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Dear 24 Hour Cable News Channels:

I understand your dilemma, I really do. You have 44 minutes on the hour to fill with content. And it has to be compelling stuff, so that the viewer isn't tempted to channel surf to your rivals. In the situation like the Fort Hood shootings, where news is coming scattershot and conflicting, it's even more difficult.

See? I get it.

But having said that--and I say this with love and respect--PLEASE, SHUT. THE. F#@K. UP. Don't spend time guessing on motivations when there is so little information available. Don't surmise terrorist intent when you can't possibly know. And for the love of everything holy, don't go to criminal profiler Cliff "A Hammer Sees Everything As A Nail" Van Zandt (a crime of which Keith Olbermann is also guilty) to make up utter bovine excrement.

At the time that Van Zandt was waxing rhapsodic over possible terrorist inclinations, remember, the news was that there were two or three shooters, one of whom was dead (Hasan, the single shooter, was alive and being treated at the time). That Maj. Nadil Hasan was of Jordanian, Arab, or Palestinian birth (he was born in Virginia of Palestinian immigrant parents), that he was a recent Muslim convert (he had been a practicing Muslim his whole life), that he was suffering from PTSD, or secondary PTSD from his work with returning vets in Virginia, that he was sympathetic with suicide bombers, angry at bad evaluations, upset at being deployed to Iraq, frustrated by the Army's dismissal of the harassment he got at Ft. Hood about his faith and/or desperate to get out of his upcoming deployment.

Bottom line: we didn't know enough. It was irresponsible of you to try to make suppositions when the information (including the fact that he was alive) was so sketchy.

And to focus on the one known of his name and then presuming his faith (A lot of 2nd and 3rd generation immigrants don't necessarily practice the religions of their grandparents, yet still have Middle Eastern names, and I will reiterate, in those early hours, WE DIDN'T KNOW) to then suggest jihadist and/or terrorist sympathies was to give legitimacy to all those hate-mongers like Michelle Malkin and Fox & Friends anchors Doocy and not-Doocy to once again, call into question ALL Muslims.

Don't you get it? "Terrorism" is not defined as "any violence by any Muslim anywhere at any time for any reason." If it's true that Hasan had been the victim of harassment because of his religion and that contributed to his state of mind, then those who create and foster an environment that makes it acceptable to demonize and dehumanize Muslims were right there with him, pulling the trigger. To focus on Hasan's faith as you did in those early hours was the lazy approach and avoids the deeper reasons:

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Chris Matthews asks Eric Cantor about Bob McDonnell trying to move away from the right and presenting himself as some sort of moderate in the Virginia governor's race and when Cantor tries to say he wasn't running away from his "conservative values" Matthews asks Cantor why McDonnell didn't want Palin to campaign for him.

Matthews: Let me ask you about the big question here for you tonight. McDonnell…let’s put a real prize around him. I think McDonnell’s great claim to fame is he ran a positive campaign. The other guy was going after his term papers from 30 years ago and McDonnell talked about his daughter’s fighting for the U.S. as a servicewoman over seas on Iraq and a Norte Dame graduate, as a R.O.T.C. person—I thought he really sold the positive and that’s why he won.

Cantor: Well, I agree with you that his campaign was incredibly well run and the message was positive and I think it does say something about the voters of Virginia. They want to have a better prospect for the future and Bob campaigned and focused on jobs. It was clearly an economic message that won the day here in Virginia. And when you look at where people’s minds are here 85% of the people are concerned about the economy. They’re looking for another way. They’re rejecting the policies coming out of the Congress and the White House towards the economy. So it was, you’re right, a very positive agenda for the future that Bob McDonnell won the day on.

Matthews: Why did Bob McDonnell keep Sarah Palin out of the state? He let her use the robo-calls but no reference to him personally. Why would you…I have a theory that Virginia may not be a liberal state and certainly never will be probably, but it’s certainly not a whacko right wing state either. And I don’t think it would ever go for a Sarah Palin over a Barack Obama, but I may be wrong. In lousy economic conditions anything’s possible.

You wouldn’t call Virginia a Palin state, would you?

Cantor: Virginia has always bean a common sense, conservative state. There are millions of voters here who embrace Sarah Palin, obviously millions who are embracing Bob McDonnell. You know our state is one that is a center-right state. I think it is reflective of where the nation is and that’s why we are very excited about what this win tonight will mean for our prospects in November of ‘010.

Matthews: I’ve got it. You go home and check with your voters Congressman. A lot of your most trusted voters who like you personally are scared to bejesus out of Sarah Palin. She’s a theocrat. She’s a…she’s so far out in terms of basic American notions of pluralism that your voters would think she was frightening.

Cantor: Chris you’ve just said that Bob McDonnell won the day on a positive message.

Matthews: Right.

Cantor: Well here you go again. (crosstalk)

Matthews: No I’m just saying you wouldn’t let her in the state. (crosstalk) Did Bob McDonnell over rule you when you tried to bring Sarah Palin in the campaign for him?

Cantor: Absolutely not. She’s welcome in this state. I’m sure Bob McDonnell would say she is and again it’s that kind of negativity that’s been rejected here in Virginia and I…you said so yourself Chris.

After rightfully calling Palin out for being as extreme as she is, Matthews goes on to kiss Cantor's butt to make sure he gets another interview with him somewhere down the pike. Earlier in the broadcast Matthews did his best to give McDonnell cover for those "term papers" which he wrote when he was 34 years old, hardly a child and tried to pretend he was some kid that can't be held accountable for them now. Matthews threw Palin under the bus tonight but did his best to give McDonnell a bit of a white washing for his extremist views.

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Chris Matthews cites a recent Gallup poll in the beginning of the segment—Conservatives Maintain Edge as Top Ideological Group—which shows those who would describe their political views as conservative at 40%, moderate 36% and liberal 20%. He goes on to take this leap about just what that poll means later in the segment which Bob Herbert rightly calls him on.

Matthews: There’s a big disconnect here in the polling and I’m looking at the NBC poll, we’re going to have it more here tonight, I’ve looked at the Gallup numbers—here’s the disconnect—the Republican Party is a lousy brand name right now. It is way down below one in five, but on every issue from semi-automatic weapons to traditional values to abortion to every…regulation of business…

Buchanan: Immigrants…

Matthews: …every issue the country is lurching to the right in ideological terms at the same time as the base of the Republican brand. How do you explain that Rob?

Herbert: Are you saying the country’s lurching to the right?

Matthews: On every issue—look at the Gallup polls.

Herbert: I completely disagree with you on that.

Matthews: Ugghh…

Herbert: You’re giving too much credence to this poll. Pat just said a moment ago…

Matthews: Why don’t you look at the polls?

Herbert: …that the Republicans can unite behind all these issues for the off year elections—they can’t even—they haven’t even been able to unite in this upstate Congressional district in the Congressional election that’s coming up next week. You’ve got Republicans lining up behind the Conservative Party candidate who’s putting the knives in the back of the Republican candidate. So where’s the unity?

Never one to let logic get in the way of his preconceived notion Matthews asks if this means the conservatives are more “powerful than ever” if they’re the spoilers in Republican elections. Herbert reminds him that turning the Republican Party hard to the right is not good for them winning elections nationally. Earlier in the segment he also reminded Matthews that Republicans are not leading in a related poll about who Americans trust to run the country.

Of course Pat Buchanan, ever the staunch Sarah Palin fan-boy thinks the party needs more ideological purity and goes on to call the Republican candidate from NY-23 a liberal. As Herbert notes, Buchanan's got a pretty strange notion of who should be called a liberal these days. I would imagine the false memes continually put out by or MSM has a lot to do with people's perception of whether they are liberal or conservative or not, as was reflected in that poll. When people continually hear unions bashed and liberal treated as though it were some sort of dirty word, it's little wonder they might shy from the label.

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Good for Joe Conason for pointing out that Pat Buchanan of all people has no business complaining about the Obama administration daring to point out that Fox News is an arm of the Republican Party after all of the things the Nixon administration did that Buchanan himself was involved in. Chris Matthews sure wasn't going to do it.

Media Matters has a nice run down of why this latest meme by the right calling the Obama administration "Nixonian" is utterly ridiculous.

Conason wrote about many of the points he attempted to make to Buchanan during this segment in his column at Salon this week--

Criticizing Fox News isn't "Nixonian." But Fox News is:

With outraged Washington journalists and Republican politicians crying "Nixonian!" over the public scuffle between the Obama White House and the Fox News Channel, what began as a mundane spat is turning into a cosmic jest. Somewhere, Nixon himself is enjoying a mordant laugh to hear this shrill defense of his old servant Roger Ailes, the television wizard whose deceptive campaigning ushered him into the presidency more than 40 years ago -- and who then became the living symbol of everything negative and nasty in American politics during the two decades that followed.

To understand what is going on today, it is essential to remember that where Ailes came from, "Nixonian" was not an insult but a badge of honor -- and seething hatred and even persecution of the press, rather than mere criticism, was a way of life.

Whatever the merits or defects of the strategy pursued by Obama's communications office in pushing back against Fox News, the furious backlash inside the Beltway is badly overwrought. Mainstream defenders of the conservative cable channel suddenly seem to be afflicted with a strange amnesia, causing them to forget not just the numerous episodes of partisan distortion that have permanently pocked its reputation, but the dirty war against the press and the First Amendment that was waged by the Nixon gang in the late '60s and early '70s. That lost memory does a disservice to journalism and history.

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Transcript via Lexis Nexis below the fold.

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Frank Gaffney finishes up this shout-fest on Hardball by telling Ron Reagan Jr. that his father would have been ashamed of him. Can't win an argument, resort to personal attacks and name calling. Classy there Gaffney. About as classy as Matthews who can't come up for air for five seconds and quit talking long enough allow the man a chance to respond without being talked over.

And why is neo-con Frank Gaffney who just held an "awards dinner" for the likes of Dick Cheney and Scooter Libby treated like someone credible we should pay any attention to? Or Cheney for that matter? Dick Cheney speaks and these idiots all rush to cover him, like anyone cares what Dick Cheney thinks about anything. Can't he just go back to shooting his friends in the face on hunting trips and leave the rest of us alone?

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From Hardball Oct. 19, 2009. Thanks to our friends Ned Lamont and Joe Sestak for stopping by C&L for the chat, and hopefully it was more enjoyable than this interview on Hardball just before you came to visit here.

Updated. Transcript from MSNBC.

MATTHEWS: Welcome back to HARDBALL. Three years ago, businessman Ned Lamont rode an anti-war tidal wave to defeat Joe Lieberman in a Democratic primary. Well, Lieberman turned independent and beat Lamont to keep his seat, but Lamont is still a big deal for many Democrats. Today he endorsed U.S. Congressman Joe Sestak in the Democratic primary here in Pennsylvania against Senator Specter. They both join me here in Philly right now, Sestak and Ned Lamont.

Ned, why did you do it? Why are you here in Philly making the case for the challenger here, the David against the Goliath, you might say right now?

NED LAMONT (D), FORMER CT SENATE CANDIDATE: Well, Chris, it's great to be back with you and I'm delighted to be here with Joe Sestak. Look, Joe's got guts. He's not only just taken on Arlen Specter, he's taken on the entire political establishment.

And Joe, I know where you're coming from right now. The calls are coming in. They're telling you not to do it. Don't do a primary. You're upsetting the apple cart. And I just think it's good for democracy. Joe knows where he stands on the issues. It's not a question of political calculation. I hope people vote for Joe Sestak.

MATTHEWS: Well, Joe Sestak, Congressman, thank you for joining us. Here's the latest polling. It's done by Pollster.com. It's an average of all the polls in this primary fight. Specter's beating you by about 20 right now. How do you catch him?

REP. JOE SESTAK (R-PA), SENATE CANDIDATE: Boy, that's great. You know, that's cut us down about half in the last four months. I've only been in the race two months. Here's how to do it, by being out there and just talking to the people. They have lost such trust, such credibility that they once had in Washington, D.C. We've been down there too long with too many people, much like you ran against somebody who had forgotten that it was about the middle class, the working family. It's being everywhere, Chris. It's being on your show. And it's making sure that I have enough to get out there and just shake hands and be on the media. I want them to know there's a credible alternative who will be in it for them, not their own job.

MATTHEWS: I was picking up the paper this morning, "The Politico," in D.C. before I came up here on the train, and the one thing I noticed, Congressman, is that you're having a money problem. And Arlen Specter never has money problems. Is politics in this country driven by who's got the money?

SESTAK: Well, look, I'm obviously a co-sponsor of a bill for public financing of campaigns, but I don't have a money problem. As you can see, Arlen has already spent $2 million this year. I've only spent $500,000. And his approval rating has dropped all the way down to only 30 percent of the people believe he should be re-elected. So it's not about money.

Chris, this is about the future of Pennsylvania and this nation. I don't say that lightly. I honestly think they want to see people who believe principle should triumph over political calculation to where-

Arlen Specter gave 2,000 votes to President Bush, voted for tax cuts where 50 percent went to the top 1 percent, the millionaires of America. They just want a change. No, they want more than that. They want a warrior that's going to fight with President Obama to make sure they bring about that change.

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From Hardball Oct. 16, 2009. Pat Buchanan cites the Willie Horton ad as one of the reasons the "Tea Party people" liked George H.W. Bush and says it hit one of their "themes". When Matthews points out the overt racism in the ad, Buchanan back tracks and tries to say the ad had nothing to do with race, but only with turning murderers loose on weekend passes.

Pat Buchanan must think most MSNBC viewers have no idea who Lee Atwater is.

MATTHEWS: Pat, I have heard that some of the people that you`re in touch with on the right, the people -- the Tea Party people, they began to get disillusioned with the Republican party, as you did, I believe, personally, when Bush came in, Bush I came in. They don`t think he was one of them culturally, ideologically, whatever.

BUCHANAN: It wasn`t when he came in, Chris, because he had a lot of support from conservatives. He beat Dukakis by running -- remember those ads, the flag thing, Willie Horton and all that? He hit all these themes that hit these people when he won. When we broke with him and Perot broke with him, he was a big spender. He was adding regulations. He had a quota bill in. He had all these different bills, legislation. He was working with the Congress.

He became a man of the city of Washington, D.C. And these folks are anything but. At one point when I was running in may of 1992, Chris, Perot was leading in the polls, a three-way race with Clinton and Bush. He had 40 percent. That`s who these folks are.

MATTHEWS: If Perot hadn`t proven he was a bit off the beam, he might have went down better. But didn`t you just make a mistake there, Pat? You said, as long as he was against Willie Horton, he was OK with the Tea Bag guys. A lot of people thought that Willie Horton thing smacked of tribalism?

BUCHANAN: Willie Horton was, in fact, a big Massachusetts liberal, turning murderers loose on weekend passes. He`s nuts. If it would have been Charlie Manson, they would have said the same thing.

MATTHEWS: Pat, clinically, you`re right. But that Shroud of Turin picture -- that Shroud of Turin picture of Willie Horton had an aspect to it that went to criminal justice. Let me go to -- and responsible justice.

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This one had me chuckling. After all of the air time Liz Cheney has been given on Morning Joe and some of the other MSNBC daytime programs, her new group, the ironically named "Keep America Safe" is running an ad saying that Chris Matthews, Ed Schultz and Keith Olbermann are afraid to debate her.

From The Plum Line-New Ad From Liz Cheney’s Group Bashes Olbermann, Matthews As “Afraid” To Debate Her:

The implication being, of course, that the MSNBC gang is running scared from Ms. Cheney. If memory serves, though, Ms. Cheney has repeatedly been granted a platform on … MSNBC, again and again and again, to defend her pop’s legacy and champion policies that don’t even exist anymore.

Looking forward to the lily-livered liberal network crew’s response to this one. Maybe they’ll invite her on again a bunch more times to discuss her contempt for them.

And from Benen:

Earlier this year, Liz Cheney spent so much time on the cable news networks, I think she had her mail forwarded to the green rooms on N. Capitol. At one point, the "liberal media" had the former State Department official on 22 times in 24 days. Not only were many of these appearances on MSNBC, but when people like me started complaining about the news networks turning Cheney into a right-wing celebrity, Liz Cheney's biggest defender was ... MSNBC.

And now Cheney wants to turn the network into a punching bag?

Also, I couldn't help but notice that Liz Cheney's ad targets Olbermann, Matthews, and Schultz, but seems to have left out one high-profile MSNBC host: Rachel Maddow. Indeed, Rachel has invited Liz Cheney onto her show many, many times, and yet, Cheney has declined every opportunity.

To borrow a phrase, why doesn't Liz Cheney want to talk substance? Why doesn't she want to debate the issues?

I would be surprised if Cheney hasn't been invited to appear on all of those shows, although I'm not sure why any of them would want to give the likes of her some air time so she can spend the segment interrupting and talking over them. She doesn't debate anyone. She filibusters and talks over anyone she's on the air with so she can get her talking points out without actually answering any questions. If they put her in a debate box off the set with a mute button they might get a word in edgewise.

I wonder if her cohort Bloody Bill Kristol wants some face time during prime time on MSNBC as well? I'd absolutely love to see him come on Rachel or Keith's shows.

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Chris Matthews and Jim Cramer praise President Obama, Ben Bernanke and Tim Geithner for saving us from another Great Depression while failing to note a number of things. One, what caused the financial collapse in the first place that resulted in the need to rescue it. Two, that we still don't know where all of our tax dollars went. And three, that the system is still not safe and as Simon Johnson just pointed out on Bill Moyers Journal, things could worse because the system has not been reformed.

Matthews: Well, I guess the big question I would have Jim is if you had to look say five, ten years from now, looking back to now with the clarity of history, does Barack Obama deserve credit for a) avoiding a second Great Depression as he came into office with a strong stimulus of almost two trillion dollars in fiscal stimulus, huge printing of money, the bailouts etc. and secondly has he really put us on the course to recovery from this recession?

Cramer: Alright, I think it’s a team effort. Chris, first of all Ben Bernanke was late, but really went into high gear and the transition from Bush to Obama was really saved by Bernanke’s actions. Second, Bernanke did a good thing, but also Tim Geithner did a good thing and you could argue well Tim Geithner’s totally Obama’s man. Geithner made everybody feel that the banking system was safe. Once we had the banking system safe we began to have the recovery. So Obama should get a lot of credit for that.

Matthews: Well you know when the politicians wag and the right wing goes after them as they do—that’s the way politics works—they say bailouts, bailouts, bailouts as if there’s something wrong with the guy. They say deficits, deficits, deficits as if there’s something wrong with the guy. But everything I studied on college and grad school was that you’ve got to do those things, both in terms of the sectors of the economy which were in trouble, the financial sectors, the auto industry and you had to do something with regard to the over all economy in terms of printing the money, monetary policy, fiscal policy. The very things he did are things you’re taught you have to do. Am I wrong?

Cramer: No! You’re totally right. I hear those people criticize and I think, did they ever read any history about what this country did wrong between 1929 and 1932? This was exactly—what these pundits are calling for is exactly what created a multi-year depression. No! I mean, Bernanke, Obama, Geithner…they got it right!

Matthews: Well, all you hear from on the right is like Terry Jeffrey’s my pal who sits there like from Human Events on the far right, they come on here as if all you had to do was laissez faire. Step back; let the invisible hand solve the problem. Say’s law is still in effect, everything’s going to clear—they actually say this crap… so loudly they must believe it or else they’re just desperate. But they do believe that doing nothing was the right answer. Just balance the budget.

Cramer: They’re dreamers. Look!

Matthews: Let business solve the problem.

Cramer: Here’s the hand. It wasn’t invisible. It was choking America. We are very lucky that these guys understood history. Now the reason why it’s easy to criticize Obama and why he doesn’t take any credit is we haven’t created any jobs yet Chris.

Matthews: Yeah.

Cramer: And that is bad.

Sadly being humiliated by Jon Stewart was not enough to keep Jim Cramer from ever appearing on my television set again. He was right back on the air pretending it didn't happen. I don't know why anyone would take this guy's advice about anything. Later in the segment he also said this when asked about where we were headed with unemployment.

I think we are at the peak or within .1 [of the peak]. We are not going to breach 10%. I have my neck on the line on that.

Oy.

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Chris Matthews is getting all hot and bothered because liberals in Congress and from the netroots are pushing hard to get a public option included in health care reform. That's called legislating, Chris. It's a long, hard process sometimes.

The Village really gets upset when dirty f*&king hippies get uppity and speak out on issues that matter. Villagers don't care that America voted in Obama with a mandate on health-care reform. Villagers don't care that America rejected conservatism, which practically caused the world to almost spin off its axis. It's getting to the point that Tweety is pulling stuff out of his pie hole because he hates us so much. And apparently Tweety forgot that "the left" was elected in droves in 2008. "The Left" is not a fringe teabagger, tax evading group, it dominates the House of Representatives. Here he is on Andrea Mitchell talking about Obama and Afghanistan and see where Tweety goes with it all.

Matthews: Everybody is doing their politics here. She represents San Francisco and she represents, I know the Speaker's role. you have to respond to the nosiest elements in your caucus, and the most passionate and apparently, I assume just knowing the Democratic House, the voices she's hearing from every single day are the left who want out. Now this president never promised to get out of Afghanistan. And he's not gonna...

He never promised to pull out, that was the good war, the necessary war. Oh, by the way he never ran on the public option. Somebody's got to tell these people on the left and the netroots and some of our colleagues, yeah, he might like the idea of a public option, he may prefer it. He didn't run on it. He didn't get elected for it. So this idea that he somehow betrayed a left wing mandate is nonsense.

Where to begin. Why is it OK to attack Nancy Pelosi for representing San Francisco? What did they ever do to Bill O'Reilly and Tweety? Aren't they part of the US of A too? That she is from the Bay Area somehow minimizes the fact that she's the Speaker. On Afghanistan, he's right. President Obama did not promises to withdraw from there. That's why we on the left have to put pressure on the administration or we could be there for decades.

But President Obama did campaign on the public option., It was part of his health-care plan that he unveiled in the primaries. I asked Ezra Klein to verify it for me and he did.

Berkeley's Jacob Hacker, who was the first to persuasively articulate it; to the Economic Policy Institute, which fleshed out the specifics; and to the Campaign for America's Future, which took the lead in selling it to advocacy groups and the presidential campaigns. John Edwards picked it up and made it central to his proposal, and the other candidates followed suit to protect their left flanks.

And I found that Paul Krugman has it also.

The idea of letting individuals buy insurance from a government-run plan was introduced in 2007 by Jacob Hacker of Yale, was picked up by John Edwards during the Democratic primary, and became part of the original Obama health care plan.

Tweety needs to apologize to President Obama, the netroots and the liberals in Congress who he just smeared in this clip. We are fighting for real health-care reform in America and not some mythical-bipartisan Beltway compromise bill that is completely useless to all the real working families that the Villagers like to pretend they speak for all the time.

(h/t Heather at Video Cafe)

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To the Villagers, the left have to be the ones to always, always compromise. If a president dares to govern to the left, it's mutiny in the Beltway. I don't remember the media getting all too upset when Bush's wingnut base freaked out over immigration reform and killed it. Tom Tancredo was invited to go on every talk show there was and even ran for president on it.

Tweety goes on and on saying the Democrats never even had fifty votes so if they wanted to use reconciliation they never had the votes to do it anyway, so they are just total failures. Really, Tweety? I wonder where he got his information from. A 900 number maybe...the Psychic Network...

Matthews: Yeah, so a lot of this has been talk, so Vick you pick up on this. Given the fact that the Senate's not going to approve a public option because they can't get any where near sixty...

Right...

...and by the way I'm wondering were they ever going to get fifty.

Yeah. And all these guys are going through reconciliation-- we're going to ram it through-- they never had fifty! Okay, that's just my hunch and my belief.

Matthews: And I would argue that if you're going to be the party that believes in government, which the Democrats do believe more than Republicans do, they believe in positive government-- you have to be able to govern and prove that you're affective at governing. If you blow it, you can't say you believe in government because you've failed at government. Thank you very much. That's a little redundant.

WTF does this mean? If you believe in government, but you fail to pass a bill---does that mean you don't believe in government? Isn't that what governing is all about? Republicans just say they hate the government so they can get elected to work FOR the government. Conservatives make a lot of money being IN the government, you freaking buffoon.

This type of health-care reform has never been done before. Ever. And with idiots on my dial only talking bullshit it really makes it hard for working families to ever get a fair shake. The Villagers like Tweety, with their million-dollar houses, actually think they represent average working-class families, but his rant just shows a lack of understanding about the basic workings of how political parties operate in America.

What does it mean to Chris when Bush (at one time Chris Matthews got very warm and fuzzy looking at the codpiece) failed to privatize Social Security? Lucky for us he didn't get a chance to destroy that also. OK...NEXT!

(h/t Heather at Video Cafe for the video)

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Another one of both Michelle Bachmann and Bill O’Reilly’s finer moments on Fox Noise. O’Reilly can’t understand why everyone is “after” poor little old Michele Bachmann and says she’s second only behind Sarah Palin in “far left angst” and asks Bachmann why the left is “after her”.

Bachmann: You know, it’s an interesting phenomenon, I think it happened with the competing cable networks who’ve taken an interest in me, and it’s only grown and so now it’s almost like I have personal stalkers, only they have TV shows. So it’s kind of an interesting phenomenon.

So who’s stalking you Michele? Chris Matthews? I would suspect he’ll have something to say about this on his show tomorrow.

While trying to rationalize Bachmann’s arguments on why the left doesn’t like her, Bill-O throws this one out there.

O’Reilly: Do you think, and this is an off the wall question and I’m telling the audience that it’s just something that occurred to me. Both you and Sarah Palin are good looking women. I mean you’re attractive, young… relatively young women, who other women can identify with. You’re a mom, a wife, you had a private sector job. I think that’s it. I think that the success of Sarah Palin and Michele Bachmann drive the far left crazy because you don’t fit, they don’t like what you believe in, but you, but you can attract others to listen to you. I think that’s what’s going on.

Yeah, that's it Bill. The left hates Palin and Bachmann because you think they're hot. And they're successful. What liberal woman could ever relate to that? And mothers...gasp. What liberal woman could relate to that either? And they had jobs... Oh my goodness what liberal woman could ever relate to another woman that had a job?

And you'd better watch it Michele or you might be getting a phone call from O'Reilly wanting you to talk dirty to him on the phone. (Warning, link definitely not safe for work.)

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From Hardball Oct. 6, 2009. Pat Buchanan claims President Obama has a 'messiah complex'. Seems Pat can't quit repeating John McCain campaign slogans.

Matthews: Do you believe he turned over too much power to the hill?

Fineman: I think there’s a way he’ll get a bill but he’s not going to get the bill he should have gotten by the way he’s doing it.

Buchanan: I don’t think he—I don’t know that he really cares. I think he says here’s the Congress… here’s the Congress and you guys put together this bill. Get all your people in there. Get it together. Get it down to me and I’ll sign it.

Matthews: Okay that gets the voters.

Buchanan: He’s got a messiah…

Matthews: But does he have a motive, does he have a clear cut policy motive like Reagan did or…

Buchanan: No, I think he’s got a messiah complex.

Matthews: What’s that mean?

Buchanan: It means he has succeeded by being President of the United States. His very presence there and who he is and who Michelle is has elevated this country, and he can get things done because of who he is.

Matthews: So you’re saying he’s just a prom king?

Buchanan: I think there’s an awful lot of that, you know, walking across big man on campus about him.

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The more I hear from this man, the more I like him. Chris Matthews asks Alan Grayson if the Republicans are going to go after him for his statement on the House floor that their health care plan is for people to die quickly. Grayson says he’s been told he’s their number one target for the next election but he’s not worried about that. He’s worried about doing the right thing with getting our system reformed and that he’s received an overwhelming amount of support as opposed to negative comments about what he said.

Matthews: Are they circling around you because you’ve shown some cajones on this thing—they think they’ve got you?

Grayson: Well, we’ll see. You know, we’ll see how it goes but certainly if they don’t feel that way already (crosstalk) they sure will because I’m going to continue to speak out.

Matthews: Are they… I’m looking for some insight here. I’m a reporter. I’m trying to find out what you know and I don’t know. When you walk around the floor, when you walk past the Republican’s cloak room, when you get on the elevator, when you get on the subway over there, in the capital building, do these Republicans come up to you and say “Your number’s up buddy”? What do they say to you?

Grayson: Yeah. I hear that all the time. I get dirty looks from the Republicans all the time, but I can’t decide on my vote. I can’t decide on health care, on energy independence, on jobs, on the economy based upon dirty looks from people who throw hissy fits all the time and expect that we’re supposed to decide America’s policy on that basis. And that’s what they’ve been doing time after time. This feigned indignation time after time—we can’t let America be run in that way.

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Chris Matthews thinks that the "nuts on the Internet" and the "bloggers huddling in their basements pushing revolution" are being read by Michelle Bachmann's staffers and feeding her conspiracy theories. I don't think Michelle Bachmann needs any help from the right wing blogs to be bat-shit crazy but possibly Matthews is reading Steve Benen over at Washington Monthly because he came pretty close to repeating this post verbatim.

ABORTION FIELD TRIPS....:

In a speech on the House floor last night, Bachmann warned about the dangers of school-based health clinics, patient privacy, and student records.

"What does that mean? It means that parents will never know what kind of counsel and treatment that their children are receiving. And as a matter of fact, the bill goes on to say what's going to go on -- comprehensive primary health services, physicals, treatment of minor acute medical conditions, referrals to follow-up for specialty care -- is that abortion? Does that mean that someone's 13 year-old daughter could walk into a sex clinic, have a pregnancy test done, be taken away to the local Planned Parenthood abortion clinic, have their abortion, be back and go home on the school bus that night? Mom and dad are never the wiser."

I'm not sure why Bachmann thinks school-based health clinics deserve to be characterized as "sex clinics," though it does suggest the right-wing lawmaker has something of a dirty mind.

Media Matters Action Network noted, "Bachmann seems to be getting her information from fringe blogs like Free Republic and WorldNetDaily, both of which have recently promoted similar claims."

PolitiFact.com fact-checked the claim in August: "We see no language in the three main versions of the bill that would allow school-based clinics, which have a long history of providing basic health services to underprivileged students, to provide abortions. Nor would the clinics even be new -- they have been around for three decades. So we rate the claim Pants on Fire!"