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If Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney has his way then toddlers could be getting a dose of fast food advertising with their Bert and Ernie.

During a campaign event in Clinton, Iowa Wednesday, the former Massachusetts governor told supporters that there were a number of things he would do to balance the budget.

"One is to stop certain programs," he explained. "Stop them. Close them. Turn them off. Even some you like."

"You might say, 'I like the National Endowment for the Arts.' I do," he continued. "I like PBS. We subsidize PBS. Look, I'm going to stop that. I'm going to say that PBS is going to have to have advertisement."

"We're not going to kill Big Bird, but Big Bird is going to have advertisements, alright?"

Sesame Workshop, the nonprofit behind the PBS children's show Sesame Street, says that the program was designed for children between the ages of 2 and 5, but is increasingly being watched by kids under the age of 2.

As of 2009, nearly 77 million Americans had watched Sesame Street as children.

In the late 1970s, the Federal Trade Commission determined that advertising to children under the age of 6 was unfair and deceptive. Research has also shown that children under the age of 8 have no defenses against advertising and often take advertising claims at face value.

Some countries like Sweden and Norway ban all advertising directed at children under 12, while other countries such as the United Kingdom, Greece, Denmark and Belgium place restrictions on advertising.

(H/T: Talking Points Memo)

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I already posted some of Mitt Romney's interview with Charlie Rose from this Monday night on PBS. Think Progress posted this portion where it looks like Romney is determined to help the Democrats with having an easy time making some negative campaign ads against him if he does end up being the Republican presidential nominee.

Romney Defends "Wall Street" And "Insurance Company Executives" From Obama’s Criticism:

Appearing on PBS last night with Charlie Rose, GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney suggested President Obama is risking the very prosperity of the country and the middle class when he criticizes Wall Street and insurance executives:

ROMNEY: He has been the most divisive president I’ve ever seen. He has attacked one American after another, one group after another. He creates these straw men and says that Republicans believe this terrible thing, and aren’t they awful. He went after insurance company executives, Wall Street, all these bad people he finds out there. Look, Americans are not going to be a powerful and vibrant economic engine with a powerful middle class if we attack one another.

Romney doesn’t seem to be concerned with whether there’s any merit to Obama’s criticisms or not; he objects to the mere fact that the president would criticize anyone. For instance, Romney’s defense ignores the fact that Wall Street helped cause the financial crisis and ensuring recession. Obama’s main “attack” on Wall Street was the Dodd-Frank financial reform law, which has hardly hurt the industry. [...]

The comments likely won’t help Romney beat the rap off being “Mr. 1 percent.”

As they noted, Romney also defended his time at Bain Capital later in that same interview and "said that attacking Bain for laying off thousands of workers is almost tantamount to an attack on capitalism itself." As previously posted at this site, Mitt Romney is still raking in the dough from Bain to this day.

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Former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney who had previously been avoiding doing any interviews with the media before it started looking like his frontrunner status in the GOP primary race was in jeopardy with Newt Gingrich rising in the polls, sat down with PBS's Charlie Rose and did his best to punt when asked what he thought about the shrinking middle class in America and the income disparity that has so many Americans upset these days.

Rose asked him straight up, twice, if he was concerned about the middle class disappearing and the class divisions we see growing deeper in the United States and in both instances, his response was to basically punt and make arguments about how we'd better not be too hard on that upper 1 percent, to trash unions, pretend that we're "punishing" those at the top if we would like to see them pay their fair share in taxes, and try to claim that if leave our economy to the "free markets" that everyone in society is going to end up being better off.

It really astounds me that after watching what forty years plus of what Reaganonomics have done to us that anyone in American politics could be so tone deaf to the fact that trickle down economics don't work and that without government intervening to make sure we protect American workers, we're going to continue to see America's economy go down the tank other than for the richest among us, like Mitt Romney, but that's exactly what we got from him during this interview.

If this is the best the GOP has to offer for the upcoming presidential election, and if these are the arguments Romney wants to make if he's hoping to be elected president, I actually look forward to watching him trying to repeat his performance with President Obama sitting across a podium from him, rather than Rose lobbing softballs with little follow up.

Romney's got all of his talking points down for the media as long as they allow him to change the subject and not actually answer their questions as he did here. He never really addressed the problem of income disparity other than to pretend that putting more money into the hands of the rich is going to solve it. I sincerely hope he doesn't get the kind of pass he did here if he wins the nomination once the debates start for the general election.

The other candidates may have their problems, but they truly don't have a better representative other than maybe Newt Gingrich of any of them that's more out of touch with the working class and what most average Americans are going through right now than Mitt Romney.

Some rough transcript of the beginning of the interview below the fold.

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Who needs Fox News when we've got PBS out there spewing the same type of nonsense we hear nonstop there, and allowing David Brooks to come on the air opining the failure of the so-called "Super Committee" to reach a deal and praising Mitt Romney for embracing the advice of Pete Domenici and Alice Rivlin, who were urging the committee to partially privatize Medicare. But that's exactly what we got this Monday on The Charlie Rose Show.

Think Progress laid out why this is a terrible idea in their post here -- GOP Super Committee Co-Chair: Lawmakers Failed Because Democrats Refused To Privatize Medicare:

Rep. Jeb Hensarling (R-TX) faults the Democrats’ refusal to accept partial Medicare privatization for the super committee’s inability to come up with a bipartisan plan to lower spending in today’s Wall Street Journal. He writes, “Democrats on the committee made it clear that the new spending called for in the president’s health law was off the table” and pretends that the spending in the Affordable Care Act added to the deficit (it actually reduces it). “Republicans offered to negotiate a plan on the other two health-care entitlements—Medicare and Medicaid—based upon the reforms included in the budget the House passed earlier this year,” he continues and lays out the premium support proposal offered by Alice Rivlin and Pete Domenici: [...]

Hensarling doesn’t mention that the Rivlin-Domenici premium-support proposal doesn’t so much lower national health care spending as it shifts it to the beneficiary. The plan reduces the federal contribution to Medicare by capping costs for each beneficiary and offering premium support credits that won’t keep up with actual health care spending. The federal government spends less, but seniors will pay more out of pocket for health care benefits every year. The proposal also breaks up the market clout of traditional Medicare and rather than ratcheting up some of efficiencies and payment reforms in the Affordable Care Act, it sets the nation on an untested path of private competition — leaving seniors vulnerable to the manipulations of for-profit health insurers.

Rough transcript of Brooks' hackery below the fold.

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MSNBC isn't the only network that needs to hear from their viewers that Pat Buchanan ought to be taken off the air. Buchanan is also a regular guest on PBS's The McLaughlin Group and this week was no exception with Buchanan and the other panel members being asked to weigh in on whether President Obama is going to have any trouble being reelected because of his failure to get some sort of immigration reform passed.

After one of the other guests, Susan Ferrechio pointed out the obvious, that there was no way Obama was ever going to get any type of immigration reform past a Republican filibuster and wavering Conserva-Dems in the Senate, it didn't take Buchanan long to go on a little tirade here about amnesty and whether the children of illegal immigrants who were brought here at a young age should be allowed a path to citizenship.

Eleanor Clift rightfully pointed out that any backlash that President Obama might be facing is likely to be more than offset by the likes of Buchanan and his ilk who have been hammering on the issue of illegal immigration for political gain for some time now.

After Clarence Page pointed out that what really has the Hispanic community upset is the number of deportations that we've seen soar under the Obama administration, host McLaughlin asked why we're not talking about just what activities they're doing that are considered illegal and what they actually contribute to our society and said we should welcome them with our aging population here in the United States.

After McLaughlin asked if easing refinancing for homeowners would earn him any Hispanic support back, Buchanan responded:

BUCHANAN: No and the immigration should be cut John because we've got twenty five million unemployed and underemployed and you're bringing in workers? […] Send them home and tell them to file their papers and get in line!

MCLAUGHLIN: It would ruin the economy! It would depress it even more! They're at the top of their profession, some of them.

BUCHANAN: They're agricultural workers!

As Eleanor Clift rightfully pointed out following that remark, immigrants whether legal or illegal are not the ones destroying the economy and if anyone wants some proof of that, just look at what happened in Alabama where farmers had crops rotting off of their vines.

Buchanan is the last person the viewers on PBS or any other network need to be hearing from when it comes to the topics of immigration, racism, or minority rights in the United States. As Nicole wrote here, Color of Change is asking that everyone sign a petition to MSNBC to get Buchanan taken off the air there. If you'd like to send PBS the same message, you can find their contact information here.

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On this weekend's The McLaughlin Group on PBS, after host John McLaughlin asked his panel whether or not the Occupy Wall Street is going to have any impact on the upcoming presidential race next year and whether the movement is "transitory or enduring", Pat Buchanan responded by comparing the movement to the demonstrations we saw in the 1960's, proving once again that he still hasn't quit reliving his days from back in the Nixon White House.

BUCHANAN: It's going to be very damaging to the President for this reason if he gets too close to it because it’s going end very, very badly with these folks in the winter, and they’re not going to be getting publicity, they’re going to be acting up and acting badly, like the worst of the demonstrators in the 60's.

MCLAUGHLIN: You mean overnight camping? Things like that?

BUCHANAN: Well not just overnight camping. They’re going to start fighting with the cops.

Eleanor Clift followed up by noting that it was a Iraq veteran and not the police who was harmed during the Occupy Oakland protests and asked Buchanan which side he was going to blame for that. And both Clift and Page responded the they believe the group has staying power. As Page noted, they've already succeeded in changing the debate in America from deficit reduction, which is all you heard from these Villagers in the corporate media, to income disparity and the wealth gap, as demonstrated by the fact that they were even having that very conversation during this segment.

Buchanan and his ilk have been using the tactics of divide and conquer and fear for political gain in order to divide the working class against each other for decades now. I'm sure he's hoping they'll manage to do the same thing by demonizing the Occupy Wall Street movement as we've from him and his cohorts on Fox and in the right wing media ever since the movement started picking up steam and they could no longer ignore them completely.

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It appears that Fox's Liz Trotta is terribly upset that PBS decided to give Democracy Now's Amy Goodman a little face time on the Charlie Rose Show earlier this week. She spent the better part of her weekly commentary time with Fox's Uma Pemmaraju this Saturday being completely dismissive of Goodman and Democracy Now because heaven forbid they represent a "lefty" point of view and continually lied to their audience calling the rest of the "mainstream" media, which we all know is actually the corporate media, "liberal" as well.

Given the fact that Fox did its best to ignore the protests completely along with most of the corporate media until they started growing to a point where they could no longer be ignored and Fox's continual mockery and dismissive attitude towards the movement and the protesters since then, segments like this are now the norm on that network. What I found surprising about this segment is the fact that they decided to acknowledge that Amy Goodman and her program Democracy Now even exist at all.

PEMMARAJU: Alright, amid the flurry of Occupy protests, a news program called Democracy Now is getting much more attention than usual. Fox News contributor Liz Trotta is joining us now to explain. Hi Liz.

TROTTA: Good morning, or good afternoon Uma. You know, Democracy Now, as this so-called independent grass roots network is called has been around for about fifteen years. And the star of the show is a rather sternly prim lefty by the name of Amy Goodman. And they deal with all manners of left wing... all manner of left wing causes and have been particularly under the microscope since these Occupy protests, which they've fallen in love with of course.

But you know they're... Amy Goodman and her compatriots are charging that the mainstream media, that means the liberal mainstream media, hasn't gotten their story right. So she gave... this was said in an interview she gave with Charlie Rose last week. Let's see... let's hear a little bit of it, of Amy Goodman from Democracy Now.

(VIDEO)

GOODMAN: I think the mainstream media has been revealed through all of this over these last five weeks as not being mainstream any more... because if you look at the polls now, most Americans actually support these Occupy Wall Street movements all over the country.

(END VIDEO)

TROTTA: Well, we can't call her wrong on that. The polls have shown support for the Occupy movement. But what's really amazing is how she's giving a lash to the mainstream media, which of course if the liberal mainstream media and saying really that they're not liberal enough. And I guess when you look at it from Amy Goodman's point of view, it's absolutely true.

Now who are these people? They're on an hour every night in New York. Check your local guides for times and stations. They claim to be on nine hundred and fifty stations across the country, they don't carry ads and they said they don't have ratings. And they also say that they run... are run by contributions from individuals. One can just imagine what that lefty list looks like.

Their subjects are quite interesting but very predictable; the Oakland and New York protests, protesters of all kinds, activists from Egypt who even admit on the air that they're here to see if they can get a handout and even some old time Vietnam war veterans; even Iraq veterans against the war, you name it.

They're all there for an hour everyday. Look for this program if you really want to be entertained and they promise to be on a lot more to delve even deeper and support even more what we now know as the nationwide, Occupy protest movement.

PEMMARAJU: Well, there you go Liz. It will be interesting to see what this winter weather does to all those folks who are camping out and about.

TROTTA: Oh, good point. Good point. I got up this morning and looked out the window and thought hmmm... I wonder how many are left.

PEMMARAJU: Exactly Liz. We shall see.

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If you missed this Tuesday's Charlie Rose Show on PBS, here's his really wonderful interview with Democracy Now's Amy Goodman and Truthdig's Chris Hedges with their thoughts on the Occupy Wall Street movement.

More video below the fold.

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During a discussion on PBS's The McLaughlin Group where the panel of Tim Carney and Pat Buchanan on the right and weekly lonely representative of the left Eleanor Clift and someone that didn't belong there with her on the left side of the aisle as usual, billionaire Mort Zuckerman, I caught something unusual that we don't hear every day when Zuckerman is allowed on the air, and that's someone asking him just what he's worth.

John McLaughlin did just that during a discussion on President Obama campaigning on the co-called "Buffet rule" and asking millionaires and billionaires to start paying their fair share in taxes. Zuckerman really did not want to discuss just how much money he makes every year, but said he was more than happy to discuss Warren Buffett's finances if McLaughlin wanted to do so.

Zuckerman also resorted to the usual nonsense that we'd have actually gotten some meaningful "reform" on taxes done if President Obama had just gone to the Republicans in private and asked them kindly if they'd be willing to quit obstructing and trashing him in public on a weekly basis and kissed their rings to get some "bipartisan" cooperation on changing our tax code.

As Clift rightfully pointed out here, it's been obvious for a long time that they're not willing to work with him on anything, even when it's him embracing what were formerly their policies, so he's basically been left with no choice but to take his case to the voters for the next election.

Excuse me please if I share Clift's sentiments here that heaven forbid we hurt these poor rich people's feelings by asking them to think they should contribute to our society in America by some similar or greater percentages than the middle class and the poor are taxed right now.

Of course, Zuckerman claimed that he supports the rich, such as himself paying their fair share as well, but I'd be curious if anyone pushed him on the specifics of that support on just what those specifics would be just how well that claim actually holds up. Of course none of those specifics were asked for by McLaughlin here.

Zuckerman was a lot more interested in bashing the president for supposedly not trying to work with Republicans, when he has, and pretending like the Republicans in the Congress are ever going to work with him no matter what he does, and having a hissy fit about that supposed lack of cooperation during this segment.

How pathetic is it that we've got in the United States a network, PBS, that is trashed as being liberal by Republicans, when it's not and someone like a billionaire Mort Zuckerman allowed to supposedly represent the "left side of the aisle" of the political spectrum, instead of this show ever putting anyone that you could rightfully call a progressive on the air in one slot, much less two of them?

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I was thankful to see Paul Krugman get some air time on PBS's Charlie Rose on this Friday's show, but sadly he got stuck debating David Brooks, who blathered on endlessly in the segment previous to what I clipped here, calling austerity measures reasonable and chastising Republicans for being unwilling to strike a deal with President Obama on spending cuts during this debt ceiling debate debacle.

Krugman did a nice job of shooting down Brooks' talking points defending the astroturf "tea partiers" on the size of government being too large and with pointing out the extreme level of obstructionism we've seen from Republicans since Obama took office. He also expressed his concerns that many of us have with President Obama governing way too far to the right and with being way too accommodating to Republicans while this madness from the other party is going on.

ROSE: There are two questions. One, if you look at the dysfunctionality of government in this case, who's responsible for them?

BROOKS: I don't pretend it's symmetrical... I wouldn't say it's symmetrical here. I do think the president and the Democrats have been much more flexible than the Republicans have been. I say that with a little pain maybe, but that's just simply the case. The president, to his credit has made his allies extremely uncomfortable, and if you were around in Washington yesterday when the entire Senate Democratic caucus erupted in fury, you saw that first hand. And so I think the Republicans are... it's a good short term negotiating strategy, but they are not seizing a deal which should be out there for them.

I'm sort of mystified why if the president is offering a $3 trillion in the reduction of government, why they're not seizing upon that and potentially settling either for nothing or maybe $500 million. I mean, it's just mystifying to me why they don't take this deal.

ROSE: Well, then take a guess. What's the answer?

BROOKS: Well, there are a lot of things. One, they will tell you they go home and nobody wants any more taxes. We ran on that, we pledged it. Second, and I think this part is bipartisan, the hatred is so strong, there is great personal resistance to doing a deal with the devil. And they regard Obama, or Boehner and Cantor as the devil. There's just sort of this emotional resistance to getting in a room, shaking their hand and having your picture taken.

And so even beneath the substance of it there's a great deal of emotional resistance, and when... even when the president makes an offer, which is a pretty good offer for Republicans, they're always looking for the weaknesses in it.

(crosstalk)

KRUGMAN: This is a longer term story. It's not just what's happened during these negotiations. The underlying reason we have dysfunctional politics right now is the radicalization of the Republican Party. I mean, Bruce Bartlett, a Republican, or maybe now an excommunicated Republican just said basically Obama is a moderate conservative. He's basically governing to the right of Richard Nixon. But what's happened is that the Republican Party has gone so far off into an extreme right wing position that we have gridlock because basically one party cannot say yes.

They cannot say yes to anything that might be coming from the other party. In a basic sense they don't accept the legitimacy of government by the other party.

BROOKS: To be fair to them, they would say that we've had government at a certain level of GDP for decade after decades, and roughly the same, and over the last couple of years its leapt up significantly, so if we want to bring it back to that level, to the 2008 level (crosstalk) that's the argument they would make.

KRUGMAN: David, all of that is the recession. All of that is that the ratio of government to GDP is higher because GDP is down and safety net programs; unemployment insurance and Medicaid and a few other programs that respond to hard times are up. If you take that out, there has been no increase in the size of government. That's an entire myth.

BROOKS: There is a long term trend of health care spending. I mean this is, and Paul and I have come back to this a couple of times in this conversation...

KRUGMAN: Right.

BROOKS: Health care spending is the problem.

KRUGMAN: Yeah.

BROOKS: And so there are two wildly different views of how you address that issue. And Republicans look out and see health care spending increasing, swallowing up everything else and they say we need something like the Ryan plan in order to fundamentally reform the structure of the program. And that's not a radically irresponsible position. It's a position you can disagree with, but it doesn't make them loons, I would say.

KRUGMAN: Well... we can go on. We should also point out that we have an enormous amount of obstructionism at all levels. Right? There's a tremendous number of unfilled positions. To a large extent Obama is trying to govern now with a hollow administration because he can't get officials approved. We had my former MIT colleague, Nobel Laureate Peter Diamond rejected for the Federal Reserve Board.

This is a crazy... uhh... this is what is making America ungovernable. It is the extremism of one party. You actually have an extremely accommodating, I would say alarmingly accommodating Democratic president, but a Republican Party that just won't deal.

I found Brooks' doublespeak on these “tea party” Republicans amusing – and I use that term loosely, because there is no “tea party”, it's the extreme right wing of the Republican base – where he had to admit that they're completely incapable of governing because of their deep-seated hatred for President Obama, but he felt compelled to defend them anyway after that admission.

Naturally Brooks played the Villager game of “both sides” are equal in this segment where he tried to pretend that there is some visceral hatred by Democrats of Boehner and Cantor that somehow compares to the right wing literally losing their minds from day one after our first black president got elected, which is just nonsense. When Brooks can find some Democrats out there with posters of Boehner and Cantor as witch doctors with bones through their noses or something similarly crazed and just downright hateful someone let me know, will they?