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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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From this Wednesday evening's coverage of the Republican National Convention on MSNBC, Chris Matthews talks to Lawrence O'Donnell, Michael Steele and Howard Fineman following Paul Ryan's speech to get their opinion of it. Both Lawrence O'Donnell and Howard Fineman heap praise on Ryan's political skills and O'Donnell proclaims that the fact checking on Ryan's lie filled speech won't matter to swing voters.

The analysis from all of them was basically that facts don't matter if people like what they hear and don't know the difference on whether they're being lied to or not and that the Democrats had better get busy with rebutting this stuff. While I agree with them as far as low information voters and whether it's even possible to get through to them and that the Democrats do indeed need to rebut this stuff, here's my beef.

Isn't that exactly O'Donnell and Fineman's job to be pointing out the lies along with the rest of their cohorts in the media? Aren't they supposed to be a backstop against the politicians being allowed to just lie to us constantly and the voters not knowing the difference? I think it's an indictment on what's left of our fourth estate that they didn't even consider the possibility that if we had enough "fact checkers," and accurate ones and not those that are too often making a mockery of that term, but if we had enough push back from a media that did its job instead of always playing the Fox "fair and balanced" game, maybe we wouldn't have so many low information voters and so many swing voters who are easily duped by the likes of Ryan.

What killed me is they did spend some time fact checking a few of Ryan's lies during the segment, but I left some of that out of the clip for the sake of brevity, but basically they were pointing out Ryan's lies and at the very same time claiming that it was somehow a useless endeavor. If anyone wants to check out a very long list of the better part of Ryan's lies during his speech, you can find those at Think Progress' live blog from this Wednesday: ThinkProgress Live Blogs The Republican National Convention. The list is so long, it's staggering.

Ryan and Romney should not be given a pass by our media for lying. The entire Romney campaign has been based on one lie after another, as Steve Benen has taken the time to document in his series, the latest of which you can read here: Chronicling Mitt's Mendacity, Vol. XXXI. They've gotten away with it so far. The question is whether they're going to be allowed to continue to do so through the rest of the campaign. I'd say the answer is yes after listening to O'Donnell and Fineman pretend their hands are collectively tied to do anything to stop it. Instead they played the same "fair and balanced" game we see on Fox where they bother to point out the lies and for "balance" Michael Steele sits there and muddies the waters with bulls**t.

And this from that so-called "liberal" network, which is not liberal but the right wingers will constantly pretend it is, MSNBC.

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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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Chuck Todd and Chris Matthews apparently have a little bit of a problem reading poll numbers. On this Thursday's edition of Hardball, both of them claimed that President Obama had better not be talking too much about the issue of "class warfare" and ever repeating his statement, heaven forbid, that he "was not born with a silver spoon in his mouth" because heaven forbid that might not poll well with some of the voters out there.

I took a look at the survey linked to Chuck Todd's First Read and either I missed it, or Chuck Todd and Chris Matthews completely misrepresented what the polling data there said.

I would love for someone to explain for me how these numbers and the question asked about the "ultra-rich" are harmful to President Obama and why anyone who is not an idiot on the Democratic side of the aisle should be telling him to shut up about it.

Here's the question from the survey that I believe Todd was talking about:

Now, I’m going to read you some statements you could hear about government and the economy from candidates running for president. After I read each statement, please tell me if you would be more or less likely to vote for that candidate, or if it would make no difference in whether you would vote for that candidate.

Says what drags down our entire economy is an everwidening gap between the ultra-rich and everybody else.

Here are the responses:

Total More likely 45 -- includes *

Much more likely 23*

Somewhat more likely 22*

Less likely 29

No difference 24

Not sure 2

Someone please explain to me how that equals bad polling numbers for Obama on that question. Either Todd is citing a completely different poll that his blog didn't choose to link today that has the name NBC attached to it, or he's lying to the Hardball audience here and assuming they'll never actually read the poll.

If Todd is going to carry water for the Romey campaign and try to pretend that the Occupy Wall Street argument about income disparity, and class warfare being waged on the poor and middle class is not a valid one that might resonate with voters, maybe he ought to try to find a poll that doesn't prove just the opposite of the points he was trying to make.

UPDATE: For clarification, the "more likely" number of 45 percent is a combination of the following two numbers labeled "much more likely" which was 23 percent and "somewhat more likely" which was 22 percent. I missed the word "total" when I copied the stats out of the poll. The correction has been made above. And as I said, I do not see how these are bad numbers for Obama or something to be running from which is the way Todd was characterizing them in the Hardball segment.

Transcript of the Hardball segment below the fold.

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In yet another pitiful example of our D.C. beltway Villagers not doing their jobs, Chris Matthews and his panel of the Huffington Post's Howard Fineman and USA Today's Susan Page allowed the viewers of his audience to think that Mitt Romney should somehow be considered a serious candidate for president because he somehow would know something about putting our economy back on track because he was a former business owner.

This is going to be one of the things that I continue to go after these Villagers in the press for until they either finally quit lying about Mitt Romney and his record as a "job creator", or until he drops out of the 2012 presidential race, or until we're in the unfortunate circumstance of somehow having him elected as our next president, in which case the hounding on this matter will no longer make any difference.

I really get tired of it when someone like Matthews or Fineman does it since they get painted as "liberals" by conservative blogs and media which neither of them are. They're both the epitome of most of what is wrong with our beltway press being too close to those they cover and more worried about their invitation to the next cocktail party or who they have access to for their next article or interview instead of doing any honest reporting on those they socialize with or that they they can get some scoop from that talks to them.

Shame on Tweety and on Howard Fineman for painting this guy as some savior for job creation. It's really a pathetic day when we get more honest reporting from a comedy show than what tries to pass itself for a "news" program on our so-called "liberal" channel, MSNBC.

Here's Colbert again on how Mittens should be treated in the press when anyone spouts this "job creator" nonsense.

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MSNBC stayed on the air to do some live coverage on the negotiations by the White House, John Boehner and Harry Reid to avoid a government shutdown. As John already noted, the President tried to put a "happy face" on this during his speech tonight. I'm really disgusted with the fact that he's validating Republican talking points on the deficit and our debt and the fact that making cuts to our budget in the wrong places is only going to make our already fragile economy worse.

Lawrence O'Donnell asked Chris Hayes about the statement coming out of Nancy Pelosi's office which he read on the air.

She commends the President for his hard work and perseverance. She then says, House Democrats look forward to viewing the components of the final funding measure. The American people's top priority is creating jobs.

As O'Donnell noted, Pelosi's statement means that this budget compromise is not going to sail through the House with all of the Democratic support John Boehner might want. As Chris Hayes noted, the Democratic minority was not even part of these negotiations, which isn't really that surprising given their numbers right now. But as Chris Hayes pointed out, even Rep. James Clyburn who's in a leadership position in the House could not tell him earlier just what programs are going to be cut. Hayes is exactly right when he says where these cuts are coming from and whose shoulders they're resting on really matters, and Nancy Pelosi was just articulating that it does matter where these cuts are coming from.

Then we move onto Howard Fineman who gave us the Villagers' view of what the White House's political game might be with the President deciding it was a good idea politically to be praising this deal with Republicans. And as Howard noted, a lot of Republicans in the House are not going to be crazy about voting for this deal as well. This passing is likely going to depend on some Democrats in the House voting for it as well. Whether Boehner can get enough of them to help him pass this remains to be seen. Fineman laid out what the White House is counting on here:

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You’ve got to love this one. Chris Matthews on his weekend show put it to his “Matthews Meter” and asked his regulars if “serious candidate” Haley Barbour “can run as a Southern alternative [to Barack Obama] without appearing racially insensitive?”

And what was their overwhelming response? By 11 to 1 they said yes he can. Howard Fineman took the first turn out of the box defending Barbour.

MATTHEWS: Howard, you said he can get away with that sort of geographic appeal and Southern boy appeal without raising the old American problem.

FINEMAN: Well, he can’t just get away with it, he can do it, but he’s got to be careful. There is no margin for error. And he’s made a couple of pre-season errors here in some of his comments about how the controversy in Virginia over black history month didn’t mean diddly…

MATTHEWS: Confederate month…

FINEMAN: Confederate month didn’t mean diddly, etc., etc.

MATTHEWS: The Citizens Councils were pretty cool…

FINEMAN: But well, I think he is playing to the Southern old boy vote, there’s no question about the good old boy vote, there’s no question. But I think he can do it in still try to sell himself to the rest of the country if he’s careful. I’ve covered him for years. I’ve known him for a long time. He’s a very smart guy and he’s doing what you advised in your book, Hardball, which is if you have a problem…

MATTHEWS: Hang a lantern on it…

FINEMAN: Hang a lantern on it… I was a lobbyist, and I was a darn good lobbyist.

Yeah, who cares that he was a lobbyist, or that he's paling around with the KKK CCC, or that he's tried to rewrite the Civil Rights movement in the South. Why would anyone care about any of that? This just reeks of the same treatment they gave George W. Bush as just some regular guy everybody "would like to have a beer with" when that was about the furthest thing from the truth.

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I'd say Chris Matthews got this one right with what the GOP presidential hopeful's line would have been had President Obama not gone into Libya; they'd have been attacking him. There are a lot of liberals and I count myself among them who have huge issues with why we decided to go in there and with the hypocrisy of pretending that it's for humanitarian causes when there are dozens of other countries that are facing far worse situations than the one in Libya.

And if this ends up going as well as anyone could hope for now that we've committed to going in there, and in the end and we oust Gadhafi in a short amount of time and we see some actual democratic movement and real elections take his place with less loss of civilian life than we might have seen with what Gadhafi was already planning for his own people, I'll be more than happy to have egg on my face. I'm not wishing for things to go badly there, but if that is the end result, I'll be very surprised. I would personally love to see our foreign policy take a turn where it centered on ending poverty and ending armed conflicts rather than continually profiting off of both.

And any liberal that was against our other military interventions as I was in the Middle East has a legitimate right to criticize what's going on now. As Chris Matthews, Howard Fineman and Joan Walsh discussed here, these hypocrites in the Republican Party who never met a new armed conflict that they didn't love who are carping now about what's going on forfeited that right to do the same when they decided to cheer lead for Dubya and his invasion of Iraq. As Matthews pointed out, their criticism of what's going on now is nothing but knee-jerk reaction and automatically attacking anything a Democratic president does.

Transcript via Lexis Nexis below the fold.

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Howard Fineman gives us a big heaping dose of false equivalencies by comparing the birthers who are trying to delegitimize President Obama to those on "the left" that were upset that George W. Bush had the presidential election stolen for him by the Supreme Court in 2000. Yeah Howard, those two groups of people are just alike.

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I'm not sure what Howard Fineman has been smoking, but I'm pretty well disgusted with the man I used to like as one of Al Franken's regulars on his radio show on Air America after hearing this nonsense out of him on Chris Matthews' weekend show on NBC. Hey Howard, here's a proposal for you. How about we ask the rich to pay their fair share in taxes instead of telling seniors on fixed incomes that they haven't sacrificed enough for their country? Or pretending that ending Social Security benefits for upper earners and means testing it would do nothing but turn Social Security into another welfare program instead of an insurance program? And while we're at it, quit pretending Social Security is doing anything to add to our deficit problem when it's not.

If there's one thing I hope President Obama does during his State of the Union address, it is to not listen to Howard Fineman or his fellow Villagers spouting similar nonsense. The only people who have not been asked to sacrifice in this country are the rich and acting like there's some abundance of rich seniors feeding off of the government trough at the expense of their grandchildren is just shameless. I'm really disgusted and disappointed with Howard for going there. He should know better.

FINEMAN: If he doesn’t make a double feature a single unified theme, then he will have failed. And what he’s got to say, bluntly is some people are going to have to sacrifice in order that this next generation can have it’s Sputnik moment and to over simplify, but only slightly, better off, that is well to do older people, senior citizens are going to have to pay more and get less from government, so that this younger generation can meet the challenges of the future.

He’s got to say that, which means he’s got to mention Social Security—after all it was part of his own budget committee…

MATTHEWS: Howard, put that against the filter of what we all know about politics.

FINEMAN: Right.

MATTHEWS: It’s the older person with more time on their hands who votes relentlessly…

FINEMAN: That’s true.

MATTHEWS: …who votes their interests, their pocket book interests, their retirement interests. Will they give way?

FINEMAN: Well he’s got to speak to them. I think that’s a very good point Chris and while Republicans are one part of his audience—they’re going to be sitting there skeptically saying “how much are you cutting, how much are you cutting”, he’s also going to talk to seniors, the better off people, people who’ve done well in the last fifteen, twenty years and say look, if you want your children and grandchildren to be as optimistic as you were when you were a kid and to have the opportunities in terms of education and the American life that you had, then we’ve all got to pull together.