As we already discussed here, Donald Rumsfeld found himself getting a nice softball interview from NBC's David Gregory this weekend on Meet the Press, but not all of his book tour has gone quite as smoothly as the big wet kiss he got from Gregory this Sunday.

Majority FM's Sam Seder walked his listeners though some of the highlights of Rumsfeld's contentious interview with American Public Media's Kai Ryssdal, who, as the KOS diary I linked in the prior post on the subject noted, asked "Rumsfeld some of the questions we've all wanted to ask."

As Seder noted, Rumsfeld might be looking to find himself a new publicist after that one, since he certainly didn't expect anyone to actually hold him accountable for his actions during the Bush administration and our invasion of Iraq. Seder says he hopes that it's not the last time he's subjected to an interview like this one because the government sure isn't going to hold him accountable, but I wouldn't hold my breath on whether he'll let it happen ever again.

Sadly, we're not going to see the corporate media hold him accountable either. We're going to see more interviews like the shameful one we got from David Gregory or we won't see him on the air at all.

One final note on the video above: Seder incorrectly identified Kai Ryssdal as working for NPR. He works for APM.

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If you need any proof that no bad deed goes unrewarded by our corporate media, you need look no further than this attention whore. Here's how you're rewarded for violent rhetoric and promoting torture on twitter these days.

New York lawmaker: I would torture an American citizen:

New York state Sen. Greg Ball (R) on Monday night reiterated his belief that Boston bombing suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev should be tortured even though he is a U.S. citizen.

During a tense interview, CNN’s Piers Morgan repeatedly asked Ball whether he was OK with torturing American citizens. While he refused to condone torture as a government policy, he said he was not opposed to personally torturing American citizens such as Tsarnaev.

“I’m telling you as Greg Ball, if personally put in a room with anybody from the most current scumbags to Osama bin Laden I’m telling you what I would do. As far as policy of the United States, you’ve got to take it up with your man Obama,” Ball explained. [...]

The New York Republican has repeatedly defended his support of torture since tweeting about it over the weekend.

In a separate interview with Fox News host Sean Hannity on Monday night, Ball remarked he was speaking “from my heart” and acknowledged his comments might not help his reelection.

Morgan's follow up with Alan Dershowitz, who defended torture in some instances wasn't a whole lot better than his interview with Ball, who walked off of the set after this segment even though he said he'd come back. Note to Piers Morgan if you're going to have someone like this clown on your show again:

Torture does not work and provides unreliable information.

Torture is not consistent with our laws or with our Constitution and it's a war crime.

Torture does not save lives.

Torture does not serve our national interests.

And maybe you could ask this guy if he ever comes on again why we don't allow the police to beat confessions out of citizens on a daily basis and why our courts won't accept confessions obtained under those conditions as evidence. This interview wasn't quite as pitiful as the ones he did on Faux "News," but that's a pretty low bar to hurdle.

You can let him know what you think of his remarks on twitter here.

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For anyone that didn't catch it, Democracy Now's Amy Goodman was featured on C-SPAN's Book TV series, In Depth, this weekend and spoke to host Peter Slen for three hours about a wide range of topics, including her books Exception to the Rulers, Standing Up to the Madness, and The Silenced Majority.

During the opening of her interview, she discussed how Democracy Now first started broadcasting and their studio's proximity to the World Trade Center during the attacks on 9-11 and the importance of independent media in America where information is not brought to the viewers courtesy of corporate America.

You can watch the entire interview here at C-SPAN's web site. Lots and lots of really interesting and important topics were covered ranging from everything from how close she's come to being killed trying to cover genocide which the American media ignored due to our government's complicity in it being allowed to go on, among a host of other stories which her show has covered that the corporate media here in America ignores.

They discussed what the role of journalism should be in the United States, the Occupy Movement, the Arab Spring, whistle blowers being prosecuted, Gitmo, and many more topics than I've got the time to mention here.

She took questions from viewers, most supportive, a few that sounded a little bit nuts and if you've got three hours to spare and are a fan of Goodman's, I don't think you'll be disappointed about making the time to watch the whole thing.

C-SPAN is generally pretty terrible about the number of right-wing authors who they have on the air as part of their Book TV series. It was nice to see the give this amount of air time to someone from the left for once. It doesn't happen that often on their network.

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Thom Hartmann takes our corporate media and the cheerleaders for war with Iraq to task and ten years after our invasion, asks 'Where are the apologies?'

Via Truthout: How the Media Fueled the War in Iraq:

Yesterday, the U.S. marked the 10th anniversary of the start of the Iraq War. And, over the course of the past ten years, we've learned more and more about how the war with Iraq actually started.

It's incredibly easy to blame the Bush administration for its lies that led us into Iraq. But Cheney, Rumsfeld and company weren't the only ones who played an integral role in convincing this nation that Saddam Hussein was a threat, and that WMD's were a forgone conclusion.

In the days and weeks leading up to the invasion of Iraq, corporate media – and even NPR and PBS - were abuzz with the talking points of the Bush Administration, echoing claims that Iraq had its hands on "yellow cake uranium" and that it had a massive arsenal of "weapons of mass destruction."

Thanks to the media's repeated claims that Iraq and Saddam Hussein were immediate threats to our nation, in the weeks leading up to the invasion, nearly three-quarters of Americans believed the lie promoted by Donald Rumsfeld that Saddam Hussein was somehow involved in the attacks of 9/11.

One of the biggest proponents of the Iraq War was Bill O'Reilly.

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Never mind the flip-flopping on his stance on immigration or whether he's hoping his family and their supporters will be doing their part to give Americans a big heaping helping of revisionist history when it comes to his brother's time in office, as Ring of Fire's Mike Papantonio and guest Sam Seder reminded their listeners this week, there is a whole host of other issues that the public should know about if Jeb Bush does actually throw his hat into the ring and runs for president in 2016.

As Pap noted, it's time to stop this campaign before it starts, because we sure as hell can't count on our "mainstream media" to do their part and tell their viewers that Jeb Bush has every bit as much baggage as his brother.

It seems Florida's current Gov. Rick Scott isn't the only one with problems involving Medicare fraud: Jeb Bush Lobbied On Behalf Of Infamous Medicare Swindler, Says Former HHS Secretary.

He was right there with the rest of the PNAC neocons who brought us the invasion of Iraq.

Mother Jones has more on some of the Bush family corruption problems mentioned here along with a host of others in this post: Bush Family Value$.

And as Sam discussed during the interview, eight years is probably not long enough to erase the nation's collective memory about just what a disaster George W. Bush was and for Jebbie to be out there trying to revive the family name. Sadly if the Villagers in the corporate media who care more about a horse race than issues have their way, no one will ever discuss any of Bush's past or he and his family's corruption.

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The Daily Show's Jon Stewart gave former Vice President and chickenhawk Dick Cheney some of the lack of respect that he deserves after he was out there going after President Obama for his national security nominees at a speech he gave in Wyoming over the weekend and his subsequent interview with the entirely useless Charlie Rose on CBS this Tuesday.

Here's more on that from our friends at Raw Story:

“You know,” said Stewart, “Cheney’s really confident in his opinions and analysis, probably forgetting that he sucked at this.”

He added, “Like, he was a shitty vice [president], but even if Obama wanted to take our standing in the world down a peg he couldn’t ’cause the Bush-Cheney Administration left him with no peg room. I guess Obama could’ve created lower peg space, maybe invest in deep sea peg-hole drilling technology, but unfortunately he can’t afford to because the previous administration left us in a bit of a cash crunch.”

“And by ‘previous Administration, I mean these motherf**kers,” Stewart added. “Where does he get the balls?” Steward wondered, admonishing his audience, “Please don’t say ‘cadavers.’”

“This guy was wrong every time,” Stewart continued, after showing clips of a few of Cheney’s less-than-accurate statements about Iraq that led the country into war. “Every time he analyzed it, he was wrong. You try that at work, see if you get to keep your job and be wrong every f**king time.”

As Stewart correctly pointed out here, there is no penalty in our corporate media for always being wrong. They should be ashamed of themselves for giving the likes of Cheney air time in the first place, but I've given up on the notion a long time ago that we're ever going to see that come to a stop any time soon. Once again, we're left with the fake "news" show making a mockery of one that actually considers themselves a news outlet --and rightfully so.

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I would love to know why Anderson Cooper and his producers at CNN thought anyone in their audience would benefit from hearing what wingnut former Rep. Allen West had to say about the recent announcement that the Pentagon is removing military's ban on women serving in combat, given his background.

I don't know about anyone else, but someone who bragged about torturing Iraqi policemen is not the person I want to hear from when it comes to any matters involving our military, but here he was, on CNN, being treated like he's someone who's sane and credible, which he's not.

Allen West Slams Women In Combat ‘Social Experiment,’ Suggests They Should Also Join NHL And NBA:

Former Republican Congressman and Army veteran Allen West made his views about the recent decision to allow women to serve in combat roles known this morning on Twitter and Facebook. And tonight, he brought those views to CNN.

Appearing on Anderson Cooper 360 along with retired General Rick Hillier of the Canadian Forces, West laid out his opposition to the new rule, saying that with all of the budget issues the military is having right now, the focus shouldn’t be on “this foray into an inequality trip.”

West then went off into an extended sports metaphor that seemed to have both Anderson Cooper and General Hillier baffled:

“I have to tell you, if this is the case, then why do we have separate hockey leagues? Women should be out there playing ice hockey with the guys in the NHL. We should not have a WNBA. I can’t shoot a three-pointer, but there are ladies who could certainly take me to the hoop. Maybe they should be competing with Kobe Bryant.”

Cooper quickly steered the conversation back to the more practical concerns surrounding women in combat, asking Hillier if he had seen any advantages in his career working with women in combat. Read on...

I'm guessing there are a whole lot of people out there that would rather have a woman serving next to them in combat than a loose cannon like West. He's no longer in the Congress but it seems our corporate media isn't done allowing him to pollute our airways.

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In his New Rules segment this Friday, Bill Maher took a shot at all of the "gun nuts" out there who are so worried about their 2nd Amendment rights being stripped away, but who, along with a lot of liberals, haven't said anything about the National Defense Authorization Act quietly being passed by Congress, which actually is a threat to our civil liberties in this country.

Maher's right that this is a bi-partisan political problem, but I think the bigger problem with the complacency is that we've got a corporate media out there which for the most part is completely ignoring the problem. It's a shame we'll see it discussed on a comedy show like his but ignored on the "news."

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If anyone is still suffering from the illusion that we get any better programming from public broadcasting than we do from the majority of our corporate media, that is determined to push our politicians into going after our social safety nets, you need look no further than their regular Friday evening series featuring The New York Times' overpaid op-ed columnist and Republican turd polisher David Brooks and their favorite faux liberal, Mark Shields.

This week, Brooks was still carping about how the so-called "fiscal cliff" deal went over and that we didn't get any meaningful deficit reduction from the debacle, or in other words, he's mad that President Obama didn't give away the store and gut our social safety net programs. And for "balance" the viewers got treated to Shields repeating every right-wing trope in the book about how those who would like to see our New Deal programs remain in place are expecting a "free lunch" or being selfish because they don't want to cut Social Security benefits and "don't want to pay" for the benefits they receive from government.

Who needs right-wing Republicans when you've got the likes of Shields out there repeating their talking points for them? And as I've written here along with a ton of others, no mention about what's really needed to solve our deficit problems without balancing budgets on the backs of the poor, working class and elderly. No mention about getting us back to full employment and what policies should be fixed to bring jobs back to the United States that pay a living wage. No mention of the enormous income disparity and concentration of wealth at the top. No mention of the fact that Social Security not adding to our deficit and that there are some fairly simple ways to keep it solvent for decades to come.

Instead it's more talk of who is acting like an "adult" by doing their best to make those gaps between the rich and the poor even worse. What irritates the hell out of me about shows like this is that there are people out there, like my dad, who watch this stuff and think it's unbiased programming because it's PBS.

It's really disheartening to see just how much the Pete Petersons of the world have managed to dominate this conversation, where instead of talking about what is driving up our health care costs, what to do to contain them and whether The Affordable Care Act is going to address those costs once the law is fully implemented, we're seeing discussions on every network from PBS to Fox to you name it in between, pretending as though all of those things exist in a vacuum and the only solutions are for the working class to make some more sacrifices. It's actually beyond disheartening. It's really disgusting and inexcusable.

Transcript via PBS below the fold.

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I have to give CNN's Ali Velshi kudos here, because he did something we don't see often enough on our corporate media. He fact checked someone right on the air and called them out for not telling the truth during an interview. Then he followed up during the same program so the viewers who watched the interview would see it. I was glad to see that happen during his New Year's Ever interview with Rep. Tim Huelskamp.

He actually went a long way in making up for the terrible interview with Huelskamp's fellow wingnut Rep. Marsha Blackburn the previous evening, where he allowed her to filibuster him and rattle off way too many of her talking points unchecked. I still don't think it makes up for him having the Wall Street Journal hack Stephen Moore just about every stinking week on his weekend show, Your Money, without some liberal economists for balance.

Velshi laid into Huelskamp for pretending that raising taxes on those making over $250,000 a year is going to harm a large number of the small businesses out there and those so-called "job creators," and gave him some grief for the stats he was quoting as well.

Ali Velshi Tears Into GOP Congressman Over ‘Misleading Statistic’: ‘You’re On CNN Right Now’:

Huelskamp disputed Velshi’s claim and said that he had “seen research” that raising taxes would impact “41% of business income.” Velshi called him out on his language, saying “41% of business income is not 41% of business, that’s a very, very different and somewhat misleading statistic.” Again Velshi asked, “You understand the distinction, right?”

Velshi then proceeded to silence Huelskamp from speaking any further, saying, “Sir, you put out information to our viewers, you’re on CNN right now. I would like the information to be accurate.” Huelskamp fought to answer, and when he was asked by Velshi whether he wanted to stand by his information, he said, “That’s our best guess. We’re still working on that.”

“I think that’s a guess,” Velshi retorted.

According to Huelskamp, part of the difficulty in obtaining accurate information is that the Obama administration won’t tell his team anything. Velshi slammed him for this misstatement, saying, “We actually don’t have any difficulty getting that information, sir. We don’t need it from the administration, that information is public.”

The post at Mediaite did not take note of the fact that he followed up during the same hour and fact checked Huelskamp for the viewers who had just watched the interview. I say good for him for doing this. It's too bad that this is the exception and not the norm on every channel with any politician who comes on the air and lies to the viewers.

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VELSHI: Wolf, I just want to... I've been doing some research as I promised I would do in the conversation that we had with Congressman Tim Huelskamp, quoting what he said was a study by Montana State University. We're working our way through that study, but I'll tell you the facts that we have right now.

If businesses... if everybody who earned more than $250 thousand saw an increase in the top tax rate from 36 percent to 39.6 percent, that would be 3.5 percent of all small businesses. That would be 940,000 businesses. That's I think a number that the Congressman was quoting. So at $450,000, it is nowhere near the number that the Congressman was quoting.

But let's just be generous and say that it was that. Of that number, only a very small proportion are not hedge funds, partnerships, law firms, companies that don't employ a whole lot of other people. So the Congressman's facts are just incorrect on this. There is nowhere near a million businesses that will be affected by this increase of taxing people above $450,000.