Geraldo Rivera has been sticking to his talking points that if Trayvon Martin had not been wearing a hoodie, he may not have been shot and killed by George Zimmerman and that "dressing like a wannabe gangster" contributed to his death. On his show this Sunday evening, Rivera was called out for his blame the victim game by Martin's attorney, who chastised Rivera for embarrassing his son again with the hoodie remarks and likened his justification of the Martin shooting to those who would justify rape by blaming the victim for what clothing they were wearing.

As our friends at News Hounds reported, this past Friday, Geraldo went on Bill O'Reilly's show and said this: Geraldo Rivera: It’s Reasonable For George Zimmerman To Have Racially Profiled Trayvon Martin Because Of His Size, Race And Hoodie “Thugwear”.

Here's more from their post on Geraldo being called out by Martin's attorney, Benjamin Crump: Trayvon Martin Attorney Tells Geraldo Rivera: You’re Embarrassing Your Son Again With Your Latest Hoodie Comments:

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The chairman of the Republican National Committee (RNC) on Sunday said it was the fault of President Barack Obama and the Democrats for reports that a super PAC supporting presumptive presidential nominee Mitt Romney was considering attack ads featuring Obama's former pastor Rev. Jeremiah Wright.

"I know how it works," RNC Chairman Reince Priebus insisted to CNN's Candy Crowley. "It's the Democrats and Barack Obama that want the story out there. He wants this story to play out in the media because for every day that [Obama strategist] David Axelrod and this President don’t have to talk about their broken promises when it comes to jobs, the debt, and the deficit — and the more time they can talk about hypotheticals that may or may not come true — is a day they want to win on."

He added: "So, look, this president’s got a bigger problem and his problem is no matter what he puts out there, no matter what distractions he puts out there, he can’t change the truth and escape the reality of where we are in this American economy. And it’s no good."

The New York Times revealed last week that the the pro-Romney super PAC had proposed an ad campaign linking Obama to Wright. Their plan went so far as to suggest possible responses to charges of race-baiting if ads were to mention Wright’s “black liberation theology.”

After learning of the proposal to use Obama’s former association with Wright, Romney told reporters that he repudiated the effort.

“I think it’s the wrong course for a PAC or a campaign,” the candidate said. “I hope that our campaigns can be respectively about the future and about issues and about vision for America.”

But on Sunday, Obama campaign strategist David Axelrod said Romney had only “tepidly and reluctantly” condemned the super PAC’s proposed ad campaign.

“We have said [that Romney's faith is] not fair game,” Axelrod told CNN’s Candy Crowley. “And we wish Governor Romney would stand up as resolutely and consistently, to refute these kinds of things on his side.”

(h/t: Think Progress)

President George W. Bush's former adviser Karl Rove says that using Rev. Jeremiah Wright to attack President Barack Obama is a "stupid" idea.

The New York Times revealed last week that a super PAC supporting presumptive Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney was considering an ad campaign linking Obama to Wright. Their proposal goes so far as to propose possible responses to charges of race-baiting if ads were to mention Wright’s “black liberation theology.”

"Speaking from the position of a super PAC, you want to do things that will be helpful to the candidate and not things that will be hurtful," Rove told Fox News host Chris Wallace on Sunday. "And frankly, trying to dredge up Jeremiah Wright -- right or wrong -- after this issue was litigated four years ago by [former Republican presidential nominee] John McCain deciding not to litigate it was stupid."

"So, you want to try and do things that are helpful, not hurtful. And look, I thought it was very smart for the Romney campaign to immediately go out an denounce the tactic. It certainly sent a message to everybody in America what they wanted the campaign to be about. And it certainly sent a message to people involved in the super PACs, don't be doing stupid things like this."

After learning of the plan to use Obama's former association with Wright, Romney told supporters that he repudiated the effort.

"I think it’s the wrong course for a PAC or a campaign," the candidate said. "I hope that our campaigns can be respectively about the future and about issues and about vision for America."

But on Sunday, Obama campaign strategist David Axelrod said Romney had only "tepidly and reluctantly" condemned the super PAC's proposed ad campaign.

"We have said [that Romney's faith is] not fair game,” Axelrod told CNN's Candy Crowley. “And we wish Governor Romney would stand up as resolutely and consistently, to refute these kinds of things on his side.”

Crossroads GPS -- a pro-Romney super PAC created by Rove -- last week launched a $25 million ad blitz accusing the president of breaking promises.

When asked about his leadership and a recent article in National Journal questioning whether he's capable of controlling his caucus or not, Speaker of the House John Boehner came up with this rather odd metaphor:

Boehner Compares His Caucus To ‘218 Frogs In A Wheelbarrow’:

In an interview scheduled to air on ABC’s ‘This Week’, House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) compared his sometimes unruly GOP caucus to “218 frogs in a wheelbarrow,” the number of votes needed to pass a bill in the House.

“I’ve never been shy about leading,” Boehner said. “But you know, leaders need followers. And we’ve got 89 brand new members. We’ve got a pretty disparate caucus. It’s hard to keep 218 frogs in a wheelbarrow long enough to get a bill passed.”

Boehner claimed there was only so much they could do with Democrats having control of the Senate and the presidency, pretended any of them have had any intentions of compromising with Democrats and repeated the Republican zombie lie on why the Senate hasn't passed a budget rather than just passing these stop-gap measures as they've been doing for the last couple of years. As Vyan over at Daily KOS reminds us in this post from last year, the Senate didn't pass a budget because the Republicans blocked it. Heaven forbid George Stephanopoulos or any of his fellow Villagers might take the time to point that out to their audience when one of these Republicans repeats that lie.

Transcript below the fold.

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House Budget Commitee chairman Paul Ryan (R-WI) says that his plan to slash government spending on programs for the poor while increasing defense spending and giving tax cuts to the wealthy would actually "prevent austerity."

NBC's David Gregory on Sunday pointed out that the debate over whether slashing budgets would grow the economy was not just happening in Europe, but in the U.S. as well.

"This question of austerity in Europe, they had failing economies, nearly depressed economies," Gregory told Ryan. "The answer throughout the region was to slash their budgets. Has it failed?"

"No, David," Ryan replied. "I would say they've also raised taxes. This is a cautionary tale of what happens when politicians who make a lot of empty promises end up running out of the ability to borrow money at cheap rates and now they are broken promises. It's a cautionary tale of what will happen to us if we stay on the path we are on."

"What we're saying is let's get on growth and prevent austerity," he continued. "The whole premise of our budget is to preempt austerity by getting our borrowing under control, having tax reform for economic growth and preventing Medicare, Social Security and Medicaid from going bankrupt. That preempts austerity."

"The president, his budget, the fact that the Senate hasn't done a budget in three years puts us on a path to European-like austerity. That's what we're trying to prevent from happening in the first place."

The budget plan Ryan unveiled earlier this year aimed to cut spending by privatizing parts of Medicare, slashing Medicaid programs for the poor by $810 billion, spending 38 percent less on transportation and 33 percent less on education than the Obama administration has proposed.

The White House has said that Ryan's budget would also "shower the wealthiest few Americans with an average tax cut of at least $150,000."

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) on Sunday challenged House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) to bring middle-class tax credits up for an immediate vote to prove they wouldn't be "held hostage" to tax cuts for the rich.

"I challenge the Speaker right now to bring the middle income tax cuts to the floor," Pelosi told ABC's George Stephanopoulos, agreeing with Boehner that budget discussions shouldn't wait until after the election.

"Bringing middle-income tax cuts to floor now, passing those would help our economic recovery, would be a clear signal that the upper-end tax cuts for the wealthy will expire because middle-income tax cuts would not be held hostage to those."

Pelosi also said that the Speaker's threat to allow the government to default by blocking increases to the debt ceiling in order to force the Obama administration to accept deep budget cuts were "over the edge."

"Here we go again," she warned. "Last year, the threat of not lifting the debt ceiling caused our credit rating to be lowered. This is not a responsible, mature, sensible place for us to go. We all know we have to reduce the deficit. We have to do it in a balanced way. The Speaker wants to go over the edge."

(h/t: National Journal)

House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) on Sunday dismissed financial regulations that could have stemmed $3 billion or more in losses on derivatives by JPMorgan Chase & Co. because the company "should be help accountable by the market."

"There’s no law against stupidity, no law against stupid trades," Boehner told ABC's George Stephanopoulos.

"And as long as the positives, money wasn’t at risk, and as long as there’s no risk of a taxpayer bailout– they should be held accountable by the market and their shareholders -- and they are," the Speaker insisted.

Boehner also shrugged off the notion that implementation of the Dodd-Frank bank reform law could have prevented the losses.

"I don’t believe there’s anything in Dodd-Frank that would’ve prevented this activity at JPMorgan," he explained.

Boehner's comments echo presumptive Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney's sentiment that the bank's losses are "the way America works."

“I would not rush to pass new legislation or new regulation,” Romney said during a Wednesday interview with Hot Air blogger Ed Morrissey. “This is, in the normal course of business, a large loss but certainly not one which is crippling or threatening to the institution.”

“This was not a loss to the taxpayers of America; this was a loss to shareholders and owners of JPMorgan and that’s the way America works,” the former Bain Capital executive explained. “The $2 billion JPMorgan lost, someone else gained.”

(h/t: Talking Points Memo)

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During his Fox Business special, Bad Speech which reaired on their sister network, Fox News this Saturday, John Stossel highlighted several incidences which he called "assaults on speech," the first of which was the firing of Pat Buchanan from MSNBC.

Apparently both Buchanan and Stossel are terribly upset with Van Jones' organization, Color of Change, for exercising their own free speech in protesting the kind of hatred Pat Buchanan had been peddling for ages now. Here's their petition which Stossel read part of to Buchanan:

Below is the message we'll send to MSNBC President Phil Griffin and NBC News President Steve Capus on your behalf. You can add a personal message using the box on the right.

I'm writing to demand that you fire Pat Buchanan immediately. Buchanan has a long and consistent history of peddling white supremacist ideology as legitimate political commentary, on your network and elsewhere. He recently went on a white supremacist radio show to promote his new book -- which argues that increasing racial diversity is a threat to this country and will mean the "End of White America."

Pat Buchanan has the right to express his views, but he's not entitled to a platform that lets him broadcast bigotry and hate to millions. If MSNBC and NBC want to be seen as trusted, mainstream sources of news and commentary, you need to fire Buchanan now.

Stossel only read the portion where they said he peddled white supremacist ideology and his response was to say he didn't know what that means. Stossel also read part of the list from this post by Think Progress: Why MSNBC Dumped Pat Buchanan: His 10 Most Outrageous Statements:

3. Claimed Jerry Sandusky’s atrocities are because of “Homosexual marriage.” Buchanan appeared on a right-wing radio show on November 15 to make some convoluted comparisons: “Let’s take this Penn State thing…these horrors, there’s an organization that marches in the gay pride parade in New York called—used to—called the North American Man Boy Love Association, which advocated voluntary sex along the lines of exactly what was going on at Penn State. Many of our political icons have marched in that parade right behind that NAMBLA float […] This is now, homosexual marriage is now the civil rights cause of the decade.”

Buchanan's response was to just start laughing and deny he made the statement. Stossel didn't bother to point out that the link goes to a Media Matters post with the audio of the interview, so people could go listen for themselves and hear what he said.

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I was fairly sure that wingnut Rep. Steve King would say something completely ridiculous or untrue as soon as I saw his name on the list of guests on C-SPAN's Washington Journal earlier this week. The crew over at Think Progress proved me right when they flagged this portion of King's interview that morning:

Steve King Claims Obamacare Will Grow The Number Of Uninsured, Calls For ‘Personal Responsibility’:

During an appearance on CSPAN’s Washington Journal Thursday morning, Rep. Steve King (R-IA) claimed that the Affordable Care Act would increase the number of Americans without health insurance, dismissing analysis showing that 30 million people would gain coverage under the law.

“Everybody in America has access to health care, and we even have many many organizations that make sure they fill those holes,” King explained. “The effort was to increase the number of insured in America and that number does not look like it will increase under Obamacare”:

KING: We’re actually going to get more people uninsured under Obamacare and this creates the foundation for a one-size-fits-all federally-run socialized medicine system. We’re not completely there and I think we are a lot better off to let the free markets do this and encourage people to be personally responsible.

King’s analysis of health policy couldn’t be more wrong. While organizations and hospitals do provide emergency services to uninsured Americans, the cost of that uncompensated care is shifted to private premium payers, resulting in higher health care spending system-wide. Obamacare accepts King’s premise of encouraging personal responsibility and will require able-bodied citizens to pay for their own health care expenses beginning in 2014.

As they noted, King also expressed his opposition to requiring insurers to cover people with pre-existing conditions and allowing kids to stay on their parent's health insurance plans, which may end up being at odds with his own leadership, once they finally release their alternative plan to the public.

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While discussing whether Gov. Mitch Daniels is going to support Richard Mourdock, who just defeated incumbent Sen. Richard Lugar from his home state of Indiana and Mourdock's statement that his idea of compromise equals Democrats voting with Republicans if we're unfortunate enough to see them gain control of the Congress and the presidency again, Daniels was apparently suffering from a severe case of amnesia when he made this statement that was flagged from our friend Jed Lewison over at Daily KOS:

Another dazzling display of Romnesia: Mitch Daniels says we're in 'peacetime':

As you watch this or read the transcript, keep in mind that from 2001 to 2003—during which time the Bush administration launched two wars, one of which we are fighting to this day, and two rounds of tax cuts for the wealthy—Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels was George W. Bush's budget director. Yet now he is blaming President Obama for allegedly creating a debt bomb:

Well, you know, he's been the president of this nation for the three years in which we have drifted ever closer to the biggest peacetime crisis we may have ever faced. There's no doubt it. It's a mathematical certainty. [...] To me the central question of this election is why such an administration deserves a second chance.

The fact that Mitch Daniels apparently has forgotten we are at war in Afghanistan—even though he served in the White House when we began the war more than a decade ago—is a fitting tribute to the Romnesia that has infested the Republican Party.

As he noted, Daniels and his ilk want to erase from our memory banks the fact that George W. Bush busted the budget with billions wasted in Iraq and Afghanistan. This is someone who worked for an administration that gave us those two "wars" off the books, an unfunded prescription drug plan and the Bush tax cuts which weren't paid for. And despite that, he's treated as someone we're supposed to take seriously by the media month after month.

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