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From this Saturday's The Chris Matthews Show, it seem the Villagers believe the Obama campaign is going to quit going after Mitt Romney on the issue of his taxes once the Republican convention rolls around. I'm not sure why they would do that but that was the consensus here.

After discussing how poor old Mittens was somehow “baited” into discussing his tax returns last week during his little whiteboard fiasco and the fact that the Obama campaign has been happy to keep the discussion on Romney's taxes going, Chuck Todd weighed in with this statement on how long that discussion might go on:

TODD: But it seems to me like we're getting to an expiration date.

COOPER: I think so. Don't you? (crosstalk)

GARRETT: Cayman Islands, Bermuda and Swiss bank accounts. That's one year of tax returns. The Democrats look at five or ten years and say, whoa... (crosstalk).

TODD: Kelly, don't (inaudible) thinks, if I get to the convention...

O'DONNELL: That they'll move on.

TODD: They'll move on.

Quite a far cry from Todd's colleague Rachel Maddow and her reporting last week: Maddow: Romney’s history shows he’s willing to lie about his taxes:

Friday night on “The Rachel Maddow Show,” host Rachel Maddow said that presumptive Republican nominee Gov. Mitt Romney (R-MA) has, if precedent is any guide, given us no reason to take his word on the subject of his refusal to disclose his tax returns. In fact, he has given voters rather the opposite. [...]

Romney said that when he looked back over his tax returns from the last ten years, he found that he had never paid less than 13 percent of his earnings and that we’re just going to have to trust him on that. However, Maddow said, in 2002 when Romney was running for governor of Massachusetts, it was demanded of him that he release tax returns to demonstrate a residency in that state of at least seven years. Romney refused and insisted that the public take his word for it.

Eventually it came out that Romney had lied. He was forced to pay Massachusetts taxes retroactively, because when he said that the public would have to take his word that he had paid taxes for seven years as a Massachusetts resident, it simply wasn’t true.

Now he wants us to take his word that he has paid at least 13 percent of his massive income over the last 10 years in taxes. Why should we take him at face value? He has demonstrated a willingness to prevaricate on this very subject in his career as a public figure.

So why would the Obama campaign drop this issue? I'm not sure when they taped this show and if it was before or after his interview with NPR, but as of this Friday, Major Garrett claimed he'd never even heard about the issue with the tax returns from 1999-2001 and the issue in Massachusetts. You can read more details about that here: Ex-Fox's Major Garrett: Never Knew Romney Caught Lying On 1999-2001 Tax Returns.

My guess on Todd's hackery here is this is what we're going to hear out of him once the convention rolls through. This is an old issue and it's time to move on. And he'll have plenty of help as well. Here's to hoping the Obama campaign ignores him and so far this election season, I'm happy to say they've been doing a lot of that and ignoring the cries by the beltway Villagers.

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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.

via The Chris Matthews Show, of all things. Now gone viral.

The Chris Matthews Show features our own version of the "Mad Men" opening this week, starring President Obama. Our take of this iconic sequence portrays the struggles of President Obama's 2012 campaign, showcasing his rivals and highlighting the issues that may complicate his bid for reelection in 2012.

The making of it, here.

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After discussing this segment from last weeks show Kathleen Parker and Joe Klein: Tea Party fringe groups are a national security threat; FOX and the Becks are acting seditiously David Ignatius decides to carry some water for Sarah Palin and her fellow hate talkers over at ClusterFox.

Ignatius: Well I…no. If the Republican Party is Fox News and Glenn Beck it will lose in perpetuity. This is not a majority movement. I get worried about words like sedition because I love brother Joe, but it seems to me that implies that there’s impermissible speech; speech that is so extreme, so inflammatory that it really shouldn’t allow it…

Matthews: How about reload?

Ignatius: … in the debate.

Matthews: How about Sarah Palin saying it’s time to reload?

Ignatius: Well, a lot of the things that she says strike me as outrageous. These people make their money being outrageous and Sarah Palin’s now joined that group. But that doesn’t mean that it’s dangerous to the republic. I mean look, our national ideology in some level is Libertarianism. I mean, you know liberals and conservatives agree, don’t tread on me. Don’t take away my freedoms to speak, to do what I want. That’s who we are as a people. These people are expressing an extreme view about it. It doesn’t worry me a lot.

Sorry David, but there are limits on free speech whether you're willing to acknowledge that or not. These Villagers sure like to protect their own even when they recognize that they're completely over the top and out of control. How pathetic is it that he also acknowledges that people who work for an organization that has the word "news" in it are being paid to be "outrageous" and representing an "extreme view" and he doesn't blink an eye about it?

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Chris Matthews has a lengthy debate with his panel on the decision by the Democrats and the Obama administration to push forward with immigration reform and Chris Matthews doesn't understand why the Democrats would choose to push this issue before the mid-term elections. His Matthews Meter question is "Immigration a Smart Issue for Obama This Year?" and ten of his regulars say no and two say yes.

Greg Sargent at The Plum Line gave his take on this:

The move comes amid signs that Dem leaders are moving forward more rapidly than expected with immigration reform, upending the political calculus of both parties heading into the midterms. By moving forward, Dems risk exacerbating the anger of the Tea Party brigade and alienating white swing voters, but they also energize a key portion of their base. The move also forces Republicans to choose between angering the Tea Partiers and alienating Latinos.

Obama has now pushed the Arizona issue to the front burner, perhaps forcing a more serious national conversation over it. Interesting.

Andrew Sullivan is the one person on the panel that thinks this is a good move on the part of Democrats. After what we just saw come out of Arizona with their new "show me your papers" law, I think he may be right. By moving the debate to immigration the Obama administration is going to force them to defend this over reach. I would hope that what Arizona is doing would be seen as offensive to anyone but the far right. There's nothing that's going to happen to get these teabaggers any more worked up than they are now already. The Republicans are upping the crazy and as Sullivan pointed out being their own worst enemies by siding with the extremists in their party and Obama is putting them a box with this move.

I'm waiting to see if they make the situation even worse if we get another Supreme Court nominee who is a minority and they act as badly as they did with Sotomayor before the midterm elections. The GOP cannot afford to lose every minority voter in this country but they look like they don't mind with the way they've been acting for the last year. I guess we'll find out shortly as we see how the politics play out in this debate.

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From The Chris Matthews Show Howard Fineman thinks Fox News and Roger Ailes are vetting Sarah Palin to see if she can cut it as a Presidential nominee. Most of the panel thinks she's actually going to run. I don't think she will. She's going to milk this for every dime she can make out of her new found fame.

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From The Chris Matthews Show 'Tell me something I don't know' segment, Kathleen Parker throws this tidbit out there:

Parker: I'm hearing a couple of very interesting things. One shocker is that some Democrats are thinking of jumping ship and changing parties.

Matthews: Do you have the names?

Parker: That's all I can say about that. The other thing is...

Matthews: What part of the country?

Parker: I can't say one more thing. I'm probably in big trouble already.

Fineman: In the continental United States?

Parker: Yes. The other thing is that these -- some of the Senators who've ...

Matthews: Arlen Spector going to flip back?

(Laughter)

Parker: But these people who've been obstructionists on the health care bill are going to have a lot of trouble. Their seats are in danger and they're going to have a lot of trouble getting money from their donors.

If she's just talking about more of the Blue Dog Democrats in the House, that isn't much of a shocker. I've got to think she's referring to some Senators since she went straight into their fund raising problems as her second point. I guess we'll find out soon enough. So who's the next Joe Lieberman we've got lying in wait out there?

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There are so many things wrong with this panel discussion on the Chris Matthews Show, it's hard to decide where to begin, but for starters, Andrea Mitchell seems to be the only one that gets it that some happy talk on increasing our troop presence in Afghanistan is not going to satisfy the left. Chris Matthews seems to take absolute glee in the fact that escalating our presence there is going to piss off those of us who are anti-war and thinks that “the center” of this country is pro-war.

Joe Klein thinks that President Obama’s bigger problems are going to be from the screeching right that are not going to support him no matter what he does and that of course the left is going to have to suck it up if the President does something they don’t agree with. As John has said here repeatedly, the Villagers always think it’s a good thing if Obama alienates his base and that we should all sit quietly and STFU when we don't agree with his policies.

I’ll wait to hear what the President has to say on Tuesday rather than second guess him as the media has, but playing the middle and sending more troops rather than getting our military out of Afghanistan is not going to satisfy any of us who don’t think we belonged there in the first place. The people who attacked us on 9-11 were from Saudi Arabia, not Afghanistan, but we didn’t invade and occupy that country.

Matthews: And finally the President said he will say how much it’s going to cost. Anne it’s amazing. I’ve never heard of going to war but saying how much is it going to cost. It’s like that old saying if you have to ask, you can’t afford it.

Kornblut: Well, the White House would say the opposite, that we haven’t asked until now and they have to finally start taking it into account. They’ve actually broken down the numbers to figure out how many per soldier it would be. You know half a million dollars a year to have them there, so at this point they’re taking it into account and they’re measuring it against the other important priorities, like health care, like the other domestic achievements they want to get done.

Matthews: Andrea isn’t it odd we’re talking about the cost of this war and we’re already in it?

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Just doing my best here to help Digby achieve her life's work.

I plan to make it my life's work to remind Chris Matthews of these little exchanges. It was the day that Matthews revealed that he and the other media whores were not just shilling for the GOP for professional reasons, but that they actually had a barely contained (and inexplicable) sexual attraction to George W. Bush.

Chris Matthews finds another excuse to praise W for his flight suit appearance on the USS Lincoln.

Matthews: Before we break, President Obama’s taken flack for his war time decision making—a little too much hand wringing some critics say—not enough snap to it. But no such knocks on the way the Commander in Chief gives his salute. The editor of Smithsonian Magazine, a former Marine himself recently decreed that Obama’s salute at Dover Air Force Base was impeccable in every way. He said it’s spot on as a mastery of standards as set by the armed services themselves.

Presidents have long taken salutes from the troops that attend them but Ronald Reagan, the movie star who made training films during his service in WWII was the first to actually return those salutes and boy did he get it right. Check out the sweep of his arm there. And then there was George H. W. Bush, the WWII fighter pilot, who kept up Reagan’s tradition. Bush’s salute as you can see was less dramatic than Reagan’s but did have a snap to it.

Bill Clinton who was as a candidate was best known for his youthful opposition to a war caused some flack for his solute which was, well, it was a bit uncertain when he first took office but after a while, he got it down pat.

As for George W. Bush, who could forget this moment on the deck of the U.S.S. Lincoln? That beats even Reagan when it comes to Commander in Chief performance art. But getting back to our current president, it does seem that the president’s salute isn’t the only one he’s mastered.

Remember Mr. Spock’s Vulcan salute in Star Trek? Obama showed that off at a black tie dinner earlier this year. Live long and prosper.

Matthews does these sort of segments week after week on his Sunday bobblehead show and I assume he thinks he's being either cute or funny. Generally they're neither with this week's addition being no exception.

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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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