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The disgraced former Republican governor of South Carolina on Sunday used a racially-coded term in his prediction that the nation's first African-American president would go on attack and "throw a lot of spears" at Tuesday's town hall debate.

Former Gov. Mark Sanford -- now a Fox News contributor -- told Fox News host Shannon Bream that President Barack Obama would have to be much more aggressive during the next debate because Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney was seen as dominating the first encounter.

"Obama's going to come out in this case much more forcefully, and he's going to throw a lot of spears," Sanford opined. "And I think it's very, very important that in this case that, you know, Romney stay focused on his vision for the country and stay focused on the things that, I think, matter most to people in this country, which is, where is the economy going, where are we with jobs, and what's happening next on the debt and the deficit issue?"

While Bream decided not to call Sanford out on his reference to Obama throwing "spears," Mediaite's Tommy Christopher saw significance in the former governor's remark.

"Completely coincidentally, and not at all related to this, the term 'spearchucker' is a racial slur against black people, but what would a 52-year-old white guy from South Carolina know about that?" Christopher quipped sarcastically. "Also, he didn’t call President Obama a 'spearchucker,' he just said he would be throwing spears. That’s completely different."

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Say what you will about whether Obama supporter Bill Burton and his Super PAC, Priorities USA and their latest campaign ad is fair to Mitt Romney or not. Fair or not, if nothing else, it's proven one thing and that is if you are a Democrat and you run an ad which makes claims that the media can distort or paint as dubious, you're going to be savaged by the press. If you're Mitt Romney, there is absolutely no punishment for lying non-stop by the corporate media.

As Steve Benen has been documenting, the Romney campaign has been lying non-stop since he's been running for office and his latest installment from last week of his series can be read here: Chronicling Mitt's Mendacity, Vol. XXVIII.

But never mind that, Fox's Shannon Bream and Ed Henry did a whole lot of water carrying for Mittens this Thursday afternoon where they relayed Romney's response to the Burton ad, without a care in the world for the sheer amount of lying we've seen from Romney day after day and month after month.

Here's Romney's statement about the Burton ad:

This campaign and the people working with him have focused almost exclusively on personal attacks. You know, in the past, when people pointed out that something was inaccurate, why, campaigns pulled the ad, They were embarrassed. But today, they just blast ahead. You know, the various fact checkers look at some of these charges in the Obama ads and they say that they’re wrong, and inaccurate, and yet he just keeps on just running them.

Mitt Romney ought to have lightening striking him for the audacity of being willing to say that out loud. Romney's been lying about President Obama in his campaign ads and that's from day one, the very first one where he took the President out of context on the economy, and it's just gone on from there.

Benen started his running list back in January of this year. If you've got endless hours to try to keep up on the sheer volume of Romney lies since that time if you weren't already, here's the latest list Steve ended his post with:

Previous editions of Chronicling Mitt's Mendacity: Vol. I, II, III, IV, V, VI, VII, VIII, IX, X, XI, XII,XIII, XIV, XV, XVI, XVII, XVIII, XIX, XX, XXI, XXII, XXIII, XXIV, XXV, XXVI, XXVII

And don't count on our lazy, complicit, corporate media to relay most of what's in that list to anyone. They'd rather be screaming about how terribly unfair it is to point out that vulture capitalists might actually ruin lives and communities for years to come after they go in and raid pension funds, trash union contracts and extract every dime they can suck out of a company so they can pocket millions while people that worked for those companies for decades wind up with nothing.

That's a story none of them want to tell about Mitt Romney, which is the main reason they all lose their collective minds after another ad comes out attacking his time at Bain. What's really ironic about this whole thing is that Burton's PAC was only going to run the ad in a few swing states and the collective freakout by the right and the corporate media just ended up giving him a whole lot of free air time.

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How embarrassing and shameful is this? We've got lies being spread on Fox News, a Supreme Court Justice repeating those lies during hearings before his court and then Fox repeating the lies told by the Justice in their "reporting" that evening.

Here's more from Steve Benen on Antonin Scalia telling repeating the falsehood that the "Cornhusker kickback" was part of the Affordable Care Act -- There is no 'Cornhusker kickback':

It's not fair for anyone to expect Supreme Court justices to become experts in every area of every law that comes before them. There are simply too many cases, spanning too broad a legal spectrum.

That said, it's not unreasonable to think justices should be relatively well informed about the basics of health care law, since literally tens millions of Americans are counting on them to make a fair and reasoned decisions. It makes displays like these rather embarrassing. [...]

In this case, Scalia doesn't seem to realize that the so-called "Cornhusker kickback" wasn't included in the Affordable Care Act; it was taken out before passage. Scalia probably heard something about it on Fox News, assumed it was true, and internalized his party's talking points. More than two years later, the conservative justice is still parroting a claim that has no basis in fact -- indeed, he's practically boasting about it during Supreme Court oral arguments.

Scalia is bringing to the discussion all the sophistication of a House freshman appearing at a Tea Party rally.

And here's more on Fox repeating the lie on Greta Van Susteren's show that evening --- Fox's Bream Falsely Suggests "Cornhusker Kickback" Is Part Of Health Care Law:

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Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) said Sunday that it was a mistake to argue that it is unconstitutional not to raise the debt ceiling.

Section 4 of the 14th Amendment reads: "The validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law, including debts incurred for payment of pensions and bounties for services in suppressing insurrection or rebellion, shall not be questioned."

On a conference call last week, Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) told reporters that the idea that the 14th Amendment requires the debt ceiling to be raised was "certainly worth exploring."

"That's crazy talk," Cornyn told Fox News' Shannon Bream. "It's not acceptable for Congress and the president not to do their job and the say somehow the president has the authority to then basically do this by himself."

"We ought to sit down and work together, and it shouldn't take the form of press conferences like the president gave last week, where he was essentially the schoolmarm, scolding Congress for not getting its job done when, in fact, he is the one who has not stepped up and given us a proposal," he continued.

In May, Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner pulled out a copy of the Constitution and read the 14th Amendment during a discussion with Politico about raising the debt ceiling.

"This is the important thing -'shall not be questioned,'" Geithner said.

For his part, President Barack Obama has sidestepped the question.

"I'm not a Supreme Court justice so I'm not going to put my constitutional law professor hat on," the president told NBC's Chuck Todd at a press conference last week.

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Holy cow, Bill Kristol actually said something two weeks in a row on Fox News Sunday that I agree with -- we don't need to be lowering the corporate tax rates when these companies are sitting on hoards of cash already and are not hiring.

BREAM: Well, if they have such a hard time doing things like getting the continuing resolution, getting a budget done, getting this debt ceiling done, I mean, who thinks they have the appetite for actually tackling the tax code?

EASTON: Actually, as James Baker said to me not long ago, doing that is actually -- you have gives on both sides, because Democrats get to close loopholes and Republicans get a lowering (ph) of the corporate tax rate. So it actually is -- there is a --

(CROSSTALK)

KRISTOL: I'm the only, like, conservative Republican in the country that actually does not think lowering the corporate tax rate is really the key to America's future.

BREAM: You're the one.

KRISTOL: Corporations have trillions of dollars. If the corporate tax rate is such a burden, how come they have all this money? They're not hiring.

The tax rates on labor are much more onerous, in my view, than the tax rates on corporations. But in any case, this is a heterodox view among conservatives. But nonetheless, this is why this deal can't happen in a year.

I mean, there's a lot of debates that have to happen among Republicans. I think Michele Bachmann probably has a slightly different view of our tax future than Mitt Romney, and this isn't going to happen before November, 2012.

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It appears that the Fox News graphic department doesn't know what their own employees look like.

During a segment reporting that Sarah Palin was undecided on whether or not to jump into the 2012 presidential race, the news channel showed a photo of Tina Fey imitating the former Republican vice presidential candidate in 2008.

In 2009, Fox News management sent out a memo to employees saying that on-screen errors would no longer be tolerated.

"Effective immediately, there is zero tolerance for on-screen errors," the memo said. "Mistakes by any member of the show team that end up on air may result in immediate disciplinary action against those who played significant roles in the 'mistake chain,' and those who supervise them. That may include warning letters to personnel files, suspensions, and other possible actions up to and including termination, and this will all obviously play a role in performance reviews."

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Simon Rosenberg, a former advisor to President Bill Clinton, decided Thursday that he wasn't going to be pushed around by conservative radio host Ben Ferguson during a discussion about Medicare on Fox News.

Fox News' Shannon Bream had invited Rosenberg to respond to video published by ABC News that showed Clinton telling Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) that he hoped Democrats wouldn't use a Democratic congressional win in New York as "an excuse to do nothing" on reforming Medicare.

"Does that hurt the current administration's efforts and what Democrats in the White House are trying to do, with President Clinton suggesting maybe they do stop the fear mongering and get to work?" Bream asked.

"I don't think that anything that's happened in the last few months is fear mongering," Rosenberg replied.

"Dumping a woman off a cliff isn't fear mongering," Ferguson interrupted, referring to an ad by The Agenda Project that shows a Paul Ryan lookalike pushing an elderly woman in a wheelchair off a cliff.

Rosenberg calmly quoted Clinton as saying that under the Ryan plan, "medical costs will continue to go up and older people will use less, get sicker and die quicker or they will be poorer because they will have to spend more money on health care."

"That's fear mongering," Ferguson interrupted again.

"Ben, shut up. It's unbelievable how much you talk," a frustrated Rosenberg said. "It's not fear mongering. It is a factual, correct interpretation of the Ryan plan. The Ryan plan is bad public policy. It would have killed people prematurely. That's fact."

After Ferguson interrupted yet again, Bream asked that Rosenberg be allowed to finish his answer.

"Why should I come on this show if I can't talk?" Rosenberg asked.

"You can pout and that's what you guys do well at," Ferguson charged.

With that, Rosenberg took off his microphone and walked off the set.

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Well, it's official; former Godfather's Pizza CEO Herman Cain has formally launched his presidential campaign today. And according to Fox News "political analyst" Angela McGlowan, if Cain just picks wingnut Rep. Allen West as his running mate, he can beat Obama in 2012.

Alan Colmes explained why he disagreed:

COLMES: Herman Cain... it's not a coincidence that he announced his candidacy on doomsday. This is a guy who said he'd put no Muslims in his Cabinet. He said Muslims want to either convert you or kill you. He's a birther. He has absolutely no chance whatsoever of becoming President of the United States.

McGlowan interrupted Colmes and reminded him that "being that extreme" could win him the primary to which Colmes basically responded, bring it on if that's who Republicans want to run in 2012.

COLMES: If that's who you want to have represent you. You want someone who can win the primary who could never win the general election, if that's the way you want to go, be my guest. Have a good time. Have fun.

MCGLOWAN: If he chooses Allen West, he could win.

COLMES: Absolutely not. Allen West is another cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs far right extremist.

McGlowan also went on to suggest that after the latest Fox attack on President Obama after his speech on the Middle East this week that Hollywood Jews are going to abandon him in droves.

Media Matters has more on that -- Right-Wing Media's Deranged Attack: Obama "Sided With Terrorists":

Right-wing media unleashed a crazed onslaught after President Obama's speech on the Middle East, outrageously asserting that Obama "sided with terrorists" by saying that the 1967 borders should guide negotiations over the formation of a Palestinian state. But this position is nothing new, and American Jewish groups praised today's speech. Read on...

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Well, Haley Barbour might have bowed out of the GOP presidential primary, but we've still got wingnut Herman Cain in the running, who went on the air with Fox's Shannon Bream and recommended we privatize Social Security like they did in Chile under Pinochet, but don't dare call it privatization.

BREAM: Alright, will part of the tough solutions and will the strong medicine include entitlement reform? And how do you sell that to the American public?

CAIN: We have to go from an entitlement society, to an empowerment society. And what I mean by that, all programs need to be restructured. You can't just continue to raise taxes on these programs and decrease the benefits. And Representative Ryan's proposed budget is a great start in that direction. We can't just continue to do the same things we've done before.

For example, relative to Social Security. I think that we put the idea of personal retirement accounts back on the table and do what Chile did thirty years ago. They don't have the problem we have today. Now it got demagogued last time as privatization. That absolutely is not the case. We need to take that route, restructure Social Security so we can achieve solvency, or the problems we're encountering, the crisis that we now have, they're only going to get worse.

Someone needs to tell this clown that Social Security is solvent. And if he thinks the GOP ought to run on privatizing it, whether he wants to call it that or not, more power to him. That didn't work out so well for George Bush, but apparently he's got a short memory. We can fix any shortfalls with our system by simply raising the cap on payroll taxes, or better yet, lift the cap and make it less regressive while we're at it.

And if he wants us to follow Chile's model, maybe someone could direct him to this article -- Chile's Retirees Find Shortfall in Private Plan.

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Apparently Liz Trotta has dispatched a team of investigators to Martha's Vineyard to check on t-shirt sales and they discovered that Sarah Palin is very popular there, or she's just making stuff up. She also thinks that we shouldn't take any attack ads about George Bush seriously because some of the beltway Villagers that she decides to label as the "far left" said some nice thing about George Bush and his insistence that we don't conflate the religion of Islam with terrorism. It's all an evil plot by the terrible "liberal media" where they're pretending to miss Bush now, only to attack him later when the mid-term elections come around, or something.

What Trotta really doesn't want to discuss here is that Republicans would like to keep George Bush locked away somewhere far from sight until the mid-term elections are over and aren't happy about the timing of the release of his new book.

Trotta: Well, let me give you... in keeping with the spirit of what we've just seen, you know, the president is a... President Obama is vacationing up at Martha's Vineyard and apparently the t-shirt that's selling the most is one that deals with President Bush and it says “Miss me yet?” Apparently the subtitle says, "How's that hopey-changey thing workin' out for ya'? " Well we know where that would come from.

But that's the funny part. The serious part is yes, there are invocations to Bush. the Washington Post editorials, their columnists; namely Eugene Robinson " you can't get any more far left than that. And the New York Times and of course Maureen Dowd are all making the case he took the right stand on the... the right Constitutional stand, the right First Amendment stand when it came to separating terrorists from the Muslim... from the Islamic religion.

And so there's what what looks to be a sort of nostalgia at first glance about Bush. What you are seeing from the liberal media is attempt to use his arguments to further their own cause; and that is, that the mosque should be banned. So, I don't think we should take much of it seriously.

Howard Fineman of course of Newsweek did a sort of half serious piece saying that because of Obama's sinking popularity, because of the economy, because of the upcoming elections, there is this kind of wistfulness for Bush and he does have a book coming out.

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