March 06, 2009 CNN

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Rolling Stone's Matt Taibbi tells us how he really feels about Rush Limbaugh on Hardball. I've never seen Matt pull his punches and he sure as hell doesn't hold back here. He makes some great points about what the future of the Republican party is with women and independent voters if this is the path they want to continue down as well.

Updated: As my fellow C&L'er Max pointed out to me tonight (thank you Max):

Oh he went so easy on him... Taibbi is the (usually) the most ruthless physical caricaturist there is.

He noted Taibbi's post at the HuffPo Erica Jong Thinks I Want to Do My Mother: A Response where Taibbi wrote this in response to Jong's criticism of his remarks about Hillary Clinton.

Like other sexist men, I apparently trained my monomaniacal focus on Hillary's appearance while while ignoring the paunches, liver spots and comb-overs of male politicians.

Jong has apparently never read anything else I've written. Here is a short catalogue of some of the physical descriptions I've used in recent articles about male politicians.

Follow the link above to read the rest. Warning before following the link, some of it may not be safe for work. I get so tired of the undeserved politeness on these shows for Limbaugh and his ilk as Margaret Carlson exemplifies with her remarks following Taibbi's where she says that Rush is more "intellectual than the other talk show hosts". Really Margaret? Intellectual is not the first word that comes to mind when I listen to anything Rush Limbaugh says. Nope. Uh...blowhard and hack, those come to mind. Intellectual...not even on the radar screen for me. And as Andy already noted in the comments, I don't think Limbaugh is beloved by anyone either. Great points Andy.

From CBS.

Who's responsible for the bad economy? Jon Stewart spreads the blame.

h/t NewsPoliticsNews

Give 'em hell Clair! McCaskill calls out Republican hypocrisy on these earmarks they've been crying about.

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Rachel Maddow takes on AIG for their latest waste of our tax payer dollars. Hiring P.R. firms to try to shore up their image with the people who bailed them out. Put some more lipstick on that pig AIG and everyone will feel better about you helping to tank the entire world's economy. Yeah! That's the ticket. Why didn't I think of that?

Rachel just gave me one more for the memory banks to slot under..why I despise union buster and over-paid consultant who helped Hillary waste tons of money to line his pockets by giving her bad advice and all the while giving John McCain his talking points for the election Mark Penn.

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MSNBC's Tamron Hall had her mind blown dealing with yet another southern Republican congressman, this time Zach Wamp who jumped right out the gate calling any move towards health reform by the Obama administration a move towards "socialism" and "class warfare". Wamp described health care as a privilege, not a right.

John Amato:

I can't really write much about this. Wamp's view speaks for itself and most of the GOP.

Raw Story:

President Obama is set to convene a summit on reforming healthcare Thursday, and some Republicans are already taking shots. Rep. Zach Wamp (Rep-Tenn) told MSNBC's Tamron Hall that Obama's proposed healthcare plans would be a "fast march to socialism", and that he believes that healthcare is not a right because many choose not to have insurance.

"This is almost class warfare in order for him to be able to say everyone now has health care. Listen, healthcare is a privilege," said Wamp.

The MSNBC anchor was almost taken aback by the "privilege" remark and asked Wamp to explain. "If you have cancer right now do you see it as a privilege to get some treatment?"

"I was just about to say, for some people it's a right but for everyone frankly it's not necessarily a right," he said. "Half the people uninsured today choose to remain uninsured. Half of them don't have any choice, but half of them choose to what's called 'go naked' and take the risk of getting sick. They end up in the emergency room costing you and me a whole lot more money."

After Wamp finished, Hall came very close to implying that the GOP couldn't come up with any viable alternatives.

Rep. Shelley Berkley went to bat for Las Vegas against the critics who've been singling it out for the stimulus money designated for Nevada.

Ms. BERKLEY. Mr. Speaker, I'm mad and I'm not going to take it anymore. I've had enough of my colleagues bashing my district, my hometown and the community I love, Las Vegas. I've sat back as Las Vegas has been maligned, insulted and lied about for the sole purpose of making political points. I've been waiting for common sense to prevail. But I'm here to say that this nonsense, the bashing and the lies about Las Vegas have got to end, and they've got to end now.

As her full remarks make clear she took dead aim at the braindead republicans who have been trying to make political hay out of this, largely by making shit up.

It started with Senator McConnell's misguided attack on the stimulus bill by singling out a mob museum in Las Vegas as an earmark in the stimulus package. There's only a couple of things wrong with that. There never was an earmark in the stimulus bill. There are none. And there certainly wasn't one for a mob museum. There was never a mention of it in the stimulus package. But the lies continued.

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From The Cafferty File:

Former top Bush aides Karl Rove and Harriet Miers have finally agreed to testify under oath before Congress about the firings of those U.S. attorneys.

The Bush White House had fought attempts to force them to testify — citing executive privilege — but an agreement has now been reached between lawyers for Presidents Bush and Obama. Rove and Miers will appear before the House Judiciary Committee in closed depositions. The committee says it might also call on them for public testimony. Rove was President Bush’s top political adviser for most of his presidency; and Miers was the top White House legal adviser for about two years.

The controversy goes back to those 2006 firings of federal prosecutors in nine cities and includes allegations of political interference. According to an e-mail from a former Justice Department official, some of these U.S. attorneys were singled out because they were not “loyal Bushies.”

Committee chairman John Conyers says this is “a vindication of the search for truth.” And for his part, Karl Rove tells Fox News that he’s looking forward to telling the committee about his alleged role in the firing of federal prosecutors — although he says it could turn into a “show trial.” Rove says Conyers probably has more interest in him than other former White House aides, stating “I understand they may be the hors d’oeuvres, but I’m the main course. Some Democrats would love to have me barbecued.”

As documents continue to surface from the Bush era there’s a hunger in some corners to set the record straight about the legality of a lot of stuff that happened over the past eight years.

Here’s my question to you: What would you ask Karl Rove and Harriet Miers about the firing of those U.S. attorneys?

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Keith talks to Scott Horton about his article in Harpers Magazine, George W. Bush’s Disposable Constitution.

Yesterday the Obama Administration released a series of nine previously secret legal opinions crafted by the Office of Legal Counsel to enhance the presidential powers of George W. Bush. Perhaps the most astonishing of these memos was one crafted by University of California at Berkeley law professor John Yoo. He concluded that in wartime, the President was freed from the constraints of the Bill of Rights with respect to anything he chose to label as a counterterrorism operations inside the United States.

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From The Colbert Report March 5, 2009. Stephen offers Jim Cramer a solution to make everyone feel better about getting back into the stock market...puppies and kittens.

After reading this diary over at Daily KOS on Jim Cramer I'm wondering who else needs to be talking to him besides Stephen Colbert if what's reported there is proven to be true.

Jim Cramer Uses CNBC to Manipulate Stocks

The diary links to this video from Bloomberg on the illegal naked short selling that's been going on for years. Why this did not receive more attention when it first aired is beyond me. The video is from March 2007.