DOWNLOADS: (301)

PLAYS: (3799)

Embed

After taking his turn going after Joe Scarborough and his juvenile sneering at Nate Silver and that damned liberal math of his, predicting a big win for President Obama and being exactly right again, The Young Turks' Cenk Uygur reminded us of how the media treated George W. Bush and his "mandate" after the slimmest of wins back in 2004.

As Cenk rightfully pointed out, if Bush supposedly had a mandate back then, President Obama has a giant mandate now, and he discussed the fact, as John Amato did here, that America also elected a progressive agenda this Tuesday.

DOWNLOADS: (335)

PLAYS: (473)

Embed

Cenk breaks down a few polls for us that show most Americans are actually liberals or progressives when you look at how they feel about specific issues instead of how they self-identify since liberal has more or less been turned into a dirty word of late.

Time for your weekly podcast from The Professional Left, our own Driftglass and Bluegal. Enjoy everybody and have a nice weekend.

To listen to past editions of the podcasts or to contribute to help keep them going you can visit their site at http://professionalleft.blogspot.com/.

DOWNLOADS: (340)

PLAYS: (576)

Embed

Cenk Uygur filling in for Ed Schultz this week hit back at Maureen Dowd's assertions about the left in her recent New York Times op-ed, No Love From the Lefties:

On the Republican side, the crazies often end up helping the Republican leadership. On the Democratic side, the radicals are constantly sniping at Obama, expressing their feelings of betrayal.

Fox built up a Republican president; MSNBC is trying to make its reputation by tearing down a Democratic one.

Here's Cenk's response.

No. The difference between MSNBC and Fox News is that we actually use our minds. We don't follow the President like robots. We are not authoritarian by nature and apparently unlike Maureen Dowd, we're capable of using independent judgment.

The establishment press loves to protect the government. They've forgotten entirely that they're supposed to do the opposite, challenge the government. Just because I think the right wing movement in this country has lost its mind doesn't mean i should lend mine out to President Obama.

Here's what the millionaire mainstream press doesn't get. We unlike you actually understand policy. And yes, guilty as charged, we care about it. I can give you a million examples but I'll give you one for tonight.

President Bush made a deal with the drug industry so that the government could not negotiate drug prices. He also blocked the importation of drugs. That effectively set up an unnatural monopoly for drug companies to charge us whatever they want.

You know what President Obama did? The same exact thing. He also made a deal with the drug industry allowing drug companies to keep their patents for 12 years so their monopoly lasts even longer.

So if I hated it under Bush, why should I love it under Obama? What's so radical or extreme or deranged about sticking with the same position had you before?

That used to be called unbiased. If anyone in the establishment media says they don't understand that, then I'm not sure I could help them.

If you like, I could talk slower. Maybe you'll understand it then. This isn't about taking down a Democratic President. It's about holding him accountable. That's what I thought the press was supposed to do.

A very nervous looking Mark Halperin came in to follow up and defend Maureen Dowd and the President. I concede Halperin's points about what people hoped President Obama could get done compared to what is realistic to expect him to get done given the Congress he's dealing with, but as Cenk said there are plenty of issues where we expected him to push harder for a progressive agenda and use the bully-pulpit rather than giving away the store before negotiations started. And Cenk's points about the press not doing their job no matter who is in charge are spot on.

You also cannot apply his comments about the reporters on MSNBC to the majority of their day time line up. They're almost as bad and many times worse than Fox and equally as bad as CNN right up through Matthews' show. Ed Schultz, Keith Olbermann and Rachel Maddow do not equal the entire network being "liberal".

DOWNLOADS: (893)

PLAYS: (1971)

Embed

Appearing on The O'Reilly Factor Thursday, Fox News' Glenn Beck took time out of his daily habit of railing against progressives to calmly explain that the country wasn't going to be destroyed by giving marriage rights to gays and lesbians.

Beck told Fox News host Bill O'Reilly why he didn't devote airtime to the issue. "Because honestly I think we have bigger fish to fry," said Beck. "You can argue about abortion or gay marriage or whatever all you want. The country is burning down."

"But isn't that one of the reasons because we are getting away from the traditional way we used to live into this progressive [agenda]," prompted O'Reilly.

"Your country is burning down," answered Beck. "I don't think marriage, that the government actually has anything to do with what is a religious right."

"Do you believe that gay marriage is a threat to the country in any way?" asked O'Reilly.

"No, I don't," said Beck. "Will the gays come and get us?"

Beck continued, "I believe what Thomas Jefferson said. If it neither breaks my leg nor picks my pocket, what difference is it to me?"

Beck told O'Reilly that he wasn't worried about same-sex marriage rights as long as churches could choose not to perform the ritual on gays and lesbians.

While O'Reilly claims that he takes a libertarian view on gay marriage, in the past he has worried that it could lead to people marrying animals.

DOWNLOADS: (423)

PLAYS: (372)

Embed

Alan Grayson expressed his displeasure with Robert Gibbs for attacking "the professional left" on MSNBC. Rep. Keith Ellison has called for Robert Gibbs to resign. Host Chris Jansing asked Grayson if he agreed and thought Gibbs should resign as well.

"No, I don't think he should resign," replied Grayson, "I think he should be fired. He's done a miserable job. People I know refer to him as Bozo the Spokesman."

I have to say I agree with Grayson that Robert Gibbs really has been a horrible White House Spokesman and I've felt that way since he first got the job. I agree with Grayson's other point he made during this interview as well which is that all Gibbs did is to hand the Republicans talking points by bashing their liberal base.

Grayson: I'd like to see Gibbs show some frustration over 15 million unemployed Americans. I'd like to see him show some frustration over 40 million people who can't see a doctor when they need to. I'd like to see him show some frustration over the Republicans who have blocked the President's plans and his programs.

The White House as I said back in January is suffering from Stockholm syndrome. They have come to love their captors and in this case their captors, the people who are imprisoning the President's programs are not the liberals, they're the GOP, the Republicans specifically in the Senate and the Republicans nation wide. They're the opponents for him, not the liberals.

Jansing read some of David Frum's remarks that the GOP fears their base and the Democrats hate theirs and asked him if he agreed with that statement. Grayson decided to punt on that one and took the topic back to Gibbs.

Grayson: Again, that's not really the point. He needs to concentrate on getting things done for the American people and restoring the middle class in this country, not giving us Republican talking points. What he said about Canadian health care, Canadians live three years longer than Americans do on the average according to the CIA, so exactly how bad can their health care be?

You know, if I wanted Fox talking points I'd change the channel to Fox, not listen to the White House. (crosstalk) He needs to get his head on straight and do his job.

Amen to that brother. This administration had better wake up to the fact that kicking their base in the teeth might not work out so well for them come November if they expect to generate any turnout in the mid-term. I can understand where some of the frustration out of the administration is coming from given what they inherited and the obstructionist Congress they're dealing with but Grayson is right, Gibbs has been terrible and needs to go.

And now for your listening pleasure it's time for your weekly Driftglass and Bluegal podcast. Have a nice weekend everybody.

You can listen to past editions here and at http://dgbgpodcast.blogspot.com/, and the podcast is also available on i-Tunes. If you enjoy these as much as I do, donations are greatly appreciated. Please consider throwing five bucks in the hat.

Cenk Uygur took on one of my least favorite pundits, John Avlon, in this segment on The Young Turks and did what you never see anyone in the our "mainstream media" do when allowing this hack to come on their shows, which is to call him out for the fact that there is no one on the left that you can honestly compare to the ultra-crazies we have on the right side of the aisle right now. The best Avlon could muster without going back to the 60's was to call unions left wing extremists.

Cenk made some other really great points like just how far to the right our country has moved when it comes to what you'd call a "centrist" these days and does a good job of attempting to explain to Avlon that what he calls "centrist" is actually "corporatist" and that when it comes to the issues that really matter to most Americans and what is causing to get hammered economically, unlike the wedge issues that get everyone riled up, people on the left and progressives are losing those battles, whether it be the bank bailouts, health care reform or tax breaks for the rich and for corporations. He also did a really good job explaining just how far what used to be called the center has shifted to the right where the positions of those on the left are what used to be considered moderate and that a lot of Republicans from past eras would be run out of today's Republican Party.

My only quibble with Cenk about this interview would be that he allowed Avlon to filibuster him a bit too often. He did finally have enough of it later in the interview and stopped him so he could make his points. He also allowed him to be portrayed as "independent" and didn't point out to his viewers that he worked for Rudy Giuliani.

That said it was a breath of fresh air to see this guy get challenged in the manner he deserves for once and premise of his book, which tries to paint people on the left as extremists when they're not and that calls centrism giving corporate America anything it wants, called a bunch of nonsense, which it is. Avlon finally showed his true colors with being an anti-union zealot in this interview with Cenk. It doesn't surprise me one bit but makes me dislike him even more than I did before listening to him call us "extremists" who are destroying America and the Democratic Party.

It's a long interview, over twenty minutes but if you've got that time to spare it is well worth is watching the king of the false equivalencies get his talking points taken apart for once. Good for Cenk. It would be nice to see MSNBC give him a job if they allowed him to do the type of interviews he just did here instead of just having him on Ratigan's show to debate wingnuts in a five minute debate box with Ratigan controlling the narrative. I'd say this interview ranks right up there with his take down of S.E. Cupp and Wayne Allyn Root.

DOWNLOADS: (162)

PLAYS: (233)

Embed

Alan Grayson joined the Ed Schultz show to talk about the Financial Regulation bill that President Obama hopes to sign into law by July 4th. As Ed noted and as I agree with “a lot of people think it’s not tough enough”. Ed blamed the Republicans for watering down the bill, but there’s no way you can blame just the Republicans since there are quite a few too many Democrats beholden to Wall Street along with Obama’s advisors who we know aren’t going to want to harm them too badly as well. That said as Grayson noted here, there are some good things in the legislation. The biggest problem in his opinion is the failure to make sure these banks are no longer too big to fail. As an article at AlterNet noted, we can at least consider this a good first step.

Members of Congress finished ironing out their differences on Wall Street reform last night, and the resulting bill deserves unequivocal support from progressives and conservatives alike. But while the final package is a necessary first step to overhauling the nation’s out-of-control financial sector, it will do very little to change the destructive status quo on Wall Street. The bill is a good first step. The public deserves too see stronger reforms from Congress next year.

As a matter of history, sweeping financial change takes several years to secure. It took Franklin Delano Roosevelt seven years to enact all of his New Deal banking regulations, and President Barack Obama appropriately sees the 1930s crisis as the historical analog to today’s meltdown-and-reform process. Obama is correct to state that the legislation approved by Congress late last night is the most significant since the Depression—but it is a hollow truth. The U.S. government has been steadily deregulating the banking industry ever since Roosevelt, and the mere act of moving policy in the opposite direction is enough to claim the mantle of dramatic reform. Actually living up to the precedent set by Roosevelt will take several years of serious work, and major legislative action during the next electoral cycle. Read on…

Dave Dayden has more details on what made it through the conference committee.

FinReg Passes Conference: Details on Volcker Rule, Section 716 Provisions:

Lawmakers worked into the night and came up with an oddly unsatisfying compromise on the two most contentious issues left in financial reform, with the final package voted upon at 5:30 this morning (ET). But hey, that was on C-SPAN, so eight people did probably get to see it. Transparency!

This bill has officially been renamed Dodd-Frank. So let’s see what they’ve done:

• Volcker rule: the contours of the Dodd counteroffer survived, with both a crisper Volcker rule that regulators will have little discretion but to implement, and also a carve-out created basically for Scott Brown, which allows banks to continue to invest up to 3 percent of common capital in hedge funds or private equity funds. While speculative trading on the bank’s account will be prohibited, depositor money could flow through that loophole into those investments. McClatchy has more. • Section 716: This is a classic Washington compromise. Reformers wanted the mega-banks to have to spin off their entire swaps trading desks into separately capitalized subsidiaries. Banks argued that it would be too costly and would drive that trading into the shadows. So what have they done? Put half of the trades, the riskiest ones including credit default swaps, onto the separate subsidiaries, while allowing the bank to still trade interest rate and currency swaps as before. This makes almost no sense to me. It bifurcates the market in derivatives and allows plenty of risky trading to still accrue in the bank. Or does it?

Much more there so go read the rest of it.

As Dave noted the AP article has more on the bill as well.

Continue reading »

From The Daily Show March 18, 2010. This might not have been one of Jon's funniest segments, but he's got the clown show down pat. Intro above and the full thirteen minute segment below.