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In what was an otherwise very informative segment discussing the rise in the number of hate groups in America in the wake of the recent shootings in Texas and questions as to whether there are links with a white supremacist prison gang, the audience of MSNBC's The Cycle were treated to conservative co-host S.E. Cupp playing concern troll for right-wing gay-hating fundamentalists, who are none too happy about being designated as hate groups by the SPLC.

As Dave Neiwert discussed here:

When right-wingers got wind of the fact that the Southern Poverty Law Center had designated a number of Religious Right organizations who specialize in rhetorically bashing gays and lesbians as hate groups, they and their allies on the Right came more or less unglued.

Now, rather than face up to the substance of the accusations, they're choosing to demonize the SPLC and their critics. Par for the course for this crowd.

Which is exactly what Cupp did this Wednesday with the SPLC's Heidi Beirich right about mid-way through the segment above:

CUPP: But Heidi, your group, the SPLC, has earned significant criticism over the years for smearing religious and far right groups and ignoring far left hate groups. Shouldn't people be aware of your ideological biases before they take seriously your claims about who they should be afraid of?

BEIRICH: Well, I guess I have to dispute the notion of the question on its... on the premise. The fact of the matter is that we've written about left wing domestic terrorism for almost a decade now coming from animal rights groups, for example, or eco-terrorist types. The criticism we get most heavily from the right-wing are complaints about our listing of groups like the Family Research Council or the American Family Association as anti-gay hate groups.

And the fact of the matter is that those organizations are akin to many of the white supremacist organizations that we list in the sense that they lie about gay folks. White supremacist folks lie about African-Americans.

In the case of something like the Family Research Council, they put out all kinds of defamatory information about how gays are child molesters at higher rates and so on, with the intention of destroying that particular population and making them appear to be lesser. So for us, it is a no-brainer to put groups like that on our hate list.

CUPP: The Family Research Council was actually the victim recently of a hate crime as I'm sure you're aware, when a gentleman stormed the building in D.C. with a bag full of Chick-Fil-A sandwiches.

BEIRICH: Yeah, I mean obviously, we condemn all kinds of violence. It's a horrible thing and what we're all about trying to stop domestic terrorism, violence and anything inspired by hate. That was a disgusting incident.

The wingers over at Brent Bozell's rag, Newsbusters, who I will not link to, were all over this, defending Cupp and blaming the SPLC for the shooting at FRC's headquarters, because of course they want to paint someone who tells the truth about hate groups and the lies they tell as a hate group themselves, as though the work the SPLC is doing is somehow equivalent to the garbage being spread by these so-called Christians. And naturally their comment section was full of attacks on Beirich for her looks, because we all know the most important thing is how you look on TV and not what comes out of your mouth. As Dave noted in his very long post which I linked above, when you can't defend your message, you attack the messenger.

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While discussing the White House commission on gun violence meeting this week, which the NRA has been invited to attend, along with Vice President Joe Biden's remarks that an executive order is on the table as part of a solution to curb the gun violence in the United States, Howard Fineman did his best to pin down MSNBC's The Cycle co-host S.E. Cupp and get an answer as to why any civilian out there needs an assault weapon or a high capacity magazine. To on one's surprise, she couldn't give him an answer.

Rather than answering his question, she started playing games with semantics on what the definition of an assault rifle, or high capacity, or rapid fire was and claimed that there were reasons someone would want them outside of the military or specialized police forces. When Fineman asked her to give one example, she punted and said she didn't want to take up the time allotted to the other hosts.

I still don't know why MSNBC hired Cupp. She's as thick as a brick and takes great pride in just being as annoying as humanly possible rather than bringing a bit of intellectual honesty to single debate. This is just the latest example of what she does on a daily basis to make sure this stinker of a show stays exactly that.

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It seems that, as Susie formerly called him, Pete Peterson's pet dog, the smarmy David Walker, made his way back onto MSNBC this Friday and surprise, surprise, he's endorsing Mitt Romney. Color me not shocked, even though the media constantly tries to portray this guy as some bipartisan straight shooter.

Apparently Walker isn't too happy that he hasn't managed to get his "grand bargain" passed under President Obama and he twists himself in knots trying to defend Romney's fuzzy math on his budget numbers that simply don't add up without raising taxes on the middle class and resorts to more or less questioning what the definition of middle class is.

As Susie noted in the post linked above, regardless of what Walker says here, she went to one of his seminars and the people who were in attendance were not buying the snake oil the man and his group were selling. You can read more about Walker and Pete Peterson here: Peterson's Grand Bargain Campaign To Kick Off After Election and here: Meet Pete Peterson, Architect of Social Security and Medicare Cuts.

Rough transcript of Walker's interview below the fold.

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MSNBC's The Cycle decided to bring on Wisconsin Rep. Sean Duffy for a discussion on Medicare among other topics and when one of the co-hosts, Krystal Ball, got a chance to weigh in and dispute Duffy's claims that President Obama is "stealing" $700 billion from seniors and giving it to some other unworthy people who just want to raid granny's pocketbook, the segment basically devolved into Duffy deciding that if he just yelled loud enough, that means he wins the argument, regardless of whether he was lying or not.

And of course the show's token Republican know nothing liar, S.E. Cupp was ready to throw Duffy a lifeline at the end of the segment, telling him that she "feels his pain" and chuckling all the way as he left the set. Why the other three hosts of this show ever agreed to act as enablers to this woman is beyond me. They do nothing but lend her credibility by appearing on the air with her every day.

As to Duffy's arguments where he was basically arguing against President Obama's policies which will extend the life of Medicare and pretending it won't and lying and telling the viewers that the cuts are going to harm seniors rather than the insurance companies, which they won't, we've been down that road already here. Go back and read Susie's post where they were telling the same lie for a debunking on Duffy's nonsense: Fox Claims Ryan Is Trying To Save Medicare, Blames Obama.

And for a little reminder of just who Sean Duffy is, here's Nicole's post on him from March of last year: Break Out The Tiny Violins: WI Rep Eager To Cut State Employee Salaries Says "It's A Struggle" To Make It on $174K A Year.

It's painfully obvious the man hasn't gotten any less obnoxious since that time. And for a little trip to opposite land, here's right wing hack Noah Rothman's take on the same segment over at Abram's place, where this type of completely dishonest headline is all too common from this guy: GOP Rep. Sean Duffy Slams MSNBC Host For Being Dishonest About Medicare Reform. Even a bunch of the commenters there, which normally reads like something out of Free Republic or The Hill, were calling him out for being full of it with the way the story was framed.

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On this weekend's The Chris Matthews Show, while discussing whether the Obama campaign might attempt to use Mitt Romney's Mormonism against him during the presidential campaign and the trouble Romney has had openly discussing his faith, panel member S.E. Cupp had this explanation for why Romney's religion might not be a problem for him:

CUPP: Second, you know, G.K. Chesterton said that the test of any good religion is whether you can make fun of it or not. And, you know, Mormonism has really come into its own in pop culture, whether you're looking at The Book of Mormon by Trey Parker and Matt Stone, or Big Love. I mean, Mormonism, as uneasy as America may have been about it in the past, I think it's having a pretty good day this year in pop culture. Mormons are kind of everywhere. So I don't know that it's as impenetrable and clandestine as it used to be.

I used to think Matthews' show on the weekend couldn't get a whole lot worse with the typical group of beltway Villagers he has as regular guests. I was wrong. This is the second show where he's had Cupp on there. I'm failing to follow the logic here. So somehow, a Broadway musical and a show on a cable premium pay channel, HBO, are Mormons being “everywhere?” And if I'm not mistaken, I don't think the church was exactly thrilled to put it mildly about either of these productions.

Sorry, but I don't think either is going to have a thing to do with the average voter, or anyone else for that matter, potentially being more comfortable with Romney's religion. As the other guests on there did point out a little later in the discussion, the hatred of President Obama is the one thing that will allow the Evangelical voters out there to get over Romney's religion and vote for him in the general election after snubbing him during the primary races. It's not going to be because of what those “elitists” in New York or Hollywood are doing and because they've made a play and a cable series making fun of the Mormon Church.

I haven't seen the play, but I watched Big Love on HBO and it sure didn't make me feel any more comfortable about the Mormon Church and their history of polygamy. I'm sure Romney doesn't want to remind anyone of that since it's not that far back in his own family's history where polygamy was practiced as well.

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I've already expressed my disdain for this woman and the fact that MSNBC gave her a spot co-hosting a show here -- S.E. Cupp Defends Disenfranchising Millions of Voters as Solution to 86 Cases of Voter Fraud. Apparently Esquire's Charles Pierce isn't any more fond of her than I am.

S.E. Cupp Is a Colossal Idiot:

In case you've missed it, MSNBC has compensated for the loss of Dylan Ratigan in the afternoon by moving Martin Bashir to 4 p.m. Eastern, and filling Bashir's old 3 p.m. slot with something called The Cycle, which is kind of Around The Horn for young pundits. The regular cast includes the younger generation among MSNBC's apparently inexhaustible reservoir of Political Analysts. These include Krystal Ball, Steve Kornacki, Touré, and S.E. Cupp and, this afternoon, as the program was winding down, Ms. Cupp spent a good four minutes being, weight for age, the dumbest person in the history of cable television:

To review: Talking about the president's tax proposal, Ms. Cupp rather loosely termed the president's tax policy "collectivist." (And, yes, both Mao and Stalin laughed uproariously as their spits turned over the flames of hell.) Kornacki gently reminded her that an increase in the marginal income tax tax rate is a lot of things — including, to my mind, a pretty good idea, but no matter — but it is in no way "collectivist," if English words have any meaning in, you know, English. Read on...

MSNBC really needs to rethink why they want to have this woman on the air... ever... at all... as a host or a guest. She lowers the IQ in the room when she enters it and sucks most of the oxygen out as well. I'm not sure how anyone ever possibly comes out better or smarter for the experience of being forced to maintain a dialog with her.

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Here we go again with MSNBC's replacement in the afternoon for Martin Bashir's show, The Cycle, after Bashir moved into Dylan Ratigan's old time slot, and more proof that the network really screwed the pooch with giving S.E. Cupp a spot as one of the co-hosts on this god awful show.

As Fran rightfully pointed out a couple of weeks ago, this show "has all the markings of a summer replacement series" and that's probably giving it way too much credit. I caught some of this on the satellite radio this Wednesday afternoon and this has to be one of the more obnoxious appearances I've had the unfortunate circumstance of listening to since I first had the unfortunate circumstance of ever hearing the woman's name in the first place.

The segment, I assume was supposed to be a serious interview with The Nation's Ari Berman, who's done some excellent reporting on the problem we've got going on right now across the country and voter disenfranchisement, some of which you can read about here: Discriminatory Texas Voter ID Law Challenged in Federal Court .

Rather than the other hosts and their guest being allowed to have a sane debate on the topic, the viewers were treated to Cupp demanding that the rest of them explain to her how to solve the 86 cases of voter fraud which were prosecuted under the Bush administration, as though those cases being prosecuted wasn't a solution in and of itself and her defending the disenfranchisement of millions of voters in order to do something about the minute number of actual fraud cases, that almost never happen and are not statistically a problem when it comes to the integrity of our elections in the United States. Unlike, you know, throwing millions of people off of the voting rolls because less than a hundred may have had some irregularity with how they voted.

If Cupp is so worried about the types of problems that were likely to be found in those 86 cases, maybe we can get her to go ballistic over her buddies Ann Coulter and Mitt Romney and making sure they're both voting from the addresses where they actually reside. Listening to her rail on over and over about them not having a "solution" to those cases of voter fraud, when they ended up in the courts, was enough to make me want to throw something at my TV set when going back to record this debacle.

If MSNBC doesn't want to lose all of their viewers in this time slot, they'll start looking for a new host and a new format for that matter. Four hosts don't work. The show has mainly been a shoutfest with them talking over each other constantly since it first aired and S.E. Cupp has no business hosting anything. The woman is just another know nothing flame thrower who is a bad guest and an even worse host. I put up with watching a lot of really bad television to help with monitoring cable "news" for C&L and this show is already somewhere in the range of Glenn Beck or Sean Hannity awful with trying to watch or listen to any of it.

If MSNBC were serious about having anyone want to watch their network in this time slot, they'd consider giving it to someone like Sam Seder. They'd also take Michael Steele out of Pat Buchanan's old cot on the set and send him packing as well. He's ruining shows from Morning Joe straight on through their prime time programming.

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When you haven't got any argument for why you think it's a good idea to cut down on the number of teachers, firefighters and police officers around the country, there's only one thing left to do: Cite right-wing think-tank studies that aren't actually factual, but lend some air of credibility to a ridiculous claim. Today's doozie comes from S.E. Cupp in response to Romney's claim that we want less teachers in this country than we have right now.

Who does conservative commentator and intellectual dishonesty giant Cupp cite? Why, none other than Michelle Rhee, that "deformer in sheep's clothing." Rhee actively campaigns against class size reduction, insisting that a great teacher can handle a large class and teach just as effectively. As Bashir points out at the very end, if they really believe this, then why is it that Romney sent his kids to posh private schools where class sizes were capped at around 16 students or so? And it's not just Romney. Those other "deformers" - Gates, Bloomberg and Education Secretary Arne Duncan -- do it too.

Via Class Size Matters:

In the past year, some of the richest and most powerful men in America – including Bill Gates, Arne Duncan and Michael Bloomberg – have come out in favor of increasing class sizes, claiming that this would be good for our kids – even in NYC and other large urban districts where students who have the greatest need for smaller classes are crammed into classes of 28, 30 or more.

It has not escaped notice that several of these men, (not the 1%, but the .00001% in terms of their wealth), send their own children to private schools where classes are capped at 16 students or less, yet they seem able to blithely ignore this contradiction.

I am sad to report that their musings are not hypothetical. Class sizes are increasing throughout the nation, and here in NYC, are now the biggest in over a decade in many grades. This fall, there were over seven thousand classrooms which violated the union contractual levels. These sharp increases have occurred despite the fact that the state’s highest court ruled that our students were deprived of their constitutional right to an adequate education, due in large part to excessive class sizes.

If larger classes don't matter, why didn't any of these men send their children to schools with large classes? In fact, one of their arguments for charter schools is the smaller, limited class size. So Rhee, Murdoch, Gates, et al argue for and fund charter schools while leaving traditional public schools to manage with less funds, less resources, and yes, less teachers.

I'm happy to be able to end this story on a positive note. In New York, where the charter school and class size battle rages on, one candidate for Congress in New York actually rejected an endorsement from StudentsFirstNY, the Rhee organization backed by Murdoch operative Joel Klein, saying “We did not seek it, do not want it and will win without it.”

Good for him. Perhaps there's some room to re-educate him about why he should not only reject the Rhee organizations, but the Rhee-forms, which include heavy emphasis on online learning and charter schools as answers to overcrowded public schools.

You know, when I was in school, this sort of problem just wasn't this complicated. More students per teacher = less individualized education. Less individualized education = less learning. More money to for-profit charter school management organizations and online providers = less money for traditional public schools. Less money for traditional public schools = less teachers. Less teachers = lower achievement.

It's not even algebra, folks. It's simple math. Perhaps S.E. Cupp was educated in large classes, which is why she cannot seem to actually reason her way through this class size argument without citing the Queen of Education Deform, Michelle Rhee.

Here's a bonus: A great article from The Nation explaining the simple economic math behind why having less public sector employees is bad for the economy.

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From this Friday evening's Real Time with Bill Maher's online Overtime segment, The Daily Caller's S.E. Cupp is asked from one of the viewers who wrote into the show if she believes Paul Ryan's budget "meets moral criteria." Color me not shocked that Cupp skated around the question and didn't really answer it, just as Ryan did in his response to the publication she was citing.

Apparently Cupp was also unaware that Paul Ryan had just thrown his hero, Ayn Rand under the bus, but Paul Begala did a nice job of summing up just what part of her philosophy he was no longer enamored with.

Rough transcript of the clip above below the fold.

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Teaching young girls to marry rich makes S. E. Cupp "an embarrassment to women":

Cenk and Ana Kasparian lay into conservative commentator S. E. Cupp’s recent op-ed praising Ann Romney decision to “marrying well.” Ana says, “She makes the assumption that women are worthless and they are unable to be independent, so they need either a wealthy man or the government to take care of them, which is not the case at all.”

Digby flagged Cupp's op-ed as well the other day. I would not be surprised at all if Cenk found out about it from reading her post here -- Study hard for your M.R.S., girls. After quoting a good deal of the post from Cupp she added this:

Somebody's been watching too much Mad Men, I'm afraid.

Seriously, it's been a while since I read such retrograde drivel even from a right winger. She's literally saying that if women want stability and security they should marry rich. Which is, I think we can all agree, nice work if you can get it. But the 1 percent is only 1 percent and unless we are going to require wealthy men to marry more than one wife (which I'm sure ole Mitt wouldn't be averse to either --- his grandfather wasn't anyway) we have a little math problem here.

But I have to say that I'm depressed by the notion that the only valid choices for a woman to gain security and stability is to be dependent on welfare or marriage is still in circulation anywhere. Presumably, Cupp is aware that the vast majority of women don't depend on anyone for those things. Not even the conservative married ones. They work at jobs, just like she does. Are they irresponsible gadabouts for failing to properly secure a millionaire?

Evidently Cupp is looking for a wealthy, patriarchal throwback to take her away from all this and there are probably a few available. Sadly, being in her 30s she's pretty much out of the running for anyone younger than 60 or so. (Rich male "providers" of all ages tend to prefer the younger ones.) She missed her "Romney window" a long time ago.

More there so just go read the rest.