Words of Power: While the econonomic royalists and their enforcers in politics and the media live the high life, will we he people fade into oblivion?

AMERICAblog News: Joseph Stiglitz predicted the global financial meltdown. So why can't he get any respect?

Calitics: In California, the Democrats caved. It's taken 31 years, but Howard Jarvis is finally going to get the wholesale destruction of public services he always wanted.

Intrepid Liberal Journal: The Death of Why: An interview with author Andrea Batista Schlesinger. It is Schlesinger’s contention that our culture promotes instant answers at the expense of inquiring.

The Satirical Political Report: In tribute to Cronkite, Fox changes its slogan

OFF THE BEATEN PATH: Pancake City, The Blue Horde, Maggie's Madness, Al's Ozone Repair Kit

GOP 12: Sanford cheated on his wife and taxpayers

Alan Colmes’ Liberaland: Here's another jiveass "conservative."  Texas secession-promoter, Rick Perry, turned down stimulus $, now wants a loan

Stinque: Leader of GOP womanizers' Jesunazi sex cult is spiritual guru to Hillary Clinton

Nixon's Ghosts: Documents from the Archives: Pat Buchanan was for Affirmative Action before he was against it

Mondoweiss: Olmert tries to resuscitate one of the all-time great lies in the Oslo peace process

Mock, Paper, Scissors: Anatomy of a column

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David Shuster and Tamryn Hall bring in J.P. Freire and Matthew Slutsky to "debate" whether the stimulus package is working or not. While I like David Shuster and think he does as good of a job as he's allowed to on MSNBC, this entire exercise struck me as just another example of why more people need to watch programs like Democracy Now and Bill Moyers Journal.

How the hell do you have an honest debate on this topic in five minutes? And cut the guests off at the end for some B.S. not important "breaking news" at the end of the segment to boot?

If MSNBC really cared about this topic, one, they'd be bringing in actual, respected economists to debate it from all sides of the aisle. Two, they'd not be limiting the debate to a few minutes. And three, they'd not be using the latest Republican talking point du jour as their guiding light for their "news" stories. Just because the Republicans decided to throw their latest hissy fit for the day doesn't mean they need to be taken seriously.

It's really tiresome to watch our "news" cycle being driven off the RNC fax machines talking points memo day after day.

[click here for larger] Open Thread below...

You needed to escape FROM the bubble, Governor? Clearly, the bubble that Sanford escaped TO is the one that got him in trouble. An average cheating spouse can use a cell phone and email account to cover his/her affair, anywhere in the world. Sanford did more than travel and cheat. He consciously disappeared. That is a form of hate toward anyone who cared about him or depended upon him, at work or at home.

There is something psychotically narcissistic about a need to disappear from the world in which you have real-life obligations.

Open thread below....

I think it's just automatic now. When a high-profile Republican gets into trouble, Fox News steps in to mislead their sheep viewers by labeling them as Democrats.

Here's a short list of Fox's chyron hackery:

John McCain - Democrat
Joe Lieberman - Democrat
Arlen Spector - Democrat (when he was still a Republican!)
Mark Foley - Democrat

Media Matters also caught Fox listing a Democratic strategist as Bush's head of FEMA -- because his name happened to be Michael Brown. Oh, and we can't forget the time they announced Rep. William Jefferson's indictment using footage of Congressman John Conyers. They apologized to their audience, but never to Conyers personally.

I'm sure it was just an oversight, just like all the rest...riiiight. Have I missed any?

Dave N:

It's almost a clockwork thing.

Whenever Fox News wants you to forget that someone is actually a Republican, they, ah, accidentally label them a Democrat on their chryon and let it go. So they did that today, as you can see, while Mark Sanford was explaining that he had been in Argentina to screw around on his wife. (They corrected it in later chryons.)

Hardly the first time this has happened.

There was the time they ID'ed Mark Foley, in the midst of another sex scandal, as a Democrat too.

At other times with sex scandals, as with Sen. Larry Craig, they simply have forgotten to identify them as Republicans.

They've also done it when someone's Republican status is inconvenient:

When Arlen Specter was attacking conservative shibboleths, he got labeled a D too.

And then there was the time John McCain was labeled a Democrat too. At the time that just seemed weird, but now, with Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh and a host of other conservatives promoting the notion that McCain was just a fake Republican anyway, it makes a certain kind of sense.

Fox sense, that is.