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I would love to know why Anderson Cooper and his producers at CNN thought anyone in their audience would benefit from hearing what wingnut former Rep. Allen West had to say about the recent announcement that the Pentagon is removing military's ban on women serving in combat, given his background.

I don't know about anyone else, but someone who bragged about torturing Iraqi policemen is not the person I want to hear from when it comes to any matters involving our military, but here he was, on CNN, being treated like he's someone who's sane and credible, which he's not.

Allen West Slams Women In Combat ‘Social Experiment,’ Suggests They Should Also Join NHL And NBA:

Former Republican Congressman and Army veteran Allen West made his views about the recent decision to allow women to serve in combat roles known this morning on Twitter and Facebook. And tonight, he brought those views to CNN.

Appearing on Anderson Cooper 360 along with retired General Rick Hillier of the Canadian Forces, West laid out his opposition to the new rule, saying that with all of the budget issues the military is having right now, the focus shouldn’t be on “this foray into an inequality trip.”

West then went off into an extended sports metaphor that seemed to have both Anderson Cooper and General Hillier baffled:

“I have to tell you, if this is the case, then why do we have separate hockey leagues? Women should be out there playing ice hockey with the guys in the NHL. We should not have a WNBA. I can’t shoot a three-pointer, but there are ladies who could certainly take me to the hoop. Maybe they should be competing with Kobe Bryant.”

Cooper quickly steered the conversation back to the more practical concerns surrounding women in combat, asking Hillier if he had seen any advantages in his career working with women in combat. Read on...

I'm guessing there are a whole lot of people out there that would rather have a woman serving next to them in combat than a loose cannon like West. He's no longer in the Congress but it seems our corporate media isn't done allowing him to pollute our airways.

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As TPM noted, it seems John McCain decided to do his part to keep the Richard Mourdock debacle in the news cycle. After the Romney campaign said they still support Mourdock, McCain threw him under the bus on CNN this Wednesday.

McCain Helps Push Romney’s Mourdock Headaches Into Day Two:

If Mitt Romney was hoping the Richard Mourdock story he’s deeply entwined in would go away fast, he apparently didn’t get the memo to one of his top surrogates.

Just as Democrats and the Obama campaign began amping up their effort to highlight Romney’s ties to Mourdock after the Indiana Senate candidate uttered his claim that pregnancies caused by rape are “something that God intended to happen” — and Romney and the Republicans worked to put the moment behind them — John McCain sat down with CNN to throw a wrench in the Republican effort.

Last week, McCain was in Indiana campaigning for Mourdock, who won the Republican nomination by beating the man McCain backed, veteran Sen. Richard Lugar.

Asked if he’s still backing Mourdock following his rape comments Wednesday, McCain instead backed far away from him.

“It depends on what he does. I think it depends on what he does,” McCain said. McCain said that “if he apologizes and says he misspoke and he was wrong and he asks the people to forgive him,” the Arizona Senator would get behind him again. Read on...

What's so disingenuous about this is, as Blue Texan noted here, Mourdock and his ilk were just saying what they -- and the clear majority of Republicans -- believe. This was more than just some "stupid" remark. It's their policy and part of their party's platform.

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I seem to remember a time not long ago when this woman's boss was running the country that talk like this would have had the right wingers screaming to the hills that you're an unpatriotic American who doesn't love their country and is on the side of the terrorists. Now, it's apparently perfectly acceptable to bet against America if you're running for president, or so says Lady McCheney, Mary Matalin.

She's not alone either. Here's McCain BFF and Romney supporter, Sen. Lindsey Graham saying the same thing: Lindsey Graham: 'It's Really American' To Avoid Taxes Like Mitt Romney Does .

Good luck with that to both of them with trying to get that to resonate with the general public. And good luck to Mary Matalin with trying to make the argument that people are going to care more about what Romney donated to the Mormon church than him hiding his money overseas so he doesn't have to pay taxes on it.

Transcript of Matalin's hackery on Anderson Cooper's show below the fold.

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Looks like Mitt Romney might want to get himself a better Communications Director than Gail Gitcho. From this Thursday night's Anderson Cooper 360: Anderson Cooper Explains Non-Partisan Congressional Budget Office To Top Romney Adviser:

Romney Communications Director Gail Gitcho says the “CBO” report from the Obama administration claimed that the stimulus would keep unemployment below eight percent. The CBO doesn't work for Obama, as Cooper notes, and it never wrote that. The eight percent figure comes from a projection authored by Obama aides before he even took office.

These surrogates get used to getting a lot of fact-free, unchallenged air time way too often. It was nice to see one of them challenged when trying to tell a few whoppers as Gitcho was here. We've already discussed the fact that the Romney campaign just can't quit lying. Here's Steve Benen's latest compilation from this week: Chronicling Mitt's Mendacity, Vol. XXII.

Full transcript via CNN:

COOPER: So, Gail, the big focus today was jobs. Something Governor Romney had to say about public sector jobs got a lot of attention a few days ago. I just want to remind our viewers what he had to say back then.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ROMNEY: He wants to hire more government workers. He says we need more firemen, more policemen, more teachers. Didn't he not get the message of Wisconsin? The American people did. It's time for us to cut back on government and help the American people.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

COOPER: Now, you know, the Obama campaign has hit those comments hard, saying he wants to fire firemen, police and teachers. Then earlier this week Governor Romney pushed back with these comments.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ROMNEY: Of course, teachers and firemen and policemen are hired at the local level. And also by states. The federal government doesn't pay for teachers, firefighters or policemen. So, obviously, that's completely absurd.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

COOPER: But the federal government, though, does provide billions of dollars every year in essential funding for schools and first responders and a big percentage of that aid goes to pay for personnel. Like more than $14 billion I think under Title 1 this year. Billions more programs for improving special education and a lot of that is hiring special education teachers, community policing support. So without that federal aid, many of those positions would disappear.

Would Governor Romney want to cut those federal programs?

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As I wrote about earlier this month, there were protests planned for anti-gay zealot and bigot Pastor Charles Worley after he was recorded preaching this sort of hatred towards lesbians and gay people from the pulpit in his Baptist church in North Carolina: NC Pastor: Put an Electric Fence Around Gays and Lesbians to Make Sure They "Die Out."

Anderson Cooper followed up on those protests on CNN this Monday evening and apparently the pastor isn't quite ready to give interviews to anyone in the media yet, even though he appears to be doubling down with his church members on his prior statements.

I'm glad to see the national media giving this guy some more attention. If he thinks what he said was acceptable and that it's okay to be preaching that type of hatred from the pulpit, he ought to have to answer for his remarks to the press. The fact that he got the standing ovation from his congregation as they reported sickens me, but I guess it should not be too surprising given they have been willing participants in agreeing with or promoting themselves the type of garbage this man has been preaching for who knows how long now.

Given the fact that he was running from the media when CNN showed up outside of his church, I don't expect we'll see the pastor defending his remarks on television any time soon. So basically he's a hate monger and a coward who is not willing to defend what he said once it's put up to public scrutiny.

Here's to the media continuing to stick a camera in this man's face whether it be local or national until he's forced to explain why he thinks it's acceptable to say we should be rounding up gay people and putting them behind electric fences.

Transcript via CNN below the fold.

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Here we go again with more birthers coming out of the woodwork making embarrassments of themselves. CNN's Anderson Cooper spoke to one of them this Monday evening, but here's some background first from Think Progress.

North Carolina Republicans Go Birther: Certificate Is A ‘Poorly Reproduced Forgery’:

North Carolina is apparently ground zero of the latest resurgence of the birther movement, as a number of Republican candidates in the state are expressing doubts about President Obama’s birthplace.

ThinkProgress has previously noted that Richard Hudson, running for a congressional seat in the state’s 8th district, said Obama is “hiding something on his citizenship,” while the Charlotte Observer rescinded its endorsement of Jim Pendergraph, running in the 9th district, after he expressed his own doubts about Obama’s birth certificate.

Now, the Observer reports that Dr. John Whitley, one of Hudson’s opponents in tomorrow’s GOP primary, has also gone birther. He declared Obama’s birth certificate a “poorly reproduced forgery” after comparing it to the Hawaiian birth certificate of one of his campaign workers. “There is a tremendous amount of smoke here,” Whitley said. “In fact, it’s called a smoke screen.”

In the interview above, Anderson Cooper just simply asked Whitley for what proof he had that the birth certificate was a forgery and allowed Whitley to spin himself into looking completely ridiculous. Whitley's proof that the birth certificate was a forgery? Wingnut Sheriff Joe Arpaio's "investigation" that we wrote about here: Arpaio Probe Offers Boilerplate Birtherism in Dramatic Presser.

When asked who any of Arpaio's so-called experts were that he was relying on, Whitley couldn't name them. When asked how he knew his friend's birth certificate was legitimate, his answer was basically that he'd looked at it himself, even though he concurred that he was not an expert on evaluating documents and records.

I really wish these yahoos would get called out for exactly what they're doing in one of these interviews, which is race baiting. Sadly I guess this still goes over well in Republican primaries in North Carolina, since we've got so many of them playing this ugly game. Shameful.

(Note on the video clip above. The CNN broadcast had problems with their video hanging up during a portion of the interview, but the audio continued to work, so it's not a problem with our servers or your computer.)

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This Friday evening, CNN's Anderson Cooper spoke to the attorney for George Zimmerman, Craig Sonner, about the Trayvon Martin shooting, and I think this interview just raised more questions than it answered. We found out that Zimmerman's attorney is claiming his client is supposedly in the United States, but he couldn't say where, or that he'd met with him face to face.

He claimed Zimmerman suffered a broken nose during the incident and that he was acting in self defense. This reminds me of the arguments being made by Larry Pratt on Cenk Uygur's show the other night, which is that basically if Martin was getting the better of Zimmerman after Zimmerman was stalking him in a scuffle, it was all right for Zimmerman to then shoot him because he's now the one defending himself.

Sonner also used the "I have some black friends" defense as proof somehow that George Zimmerman is not a racist and claimed the crime was not racially motivated.

Here's more from MSNBC on potential charges against Zimmerman — Trayvon Martin family attorney confident state charges coming in shooting death:

An attorney for the family of Trayvon Martin said Saturday he expects that state charges will be filed against the neighborhood watch volunteer who shot dead the unarmed black teenager.

Attorney Daryl Parks, in an interview by Skype with the board of the National Association of Black Journalists, said the family and its attorneys met Thursday with officials from the U.S. Justice Department.

“I think the focus is not a federal arrest over a state arrest,” Parks said told the journalists. “We want an arrest, period. And I think that the state aspect of that is the one that's most feasible, that's most attainable in this matter.”

Asked his sense that state officials will press charges, he said, “Oh, they will.”

More there so read the rest, but it appears they're worried the bar may be too high to prove a hate crime at the federal level but seem fairly sure the state is going to prosecute instead.

Transcript of the CNN interview below the fold.

h/t Raw Story

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This has to be one of the more pitiful segments that I've had the unfortunate circumstance of watching for a while now. Anderson Cooper really should be ashamed of himself for allowing Mary Matalin and Ari Fleischer get away with this ridiculous defense of Rush Limbaugh where they decided to start attacking Arianna Huffington for a satirical piece posted at her web site, The Huffington Post.

Here's the offending piece that apparently had Fleischer and Matalin worked into a tizzy -- The Jesus-Eating Cult of Rick Santorum.

And here's his response which was also posted there as well where he explains what he wrote and why he wrote it -- Dear Catholics: I Am Heartily Sorry, etc.:

Actually, I'm not sorry at all, but I suppose an explanation is in order.

Last week, I wrote a piece with the somewhat provocative title "The Jesus-Eating Cult of Rick Santorum." The purpose was to take Santorum to task for his persistent and opportunistic attacks on the faith of others, in particular his dog whistle references to President Obama's "phony ideology" and his assertion that it is impossible to be a Christian and liberal. My criticism took the form of a ridiculously over-the-top broadside against Roman Catholicism, a demonstration of the type of vicious religious ignorance and intolerance I too often see coming from too many so-called Christians, especially Santorum. [...]

I won't say that Catholics need to lighten up or learn to take a joke, because the piece wasn't intended to be light-hearted or funny. It was satire, meaning... well, you can look that up. (It was probably a mistake to put it in the Comedy section; the editors wanted readers to know it was not to be taken literally.)

It's traditional at this point for me to half-apologize, to say that I'm sorry if anybody was offended, but I really don't mind if anybody was offended. I hope they will now think twice before they question the faith of progressive Christians, or Mormons or Muslims. I doubt they will.

Apparently that was completely lost on Matalin and Fleischer as well, or maybe not and they know full well the piece was satire and their only defense of Limbaugh is to distract, attack and lay it on thick with the false equivalencies. And note to Maria Cardona here, the correct answer for Fleischer when he ambushes you with a question about something you haven't read is to say you haven't seen it and won't comment on it until you do and you'd be happy to discuss it later after you look at what he's talking about instead of ceding ground to their attacks.

A writer that most people have not heard of at Huffington's site writing a piece of satire and his response after the fact explaining what he did and why is in no way the same as Rush Limbaugh's nasty, personal attacks on Sandra Fluke and Fleischer and Matalin know it.

And speaking of Ari Fleischer, why is anyone listening to anything this man has to say about women's reproductive rights or contraception after that sage advice he was paid to give the Komen foundation?

And one last note to Cooper and Cardona, someone needs to call Matalin out when she conflates contraception with abortion like her buddy Rove did a little while back.

h/t Digby

Transcript below the fold.

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While I do not disagree with any of the points that CNN's Fareed Zakaria made to Anderson Cooper after seeing the turn that this debt ceiling hostage taking has taken with the extreme level of obstruction by these so-called "tea party" freshmen in the House of Representatives and as Zakaria pointed out, their refusal to do any negotiating at all during this debacle. But what both of them failed to point out here is that there is no "tea party." It's the extreme right wing of the Republican base.

It's a drummed up astroturf movement sponsored by corporate America that is not only one of Fox's making, but CNN's as well. I don't believe for one minute that any of these right wing Republicans actually believe that it's not necessary to raise the debt ceiling. I also don't believe that any of them are too naive to realize what kind of dangerous game they're playing with our economy. I don't believe they're acting out of ideological purity. I think they're willing to play bad cop to push the Overton window even further to the right so that the rest of them can jam through right wing policies that would otherwise be completely unacceptable to the electorate in the name of a fake, drummed up emergency.

It's shock doctrine and the "tea party" is playing their part as the useful idiots. And our media continues to pretend that they're some grass roots movement that is just beholden to some ideological purity and not just the extreme right of the Republican Party who is helping them to achieve their goal of destroying our social safety nets, which Republicans have hated ever since they've been enacted. And they're doing corporate America's bidding with helping to turn us into a third world country where we have no middle class left. That's their goal. They're not crazy. They're bought and sold.

CNN helped to create this monster. Now we've got Zakaria and Cooper bemoaning how undemocratic they're behaving with Zakaria saying the president should invoke the 14th Amendment and end this nonsense. I don't disagree with him there either, but maybe if CNN was not playing cheer leader for these posers we would not be in the mess we are now with these right wing extremists dominating our House of Representatives and with having the power to threaten the United States' and the rest of the world's economy with their hostage taking during this kabuki theater.

Here's the transcript from CNN. Every time they say the words "tea party", substitute far right wing Republicans and maybe we'd have a halfway honest discussion going on here with where we are now, but one that still ignores CNN's willingness to prop these wingnuts and their "movement" up in the first place. One that they're still being dishonest about here.

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For all of the good things you can say about a lot of Anderson Cooper's reporting on CNN, it's segments like this that are just plain infuriating and where he proves himself to be little more than a hack like much of the rest of our corporate media who are happy to whitewash the corruption of past presidential administrations by treating someone like Elliot Abrams as though he's someone who's opinion should be respected rather than sitting in a jail cell right now.

If anyone doesn't think Cooper or his staff knew full well who they were bringing on here to discuss the situation in Syria along with one of CNN's other correspondents, Jill Dougherty, a simple search yielding his Wiki page would tell most people who wanted to do about two minutes of research just how slimy this man's background is.

Or maybe if they'd looked a bit more, they would have found this article at The Nation:

"How would you feel if your wife and children were brutally raped before being hacked to death by soldiers during a military massacre of 800 civilians, and then two governments tried to cover up the killings?" It's a question that won't be asked of Elliott Abrams at a Senate confirmation hearing--because George W. Bush, according to press reports, may appoint Abrams to a National Security Council staff position that (conveniently!) does not require Senate approval. Moreover, this query is one of a host of rude, but warranted, questions that could be lobbed at Abrams, the Iran/contra player who was an assistant secretary of state during the Reagan years and a shaper of that Administration's controversial--and deadly--policies on Latin America and human rights. His designated spot in the new regime: NSC's senior director for democracy, human rights and international operations. (At press time, the White House and Abrams were neither confirming nor denying his return to government.)

More there so go read the rest. If you'd like to contact CNN and Cooper's show to voice your displeasure, here's the link for that.

Transcript below the fold.

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