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From C-SPAN's Washington Journal, the Carlson twins (not really) Margaret and Tucker showed up to give us some of their Villager insight on the news of the day. When asked about how people feel about quitter Sarah-Barracuda, Tucker pulled out the tired old McCain campaign rhetoric about how President Obama is "less experienced" than Palin even though he thinks there should be "more respect for the office" than to want to elect either one of them. Tucker added that he believes Palin is smarter than Al Gore, and just thinks its "weird" that anyone would be terrified of her and afraid that she might actually have a chance of being elected President.

Margaret played nice and just followed up by saying that Sarah didn't strike her as much of a reader. She reads alright Margaret--Newsmax and The John Birch Society.

Tucker gave me an excuse to to post this exchange where Jon Stewart treated Carlson with the disdain he deserves for his hackery. No more bow tie these days, but no less idiotic.

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From Fox News Sunday, Brit Hume tries to blame our situation with China owning our debt on President Obama, and throws in a bit of not-so-subtle racism with his offhand "bow and scrape" remark, just for good measure. It seems Hume has been asleep for the last eight years plus before Obama got elected if he thinks our problems with China just started in January.

Wallace: Let's talk about that point that Anne brings up Brit, because especially in China there was a sense of a diminished U.S. roll in the world. The Chinese were lecturing us when it came to economic policy and basically ignoring the President when it came to human rights.

Hume: Look, the president is in a weaker position than he might have been, not least because his policies have contributed mightily to the immense amount of new borrowing that's being done, much of it from the Chinese. So now you have the Chinese even worried about the size of the health care plan. That is unfortunate. But this president seems quite willing to embrace weakness as a position for the United States. I mean, the bowing and scraping that we see, in Saudi Arabia we saw it. We saw it on this trip in Japan--these kinds of gestures -- they wouldn't mean anything if they didn't seem to be of a piece with the general approach that the president has taken.

I think that he thinks that if he is such a -- he is a nice man, with a magnetic personality, and if he can reason with these people and not try to throw his weight around, that they will respond to him. That's exactly backward. The United States has some weight to throw around and still with the Chinese. They need our market as much as we need their money to borrow. And he's not in as weak a position as he behaves. And I don't think it helps for him to do what he did on this trip and the results bear that out.

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Chris Matthews takes his best shot at attempting to turn President Obama into Jimmy Carter. This from the man who said this about George Bush when he decided to play dress up on the aircraft carrier:

MATTHEWS: What's the importance of the president's amazing display of leadership tonight?

[...]

MATTHEWS: What do you make of the actual visual that people will see on TV and probably, as you know, as well as I, will remember a lot longer than words spoken tonight? And that's the president looking very much like a jet, you know, a high-flying jet star. A guy who is a jet pilot. Has been in the past when he was younger, obviously. What does that image mean to the American people, a guy who can actually get into a supersonic plane and actually fly in an unpressurized cabin like an actual jet pilot?

[...]

MATTHEWS: Do you think this role, and I want to talk politically [...], the president deserves everything he's doing tonight in terms of his leadership. He won the war. He was an effective commander. Everybody recognizes that, I believe, except a few critics. Do you think he is defining the office of the presidency, at least for this time, as basically that of commander in chief? That [...] if you're going to run against him, you'd better be ready to take [that] away from him.

[...]

MATTHEWS: Let me ask you, Bob Dornan, you were a congressman all those years. Here's a president who's really nonverbal. He's like Eisenhower. He looks great in a military uniform. He looks great in that cowboy costume he wears when he goes West. I remember him standing at that fence with Colin Powell. Was [that] the best picture in the 2000 campaign?

I guess Obama needs to get himself a cowboy outfit and do some brush clearing or a flight suit and play war hero and maybe Tweety will be impressed.

Transcrict via Nexis Lexis.

MATTHEWS: Welcome back. The word these days is optics, visuals, signals. In the Carter presidency, the optics were not exactly robust. And Ronald Reagan rode that to a big victory in 1980. Is the Obama White House sending some Carter-esque signals these days? Some see that in the deep bow to the emperor of Japan, an unforced error, say the critics. Then there was--there was what happened in China. Obama got nothing in the way of concessions over there despite playing the polite visitor. And his effort to speak directly to the Chinese was jammed by the government. Third, that decision to try the terrorists up in that federal court in New York City. Again, nothing had to be done, and critics say--the critics say it shows that Obama, his team doesn't understand this is a war we're in.

David, that's the question. These optics are everything in a presidency. Carter used to carry that garment bag over his shoulder. This president, is he making mistakes like in China, like in Japan?

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American history is brought to life by adorable children in this truer-to-life-than-you-likely-read-in-your-history-books reenactment of the first Thanksgiving.

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Boy, this is some hard-hitting journalism by George Stephanopoulos here isn't it? Anyone think Tom Coburn would have gotten this type of softball from Rachel Maddow?

Shorter George Stephanopoulos:

STEPHANOPOULOS: So Senator, is there anything else we should know about you arranging a bribe for your C-Street buddy that you can tell us in ten seconds or less?

COBURN: Nope.

STEPHANOPOULOS: Okay, nothing to see here. Move along. Thanks for coming in everybody.

Let's hope his network's interview with Doug Hampton yields just a tad more information than Georgie-boy decided to try to elicit from Coburn on This Week. Really pathetic George.

STEPHANOPOULOS: I'm going to have to -- I'm going to have to stop this right now. And, Senator, before you go -- and I know this is your least favorite subject -- but Doug Hampton, Senator Ensign's chief of staff, has given an interview to "Nightline" which is going to air tomorrow night, where he says that you were an intermediary between him and Senator Ensign, and I want to show that for a second.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

HAMPTON: Tom Coburn said, "What I would do, Doug, if I was you is I would have them buy your home, give you $1 million bucks so you could get started over, and that's what I'm willing to help you negotiate."

(UNKNOWN): And what happened?

HAMPTON: John said, "No can do. Not going to happen."

(END VIDEO CLIP)

STEPHANOPOULOS: Is he telling the truth?

COBURN: No.

STEPHANOPOULOS: Flat no?

COBURN: No.

STEPHANOPOULOS: You did not serve as an intermediary?

COBURN: Oh, I did. No, there's no question. Look, my whole goal in this thing was to bring two families to a closure of a very painful episode. And there's no question that Doug called me and said, "Will you talk to John about solving a problem?" And so I called John Ensign and said, "Do you want me to talk to him?" He said, "Yes."

But, you know, the -- the question that's worrisome is, what is the motivation now for -- for this? Doug obviously asked to have some remuneration for the injury that he had. And on private sector, that happens all the time. But there -- there was no negotiation. There was, "I'll pass it along," or, "Yes, I won't."

STEPHANOPOULOS: Senator, thanks very much.

Thank you all very much.

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George Stephanopoulos just had to give Liz Cheney some more air time on his bobblehead show in another of his "fair and balanced" panels. Sorry Liz but what's "inexcusable" is your daddy helping to get us into this quagmire in the first place. I still want to know when she's signing up for the military if she wants to keep beating those war drums.

WILL: The danger is that the president is going to be seen as escalating this war. He’ll do it half-heartedly with his heart not in it, he will lose his party, and he’ll be supported by Republicans of the stripe of Liz Cheney, and that’s not a sustainable path.

CHENEY: Well, let me just say that what I will support is the strategy that actually will win in Afghanistan, a strategy that’s the one that was laid out by General McChrystal, and I think it’s just completely inexcusable that we’ve now had month after month after month of photo-op out of the White House and no decision.

The president is very fond of saying, “Before I commit troops, I’m going to think very carefully about it.” Somebody in the White House needs to remind him: He’s already committed troops. We’ve got American men and women in Afghanistan today, because we’ve got to prevent Afghanistan from again becoming a safe haven for Al Qaida. The cost of walking away, the cost of defeat, the cost of retreat is huge. They’re fighting there today, and they’re fighting without the kind of resources and reinforcements that he needs -- that they need.

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I caught this on Hardball as well and was focused on Matthews touting tort reform as a solution to health care costs, which is nothing but a distraction and right wing talking point as Daphne Eviatar does a nice job of summing up here. Digby took note of why allowing the likes of Haley Barbour to tout Mississippi as a model for health care reform is absolutely ridiculous.

The state is a disaster when it comes to health care on every front. But they have reduced their premiums and now nobody can expect restitution if a drunk doctor cuts off the wrong limb, so everything's just ducky in Haley's world. In fact the whole country should "experiment" with Mississippi's great successes.

In case you were wondering, number one is Vermont, followed by Hawaii and Iowa. If Barbour and his buddies were willing to take the lead of the states that actually deliver pretty good health care his words wouldn't ring so hollow. But all he cares about is destroying trial lawyers on behalf of his rich friends and throwing poor people off Medicaid. I don't think that's a serious solution to the problem so there's no reason to listen to anything he or any other Republican says on this subject.

Lots of stats and more over at Digby's place. So much for that "librul" media huh?

Transcript via Nexis Lexis below the fold.

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Despite the Club for Growth, Dick Armey and Sarah Palin's involvement in New York's 23rd District Congressional race resulting in Democrat Bill Owens being elected, Fox News Sunday makes The Club for Growth's Chris Chocola their "Power Player of the Week". Yeah, the power to drag the Republican Party even further to the right. Wallace touts that as a good thing for the party.

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As Jed noted "What would a health care debate be without some good ol' fashioned race-baiting from the G.O.P.?" Stay classy Alexander. So let me get this straight...the Democrats want to steal from grandma to give to the "ghetto"...or did I miss something here?

Alexander: Every other word we hear coming from the other side is that this vote tonight is historic. And I agree it’s historic, but I think my view of why it’s historic is a little different than their view. And I wonder if my colleagues would not agree with me that this bill is historic in its arrogance—in its arrogance that we in Congress are wise enough to take this entire complex health care system that serves 300 million Americans, that is 16% of our economy, and write a, and think that we could write a 2000 page bill and be wise enough to change it all—all at once.

Or arrogant in the, in its dumping of 15 million low income Americans into a Medical Ghetto called Medicaid that none of us, or any of our families would ever want to be a part of for our health care.

Or arrogant in then sending to the states, who are going broke a big chunk of the bill for what we’ve just done. Or arrogant enough to tell Americans that the bill cost $849 billion and think we’re not smart enough to read the print and figure out that it’s actually $2.5 trillion when it actually is implemented. Or to tell us that paying for reimbursement for physicians is not an important part of a health care bill, and so they run over here in the dead of night—run up the deficit another quarter of a trillion dollars.

I can make a long list of reasons this bill is arrogant—arrogant enough to cut and tax grandma’s Medicare that’s going broke according to the trustees in 2015-2017 and then spend it on somebody else other than grandma.

I mean the bill is arrogant in its telling us that it’s going to reduce premiums for most Americans when in fact it increases premiums for most Americans. So people say “Where is the Republican health care bill?’ and my answer to that Mr. President is don’t expect Sen. McConnell to come rollin’ in here with a wheelbarrow with a 2000 page budget busting, debt ridden, arrogant piece of legislation because that’s not what we believe in.

What we need to do as a Congress is re-earn the trust of the American people by setting a clear goal of reducing health care costs, showing some humility and start moving step by step in that direction and I hope during this hour that we have a chance to talk about the specifics steps to reduce health care costs that we Republicans have offered day after day after day to no avail.

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November 19, 2009 CURRENT TV SUPER NEWS