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Nothing like watching a bunch of overpaid, millionaire pundits yucking it up and having a grand old time discussing whether the administration has happily thrown their base under the bus with -- no regard for the lives of those who would be affected by these policy changes.

That's exactly what the audience was treated to on this Friday's Morning Joe on MSNBC. These millionaire pundits probably would not find the hippie punching so humorous if any of of them thought they might have to rely on Social Security to get by in their old age.

Carville: I Think Obama Likes Angering Liberals (VIDEO):

Democratic strategist James Carville said Friday that he doesn't think President Barack Obama is sweating the criticisim he's taken from his liberal base over a budget proposal that includes cuts to Social Security.

Appearing on MSNBC's "Morning Joe," Carville said he thinks Obama relishes the commendation he's received from deficit hawks like New York Times columnist David Brooks and host Joe Scarborough. Asked by co-host Mike Barnicle how the President will respond to the outrage from the left-wing of the Democratic Party, Carville was blunt.

"I think he likes that," Carville said. "I don't think he's upset. He got a very favorable Washington Post editorial. 'Morning Joe,' very favorable commentary right here. I guarantee you if he's up watching this right now. Got a good David Brooks column. He's kind of excited this morning. This is kind of important to him."

But Carville added that the White House is not "totally out of bounds" with its budget, arguing that the proposal will "throw the Republicans off" and that Obama is desperate to strike a grand bargain with the GOP.

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If anyone didn't think this guy was quite insufferable enough during his interview on Piers Morgan last month, you're in luck. You can be treated to almost an entire hour of his whining about how liberals are keeping the poor conservative white man down.

This was a talk he gave at Jim DeMint's wingnut Heritage Foundation a couple of weeks ago.

Yes, Breitbart protege Ben Shapiro has got a book to sell, so naturally he's being promoted by the likes of C-SPAN, which sadly leans way, way to the right with their Book TV series. They ended up treating their viewers to what was one long exercise in projection, claiming that liberals just want to silence conservatives, making ridiculous claims that conservatives are somehow shut out of the political debate in the United States, and are being oppressed by some secret liberal cabal out there who makes sure no one can hear their message.

[Insert laughter here.]

In Shapiro's world, Media Matters has a whole lot more influence than I'd give them credit for. Plus, there's some grand conspiracy to keep conservatives out of Hollywood and our educational institutions. And you can't dare call a conservative a racist ever... never, ever... and don't dare call voter suppression racist or mention anything about their policies being racist, because then you're just pandering and trying to pick on them and YOU JUST BETTER SHUT UP.

And heaven forbid someone picked on poor ALEC and forced them to run away from the "stand your ground" laws. Yes, and Al Sharpton is a big bad meanie who, along with the rest of the "liberal media," tried to frame George Zimmerman.

I don't know if anyone's got the stomach for the rest of his pity party, but you can watch the entire event here. I'll leave everyone with a quote from one of my fellow contributors here at C&L, Mugsy, who relayed his feelings on this pity party of Shapiro's by email:

As noted, classic "projection". I've been saying for years that "if a conservative accuses you of something, it's only because they either did the same thing themselves or would if they were in your shoes."

Ding, ding, ding, ding... give that man a medal. That's exactly what we had here -- in such blatant form that it's almost laughable, or it would be, if not for the fact that there are still people who consider this guy some kind of "serious" conservative thinker.

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the new fresh face of the Republican party -- which, oddly enough, looks just like the old face of the Republican party.

If they need any help with their "rebranding" effort, I sincerely hope they give this guy a call. I'm sure it will work out just as well for them as the recent efforts by Eric Cantor and Bobby Jindal.

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From The Last Word's Rewrite segment this Thursday evening, Lawrence O'Donnell gives his take on Rush Limbaugh "working the refs" by attacking the presidential and vice presidential debate moderators, calling them "far left-wing liberal" Democrats when it's clear to everyone that they are not that.

While I agree with him on why Limbaugh is doing this, I disagree with his characterization of the moderators. They're not neutral. They're corporate, inside the beltway Villagers. And I haven't watched a lot of Lehrer or Raddatz on the air, but I do catch Crowley and Schieffer on a regular basis and they're both neither fair or balanced and are always more hostile to Democrats than they are to Republicans and both are pretty useless when it comes to addressing issues or matters that actually have any real impact on most voters' lives.

Limbaugh knows full well these hacks aren't liberals. You want some real liberals, let someone like an Amy Goodman, or Paul Krugman, or Sam Seder or Rhandi Rhodes moderate the debates and then we can literally watch Limbaugh's head explode in the studio. Although, sadly we'd never get the Democrats agree to have any of them asking questions either because they'd be asking both sides questions they don't like.

Here's more from O'Donnell's blog: Rush Limbaugh attacks debate moderators as 'far left-wing liberal Democrats':

Rush Limbaugh has a problem with the four journalists selected to moderate this year's presidential debates. As Lawrence O'Donnell highlighted on The Last Word, Rush thinks they are all "far left-wing liberal Democrats."

Jim Lehrer of PBS, whjo'll be hosting the first encounter, has previously hosted eleven debates. Limbaugh called him a "far left-wing liberal Democrat."

CNN's Candy Crowley, who will host the second "town-hall" style debate, is a "far, far left-wing liberal Democrat momma," Limbaugh said.

Rush dubbed CBS's Bob Schieffer a "far, far left-wing liberal Democrat...and dinosaur."

And he called ABC News reporter Martha Raddatz, who is hosting the vice presidential debate, the same—except instead of a "dinosaur," Rush dismissed Raddatz as an "infobabe for ABC."

“It’s the same old media hacks handling the debates,” said Limbaugh.

That last line I actually agree with. Just not for the same reasons as Limbaugh. Sadly these so-called "debates" are so scripted and structured that it's not always going to make a whole lot of difference who's moderating them. They're not real debates. They're media events.

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I'm not sure what "liberals" Washington Post columnist Charles Lane was talking about on this week's Fox News Sunday when he said this, but I've got a few words for his assumptions about how "liberals" are going to have to act if Supreme Court Justice John Roberts overturns part of the Voting Rights Act or affirmative action and that's "I don't think so pal."

LANE: What he has done in his brilliant opinion is to sacrifice a pawn, called the individual mandate and put the entire Great Society in check. And he has done that by getting two liberal justices to agree with him in a seven to two ruling that there are serious limitations on the federal government's ability to use its spending power to get the states to cooperate in welfare and education programs, which is really how everything works, or a lot of things work including education, Medicaid, etc.

And he has done that and gotten liberals to applaud him for it, so that now, next term when Voting Rights Act Section 5 and affirmative action in colleges come up before the court as they're going to and he votes with the other four conservatives to strike them down, all those liberals who might otherwise complain will now have to acknowledge that this fair-minded statesman, John Roberts, was involved in that decision.

This is a man of great brilliance and all those conservatives who are griping about this ruling need to give it a second thought.

Here's what most liberals still think of John Roberts, no matter how he ruled on this insurance friendly, Republican health care law he just upheld: 10 Ways John Roberts Is Still A Conservative’s Best Friend.

And calling someone ruling to keep "the Great Society in check" "brilliant" has to be one of the most crass things I've heard come out of anyone's mouth in a while now.

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Sadly, Jonah Goldberg has another book to promote, which means he'll surely be popping up for more interviews like the ones that Blue Texan already wrote about here and here. For anyone who would like a reminder of the dishonesty in the last book he wrote, check out Dave Neiwert's post from back when Glenn Beck was still on the air and promoting Goldberg's fraudulent Liberal Fascism: Historians stand up to 'Liberal Fascism' and its abuse of history, while Beck blithely promotes it.

This Friday, Goldberg appeared at Ralph Reed's Faith and Freedom Coalition conference and although he claimed that he was not there to plug his new book, that's clearly what he was doing during the end of his speech there. I'm assuming a lot of what he said is straight out of his new book, The Tyranny of Cliches: How Liberals Cheat in the War of Ideas, but someone else who has actually read it will have to let me know, since I'm not in the mood to beat myself upside the head with a hammer attempting to read it or to send him any money. Hearing him talk about it in the interviews or speeches I've seen is bad enough.

I'm no expert on so-called "liberal philosophers" like the ones Goldberg was quoting here, but to this non-expert, his arguments seem completely ridiculous. Feel free to correct me in the comments section because what he said here is so convoluted, I'm having trouble making sense of it, but his basic premise seems to be, here are some things some liberal philosophers said. I'm going to interpret what they said to mean they want man to take the place of God. Man shouldn't have anything to do with government getting involved with policies that protect the least among us, because that's God's place. The lowest person in a society is an unborn fetus, so you can't care about those who are actually born unless you put that unborn fetus first. And President Obama has repeated some things these liberal philosophers have said, therefore he must be a Socialist. And his Life of Julia campaign is very creepy.

For a more honest assessment of President Obama's Life of Julia, here's Steve Benen's take from last month: 'The Life of Julia':

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After last week's segment where Bill Maher sent Alexandra Pelosi out to interview residents of Mississippi, that as I noted, may very well not represent the voters of that state and may well have offended a lot of viewers after watching it, Maher followed up with Pelosi going out and talking to welfare and food stamp recipients in New York City. Here's how the segment was characterized by both Maher and Pelosi, which Dan Abrams' site, Mediaite, was apparently happy to go along with.

Alexandra Pelosi Debuts New Video, Bill Maher Says It May ‘Make Liberals Go Insane’:

Alexandra Pelosi appeared on Real Time tonight with two purposes: to defend the video she filmed of voters in Mississippi that aired on the show last week, and to air a brand-new video that Bill Maher admitted would probably anger liberals in the same way the aforementioned video angered conservatives. For her new video, Pelosi spoke to African-American welfare recipients in New York. There was far less laughter during this piece than the Mississippi one (which Pelosi pointed out after it played), but there were still some revealing moments contained therein. One of the men lined up outside the welfare office said he was more interested in collecting than going across the street to try and find a job. Pelosi asked surprisingly tough questions, like “When was the last time you actually worked?” and “Why should my tax dollars be going to you?”

Maher joked before the video aired that Pelosi might not want to reveal her real New York address in case anyone has a problem with the video. Pelosi revealed afterwards that some of the people she spoke to at HBO told her that the video was too controversial for TV. She noted a slight hypocrisy between the willingness to run a video of “toothless rednecks, but when it’s our neighbors,” it becomes a problem. However, she and Maher did make sure to give some context to the two videos so that they were not completely equating both situations. Pelosi contrasted the money spent by the government on food stamps as opposed to defense, which gets a significantly larger portion of the federal budget.

Because this video depicted just as extreme a side as Pelosi’s first piece, she predicted there would be a similar response from the left complaining about her new video.

Sorry Bill and Alexandra, but no, the video you just posted this Friday is not going to make anyone "go insane." I'm not shocked by what you posted any more than anyone living in the real world should be because yes, there are people out there who don't want to work and receive either welfare or food stamps. And those people live all over the country and not just in Mississippi and New York City and they're not just black or white any more than the issue is black and white. And if you want to solve the problems with poverty, and drop out rates and the real problems underlying either of these videos, you cannot reduce some complex social issues to sound bytes as one of my fellow contributors here at C&L reminded me tonight after watching this segment.

And note to Alexandra Pelosi, please spare me the condescending crap about bloggers in pajamas and who is doing real journalism out there. You're roaming into Willie Geist/Joe Scarborough territory there with those sort of cracks during this interview.

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Earlier this year at the Conservative Political Action Conference, otherwise known as CPAC, Herman Cain made the statement that "The objective of the liberals is to destroy this country. The objective of the liberals is to make America mediocre." When asked if he still believed that by David Gregory on this week's Meet the Press, Cain decided to double down on his remarks. Naturally one of the reasons he gave here is that heaven forbid, liberals would like to see defense spending cut.

Cain hasn't shown much interest in understanding foreign policy and has said he'll have to rely on advisers to guide him along if he is elected president, but he seems to be dead sure that we have to continue spending outrageous amounts of money on America's militarism.

GREGORY: Let me move on to some other issues and some of your views, which I think a lot of Americans haven't heard about. A lot of attention on these Wall Street protests right now.

CAIN: Yes.

GREGORY: You've written about, you've reacted to it. Do you empathize, as the president does, with the message of those Wall Street protesters?

CAIN: What is their message? That's what's unclear. If that message is, "Let's punish the rich," I don't empathize with that message. They should be protesting the White House. The White House has basically enacted failed economic policies. The White House and the Democrats have spent $1 trillion that did not work. Now the president wants to pass another $450 billion. They have their frustrations directed at the wrong group. That's what I'm saying.

GREGORY: You've talked as well about liberals in the country. You gave a speech in February where you didn't mince words. This is what you said.

(Videotape)

CAIN: The objective of the liberals is to destroy this country.

(End videotape)

GREGORY: To destroy this country. How so?

CAIN: Economically. Look at this economy. David, the engine of economic growth is the business sector. We are growing at an anemic 1, 1 1/2 percent. If we allow this economy to continue to go down, it would destroy our economic capability. And, as a result, we are now looking at how much in defense we can cut. That's destroying it. It...

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While wrapping up his interview on Rachel Maddow's show this Tuesday night, Bill Maher was asked what he thinks President Obama should do about the fact that he can't get unanimity from Democrats in his own party to support his jobs bill that the Republicans just filibustered.

Maher responded pointing out how important he believes the Occupy Wall Street movement is because the Democratic Party does indeed need something to push it and the group of Conserva-Dems that continually side with Republicans in the Senate back over to the left.

MAHER: I don't know if they can get them in line, but I would agree with you that that is one of the big problems in this country, is we understand that the Republicans are mostly bad policy makers who are trying retreaded ideas that didn't work the first time. What's especially disappointing is that group of Democratic Senators, you know, the Ben Nelsons, the same types, these centrist, corporatist Democrats who ally with them.

You know, it's bad enough that you need sixty votes, which is kind of a quiet coup, you know, of government, because really the Constitution says it should be fifty one, to get something done. When you add the fact that there's fifty three Republican, I mean fifty three Democratic Senators, forty of them are pretty good, but there's that thirteen that call themselves centrist that really wind up with the Republicans, and then of course, nothing is ever going to get done.

And this is again, to come back to what we started to talk about, and why I think that Occupy Wall Street movement is so important. Because the left needs some... something to move them away from the center and toward the left. You know, we've tried conservatism in this country. We've tried centrism. We need something to make us try liberal policies.

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Oh goodie. It looks like Ann Coulter has got another book to sell attacking liberals and of course Sean Hannity was happy to have her on the air to give us some Palin-esque history lessons. And to add insult to injury during this segment, Hannity pretends that MSNBC flack that could easily have a desk over at Fox with her usual water carrying for conservatives, Chris Jansing, is somehow a "liberal" because she said something true about Republicans.

It's too bad Hannity didn't bother to ask Coulter just how many Starbucks the "Founding Fathers" visited on a regular basis, but instead, he just let this gaffe go.

HANNITY: In her brand new book, Ann Coulter describes in great detail how the mob mentality of the Democratic Party has helped shape America. And she also warns how the phenomenon is likely to impact politics for the years ahead and the years to come. Now not everyone's getting the message because after James Carville warned that civil unrest could occur if the economy continues to tank, one left wing news anchor said that Republicans would be to blame should Carville's prediction come to fruition. Watch this.

JANSING: If that does happen though, is it because the politicians on both sides, and I would say the Republicans who have been hammering at the president, that they would bear some responsibility on that?

HANNITY: What? We continue now with reaction and much more. The author of the brand new book Demonic, Ann Coulter is back with us. So let me see, liberals screw up the economy, people get angry. They're out of work and they're frustrated. So if James Carville's prediction about violence erupting comes through, who's fault is it.

COULTER: I would just like to say that there will not be violence from conservatives. In two hundred years...

HANNITY: But they're to blame for it.

COULTER: ...there has not been violence for conservatives, from conservatives. I was writing this book, you know, when Jared Loughner shot up Tuscon Arizona, Tuscon Arizona shopping mall and I told all my friends immediately, I promise you, whatever he is, he's not a conservative. It's never happened. It never will happen.

This isn't how conservatives relate to politics. They are the heirs to the American revolution. They're thinkers, debaters, they're out reading the Constitution. They're demanding that Congressmen read the bill. They're trying to hold members of Congress to the Constitution.

It is liberals who are out smashing Starbucks windows, committing assassination attempts against presidents, since the founding of this nation.

Maybe Annie is just a little bit off her game since she's been out of the spotlight for a while. Apparently she didn't do so well during her interview on Piers Morgan's show as well -- Piers Morgan Asks Ann Coulter A Series of Personal Questions. It Gets Awkward.

And classy as ever, here's how Coulter responded to Hannity questioning her about that interview with Morgan where she elaborated on Morgan's question on how she would handle having a gay child -- Coulter: If My Child Said He Was Gay, "Obviously I'd Tell Him He Was Adopted," "Ask For Some Help Redecorating The Dining Room". She should have just stuck to saying she could not imagine herself being married.

Time for your weekly podcast with The Professional Left, otherwise known as our own Driftglass and Bluegal.

Link for this episode, our appearance on The Matthew Filipowicz show, at the 9:10 minute marker.

You can listen to the archives at http://professionalleft.blogspot.com/ and if you'd like to help them with their fuel costs so they can afford to make it to Netroots Nation this year, there's a donation button there if you'd like to throw a few bucks in the hat.

C & L is still doing our donation drive here if you can afford to help the site keep going and for the upgrades we've got coming soon. Have a great weekend everyone and enjoy the podcast.