From the office of Sen. Bernie Sanders -- Deficit Hawk Hypocrites:

Who caused deficits? Some of the same people in Congress who bemoan all the red ink in the federal budget actually created the problem. At a Senate Budget Committee hearing on Tuesday, Sen. Bernie Sanders called out the hypocrites who showered the wealthy with tax breaks, who let pharmaceutical companies rip off taxpayers, and who launched wars without calling on the country to pay the price.

Don't forget that Bernie Sanders is one of the candidates we're supporting at our Blue America page and you can make a donation here.

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Bill Maher had a warning for North Korea's Kim Jong-un, who seems all too willing to push his luck with the United States given the fact that our country has been addicted to war for far too long. Maher also told his audience that it's time that we "start defining peace as strength" instead:

In the last part of his weekly “New Rules” segment, Maher lambasted “Kim Jong Pugsley of North Korea” for his threats of war with the U.S. and the West.

“Have you seen a North Korean rocket test?” he asked. “They don’t even look like real rockets. They look more like that thing the Russian kosmonauts were in when they crashed on to ‘Gilligan’s Island.’”

No, he said, the real threat here is the war-mongering Americans who are looking for “any excuse to ramp up the war machine again.” [...]

“Just like we’re the gun country,” he said. “Come on, we’re the war people. We don’t need a lot of encouragement. Have you ever met John McCain? Offering to go to war with the U.S. is like offering to go out to drinks with Lindsay Lohan. We’re already in the car.”

“Just in my lifetime, we’ve invaded Vietnam, Cambodia, the Dominican Republic, Granada, Panama, Bosnia, Iraq, Afghanistan and Iraq again,” he said. “That’s when you know you’re war-mongers, when some countries are coming up twice.”

“At some point, don’t you have to look in the mirror,” he asked, “and say ‘Maybe it’s me?’”

“America needs to start defining peace as strength,” he said. “Do you know who the role model for every president should be? Jimmy Carter. He was the one out of all of them who figured out how to sit in office for four years and never fire a shot.”

“And every president’s negative example,” he concluded, “should be Dick Cheney, who even shot his friends in the face.”

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Mandy Patinkin sat down with Stephen Colbert to discuss the his character in the Showtime series, Homeland, and what followed was a righteous rant and debate with Colbert -- with Colbert in full character -- on terrorism, whether we bear any personal responsibility for it here in the United States and the fact that words and not weapons are going to be the solution to our problems.

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From this Saturday's Up With Chris Hayes, his Story of the Week is a good reminder for anyone who is not thrilled with a lot of the ugliness of our democratic process, or frustrated with dealing with the United Nations -- it sure beats the alternative.

Hayes: The beauty of process:

ABC's Martha Raddatz did, I thought, on the whole, a pretty good job moderating Thursday night's vice presidential debate, particularly when asking questions on her area of expertise, foreign policy. But her final question of the night, about the negativity and sordidness of electoral politics, really bothered me.

Here's what she asked:

I recently spoke to a highly decorated soldier who said that this presidential campaign has left him dismayed. He told me, quote, "the ads are so negative and they are all tearing down each other rather than building up the country." What would you say to that American hero about this campaign? And at the end of the day, are you ever embarrassed by the tone?

That soldier, of course, isn't alone: Lots of Americans feel the same way. I've heard the same thing from random voters I've interviewed in every campaign I've covered. And it's a recurring theme among the political press paid to cover politics to bemoan the nastiness and negativity of the thrust and parry of electoral politics. But it's an impulse we should collectively resist, because it contains the kernel of an insidious view of the value of democracy and diplomacy and bureaucracy and the manifold ways that we as human beings channel and resolve conflict in a non-violent fashion.

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Rachel Maddow highlighted part of an event that took place earlier this week where she sat down with Bill Maher at the Saban Theatre in Beverly Hills, CA to promote her new book Drift. They discussed Ronald Reagan and the Iran-Contra scandal and the fact that the one person who bought Reagan's excuse that anything a president does when it comes to national security is legal, was Dick Cheney.

I hope the rest of the event is posted on line somewhere because I'd really love to get a chance to watch the whole thing. I'll add a link here if I find it.

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From the "Jesus candidate" Rick Santorum at this Sunday's NBC-Facebook debate. Santorum apparently thinks that it's perfectly acceptable for a nuclear armed United States to become a theocracy, but if it's the Iranians, well, that's a reason to go to war with them.

How very unChristian like of him. How many countries would Jesus bomb Rick?

GREGORY: Senator Santorum, I want to ask you about Iran. It's been a big issue in the course of this campaign so far. I wonder why it is, if America has lived with a nuclear Soviet Union, we have come to live with a nuclear North Korea, why is it that we cannot live with a nuclear Iran? And if we can't, are you prepared to take the country to war to disarm that country?

SANTORUM: They're, they're a theocracy. They're a theocracy that has deeply embedded beliefs that the, the afterlife is better than this life. President Ahmadinejad has repeatedly said the principal virtue of the Islamic Republic of Iran is martyrdom. So when your principal virtue is to die for your--for Allah, then it's not a deterrent to have a nuclear threat if they would use a nuclear weapon. It is, in fact, an encouragement for them to use their nuclear weapon, and that's why there's a difference between the Soviet Union and China and others and Iran.

GREGORY: What about Pakistan? They are in indifferent ally at best, they have nuclear weapons. Are you also prepared as president to say they must disarm or else?

SANTORUM: They are not a theocracy. And we're very hopeful of, of maintaining a more secular state than, than is in place today. But there is a serious threat, and this administration has bungled it about as badly as they can in trying to continue those positive relationships. We've had some real serious problems with the, with the Pakistani military. Obviously, with respect to Osama bin Laden, with respect to North Waziristan, but you have a--the reason is we have a president that's just very weak in, in that region of the world and is not respected...

GREGORY: All right.

SANTORUM: ...and, therefore, he's not, he's not been able to have that strong hand in working with Pakistan that they're used to.

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GOP presidential candidate Ron Paul got the neocons up in arms again with his statements during this Thursday night's GOP primary debate on Fox News when he told one of the moderators, Bret Baier, why he thought all the hyping of Iran's potential nuclear threat was so dangerous.

The LA Times summed up this segment of the debate quite nicely -- Ron Paul: Strike against Iran would risk a repeat of 'useless' Iraq war:

Ron Paul did it again. The libertarian-minded Republican separated himself from the pack of candidates at tonight's debate by urging restraint in response to a possible Iranian nuclear threat, saying the U.S. can ill afford a repeat of its now-concluded war in Iraq.

Paul said there was "no U.N. evidence" that Iran is developing a nuclear weapons program, calling claims to the contrary "war propaganda."

"To me the greatest danger is that we will have a president that will overreact, and we will soon bomb Iran," he said. "We ought to really sit back and think, not jump the gun and believe that we are going to be attacked. That's how we got into that useless war in Iraq and lost so much."

Paul said it "makes more sense" to directly engage with Iran diplomatically. And he even praised President Obama for "wisely backing off on sanctions" against Iran, which he called overreaching.

"We have 12,000 diplomats in our services. We ought to use a little bit of diplomacy once in a while."

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In case anyone missed it, there was actually another Republican debate this Saturday, this time sponsored by Citizen Link (formerly Focus on the Family Action) and moderated by Republican pollster Frank Luntz. C-SPAN was initially scheduled to air the debate and apparently reversed its decision due to budgetary reasons.

Here's Newt beating the war drums for Iran and pretending we don't send mercenaries such as Blackwater, now called Xe to go fight our wars for us and that we're somehow the only country on earth that heaven forbid has family members dying in wars during this Saturday's debate.

h/t Dave for the video

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And the hits just keep on coming from Michele Bachmann. From Greg Sargent at The Plum Line -- Bachmann on why she worked for IRS: “First rule of war is `know your enemy’”:

This is fun. Michele Bachmann, on the campaign trail today, offered what seems to be a new explanation for her previous work as a lawyer for the Internal Revenue Service, something that has drawn some ire from the right.

Her explanation: She worked for the IRS as a kind of secret anti-tax mole whose mission was to get to know the place in order to better undermine it later. As she put it: “The first rule of war is `know your enemy.’”

This explanation seems a bit at odds with descriptions of the episode she’s given on previous occasions, when she’s said her anti-tax fervor was the result of her work for the IRS. This version on the trail explains her work for the IRS — which spanned four years, from 1988-1992 — in a way that will be more acceptable to hard-core anti-tax conservatives. [...]

Bachmann, speaking at a rally today in South Carolina, said:

“We change the economy by changing the tax code. How many of you love the IRS? No! It’s time to change it. I went to work in that system because the first rule of war is ‘know your enemy.’ So I went to the inside to learn how they work because I wanted to beat them.”

Read on...

Chris Matthews made this part of his Sideshow segment this Thursday and asked if she was "running for president now to infiltrate the enemy, yet again?"

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As John wrote about yesterday, Alan Grayson is going to run for Congress again in Florida. He joined Ed Schultz to talk about the current negotiations going on right now over raising the debt ceiling and he didn't have too many kind words about our social safety nets being put on the table and for Republicans being given a complete pass for claiming we have to make huge cuts to the budget without explaining what those cuts are.

As Grayson noted, if we ended a lot of our ill advised military adventures, that would go a really long way towards balancing our budget rather than asking it be taken our of the hides of everyday Americans. Ed Schultz asked Grayson about President Obama putting Social Security on the table during these debt ceiling negotiations and I don't necessarily agree with the way Schultz characterized it since unfortunately we don't know enough details about what either side is offering up during these negotiations.

That said, I do agree that I don't think our social safety nets should have been put out there as a bargaining chip so that the Obama administration might be able to use to make the Republicans look like the unreasonable fools that they are if they still refuse to make a deal. The problem with making that offer is what if the Republicans take it? Then what?

Anyway, par for the course, Grayson as usual didn't pull too many punches here with how he feels about all of this.

Transcript below the fold.

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