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The latest Rasmussen Poll has disastrous news for Republicans -- and disquieting news for for the rest of us too:

In a three-way Generic Ballot test, the latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds Democrats attracting 36% of the vote. The Tea Party candidate picks up 23%, and Republicans finish third at 18%. Another 22% are undecided.

Among voters not affiliated with either major party, the Tea Party comes out on top. Thirty-three percent (33%) prefer the Tea Party candidate, and 30% are undecided. Twenty-five percent (25%) would vote for a Democrat, and just 12% prefer the GOP.

The look on Eric Bolling's face, filling in for Neil Cavuto yesterday on Fox News, contemplating this news said it all: He thought the Tea Party and Republicans were one and the same thing! In fact, he spills as much:

Bolling: Isn't the tea party just another wing of the Republican Party? ... Aren't we just splitting the party?

Well, not exactly. Like Republicans, the Tea Party folks are fervently anti-Obama. But as Republicans like Lindsey Graham are discovering, the Tea Partiers are so arch-conservative they hate BOTH parties, and consider Republicans to be sellouts of their true-blue conservative ideals.

Now, this may appear to be good news for Democrats, since it means the Right is splitting its vote. And over the short term, as we saw in the NY-23 race, it may well be. But there is an ominous quality to this that should be disturbing to everyone.

The GOP thought it could unleash this tide of right-wing populism and prosper -- but are discovering that it's not such an easy thing to control.

And what they're unleashing is a flood of right-wing extremism in the process. Because as the "Tea Party" gathering we saw this past weekend in Spokane made crystal-clear, the "Tea Parties" are one of the most massive conduits for mainstreaming extremist beliefs in our history:

More than 1,000 people, including local sheriffs, state representatives, lawyers, families and blue-collar workers, gathered in Post Falls last month to hear a former Arizona sheriff blast the federal government. About 500 met last week in another event organized by the Campaign for Liberty – a coalition of about 10 Inland Northwest groups hoping to create a forum to share ideas and create a louder voice in politics.

Some aren’t afraid to use the word militia.

“We need to rob that word back from the people who villainize it,” said Schaeffer Cox, a 25-year-old from Fairbanks, Alaska, eliciting a roar of approval from the crowd in Post Falls Wednesday night.

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Master economist Bill O'Reilly last night proposed that, to shrink the federal deficit, President Obama adopt the Bill O'Reilly Bold Fresh Economic Recovery Plan: halt "runaway" federal spending, keep the Bush tax cuts, and best of all, institute a federal sales tax.

O'Reilly wants just a 2 percent tax to last only two years. He thinks that'll close the deficit and get the dollar back on solid footing.

He brought on Neil Cavuto afterward. And say what you will about Cavuto, he's not an economic dunce. Like some people. And he tried to explain to O'Reilly that sales taxes don't work that way; they actually would suppress economic demand at exactly the time it needs to be rising.

This went whistling right over O'Reilly's head (duh). What Cavuto left unmentioned, of course, is that a sales tax is one of the most regressive taxes known to man; the tax burden resulting from consumption taxes disparately falls on the lower and middle classes. Guys with big mansions like Bill O'Reilly, however, are perfectly fine coming up with more taxes for working stiffs to pay.

A "federal sales tax" is what's otherwise known as a "consumption tax." It's worth remembering that, back in 2003, George W. Bush floated a similar idea (the suggestion then was to replace the entire income-tax system with a consumption tax), it was shot down pretty quickly.

As Angry Bear explained back then:

There are a number of reasons, including social justice, why a regressive tax is not a good idea, but that's a topic for a later post. Instead, the question is why a consumption tax is worse than an income tax. First, it will surely cost more than it is expected to. Why? Because naively setting the target consumption tax in a revenue-neutral fashion will actually lead to a decline in revenue. A consumption tax increases the cost of the final good to the consumer, meaning that for any price that stores charge, consumers buy less after the tax is imposed than before. Most states have sales taxes around 8%. To replace all income taxes with consumption taxes would require a federal consumption tax of at least 15% on top of the states' 8%. So things will change from the scenario in which, when a store sells a DVD player for $100, the consumer pays $108 to a situation in which the consumer pays $123. Consumers care about price after tax, not before (question: can you buy a $100 DVD player with only a $100 bill?)! So what happens when the effective price to consumers goes up? They buy less DVD players! But the government can not collect sales (consumption) taxes on unsold DVD players. As an economic aside, some, but not all, of the impact of the tax would be borne by sellers. In the current example, the retail price might fall to $95 ($5 less for stores) and the after tax price to consumers would be $95*1.23=$116.85 (an $8.85 increase). Stores get less and consumers pay more, as a result the total volume of goods traded will fall. More generally, any move to a consumption tax that proposes a neutral tax rate, one such that

"(the value of all goods sold * proposed rate) = Income Tax Revenue"

will not generate the same revenue as under the income tax because it fails to account for the fact that the volume of commerce will fall (economists call this "dead weight loss").

Put simply: Consumption taxes drive down economic activity because people will spend less, necessarily. O'Reilly's 2 percent tax won't even cover the decrease in economic demand that would result.

Incidentally, O'Reilly still owes Paul Krugman an apology.

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We can all thank Ben Nelson for trying to get this killed in the health care bill. Ring of Fire’s Mike Papantonio makes a great case for why we need to get rid of the anti-trust exemptions for the insurance industry and how the lack of regulation over the industry is harming small businesses in the United States. Of course good little wingnut S. E. Cupp plays concern troll for the insurance industry with her B.S. about having more competition across state lines, which would only mean a race to the bottom to the states with the least regulations.

Fox Host: Instead of worrying about the cash registers today, are retailers more worried about Washington? The industry reportedly fighting the Senate health care bill saying it is going to hurt retail jobs. But will it? Conservative columnist S. E. Cupp says you bet it will. Radio talk show host Mike Papantonio disagrees. We’ll start with you Mike. Why do you disagree?

Papantonio: Well every economist in the universe will tell you that the way to increase employment is increase competition. The insurance industry has been treated like a special prima donna since 1945 with this McCarran–Ferguson Pre-emption Act and here’s the problem; when you don’t have free competition, you’re going to…it affects jobs. There’s no secret here. The anti-trust laws would prevent the industry from charging small business anything they want to charge for employee policies.

So what ends up happening Brian is small business has to pay these exorbitant premiums—by the way, the insurance industry has increased those premiums 400% in the last ten years. McCarran–Ferguson would never allow that to happen because there would be transparency. So where’s the first place they cut? They cut jobs, they cut R&D, they cut expansion, they cut new risks. That’s exactly what’s happened because we treat this industry like they’re a prima donna. They’re the only industry besides baseball that is not subject to anti-trust laws and it’s killing employers.

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Chuck Norris seems to have been hanging out listening to his good buddy Glenn Beck a bit much these days.

He went on Neil Cavuto's Fox News show yesterday and regurgitated a lot Beck's talking points about how Obama is radically transforming the country, but took them the next logical step into militia-style black-helicopter territory.

What had him all worked up was Obama's pending trip to Copenhagen to help negotiate a global-warming treaty:

Norris: I really think he's going over there to try to create a one world order. And I think --

Cavuto: Well, what's your big worry?

Norris: My big worry is the fact is that we, as a nation, if we start having to be, ah, obligated to other countries. Like -- in this conference, they're going to try to take our money and send it to third-world countries, because we spend so much oil, and so other countries have suffered, and they want to give our money to these, uh, third world countries.

Neil, we have people here who are starving in our own country. I -- you know, my foundation, I have families who are making nine thousand dollars a year -- the kids that I'm teaching. Why aren't we trying to help the poverty in our own country?

Nevermind, of course, that we have this thing called to Aid to Families With Dependent Children and a host of other poverty-fighting programs -- aka "welfare" -- that work reasonably well in attacking poverty in the USA. Except that funding for these programs keeps getting cut by right-wing anti-tax nutcases who think like Chuck Norris.

No, what really is bothering Chuck is that looming New World Order. This is also why he doesn't believe in global warming: "I don't believe it for a second. I think it's a big con game that they're doing."

And if Obama indeed hands over our "sovereignty"?

Who knows what's going to happen. God forbid this happens in our country. Our country as we know it now will no longer exist, Neil, that's the whole thing right there.

A little later, he brought up health-care reform as a signal event in the New World Order takeover:

Norris: I'll tell you what, the thing that worries me the most is this health-care bill. And why I'm scared about it -- it's not about the health care. It's about the provisions that are in that bill.

One, is that if this thing passes, the government will have the right to come into our home and regulate how we raise our children. I found that in the bill.

Cavuto, to his credit, wasn't buying: "I don't believe that."

Give it a day or two. I bet Glenn Beck does.

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September 28, 2009 News Corp

Heather: Bobby Jindal recites Frank Luntz's talking points on health care reform.

CAVUTO: Well, the push for the public option is gaining a lot of steam. Two top Democrats are pressing to make sure that the Senate bill includes a government-run plan. The Finance Committee is expected to vote on it tomorrow.

My next guest says that public option will kill lots of private sector jobs, and he`s got a plan that will not.

Bobby Jindal is the Republican governor of Louisiana.

Governor, always good to have you. Thanks for coming.

JINDAL: Neil, thank you for having me.

CAVUTO: All right. Now, a lot of folks are concerned that this public option ultimately becomes the only option and ultimately means the government is running everything.

You have an alternative. What is it?

JINDAL: Absolutely. Well, let`s start first of all -- Neil, across this country, I think the debate`s over. I think the American people have spoken loudly. they have said they don`t want a government- run plan that increases their taxes, that increases government spending.

Across the country, our people are worried that government is spending too much money. Only in Washington, D. C. , would they respond by creating a plan that could spend $900 billion more dollars.

Across the country, people are worried about jobs and the economy, and the greatest recession since the Great Depression. Only in Washington, would they respond by saying let`s raise taxes on employers and families.

Across the country, our people are worried about the rising cost of health care, the inaffordability of health care. Only in Washington would they respond by proposing taxes on health insurance, on medical devices, on -- on medical products.

Look, the reality is, the American people don`t want this big Pelosi plan that government take over our health care. But there is an opportunity to get bipartisan reforms done.

Nobody is defending the status quo. As Republicans, we can`t just be the party of no. There`s several things -- if they would scrap these massive government plans, there`s several things we could agree on in a bipartisan way.

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September 03, 2009 News Corp

(Nicole) KTLA:

A 65-year-old man's finger was bitten off at a health care rally Wednesday night in Thousand Oaks, California. KTLA reports that the man was part of an anti-reform crowd:

About 100 protesters sponsored by MoveOn.org were having a rally supporting health care reform. A group of anti-health care reform protesters formed across the street.

A witness from the scene says a man was walking through the anti-reform group to get to the pro-reform side when he got into an altercation with the 65-year-old, who opposes health care reform.

The injured anti-reform man walked to Los Robles hospital to have the finger reattached.

He had Medicare. A blogger who witnessed the fight from the pro-reform side says that the finger-biter was provoked

The finger-biter fled the scene and is still at large. I don't know if I buy the whole "he punched me, so it's okay that I bit the guy's finger off" alibi, but isn't it nice to know that the guy protesting government's role in health care has Medicare to take care of his hospital bills?

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On three separate Fox News programs yesterday -- on Neil Cavuto's show, on Sean Hannity, and on Greta Van Susteren -- the hosts specifically referred to the Democrats' decision to go through "reconciliation" sessions to settle on the final form of the health-care legislation as "the nuclear option."

Eh?

Now just a gol-darned minute. The "nuclear option" always referred to the possibility of permanently changing Senate rules regarding filibusters so that the minority could not use it so readily to frustrate majority-approved legislation -- and it was an invention of Republicans who were considering bringing it against Democrats.

No such steps are being considered here.

Instead, we're seeing the health-care legislation go through the "reconciliation" process, which assures that it will only need 51 votes to pass. This is a long-established Senate procedure, and was indeed used frequently by Republicans when they controlled the Senate from 2001-2006.

Media Matters has the complete rundown.

Republicans repeatedly used reconciliation to pass former President Bush's agenda. Republicans used the budget reconciliation process to pass Bush's 2001 and 2003 tax cuts as well as the 2005 "Tax Increase Prevention and Reconciliation Act." The Senate also used the procedure to pass a bill containing a provision that would permit oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. (The final version of that bill signed by Bush did not contain the provision on drilling.)

These people never quit when it comes to twisting reality for their agenda, do they?

Via Media Matters:

In an interview with Fox News' Neil Cavuto, Sen. Jon Kyl (R-AZ) made it clear, again, that current proposals for health insurance reform will not receive any Republican support. "For either the bill that passed the House Committee or the bill that passed the HELP committee in the Senate, I don't think a single Republican in the Senate would support either of those bills," he declared. Kyl went on to say that the three Republicans engaged in talks with Democrats, led by increasingly erratic Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA), are finding negotiations "very difficult" because of the "liberals in both the House and the Senate."

Kyl's comments come just two days after he told reporters that "almost all Republicans" will oppose reform, even if Democrats make significant concessions -- remarks that Steve Benen called "the death knell of bipartisan negotiations."

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Yesterday on three separate reports Fox News, its various anchors and reporters told viewers that Rep. Eric Massa, talking with progressives last week at Netroots Nation, had told them he's "vote against the interests of his district" in order to support the single-payer option on health-care reform.

They were, of course, distorting. Massa did at first say he'd vote against his constituents' interests when what he clearly meant was that he'd vote against their popular opinion if that meant protecting their best interests. And he quickly corrected himself to say that.

What the Fox crew was counting on was their ability to confuse viewers over the difference between voting for the popular wishes of one's district and its actual wishes. What Massa said -- quite clearly -- was that he would vote for the public option even if his constituents had the opposite opinion, precisely because it would be in their best interests.

This meme actually originated in the Washington Times, which characterized it the same as Fox: "Rep. Massa: I will vote against the interests of my district."

But look at what Massa actually said:

MASSA: I will vote for the single payer bill.

PARTICIPANT: Even if it meant you were being voted out of office?

MASSA: I will vote adamantly against the interests of my district if I actually think what I am doing is going to be helpful.

PARTICIPANT: You'd vote against their interests, or their opinion?

MASSA: I will vote against their opinion if I actually believe it will help them.

Digby posted about Massa's position the other day:

I was on a panel at Netroots Nation with Congressman Eric Massa. He was adamant about the public plan. There was no need to cajole him into supporting it, he had been there all along. He is also in a very tough swing district and his town halls have been horrific. It didn't move him, he stood and fought with his own constituents and came out even more committed because he realized just how important it was going to be to the very people who were so sadly misinformed.

That's called leadership and it deserves our support and thanks.

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Max Blumenthal at The Daily Beast has a damning expose of Louisiana Sen. David Vitter's incredible hypocrisy in dealing with the health-care teabagging crowd.

First, Vitter crows to the press that, unlike some of his fellow congresscritters, he's not afraid to have teabaggers at his town hall meetings:

“Please know that this and any other angry mob is welcome at my town-hall meetings whenever you want to come,” Vitter declared, bringing the audience to its feet with a raucous ovation.

But what he apparently is afraid of is dealing with any Democrats who favor health-care reform -- because he excluded them from his town halls:

At a town-hall meeting on August 10 in Jefferson Parish, many local constituents were reportedly turned away while Tea Party activists were allowed to enter. When the event concluded, Vitter rushed out of the back door and away from the press and his constituents, guarded by a phalanx of police officers.

But the most disturbing part of the piece featured Vitter actually promoting the effort by right-wing extremists -- which has been similarly encouraged by both Glenn Beck, Neil Cavuto, and Sean Hannity -- to advocate "state sovereignty" as a means of defying the federal government:

Vitter earned even more enthusiastic cheers with a not-so-subtle appeal to states’ rights. When an audience member asked him if Louisiana could withdraw from Obama’s health-care plan if it passed, Vitter proclaimed, “The first thing we need to do is elect members of Congress who respect the Tenth Amendment.”

Invocations of the Tenth Amendment, which reserves “powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution” to the “states respectively, or to the people,” have become common among secessionists seeking a veneer of constitutional legitimacy.

As I explained when Beck did this, these "10th Amendment" theories are not only highly dubious, they actually originated in the 1990s with the black-helicopter/militia crowd:

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...government health care will not reduce the cost; it will simply refuse to pay the cost. And who will suffer the most when they ration care? The sick, the elderly, and the disabled, of course. The America I know and love is not one in which my parents or my baby with Down Syndrome will have to stand in front of Obama’s “death panel” so his bureaucrats can decide, based on a subjective judgment of their “level of productivity in society,” whether they are worthy of health care. Such a system is downright evil.

This was too much even for him. He had on a Dr. Leigh Vinocur, who seems to be there to argue for Palin's point of view but ends up saying that what the Zombie Plumber Queen is saying is nuts.

Cavuto: Dr. Leigh Vinocur says she's not that far off. Ahhh, doctor, that's a little extreme, don't you think?

Vinocur: Yes, I do think it's a little extreme and it's because right now Obama is looking at end of life care, and I think the majority of out healthy care costs are in our last twelve years of life so it makes sense....

Cavuto: To call this a death panel and evil, that's that's a little much, don't you think?

Vinocur: Well I do, but I think her point is that she doesn't want administrators making the call...so I've dealt with those issues and doctors tell you, look, these are the options. You have to change peoples expectations in America. What do you say to somebody..

Cavuto: We have that going on in our health system now. We have rationed care in our health system now and I know the fears are that it would be on steroids a national type program and maybe those fears are legitimate, but to then start saying things like "death panel" and "evil" destructs the debate, does it not?

...

Cavuto: She's going further than that. She's mentioning her Down Syndrome baby and more or less implying that in such a system that we're envisioning that baby is tough out of luck.

We already have administrators making the call. They are called the freaking health insurance companies... Cavuto will never support the public option or most of what progressives want in the health care bill, but even he can't handle the Beckerwocky that the teabaggers are speaking.

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Check out the above video from Neil Cavuto's show. He had on some weird work-out dude named Michael Karolchyk who has a porn lite website called "Anti Gym" and is a regular FOX guest wearing a "No Chubbies" t-shirt. He wears it a lot, but for this segment it was embarrassing and Cavuto should have objected to it. She is the Surgeon General, after all. I guess I can wear just about anything on TV now. He compared her to a man living in a cardboard box running the Fed. It's disgusting.

As soon as Dr Regina Benjamin was named as our new Surgeon General the right wing haters crawled out from under their rocks. Every single move President Obama makes is immediately transformed into some socialistic/Nazi/Witch doctor conspiracy theory which is amping up the crazies and violence is sure to follow in even greater numbers now than it already has. C&L has vigorously objected to several of President Obama's moves on policy, but the freepers even attacked the jeans he wore when he threw out the first pitch at the All Star game.

Now they've expanded their hatred and have unleashed vile attacks on Dr. Benjamin.

The only problem seems to be that some people think the face is too fat.

From her photos, it appears that Dr. Benjamin will need a generous size 18 military uniform. The anti-fat brigade has been arguing in various online comments sections about her BMI and whether or not the term obese applies. These chattering masses wonder if a country plagued by obesity should have an above average-weight woman speaking to public health.

For me the answer is a resounding yes. This country is full of above-average weight women and children struggling for dignity as well as to lose weight. Achieving either of these is not easy. (Never mind that none of these criticisms have mentioned any actual health concerns Benjamin might or might not have, instead presuming "obesity" as a catch-all for bad health.) Having a confident, big-bodied and big-spirited woman as America's family doctor could do more to improve their health than skinny HHS secretary Kathleen Sebelius. It's good to know that even doctors struggle with their weight -- and lead full and active lives in spite of adversity.

Amanda Marcotte has an excellent post about this story.

Yet, as Marcotte points out, there is an increasing tendency to see all of this as yet another opportunity to marginalize and shame certain segments of society based upon appearance:

By saying this, I’m not making any health claims about weight. That discussion, while interesting, is beside the point of this post. It’s enough to know that most people strongly associate health and weight. So when disingenuous sexists start to bellyache about the dangers of letting fat women out in public, they get traction, because it’s becoming increasingly acceptable to suggest that not being perfectly healthy is a moral failing that should be punished with social disapproval, shaming, ostracism, and lowered access to society. Of course, we double down on fat people, and triple down on fat women, because of plain old prejudice, but this isn’t happening in a vacuum. Smokers, people who don’t eat right, and other people with poor health habits are also considered morally inadequate, if harder to judge because they’re harder to spot. The fetish for health management is, I suspect, a large reason that the anti-vaccination movement has taken hold. People who want an edge in the moral olympics of prevention are inventing counterintuitive (and anti-intellectual) shit to do in order to win as the bestest, most deserving of good health.

Joe Gandelman has an answer:

Dear America. Please go worry about something important, rather than whether or not the new Surgeon General looks hawt in a bikini. Trust me, there’s lots of things going on in Washington right now which are worthy of a full blown panic.

I lost 30 lbs using the Weight Watchers system, but I was always a skinny kid. It's not an easy thing to deal with and when FOX attacks overweight people, they are attacking as many teabagger/republicans as they are Democrats. But who they really are attacking are Americans. When was it a moral sin to not look like Ally McBeal?

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[Note: I confirmed earlier today that my interview with Anderson Cooper regarding "lone wolf" violence will air on AC360 tonight, so be sure to catch it on CNN.]

When that Homeland Security bulletin on right-wing extremism was issued two months, C&L was among the first to point out the report's complete factual accuracy. In retrospect, there are some methodological issues with the bulletin, which Leonard Zeskind ably limns; and the report's political framing unfortunately left it open to political attack.

Yet, as we've seen this week, it was clearly prescient in warning about the dangers posed by lone wolves and small-cell terrorists. Shepard Smith notwithstanding, everyone at Fox has been pushing hard to convince the public once again the DHS report was wrong. Next: Rupert Murdoch is the King of the Moon.

Among them: Neil Cavuto yesterday on his daily Fox News program. He invited a Gulf War vet named Matthew Burden on to talk about how wrong the report was. This produced some real howlers.

Burden: Well, first of all, this report was poorly written, and it was a completely unprovoked attack on our veterans.

Well, regardless of its literary qualities, the report in fact was not only perfectly accurate -- it was in fact issued largely in response to the shooting of three police officers in by a right-wing extremist Pittsburgh the week prior. Moreover, the warning raised regarding veterans was strictly about the effort by right-wing extremist groups, particularly neo-Nazi organizations, to recruit returning veterans -- a fact that had already been long established.

Finally, it must be pointed out that the DHS report in fact accurately predicted that the most significant domestic-terrorism threat Americans faced was going to come from "lone wolf" and small-cell terrorists motivated by right-wing extremism. Not that Neil or his guest ever bother to discuss this point.

Cavuto: I always wonder if -- the prior administration had said the exact same thing, you know, how differently that might have been treated.

Good question, Neil -- because, as Catherine Herridge and Shepard Smith reported on Fox they did say "the exact same thing" -- this report was in fact commissioned by the Bush administration.

So we wonder, indeed, how this would have been reported if any of the rest of Greater Wingnuttia had bothered to report that fact as well?

Most of all, Cavuto wants to emphasize the portion of the report that discussed veterans -- but ignores the fact that most right-wingers were outraged not just over that portion, but over what they saw as conflation of right-wing extremists with their own mainstream conservatism. Of course, what they mostly were intent on doing was futilely scrubbing to get that nasty right-wing extremist stain out.

Fortunately, all you had to do was switch the channel to MSNBC to get a reasonable and intelligent discussion of the DHS memo between Mark Potok of the SPLC and Keith Olbermann:

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David Neiwert posted about David Zurawik's frothy appearance with Howard Kurtz last weekend as he bashed MSNBC. On 'Reliable Sources,' David Zurawik decries heated cable talk by shrieking about MSNBC's 'fascism'

Zurawik felt compelled to explain himself in a little more detail online.

As you can see from the video, I am harder on MSNBC than Fox, because this NBC sister channel has outrageously decided it doesn't have to cover news on weekends and holidays -- and yet, still calls itself a news channel.I have to admit, it is a great business moldel: Don't cover the news. let someone fulfill that expensive task. We'll just put on ideologues like Keith Olbermann and Rachel Maddow and let them mock our opponents as we opine about the news that others like CNN went to trouble and expense of gathering and verifying.

He's upset because they choose to run some of those Locked Up episodes during the weekend, really? Here's a little info for Z: MSNBC does cover the news on the weekends, they just don't do it 24/7. He should probably check their schedule sometime before making the claim that they don't cover the news on Saturday and Sunday. And WTF does that have to do with how they cover the news in general or if they are biased in their reporting? Which is worse, showing some non-news shows on the weekend, or pushing a political agenda 24 hours a day, seven days a week for as many years as they've been on the air?

Fox News tries to shrug off their right-wing bias by saying they have opinion talking heads, so they don't consider those shows to be news. But if anyone -- and that means you, David -- were to watch Fox News, starting with Fox and Friends right up through Neil Cavuto, you would see a right-wing bias that would make your head spin -- all dressed up as news reporting. Heavy anti-union messages, insane free-market Wall Streeters and anti-Obama segments dominate their coverage, but somehow Z isn't outraged by that behavior as much.

Sure, MSNBC's opinion lineup, from Hardball to Maddow is largely center-left commentators, but they start their mornings with three hours of Joe Scarborough before going into seven straight hours of news blocks that for the most part interview politicians from both parties along with the usual battle of the consultants. Andrea Mitchell has her own hour and you can't call her a lefty.

So while I agree with some of Z's complaints, please get some basic facts straight. And his criticism of MSNBC gives us a look into the window of the mind of a Villager critic.

And yes, these cable shows have hurt America, because they are always looking for a "conflict" which will increase ratings rather than examine the news and issues at hand with an emphasis to inform us rather than persuade of. This approach aided Bush and Cheney in their quest to go and invade Iraq, and look where that has taken us: Thousands dead, innocents lost, billions of dollars spent, torture, military commissions and wiretapping soon followed. Good job, cable news.

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You have to wonder just what level of moral and ethical depravity you have to reach to be a Fox News talker these days.

Col. Ralph Peters -- who doesn't exactly have a track record for probity to begin with -- went on Neil Cavuto and offered a solution to dealing with terrorists at Guantanamo Bay -- just kill them all:

Peters: Neil, I've gotta tell you where I'm coming from. I come from Schuylkill County, Pennsylvania, the anthracite coal fields. We don't screw around with terrorists.

[Oh, yeah -- that Schuylkill County: Where redneck juries let minority-bashing thugs off scot-free. In other, they don't screw around with white terrorists -- they just let 'em go. OK, good to know.]

Peters: First of all, I am not concerned about the human and legal rights of terrorists. Because as far as I am concerned, when a human being chooses to commit an act of terror against innocent human beings, he puts himself outside of humanity. And this obsession with the legal -- supposed legal and human rights of terrorists -- a small number -- condemns billions of human beings, billions, to live in fear.

And again, Neil, once you commit an act of terror, in my book, you are outside, you are anathema, and you should be killed.

Now, I'm not talking about killing every living thing in the barnyard. But for example, when we attack an Al Qaeda compound, and the people defending the Al Qaeda compound can -- and they're shooting at us, that's probably a pretty good indicator that they are terrorists. So I see no reason to bring them to the United States, no reason to bring them to Guantanamo. There are a small number of senior terrorists who have intelligence value. Them we should take prisoner, but we should do the interrogations in foreign countries -- and why set ourselves up for legal problems?

Now Neil, I know it's not politically correct. I don't care. I care about the security and well-being of my fellow Americans. I care about the human rights of innocent people around the world. And as far as I'm concerned, terrorists should die.

And a good thing that's happening now -- as soon as you had this movement to close Guantanamo, et cetera et cetera, the word I'm getting from the field is our special operators and our soldiers and Marines on the front lines are taking fewer prisoners.

Cavuto: All right, so in other words, they're killing them.

Peters: Yep.

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