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The Last Word's Lawrence O'Donnell got his shots in at Fox and their joke of a business channel and the likes of Stuart Varney, who was previously claiming that the election of President Obama was responsible for the dip in the stock market the day after the election. With the markets reaching a record high this week, as O'Donnell rightfully noted here, those talking heads are just as clueless now about why the market went up as they were when it went down last year.

I'm not sure who actually watches the Fox Business Channel, but sometimes I wonder if they exist solely as an attempt to make CNBC look respectable in comparison.

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Lawrence O'Donnell read the entire op-ed which appeared in the L.A. Times in his rewrite segment this Thursday evening: Loughner’s Judge Makes Conservative Plea For Gun Control:

Larry Alan Burns, the federal district judge in San Diego who just last month sentenced Tuscon shooter Jared Lee Loughner to seven consecutive life terms plus 140 years in federal prison, is no darling of the gun control movement.

Burns is a self-described conservative, appointed to the bench by President George W. Bush, and he agrees with the Supreme Court’s decision in District of Columbia vs. Heller, which held that the 2nd Amendment gives Americans the right to own guns for self-defense. He is also a gun owner.

But while sentencing Loughner in November, Burns questioned the need for high-capacity magazines like the one Loughner had in his Glock, and said he regretted how the Federal Assault Weapons Ban was allowed to lapse in 2004. On Thursday, reacting to last week’s mass shooting in Newtown, Conn., Burns publicly called for a new assault weapons ban “with some teeth this time,” in an op-ed published by The Los Angeles Times.

A conservative case for an assault weapons ban:

If we can't draw a sensible line on guns, we may as well call the American experiment in democracy a failure.

Continue reading »

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Lawrence O'Donnell tore Senators Lindsey Graham and his BFF John McCain to shreds in his rewrite segment this Wednesday evening and I have to say, I can't think of a more deserving pair after their hypocritical treatment of Amb. Susan Rice this week.

McCain and Graham attack Susan Rice. Hypocrisy?:

Senators John McCain and Lindsey Graham vowed to block U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice for a potential cabinet position after her remarks on the deadly Benghazi attack. Yet not so long ago, they defended Condoleezza Rice over her misinformed Iraq WMD testimony.

MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell called out these top Republicans senators over their apparent double standard in Wednesday’s Rewrite segment on The Last Word.

“Lindsey Graham and John McCain are the same guys who had no problem voting for another woman named Rice to be Secretary of State. And they cast those votes after Condoleezza Rice failed miserably as George W. Bush’s national security adviser after she and everyone else in the Bush administration misread the intelligence on Iraq’s, as it turned out, nonexistent weapons of mass destruction program.”

The Republicans criticized Susan Rice for appearing on Sunday talk shows, prematurely claiming protests over an anti-Islamic video were the cause of the deadly Sept. 11 attacks, instead of calling the assault a premeditated strike. The U.S. ambassador to Libya and three other Americans died in the chaos.

Rice, who has not been formally nominated for a position, is reportedly a front-runner for the Secretary of State post, soon to be vacated by Sec. Hillary Clinton.

O’Donnell accused Graham of “lying Joe McCarthy-style” for calling Susan Rice “’an essential player in the Benghazi debacle.”

McCain, who selected Sarah Palin to be a heartbeat away from the White House, said Susan Rice is “not qualified.” He said, “Anyone who goes on national television in defiance of the facts five days later–we’re all responsible for what we say and what we do.”

As O'Donnell noted at the end of his segment: "John McCain and his fellow traveler, the little liar Lindsey Graham, stopped being responsible for what they say and what they do a long, long time ago."

Hey Lawrence, Graham is going to be on your buddy and Karl Rove dance partner, David Gregory's show this weekend. Too bad he's one of the people who won't hold him accountable as well, but you'll never hear O'Donnell call out by name since they work for the same network.

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Lawrence O'Donnell skewered Mitt Romney for his time writing love letters in the sand to Ann on the beach in France during the Vietnam war, and for being one of the few people out there to actually protest in favor of that war, while simultaneously getting draft deferments.

And he wrapped things up with Sen. Jim Webb who while introducing President Obama at a campaign event in Virginia, reminded Mitt Romney of just who that 47 percent he was talking about that fundraiser includes and what they're owed -- Webb to Romney: A ‘thanks’ would have been nice:

Introducing President Obama in Virginia Beach, retiring Sen. Jim Webb (D-Va.), condemned Mitt Romney for failing to mention veterans or the military in his GOP convention speech.

The omission was all the more damning, Webb suggested, because Romney is of an age where he might have served in Vietnam but did not.

“If nothing else, at least mention some word of thanks and respect when a presidential candidate who is their generational peer makes a speech,” said Webb, a former Navy secretary and decorated Marine who served in Vietnam. Romney was exempted from the draft, first as a student and then as a missionary.

“This was a time when every American male was eligible to be drafted. People made choices,” Webb said. “Those among us who stepped forward to face the harsh unknowns did so with the belief that their service would be honored.”

Webb also tied in Romney’s much criticized remark that 47 percent of Americans believe they are “victims” who feel entitled to federal handouts, saying some of those benefits go to veterans.

“Those young Marines that I led have grown older now. All gave some. Some gave all. That’s not a culture of dependency,” he said. ”They paid. Some with their lives, some with their wounds, disabilities. Some with emotional scars. Some with lost opportunities. Not only did they pay, they are owed. They are owed.”

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After Rush Limbaugh has been accusing pollsters of being in the tank for President Obama and trying to rig the election for him, MSNBC's Lawrence O'Donnell was wondering how the talking heads over at Fox were going to handle things now that one of their own polls shows President Obama with a five point lead over Mitt Romney.

Well, he got his answer on Bill O'Reilly's show where Dick Morris did his best to "rewrite" the poll results:

O’Reilly asked Morris what he thought about the poll. Morris essentially dismissed it as “understat[ing] the Romney vote” and said pollsters are using “the highest, most pro-Obama turnout model.” O’Donnell remarked at exactly how “Fox News’ biggest star” handled his own network’s poll.

“He brought on a Fox News employee to see that Rupert Murdoch paid for a Fox News poll that was wrong to basically rewrite the poll on the air into yet another indicator that Mitt Romney is going to win. Bill O’Reilly wasn’t going to be stupid enough to do that himself, but he knows there will always be a Fox News player ready to go to say whatever the Fox News audience wants to hear, no matter how preposterous it could actually be.”

Of course this is nothing new for Dick Morris. He was pulling the same stunt back in May as our friends at News Hounds pointed out here -- Dick Morris Disses Fox News Poll To Predict A Big Romney Win.

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From The Last Word's Rewrite segment this Thursday evening, Lawrence O'Donnell gives his take on Rush Limbaugh "working the refs" by attacking the presidential and vice presidential debate moderators, calling them "far left-wing liberal" Democrats when it's clear to everyone that they are not that.

While I agree with him on why Limbaugh is doing this, I disagree with his characterization of the moderators. They're not neutral. They're corporate, inside the beltway Villagers. And I haven't watched a lot of Lehrer or Raddatz on the air, but I do catch Crowley and Schieffer on a regular basis and they're both neither fair or balanced and are always more hostile to Democrats than they are to Republicans and both are pretty useless when it comes to addressing issues or matters that actually have any real impact on most voters' lives.

Limbaugh knows full well these hacks aren't liberals. You want some real liberals, let someone like an Amy Goodman, or Paul Krugman, or Sam Seder or Rhandi Rhodes moderate the debates and then we can literally watch Limbaugh's head explode in the studio. Although, sadly we'd never get the Democrats agree to have any of them asking questions either because they'd be asking both sides questions they don't like.

Here's more from O'Donnell's blog: Rush Limbaugh attacks debate moderators as 'far left-wing liberal Democrats':

Rush Limbaugh has a problem with the four journalists selected to moderate this year's presidential debates. As Lawrence O'Donnell highlighted on The Last Word, Rush thinks they are all "far left-wing liberal Democrats."

Jim Lehrer of PBS, whjo'll be hosting the first encounter, has previously hosted eleven debates. Limbaugh called him a "far left-wing liberal Democrat."

CNN's Candy Crowley, who will host the second "town-hall" style debate, is a "far, far left-wing liberal Democrat momma," Limbaugh said.

Rush dubbed CBS's Bob Schieffer a "far, far left-wing liberal Democrat...and dinosaur."

And he called ABC News reporter Martha Raddatz, who is hosting the vice presidential debate, the same—except instead of a "dinosaur," Rush dismissed Raddatz as an "infobabe for ABC."

“It’s the same old media hacks handling the debates,” said Limbaugh.

That last line I actually agree with. Just not for the same reasons as Limbaugh. Sadly these so-called "debates" are so scripted and structured that it's not always going to make a whole lot of difference who's moderating them. They're not real debates. They're media events.

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Lawrence O'Donnell hit Ayn Rand fan-boy and now Mitt Romney presidential running mate Rep. Paul Ryan for his romance with Rand that he's been trying to run away from for some time now. As O'Donnell noted, there are two reasons for Ryan trying to distance himself from his hero. One is the Catholic Church going after him for supporting her philosophy and the other was the fact that he was being considered as a running mate for Romney.

O'Donnell went after Ryan for trying to play dumb during his interview with Brit Hume on Fox News this Tuesday evening on Baier's show. During his time with Hume lobbing softballs at him, Ryan pretended he was a fan of Rand's, until he realized what her philosophy was. As we've shown here in post after post and as O'Donnell pointed out, that change had to have happened very recently because as late as 2009 he was still singing her praises: Paul Ryan Tries Keeping Up With Etch-a-Sketch Mitt By Pretending His Ayn Rand Fandom Is an 'Urban Legend'.

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Lawrence O'Donnell took Ron Paul to task for his very non-Libertarian like views on people's sex lives and contraception that sadly were on full display during last night's Republican debate on CNN. Anyone who's been following him at all already knows his views on women's issues, abortion and contraception are about as awful as his economic policies, but then you could say that for the lot of them.

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Lawrence O'Donnell rescinded some of his previous criticism of Newt Gingrich during his Rewrite segment and praised him for going after Mitt Romney and his time at Bain Capital and for earning himself new enemies like Rush Limbaugh for this:

O'DONNELL: Republicans are hearing things from Newt Gingrich that they have never heard from a Republican before. They are hearing that in our capitalist system the freedom to choose our occupations, the freedom to choose what we will do for money requires us to check, not just if it's legal, but if it's the right thing to do. That requires judgment. Sometimes ethical judgement. Sometimes moral judgement. It requires a sense of decency. It requires restraint in situations where the situation would allow you to exploit others.

What we do for money and what harm we do while doing it, goes a long way to define who we are. Mitt Romney took over businesses and among other practices, fired people to make money, not to make a modest profit that would keep the business alive, but to make massive profit, hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars in profit, unspendable amounts of money for him and his family. So much money that Mitt Romney fears even showing us just one year of his income tax returns, which would be but a tiny measure of his actual current wealth.

And Newt Gingrich is asking how many people could have kept their jobs if Mitt Romney was willing to make a couple of hundred million dollars less than what he made at Bain Capital. If Newt Gingrich stops talking about this tomorrow, if Rush Limbaugh scares him into silence on this, Newt Gingrich has already done an admirable job of forcing Republicans to think about something they don't like to think about, the difference between the right to do something and doing the right thing.

The Last Word on this goes to Newt Gingrich.

GINGRICH: I am not saying anything that Mitt Romney's done was outside the law. I'm saying it may have been bad judgment. It may have been an exploitation. It may be inappropriate and I think as a potential president you ought to look... the idea of saying “well I was barely inside the law so it's okay,” no. Was it the right thing to do?

Just because you have the right to do something doesn't mean it's the right thing to do.

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In his Rewrite segment on this Thursday evening's Last Word, Lawrence O'Donnell suggested Mitt Romney might want to find out more about the song "America the Beautiful", its lyrics and songwriter Katharine Lee Bates before he quotes it on the campaign trail again.

After attacking President Obama for his use of the teleprompter, apparently Mitt Romney has been trying to avoid them on the campaign trail and as O'Donnell noted, "when Romney tries to sound like he's speaking from the heart, he relies on a semi-memorized version of America the Beautiful."

And as O'Donnell pointed out, the poem which was later put to music that Romney pretends to love so much has verses that none of us remember such as this one:

America! America!
God mend thine every flaw,
Confirm thy soul in self-control,
Thy liberty in law!

O'Donnell noted that Mitt Romney, in his attempt to appeal to some of the Libertarians and Ron Paul voters in the Republican base this year, pretends that our laws are robbing us of our liberty, and songwriter Bates might have been a Republican, but she would not have been a Romney Republican. I wouldn't restrict that just to Romney, but I don't disagree that anyone who was a Republican ages ago might not recognize their party now and how far its fallen off the right wing crazy train these days. Romney's moved so far to the right during this primary race that I'm really curious how severely he's going to try to boomerang back over to the so-called "center" if he does eventually win the primary, which I suspect he will since he's the one with all of the big money behind him.

I also agree with O'Donnell on how stiff Romney is on the campaign trail and the reason his handlers really don't want him going off script too often, or the results are the type he showed us in the beginning of the segment above. He's a member of the 1 percent and doesn't have a clue what life is like for most Americans and it shows... to put it mildly.