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I guess PBS decided that "Fix the Debt" campaign's Steve Rattner wasn't getting quite enough air time, what with his near daily appearances on MSNBC's Morning Joe, because Charlie Rose and his producers gave him some unfettered air time Monday evening.

Rose asks why President Obama should care about the "Democratic wing of the Democratic party" thinks about his policies, and whether he's willing to go after our social safety nets. I'd love to know the last time Rose asked whether a Republican president should just ignore the base of his party and suggested that what they think doesn't matter all that much. To his credit, Rattner did admit that President Obama has good reason to pay attention to those that just reelected him, and that they should not be ignored.

He also briefly alluded to the conversation he had during the panel segment on This Week, where his fellow guest Steve Brill rightfully pointed out that lowering the Medicare age would actually save money, but rather than getting into the weeds on that discussion, Rattner only admitted that maybe raising the age might not be "such a good idea." Heaven forbid anyone might actually discuss the heart of Brill's arguments, because it runs counter to the Villager narrative that we must raise the Medicare eligibility age in order to control our health care costs.

Instead, the conversation turned to whether President Obama is entitled to change his mind on the issue or not and with Rattner again pushing for "significant changes to entitlements" as long as there "was a reasonable response from the Republicans on revenues." The idea that Republicans are ever going to come around on taxes seems pretty ridiculous, and as Karoli noted here on our health care costs, the problem is not with the cost to administer Medicare or with the consumers out there, it's with the providers Congress refuses to reign in.

Rose and Rattner were also extremely dismissive of Paul Krugman, who has written extensively about the fact that the debt and the deficit are not urgent issues now and not what we should be focusing on, with Rose calling him "a Nobel Prize winner, but also a minority opinion."

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Chuck Todd and the rest of the beltway Villagers over at MSNBC just can't stop themselves. Todd treated his viewers to yet another infomercial from the network for the Fix the Debt campaign, this time with former Republican Rep. Mark Kennedy having a seat at the table instead of their regular contributor, Ed Rendell, who is usually the one who we see shilling for that organization on the network.

After showing some footage of Republican Paul Ryan blaming the budget sequester on President Obama, but completely ignoring Ryan's hypocrisy on the matter, Todd opined and asked Kennedy why, if this current threat of sequester didn't force both sides to come together, how in the world are we ever going to believe they'll ever work anything out?

Kennedy responded by blaming the problem on the lack of trust between the two parties (never mind which party we can rightfully blame for the better part of that), and he blamed a good portion of the impasse on what he called “debt deniers."

It looks to me like this is taken straight out of the latest attack on Paul Krugman from Todd's fellow MSNBC contributor, Joe Scarborough. After Krugman came on the air with Scarborough and handed his ass to him, Scarborough continued to rant that he was right about the debt.

Here's more on that from Jonathan Chait: Scarborough and Friends Trying to Make ‘Debt Deniers’ Happen:

The deficit scold cause has suffered significant intellectual erosion over the last year or so. In the short run, the interest rate spike they keep insisting will happen keeps not happening. In the long run, the health-care-cost inflation that is at the root of the long-term fiscal predicament is growing markedly less dire. The case for prudent fiscal adjustment remains strong, but the case for bug-eyed, table-pounding terror is growing increasingly ridiculous.

But bug-eyed, table-pounding terror is the stock-in-trade of the fiscal scold movement. And so they are striking back by labeling anybody with a calmer view of the deficit as a “debt denier.” Joe Scarborough, who may have launched the new catchphrase on Twitter, has a new op-ed in Politico brandishing the epithet. Meanwhile, the anti-deficit lobby “Fix the Debt” — for whom Scarborough has served as one of many media spokespersons — has taken up Scarborough’s favorite label with a new campaign, debtdeiners.com, which, alongside its latest attempt to generate a viral dance video, amounts to a concerted counteroffensive against Paul Krugman and others who have ever so slightly mitigated the tone of apocalyptic hysteria surrounding the fiscal debate. They even have their own debt deniers hashtag. They are trying very hard to make “debt deniers” happen.

Go read the rest of Chait's post on why pushing for deficit reduction now is harmful to our economy and helping it to recover and how ridiculous the position of these deficit scolds has been.

Never mind that though if you watch this interview. In the world of Chuck Todd and his guest Mark Kennedy, the almighty Thomas Friedman must be listened to -- because everyone knows that's what all the Very Serious People out there do. He's never been wrong about anything and "debt denier" is now the new phrase they're going to use for anyone who actually wants us to grow our economy by enacting some progressive policies -- instead of using the deficit as an excuse to slash our social safety nets.

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Fox Business host Stuart Varney blasted President Barack Obama's proposal to provide high-quality early education for poor and middle-class children, saying that the plan is just Democrats handing out "goodies" and "free stuff" in an attempt to buy votes.

During a Friday segment titled "Who's Ruining the Economy?" Varney joined Fox & Friends host Steve Doocy to talk about Obama's effort to "establish a continuum of high-quality early learning for a child – beginning at birth and continuing to age 5."

"Look what the president is doing here, it's a repeat performance of his campaign, which is you raise taxes on the rich and you offer all kinds of free stuff to people who will vote for you in the future," Varney charged. "Free preschool education for 4-year-olds, it's free, here it is. Hand out the goodies.

"What the president's really doing here -- because he's not saying how he's going to pay for this -- he's buying votes with future taxpayer money, he's increasing the scope of the unions because it is the teachers' union which will staff these preschools and he's introducing big government, more big government to the states," the Fox Business host said.

Varney also lashed out at other elements of the president's plan.

"He's also going for an early Head Start program -- that's for 3-year-olds and under. He's also going for an increase in the home visiting program, where nurses and professionals go to the homes of the poor to sign them up for preschool and education, for food stamps, for cell phones!" Varney ranted. "It's entitlement!"

Doocy agreed. "It's an extension of, quite literally, the nanny state."

(h/t: Media Matters)

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Fox & Friends hosted Gene Sperling, director of the National Economic Council and an advisor to President Obama on economic policy, to preview the president’s State of the Union address tonight. Although Sperling told them that the focus would be on jobs and strengthening the middle class, the Curvy Couch Crew responded by obsessing over cuts to “entitlements” and carping about spending. Boosting employment? Helping the middle class? They neatly avoided the whole subject.

Sperling, when asked for a “20-second preview” said the president would hone in on “what we can do, working together, bi-partisan way, to strengthen the middle class.” He added that “a stronger middle class, better educated, working, in manufacturing, innovation, entrepreneurship, small business, these are the things that drive further economic growth.” He said that the administration has made “a lot of progress since the deep recession of 2009” but that “we have a lot further to go on job creation, on bringing down the deficit, and investing in our people.”

The only discussion about jobs was Brian Kilmeade’s comment that unemployment has just gone up in “year five” of Obama’s presidency. Apparently, he and his co-hosts thought that was all the consideration the subject deserved. He moved on to cite a Fox News poll that found 83% of respondents think government has a “spending problem.” From there, he took a swipe at Nancy Pelosi for saying otherwise and “asked” if the White House agrees.

In my opinion, Sperling should have sidestepped and highlighted what was obviously a pre-planned gotcha question that had nothing to do with the State of the Union address. But, instead, Sperling fell right into the trap of framing cuts as the Big Issue and, even worse, threw Democratic Leader Pelosi under the bus by saying the Obama administration believes “you absolutely have to bring down spending” but “in a balanced way.” He touted how much has already been cut and that there are more cuts on the table.

But, of course, that wasn’t good enough. Steve Doocy griped, “You’ve had five years, why hasn’t this administration addressed fixing entitlements with the Republicans?”

When it was Gretchen Carlson’s turn, she said, “One of the big buzzwords” in the SOTU would be “investment, which is another word for 'stimulus.'” She sneered, “Is the president really going to ask this country for more stimulus money?” She didn’t seem to care about how the previous stimulus increased employment for millions of Americans.

Sperling brought it back to jobs. “Today, we have now created twice as many jobs in this recovery as happened under President Bush in the previous recovery, even though this recovery (sic) was far deeper. …The economy has created 500,000 manufacturing jobs, we haven’t seen that in over 20 years. So you are totally right to suggest we have a lot further to go. That’s why the president has a singular focus on the economy, on middle class jobs, and making more progress.”

Oops, time up. But even as the segment was closing, Kilmeade was changing the subject. “It’s just hard to believe that we’re gonna print more money in order to pull ourselves out of it.”

The hosts could have questioned whether President Obama’s policies would accomplish any of his job-creating, middle-class-strengthening goals. But they were so busy talking about spending, they never got there. Which suggests the Republicans have no plan for the middle class and that that’s what the hosts really didn’t want to talk about.

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It was nice to see Chris Wallace get some push back on the assertion that we should be trying to balance our budget on the backs of our seniors or that it saves us a dime to be throwing more of them into the private insurance market by raising the age for Medicare eligibility.

Pelosi Stresses Need For Job Growth In New Budget:

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi defended Democrats' desire to raise revenues by closing tax loopholes, during an interview which aired on "Fox News Sunday."

Pelosi stressed the need for a budget which will create jobs and argued that the sequester would do too much harm to the economy. She also batted down the idea of saving money by raising the Medicare eligibility age.

"Don't you think you ought to see if raising the age really does save money?" Pelosi said. "Those people are not going to evaporate from the face of the earth for two years. They're going to have medical needs and they're going to have to be attended to. And the earlier the intervention for it, the less the cost will be and the better the quality of life. I do think we should subject every federal dollar that is spent to the harshest scrutiny. And I do think the challenge to Medicare is not Medicare, the challenge is rising health care costs in general."

Wallace was doing his usual bit where he was carping about how it wouldn't do any good to raise taxes on the rich, because that would not completely solve the deficit problem. He had no response to this and simply moved on to the next subject.

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He just can't stop himself. It's only been a few weeks since Tom Brokaw was on Meet the Press, pushing for cuts to Social Security and Medicare and here he is back again this Sunday, this time using an new NBC/WSJ poll on the public's expectations going into President Obama's second term to push for cutting them again.

Chuck Todd showed the audience some of the results from the poll and a word cloud showing the answer to the question "What would you tell Pres. Obama as he begins his second term?" and here's what that looked like:

And here's how Brokaw interpreted it:

BROKAW: Yes, and I was looking at those top three priorities for the American people and they all fit into his single most difficult task, it seems to me, both conceptually and specifically. In the next couple of years -- and he only has a couple of years, second terms are not four year terms -- you're running right up to the mid-term election, frankly -- I think that there's a desperate need for the country, going forward, to do something about tax reform and entitlements, sitting under the umbrella of fixing the economy and creating more jobs and stop the spending. That's going to be tough.

We've been giving people things for a long time. Now they're going to have to start reeling them in and fine tuning them and that's going to take an exceptional hand in the White House to pull that off. So that's a daunting task. You know, this is like the Saturday before Superbowl Sunday, everybody's talking about what's going to happen. Then the kickoff comes and unexpected events begin to roll out across the political landscape and that's what he has to adapt to David.

You know what's not "unexpected" Tom? That millionaire pundits like yourself are going to continue to push to gut our social safety nets because you don't want your taxes raised.

When I read that Americans believe we need to create jobs, fix the economy and stop the spending, the first things to come into my mind are stop outsourcing, quit with the race to the bottom on wages, quit busting unions and stop wasting money on our bloated military industrial complex. Somehow cutting Social Security benefits instead of raising the cap and cutting Medicare benefits by raising the eligibility age and forcing seniors into private insurance -- instead of addressing the real problems with our rising health care costs -- never made it onto my list. Imagine that.

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I'm not sure what George Will was smoking before he made an appearance on ABC's This Week on Sunday morning, but apparently he believes that Democrats agreeing to extend tax cuts for income under $400-450K somehow marks the beginning of the decline of liberalism and now no other taxes can ever be raised. And of course in Will's world, we must go after "entitlements" because the only way to keep them was going to be to raise taxes on the middle class.

Never mind that, as Robert Reich reminded him, we did just raise taxes on the middle class with the expiration of the payroll tax holiday. I'm just wondering how many things Republicans have voted for to which he's asserted that same sense of finality? Or anyone else, for that matter? Will, like other Republicans, seems to have a little bit of trouble with that whole concept of compromising -- which, as much as people may dislike the results, is what used to be considered the normal way politics operated in Washington. Now it's become a series of hostage taking events, with Republicans continually threatening to kill the hostage if they don't get what they want.

I'm pretty sure Will has been predicting liberals' demise for quite some time now, but if his party thinks the way they're operating these days is an acceptable form of governing, and if they continue to push to destroy our social safety nets, the voters will start to wake up to the fact that we've got a problem with one of the political ideologies in this country -- and it's not liberalism.

Liberal groups in this country are the ones pushing back against austerity, against the unfairness of the unequal income distribution, pushing for a tax code that's fairer and pushing to keep our social safety nets in place. Will and his ilk are ready to throw grandma and the poor and the middle class under the bus and back over them a few times.

Transcript below the fold.

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Surprise, surprise! It's all sour grapes over at Fox now that it seems Republicans are finally going to allow a clean vote on this so-called “fiscal cliff” bill that had passed the Senate. Leave it to their resident curmudgeon Charles Krauthammer to use the opportunity to paint President Obama as some evil Socialist who just wants to extract money from those hard-working rich people so that the lazy, good-for-nothing moochers out there can have their “entitlements.”

Never mind that he's completely wrong about President Obama being willing to negotiate with Republicans (far too often with the hostage taking we've witnessed), or that Republicans were the ones who originally voted to have these tax cuts expire. And never mind that we've got record income disparity and if we want to pay for a democratic society with a middle class, we should have a progressive tax code where the rich pay their share.

And of course no segment on Fox would be complete without some revisionist history in the form of St. Reagan worship.

BAIER: I mean, if you look at his deficit and debt commission, the Simpson-Bowles commission and the recommendations that came out of there (sorry Bret, but there were no recommendations from that commission, it failed) and what has not been followed through on, now two years ago, it's pretty remarkable.

KRAUTHAMMER: But he's not interested in that. And he's not interested in leading on spending. He's not interested in cutting spending. I think if you look at this in a large view, it's now becoming very clear who he is and what he wants to do. He's now in his second term. He's liberated.

He can be open about what he wants to do. He once said on '08 that Reagan was a historical President in a way that Clinton or Nixon was not. He meant Reagan changed the nature of the country. He got it hooked on low taxes, less government and an increase in inequality, is the way Obama sees it.

He sees his historical role, Obama, is to undo Reaganism and that means, not to cut spending. It means to raise taxes and he let the cat out of the bag on Monday. In that little rally he had, he said to Republicans, you're not getting any spending today and you know that, any spending cuts, but he said that if you think that you can get spending cuts after this in the rest of our negotiations, the answer is no. If you want a cut in spending, you're going to have to increase taxes on the rich.

Remember, he got an increase in revenues now by raising the rates on the rich. Well, now he's going to return, as he said on Monday and get increased revenue from the rich by eliminating deductions, the other way to do it. So he has no interest in anything other than raising the level of taxation, to sort of pre-Reagan levels, so he can support the entitlement state, which is what his presidency is all about. It's a very long view and I think he's attacking it in exactly the right way, if you were of his ideology.

Yeah, that's the ticket. The Kenyan usurper Socialist Communist just wants to beat up on the poor, oppressed rich people and steal all of their money for those lazy, undeserving seniors who would like their Social Security benefits so they don't starve. Krauthammer's still stuck in the '60's if he thinks this sort of talk is going to move most people when you still have so many people hurting from the recession and unemployed. That said, he knows he's speaking to the Fox viewers here, who are probably stuck right there with him.

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I don't know about anyone else, but I'm really tired of the negotiations on this so-called "fiscal cliff" and whether those tax cuts are going to expire for the wealthiest among us must always be framed the way David Gregory did here, which is that no proposal is Serious unless it causes some pain for the working class. Of course that pain is something which David Gregory and his ilk will never feel themselves.

He also did his best carrying water for Republicans during this interview with Sec. Tim Geithner and pretended that the administration hasn't put forth any specific details about their proposals, which as was already noted here, is just not true.

If Gregory wants to know what's "fair," how about a reminder that those tax cuts were temporary because that's the only way Republicans could get them passed using budget reconciliation. They weren't concerned about blowing a hole in the budget back then and now that they've starved the beast, they want to go after our social safety nets, and David Gregory is always more than willing to help them along.

Rough transcript below the fold.

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Here's Mitt Romney as he presents himself behind closed doors, and if you were one of the ones who thought Barack Obama's "clinging to God and guns" remark was terrible, you ought to really listen to how Mitt views those of us he seeks to govern.

These videos have been authenticated by the Huffington Post and Mother Jones. They were uploaded to YouTube by an anonymous witness who recorded a closed-door fundraiser.

In the snippet at the top, Romney says Obama supporters are lazy freeloaders who contribute nothing and expect the government to take care of them. I can almost imagine the sneer, can't you?

During a private fundraiser earlier this year, Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney told a small group of wealthy contributors what he truly thinks of all the voters who support President Barack Obama. He dismissed these Americans as freeloaders who pay no taxes, who don't assume responsibility for their lives, and who think government should take care of them. Fielding a question from a donor about how he could triumph in November, Romney replied:

There are 47 percent of the people who will vote for the president no matter what. All right, there are 47 percent who are with him, who are dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims, who believe the government has a responsibility to care for them, who believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you-name-it. That that's an entitlement. And the government should give it to them. And they will vote for this president no matter what…These are people who pay no income tax.

Please do take note of what Willard thinks of "entitlements." Because this is what wealthy people think about people who actually do pay more of their income as a percentage into taxes -- sales taxes, payroll taxes, and other taxes they have to pay to live and get by.

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