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Every time I hear one of these pundits on cable television use the word "spin" I try to remind myself that it's just a polite term for the word they ought to be using, which is "lie." Which is exactly what Will Cain was doing here on CNN's "The Situation Room." Republicans like Cain are desperate to try to downplay the huge gender gap they have right now, where as Dave already noted here, they're looking at a 2-1 deficit among female voters in swing states.

We can add Cain to the list of Republicans such as Rep. Cathy McMorris Rogers who recently tried to claim that it's really the Democrats who are behind all of this "war on women" stuff. His arguments here were just as unconvincing.

And before I go any further, just a little reminder that Will Cain is a contributor to Glenn Beck's site, The Blaze, a site run by someone who was thrown off of Fox News for their over-the-top rhetoric and being too extreme for that network. Why he, or his fellow Blaze contributor, Amy Holmes, who is also a CNN regular on Howard Kurtz's show, or Dana Loesch and Erick Erickson for that matter, should be regularly polluting the airways at CNN is beyond me, but having any of them on is just another example of how that network has decided the best way to get ratings is to become Fox-lite.

We're fair and balanced don't ya' know. We've got your right wing flame throwers up against Democratic establishment types like Carville who could be considered center-left in their views at best. Actual liberals, or progressives are shut out of these "debates" too often because god knows we wouldn't want to allow any of them to embarrass the likes of Will Cain. That might be considered "uncivil" and we can't have that.

If Will Cain actually believes, and isn't just trying to "spin" the audience at CNN, that there is no "war on women" then I've got some reading for him to do.

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Apparently Dylan Ratigan inserting himself into the Occupy Wall Street has got the folks over at TeaNN terribly upset, since Howard Kurtz decided to spend a segment carping about it on his show that claims to report on media bias, Reliable Sources. And apparently Kurtz believes someone who was a former Trent Lott staffer and now an anchor on Glenn Beck's GBTV, Amy Holmes, qualifies as some sort of objective "journalist" to weigh in on Ratigan's advocacy of the #OWS protests.

Kurtz's panel also included The Washington Post's Dana Milbank and PBS' Terence Smith, who like Holmes thought it was just awful that someone who appears on a "news network" like Ratigan would openly show support for the Wall Street protesters, also defended the firing of Lisa Simeone from NPR for openly advocating for the protesters as well. So much for free speech. James Fallows at The Atlantic has more on that here as well.

They also discussed the AstroTurf "tea party" being openly supported by pundits over at Fox "News", but what was missing here was any mention whatsoever of the fact that CNN was every bit as big of a cheerleader for that "movement" as anyone at Fox was. They sent their reporters to be embedded on their buses and if you had twenty of these people showing up anywhere, there were CNN reporters there to cover it and make sure those protests or town hall meetings made it into the national spotlight.

And what other network besides CNN has allowed the "tea party" to co-host their presidential primary debates? None. But they're going to talk about Fox supporting them as though that happened in a vacuum and their network wasn't participating in propping up that Koch brothers, FreedomWorks, Dick Armey, and friends corporate sponsored fiasco of that as well.

Matt Taibbi responded to the recent dust-up over the hacked emails from himself, Ratigan and others at his Rolling Stone blog here -- Why Rush Limbaugh Is Freaking Out About Occupy Wall Street.

Full transcript below the fold.

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I don't know if it's just me, but Howard Kurtz seemed to be a bit puzzled during this panel segment on Reliable Sources as to why liberals like Thomas Frank might be disappointed with President Obama and the legislation he's managed to get passed during his first two years in office. I think Frank summed it up pretty nicely during the little time he was allowed to speak during this segment.

FRANK: That's true and look what he just did the other day. I mean, it's a great accomplishment. He did get something done with health care. I mean, it was -- it was the constant selling out earlier in the process, remember, of negotiating with the Rs, and then the Rs walked away from the table.

Sadly Frank wasn't allowed to elaborate any further during this part of their discussion before Kurtz turned the topic to Sarah Palin and we got more nonsense instead from the other panelists about whether the media has given the president good press coverage and why, whether they've sold their legislative accomplishments to the public well enough and other similar talking points.

What Kurtz and the other talking heads in the media don't seem to understand is that it is possible to appreciate what Obama has managed to get passed in this extremely hostile legislative environment while at the same time being upset that he hasn't used his bully pulpit to push for a more liberal agenda.

I realize fully that in this community we’ve got a range of views from Obama being a complete sellout and he’s as bad as or worse than George Bush with his policy positions to those who are still supportive of the President and who think he’s doing the best he can given the Congress he’s dealing with.

Personally, I’m in the camp where I’m upset with how he’s done business and that he has shown way too much deference to Big Business, and hasn’t done enough to undo the policies that we saw under Bush, with everything from rendition to continuing our occupations overseas to the spying, and to our ridiculous continuation of this “war on terror” -- which looks to me like an excuse to drop bombs on poor people’s heads rather than address the economic conditions that cause people to resort to terrorism in the first place.

That said, I’m also enough of a pragmatist to realize that for him to get anything done, he was going to have to work with Republicans and “conservative” or rather corporate Democrats in the Congress. I admit as Thomas Frank did here that he has gotten a lot of good legislation passed which is not easy to do given the Congress he’s been forced to work with. And as legitimate as the reasons are for anyone being upset with him, he’s still not as terrible as John McCain and Sarah Palin would have been had they been elected instead. If those war mongers had been elected, we’d be asking whether we should have bombed Iran or not by now and not how many troops we should be pulling out of Iraq and Afghanistan.

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Bill Maher had a pretty good New Rules segment where he hit the WATB mega-rich who are complaining about their tax cuts possibly expiring. Good on Bill for that. I've got a New Rule right back for Bill Maher though when it comes to his show tonight. I"m curious if any fellow HBO subscribers who watched it agree with me.

New Rule, do not allow Andrew Breitbart and Amy Holmes back on your show EVER again to ruin it. Or if you're going to allow them on, bring on a liberal that follows what the hell is going on well enough to at least call bulls**t on the Kenneth Gladney story.

Bill Maher allowed the two of them to basically filibuster the entire first half of his panel segment. It was pitiful. And when they lied, he didn't know enough about the issues to call them on their lies. Bill, if you want a fair and balanced show that lets both sides get their points out there and there's an actual debate between liberal policies and right wing talking points, then bring on some actual liberals who follow what the hell is going on to call these liars out that you decide to bring on your show. I've got about a mile long list of names I could give you if you'd like any recommendations.

Maybe if you want to make some amends next week for giving Breitbart a pass you can go back and read this post on Breitbart's Kenneth Gladney lie if that's not too much trouble for you to spend some of your precious time doing some research.

Faking victimhood: Just how hurt was that supposed victim of SEIU 'thuggery'?

The bigger issue is why you think it's necessary to keep bringing these liars back on your show who you don't agree with and don't follow issues well enough to counter their lies. You're as bad as Jon Stewart as much as I love him as well with falling for the false equivalency game where you pretend you're being fair by giving the liars on the right a format to present their views as somehow a balance to those on the left. There's telling the truth and then there's lying to the American people.

You gave Andrew Breitbart and Amy Holmes a huge format to try to appear sane, balanced and let them lie to your audience and your viewers with way too many of those lies going unchallenged. I think that's just shameful. I don't mind a real debate where they get called on their B.S. and it's debated. You didn't do that on your show tonight and you let them talk over your guests that tried like Carl Sagan's wife Ann Druyan who was lucky to get a word in edgewise without being interrupted. And I don't know what the hell was wrong with Seth McFarlane tonight but apparently someone tied his tongue. I know he didn't agree with what Breitbart and Holmes were saying for the better part of the show but instead of attempting to call them out he sat there and let them rail on instead and just looked disgusted. Pitiful.

The transcript of Bill's rant is up at the HuffPo for anyone that can't watch the video.

New Rule: Rich People Who Complain About Being Vilified Should Be Vilified

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Joan Walsh added a bit of sanity to the Sunday morning bobblehead lineup when she called out Mitch McConnell for his Frank Luntz talking point that was so bad that even the mainstream media finally had to acknowledge it. As Paul Krugman said, it was "Possibly the Most Dishonest Argument' 'In the History of Politics'".

Joan has more on the interview at Salon: Another Sunday, another Republican lie:

The Republican Party seems to have a new strategy for the Sunday shows: Use them to float the week's big political lie. Last Sunday, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell used his slot on CNN's "State of the Union" to claim the Democratic bank reform bill would commit the federal government to future "bailouts" of toxic banks, when in fact the bill outlines a new process to place such banks in bankruptcy, not bail them out. The proposed $50 billion fund to restructure such banks was called "a bailout fund," when in fact it is funded by fees on big banks, not the government. On CNN's "Reliable Sources" this week, there was broad agreement that this false storyline didn't work with the media.

This Sunday, GOP leaders tried again. Today's message: Democrats are playing politics by proposing comprehensive immigration reform in the wake of Arizona's likely unconstitutional racial profiling law. Sen. Lindsay Graham got the storyline rolling with a histrionic letter to John Kerry and Joe Lieberman, pulling out of a press conference where they were set to announce bipartisan climate change legislation, because Sen. Harry Reid announced the Senate will take up immigration reform as well. “Moving forward on immigration — in this hurried, panicked manner — is nothing more than a cynical political ploy,” Graham wrote. Read on...

Transcript via CNN.

KURTZ: Joan Walsh, the liberal view, coming back to this question about the bank bailouts in the Democratic legislation, is that the Republicans are lying about this. But journalists are reluctant to accuse politicians of lying, aren't they?

JOAN WALSH: They are, but the truth is they are lying, Howie, because there is a bill. It has language.

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As our own Jon Perr noted, Amy Holmes joined the ranks of the Bush torture apologists on Real Time with Bill Maher when she compared the attacks by Liz Cheney's group Keep America Safe on DOJ lawyers who represented terrorism suspects to criticism by the left of the Bush torture lawyers such as John Yoo, Jay Bybee, David Addington, Jim Haynes and Steve Bradbury.

The Bizarro World of the Bush Torture Apologists:

Now, conservatives on both sides of the Liz Cheney "Al Qaeda 7" smear of the Obama Justice Department have entered Seinfeld's Bizarro World where the polar opposite of truth reigns. For the likes of David Brooks, Marc Thiessen and Amy Holmes, the Obama DOJ lawyers who defended the U.S. Constitution are no different than the Bush torture team that undermined it.

Read on...

I really wish Bill would quit bringing this annoying woman on his show all the time. All she does is regurgitate one right wing talking point after another every time she’s on.

Holmes: I agree with you. I don't think it's remotely fair to tar lawyers with the crimes of their clients. You could never have anyone defending a murderer or a rapist or anything like that and we do have a system where you get a fair defense, but other folks say—I don't agree with it—but turnabout is fair play. Look at what the left did to the lawyers in the Justice Department who were trying to give advice under the Bush administration. They were singled out. You know they were... fingers were pointed at them...

Maher: Oh lord...

Holmes: ...to try to tear them down and I think a lawyer should be able to do his job...

Maher: Wow...

Holmes: ...without being tarred as you say...

Maher: That is quite an analysis there.

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Paul Begala on AC360 makes the case for why it's time for Democrats to stop negotiating with Republicans on health care reform, and puts out the number on just how much Democrats have given to Republicans in order to appease them for a bill they are never going to get a single vote on. David Gergen is dead wrong here. If there is decent legislation passed with some meaningful reform, the public is not going to care who voted for it.

If it's a bad bill and nothing but a giveaway to the insurance industries, then they're not going to be happy in the end no matter what the roll call is when this is said and done. And Amy Holmes is full of it. Republicans are not going to support even the watered down co-op plan. They're already calling it all the same names they would be single payer if it was on the table, and the public option. Republicans do not want any reform of the insurance industry, or anything to be done which cuts into their profits.

COOPER: Paul, we got a text 360 question based on the -- I guess, the Barney Frank thing.

Patty says, "Do you think the Obama administration is considering moving ahead because of negative Republican reaction at town hall meetings?"

I mean, do you think this -- this idea of -- of going it alone is in response to what they have suddenly seen at all these town hall meetings?

BEGALA: I think, frankly, less the town hall meetings. That hasn't moved a lot of Democrats. I have talked to a whole lot of them. They don't seem terribly rattled by that. But I think what they're seeing is...

COOPER: What about independents?

BEGALA: Well, I mean, Democratic members of Congress.

COOPER: Oh, OK.

COOPER: Among independents, it's -- Republic opposition has hardened. And that's fine. They're the opposition party.

But to try to pass something in a bipartisan fashion is just going to be very difficult, and almost impossible. Look at this. There's four committees that have already passed out versions of health care, three in the House, one in the Senate.

If you add all those committees together, they accepted, the Democrats who run the committees, 183 Republican amendments in those four committees, 183. Despite taking all those 183 amendments, you know how many Republican votes they got? Zero, zilch, as we say in the Catholic Church, bubkes, nada.

Now, at what point do you start to get the idea that the Republicans are just not going to play along? More recently, you know, we have the Senate Finance Committee as the last hope of bipartisanship. Senator Max Baucus, the chairman, is trying to negotiate with Charles Grassley, the leading Republican on the committee.

And he's been reached out to, Grassley has, and the president has praised him in the past. And, so, what does he do? He goes home. And, you know, grandpa Twitter gets on his BlackBerry and says, the president wants to pull the plug on grandma, and then he calls the president of the United States intellectually dishonest.

That's who Obama is trying to deal with. So, there's no hope of bipartisanship.

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Howard Kurtz admits that the media "has fun" covering the pissed off Republicans at the town hall protests. Hey Howard, I didn't think having fun was supposed to be something the media considered when deciding what "news" stories to cover. And no, the coverage has not been fair. There's been very little coverage of these Remote Area Medical events with people lined up for miles and hours on end to get treatments they can't afford.

KURTZ: Jeff Zeleny, is Robert Gibbs right and Obama right that the media are providing a distorted picture of these town halls by focusing on the most confrontational moments?

ZELENY: Well, I think in a sense they are, but in a sense they're not. First, I think, I mean, the images and the passions that were shown this week from town hall meetings show real Americans having real concerns about this. I think that's one of the things that has been left out of this.

I spent most of the week in Iowa going to several town halls. There are real, patriotic voting Americans, some who voted for President Obama, who don't like what they see shaping up as a plan. But...

KURTZ: But is that the whole story?

ZELENY: But it's not the whole story. And I think we have been missing the context of all this

YouTube is fantastic. It takes us everywhere, into town meetings that we couldn't go, but it doesn't give us any context. And that has been a problem this week.

KURTZ: And when I watch cable, Amy Holmes, it almost seem like this endless loop of these loud moments. I mean, there's one woman in a blue dress, Katy Abram, we're going to play later. I've seen her 50 times.

HOLMES: Indeed. And it's perfect for television. You've got the audio, you've got the visuals, you've got the heat and the passion. But there are some loops that have not been played endlessly.

Kenneth Gladney, an African-American gentleman who was at one of these town halls, was beaten up. And yet, he has not been splashed on the front pages. He has gotten less attention than Professor Gates and his arrest at Harvard.

So, I think if you look at conservatives, the context that they are concerned about is the context that this is supposed to marginalize and characterize the entire opposition to health care plan as being fringe and hysterical. And the same treatment is not given to the other side when their folks come out to protest.

KURTZ: And Ruth Marcus, Obama keeps repeating this line about how TV loves a ruckus. And here we just heard Gibbs say the media was disappointed that no one yelled at the president after his first town hall meeting in New Hampshire.

Is there a grain of truth there?

MARCUS: Sure. Look, conflict is more interesting than lack of conflict. When flowers bloom and the sun is shining, it's not necessarily news. And so, we are all going to naturally gravitate to -- we, being the media -- naturally gravitate to the more exciting moments.

And it is more exciting if you're a journalist to have those exciting moments. And I think it's a little naive and a sign of some -- to some extent their -- the way they have been rocked back on their heels to hear the White House complaining about, you know, following the ruckus. They know that.

KURTZ: Right.

HOLMES: This White House complaining about media coverage after Obama being on the cover of "TIME" magazine how many times?

KURTZ: It's really striking though how often Robert Gibbs and the president have complained about the media coverage. And here's a funny note.

When Fox News was breaking away from that first Obama town hall, the anchor, Trace Gallagher, said, "Any contentious questions, anybody yelling, we'll bring it to you." In other words, that would cause them to go back.

Now, Jeff Zeleny, the other night, the "CBS Evening News" led off with a story about 1,500 people lined up in L.A. for a clinic that was providing free health care for a couple days. And it made me think, well, the reason the existing health care system -- we've all kind of gotten away from covering it -- I think news organizations have made an honest effort to try to unravel the complexities of this health care issue. But, let's face it, covering angry, shouting folks is a lot more fun.

ZELENY: No question about that. And that free clinic I think was one example of that. I think we had it on the cover of our paper as well, this week.

But I think if you look at the coverage, what I was struck by, talking to voters and seeing people this week, how well-informed people really were about this. Not necessarily -- all the information was not accurate.

MARCUS: They knew about the death panels?

ZELENY: Well, some, I think -- I think that was another thing that was taken a little bit -- perhaps given more attention than people actually thought. But without question, I think a lot of news organizations are devoting a lot of time to serious coverage of this. But it's a complicated issue. It's impossible to break it down in a long newspaper story, let alone a 60-second TV story.

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From Real Time with Bill Maher May 15, 2009. Bill's guests were David Simon, the creator of HBO's The Wire, former Bill Frist staffer and CNN contributor Amy Holmes, senior editor at the National Review's Richard Brookhiser and columnist Dan Savage. The panel discusses how the drug war has failed in the United States.

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The conservative panel of David Brody, Stephen Hayes, Amy Holmes and Brian Debose on CNN's "The After Party" have themselves a little wing-nut delusion festival over how George Bush will be remembered. Hayes continues to perpetuate the myth that George Bush has kept us safe from a terrorist attack. Holmes has a big chuckle over whether Dick Cheney admitting to torture will be a problem for them or not and thinks it won't matter since Bush has only got a month left in office. I guess she thinks there is some statute of limitations on what's been done that expires when Bush leaves office or that The Hague won't deal with if our country and the Obama administration sadly does not. And Brian Debose seems to think that torturing prisoners is legal but maybe not moral and that is his only concern with what's happened. Rough transcript for anyone that can't watch the video:

Brody: Alright let's move on to President Bush, his legacy. He's on the magical mystery tour now, whatever he's doing and do you get a sense Steve, what is this going to be like exactly for George Bush? How will he be remembered? Is this going to be a Harry Truman type situation where he wasn't looked upon all that great coming out of office but maybe give it ten, fifteen, fifty, seventy five years?

Hayes: Well I think that's their hope but they're certainly not taking any chances so I think the Bush administration and his top advisers have been working now for more than six months to help shape this legacy. They've been working on this thing called the Bush Legacy Project where they've been meeting regularly talking about the kind of things that they want to highlight to the country as he's on his way out.

I mean I think, you know it was easy to listen to the progressives sort of down play the fact that we haven't been attacked since 9-11. But if you look back at the public opinion polls taken at the time you know some eighty percent of Americans thought we'd not only be attacked again but we'd be subject to a major catastrophic attack. It's a big deal and it's because of his policies that we haven't been attacked.

Brody: This administration has taken some major hits over waterboarding and torture, especially Dick Cheney. Let me play a clip of Dick Cheney this week on ABC.

[Cut to video.]

Brody: Amy, how much of a problem is this for the administration?

Holmes: With one month to go, not very much and when you look at Gitmo even in the New York Times a few weeks ago said well letting them out, that could be a little tricky. Do we want to throw them into our Federal court system where they could maybe use it against us. Rendition is difficult because these countries actually don't want these guys. These are actual real terrorists that are down there. And we don't have any easy answers and all of the sudden the New York Times figured that out now that Barack Obama is going to be the Commander in Chief.

Debose: That has been the argument all together. The only problem I have with some of the messaging that has come out with respect to Dick Cheney is trying to defend the morality of torture and other things that went on versus the legality. You can defend the legality. Morally that is something totally different and I don't like the merger of those two things. That's, that's the only thing that's really been problematic.