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In case you missed it, from Friday evening's The Daily Show, Jon Stewart's Best F#@king News Team Ever showed us that in order to run America more like a business, as Republicans keep claiming we need to do, some under performing states are going to have to downsize.

Once again our comedy shows are doing the work of showing the absurdity of Republican talking points that our Villagers in the media that call themselves "news" refuse to do.

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John Amato:

Heather sums up this segment quite well, but I want to focus on Jennifer Rubin's performance here. She is totally out of control as she freaks out on Matthews and Aravosis. Talk about being "unhinged". Rubin becomes the embodiment of unhinged-ness. My God, she's as unhinged as it gets. But let's not forget that Republicans create their own reality, so I guess in her brave new world she's just being normal. As Digby states:

Perhaps this still explains the Republican strategy better than anything else:

"When we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality—judiciously, as you will—we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors…and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do."

That's not all that different from this:

Romney pollster Neil Newhouse: "We’re not going to let our campaign be dictated by fact checkers."

On a more prosaic level, some of this is a function of the massive amounts of information out there and the nature of the two party system. All it takes is for one side to tell a lie and the other side to call them out, for many people to retreat to their partisan corners. They don't feel capable of sorting out the truth so they rely on their tribal identificati.

Howard Kurtz apparently thinks there wasn't anyone more qualified than Mitt Romney fan-girl and neocon, right-wing blogger Jennifer Rubin to weigh in on Chris Matthews' dust up on Morning Joe last week with RNC chairman, Reince Priebus, because that's one of the guests he brought on Reliable Sources to discuss it this Sunday.

Rubin took the opportunity to call Matthews "unhinged" and attack MSNBC for their liberal convention coverage lineup and to make some snide remarks about liberalism not being in the "mainstream." As Kurtz's other guest, John Aravosis rightfully pointed out, that aggressive interview style we saw from Matthews with Priebus is "what Matthews does," and like some of his counterparts on Fox, such as Hannity and O'Reilly, he very often gets aggressive with guests, interrupts them and talks over them, although I'd never put Matthews in the same category as either of those two. Matthews can be a bully at times, but he's no Hannity or O'Reilly.

If Rubin didn't realize that before last week, I guess she never watches his show, because John is right, Matthews can be and is often very aggressive with his guests. I for one was glad he was with Priebus, but that's because I'm fully aware of how Priebus normally handles interviews, which is he filibusters and makes sure he gets all of his talking points in and then runs out the clock. He's also an unabashed liar and gets away with lying without being called for it on a regular basis.

The only reason she cares one iota about how Matthews acted this time around is it's an excuse to attack all of them for their convention coverage for supposedly being too "liberal." Note to Rubin and Kurtz on that matter: Andrea Mitchell, Chuck Todd, Tom Brokaw, Brian Williams, and Chris Matthews for that matter, are not liberals. And if Rubin thinks Matthews is "unhinged" it makes me wonder if the woman reads her own column or has watched herself on the television. She didn't mind getting into it with and interrupting Aravosis during this very interview.

Kurtz followed that by allowing Rubin to pretend that Paul Ryan wasn't really lying during his convention speech. Aravosis called her out for it and Kurtz wrapped things up with the typical Villager, we just have two different points of view and I can't dare let the audience know who's lying game. Pitiful.

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From this Saturday's Fox News Watch, regular guest and columnist Cal Thomas comes up with this doozy when his fellow panel member Alan Colmes points out the fact that the Republicans' presidential candidate Mitt Romney and his veep lie like rugs and haven't been called out for those lies by the media. Thomas' response... well the Democrats aren't asked enough why they don't have more of their politicians running on the Republican platform. I kid you not.

It's bad enough that he just completely ignores Colmes' points about the lying and how unrealistic and harmful his campaign rhetoric has been, but then he's got to stretch and claim that the media pointing out the fact that the Republican party is pretty much all white and not all that inclusive of minorities or concerned about issues that affect women, is the same as the media not asking Democrats why they don't have any "pro-life, pro-traditional marriage, smaller government, lower taxes people in your party." Never mind the fact that it's not true that there aren't any Democrats who agree with some or all of the issues Thomas was addressing here. As Colmes pointed out, it's a completely ridiculous comparison.

SCOTT: Well, should these presidential candidates be pressed to give us more?

COLMES: Of course they should.

SCOTT: We don't know what President Obama wants to do in the next four years.

COLMES: Of course we do. We've had him for four years. He's been much more opaque than Mitt Romney and Mitt Romney the minute you ask him in an interview, nobody presses him on how you gonna'... he wants to cut everything down to twenty percent of the G.D.P., he wants to cut taxes for the rich. He wants to raise military spending. And he wants, he said last night... that he was going to not increase taxes on the middle class. That is physically impossible. How's he going to do all that and solve the budget deficit problem? Nobody has pressed him on this and the media has not done its job nor have they held these people accountable for their lies, their constant lies about Barack Obama, the constant lies about what their plan is. They have not been held accountable.

THOMAS: You sound offended.

COLMES: Well, I am offended.

SCOTT: Well, are the media going to do the same thing at the Democratic convention?

THOMAS: Oh, no, no no. Here's what the media are going to do at the Democratic convention. They're not going to apply the same standards to Democrats as they do to Republicans. If they did, this is what it would look like. The media would be asking the Democratic leaders, why don't you have any pro-life, pro-traditional marriage, smaller government, lower taxes people in your party? It is all monochromatic, ideologically among Democrats. But when it's Republicans, they always say we need to hear more from groups, blacks, African Americans, women. So when the Republicans get those people up on the stage, Susana Martinez, Marco Rubio and others, well obviously they're just tokens. They don't really represent the party. So it's a complete double standard and you're never going to hear the same questions asked of Democrats as you do of Republicans.

COLMES: You're talking about race and ethnicity versus ideology. They're two very different things.

THOMAS: Well, not to the media they're not. Because if you're a black conservative, then you've gone off the, to mix a metaphor, the reservation...

COLMES: And I wonder why black conservatives aren't too happy about the Republican party. I wonder why.

I'd like someone to ask Thomas what's "pro-life" about starting wars, why after busting the bank under Bush that anyone should really believe Republicans are for "small government," and why the only ones Republicans want to raise taxes on are the working class. I don't expect we'll see that happen any time soon. Republicans are "pro-life" until you're born. Then you're on your own. And all the happy talk or minority speakers at their convention and propping up a few of their leaders which is supposed to show they care about diversity isn't going to change the fact that their policies are cruel and benefit the rich. If we had more "fair" coverage Cal, Republicans would be asked about those issues more often, rather than all this stupid horse race coverage we're treated to day in and day out.

From this Saturday's Up With Chris Hayes, Chris takes a look at the message we saw coming out of this year's Republican National Convention and as he concluded "It's an ugly message, but in a time of anxiety and diminished expectations, not a stupid one." It may not be stupid but it's extremely cynical.

The RNC’s backward-looking tour of nostalgia:

This week the Republican party gathered in Tampa to tell a terrible and tragic tale of American decline. They couldn't quite say that, explicitly, of course. This is the party of Reagan and sunny optimism, or so they'd like to present themselves, but you couldn't help notice that the three days of speeches on the convention floor were an orgy of imagined persecution, grievance and doleful recollections of halcyon days gone by.

But the packaging for this message was insistent invocation of American greatness. As Rachel Maddow's team documented in a montage for MSNBC's convention coverage, almost every single speaker told a story of upward mobility, usually taken from their own family's past: tracing the arc of the American dream that had brought them to the podium.

Part of this is just standard political treacle, a way for, say, an extremely wealthy prep school graduate like Ann Romney, to seem relatable. But the larger reason this was such a dominant theme at the RNC is that the Republican Party's platform and tribal identity are zealously committed to the notion of American exceptionalism, and when people talk about American exceptionalism, this is usually what they mean. [...]

Somewhat oddly almost every single one of the stories of "we-built-it," plucky American success didn't revolve around the speakers own experience of social mobility but rather that of their hardworking relatives and ancestors. It struck me, listening to these invocations of the labors of previous generations as a slightly odd note, a backward looking tour of nostalgia for an America that we are losing. But of course, that's precisely the message of the Republican party this year and its a potent one because it's based on a core reality.

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From this Friday's Real Time with Bill Maher, one of Bill's "Real Time reporters," Alexandra Pelosi, sent the show this report from the 2012 Republican National Convention. Lots of Obama derangement syndrome, teabaggers and wingnuts galore.

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From this Friday evening's Real Time with Bill Maher, Bill slams the Republicans for running away from all of the recent leaders of their party and recent presidential and vice-presidential nominees at this year's Republican National Convention in his New Rules segment.

And finally New Rule, Republicans don't have to accept evolution, economics, climatology or human sexuality, but I just watched a week of their national convention, and I need them to admit the historical existence of George W. Bush.

If your party can run the nation for eight years and then have a national convention and not invite Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Colin Powell, Karl Rove or Tom DeLay, you're not a political movement, you're the witness protection program.

In fact, Republicans, next time instead of holding a convention without your most recent president, your most recent vice-president, your most recent vice-presidential nominee and most of the runners up from your most recent primary, why not just wave one of those Men in Black memory eraser wands and say make us forget everything we know about you?

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This from The Daily Show last night was brilliant. A truer biopic than the one shown at the convention.

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Joan Walsh was one of the many great writers out there who called Paul Ryan out for his lie-filled Republican National Convention speech this Wednesday evening and she appeared on MSNBC's Hardball with Chris Matthews, along with Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz to discuss that very speech. As she noted in her conversation with Matthews in the clip above, it's important that the media quits with making excuses for these politicians and pretending this is just political rhetoric. When they're lying to the public, a lie needs to be called what it is, a lie.

And when it comes to lying, Ryan's speech wasn't just brazen with how easily disprovable the lies were in his speech, but for the sheer number as well. His speech was filed with them from beginning to end to an extent that should be shocking for anyone paying an ounce of attention to what's going on and the extreme disconnect between Ryan's rhetoric and how he's governed and what he's unwilling to take responsibility for, yet heap onto President Obama.

You can read more on Joan's response to Ryan's speech here: Paul Ryan’s brazen lies:

Paul Ryan gave a feisty anti-Obama speech that will have fact-checkers working for days. His most brazen lie accused President Obama of “raiding” Medicare by taking the exact same $716 billion that Ryan and the House GOP notoriously voted to slash. It was stunning.

But that’s not all. He attacked Obama for failing to keep open a Janesville GM plant that closed under Bush in 2008. He hit him for a credit-rating downgrade that S&P essentially blamed on GOP intransigence. He claimed that all taxpayers got from the 2009 stimulus was “more debt,” when most got a tax cut (and the stimulus is known to have saved between 1.4 and 3.3 million jobs). He derided the president for walking away from the Simpson Bowles commission deficit-cutting recommendations when Ryan himself, a commission member, voted against those recommendations.

He blamed Obama for a deficit mostly created by programs he himself voted for – from two wars, tax cuts, new Medicare benefits and TARP.

And of course, he riffed on the tired central lie of the GOP convention: that the president said “government gets the credit” for small businesses, not the business owners themselves.

Other than that, it was a great speech.

Interestingly, for all his lies, Ryan didn’t repeat the Romney camp’s false claim that Obama did away with the welfare system’s work requirements. Maybe he ran out of time.

Ryan got off a few good zingers: “College grads shouldn’t have to live out their 20s in childhood bedrooms, staring up at fading Obama posters.” He didn’t mention that he opposed legislation to keep student loan rates from doubling. His remarks about his childhood were slightly moving. He talked about losing his father at 16, and he called his mother, who went back to school and to work after that, his role model. But he never mentioned the Social Security death benefits that let him go to an out-of-state school. Occasionally he seemed to be going after swing voters, rather than his hard-right base, taking a more in sorrow than anger tone about Obama’s failings. Then he’d mix things up with nastiness and lies. Read on...

Addendum (Nicole): The Week notes fifteen ways the media avoids calling Paul Ryan a liar.

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Leave it to Stephen Colbert to take some of the talking heads on cable news to task in a way that only he can. After pointing out that even Fox's web site featured an article which called Paul Ryan's speech "an apparent attempt to set the world record for the greatest number of blatant lies and misrepresentations slipped into a single political speech" and the Romney campaign stating that "We're not going to let our campaign be dictated by fact-checkers," Colbert made a mockery of some of CNN's coverage which we featured here at C&L.

Thank you Stephen for putting into perspective why allowing these lies to go unchecked or to excuse them is so dangerous. It's really pathetic that we continually have to turn to a fake news show on a comedy channel to debunk the propaganda on the "news" channels.

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The Arizona Governor never seems to be "all there" when she's speaking but she might have outdone herself tonight at the Republican National Convention.

John Amato: OMG, here's what she said:

Brewer: And I know that if President Obama is elected which I hope that he is, he will be able to come together with all of us and come up with a solution and I believe he will secure our borders and therefore we can resolve all those other issues..

It reminds me of a similar brain lock when Mitt Romney introduced Paul Ryan as the 'next president of America'

Today is a good day for America,and there are better days ahead. Join me --(APPLAUSE)-- join me -- in welcoming the next President (sic) of the United States, Paul Ryan.

RYAN: Wow! Hey. And right in front of the U.S.S.Wisconsin, huh? Man!

ROMNEY: Every now and then I'm known to make a mistake.(LAUGHTER) But I did not make a mistake with this guy. But I can tell you this, he's going to be the next vice president of the United