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Oh look! It's John McCain on a Sunday show pushing for the United States to start dropping more bombs on people's heads. What a rare treat it is that our corporate media allows McCain on for more warmongering. That never happens, does it?

Here he is with guest host Martha Raddatz on This Week, where he actually got a little bit of push back about the dangers of the United States escalating our involvement in Syria, but McCain just brushed it off.

So we might get the Russians involved if we go in there... or be arming terrorists. So what? What could possibly go wrong?

I guess you've got to give McCain credit for one thing. He is at least consistent in never being able to find a military conflict somewhere that he doesn't want to help escalate. Consistently wrong... but consistent. No amount of bad behavior ever goes unrewarded by our media if you're a Republican. I was shocked to see this is only his tenth appearance on a Sunday show this year. I guess it just feels like more since he's got his mug on Fox and CNN so often throughout the week as well.

RADDATZ: I -- I want to move on to Syria. It's been more than a week since Israeli jets hit targets in Syria. More than two weeks since the U.S. said that there was evidence of the use of chemical weapons. What should be happening now concerning, especially these chemical weapons, and the red line that the president talked about?

MCCAIN: Well, the president said he wants a U.N. investigation. The only problem with that is the U.N. can't get into -- into Syria.

RADDATZ: And we read this morning that Assad's forces are making incredible gains. You...

MCCAIN: Incredible gains?

RADDATZ: ...you talked about...

MCCAIN: Which...

RADDATZ: ...a no-fly zone, striking targets. What good does that do?

MCCAIN: Well first of all, engage their air assets. In that kind of terrain, and that kind of weather, air is a -- is a decisive factor in this kind of conflict, and...

RADDATZ: A -- a decisive factor in doing what? What's -- what's...

MCCAIN: Well, we take out the air. We establish a no-fly -- no boots on the ground, no American boots on the ground...

RADDATZ: That's still a lot of risk taking out that air. In fact -- in fact the Russians have said they would move in...

MCCAIN: Well, if they move in...

RADDATZ: ...anti-aircraft, very...

MCCAIN: ...if they move in...

RADDATZ: ...sophisticated.

MCCAIN: ...if they move that in, it's going to make it more complicated, and certainly maybe gives us a little bit of skepticism about a conference. But, we can provide them with a safe zone. We can provide them a place to organize inside Syria. We can give them the heavy weapons that they need...

RADDATZ: Who's -- who's them? Who's them?

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South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham can't seem to make up his mind on whether the United States ought to be sending ground troops into Syria, since he just contradicted himself from the statements he made to Foreign Policy last month during an interview with Bob Schieffer on CBS this Sunday. He has, however, been consistent with beating the war drums and giving dire warnings about the consequences of the United States failing to insert ourselves into the middle of their civil war.

Graham continued the fearmongering on this Sunday's Face the Nation, telling the audience they should be concerned about everything from more terrorist attacks in the United States, to extremists taking over the country and getting a hold of weapons of mass destruction.

Graham also claimed he's really worried about "all hell breaking loose" in the region if the United States fails to intervene. I hate to break it to you Lindsey, but you're a whole lot of years and a dollar short on that one. That ship sailed a long time ago.

I've got a proposal for Graham and his fellow warmongering buddy John McCain -- you first. If the two of you want to lead the charge inserting yourselves into another country's civil war without the support of the international community, you go lead the troops over there and take a spot on the front lines of the battlefield. Let us know how that works out for you.

Full transcript below the fold via CBS.

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Leave it to Charles Krauthammer, and Fox News, to compare the so-called 'fiscal cliff' negotiations to the terms of surrender that ended the Civil War. Krauthammer ended with the thought that Republicans should just walk away because they were in such a strong position of leverage when the economy heads back into a tailspin as a result. This is the type of mindset that not only the conservative pundits have but also some Republican politicians. The smarter among them though realize the folly of Krauthammer's pontificating and are looking for a deal --any deal-- that won't get them lynched by their own supporters. They know Obama has them in a bind and are looking for a face-saving option.

CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER: It's not just a bad deal, this is really an insulting deal. What Geithner offered, what you showed on the screen, Robert E. Lee was offered easier terms at Appomattox, and he lost the Civil War. The Democrats won by 3% of the vote and they did not hold the House, Republicans won the house. So this is not exactly unconditional surrender, but that is what the administration is asking of the Republicans.

This idea -- there are not only no cuts in this, there's an increase in spending with a new stimulus. I mean, this is almost unheard of. What do they expect? They obviously expect the Republicans will cave on everything. I think the Republicans ought to simply walk away. The president is the president. He's the leader. They are demanding that the Republicans explain all the cuts that they want to make.

We had that movie a year-and-a-half ago where Paul Ryan presented a budget, a serious real budget with real cuts. Obama was supposed to gave speech where he would respond with a counter offer. And what did he do? He gave a speech where he had Ryan sitting in the front row. He called the Ryan proposal un-American, insulted him, offered nothing, and ran on Mediscare in the next 18 months.

And they expect the Republicans are going to do this again? The Republicans are going to walk on this. And I think they have leverage. Yes, for Congressional Democrats it will help them in the future if Republicans absorb the blame because we will have a recession. But Obama is not running again unlike the Congressional Democrats. He's going to have a recession, 9% unemployment, 2 million more unemployed, and a second term that's going to be a ruin. That is not a good proposition if you are Barack Obama.

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Sean Hannity decided he wasn't done embarrassing himself after his ridiculous pimping of the latest Breitbart fake scandal from his previous show this Thursday evening and who better to bring in and talk about how President Obama supposedly was not "properly vetted" by the media before being elected president, than the un-vetted half-term quitter from Wasilla, Sarah Palin.

I would not recommend playing a drinking game with the word "radical" for this segment of Hannity's interview with Palin, because if you're doing a shot every time it comes out of one of their mouths, you might have to call an ambulance for blood alcohol poisoning by the time it's over.

The racist blow horns were on full alert with this bit of mind-blowingly stupid hackery from Palin about our first black president when Hannity asked her what she thinks if heaven forbid their worst nightmare comes true and he's reelected:

PALIN: Well, what we can glean from this is an understanding of why we are all on the road that we are on and it's based on what went into his thinking, being surrounded by radicals. He is bringing us back Sean to days that... you can harken back to days before the Civil War, when unfortunately too many Americans mistakenly believed that not all men were created equal. And it was the Civil War that began the codification of the truth here in America... yes, we are equal and we all have equal opportunities, not based on the color of your skin.

You have equal opportunities to work hard and to succeed and to embrace the opportunities, god given opportunities to develop resources and work extremely hard and as I say, to succeed.

Now, it has taken all these years for many Americans to understand that that gravity, that mistake, took place before the Civil War and why the Civil War had to really start changing America. What Barack Obama seems to want to do is go back to before those days when we were in different classes based on income, based on color of skin.

Why are we allowing our country to move backwards instead of moving forward with that understanding that as our charters of liberty spell out for us, we are all created equally.

Yeah, that's the ticket. The amount of sheer projection here is just astounding, but that's just how they roll. Whatever our worst traits are, we're going to hurl them right back at the other side and hope the low information voters who watch this tripe are too stupid to know the difference.

And surprise, surprise, the video Hannity and Breitbart's site are pushing, which he mentioned again here of the lecture by Harvard professor Charles Ogletree is doctored. Who would have guessed?

h/t Media Matters

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As Rachel Maddow noted in this segment tonight, sadly 150 years after the start of the Civil War in the United States, we've got wingnut politicians in the South who are pushing nullification laws in their states and those themes are sadly still resonating in this day and age after... and potentially because of the election of our first black president.

It's a damn shame we've still got wingnut politicians whipping up these divisions in the South, but apparently 150 years later, we haven't come nearly as far as we should have with racial tensions in the United States and with politicians who are willing to take advantage of them.

From The Maddow Blog, here are some links on her segment tonight:

McDonnell's Confederate History Month proclamation irks civil rights leaders

House: nullify health reform

Citizens line up to urge 'nullifcation' of health reform law

Nullifcation backers eye next move on anti-health reform plan

Arizona bill on nullifying U.S. laws revived

The 10th Amendment Nullification Movement

This Act shall be known and may be cited as the "Georgia Food Freedom Act."

Lawmakers Seek to Exempt Guns, Coal from Federal Regulation

Kentucky threatens to give boot to federal EPA

Confederate currency on eBay

North Carolina RLC Representative Glen Bradley Says State Needs Alternative Currency

South Carolina Lawmaker Seeks to Ban Federal Currency

At Least 10 States Have Introduced Gold Coins-As-Currency Bills

Bogus coins, bullion seized in CdA focus of federal action

Health Care Law Has Wamp Hoping Against Secession Palin's secession flirtation

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Bill Maher gave some grief to the Sons of Confederate Veterans for their celebration of the 150 year anniversary of the Civil War.

The SPLC has more on their "celebration" -- Once Again, Racism Rears Up in the Sons of Confederate Veterans:

For much of the last decade, the Sons of Confederate Veterans (SCV) has been roiled by an internal civil war between racial extremists and those who want to keep the Southern heritage group a kind of history and genealogy club.

It’s beginning to look like the racists won.

First came the news, originally reported on this blog last August, that the SCV was planning a Feb. 19 march down Dexter Avenue here in Montgomery, Ala., to “CELEBRATE THE BEGINNING OF THE CONFEDERACY” and ensure that it “is remembered and portrayed in the right way.” What the SCV meant by “the right way” was made obvious by its website promoting the event, which insists that “the South was right!” and claims that “there is no difference between the invasion of France by Hitler and the invasion of the Southern states by Lincoln.”

And now, from the Mississippi Division of the SCV, comes this new gem: The group wants the state to issue a special license plate, keyed like the Montgomery march to the 150th anniversary of the Civil War, to honor Confederate Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest — a millionaire Memphis slave trader before the war, an apparent war criminal who presided over the massacre of surrendering black prisoners at Fort Pillow, Tenn., during it, and the first national leader of the Ku Klux Klan afterward, when the Klan’s terrorist violence paved the way to a Jim Crow South.

Neo-Confederate apologists in the SCV and elsewhere claim that Forrest has been mischaracterized, that he was a good man who disbanded the Klan when it became violent. Mississippi SCV member Greg Stewart told The Associated Press that Forrest had sought “Christian redemption” and ultimately rejected the Klan. “He redeemed himself in his own time,” he said. “We should respect that.”

That is false. Forrest, for all the fawning attention he’s received from the historical revisionists of the neo-Confederate movement, was certainly a brilliant and highly successful cavalry general — but he was also a homicidal bully.

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So how does the media decide to handle Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell's 'Confederate History Month' proclamation? Why trot out some racists who want to defend his original decision to ignore the issue of slavery of course. And what do all three of these interviews have in common? All three involve having someone of African American descent trying to argue with these Yahoos. First up we had Pat Buchanan on Hardball arguing that both sides were right in the Civil War and former DNC head Karen Finney. Finney posted this at Politico on the subject:

Gov. Bob McDonnell’s decision is shameful. If you’re going to declare April as “Confederate History Month” to commemorate, “… the Commonwealth’s shared history, to understand the sacrifices of the Confederate leaders, soldiers and citizens during the period of the Civil War, and to recognize how our history has led to our present;” then have the courage and character to embrace the full truth, not hide from or censor it. This is not about being “PC”. [...]

For me this is very personal. My father, who is African American, is from Virginia. The Finney name comes from the man who once owned my family as slaves. My mother, Mildred Lee, is the great, great, great niece of Robert E. Lee, or “the General”, as he is referred to by my family. I am therefore the great, great, great, great niece of General Lee. That is my American story, a mixed race heritage that I am proud of, just as Virginia, the South and our country has a mixed history.

I think it was shameful to make her sit through Buchanan's crap on Hardball. More from CNN's Anderson Cooper 360 and MSNBC TV below the fold.

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Fareed Zakaria talks to former Foreign Service officer Matthew Hoh who recently resigned as a Political Officer in Afghanistan. You can watch the entire interview here.

ZAKARIA: Matthew Hoh is the young Foreign Service officer who resigned this week from his post in Afghanistan. He joins me now.

Matthew, I'm going to just start by reading a bit from your resignation letter. You say, "I fail to see the worth or value in continued U.S. casualties or expenditures of resources in support of the Afghan government in what is truly a 35-year-old civil war."

And then you go on to say, "Thousands of our men and women have returned home with physical and mental wounds. The dead return only in bodily form to be received by families who must be reassured that their dead have been sacrificed for a purpose worthy of such futures lost, love vanished and promised dreams unkept. I have lost confidence such assurances can any more be made. As such, I submit my resignation."

These are very strong words.

Give us some sense of what this insurgency that we are fighting looks like. What did you think people were fighting U.S. troops for?

MATTHEW HOH, FORMER MARINE CAPTAIN AND U.S. STATE DEPARTMENT OFFICIAL: The first place where I really had -- where this was codified for me and where I started to understand what we were doing and how we were involved -- the Korengal Valley, which I'm sure a lot of your viewers are familiar with. It's been on the cover of TIME Magazine. The "New York Times" refers to it as the valley of death. Off the top of my head, unfortunately, I can't remember how many American soldiers we have lost there, but it's probably 30 or 40.

This is a valley, I don't know, 15, 20 kilometers long. There's only 10,000 people in it. They speak their own language. They speak Korengali. In the year 2009 we have a valley with people who speak their own language. Their only trade is the timber trade. And when they move their timber, they don't even leave their valley. Most of the time, I believe, they just take it to the Mazar Valley, and a middleman picks it up and brings it to Pakistan for them.

We show up. We enter their valley. We occupy the richest man's timber mill. And then we bring in Afghan army and Afghan police, who aren't from there.

And then what do we do? Then we have the Afghan police and Afghan army. They say to the Korengalis, they say, "These mountains here that your families have been cutting trees down, sustaining yourselves for hundreds of years, you don't own them. The central government does. And you have to pay tax on that."

I'm not sure how many people anywhere else in the world wouldn't take up arms against something like that.

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