Thom Hartmann talked about the sequester with Jamie Weinstein, who's an editor at the Daily Caller, Tucker Carlson's rag. He pointed out that Republicans are now trying to lay all of the blame on President Obama's feet, even though House Speaker previously said that he got "98 percent of what I wanted" with the deal. Thom says the real reason that Republicans want to see sequestration go through is that it's going to tank the economy and they want to blame President Obama.

It's more of the same. Republicans are more than happy to inflict economic damage onto the American economy if they think they'll benefit from it politically. I'm pretty sure Weinstein and his ilk will do their best to make sure that happens and that there is no accountability if Republicans don't reach some deal next week, when Congress comes back from vacation.

Hartmann also took on Weinstein over whether it's fair to be asking those who make their living from capital gains and investments to pay the same tax rates as those of us who work for a living instead of just shuffling money around, like the Mitt Romneys of the world. He pointed out that even the Republican St. Ronnie agreed back in the day and had Republican crowds cheering for the rich to pay their fair share of taxes.

Weinstein responded with some weasel words about the average tax rate of most millionaires, which is a distraction from the point Hartmann was making about the difference in how income from work compared to income from investments is taxed, and whether we've got too many Mitt Romneys out there who are paying lower tax rates than those who work for them.

All in all, I'd say Weinstein brought a knife to a gun fight, because he didn't do a very good job of rebutting most of Hartmann's points.

I don't know how all of this is going to end up, but right now, I'm about as cynical as Hartmann when it comes to what kind of damage Republicans will inflict on this country if they think they won't pay a political cost for their actions. As long as we've got a compliant media treating their actions as normal or as something the public should consider acceptable, they don't have any reason to change their behavior.

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Chuck Todd really should have just stuck to being a pollster, because ever since Tim Russert brought him on at MSNBC, he really has gone from someone who used to be pretty good at analysis of voter trends and elections for Roll Call and with his regular appearances on C-SPAN, to pretty much just another Villager hack once MSNBC hired him. I remember actually enjoying him sharing some of his insights on election coverage on Washington Journal, before he decided to join the D.C. cocktail circuit with the rest of the Villagers.

Todd seems to have made the move quite easily and unfortunately from someone who used to be more concerned about reporting facts and statistics and trends to the typical inside the beltway type of "reporting" we see from his colleagues Chris Matthews, David Gregory and Andrea Mitchell, among others.

His interview with Rep. Tom Price from this Wednesday is just the latest example of that. Todd was terribly upset with Stephen Colbert for making a "mockery" of his brand of "journalism" but sadly as Nicole noted, Todd's done a good enough job of that all by himself.

He did it again here by letting Price claim that you're going to kill the Confidence Fairies if you raise the capital gains tax and that will somehow lead to more offshoring of jobs.

That you shouldn't tax capital gains because that money has supposedly already been taxed.

That the Community Reinvestment Act and giving loans to poor people somehow caused the housing crisis.

That Republicans care anything about closing loopholes for businesses or doing anything about offshoring our jobs.

That unions are harming our economy or the working class.

That we need to lower the corporate tax rate.

And that we'd be "punishing businesses" if we dared to tax them if they want to repatriate the money they've been hiding offshore to avoid taxes in the United States.

If Chuck Todd considers himself a "journalist" you'd think he'd have bothered to push back a bit more harshly at any one of these lies, but that's not what we got during this interview. Heaven forbid he might lose some access for the next interview with Price or one of his colleagues to potentially keep the ratings up on his show if he dared to call him out for anything he lied about here.

I'm sure the salary is much better for Todd since he made the move to MSNBC from Roll Call. Sadly what he's contributing to the national political dialog for the most part has gone down the sewer while his salary has gone up for adding to the pollution.

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As Al Sharpton rightfully noted in the segment above, this article from The New York Times isn't going to do much for Mitt Romney trying to paint himself as some ordinary "man of the people", not that he seems to be having much luck in that area as it is.

Last June, Romney joked that "I am also unemployed", even though, as Karoli noted, "with $200 million in the bank and a few houses around the country, maybe he's not quite as desperate" as the group he was speaking to."

Last September at a town hall event in Florida, Romney told a group of voters that he was part of the middle class as he threw out the canard that "almost half of Americans that are not paying income tax," as though that means those who are too poor to pay income taxes aren't paying any taxes at all.

And yesterday on Fox News, Romney again showed how out of touch he was when he told Chris Wallace he didn't think cutting $700 billion in aid to the states was going to harm the poor.

Now we have this story from The New York Times -- Buyout Profits Keep Flowing to Romney:

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On this weekend's Fox News Sunday, Liz Cheney accused President Obama of believing in "redistribution of the wealth" because heaven forbid he'd like to see those who make their income off of their stock portfolio to pay the same amount in taxes as someone who actually works a job for a living.

I hate to break it to Liz Cheney, but at a time when we've got record income disparity in the United States that we've not seen since the Gilded Age, that income has already been redistributed and it went to the upper 1% of the country. Sadly Cheney and her ilk weren't too concerned about blowing up the deficit with two invasions they left off the books and the damage that the Bush administration did to our economy. But now she's going to opine over the wealthiest in this country potentially having to pay their fair share in taxes.

And heaven forbid like the rest of the neo-cons, she thinks it would just be horrible if we cut spending to defense. I think Cheney and the rest of them out there playing the violins for the rich really aren't going to be content until we have absolutely no middle class left in America. They've done their best to make sure we're heading there rapidly now.

WALLACE: Liz, let's talk about the super committee, which, as I was pointing out with Eric Cantor, I mean, the clock is ticking. It started in August. Now we're in mid-October .

They have got a month, November 23rd, to come up with a deal, $1.2 trillion in deficit reduction, whether it's spending cuts, tax increases, whatever, or you end up with this automatic triggers which everybody says are just horrific, $600 billion more in cuts to the Pentagon. Leon Panetta says that would be a threat to national security.

Do they make a deal, or do we end up with the triggers?

CHENEY: I think the odds are that we'll have a deal. I think one of the places where you've got bipartisan support -- bipartisan agreement -- for example, is that the triggered cuts in the defense budget would just be devastating. Leon Panetta said it would be the equivalent of shooting ourselves in the head. So I think we'll get an agreement on spending.

You know, I think that the Republicans have actually put forward a response on this issue of the millionaire's tax, which is the notion that you've got the vast majority of small businesses in this country pay taxes as individuals at those highest tax rates, and those are the job creators. So I think, you know, we've got the super committee that will get something done, will avoid triggers, but it will only be part of what has to happen here.

The rest of it has got to be a set of policies put in place by a new president that understands that you've got to get the private sector going again. And I think in terms of President Obama, what he's doing politically he may think makes sense. I think it's actually scarier than that though. I think he really believes it.

I think that he's now put forward so many policies that aren't working economically and that are not working for him politically, that you've got to at some point say it must be ideology. It must be that he really believes in redistribution of the wealth. He really believes in increasing capital gains tax, even if it means lower revenues to the treasury. I mean, I think it's something new than we've seen from a president in a long time, and I think its' very concerning.

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Apparently Bill O'Reilly is terribly upset that President Obama might want to raise his taxes on capital gains, so much so that he actually threatened that he and his ilk of fellow investors who potentially could be taxed higher on their "sweat equity" might "pack it in" during his "Talking Points Memo" on this Monday's The O'Reilly Factor.

O'REILLY: Here's the unintended consequence of Mr. Obama's revenue enhancing plan, and I must tell you, I want the feds to get more revenue. I don't want to starve them, as some people do. We need a robust military, a good transportation system and protections all over the place. But if you tax achievement, some of the achievers are going to pack it in.

I'm not quite sure just where O'Reilly and his buddies are going to "pack it in" to, but let me be the first to say that if it means you not being on the air any more at Fox, please go... and don't let the door hit you in the ass on the way out to wherever in the hell you plan on going.

And apparently O'Reilly has absolutely no idea what the term "sweat equity" means. I would recommend him spending a little time watching either HGTV or the DIY networks if he would like to get a clue on what that term actually means.

UPDATED: Steve Benen explains:

In Ronald Reagan’s first term, for example, the top rate was — you guessed it — 50%. Did Reagan’s “oppressive” tax rates prevent robust economic growth? Did “the achievers” decide to “pack it in”? No and no.

For nearly all of Dwight Eisenhower’s presidency, the top rate was 91%. That’s not a typo. Did this Republican president’s “oppressive” tax policy prevent the U.S. economy from growing in the 1950s? Apparently not. That said, if O’Reilly is contemplating retirement to avoid helping America pay its bills, I’m not inclined to discourage him

Hullabaloo

That's the best reason I've yet heard for raising taxes on these creeps. What's funny is that O'Reilly is under the illusion that he's one of the big job creators in our culture who can't be asked to give up even one penny of his massive income lest he lose all reason to wake up in the morning. Well sorry -- he's one of the entertainers, not one of the producers. He may be irreplaceable to curmudgeonly old FOX News, but it won't make a bit of difference to the economy. So, buh bye.

But that's not why I say he's a moron. He's a moron because he doesn't know how marginal tax rates work and when you make the ridiculous sums of money he makes, you really ought to. On the other hand, if he's so dumb that he thinks Obama is actually proposing a 50% tax rate and then whines publicly to a country full of poor people about it, then maybe we should just take his money

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Rep. Jerrold Nadler joined the set of Chris Hayes' new show, Up With Chris Hayes on MSNBC this Sunday morning to talk about President Obama's proposal to increase the tax rate on millionaires and a bill he's going to be introducing this week that should end this hostage taking we've seen from Republicans on the debt ceiling.

Here's more from The Hill on that -- House Dems introduce bill to eliminate debt ceiling:

Three congressional Democrats are introducing a bill Wednesday that would abolish the federal debt ceiling. The lawmakers say that the recent debate to raise the ceiling and avoid default had a "disastrous" effect on the U.S economy, and that the legislation would keep parties from using a potential default as a hostage in future budget debates.

"The debt ceiling is truly arbitrary and has nothing to do with the deficit," Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.) said in a statement last Wednesday. "The debt ceiling does not prevent the United States from incurring new debts. That occurs when Congress decides to authorize more spending than revenues. The debt ceiling prevents the president from borrowing money to pay those debts when they come due."

Virginia Democrat Jim Moran and Georgia Democrat Hank Johnson will join Nadler in introducing the legislation. But the bill is unlikely to gain traction, especially in the Republican-controlled House. Members of the GOP were encouraged that they were able to use the debt ceiling as leverage to attain deep budget cuts during negotiations with President Obama and the Senate. [...]

“Republicans in Congress have shown they are willing to hold the fate of our economy hostage by using the debt ceiling as a political weapon. It’s a tactic that has far ranging effects, disrupting financial markets, damaging the peoples’ trust in government and delaying consideration of must-pass legislation to create jobs and get our economy back on track," Moran said.

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This makes absolutely no sense to me, but most of the things Republicans do don't make much sense other than them looking like they're going to stick to their talking points on more tax cuts no matter what and all government jobs are evil.

Why would someone support extending unemployment benefits instead of stimulus spending where you put people back to work? Aren't Republicans supposed to be the ones that want everyone working instead of sitting home collecting a check from the government? This kind of double speak makes my head hurt.

And to add insult to injury here, there's the added hypocrisy of this from our friends at Think Progress.

As Republicans Block Unemployment Insurance, Kyl Calls For Extending The Benefits:

Today on Fox News Sunday, Sen. Jon Kyl (R-AZ) called for extending unemployment insurance — which is set to run out tomorrow for many Americans — to help the millions of Americans who are out of work. [...]

The reason that so many Americans will lose their benefits tomorrow is because of GOP obstruction. Late last month, Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK) announced that he was blocking unanimous consent to move forward on a measure in the Senate to extend unemployment benefits — similar to what Sen. Jim Bunning (R-KY) did weeks prior. However, this time, other Senate Republicans, including Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY), are backing Coburn’s obstruction. Read on...

And as Media Matters noted, Chris Wallace let Kyl push falsehood that "most of the jobs created are government jobs" in latest jobs report. As they pointed out Mike Huckabee told the same lie on Cavuto's show:

While criticizing congressional Democrats for touting March's improved employment figures, Fox News' Mike Huckabee claimed that "there are fewer private sector jobs because of their policies, their regulations." But the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that private employers added 123,000 jobs in March, which is the biggest gain in nearly three years. Read on...

Transcript via Nexis Lexis below the fold.

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