DOWNLOADS: (1084)

PLAYS: (2213)

Embed

Will Tea Partiers Have a Veto Over the 2012 GOP Nominee?

That was the “Matthews Meter” question for the panel this weekend on The Chris Matthews Show where they discussed whether the Tea Partiers are going to drag the party further to the right, as the right led by Barry Goldwater did back in the 60's. His regulars are split including Gloria Borger who says let's wait for the mid-term elections and see how independent voters end up reacting to their candidates and doesn't think they're going to have enough power to have a veto power over who their presidential nominee is.

Dan Rather disagreed with Borger and agreed with Matthews that at least one of the people on the Republican presidential ticket was going to have to be someone that the Tea Party was satisfied with.

Richard Stengel is asked about Sarah Palin and what kind of power she's going to wield and Matthews notes that Palin is not just picking “stupid right wingers” but winners. (Note to Chris Matthews, not all of her picks have been winners, some have been right wingers and she's often waiting until those picks are fairly safe before she makes them. I know you and Uncle Pat love her, but she's not some political genius.)

Stengel agrees that Palin will wield a lot of power because so much of the Republican electorate is “listening to the silent song of Sarah Palin” but also notes that there's not going to be some big rift in the party no matter who they choose because the truth of the matter is the “mainstream” of the Republican Party and their right wing base are not that far apart ideologically, unlike the days of Rockefeller and Goldwater Matthews showed earlier in the segment.

That got a good chuckle from the panel who were amused by Stengel's statement. Whether it is because they agreed with it or not I'm not sure. That seems to be the big elephant in the room they all managed to almost get to but failed to discuss in this segment. This is not just a matter of whether the Republican Party is going to continue to move further to the right for the next election cycle. It's a question of whether they're ever going to move back to the center if they see some short term gains in these mid-term elections.

Continue reading »

DOWNLOADS: (2007)

PLAYS: (1339)

Embed

Apparently Liz Trotta has dispatched a team of investigators to Martha's Vineyard to check on t-shirt sales and they discovered that Sarah Palin is very popular there, or she's just making stuff up. She also thinks that we shouldn't take any attack ads about George Bush seriously because some of the beltway Villagers that she decides to label as the "far left" said some nice thing about George Bush and his insistence that we don't conflate the religion of Islam with terrorism. It's all an evil plot by the terrible "liberal media" where they're pretending to miss Bush now, only to attack him later when the mid-term elections come around, or something.

What Trotta really doesn't want to discuss here is that Republicans would like to keep George Bush locked away somewhere far from sight until the mid-term elections are over and aren't happy about the timing of the release of his new book.

Trotta: Well, let me give you... in keeping with the spirit of what we've just seen, you know, the president is a... President Obama is vacationing up at Martha's Vineyard and apparently the t-shirt that's selling the most is one that deals with President Bush and it says “Miss me yet?” Apparently the subtitle says, "How's that hopey-changey thing workin' out for ya'? " Well we know where that would come from.

But that's the funny part. The serious part is yes, there are invocations to Bush. the Washington Post editorials, their columnists; namely Eugene Robinson " you can't get any more far left than that. And the New York Times and of course Maureen Dowd are all making the case he took the right stand on the... the right Constitutional stand, the right First Amendment stand when it came to separating terrorists from the Muslim... from the Islamic religion.

And so there's what what looks to be a sort of nostalgia at first glance about Bush. What you are seeing from the liberal media is attempt to use his arguments to further their own cause; and that is, that the mosque should be banned. So, I don't think we should take much of it seriously.

Howard Fineman of course of Newsweek did a sort of half serious piece saying that because of Obama's sinking popularity, because of the economy, because of the upcoming elections, there is this kind of wistfulness for Bush and he does have a book coming out.

Continue reading »

I could not agree more with Glenn Greenwald on this one. What the hell is wrong with Howard Dean and any of the other Democrats who have lost their spine on this issue? If we don't have the Democratic Party standing up for the First Amendment, who the hell is going to? We sure as hell can't count on the Republicans to do it. This just disgusts me to no end as it did Glenn.

Howard Dean: "Mosque" should move:

Certain things are disappointing and surprising even for the most hardened cynics. Hearing Howard Dean -- the former liberal standard-bearer -- join Newt Gingrich and Sarah Palin by saying the following is definitely one of them. [...]

Making this more repellent is that he doesn't even have the "I-want-to-get-re-elected" excuse. Today, former Reagan Solicitor General Ted Olson -- whose wife, Barbara Olson, was killed on 9/11 -- said he saw no reason for Park51 to move. And Peter Beinart, expediting his ongoing transformation from TNR Seriousness Guardian into shrill liberal blogger, today called on Democrats to -- as he put it -- "Grow a Pair" by standing up to this increasingly toxic campaign. Yet here comes Howard "I'm-from-the-Democratic-wing-of-the-Democratic Party" Dean, advocating that the vicinity of Ground Zero be turned into a Muslim-free zone because some people don't want Muslims near it. It's episodes like this which breed increasing levels of pervasive disgust and even indifference about electoral outcomes.

Read on...

UPDATE: As aggravated as I was with Howard when I wrote this post before it went up for promotion to the front page and before he went on Countdown to explain himself, I respect that fact that he was willing to defend his stance and try to clarify it, but I agree with Keith, he's not doing the Democrats any favors by giving weight to the extremists in the right wing. He may not have meant to, but he did.

The victims of 9-11 are not the ones driving this or that need to be talked to. They already had a chance to have their positions heard when they had the local meetings in New York. The extremists he says should be left out of the debate are the ones pushing this.

I would not be as aggravated at Howard Dean as I am if I didn't think he was one of the good guys who's just dead wrong this time around and if I didn't think his comments were fueling those who want to spread hatred instead of tolerance. I'm sick to death of them using any Democrat to justify their bigotry.

You can watch the Countdown interview here.

DOWNLOADS: (1514)

PLAYS: (5086)

Embed

As Karoli already noted "News Corp. donated $1 million to the Republican Governors' Association in order for the Republican Governors' Association to mount high-profile attack campaigns on Democratic candidates." Cenk Uygur took a whack at them while filling in for Ed Schultz this week.

Uygur: Fox News came out of the closet today. Everyone with two bits of sense always knew they were a Republican propaganda machine, but today they made it official. Bloomberg News reported that News Corp, the parent company of Fox News Channel, The Wall Street Journal and The New York Post donated $1 million to the Republicans Governors Association.

Now that they're open about their orientation they are free to get in bed with any Republican they like and they've already taken full advantage.

In the recent Iowa caucus poll of Republicans, Mike Huckabee came in number one, Newt Gingrich was number three and Sarah Palin was number four, all of them Fox News employees.

In case you were wondering Mitt Romney came in second and Fox's Facebook game as we speak. According to Bloomberg, News Corps gift is the largest from any corporation to the Republican Governors Association. How's that for fair and balanced?

Is this any surprise given that the President of Fox News is Roger Ailes, who was a media consultant for Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush and Richard Nixon? Nixon would have been so proud.

Fox News does on a daily basis what Nixon could only dream of doing to his enemies in the press.

Cenk continued with showing examples of Fox promoting their potential presidential candidates working for the network and their help in creating and promoting the Tea Party movement. He also said he didn't have any problem with what they're doing as long as we had a little "truth in labeling".

That's never going to happen since Fox will never "out" themselves to their propagandized viewers. He also slammed the rest of the media for "taking their stories at face value" and running with them. I say amen to that brother. Fox like Drudge and Politico are nothing but an RNC talking points propagators and sadly it's not just Fox that is regurgitating this crap into what we call our mainstream media which would be better labeled our corporate media.

I hope Cenk gets his own show on MSNBC. I guess we'll find out if this much truth telling is too much for the network to give him a slot.

DOWNLOADS: (1004)

PLAYS: (3679)

Embed

Media Matters Eric Boehlert spent a little time talking to Ed Schultz about how Rand Paul and Sharron Angle have taken up the Sarah Palin mantle for how to deal with the press. Throw some stones on right wing radio or ClusterFox or some other right wing outlet where you're going to have a friendly audience. When the local media tries to get you to do an interview, run from them. Ignore the local media when they try to get you to do an interview and dismiss them as being biased against you. And then play the victim if they do some negative reporting anyway.

Thankfully as Eric Boehlert pointed out, even if this strategy is working on a national level, both Paul and Angle are not getting away with it on a local level.

BOEHLERT: Actually Sarah Palin has gotten a complete free ride. She has stiffed the press, told them... made it clear she's not going to deal with any of them. She posts, or her ghost writer posts on Facebook and the national press, you know, runs around and writes it down because it's important news. She has gotten a total free pass. She's not running for anything right now.

But in Kentucky and Nevada I think they... it's hurt them and the local press has made it known... has made this a story. The fact that they won't talk to the press has become a story and if you look at the polls it might be hurting them locally.

Now if we can just get them to do the same at a national level for any of them, especially our half-term Governor Sarah McQuitter if she throws her hat in for the Presidential race in 2012.

If you can't answer questions to what are just straight reporters and not pundits who are actually trying to do their jobs that should disqualify you for running for any office, and especially for the United States Senate and for President of the United States. Sadly our national corporate media has done nothing but undermine the work of the few real reporters we've got left out there.

How pitiful is it that as they reported here, Rand Paul even ran away from a local Fox affiliate after doing their national show?

Poor Sarah. Apparently she can't even record her new reality show without some of those darned liberal activists in Alaska mucking up the works for her.

Palin's Homer Moment: Celebrity Sarah Confronted by Citizen:

Sarah Palin & company spent several days in Homer filming her "Sarah Palin's Uh-laska" show. (Eyes rolled).

On the public dock, private security patted down private citizens. The Fourth Amendment protects citizens from unreasonable search and seizure from their government. Private security searching private citizens in a public place, doesn't fall under that category. It's a bit more hinky.

Whether it was TLC or the Palins who contracted security, under what authority did they operate in a public location? Were they looking for weapons? Well, now there's a Second Amendment issue.

[...]

Risking accusations of being all "Wee-Wee'd Up", one Homer woman made a sign in her shed. She then took the 30-foot-by-3-foot banner out to the boat harbor. It said "WORST GOVERNOR EVER". Kathleen Gustafson is a teacher married to a local commercial fisherman. She felt like Sarah Palin had let the state down by becoming a dollar-chasing celebrity and ignoring the oath of office she'd sworn on a Bible.

Kathleen was motivated by the fact Palin was using the very place where her family makes a living to fortify the Palin personality cult -- pretending to do the very thing they worked so hard to sustain. Initially, Kathleen just wanted to waste a little of the camera crew's time, since Palin wasted so much of her time purporting to represent Alaska's interests.

She didn't imagine Palin would be so easy to draw out.

Go read the rest for more details about the encounter.

You can read the transcript of the above video over at Shannyn's blog.

DOWNLOADS: (1367)

PLAYS: (5865)

Embed

The Democrats need to use this footage for some campaign ads this year. Rachel Maddow lays out how the Republicans have continually flip-flopped on their own campaign issues once Democrats decide to embrace them whether it be health care reform, campaign finance reform, aid to small businesses or cap and trade. As she said in the clip of this rank hypocrisy, they're just not embarrassed. But then since the media largely gives them a pass on this kind of stuff, why should they be?

DOWNLOADS: 698

PLAYS: 174

Embed

Site contributors Bluegal and Driftglass are not the only ones out there doing some really great podcasts every week. Our own Nicole Belle has been a regular guest on the Nicole Sandler show on Mondays for a little while now and I wanted to share the latest edition of the Nicole and Nicole show with our readers who I'm sure have been following her writing here for years. She may not have gotten that CNN gig yet, but she did a fine job recapping the Sunday bobble head shows with Nicole Sandler this week instead.

Nicole Sandler lost her gig at Air America when they went under. Hopefully she manages to get back on the air with some wider syndication than she has now in the near future. You can occasionally catch her filling in for Randi Rhodes.

You can listen to the entire show from this Monday at Nicole Sandler's blog:

And we wrapped up the show with Nicole Belle of Crooks & Liars, who visits almost every Monday with a look back at the Sunday talking head shows in a segment we may call “Fools on the Hill”…

In addition to our regular talking smack session about who was on and what they said, we took a couple of minutes at the end of the show to talk about what’s really being proposed, but described as a “Mosque at Ground Zero” (it really isn’t). Nicole wrote a great piece about it that you can read at Crooks & Liars, “On Tolerance and Healing.“

You can listen to our own Nicole's segment if you don't want to wade through the entire podcast to find it in the audio link above. Hopefully we'll have some more of Nicole's show to share with everyone not just on Mondays with Nicole Belle's Sunday show wrap ups but with our own John Amato and Dave Neiwert as well talking about their new book Over the Cliff: How Obama's Election Drove the American Right Insane.

DOWNLOADS: (1184)

PLAYS: (3703)

Embed

$3.8 trillion is such a big number that Sarah Palin can't remember it without writing notes on her hand.

In February, Palin found herself the butt of many jokes after she was caught using answers written on her hand a speech to the Tea Party. Palin called the trick "a poor man's version of a teleprompter."

The former Alaska governor returned to the use of crib notes during an interview with Fox News' Chris Wallace Sunday. Palin explained that the expiring Bush tax cuts would mean the largest tax increase in American history.

"Democrats are poised now to cause this largest tax increase in US history," Palin told Wallace. "It's tax increase of $3.8 trillion over the next ten years and it will have an effect on every single American who pays income tax.

"My palm isn't large enough to have written all my notes down on," she admitted.

"What do you have written on your hand?" asked Wallace.

"$3.8 trillion in the next ten years so I didn't say $3.7 trillion and get dinged by the liberals saying I didn't know what I was talking about," Palin answered.

Liberals may also question Palin's claim that all Americans will be hit by increasing taxes. A chart by the Wall Street Journal shows that taxes for single Americans making less than $300,000 will stay the same under President Barack Obama's tax policy for 2011. Taxes for married couples making less than $300,000 will actually go down.

DOWNLOADS: (746)

PLAYS: (1521)

Embed

Sarah Palin believes that President Barack Obama doesn't have what it takes to enforce immigration laws but Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer does.

"Jan Brewer has the cojones that our president does not have to look out for all Americans, not just Arizonans, but all Americans in our desire of our to secure our borders and allow legal immigration to help build this country as was the purpose of immigration laws," Palin said during an appearance on Fox Sunday.

Palin also blamed the media for her low approval numbers.

"If I believed everything I read or heard in the media, I wouldn't like me either," she said.