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In what was an otherwise very informative segment discussing the rise in the number of hate groups in America in the wake of the recent shootings in Texas and questions as to whether there are links with a white supremacist prison gang, the audience of MSNBC's The Cycle were treated to conservative co-host S.E. Cupp playing concern troll for right-wing gay-hating fundamentalists, who are none too happy about being designated as hate groups by the SPLC.

As Dave Neiwert discussed here:

When right-wingers got wind of the fact that the Southern Poverty Law Center had designated a number of Religious Right organizations who specialize in rhetorically bashing gays and lesbians as hate groups, they and their allies on the Right came more or less unglued.

Now, rather than face up to the substance of the accusations, they're choosing to demonize the SPLC and their critics. Par for the course for this crowd.

Which is exactly what Cupp did this Wednesday with the SPLC's Heidi Beirich right about mid-way through the segment above:

CUPP: But Heidi, your group, the SPLC, has earned significant criticism over the years for smearing religious and far right groups and ignoring far left hate groups. Shouldn't people be aware of your ideological biases before they take seriously your claims about who they should be afraid of?

BEIRICH: Well, I guess I have to dispute the notion of the question on its... on the premise. The fact of the matter is that we've written about left wing domestic terrorism for almost a decade now coming from animal rights groups, for example, or eco-terrorist types. The criticism we get most heavily from the right-wing are complaints about our listing of groups like the Family Research Council or the American Family Association as anti-gay hate groups.

And the fact of the matter is that those organizations are akin to many of the white supremacist organizations that we list in the sense that they lie about gay folks. White supremacist folks lie about African-Americans.

In the case of something like the Family Research Council, they put out all kinds of defamatory information about how gays are child molesters at higher rates and so on, with the intention of destroying that particular population and making them appear to be lesser. So for us, it is a no-brainer to put groups like that on our hate list.

CUPP: The Family Research Council was actually the victim recently of a hate crime as I'm sure you're aware, when a gentleman stormed the building in D.C. with a bag full of Chick-Fil-A sandwiches.

BEIRICH: Yeah, I mean obviously, we condemn all kinds of violence. It's a horrible thing and what we're all about trying to stop domestic terrorism, violence and anything inspired by hate. That was a disgusting incident.

The wingers over at Brent Bozell's rag, Newsbusters, who I will not link to, were all over this, defending Cupp and blaming the SPLC for the shooting at FRC's headquarters, because of course they want to paint someone who tells the truth about hate groups and the lies they tell as a hate group themselves, as though the work the SPLC is doing is somehow equivalent to the garbage being spread by these so-called Christians. And naturally their comment section was full of attacks on Beirich for her looks, because we all know the most important thing is how you look on TV and not what comes out of your mouth. As Dave noted in his very long post which I linked above, when you can't defend your message, you attack the messenger.

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Any time I hear Rep. Marsha Blackburn start talking about "adult conversations" and Republicans needing to pay attention to their tone on any topic, I'm reminded of this little hissy fit she threw on the floor of the House just after the health care bill passed. Blackburn appeared on MSNBC's The Cycle and was asked about the immigration proposal put forth by a group of Senators this Monday and the fact that Republicans have been losing Latino voters in droves over the last few election cycles.

Her response was that they need to do a better job of getting their message out to the voters and that "sometimes their messengers aren't as good" or maybe they just haven't repeated their message enough times to be getting through to the voters. If she thinks the GOP needs some better messengers, maybe she ought to take a good look in the mirror and start spending a little less time throwing flames in front of the cameras.

And note to Rep. Blackburn, as Susie pointed out this Monday... the problem is not your messaging. It's you. She was all smiles for this interview but repeating the same rhetoric we've been hearing out of her for years now. You'd better secure the border first, even though migration from Mexico is at zero or below. No amnesty. Fix ICE even though we've had record deportations over the last year.

She and her cohorts have lots of obstacles lined up against making any meaningful changes to our immigration policy, regardless of all of the rhetoric we're hearing out of them right now.

Rep. Blackburn weighs in on new immigration proposal:

Representative Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) who joined the show, said that along with other Republicans she is waiting to see what the exact details are and what other options are available. Rep. Blackburn said overall the “good thing is people are coming out and saying let’s get this problem solved and I like the fact that it has gone from being a back burner issue to a front burner issue.” However, when it comes to the bill there are certain “must haves” that she believes need to be included.

We need to make certain that we have a secure border, amnesty should not be included as it has not worked before and will not work again, those that are in our country need to pay and right their wrongs, she said. Rep. Blackburn continued to say, “Finally, you have to make certain that ICE is going to clean up their act, and that the immigration service is going to finally be a service that works. We all appreciate legal immigration, we want to encourage legal immigration and bring those individuals that want to come to America to seek a better life, we want to make certain they have the ability to be here legally.”

The eight senators do agree with Rep. Blackburn when it comes to borders; they said that before we can start creating permanent residents, we must first work on securing America’s borders and launch an employment verification system that actually works. As Rep. Blackburn said during the show, “This is a time to be very honest with the American people, just to say this is where we are, these are the facts, help us work through to a solution. I have to tell you I certainly hope that we do.”

Talk is cheap. I will be surprised if anything actually gets through the House, but we'll see. And I certainly don't underestimate the ability for any of them to come up with a really bad bill that doesn't have any labor protections in it.

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While discussing the White House commission on gun violence meeting this week, which the NRA has been invited to attend, along with Vice President Joe Biden's remarks that an executive order is on the table as part of a solution to curb the gun violence in the United States, Howard Fineman did his best to pin down MSNBC's The Cycle co-host S.E. Cupp and get an answer as to why any civilian out there needs an assault weapon or a high capacity magazine. To on one's surprise, she couldn't give him an answer.

Rather than answering his question, she started playing games with semantics on what the definition of an assault rifle, or high capacity, or rapid fire was and claimed that there were reasons someone would want them outside of the military or specialized police forces. When Fineman asked her to give one example, she punted and said she didn't want to take up the time allotted to the other hosts.

I still don't know why MSNBC hired Cupp. She's as thick as a brick and takes great pride in just being as annoying as humanly possible rather than bringing a bit of intellectual honesty to single debate. This is just the latest example of what she does on a daily basis to make sure this stinker of a show stays exactly that.

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It seems that, as Susie formerly called him, Pete Peterson's pet dog, the smarmy David Walker, made his way back onto MSNBC this Friday and surprise, surprise, he's endorsing Mitt Romney. Color me not shocked, even though the media constantly tries to portray this guy as some bipartisan straight shooter.

Apparently Walker isn't too happy that he hasn't managed to get his "grand bargain" passed under President Obama and he twists himself in knots trying to defend Romney's fuzzy math on his budget numbers that simply don't add up without raising taxes on the middle class and resorts to more or less questioning what the definition of middle class is.

As Susie noted in the post linked above, regardless of what Walker says here, she went to one of his seminars and the people who were in attendance were not buying the snake oil the man and his group were selling. You can read more about Walker and Pete Peterson here: Peterson's Grand Bargain Campaign To Kick Off After Election and here: Meet Pete Peterson, Architect of Social Security and Medicare Cuts.

Rough transcript of Walker's interview below the fold.

Continue reading »

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I've already expressed my disdain for this woman and the fact that MSNBC gave her a spot co-hosting a show here -- S.E. Cupp Defends Disenfranchising Millions of Voters as Solution to 86 Cases of Voter Fraud. Apparently Esquire's Charles Pierce isn't any more fond of her than I am.

S.E. Cupp Is a Colossal Idiot:

In case you've missed it, MSNBC has compensated for the loss of Dylan Ratigan in the afternoon by moving Martin Bashir to 4 p.m. Eastern, and filling Bashir's old 3 p.m. slot with something called The Cycle, which is kind of Around The Horn for young pundits. The regular cast includes the younger generation among MSNBC's apparently inexhaustible reservoir of Political Analysts. These include Krystal Ball, Steve Kornacki, Touré, and S.E. Cupp and, this afternoon, as the program was winding down, Ms. Cupp spent a good four minutes being, weight for age, the dumbest person in the history of cable television:

To review: Talking about the president's tax proposal, Ms. Cupp rather loosely termed the president's tax policy "collectivist." (And, yes, both Mao and Stalin laughed uproariously as their spits turned over the flames of hell.) Kornacki gently reminded her that an increase in the marginal income tax tax rate is a lot of things — including, to my mind, a pretty good idea, but no matter — but it is in no way "collectivist," if English words have any meaning in, you know, English. Read on...

MSNBC really needs to rethink why they want to have this woman on the air... ever... at all... as a host or a guest. She lowers the IQ in the room when she enters it and sucks most of the oxygen out as well. I'm not sure how anyone ever possibly comes out better or smarter for the experience of being forced to maintain a dialog with her.

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Here we go again with MSNBC's replacement in the afternoon for Martin Bashir's show, The Cycle, after Bashir moved into Dylan Ratigan's old time slot, and more proof that the network really screwed the pooch with giving S.E. Cupp a spot as one of the co-hosts on this god awful show.

As Fran rightfully pointed out a couple of weeks ago, this show "has all the markings of a summer replacement series" and that's probably giving it way too much credit. I caught some of this on the satellite radio this Wednesday afternoon and this has to be one of the more obnoxious appearances I've had the unfortunate circumstance of listening to since I first had the unfortunate circumstance of ever hearing the woman's name in the first place.

The segment, I assume was supposed to be a serious interview with The Nation's Ari Berman, who's done some excellent reporting on the problem we've got going on right now across the country and voter disenfranchisement, some of which you can read about here: Discriminatory Texas Voter ID Law Challenged in Federal Court .

Rather than the other hosts and their guest being allowed to have a sane debate on the topic, the viewers were treated to Cupp demanding that the rest of them explain to her how to solve the 86 cases of voter fraud which were prosecuted under the Bush administration, as though those cases being prosecuted wasn't a solution in and of itself and her defending the disenfranchisement of millions of voters in order to do something about the minute number of actual fraud cases, that almost never happen and are not statistically a problem when it comes to the integrity of our elections in the United States. Unlike, you know, throwing millions of people off of the voting rolls because less than a hundred may have had some irregularity with how they voted.

If Cupp is so worried about the types of problems that were likely to be found in those 86 cases, maybe we can get her to go ballistic over her buddies Ann Coulter and Mitt Romney and making sure they're both voting from the addresses where they actually reside. Listening to her rail on over and over about them not having a "solution" to those cases of voter fraud, when they ended up in the courts, was enough to make me want to throw something at my TV set when going back to record this debacle.

If MSNBC doesn't want to lose all of their viewers in this time slot, they'll start looking for a new host and a new format for that matter. Four hosts don't work. The show has mainly been a shoutfest with them talking over each other constantly since it first aired and S.E. Cupp has no business hosting anything. The woman is just another know nothing flame thrower who is a bad guest and an even worse host. I put up with watching a lot of really bad television to help with monitoring cable "news" for C&L and this show is already somewhere in the range of Glenn Beck or Sean Hannity awful with trying to watch or listen to any of it.

If MSNBC were serious about having anyone want to watch their network in this time slot, they'd consider giving it to someone like Sam Seder. They'd also take Michael Steele out of Pat Buchanan's old cot on the set and send him packing as well. He's ruining shows from Morning Joe straight on through their prime time programming.

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You know, back in 1983, there was this show called Manimal on NBC. It was so bad that I swore I would never miss a single episode, because I was sure it would be cancelled before Christmas. And it was.

I feel a similar temporal urgency about MSNBC's latest offering for their 3 pm timeslot, "The Cycle." It's clearly a show with training wheels for up and coming possible anchor talent, and it has all the markings of a summer replacement series. Remember back in 1977 when Starland Vocal Band (Afternoon Delight) had their own summer TV variety show? Neither do any of the anchors for "The Cycle." They weren't born yet.

Given a brand new show with a relatively inexperienced and young cast, there are bound to be clumsy moments. But S.E. Cupp's revelation today that the well-researched months long investigation of Fast and Furious by Fortune Magazine had been debunked, was something special.

Touré: Who did the debunking?

S.E. Cupp: Oh, you can read about it at Townhall.

Touré: Ooooooooh.

I love how he just about fell out of his chair on that. And you can tell that as she's saying it, depending on a right wing opinion blog for her argument, she knows she's just climbed way out on a limb. Way out.

But full disclosure: I am a liberal blogger. I am all for treating blogs that do any amount of serious fact-based reporting (such as Crooks and Liars) as serious news sources, except when, like my own smaller blog, they have no pretense of doing any reporting. At my blog, Blue Gal, I do not investigate using primary sources or report on anything, I merely comment as a partisan on my opinion of events. S.E. Cupp just threw a Townhall blog post in the air as somehow debunking a six-month fact infused investigation of the real story behind a right wing witch hunt from a real reporter at a real magazine. I would be just as appalled if Crystal Ball had held up my own photoshop of Andrew Breitbart in heaven as some sort of proof of a political and theological point. There is no "there" there, Ms. Cupp. And you opened your mouth before you realized that you were at the big people's table.