a fact-checking process as we always do," Bates said. "They had a sense of what was coming, and it was all on the record, and they spent a lot of time with our reporter, so I think they knew that they had said it."

In an interview Friday, the managing editor, Will Dana, said the reporter’s notes and factual matters were exhaustively reviewed.

But 30 questions that a Rolling Stone fact-checker posed in a memo e-mailed last week to then-McChrystal media adviser Duncan Boothby contained no hint of what became the controversial portions of the story. Boothby resigned Tuesday.

In the e-mail, a copy of which was provided to The Washington Post by a military official sympathetic to McChrystal, Boothby is asked to confirm the makeup of McChrystal’s traveling staff on the Paris trip and the communications equipment they brought with them on an earlier visit to London. "They don’t come close to revealing what ended up in the final article," the official said.

This all raises an interesting question that seemed to elude mainstream media as they quickly attacked the General probably forcing Obama to relieve him of his command: did the Rolling Stone break some journalism rules with this report?

As NewsBusters’ Tim Graham pointed out Thursday, this is a FAR-LEFT magazine with strong anti-war convictions.  

Is it indeed possible that much of the truly damning comments were made to Hastings off the record, and that he and his editors in their zeal to tear down McChrystal just didn’t care?

Is it also possible that the magazine didn’t go through proper fact-checking procedures before it published the piece?

If the answer to both questions is "Yes," then maybe media quickly overreacted to this article before weighing and investigating such possibilities thereby making them complicit in ruining the General’s career while also conceivably endangering the mission in Afghanistan.

This is certainly not to say that any of these comments were appropriate irrespective of whether or not those making them believed they were speaking off the record.

Regardless of the setting, the General commanding our troops in Afghanistan certainly shouldn’t have been party to such statements assuming he was aware they were being made.

But that doesn’t exempt Hastings from adhering to the off-the-record status of such commentary if indeed there was a request for that to be the case.  

As the Post has now let this cat out of the bag, it will indeed be interesting to see how this matter is handled on the Sunday talk shows tomorrow as well as in the coming days.

Stay tuned. 

The Los Angeles Times on Thursday published a blockbuster report concerning California welfare recipients using state-issued debit cards at casino ATMs to be able to instantly gamble with taxpayer dollars.

"The cards, provided by the Department of Social Services to help recipients feed and clothe their families, work in automated teller machines at 32 of 58 tribal casinos and 47 of 90 state-licensed poker rooms, the review found."

Despite this shocking revelation, America’s media largely ignored the findings.

But before we get there, KTLA-TV logged a fabulous report on this subject Thursday evening (video follows with more highlights from the Times piece and commentary):

"In a time when we have a $19-billion deficit, and we’re taking a serious look at the future of many safety-net programs, it’s appalling to think that welfare beneficiaries can use their cards in a casino," said Seth Unger, spokesman for the Assembly Republican Caucus.

Democratic leaders, who have vowed to protect the state’s fraying social safety net, also began calling for reform Wednesday.

"In these tough times, when so many children and vulnerable families depend on the safety net, we have to make sure food stamps and other services are being used the way the people of California intended them to be," said Shannon Murphy, spokeswoman for Assembly Speaker John A. Pérez (D- Los Angeles). "Other states have closed this loophole, and the Assembly will work with the Schwarzenegger administration to make that happen."

The casinos are listed on a Department of Social Services website that allows welfare recipients to search for addresses of ATMs where they can withdraw cash provided under the Temporary Aid for Needy Families program. The monthly grant ranges up to $694; most of the ATMs impose a withdrawal limit of about $300 per day.

To be sure, there IS a national interest here:

The cash portion of California’s welfare benefits comes from the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program. Each year, California gets $3.7 billion from the federal government for the program, while state and local governments kick in an additional $2.9 billion.

Furthermore, as many states also issue these cards for their welfare recipients, who knows how many Americans are gambling with taxpayer dollars across the fruited plain?

Yet outside of California, the media weren’t very interested in this story.

According to LexisNexis, no newspapers outside of the Golden State reported the Times’ findings. Neither did ABC, CBS, CNN, MSNBC, or NBC.

This boycott seems especially odd as the Associated Press and UPI covered this matter over their respective wires with the former logging reports on Thursday AND Friday.

Also bucking the trend were Fox News’s Sean Hannity and Greta Van Susteren who both discussed this on Thursday as did NPR.

The well-read Drudge Report featured this as a "developing" story at 6:47 PM Thursday. 

With this in mind, why did the rest of our national media completely ignore it? 

Those interested can read more about California’s Electronic Benefit Transfer program here. 

On his June 24 radio show, left-wing host Ed Schultz went on a rant against NewsBusters’ Matt Hadro, who earlier that day wrote a pretty inoffensive piece documenting how Schultz credited President Obama’s $862 billion stimulus package with more than doubling the size of his North Dakota construction firm.

Schultz bizarrely (and incorrectly) tried to ridicule the Media Research Center summer intern as a spoiled rich kid. (Audio excerpt here.)

Did Mommy and Daddy pay your way to go to school? Are you a little conservative boy that gets all the tax breaks of the top 2 percent rich? Have you ever gotten your hands dirty doing a job, Matt? [employs falsetto voice] ‘Oh, Matty, it’s time for milk and cookies! It’s 4:00, come home now! And here’s some more money. Oh, I think it’s so cute that you’re working for those wonderful conservatives over at Newsbusters. Oh, Matty!’ I’ll bet you that’s exactly who that kid is.

What triggered Schultz’s wrath was Hadro’s matter-of-fact reporting of what the talk radio host said on C-SPAN’s Washington Journal on Wednesday:

“We’ve gone from eight employees to 20 employees in the past year, because of the stimulus package,” he said of his construction company. “We’ve put some people back to work. There is some growth.”

Schultz is evidently quite thin-skinned, since Hadro’s piece included no criticism of the host, his construction company, or the stimulus, but merely recounted what he said on C-SPAN. But the topic obviously struck a nerve, since Schultz lashed out at NewsBusters as “so negative” and “so hateful” in its depiction of him:

Tell me, what’s negative about expanding a company?! What’s negative about giving someone a job?! These people are so negative on America, and so hateful of Obama and anybody who has any type of success whatsoever, the mission is to put ’em in light, in bad light, any way they possibly can.

Here’s a longer transcript of Schultz’s June 24 fulmination:

ED SCHULTZ: Hell, the righties, they’re even upset when we do create jobs. What’s the big deal? Those of you who follow the radio show, I wouldn’t call it a running feud because they’re not worth it, but I do love to point out every time I make NewsBusters, which is Brent Bozell’s right-wing, psycho-analysis, conservative think-tank. They like to, well, they just write a bunch of stuff about me, no matter what it is.

(…)

I’m on C-SPAN yesterday and I live my life a little bit on the air. It is a fact that this President has done so much for small business, more than anybody else that I can see in recent terms. And our company has gone from eight employees to 18, 20, 22, depending on what’s going on, what the project is! It’s American! It’s risk-taking! It’s what I talk about!

And you jerks over at NewsBusters, you never call me, which shows that you’re not journalists. Never have you ever interviewed me. But this is how these conservative psychopaths operate. Tell me, what’s negative about expanding a company?! What’s negative about giving someone a job?! These people are so negative on America and so hateful of Obama and anybody who has any type of success whatsoever, the mission is to put ‘em in light, in bad light, any way they possibly can.

So the story reads, “While defending the Obama administration as a champion for small business owners, MSNBC host Ed Schultz revealed that his construction company more than doubled its number of employees in the past year – thanks to the stimulus bill.” Oh! Obama wrote me a check. Is that what it was? Is that the idiot implication there? Anybody who knows anything about jobs in construction knows that you have to bid!

But, I think what we’re going to do is, we’re going to check out who Matt Hadro is and we’re going to find out how much money he makes. We’re going to find out if he’s ever written a check for someone else who’s done work for him. We’re going to find out if he is a risk taker! In fact, I’m going to see if I can find out a little bit more about Brent Bozell. What has he ever done other than suck the hind tit off conservatives who want to fuel money right into his conservative think tank. He’s a leech. I’m out there supporting the boys, hiring kids, paying ’em union wages, getting ’em health care, doin’ what I gotta do, growing the company. But because I’m on MSNBC and because I champion for small businesses, they try to cook up some kind of a story like there’s, well, (sarcastically), what’s going on here?

Continuing to read it — it’s actually kind of funny, because there’s no new information there. There’s nothing there, other than what I said on C-SPAN. Absolutely nothing there. And I love it. I love the publicity. And I love pointing out who these jerks are, and how poor they are when it comes to research. And Matt Hadro, I’m going to make you a star, buddy. I want to make you a star. I want you to show some spine and be a guest on the Ed Schultz radio show. Hell, I’ll even put you on TV. I can do that too. And let’s debate the stimulus package. And let’s find out what you’re all about. Did mommy and daddy pay your way to go to school? Are you a little conservative boy that gets all the tax breaks of the top 2 percent rich? Have you ever gotten your hands dirty doing a job, Matt?

[Pretending to be Matt’s mother] ‘Oh Matty, it’s time for milk and cookies, it’s four o’clock, come home now. And here’s some more money. Oh, I think it’s so cute that you’re working for those wonderful conservatives over at Newsbusters. Oh, Matty!’ I’ll bet you that’s exactly who that kid is. (Laughing)

And Matt, I will pay your airfare from wherever the hell you are, at no expense to NewsBusters, I will put you on a plane. Well, better yet, I’ll put you on my plane. And I will take you to our construction site. And I will show you and let you interview the guys who were jobless until they came to work for E. A. Schultz Construction. You know what I’ll even do, Matt? I’ll even open up our books. I’ll show you what we’ve bid on, I’ll show you what we’ve won, I’ll show you what we’ve lost. In fact, if you have a hair on your ass, maybe you’d like to work. Do some real work instead of playing with that computer and throwing up a bunch of hate and half truths and accusations. You see, Matt, I believe in the working people. You don’t. You wanted to vilify our efforts. You want to vilify our investment. You want to put us in a bad light because we are, proudly, a liberal construction company! That actually pays people!

To refresh, as posted at NewsBusters and Eyeblast.tv, Pennsylvania Congressman Paul Kanjorski said the following on Wednesday while he was defending what Investors Business Daily has called "Financial Deform":

We’re giving relief to people that I deal with in my office every day now unfortunately. But because of the longevity of this recession, these are people — and they’re not minorities and they’re not defective and they’re not all the things you’d like to insinuate that these programs are about — these are average, good American people.

This isn’t too tough to decipher, no matter how many House Democrats try to give him defensive cover — If the people Kanjorski "deal(s) with in my office everyday" are "average, good American people" because "they’re not minorities and they’re not defective," then those who are minorities and "defective" in some way are not "average, good American people." Kanjorski uttered an objectively racist (embodying "the belief that race accounts for differences in human character or ability and that a particular race is superior to others") statement.

According to this report, Kanjorski is not apologizing. Therefore, one must conclude that the congressman is comfortable with his objectively racist statement.

So how is the press handling this?

The mostly Democrat-defending establishment press that generally sets the narrative for radio and TV news mostly understands the aforementioned elementary exercise in logic. This explains why Kanjorski’s statement, while occasionally being framed with the usual "Republicans attack poor misunderstood Democrat" approach, is mostly getting ignored.

A search at the Associated Press’s main web site on the Congressman’s last name comes up with one seemingly relevant item, an article headlined "McMahon: Wrestling was soap opera." Yeah, you read that right. But the article is really a collection of four short items and two "Quick Hits." AP writer Philip Elliott (or perhaps his editors) thought that Connecticut U.S. Senate candidate Linda McMahon’s description of her Word Wrestling Entertainment enterprise was more important than Kanjorski’s racist remark, the coverage of which came second.

Naturally, Elliott’s item used the "Republicans attack" technique:

Republicans criticized Rep. Paul Kanjorski for what they said were remarks suggesting minorities are not "average, good American people."

The 13-term Pennsylvania Democrat vigorously denied the charge, saying Republicans were taking his words out of context to score political points.

… A Kanjorski spokeswoman said the congressman was defending people who get government help from those who unfairly criticize them.

Sure he was. But in the process, he uttered an objectively racist remark. Alleged "context" is irrelevant.

Well, at least the AP has covered it in its own quirky way. The New York Times hasn’t.

The Washington Post restricted coverage of Kanjorski’s statement to its "44" blog, and has apparently kept the matter out of its print edition. Matt DeLong’s post is funny, in a reality-denying, sickening sort of way (bolds are mine):

A Democratic congressman has found himself the target of conservative criticism after an inartful description of who will be helped by the financial reform bill currently working its way through Congress.

The conservative website Human Events reported that Rep. Paul Kanjorski’s (D-Pa.) appeared to say during Wednesday’s financial reform conference committee meeting that the financial overhaul will help "average, good American people" — but not minorities or "the defective."

It’s amazing how often the word "inartful" — which isn’t even a recognized word in the dictionary (here or here) — has appeared since candidate Barack Obama and others frequently employed it in 2008 to defend him and others after verbal gaffes and worse utterances.

As to DeLong’s use of "appeared" — Matt, stop insulting our intelligence.

Finally, it’s also quite predictable to see DeLong tag Human Events (accurately) as "conservative," while, as Tim Graham at NewsBusters noted earlier this week, magazines like Rolling Stone almost never get the "liberal" or "radical left" tag from the establishment press.

Cross-posted at BizzyBlog.com.

On Thursday, a new unemployment bill died in Congress as Senator Ben Nelson (D-Neb.) joined Republicans on the grounds that government spending can’t go on forever.

Instead of reporting both sides, the media couldn’t seem to hide their anger.

The bill was called a "jobless aid" package that "governors were counting on" to help "the poor" across the nation. Almost all news reports began from the Democrat perspective and waited several paragraphs before weakly defending Republicans.

Worse yet, a consensus with far more damaging impact began to grow: the loss will cause the nation’s economy to fall into a double dip recession, and it will be entirely the Republicans’ fault.

Never mind last year’s stimulus bill worth $700 billion, or the bank bailout of 2008, both of which have failed to live up to promises of recovery. No, our economy is suffering because fiscal conservatives won’t spend even more.

The Seattle Times was quick on the draw Thursday night with a clearly disappointed report headlined "Republicans Continue Blockade of Federal Aid Bill." What followed was an obviously biased effort to paint Republicans in a bad light:

Senate Republicans on Thursday once again blocked legislation to reinstate long-term unemployment benefits for people who have exhausted their aid.

With the Senate apparently paralyzed by partisan gridlock, the fate of the aid, as well as tax breaks for businesses and $16 billion in aid for cash-strapped states, remains unclear. Dozens of states, including Washington, are hoping for federal aid to help balance their budgets.

Republican lawmakers – joined by Democrat Ben Nelson of Nebraska – maintained a unified front to sustain a filibuster of the $110 billion bill. The vote was 57-41, three short of the 60 needed to cut off debate and bring the bill to a final vote.

Democrats said they would give no further ground and put the onus on Republicans to make concessions.

Those who have "exhausted their aid" are the long-term unemployed who received financial assistance for up to 99 weeks already. Republicans seem to have this crazy notion that receiving government assistance that long might be long enough, and perhaps it’s time to start asking if Keynesian economics is working.

But according to the Seattle Times, that kind of talk is just "partisan gridlock." The article quoted one Republican against three Democrats and never got any deeper than vague concerns about the national debt.

Toward the end, the Times went to White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs to imply that Republicans were sabotaging the economy:

In a statement, the White House vowed to keep pushing for the bill. "The president has been clear: Americans should not fall victim to Republican obstruction at a time of great economic challenge for our nation’s families," spokesman Robert Gibbs said.

By Friday morning, this became the battle cry for reporters around the country. Reuters published an article that advanced the point in plainer terms:

The bill, which also would have provided more aid to cash-strapped states for the Medicaid health program for the poor, fell a few votes short of the 60 needed to advance in the 100-member Senate. One Democrat, Ben Nelson, joined 40 Republicans to block the measure.

Democrats argued that the bill would have helped shore up the fragile U.S. economic recovery, a priority for President Barack Obama’s administration.

Yes, saving the economy has been one of President Obama’s priorities for some time now, mostly because nothing he does seems to save it. But Reuters didn’t have time to mention an inconvenient thing like that. Readers were expected to believe the premise that one more spending bill would have shored up the economy if not for those meddling Republicans.

A few hours later, the Associated Press got involved with an even sharper accusation aimed directly at Republicans:

The rejected bill would have provided $16 billion in new aid to states, preserving the jobs of thousands of state and local government workers and providing what White House officials called an insurance policy against a double-dip recession. It also included dozens of tax breaks sought by business lobbyists and tax increases on domestically produced oil and on investment fund managers.

"This is a bill that would remedy serious challenges that American families face as a result of this Great Recession," said Max Baucus, D-Mont., the chief author of the bill. "This is a bill that works to build a stronger economy. This is a bill to put Americans back to work."

How strange that quote didn’t show up in the early dispatches Thursday night. It’s almost as if the media spent Friday collectively drifting toward a good narrative.

By 4:00 Friday, the economy-sabotage angle was official. The Washington Post’s Greg Sargent used the Plum Line blog for the announcement:

A number of bloggers today have been up in arms about the apparent failure of the jobs bill in the Senate, now that it looks like no Republicans will help Dems break the GOP filibuster.

This could have terrible consequences, and Senator Debbie Stabenow, in particular, is furious. Today she argued that Republicans want the economy to tank in order to help themselves in the midterms

Thus in less than 24 hours, it went from Republicans worrying about the national debt to Republicans purposely tanking the economy just to embarrass Democrats.

Not to be left out, Bloomberg’s Shobhana Chandra also cut right to the bone in an article on Friday:

The Senate’s failure to pass legislation extending unemployment benefits will slow the pace of the U.S. recovery, said economist David Resler.

The bill’s demise will trim economic growth by 0.2 percentage point this quarter and by 0.4 point in the period from July through September, estimated Resler, chief economist at Nomura Securities International Inc. in New York.

So you see, economic growth apparently comes only by way of government spending, and this time there’s a real expert to say so!

But all is not lost. While working hard to opine on the terrible news, Chandra inadvertently let something slip:

Resler estimated that the unemployment rate, 9.7 percent in May, may decline by as much as one percentage point as some workers drop out of the labor force and others accept jobs they might have rejected earlier.

Wait…when people finally realize they can’t live on government assistance forever, they might buckle down and accept a tough job? This nugget appeared exactly 11 paragraphs down from the headline and was quickly glossed over.

So maybe, just maybe, Republicans are trying to enact market-based principles by urging people to go back to work. Maybe it has nothing to do with sabotaging the economy after all.

Don’t count on that particular narrative to grow any legs, though. An hour after the Washington Post hit piece, the Associated Press was back for more:

Labor Secretary Hilda Solis said Friday that Senate Republicans could be prolonging the recession by opposing a spending bill that would have extended unemployment benefits.

Solis, talking to a group of Latino government officials in Denver, said Republicans were wrong to oppose to a broader jobs bill that would have extended jobless benefits for about 200,000 people a week. She warned of dire consequences if benefits are shut off.

"This will be devastating and could take us back to a deeper recession," Solis said

Oh yeah, urging healthy workers to accept less glamorous jobs is really the "devastating" consequence of a diabolical Republican strategy.

Good to know we have professional, independent, unbiased journalists hard on the trail of Republican masterminds. 

*****Updated by Noel Sheppard: Did media get this talking point from Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) (h/t Twitter’s @ndgc12dx)?

The morning after the Senate failed to advance a bill that responded to the recession, Sen. Harry Reid laid into Republicans who blocked it en masse.

Clearly sore after falling three votes short Thursday night of the 60 needed to overcome a Republican filibuster, the Senate majority leader from Nevada charged in a Senate speech that GOP senators "are betting on our country to fail."

Rather than help Americans, he said, Republicans are more interested in bringing down President Barack Obama.

"The Republicans in the Senate have made the decision to do everything they can to turn the country upside down, to do everything they can to stop economic recovery because they think it may help some of their people running for the Senate around the country.

"They figure as bad as they can make the economy, the better off they will be," Reid said. "That is a pretty difficult view for people who are United States senators."

"As we learned from the health care debate, (Republicans) want everything that Obama wants to be his Waterloo."

As the deadline for a new California budget nears, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger is threatening to pay all state workers the minimum wage until legislators in Sacramento reach an agreement:

After enduring more than a year of unpaid monthly furlough days, state workers could see their pay cut to minimum wage until Sacramento strikes a budget accord this summer, according to a memo from Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s administration sent Wednesday…The memo from Department of Personnel Director Debbie Endsley to state department heads said that "absent a state budget," the governor would seek to slash workers’ pay to minimum wage until the impasse is over.

Thoughts? 

The former CEO of CNN and the creator of its Crossfire show, Reese Schonfeld, has slammed the new CNN show that will be hosted by Kathleen Parker and Client Number Nine aka Eliot Spitzer. In his Huffington Post blog, Schonfeld not only blasts the proposed new show but provides some interesting background on the original Crossfire in its early years:

As the former CEO of CNN, and the creator of Crossfire (the show, not the name — Paul Bissonette, CNN’s PR man, came up with that), I think I’m qualified to comment on the new, not to be called Crossfire, television program created for Eliot Spitzer and Kathleen Parker.

To be blunt, I can’t think of a worse idea. The original Crossfire featured Pat Buchanan and Tom Braden, whose name you rarely hear these days. The program was not intended as a shouting match — our goal was to put the number one news maker of the day on CNN air at 10pm every night and to have him reply to questions from the right, Buchanan, and from the moderate left, Braden. The guest would be caught in the crossfire.

So how was Schonfeld treated for creating the concept of Crossfire? He was fired:

But Ted Turner didn’t like the idea of the show, and refused to schedule it. Ted and I had a fight — I lost, and I got fired. But I, as CEO of CNN, had signed a contract with Braden and Buchanan. They threatened a lawsuit. I was to be a witness, and Ted was advised to settle the lawsuit. He agreed, and put Crossfire on the air for a half an hour at 11:30pm, and within six months, Ted moved it to 7:30pm. It quickly became the highest rated show on CNN.

The original hosts, and it seems the original concept, left Crossfire by 1989 and here is the reaction of Schonfeld to the new shouting match show:

I was appalled by it, and remained so for the next fifteen years — lazy bookers, second-rate guests, a crowded stage and a shouting match. Its ratings had decreased, and once FoxNews launched, Crossfire was overmatched and overwhelmed. It’s a sad and painful story, so I wasn’t too disappointed when CNN’s current President, Jonathan Klein, killed it. I didn’t think anything could be worse than that, but Klein has proven me wrong.

As for the new Spitzer-Parker show, Schonfeld has less than kind words:

Now, in what seems to be one last desperate attempt to save his job, Klein has created a pale imitation of the original Crossfire. The dictatorial Eliot Spitzer is the antithesis of the strong, but cordially polite, Tom Braden, and Kathleen Parker is no Pat Buchanan. According to the New York Times, she characterizes herself as "pro-life…But I don’t go around carrying a fetus in a jar." Buchanan, like Barry Goldwater before him, was not afraid of being considered extreme. Parker seems to avoid it at all costs.

CNN was created as a news network, and the 10pm hour, where the Crossfire show had been originally scheduled, was supposed to make news. By interviewing the protagonist of the day’s leading story, we hoped we could get him to say something that would advance the story by at least one news cycle, and have everybody quoting us in the next day’s newspaper. The guest was supposed to deliver fresh information, not controversy. Unfortunately, for twenty years, Crossfire shed more heat than light, and I suspect Spitzer-Parker will do the same.

Not to quibble with Schonfeld but to your humble correspondent it appears that Kathleen Parker seems to avoid being considered a real conservative at all costs. And how good can a show be if it features a liberal versus a "conservative" who is apologetic for being so? Can’t CNN at least find a real conservative or perhaps it is more of a matter of them not even wanting one in the first place.

It’s been two months since Comedy Central censored Mohammed out of their cartoon “South Park.” Even the utterance of the name was bleeped. The blog Revolution Muslim quoted the world’s most notorious terrorist as an inspirational figure. “As Osama bin Laden said with regard to the cartoons of Denmark, ‘If there is no check in the freedom of your words, then let your hearts be open to the freedom of our actions.’”

But there has been no ceasefire in Comedy Central’s war on Christianity. The attacks on Catholic Americans just keep coming. On “The Daily Show” on June 17, fake correspondent Samantha Bee interviewed two priests and two nuns who are watchdogging Goldman Sachs for a liberal interfaith group.

Jon Stewart started the Catholic-bashing in his introduction: “Sometimes it’s easy to spot the villain in a story. Sometimes it’s not.”

Bee joked to the priests and nuns: “Jesus wants us all to be rich. The Pope gets it. Have you even seen his ceiling?” Later, she joked that these “churchies” are “maybe not the best messengers.” When they suggested Goldman Sachs needed more transparency, Bee stressed with a laugh track: “Hold on. The Catholic Church wants more transparency.” Referring to this spring’s round of media investigations and church statements on priest sexual abuse, she said “Wouldn’t it be better to just lay low for a little while?” She narrowed her eyes and lectured a financial analyst: “Goldman Sachs is losing a P.R. war to the Catholic Church. That is not easy to do.”

Christians should and do allow themselves to be the objects of good-natured comedy, but there is clearly a nasty, even vicious undercurrent here. In an interview on the National Public Radio show “Fresh Air” on June 2, Bee revealed that she loves the church-mocking as a “terribly lapsed” Catholic. “So it is joyful for me to do that. That is pure pleasure for me, I will say.”

The comedians appearing on Comedy Central are also piling on Catholics. On June 11, the Catholic Church was mocked in a special featuring comedian Paul F. Tompkins. "Things started to just kind of unravel for her and it made less and less sense," Tompkins said of his mother turning to atheism. "She said, ‘One day I woke up and I realized it was all just s–t.’ Very eloquently put, mother dear." He described the steady, subtle erosion of faith. “And so years and years go by and then one day you wake up and say, ‘Hey, what happened to all that crazy junk I used to believe in? Boy, I sure like having my Sundays back.’”

That was mild compared to the comedian calling himself Louis C.K., who appeared on “The Daily Show” on June 16. Jon Stewart promoted him as “one of my all-time favorite comedians.” Late in the segment, as they were joking about being bleeped by censors, Louis said “I was going to say that the pope f—ed boys and I didn’t have time.” After the laughs, he insisted he was serious: “I do think he does. Can I defend that before we go away?…Well here’s the thing. He lets other people do it," and you are either outraged, or you are participating in it.

In this bigot’s mind, and many virulent anti-Catholic minds, Pope Benedict’s myriad of apologies and denunciations don’t display an ounce of outrage.

He was not kidding. On YouTube, there’s a five-minute video he made for his own website LouisCK.com where he interviews a fake “church spokesman” in priestly garb. The man declares “The Catholic Church is an ancient, worldwide organization dedicated to the constant goal of f—ing young boys.”

Louis C.K. presents a fake letter from the Pope that says “We at the Catholic Church f— boys all day long. That’s all we ever do. Signed, the Pope.” The “spokesman” he was interviewing proclaimed that “we’re very thorough” and the priests have raped every Catholic boy who’s come through a church door. With a smile, this alleged comic, a lapsed Catholic, "remembers" that why, yes, he was raped.

You don’t make a skit like this for laughs. You make it to propagate a lie and unleash your personal hatred.

But these Catholic-bashing comedians aren’t even controversial or “edgy.” Apparently, smearing the global leader of the world’s largest church just makes you a “truth” teller. Louis C.K. had a sitcom on HBO, and he’s now publicizing his new one for FX. He is so mainstream that CBS News just used him for a largely warm and fuzzy Father’s Day commentary on their show “Sunday Morning.”

That’s how acceptable anti-Catholic bigotry has become.

In the Saturday Washington Post, media reporter Howard Kurtz wrote up the resignation of blogger David Weigel, whose disgust for conservatives was too much for the Post to defend for a man hired to cover conservatives. Post executive editor Marcus Brauchli lamented "we can’t have any tolerance for the perception that people are conflicted or bring a bias to their work."

Everyone brings some bias to their work, and some Post reporters bring plenty. I’d guess he means that the Post couldn’t have the perception that a reporter/blogger viscerally hates the people he’s supposed to cover, and wants some of them dead. Brauchli bristled at the idea that the Post didn’t exactly take a hard look at Weigel’s writings before hiring:  

Asked about Weigel’s strong views about some conservatives, Brauchli said: "We don’t have the resources or ability to do Supreme Court justice-type investigations into people’s backgrounds. We will have to be more careful in the future."

It didn’t require a committee of investigators to read through 40,000 documents. Two NPR interviews would have been a decent start. I’d think that anyone who’d read Weigel’s reports for The Washington Independent would have found a liberal vibe. For the Post, that’s not disqualifying, it’s a plus, just as it was for NPR.

Media outlets don’t have to hire conservatives to cover conservatives, and they generally avoid "stooping" to that, perhaps for the sake of newsroom peace. But a reporter-slash-blogger can’t gain access to conservatives very successfully after suggesting you wished Rush Limbaugh would die, or especially that it’s unfair that the media has to offer "equal time" for moronic "real Americans." Kurtz relayed:   

The Daily Caller reported more inflammatory comments on Friday, with Weigel writing that conservatives were using the media to "violently, angrily divide America" and lamenting news organizations’ "need to give equal/extra time to ‘real American’ views, no matter how [expletive] moronic." When Rush Limbaugh, who has called for President Obama to fail, was hospitalized with chest pains, Weigel wrote: "I hope he fails."

Post ombudsman Andy Alexander reported the Post will try, try again, but he suggested two hires: 

“We will look for someone to replace Dave,” [managing editor Raju] Narisetti said.

Instead of just a replacement, The Post might consider two: one conservative with a Klein-like ideological bent, and another who can cover the conservative movement in the role of a truly neutral reporter.

In the meantime, Post managers would be wise to remind all staffers that personal opinions, expressed privately on listservs or through social media, can prove damaging if made public….

Alas, it took only one listserv participant to bundle up Weigel’s archived comments and start leaking them outside the group. The result is that Weigel lost his job. But the bigger loss is The Post’s standing among conservatives.

The guys at the Glenn Beck radio show had some fun at Al and Tipper Gore’s expense Thursday creating a mock interview where the host questioned the separated couple about the former Vice President’s antics with a masseuse in a Portland hotel room back in 2006.

The role of the Global Warmingist in Chief was marvelously played by Pat Gray with Stu Burguiere doing an adequate Tipper.

The interview began with Beck asking the Nobel Laureate what happened in the hotel Lucia that fateful evening.

Al/Pat deliciously responded, "The global warming just became overwhelming as I was receiving massage" (video follows with more highlights and commentary):

When Tipper/Stu was introduced, Al/Pat asked, "Do you remember the time when I read you poetry? When I said, ‘I was a child and she was a child in this kingdom by the sea. But we loved with a love that was more than love, I and my Annabel Lee.’"

Tipper/Stu responded, "That really brings back memories."

Yes, Al reading Edgar Allan Poe poems to Tipper. Somehow you imagine them being more "The Raven" than "Annabel Lee," but I digress.

Later the couple renewed their claim that "Love Story" was indeed about them despite the convenient truth that Tipper didn’t die of cancer.

But the highlight had to be Tipper/Stu’s marvelous haiku, "Get your hands off me. Why do you touch my buttocks? Mother Earth cries rape."

Now THAT’S poetry.

Nice job, guys! 

The inside-the-beltway media world was turned on its head with leaked e-mails that revealed Washington Post blogger Dave Weigel had some disparaging things to say about prominent conservative figures, including Rush Limbaugh, Matt Drudge and Byron York.

This ultimately resulted in Weigel’s resignation. However, some of Weigel’s antics have been previously raised by his critics, including Media Research Center Vice President Dan Gainor, who offered remarks to Washington Post ombudsman Andrew Alexander.

Alexander included them in a June 25 post on his blog:

With bloggers such as Weigel, "I think The Post needs to decide what it wants to be online," said Dan Gainor, a vice president at the conservative Media Research Center. "Does it want to be opinion? Or, does it want to be news? The problem here was that it was never clear."
"If it’s going to be opinion, it ought to have somebody on the conservative side — something Dave Weigel never was," he said.
If The Post wants to assign a "good neutral reporter" to cover conservatives, "we’d be thrilled," said Gainor. But quickly added, Weigel "wasn’t one. He looked at the conservative movement as if he was visiting a zoo. We’re more than that."
Gainor raises valid points. Klein’s blog posts clearly pass through a liberal prism. For that reason, liberals have a comfort level with what he writes, and conservatives know where he’s coming from, even if they disagree. In contrast, Weigel’s blog seemed to confuse many conservatives who contacted me. Was he supposed to be a neutral reporter, some wondered?

Also picking up Gainor’s reaction to the Weigel incident was Fox News Channel’s June 25 "Special Report." During the "Political Grapevine" segment, "Special Report" host Bret Baier offered viewers Gainor’s reaction.

"A Washington Post blogger assigned to cover the conservative beat has resigned after e-mails he wrote surfaced that included disparaging comments about the very conservatives he was supposed to cover," Baier said. "David Weigel’s e-mails to  JournoList, a listserv for liberal journalists were leaked Thursday. In them he wrote it would be a better world if Matt Drudge of the Drudge Report would quote, "Set himself on fire." Weigel also wished for the death of Rush Limbaugh and accused pundits and Republicans of racism. Weigel did apologize on his blog before calling it quits."

"Ben Smith at the Politico blames the paper for hiring what he calls, quote, ‘A liberal blogger under the false impression that he’s a conservative.’ Dan Gainor of the Media Research Center goes further calling the incident ‘a disaster for the Post,’ writing, quote, ‘the Post brought in someone who tried to tear down conservatives and look at the right as if he were visiting a zoo.’"

"Being a suicide bomber is the new political role model," Chris Matthews told his Friday "Hardball" audience. "Just kill everything, destroy everything, blow it up, nothing gets done. You’re dead, but who cares?" he added, referring to conservative Republicans running against Democrats in the 2010 midterms.

The comment came at the end of a segment featuring Rep. Jim Moran (D-Va.) and Politico’s Jim VandeHei. Matthews had complained to the latter that the congressional minority Republicans were intent not merely on tinkering around the edges of the majority Democrats’ policy proposals but on "destroy[ing] the United States government every time it gets up in the morning" all to the applause of "its cheering section back home say[ing] good work, keep trying to destroy the government."

[MP3 audio available here; WMV video available here]

VandeHei didn’t agree with Matthews’s "destroy the government" rhetoric about the GOP, although he agreed that the GOP was intent on "destroying" policies that President Obama supports.

For his part, the Politico writer argued that the political system as it stands now is just geared towards extreme partisanship because in part moderates had been "purged" from the GOP but also because "right now we have an entire system, we have a media system, we have a culture, we have technology that really rewards the incendiary, [that] rewards conflict."

Given Matthews’s hyperbolic invective about "The Rise of the New Right,"  VandeHei might unwittingly be on to something, at least when it comes to the incendiary media.

Please don’t let it be Big Bob!

Please don’t let it be Big Bob!

That fervent prayer by Harold of "Harold and Kumar Escape From Guantanamo Bay" as he desperately hopes that sound of the approaching footsteps don’t belong to a sadistic guard named Big Bob comes to mind when reading a New York Times article by Michael Luo. In Luo’s case he is hoping that the Republicans won’t gain significant victories in this November’s elections. He bases his glimmers of hope on what he perceives to be signs of economic progress. It isn’t a very strong peg upon which he hangs these hopes but it is pretty much all he has:

The economy is slowly recovering but remains on its sickbed, and most signs still point to a rough cycle for the party. Political analysts expect Republicans to make gains — possibly significant ones — in Congress in November, threatening to retake the House and maybe even the Senate.

But digging deeper, beyond the national numbers, reveals at least a few glimmers of hope for Democrats — still fairly distant and faint, but bright enough to get campaign strategists scanning the horizon and weighing the odds.

Please don’t let it be Big Bob!

Please don’t let it be Big Bob!

That is because different parts of the country are recovering at different rates — and, in a bit of electoral good luck for the Democrats, some of the areas that are beginning to edge upward more quickly, like parts of Ohio, Pennsylvania and New York, happen to be in important battlegrounds for the House and the Senate. 

Whew! So that means that Big Bob, uh, I mean electoral disaster won’t be arriving in November? 

And here Luo sounds a bit too anxious in his ardent desire to find economic upticks to counter the big bad Republicans:

A detailed examination of House and Senate seats in play, alongside state and local economic data compiled by Moody’s Analytics for The New York Times, yields some surprising bits of encouragement for Democrats but also adds color to the overall daunting picture confronting the party. At the very least, any such signs of hope are certain to affect the strategies being worked out now in campaigns. 

As for the unemployment rate, eh, it should have no effect on the election results. Or so Luo hopes so don’t mention the year 1930 midterm elections results to him:

While much attention has been paid to the nation’s stubbornly high unemployment rate, political scientists have found little correlation between that measure and midterm elections results. Instead, they have found more broad-based indicators, particularly real personal disposable per capita income, which measures the amount of money a household has after taxes and inflation, to be better gauges. 

Another hope is that voters have short memories:

Historically, political scientists have found that voters’ memories tend to be short. Larry M. Bartels, a political scientist at Princeton, has studied the impact of economic conditions on presidential elections and found that it is the second and third quarters of the election year that matter most. 

And if the economy is still in the tank come November? Not to worry. Reality doesn’t really count. Only imaginary perceptions:

In the end, however, the ultimate deciding factor will be voters’ perceptions — not how well the economy is actually doing, but how well voters believe it is doing. 

In the end, Michael Luo still doesn’t sound all that confident about keeping the Republicans from big gains in November. Despite his brave front, one can still picture him with eyes squeezed shut as he hears the ominous economic reports approaching and fervently reciting the political equivalent of:

Please don’t let it be Big Bob!

Please don’t let it be Big Bob!

It’s union thuggery, but at a higher echelon.

Imagine you’re representing the AFL-CIO, going on Fox News and trying to make a case that the $787-billion stimulus last year wasn’t nearly enough and that more is needed, despite the prevailing argument being that Keynesian economics doesn’t work based on this example.

Well, Ron Blackwell – the chief economist for the AFL-CIO faced that on the June 25 broadcast of Fox News’ "Your World with Neil Cavuto." Cavuto, asking some honest questions, pressed Blackwell, who was attempting to make the case for more stimulus, as to why the idea of more government spending to help the ailing economy was a legitimate one.

"You’re not creating the jobs, with all this money you’re wanting us to spend – then why should we keep digging?" Cavuto asked. "What’s wrong with saying let’s put the shovel down – that’s not working?"

Cavuto continued to press Blackwell on his premise that it would take more of the Keynesian medicine – an idea Blackwell wasn’t willing to concede was an incorrect one.

"I’m answering you right now – these programs did create jobs but not net creation," Blackwell said. "We lost more jobs because of the recession than were created by these programs. Net, gross – is that a complex idea for you?"

"Ron, you’re the chief economist there," Cavuto replied. "Where did you get your degree, a baking school? Where are you cooking up these numbers? The fact is we spent a trillion dollars…"

That comment drew an upset response from Blackwell.

"Oh, that’s an insult," Blackwell said. "Forget about it. You’re a joker – you’re an asshole."

The two followed up with another series of exchanges, but Blackwell was unwilling to concede the failure of last year’s stimulus to live up to its billing.

"[A]nd we’ve not seen results from that money," Cavuto said. "And now you’re saying it could have been worse had we not."

"I just told you that we have seen results," Blackwell said.

"So your answer to just answering a simple question is to curse at me, or to frame it differently, or to obfuscate the facts, or to ignore the facts with a trillion dollars spent and we haven’t seen any net new jobs and you’re answer is, ‘Well, we have to spend more?’" Cavuto said.

"We lost more jobs because of the recession than we created by these programs," Blackwell said. "Gross and net – it’s not a complex idea. You should have learned that in high school, Neil."

While calling for a boycott of the Grand Canyon State, Peggy West, member of the Democrat Executive Committee of Milwaukee, decided the whole Arizona anti-illegal immigration thingy is a bad idea since Arizona isn’t close to Mexico….

Just what does one say to that?

h/t Warner T

CNN’s Carol Costello and Jim Acosta revealed their disdain for a federal judge’s decision to overturn the Obama administration’s 6-month moratorium on offshore drilling when the expert they interviewed on the June 25 "American Morning" made a convincing case against the moratorium.

Tom Bower, an author who has written extensively on the oil industry, tried to explain the devastating economic impact the moratorium would inflict on an already beleaguered industry, but Costello and Acosta were blinded by ideology: "But isn’t safety more important than money?" queried Costello. "Because, I mean, these oil companies make massive amounts of money each day."

Bower, author of "Oil, Money, Politics and Power in the 21st Century," drew the ire of Costello and Acosta for calling the Gulf oil spill an "aberration" and noting the oil industry’s "phenomenal" overall safety record.
    
"But that’s what they say, it is just an aberration, but the BP disaster happened," argued Costello. "Nobody thought that could happen either. So, it’s just not logical, is it, that argument?"

"What do you mean they’re doing a very good job on the whole down there?" demanded Acosta. "I don’t know what that means. In what sense? You know, I mean, this entire body of water is at risk right now. It has been poisoned. And I’m just curious, what do you mean by doing a good job?"

Taking aim at Republicans and moderate Democrats like Sen. Mary Landrieu (La.) who continue to support offshore drilling, Acosta asked Bower: "I’m just curious, you know, is there a little bit of a having your cake and eat it too, when it comes to some of these Gulf Coast politicians saying we want the jobs and the protection from any environmental impact at the same time?"

Loaded questions designed to advance the White House’s narrative reflect Acosta’s underlying liberal tendencies.

Costello also parroted the Obama administration’s narrative:

Well, let’s talk about this moratorium because, and I’m just going to play devil’s advocate here. Let’s say — I mean, what’s wrong with these oil companies to stop drilling in the deepwater, these 33 wells, for four more months? Because that’s all we’re talking about when you take the moratorium in its entirety. What’s wrong with that?

Bower’s response, unlike Costello’s sputtering rant, was succinct and nonpartisan:

Well, the cost. We see each oil platform, each rig costs at least half a million dollars a day, and often more, and they just can’t afford that sort of equipment lying idle and the contractors will find other places around the world who want the rigs, and they’ll just take them there, so there’s just no choice.

After dismissing the expert, Acosta, turning to Costello to offer his informed opinion, lamented that "it just doesn’t feel right, you know, to say that as a whole, the industry’s just doing a great job down there."

The transcript of the segment can be found below:

CNN
American Morning
6/25/10

6:41 a.m.

CAROL COSTELLO, co-host: The Obama administration loses another effort to put a moratorium on drilling in the Gulf. But does lifting that ban serve our nation’s best interests? You know, Bonnie is talking about this storm coming in.

JIM ACOSTA, co-host: Yeah.            
        
COSTELLO: Wouldn’t it be a good idea if they continue to stop drilling on those 33 rigs — you know that are affected by this?

ACOSTA: It’s another potential complication for this whole thing.

COSTELLO: Yes. We’re going to get really into that with author Tom Bower, who has written a lot on BP and the oil industry. It’s 41 minutes past the hour.

[...]

ACOSTA: Welcome back to the "Most News in the Morning." You know, a showdown looms this morning over offshore drilling. A federal judge denied the administration’s request to postpone an order that would end a six-month moratorium.

COSTELLO: That means if anyone wants to start up the deep water drills, they certainly can, but the White House says it will introduce a new ban in a few days. We wanted to know what a moratorium really means for safety though. Is it really necessary? Joining us from London this morning: Tom Bower, who is the author of "Oil, Money, Politics and Power in the 21st Century." Good morning, sir.

TOM BOWER, author of "Oil, Money, Politics and Power in the 21st Century": Good morning.

COSTELLO: Well, let’s talk about this moratorium because, and I’m just going to play devil’s advocate here. Let’s say — I mean, what’s wrong with these oil companies to stop drilling in the deepwater, these 33 wells, for four more months? Because that’s all we’re talking about when you take the moratorium in its entirety. What’s wrong with that?

BOWER: Well, the cost. We see each oil platform, each rig costs at least half a million dollars a day, and often more, and they just can’t afford that sort of equipment lying idle and the contractors will find other places around the world who want the rigs, and they’ll just take them there, so there’s just no choice.

COSTELLO: But isn’t safety more important than money? Because, I mean, these oil companies make massive amounts of money each day.

BOWER: Well of course, safety is critical. As we’ve now seen, the catastrophe follows if these are not safe. But on the whole, all the oil corporations are working safely. This is just an aberration.

COSTELLO: But that’s what they say, it is just an aberration, but the BP disaster happened. Nobody thought that could happen either. So, it’s just not logical, is it, that argument?

BOWER: We don’t stop driving on the road because of a car crash. People carry on driving and people walk up staircases and fall down them, but we still walk up stairs. So in the end –

ACOSTA: Totally different when you’re talking about an entire body of water as important as the Gulf of Mexico. I mean, the question that I have is we’ve heard the governor of Louisiana, and I’m sure you watch him closely as well, Bobby Jindal, you know, talk about why this moratorium should be lifted for the sake of jobs and so forth. But at the same time, the governor is saying we need to built berms, we need to do all these other things to protect our coastline, and I’m just curious, you know, is there a little bit of a having your cake and eat it, too, when it comes to some of these Gulf Coast politicians saying we want the jobs and the protection from any environmental impact at the same time?

BOWER: Look, I’m not an apologist for the oil industry, but I must tell you that on the whole, their record is very good. And America needs the oil, it needs the gas, and the product in the Gulf has been superb, and they’re doing very good job down there on the whole. So, you know, just like we don’t stop fly when a plane crashes, you just got to improve the regulation –

ACOSTA: What do you mean they’re doing a very good job on the whole down there? I don’t know what that means. In what sense? You know, I mean, this entire body of water is at risk right now. It has been poisoned. And I’m just curious, what do you mean by doing a good job? Because the other day, there were CEOs from the entire oil industry testifying on Capitol Hill saying that if they were to also engage in deepwater oil drilling, they essentially have the same plan of action in place if there is a major catastrophe, which is, well, we just have to, you know, see if we can plug the hole.

BOWER: Look, again, I can only say I’m not an apologist for the industry, but they are extracting amazing amounts of oil from the most difficult conditions. You got to ask why they’re in the Gulf and not getting it from Mexico, Venezuela or Russia. That’s one of the great issues.

ACOSTA: Are you saying that we basically put ourselves in this position? I mean, is that your point?

BOWER: I think the countries have gotten the oil to put America in that position. But on the whole, they have done a very good job in the Gulf and the executives who testified on the Hill like (INAUDIBLE) have not had these sort of catastrophes that BP is just having. So, I got to repeat on the whole, they’ve done an amazing job to find oil and gas there, and they are bringing it out safely. The point is that the administration discovered that the regulators, the MMS have done a very poor job so the government has got some of the blame here. They’ve let the oil corporations get away with murder for too long. They’ve now learned a lesson. They’ll clearly have much better regulations down in the Gulf and elsewhere as well, because, believe me, they’re going to have to start digging for oil and drilling for oil off other coastlines around the U.S. again in the near future because America needs the oil.

COSTELLO: Funny you mentioned that because BP is doing that, you know, off the shores of Alaska and it’s doing this maneuver where they’re drilling it’s three miles offshore, they drilling down very deeply, and then they’re going to make a horizontal line, something that’s never been done before. So, BP, itself, is being allowed to go ahead with this process when we know that BP doesn’t have it together when it comes to extreme disasters and how to fix things.

BOWER: You’re absolutely right. The horizontal drilling is really quite well established now. There’s nothing new on that. That is a very effective way of getting huge amounts of oil out which previously would have got lost. But I think BP has learned a lesson. I don’t think they’re going to make that sort of error again. They’re going to be more careful than ever. They can’t afford another catastrophe nor can any other oil corporation. I mean, you just got to set the seed that of course oil is a very risky business as I show in the book. What they’ve done down in the Gulf is quite phenomenal. This is a catastrophe which never should have happened. Everyone is learning lessons. They’re going to do their best to prevent it from happening again, but the government has got as much responsibility now as the oil corporations to make sure that the regulations are there and enforced.

COSTELLO: Tom Bower, many thanks to you this morning. We appreciate it.

BOWER: Pleasure.

ACOSTA: I’m not sure I agree that they’re doing a bang-up job down there, but that’s just my take on it.

COSTELLO: You mean BP or the oil industry as a whole? Because I think he was separating them out.

ACOSTA: I think he was trying to separate it, but it just doesn’t feel right, you know, to say that as a whole, the industry’s just doing a great job down there.

COSTELLO: It’s sort of like you have to trust them that catastrophes similar to what’s happening with BP doesn’t happen again. And the oil companies are saying, "well, we have a great safety record." But BP said that, too.

ACOSTA: Yes. We can’t go on like this. We’ll move on.

–Alex Fitzsimmons is a News Analysis intern at the Media Research Center. Click here to follow you on Twitter.

This is one of those "I told you so" moments conservatives should really be out publicizing: The $787-billion stimulus passed early 2009 – it’s not working.

And on CNBC’s June 25 broadcast of "The Call," CME Group floor reporter Rick Santelli explained that all government spending is not created equal, and President Obama’s so-called stimulus spending was for government payrolls and not the infrastructure improvement is was sold to be.

"Well, you know, it’s all about, in my opinion, definition and choice," Santelli said. "Definition, I don’t disagree with our guest, Richard [DeKaser, president of Woodley Park Research], about stimulus, but I haven’t seen any stimulus. I’ve seen a lot of spending. And in terms of choice, austerity isn’t something people are going to volunteer for. The creditors are going to force it on them. I think these issues are much different than we’re selling them. You know, we don’t have a new Hoover Dam. We don’t have a new electric grid. We paid a bunch of salaries and benefits and extension benefits, unemployment with a lot of that money that you save jobs because you paid teachers because states couldn’t afford it I don’t think any of that really falls under a definition of stimulus."

"The Call" co-host Larry Kudlow offered a more technical analysis of this Keynesian economic policy implemented by the Obama administration. He explained an International Monetary Fund study, analyzed by the Hoover Institute’s John Taylor, shows Keynesian policy doesn’t translate into the most efficient way to jumpstart a lagging economy.

"The IMF has done a study that for every dollar of government spending, you only get 70 cents more in GDP, and after year two it goes to zero," Kudlow said. "Now, I think we’re going to zero. No wonder our borrowing ratios are so high. When are we going to learn that this kind of stimulus isn’t even what Keynes argued for many years ago?"

DeKaser, one of the segment’s panelists, argued that 70 cents of GDP growth was better than nothing, which Kudlow questioned.

"You borrow a dollar to get 70 cents, and you lose 30 cents?" Kudlow said. "Boy, that sounds like a bad deal, my friend. I wouldn’t want you trading my account. I mean, the whole thing could go deeper into debt."

Santelli argued that even if one subscribes to the 70 cents per dollar economic growth figure theory as a positive, this government didn’t get it right in its approach.

"I mean, the notion of stimulus is you want capital in the system, but when you have artificial stimulus, you give capital to the people that aren’t really creating an expansive employment scenario or creating something that’s actually positive for a society," Santelli said. "What you end up doing is putting capital to businesses that on their own couldn’t get capital and that’s for a reason. The market didn’t allocate it because they didn’t deserve it."

CNBC senior economics reporter Steve Liesman questioned Santelli’s wisdom – that a bailout for certain government employees was good policy.

"Rick, why is it artificial to keep teachers in the classroom and cops on the beat and firemen in the firehouses?" Liesman said. "To me that’s not artificial stimulus. That’s just good policy."

But that led to a vintage Santelli rant – why should taxpayers all over the country be held responsible for the woes of a local government brought on by its own irresponsibility.

"Because that’s what people pay property taxes for, and if the state of California when the bubble was going on raised boatloads of property taxes, why should the value of somebody’s house make collecting garbage more expensive, running transportation more expensive? It doesn’t. They spent all the money. So, why does my share have to pay for their teachers?"

The idea that Washington Post writer David Weigel was supposed to be a conservative — and not merely someone reporting on the conservative movement — was clearly not based on a review of Weigel’s output. Weigel didn’t just deconstruct conservatives for the Post, but was also presented twice recently by National Public Radio as a wise man assessing the fringiness of conservatives. Last October, they wanted to know how strange Fox News was, and whether they could be blamed for Tea Party protests. Weigel called their influence "massive." Weigel typically suggested Fox and Glenn Beck were not "realistic" in painting President Obama as connected to ACORN and the SEIU.

On NPR’s Fresh Air on February 23, before he joined the Post, Weigel reported on CPAC and the Tea Party and embraced host Terry Gross’s idea that conservatives shouldn’t be big fans of government-enhancing Dick Cheney: 

GROSS: So if the conservative movement is glad that Bush isn’t around anymore, and if they think that he embraced big government, why was Dick Cheney such a rock star at CPAC? I mean, if anything, Cheney is the person most responsible for the expansion of the powers of the executive branch.

WEIGEL: Well…

GROSS: And Cheney was the person who – was the architect in a – one of the architects of the war in Iraq, which was certainly government getting us into a very long war, a war that many people think was not only fought on false premises but many people believe has been very destructive both to America and Iraq. So why did he get such the rousing welcome that he did, if in many ways he represented the expansion of government’s power?

WEIGEL: That’s an excellent point, it’s just that he represents a specific kind of government expansion, the expansion of the national security state and the expansion of America’s role in spreading democracy around the world with military action.

Those are very popular with conservatives, and that’s a dispute. CPAC was pretty convivial this year, but the dispute that existed there was between more Ron Paul-type activists who think America should pull back from engagement in the world and wiretapping and all these debates that are hot right now, and the more traditional conservatives, who think anything that the president needs to kill terrorists is justifiable.

So that’s why he was cheered. Cheney was a surprise guest who was introduced by his daughter, Liz Cheney, who has become a pretty successful pundit, basically making that argument, arguing sometimes against reality that everything Barack Obama does is aiding terrorists and making America less safe. That got huge cheers.

Weigel also talked about how CPAC organizers were downplaying a presidential straw poll that Ron Paul won, and the idea that Weigel’s libertarian doesn’t come through in this segment:

WEIGEL: But conservatives were united in trying to diminish this result, because they don’t want their image to the American people to be a septuagenarian politician who bangs on about the need to pull – you know, to close down American bases and speaks at meetings of the John Birch Society. I mean, it was accidentally very revealing of how far right the party has gotten.

GROSS: Do you mean that Paul’s victory is representative of how far right the party has gotten?

WEIGEL: Oh, yeah, this is an unscientific straw poll that was conducted, but they’ve all been unscientific straw polls, and they usually don’t end with this very libertarian – and libertarian is a term that gets tossed around a lot. Paul specifically is one of these guys who thinks we just really need to roll back the federal government to at least what it was like before 1912, before the progressive movement. Actually, I correct myself: before Teddy Roosevelt.

Weigel also suggested the Tea Party movement weren’t Dick Armey’s puppets, but they didn’t know which bills to oppose until Armey told them: 

GROSS: The Tea Party movement wants to be something new and different and have some impact on the Republican Party. But one of the chief funders of parts of the Tea Party movement is Dick Armey, through his organization Freedom Works. And Dick Armey is really, you know, a voice of the past. I mean he was one of the – he was a Republican leader during the Clinton administration and goes back before that. Like, when was he in Congress?

WEIGEL: He was elected in 1984 and he left on his own volition in 2002. I mean he was in no danger of being defeated. He just retired to become, like a lot of former congressmen, a lobbyist with some political interests.

GROSS: Okay. So what are his interests in funding the Tea Party movement?

WEIGEL: One thing Armey would say is that he doesnt fund the Tea Party movement. He loves to contrast what they see as union thugs and ACORN putting Democratic rallies together with Tea Party people gassing up their cars and driving to Washington for his rallies. There’s some dishonesty there. (Laughter)

I mean Freedom Works is always on the scene. It helps set these things up. It’s got full-time activists who help get permits. And I mean I’ve been to a couple of events at Freedom Works’ office where theyll have huge, you know, nice buffet spreads and things like that for Tea Party activists and conservative bloggers to meet and strategize. But it’s not a ton of money they’re spending. He has figured out that the very libertarian beliefs he’s had for a long time, which he always thought had some sort of, you know, if not a majority support, some huge support in the country he just couldnt locate, well, that support’s been located. So he is happily steering these guys and giving them candidates they can support and giving them policies they can support.

I mean Tea Party activists are not – do not come to these rallies with a set of political goals. They generally believe the things I’ve been talking about – about the Constitution, about how Obama’s trying to wreck it. But for them to come out against a bill or believe that that bill contains a provision that’s going to kill their grandmothers, something like that, that is coming from people like Armey, who have these interests – have lobbying interests in some respects, who want that message to get out there. And that’s what you see.

I mean I dont – I really don’t think that conservative activists at the top like Armey have been puppeteering this movement. I mean they’re right, it was – it did spring out of some part of the American map in reaction to Obama’s policies. But they are telling it what it should stand for as much as Fox News is informing them what Obama is doing that they should be opposing.

On NBC’s Today on Friday, White House correspondent Chuck Todd preemptively dismissed any criticism of President Obama referring to "Twitters" during a joint press conference with Russian President Dimitri Medvedev on Thursday: "It turns out he didn’t misstate it. It was written incorrectly in his prepared remarks."

During Todd’s report, a clip was played of Obama noting how in a visit to California’s Silicon Valley, Medvedev went to "visit the headquarter of Twitters." Obama simply placed an ’s’ after the wrong word. Rather than let the minor gaffe stand, at the conclusion of the report, Todd made to sure to explain the typographical error to viewers: "You did not mishear. The President did say the word ‘Twitters,’ plural." Despite Obama’s inability to correct the remarks off the cuff, Todd solely blamed a White House staffer for the mistake: "A speechwriter falling on his sword on that one."   
                        
Todd quickly changed the subject to a similar gaffe made by President Bush: "…it did bring back memories of President Bush one time referring to those ‘internets.’" The media was certainly never quick to come to Bush’s defense after a verbal misstep.  

In his report, Todd observed how Obama got a "diplomatic head-start" on the upcoming G-20 economic summit in Canada by meeting with Medvedev and how "…the President treated Medvedev to cheeseburgers at one of the President’s favorite burger spots in northern Virginia."

Here is a full transcript of Todd’s June 25 report:

7:07AM

MATT LAUER: President Obama will be keeping an eye on what’s happening in the Gulf today from Toronto. He’s heading there this morning to join a host of world leaders at the G-20 summit. NBC’s chief White House correspondent Chuck Todd is there as well. Chuck, good morning to you.

CHUCK TODD: Well, good morning, Matt. The President is scheduled to arrive here later this morning. He’s going to have a new Wall Street reform deal in his back pocket. It’s something he’s going to try to use to convince these other nations from around the world to do similar action. On Thursday he met with an important G-20 ally, the Russian president. Believe it or not, it’s the seventh time these two have met face-to-face. Security here at the G-20 meeting is tight. The Canadian government has spent more than any other host country ever to try to make sure world leaders are safe. Heading into the important economic summit, the President got a diplomatic head-start by meeting with one of America’s most touchy allies, Russia, and its president, Dimitri Medvedev.

BARACK OBAMA: America’s most significant national security interests and priorities could be advanced most effectively through cooperation, not an adversarial relationship, with Russia.

TODD: And yet, despite the global economic concerns and the presence of the Russian president-

UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN: Does the change in command in Afghanistan-

TODD: A reporter’s first question brought the President back to the issue that’s dogged him all week, Afghanistan.

OBAMA: I am confident we’ve got a team in place that can execute it.

TODD: The President promised no more personnel changes after Wednesday’s dramatic firing of General Stanley McChrystal and the President made sure to leave himself wiggle room on the question of whether the U.S. will actually go through with its plans to draw down troops in July, 2011.

OBAMA: We didn’t say we’d be switching off the lights and closing the door behind us. We said as we begin a transition phase in which the Afghan government is taking on more and more responsibility.

TODD: Medvedev was asked if he had any advice for the President, given Russia’s long and costly war in Afghanistan.

DIMITRI MEDVEDEV: But I try not to give pieces of advice that can’t be fulfilled.

TODD: But Defense Secretary Robert Gates did have words of advice.

ROBERT GATES: No one, be they adversaries or friends, or especially our troops, should misinterpret these personnel changes as a slackening of this government’s commitment to the mission in Afghanistan.

OBAMA: Visit the headquarter of Twitters.

TODD: On a lighter note, President Obama noted President Medvedev opened a Twitter account and joked it was a 21st sentry substitute for the old Cold War hotline.

OBAMA: I have one as well, so we may be able to finally throw away those red phones that have been sitting around for so long.

TODD: Earlier in the day, the President treated Medvedev to cheeseburgers at one of the President’s favorite burger spots in northern Virginia.

MEDVEDEV: Probably it’s not quite healthy but it’s very tasty and you can feel the spirit of America.

TODD: Alright. You did not mishear. The President did say the word ‘Twitters,’ plural. It turns out he didn’t misstate it. It was written incorrectly in his prepared remarks. A speechwriter falling on his sword on that one. But it did bring back memories of President Bush one time referring to those ‘internets.’ Matt.

LAUER: Alright, Chuck Todd, thank you very much. He’s in Toronto this morning.

Stephen Holden, the New York Times’s most left-wing movie critic (and that’s saying something) admires Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez almost as much as left-wing conspiracist/movie director Oliver Stone does.

Stone’s new documentary, "South of the Border," features informal interview sessions with several left-wing Latin American leaders, but the screen-time is dominated by Chavez, who Holden holds up as a humorous, "good-hearted man of the people."

Political documentaries shadowed by paranoia and apocalyptic foreboding are so commonplace nowadays that "South of the Border," Oliver Stone’s celebration of the leftward tilt of South American politics, comes as a cheerful surprise. As anyone who remembers "JFK," his 1991 film about the Kennedy assassination, can attest, Mr. Stone has his own paranoid tendencies, but they are muted in this provocative, if shallow, exaltation of Latin American socialism.

During "South of the Border" Mr. Stone schmoozes with several left-wing political leaders, including his good buddy the Venezuelan president, Hugo Chávez; he takes Mr. Stone to his childhood home, where Mr. Chávez mounts a children’s bike that collapses under him. Mr. Chávez comes across as a rough-hewn but good-hearted man of the people whose bullheaded determination is softened by a sense of humor. At a corn-processing factory, he jokes: "This is where we build the Iranian atomic bomb. A corn bomb." Ho, ho, ho.

Such "humor" is especially hilarious given that, as Forbes reports, Venezuela under Chavez harbors terrorists and weapons from the anti-Israel groups Hezbollah and Hamas via Tehran.

Mr. Stone’s visit with Mr. Chávez is the movie’s longest interview with a Latin American statesman during what feels like a whirlwind tour of South American capitals. Instead of the saber-rattling, America-hating tyrants often depicted on American television (especially Fox News, several of whose extreme fulminations are excerpted for comic effect), Mr. Stone finds sensible, plain-spoken men (and one woman, Argentina’s president, Cristina Fernández de Kirchner). They are well aware of how power works in the global arena. Those who have it use it for their own advantage; it’s the way of the world.

The two demonic influences named in the movie are the American-controlled International Monetary Fund and the "private media." Mrs. Kirchner recalls resisting pressure to keep borrowing from the fund rather than pay back what was owed. Mr. Chávez repeatedly triumphs despite the almost unanimous hostility of Venezuela’s privately owned media.

Holden brought up the anti-Chavez hostility of the "private" media without reporting that earlier this year Chavez arrested the owner of the independent TV network Globovision for "comments offensive" to Chavez.

Holden left Chavez criticism to a single sentence:

There are no serious interviews with the poor to determine how everyday lives have changed under these socialist governments, and there is no mention of the human rights abuses in Venezuela reported by Amnesty International.

Holden left out plenty. Chavez arrested Judge María Lourdes Afiuni for a ruling that displeased him (she had freed a businessman who had supported opposition politicians), as the Times itself reported on April 4, "Criticism of Chavez Stifled by Arrests." Reporter Simon Romero added:

Twenty to 30 Venezuelans, including Judge Afiuni, are now imprisoned here because of their political activity or for reasons connected to publicly contradicting Mr. Chávez’s wishes, said Rocío San Miguel, a legal scholar here who leads a nongovernmental group that monitors Venezuelan security.

Holden argued that "South of the Border" "is a valuable, if naïvely idealistic, introductory tutorial on a significant international trend."  Ever the socialist idealist, Holden concluded: "It ultimately proffers the vision of a pan-South American union that is economically and politically strong enough to realize the Bolivarian dream."

Seems the only thing gushing more than the BP oil spill these days is the disaster brewing in Paul McCartney’s mouth.  In an exclusive interview with The Sun, McCartney takes a major swipe at global warming realists, er, deniers, by stating (emphasis mine):

"Sadly we need disasters like this to show people. Some people don’t believe in climate warming – like those who don’t believe there was a Holocaust."

Well that’s putting things in perspective.  I’m not sure global warming has been proven to have caused the Deepwater Horizon oil rig explosion.  Missed that report.  Regardless, it remains unclear how the theory of global warming is in any way similar to the reality of the Holocaust.

McCartney goes on to defend President Obama from any and all criticism concerning the Gulf disaster, culminating with the revelation that he "really love(s) him."

Because nobody was really sure where your allegiances lied after the ‘library’ swipe at former President Bush, Paul.

McCartney starts with a blanket dismissal of the Obama critics:

"I don’t accept the criticism of Barack over the oil spill."

He continues,

"If the President of the country you spilled oil in tells you off then you’ve just got to take it or say, ‘I’m really sorry, we’ll clean it up and pay for it all by next week."

Now I ask, why didn’t BP think of that in the first place?  All of these failed attempts and confusion in trying to ‘plug the damn hole’, and all Tony Hayward had to do to make things right was say, "I’m really sorry, we’ll clean it up and pay for it all by next week."

Of his recent visit to the White House, McCartney recalls,

"It was such an honour. I’d heard of the prize – it’s the biggest for popular music in the US. When the President gave it to me, I was so touched. I’m a huge Obama supporter. I really love him."

He also gushes,

"I think Obama’s doing great. He’s a smart guy."

I’m not sure what it is, but McCartney is clearly smitten (or wee-weed up) with our ’smart guy’ President.  Perhaps it was his spelling of the University of ‘Sycacuse’.  Perhaps it was his over-estimation of a tornado death toll by roughly 9,988.  Maybe it was his firm grasp of geography.  Or his love of Sioux City.

No word on whether it was true that Sir Paul went on to say, "He had me at 57 states."

Based on these comments it is clear that, as The Sun interview states, McCartney has been spending too much time sitting in "a darkened room lit only by scented candles … to gather his thoughts."

Clearly the gathering isn’t working.  To be fair though, even the Dutch skimmers would have a tough time reigning in those thoughts.

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Photo Credit:  AFP/Getty