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I hate to break it to Mr. Axis-of-Evil David Frum -- who was more than happy to be one of those conservative flame throwers when he was still in the club -- but Fox finally getting rid of Palin doesn't represent any kind of sea change for the network. They've still got a long, long list of others who are just as bad as Palin and Beck still working at that network and so unless we see some mass firings there, it's business as usual with or without Palin.

And CNN TeaNN doesn't have much room to talk about giving extremists air time after watching them work every bit as hard as Fox to promote the AstroTurf "tea party" and giving these flame throwing politicians endless interviews with little to no push back. I don't expect we'll see Howard Kurtz talking about that on his Sunday show any time soon though.

KURTZ: For three years now the former governor of Alaska has been one of the most prominent voices on Fox News.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SARAH PALIN, FORMER GOVERNOR OF ALASKA: Barack Obama is a socialist. He believes in socialism, in redistributing wealth and confiscating hard-earned dollars of our small business men and women.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KURTZ: On Friday we learned that Sarah Palin's contract will not be renewed. Sarah Palin was a very hot property when Fox hired in her 2009. What happened?

PAGE: That's showbiz. You know, she has really kind of played out now I guess as far as is Fox is concerned and her appeal. But it's been said Roger Ailes was not happy with the Palin arrangement. He wants to get away from that sort of showbiz punditry on the right, unless she's going to it clear her candidacy, I suppose.

KURTZ: Is it the political climate has changed since Palin's VP run, rise in the Tea Party or is it Sarah Palin's star has simply faded?

FRUM: I think both are true. Watch this in tandem when Glenn Beck was taken off the air. There was this period from 2009 to 2011 where there was nothing to wild too put on Fox News. Beck began to frighten his programmers. This man was capable of saying anything, including things that could wreck his show, damage the network.

And as they backed away from him, as they have backed away from other characters who went, the whole exercise is, the whole network is an exercise in going too far, but as they retreated from those who went farthest, I think this is a milestone, as well.

KURTZ: My reporting shows that Fox News did offer Sarah Palin a new contract, but what I would call low ball offer, significantly less, a fraction of the million dollars a year she had been paid.

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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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It seems ABC's This Week is continuing their goal of becoming Fox-lite with the inclusion of Lou Dobbs on the panel this Sunday. Can't we get Paul Krugman back to refute some of George Will's hackery instead of being treated to guests like Dobbs, and Laura Ingraham and Dana Loesch? Dobbs did his best to play the "blame the media" game here by claiming that it's the press that drummed up the outrage over Santorum Super-funder Foster Friess' remarks that women could "put an aspirin between their legs" as a means of contraception.

Sorry Lou, but it's not just the media trumping up whether his remarks were truly offensive. They were offensive to anyone that heard the remarks because women don't want to be made ashamed for having sex and told to keep their legs shut in the year 2012. They also don't want someone lying about the cost of contraception and the availability to women of all income levels.

Both Dee Dee Myers and Clarence Page did a good job here of explaining exactly why Friess' remarks don't reflect well on the Santorum campaign, not that he seems to be needing much help these days with all of the other offensive remarks he's already made on the topic of women's reproductive rights and health.

Transcript below the fold.

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While discussing Rush Limbaugh's defense of the NASCAR crowd that booed First Lady Michele Obama and the Vice President Joe Biden's wife Jill and Rush Limbaugh's subsequent defense of those fans and calling FLOTUS Michele Obama “uppity”, which host Chris Matthews rightfully called not “just a dog whistle, but a bugle call”, Matthews asked whether President Obama is going to have a hard time garnering the white vote this election as he did during his first campaign for president.

Andrew Sullivan, for all of his faults and with being in the same class as the David Brooks and Tom Friedman's of the world out there and with being wrong in his support of the Republican Party for years and making excuses for their policies, even though they obviously had utter and complete disdain for gay men such as himself, gets this one right.

As Sullivan rightfully asked here, just how many more minority groups does the GOP have to alienate and piss off before they have a real problem where they cannot just be the party of white angry men any more.

SULLIVAN: But I think it's a huge problem for the Republicans too.

MATTHEWS: How so?

SULLIVAN: Look, you've been watching these debates. Everybody, a lot more have been watching them. If you're a Latino, if you're black, if you're a woman and watched the way they sort of coo-cooed sexual harassment allegations. If you're gay and they booed a gay soldier. I mean how many minorities are they going to tell not to vote Republican until they realize this is going to be a problem for them?

And the more the Limbaugh brand adheres to the Republican Party, the more doomed they are.

As all of them noted, Romney has moved so far to the right on immigration, he's going to have to eventually move on that, but we're not likely to see him flip-flop again until the general election. How much longer the Republicans can continue to follow the Limbaugh model and use racial divisions to win elections successfully remains a question we haven't answered yet, but I sincerely hope those divisions continue to go by the wayside as Rush Limbaugh and Fox's audiences continue to age.

It's long past time that it's not socially acceptable for some racist like Limbaugh to be openly calling the First Lady "uppity" and all I can say is I have to wonder how someone like Limbaugh can continue to look himself in the mirror and spout hatred such as he did here, but I guess those millions he's got coming in somehow make that reflection of such ugliness a whole lot easier to ignore.

I hope Sullivan is right that there's finally a backlash against such hatred and ugliness and that those who are engaging in actual class warfare are punished at the ballot box.

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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's bad enough that CNN has decided to make embarrassment to the city of St. Louis and the state of Missouri, resident right-wing radio host and self-proclaimed "tea party" member Dana Loesch a regular contributor on CNN, but apparently ABC decided that we just could not survive the weekend without hearing some of her infinite wisdom as a panel member of This Week as well. Hiring her at CNN ranks right up there with their decision to make Erick Erickson part of their "best political team on television."

I guess it's true that hiring someone like this Breitbart contributor and flame thrower is a good idea if you think corporate America, the John Birch Society and the extreme right wing of the Republican base just haven't had quite enough representation in our corporate media these days.

While discussing whether Texas Gov. Rick Perry might have some problems in the general election with his stance on Social Security, and calling it a "crumbling monument to the failure of the New Deal" and a "Ponzi scheme", Loesch claims that Perry is not going to be harmed by those statements because he's just representing something the "grass roots" of this country have been supportive of.

She also tells one of the lies we've heard over and over from the right wing on the Social Security trust fund -- that it is supposedly broke because it's been borrowed against and all those T-bills that have been issued out there are somehow worthless.

Sadly, the completely useless Christiane Amanpour didn't call her out for it, but she did at least allow Clarence Page to weigh in, who just wrote a recent column on the topic of Perry and Social Security here -- Rick Perry grabs a 'third rail'.

Page reminded Loesch that if Perry wants to turn Social Security over to Wall Street as Bush did, that's not going to go over very well with most of the public and with the majority of voters, no matter what party affiliation they choose to align themselves with.

Full transcript below the fold via ABC News.

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After showing a number of clips in the run up to the next segment where Michele Bachmann clearly showed she didn't have a lot of use for either facts or concern for flame throwing, the panel on The Chris Matthews Show pondered whether the now very "serious" and now "disciplined" Michele Bachmann somehow has her finger on the pulse of the Republican electorate in America.

What was amazing to me is that even after showing how off the cliff Bachmann is and that there is no way in hell she should be elected to lead this country, they pretty much calmly discussed how the Republican Party has gone off the rails, and without explaining just how dangerous someone like Bachmann would be should the American public actually turn out to be insane enough to elect her, and pondered whether Bachmann now represents the heart of the Republican Party.

I never thought I'd live see the day when our beltway Villagers were seriously discussing Michele Bachmann's potential road to the presidential nomination, but here we are.

MATTHEWS: Andrea, I hear something there that's powerful. It's connecting the regular people, the base of the country, the regular people and their sense of conservative history, their conservative view of history.

MITCHELL: I think you're actually right and there's a new PEW poll which says that people do not want to see their Medicare, Social Security, I mean, not surprisingly, they don't want to see their benefits cut, they don't want to see taxe increases. The majority of people in this country are not willing to do the things that John Boehner is now prepared apparently to do, that the President wants us to do, that leadership, arguably needs to do in order to get past this crisis.

Michele Bachmann really has her finger on that pulse. She's put up a new ad, her first ad in Iowa, which said I will not vote for a debt ceiling.

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CNN's Howard Kurtz and the San Francisco Chronicle's Debra Saunders did their best to give cover to Sarah Palin for her crosshairs map targeting Rep. Gabrielle Giffords. It's pretty bad when even Politico hack Roger Simon has had enough of your nonsense. As he rightfully pointed out, Palin doesn't have to be directly responsible for what happened with this shooting to have a conversation about the violent political rhetoric coming from her and the rest of the right wing noise machine in America and the fact that it needs to stop.

Edit: A tweet by Howard Kurtz on Saturday.

KURTZ: You just saw that montage, Roger Simon, and you can't make a worse mistake than that, to declare a member of Congress dead. And I find it disappointing, because we've been through so many stores like that, where fragmentary information turns out to be wrong.

SIMON: Well, you're always going to get certain things wrong on these stories. The number of dead always climbs and shrinks, and climbs again.

I remember as a young school kid hearing that Vice President Johnson had been shot and President Kennedy had been wounded. That got flipped around. The fact is, we go with what we hear. That's often wrong.

KURTZ: But why not wait? Look, we understand it's happening, you're seeing sort of news gathering in its roughest and rawest form. Why not wait until it's confirmed. If she was dead, we would have found out 20 minutes later. [...]

KURTZ: And on that point, Debra Saunders, a couple of hours after this tragic shooting, even as we weren't sure who was alive and who was dead, I Googled "Gabrielle Giffords" and "Sarah Palin." And lots of stories and blog posts came up talking about Sarah Palin, 10 months ago, putting up a map of the Democrats she wanted defeated, and using crosshairs, gun sites, to represent those targets, and, of course, she used the rhetoric about "Don't retreat, reload."

And in a way that I found to be -- you know, first of all, I guess how about a decent interval? The victims were still being rushed to surgery. But I also felt like, was it fair to bring her into something that she had nothing to do with?

SAUNDERS: Well, it was ideological opportunism. I mean, it's very human, when something like this happens, you want the villain to be the person you hate. And so a lot of people rushed to do that.

You know, I've got to tell you, I'm a conservative. When I heard this story, my first thought was, oh, no, it's a right-wing nut with a gun. And I think that these stories about the Tea Party being a ticking time bomb are crap. I find them offensive, but we know that there are extremists.

KURTZ: But you said, oh, no, it's a right-wing nut with a gun, because you feared that then anybody on the right would, by implication, be blamed for this shooting?

SAUNDERS: No. Because I feared it was true. I mean, that was my first thought.

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After Eleanor Clift pointed out that there's no way Republicans want to see Sarah Palin nominated for president because she doesn't have a very good chance of winning, Pat Buchanan names her as his "Person of the Year" and thinks she's got the "polo position" for the GOP primary. Looks like Uncle Pat's going to stick with his grifter girlfriend until the bitter end when she claims the horrible meanies in the "lamestream media" unfairly forced her out of the race.