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From Nicole Sandler's Radio or Not, here's our own Nicole Belle's weekly segment called Fools on the Hill. If you try to catch the show live she's moved to a new time, 10am ET. You can listen to the entire podcast here.

Here's more from Nicole Sandler's blog:

And we’ll continue our Monday tradition of getting together with Crooks & Liars‘ Nicole Belle to dissect the Sunday talking head shows, in a segment we call “Fools on the Hill.”

Here’s what she sent me for today’s show, complete with links to all the clips we’ll comment on today so you can play along at home:

I guess since this weekend marked the 9th anniversary of the 9/11 tragedy, our relationship to the Muslim community was a large theme of the day.

Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, the chairman behind the Cordoba House, was on This Week and called the attacks now on the Park51 center—especially by partisans like Palin—are “disingenuous”:

http://videocafe.crooksandliars.com/david/imam-rauf-palin-attacks-islamic-center-are-0

Reza Aslan did the imam one better. During a roundtable of Meet the Press, Aslan cut down to the essence what many of us who are trying to make a distinction between terrorism and Muslims in general:

http://videocafe.crooksandliars.com/heather/reza-aslan-if-you-are-painting-15-billion-

The answer is kind of simple, actually: Islam. But let’s call a spade a spade for a moment. If you are painting 1.5 billion people with the same brush of violence and, and, and extremism, you’re a bigot. And I think what’s, what’s disturbing is the way that that’s become part of the, the, the natural discourse now.

To punctuate this point, Dave Neiwert did a post on 9/11 that noted that the Bipartisan Policy Center just recently released a report titled “Assessing the Terrorist Threat”, and did not note a single homegrown terrorist of a radical, right wing or Christian background, like the guy who wanted to shoot up the Tides Foundation, or Dr. Tiller’s assassination, or the shooters at the Holocaust Museum, the Universalist Unitarian Church, or the Hutaree militia.

http://crooksandliars.com/david-neiwert/assessing-threat-despite-rise-right-

Then we have the same old lies to the people on taxes. I think that this is being calculated as a the biggest arrow in the Republican quiver. I mean, when you have tea party types saying they’ve been taxed enough already (and they’ve already gotten a tax cut by Obama and would not be included in the expiration of the Bush tax cuts) and yet, we’re still having partisans telling us that repealing Bush tax cuts will affect small businesses:

http://videocafe.crooksandliars.com/heather/peter-morici-repeats-lie-repealing-bush-ta

Chris Wallace tries to do it too, and new chair of the President’s Council of Economic Advisers Austen Goolsbee sets him straight:

http://videocafe.crooksandliars.com/heather/austan-goolsbee-calls-out-chris-wallace-sm

And then finally, Howard Kurtz calls out Hannity for his “deceptive” editing of Obama’s Labor Day speech, ignoring that this is a standard operating procedure for Fox News:

http://crooksandliars.com/david-neiwert/kurtz-calls-out-hannity-his-deceptiv

It’s an exciting time for me. Thanks for bearing with the changes…. radio or not!

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In case you missed it like I did, here's our own Nicole Belle with Nicole Sandler with their Fools on the Hill Sunday talking heads show roundup from past Monday. Nicole Sandler has more here: Grayson & Tudor – Florida Progressives!

And in hour two, Nicole Belle of Crooks & Liars returns for our weekly Fools on the Hill segment, discussing the Sunday talking head shows. Here’s her take on the Sunday shows:

So I think today’s theme is cluelessness:

Chris Matthews asks his panel if the Tea Party will have veto power over the 2012 GOP nominee. First and foremost, they are using Sarah Palin as some benchmark of influence, which is ludicrous. Her endorsement is by no means a shoo-in for any candidate right now, and there’s nothing that says her influence will strengthen in the intervening years. If anything, if she opts to pursue a national candidacy herself, I suspect that the media scrutiny will result in her having even less credibility.

http://videocafe.crooksandliars.com/node/39178

It also gives the tea party itself far more credit than they deserve. I think we’ve seen middling electoral success from them in primary races, but they have yet to show themselves successful in full elections and given the polls for Angle, Paul and others, I don’t think they should crow just yet.

Which segues nicely into Howard Dean. He points out to Candy Crowley that although the conventional wisdom is that the party in power suffers electorally in mid-terms, when your alternative is the Party of No, conventional wisdom may be wrong.

http://crooksandliars.com/nicole-belle/howard-dean-name-one-thing-republican

And then we have Dick Armey, the corporate head of the Tea Party, spouting off some truly unbelievable stuff:

http://crooksandliars.com/karoli/dick-armey-medicare-trashes-constitution

He says that Medicare trashes the Constitution. Huh? What does he think those lazy, entitled senior citizens should do? Work to pay for their Alzheimer’s treatment? For proof, he brings up the example of “the” Christian Scientist, whom we apparently should feel bad is being forced to sign up for a doctor to get Social Security. Of course, no one says he has to GO to the doctors, just sign up for Medicare. But again, David Gregory falls down on the job of calling out this crap, and lets Armey filibuster through the segment and not allow Granholm to respond.

And then, in light of the protests on the Cordoba House in NYC over the weekend, Fareed Zakaria wants to remind Americans that we are not in a war with Islam and that al Qaeda hates factions of Islam as bad as they hate us.

http://crooksandliars.com/nicole-belle/fareed-zakaria-gps-al-qaeda-vs-islam

By the way, a commenter made this video of the NYC protests when the haters went after a passerby, who happened to be a construction worker at Ground Zero and not a Muslim.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EwaNRWMN-F4&feature=player_embedded

George Will thinks that the Mideast peace process is the biggest obstacle to Mideast peace.

http://videocafe.crooksandliars.com/node/39185

Amazingly, I actually agree with him if only for this story:

http://crooksandliars.com/ian-welsh/israeli-pm-natanyahu-america-easily-move

I think if we really want to see Mideast peace, then the US needs to come to grips with the dichotomy between what Israel officially tells us and what they say behind closed doors.

And then Fox chooses to use Judith Miller of all people to discuss the study that American people have lost faith in broadcast news

http://videocafe.crooksandliars.com/node/39175

Really, what can you say about them using the person the Bush White House used to feed propaganda about invading Iraq to?

Our own Howie Klein and Rep. Alan Grayson joined the show this week as well. Go over to Nicole's site to listen to the whole show.

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Things didn't go quite according to plan when CNN's intrepid reporter Wolf Blitzer asked one of those cliché questions reporters always seem to ask survivors of natural disasters.

WOLF BLITZER: “You’re blessed. Brian, your husband is blessed. Anders is blessed… I guess you got to thank the Lord, right?”

REBECCA: *Shrug*

WOLF BLITZER: (Insisting) “Do you thank the Lord for that split-second decision?”

REBECCA: “I–I’m actually an atheist,” (Awkward laughs) “We are here and you know, I don’t blame anybody for thanking the Lord.”

WOLF BLITZER: "Of course not."

Perfect.

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By now you may have heard about Toronto's crazy, allegedly crack-smoking mayor Rob Ford. The man's many pratfalls were the stuff of legend and local embarrassment, but are now finding international ridicule. And while Stewart highlights a few awkward moments, there are really so many cringe-inducing moments in Ford's less than stellar career it's actually hard to pick only a couple and leave out so many more. Slate has some here.

This is a few minutes of an eight minute segment. Later in the bit, Canadians Jason Jones and Samantha Bee educated Jon Stewart on Canada's true national pastime: smoking crack.

And lest you think Jon Stewart is the only comedian taken with Ford's brand of (unintended) physical comedy, last month Ford was also featured on the Jimmy Kimmel Show.

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Stephen Colbert got to the bottom (the very bottom) of 'Asparagusgate' last night, the dust-up between Attorney-General Eric Holder and Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-TX).

“How dare you cast aspersion on that man’s asparagus! What is next, sir? Libeling his lettuce? Questioning his quinoa? Arguing with his arugula? Repudiating his rutabaga?! Vilifying his vinaigrette before drizzling it on his scandal salad?”

Edit: As noted below, "Gohmert" is listed in Urban Dictionary as

Gohmert

verb: to say something that is obviously and patently untrue to the point of stupidity, then when called upon to provide concrete evidence of the assertion, to flounder about angrily while shouting about the integrity of the questioner.

The Congressman Gohmerted for 5 minutes when called upon by Anderson Cooper to provide evidence that terror babies are being sneaked across the border.

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Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) on Tuesday lashed out at fellow members of Congress for looking into how technology giant Apple is able to avoid paying billions of dollars in taxes.

The Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations released a report on Monday detailing how Apple had used a network of offshore shell companies in recent year to avoid paying taxes.

At a committee hearing on Tuesday, Paul was livid that Apple CEO Tim Cook was asked to testify.

"I'm offended by a $4 trillion government bullying, berating and badgering one America's greatest success stories," the Kentucky Republican told the committee. "Tell me what Apple has done that is illegal?"

Paul added that he was also "offended" that that the IRS would "bully" tea party groups.

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The worst Senator in a body replete with really bad and odious senators tells us why Tornado relief is different than Hurricane relief.

Via WaPo

In the wake of the devastating tornado in an Oklahoma City suburb, Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.) rejected comparisons between federal aid for this disaster and the Hurricane Sandy relief package he voted against.

That was a “totally different” situation, Inhofe told MSNBC, arguing that the Sandy aid was filled with pork. There were “things in the Virgin Islands. They were fixing roads there and putting roofs on houses in Washington, D.C.”

“Everyone was getting in and exploiting the tragedy that took place,” he said. “That won’t happen in Oklahoma.”

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Unlike his cohort Jon Stewart, who hasn't bothered to mention Jonathan Karl's Benghazi email scandal all week, Stephen Colbert had no problem taking the ABC reporter to the woodshed and giving him the treatment he deserved after his non-apology over the weekend.

Bruinkid over at KOS actually took the time to transcribe the whole show which I'll share part of here: Stephen Colbert lays waste to ABC's Jonathan Karl for his Benghazi lies:

And tonight's scandal is... Benghazi!!

Yes, Benghazi. Following the tragic attacks of eight months ago, Benghazi, and the rumored cover-up, has become problem #1 for the Obama administration. [...]

Yes, Benghazi is the biggest scandal since sliced bread was caught funneling money to Nicaraguan death squads. And folks, if Republicans are angry now, imagine how they'll feel when they learn where Benghazi is. [...]

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Oklahoma Sen. James Inhofe (R), who maintains that global warming is a hoax created by former Vice President Al Gore and the United Nations, said on Tuesday that it was "hard to explain" why Monday's tornado was "so much worse."

During an interview with John Berman on CNN, Inhofe remarked that the storm had transported a photo 80 miles from Shawnee to his neighborhood in Tulsa.

"So many things happen that are so hard to explain," he told the CNN host. "This thing was huge. This is one of the largest ones that we've had."

"What you're looking at now in Moore, Oklahoma is what you could have seen had you been there in 1999 or in some parts of of Shawnee. Devastation is devastation. And it's just that this is so much worse. Because you're talking about a two mile by 20 mile area. That's very unusual."

In terms of disaster aid, Inhofe said Oklahoma had "everything that we need," but he recommended donating to the Salvation Army and the Red Cross.

"It's going to be necessary to raise a lot of money."

As we already discussed here, Donald Rumsfeld found himself getting a nice softball interview from NBC's David Gregory this weekend on Meet the Press, but not all of his book tour has gone quite as smoothly as the big wet kiss he got from Gregory this Sunday.

Majority FM's Sam Seder walked his listeners though some of the highlights of Rumsfeld's contentious interview with American Public Media's Kai Ryssdal, who, as the KOS diary I linked in the prior post on the subject noted, asked "Rumsfeld some of the questions we've all wanted to ask."

As Seder noted, Rumsfeld might be looking to find himself a new publicist after that one, since he certainly didn't expect anyone to actually hold him accountable for his actions during the Bush administration and our invasion of Iraq. Seder says he hopes that it's not the last time he's subjected to an interview like this one because the government sure isn't going to hold him accountable, but I wouldn't hold my breath on whether he'll let it happen ever again.

Sadly, we're not going to see the corporate media hold him accountable either. We're going to see more interviews like the shameful one we got from David Gregory or we won't see him on the air at all.

One final note on the video above: Seder incorrectly identified Kai Ryssdal as working for NPR. He works for APM.