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Well, we got rid of this bigot on MSNBC, but he's still out there week after week on PBS with one of their other right wing relics, John McLaughlin, once again showing he's not quite ready for the 21st century with his hopes that we don't have a woman in the Oval Office for another few decades: Pat Buchanan Says, "Let's Hope" U.S. Doesn't Elect A Female President Until "2040 Or 2050," Then Claims He's Joking.

What's really sad relates somewhat to what Eleanor Clift pointed out, which is that politics is such a dirty game these days, you've got a lot of potentially good people who don't want to put up with the negative campaign ads and their name being dragged through the muck whether they're men or women. What did not get mentioned here is the issue of just how much money it takes to get elected and the impediment that is there to prevent anyone of any sex, gender, religion, party, or walk in life from having a chance to serve in elected office if you're not rich already or have the backing of those who are.

It is really pathetic that the United States is lagging behind a good portion of the rest of the world with the number of women in elected office or heaven forbid leading a country. It was sad to hear Buchanan hoping it remained that way for our highest office for decades to come, whether he claimed he's joking or not. I guess he's still bitter his girlfriend Palin didn't have a chance to get in there after she helped blow up John McCain's campaign.

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While discussing whether the "war on terror" is over or not and some of the documents that were newly released that were acquired in the raid on Osama bin Laden's complex, The National Review's Rich Lowry decided to take a cheap shot at Media Matters. Apparently if a spokesman for a terrorist organization says something bad about Fox, that means the watchdog site Media Matters that also does not like Fox are exactly the same.

Here's the offending quote by the al Qaeda spokesman:

Adam Gadahn: In general, and not matter what material we send, I suggest that we should distribute it to more than one channel, so that there will be a healthy competition between the channels in broadcasting the material, so that no other channel takes the lead. It should be sent for example to ABC, CBS, NBC and CNN and maybe PBS and VOA. As for Fox News, let her die in anger.

Fox News Watch, which this segment is from, is supposed to be Fox's sorry excuse for a media watchdog site, that calls out biases in the "mainstream" evil liberal media, as opposed to all that "fair and balanced" reporting we get from Fox.

The show's equivalent we have from CNN is Howard Kurtz's Reliable Sources. It's usually a toss up from week to week on which one is worse with failing completely to be any sort of check on whether we're getting any honest reporting from our corporate media, and instead of adding to making their so-called "reporting" worse.

The right absolutely hates Media Matters because they dare to record and often just post without comment, what comes out of their mouths on a daily basis. But that's the equivalent of siding with terrorists in Rich Lowry's world. I'm sure if anyone actually asks him about this later, he'll write it off as another sorry attempt at right wing humor and claim that he was just joking, because everyone knows that it's completely hilarious when you call people you disagree with terrorist sympathizers.

And h/t to Media Matters for flagging this clip.

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I'm waiting for Cee-Lo Green to become the next Bill Maher over at Fox "News" to join in the false equivalencies game after this little stunt of his at an Obama fundraiser.

Artist Cee-Lo sings ‘F**K You’ uncensored at Obama fundraiser:

Music superstar Cee-Lo provided a very colorful moment during a fundraiser from President Barack Obama Friday evening in Atlanta, Georgia, singing the uncensored version of his hit song “F**k You.”

NBC’s The Voice co-host was scheduled to perform the PG version of the song titled “Forget You” with “forget” replacing the four letter swear word. But Cee-Lo was motivated to perform the song in the original way he created it after flashing a middle finger to the audience and asking, “Can I cuss?”

As Andrew Jones at Raw Story pointed out, Rich Lowry, who was filling in for Sean Hannity Friday night, was apparently unaware of who Cee-Lo Green even was before watching this clip and going on about the "incivility" in in our politics these days and Lowry wondered why someone from the Obama campaign staff didn't warn him ahead of time not to do this.

As one of the guests on the panel, Mo Elleithee pointed out, it's likely he was talked to ahead of time about not cursing on stage and just didn't listen and once someone is in the middle of a performance, it's next to impossible to control what they do. Personally, I find it a lot more offensive and uncivil to do what Fox does every day, which is lie to their viewers and spread propaganda 24/7 than someone cursing in a song, not that I think it was too terribly bright for Cee-Lo to have done this, knowing full well the Obama administration was going to get attacked for it.

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Well, we managed to get Pat Buchanan off the air on MSNBC, but that didn't stop him from rearing his ugly head on PBS over the weekend to sing the praises of one Charles Murray, along with host John McLaughlin and The National Review's Rich Lowry.

John McLaughlin opened the second segment of the show bemoaning the decline of marriage in the United States along with the number of children who are born out of wedlock.

For a little refresher on just who Charles Murray is, I'll just refer back to David Brooks singing his praises earlier this month on Charlie Rose's show which I posted here -- David Brooks: The Villagers' Mr. 'Common Sense Center'.

As was linked and quoted in that post, Charles Pierce took apart Brooks' op-ed preceding that interview in his article here -- Our Mr. Brooks Finds Another Very Important Thinker. Rich Lowry in the clip above failed to mention the entire title of Murray's book just as Brooks did, which is as Pierce noted Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960-2010. Somehow that whole "state of white America" portion of the title didn't seem to be very relevant to either of them. Imagine that?

As Media Matters documented before Buchanan finally got the boot from MSNBC, and as Buchanan mentioned in the clip above, Buchanan cited Murray's work in his recent book -- Pat Buchanan Won't Disavow Idea That Minorities Have Inferior Genes:

In his new book Suicide of a Superpower, Buchanan cites The Atlantic article and the work of Charles Murray, who co-wrote The Bell Curve with Herrnstein. The Bell Curve argues that there's racial differences in intelligence. Buchanan wrote in his book.

It seems trying to mainstream Murray's ideas are nothing new for our corporate media or for The McLaughlin Group in particular. From FAIR back in Feb. 1995 -- Racism Resurgent - How Media Let The Bell Curve's Pseudo-Science Define the Agenda on Race:

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Dave already wrote about this last week where the crew at Fox & Friends were attacking the Girl Scouts, claiming they were conspiring to "promote a clear liberal ideology" because they included Media Matters in one of their publications:

Fifteen-year-old Sydney Volankski, who left the Girl Scouts in 2010 to write about their "pro-abortion mindset" on her blog, has now discovered that a guide published by Girl Scouts of the USA (GUSA) advises scouts to check media facts through a number of sites including Media Matters, which Fox News host Steve Doocy called "clearly a lefty blog."

Glenn Beck's website The Blaze first hyped the latest claims against the Girl Scouts after they were contacted by Volankski's mother.

"Perhaps the Girl Scouts staffers were too busy to respond to us, but considering the fact that the Media Matters reference is, in itself, a form of misinformation, bias — potentially even indoctrination — we assumed that the book would no longer be on the market," The Blaze's Billy Hallowell wrote. "We were wrong."

As their one liberal (and always outnumbered) panelist, Jehmu Greene pointed out on Fox News Watch this week and as Dave did last week, the other larger story here is that this girl that Fox had on as a guest last week on Fox & Friends is trying to take down the Girl Scouts, claiming that they're a "pro-abortion" organization for wanting to give their members accurate information about women's reproductive rights. Here's more on that from Dave's post last week:

The former scout has also written that "role models GSUSA encourages girls to emulate include pro-abortion champions, Marxists, Socialists and advocates of same sex lifestyle."

While the national Girl Scouts organization does maintain a neutral position on reproductive rights, local and regional chapters have the autonomy to partner with groups like Planned Parenthood for educational purposes.

"In some areas of the country, Girl Scout troops or groups may choose to hold discussions about human sexuality and may choose to collaborate with a local organization that specializes in these areas," GSUSA said in a statement earlier this year. "The topic is discussed from a factual, informative point of view and does not include advocacy or promotion of any social or religious perspective."

For his part, the National Review's Rich Lowry continued to beat that drum during this segment. And panelist Jim Pinkerton chimed in that if the Girl Scouts had just included Brent Bozell's right wing rag, The Media Research Center, which is just as much of a propaganda arm of the Republican Party and the right wing as Fox "News" he would have been just fine with the publication including Media Matters as well.

The only proof anyone on the panel offered up as to why Media Matters should not have been included in the publication is because they're a "far left" organization that receives money from George Soros, so of course the Fox panelists claimed they therefore can't be trusted. Never mind that the real reason they hate them is they've got a laser focus on the misinformation that's being spread over at Fox.

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Just before President Obama gave his speech this Tuesday in Osawatomie, Kansas, Fox's Megyn Kelly brought on The National Review's Sarah Palin fan-boy, Rich Lowry to opine over whether there was some risk involved for the president by invoking Teddy Roosevelt with this latest push to get Republicans to agree to an extension of the payroll tax holiday.

Naturally Kelly was very concerned over whether this would place some undue burden on the, as she called them, "so-called rich" and they dismissed the fact that we have record income disparity now which is similar to Roosevelt's time because no one paid personal income tax in those days. Naturally they also used the opportunity to repeat the Republican talking points that Americans are over-taxed, over-regulated and that our entitlement programs are out of control to claim that Roosevelt would be horrified by the tax burden placed on them now. Lowry repeated the lie that the administration is trying to take us back to the days when upper earners were paying as high as fifty percent or more in taxes, when no one is talking about going back to those rates now.

And of course they couldn't finish trashing President Obama for daring to want to talk about some fairness in our economy without pulling out the other Fox boogeyman... Socialism. The horror.

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Media Matters has been following this discredited story for some time now and you can read some of their past posts on that here -- Rich Lowry Clings to Discredited Obama-Bullied-Ford Story, Claims Denials Mean "It's Probably True". As they noted last week, The Washington Post's Greg Sargent already debunked this story, but that didn't stop the panel on Fox News Watch this weekend from continuing to treat it as a scandal.

Wash. Post's Sargent Deflates Story That White House Pressured Ford Over Ads:

The Washington Post's Greg Sargent reported today that the White House and Ford Motor Co. are both denying a story about the White House pressuring Ford to yank TV ads critical of the auto bailout. These allegations originated with a Detroit News column and have been spread by right-wing bloggers, including Michelle Malkin and RedState. From Sargent's post:

Apparently some right wing bloggers think they may have found their next big scandal: The White House may have pressured Ford Motor Company to yank a TV ad critical of Obama's rescue of the auto companies!

That would be quite a story indeed -- the latest example of heavy handed White House bullying of the private sector, all in service of its hated auto bailout. Except there's a small problem: Ford and the White House are both denying the tale, and the original report that is the basis for all the chatter today is not even sourced at all.

As Sargent also wrote, the ad ran its normal four week course and both parties denied there was any pressure placed on Ford to pull it. That's not going to stop Fox from continuing their latest feigned outrage over the latest non-scandal coming out of the Obama White House.

The other thing that kills me about the fact that Ford ran this ad in the first place is one, those auto bailouts started under Bush and not Obama -- a point that seems to get overlooked by the yappers at Fox here.

Another point I think bears discussing is that if both the Bush administration and the Obama administration had not supported bailing out the auto industry in America, even though Ford did not directly participate in the bailout, what do they think would have happened to their company if their suppliers had started going out of business as a result as this article from last year discussed? Frankly I find it pretty astounding that Ford thought it was a good idea to run the ad in the first place. They may not have been directly helped by the program, but they sure as hell were indirectly helped.

I don't expect that's a topic we'll be hearing discussed on Fox any time soon either. They'd rather drum up phony scandals to be outraged over, play the conservative victimhood game and trash the United Auto Workers Union as they did here.

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Another week, another day for Eleanor Clift to get ganged up on as the lonely representative of the “left” on PBS's The McLaughlin Group. This week one of the topics was Gov. Rick Perry's statement during the GOP debate that Social Security is a Ponzi scheme. Naturally, Mort Zuckerman, Pat Buchanan and Rich Lowry all came to his defense.

ZUCKERMAN: Yes, well you know there was a cartoon in The New Yorker and somebody was asking Bernie Madoff, “What was your inspiration?” He said “Social Security.” I'm not making that up. Okay, so that's in fact what you have in Social Security is we all know, you have millions of people who are going to be beneficiaries over the next several decades, and the funding still isn't there. And nobody's being willing to address this, either by postponing the age at which you get it. So in one sense it is clearly a false basis for the financial structure of it.

After McLaughlin chimes in and claims the money is not going to be there for young people as well and who also calls Social Security a Ponzi scheme, then we get treated to Pat Buchanan with yet more fearmongering.

BUCHANAN: But John, there is no trust fund. They say, look at the trust fund out in Virginia, they borrowed it and spent it. There's an IOU out there. He's telling the honest, though, hard truth! Is is smart politically? Romney is stomping all over him for having said it.

After some back and forth over whether Perry made a political mistake with what he said, we get this from the National Review contributor and Sarah Palin fan-boy, Rich Lowry.

LOWRY: The Ponzi language is not what's most dangerous to him. If he goes into a general election saying it's a failure and unconstitutional, then it will be hard to defend. But no one believes in the financing of Social Security over the long term. But it is a mistake for Romney to take this on now.

Late in the segment, Eleanor Clift finally got a chance to weigh in and talked about lifting the cap on taxable income to shore up the funding and the difficulties those who do manual labor would have with increasing the retirement age. Of course they all had a good laugh when she mentioned, heaven forbid, any of them possibly having to pay more in taxes. Heaven forbid any of these overpaid rich white men should think they might have to participate in some “shared sacrifice.”

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Fox News host Martha MacCallum said Thursday that Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-NY) didn't deserve five uninterrupted minutes to announce his resignation.

As Weiner was announcing his intentions to step down at a press conference Thursday afternoon, he was mercilessly heckled. One man shouted "pervert" and several other lewd comments.

"Boy, a lot of anger in that room," MacCallum announced as Weiner left the podium. "Did you hear the heckling? Sometimes it was almost difficult for Anthony Weiner to get his sentences out. There was a very strong reaction in that room which is emblematic of the way things happen everywhere this man goes. He evokes a lot of response in everything that he does."

"The heckling was really extraordinary," National Review editor Rich Lowery told MacCallum. "Given the abuse and the humiliation that's been heaped on this guy, you could at least give him five uninterrupted minutes to sing a swan song."

"But you know what, Rich?" MacCallum asked. "The problem is that he never gave anyone else five uninterrupted minutes. You know, you think about the way he talked to those reporters in the room when he came out of his office that day and he was berating them."

"Let's pile on, shall we?" radio host Allen Colmes said sarcastically.

"All I'm saying is that the energy in the room came right back at him," MacCallum insisted.

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The panel on the Fox News Watch, the weekend show on Fox News that claims to look for bias in the media, apparently isn't too happy with President Obama for telling Rolling Stone Magazine that their right wing propaganda network might not be so good for the country.

The golden age of an objective press was a pretty narrow span of time in our history. Before that, you had folks like Hearst who used their newspapers very intentionally to promote their viewpoints. I think Fox is part of that tradition... it is part of the tradition that has a very clear point of view. It's a point of view that I disagree with... It's a point of view that is ultimately destructive for the long-term growth of a country that has a vibrant middle class and is competitive in the world.

Jim Pinkerton immediately confuses Fox's propagandized viewers to Fox itself and pretends the president said their viewers are destructive to the country. He also manages to give two whole examples of some reporting he didn't like during that “golden age” from back in the 1930's and the 1960's from Walter Duranty and Daniel Schorr. Nothing like holding some old grudges there.

I find the gripe against Shorr particularly amusing since it's for a "hit piece" he did on Barry Goldwater. Here's how the right wing rag Newsbusters portrayed the story. Looking Back at Schorr’s Goldwater-Nazi Axis CBS Evening News Hit Piece. And here's how it was portrayed in his obit in the New York Times linked above.

Goldwater had held a grudge since 1964, when Mr. Schorr, while at CBS, reported on the enthusiasm of right-wing Germans for Goldwater as he secured the presidential nomination that year. Mr. Schorr noted that a planned postconvention Goldwater trip mainly involved time at an American military recreation center in Berchtesgaden, site of a favorite Hitler retreat.

Heaven forbid someone was doing some guilt by association in their reporting. We all know the "reporters" on Fox "News" would never do a thing like that.

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