DOWNLOADS: (421)

PLAYS: (6021)

Embed

The Daily Show's Jon Stewart ripped former Reagan speech writer and fan girl Peggy Noonan for her selective memory on Meet the Press this past Sunday where she seemed to forget all about her former boss St. Ronnie and his problem called Iran-Contra.

STEWART: Now, think hard Peggy Noonan. Never in your lifetime have you seen a scandal this bad? What if the president secretely sold weapons to Iran in return for American hostages and then used the proceeds to illegally fund a bunch of coked up right-wing jungle rapists in Nicaragua? Ring a bell? Here's a hint. You worked in his White House as a high profile speech writer.

Stewart followed up by playing some old footage of her from back in 2001, where she was making excuses for The Gipper and claiming that he "wanted to help the hostages" "but it spun out of control and Reagan by the end was surprised at some of the things that had happened." And of course it was also just "bad luck."

STEWART: Bad luck! Reagan was just on the wrong place at the wrong time. Specifically the White House during his own administration. This Iran-Contra wasn't a ahhmmm... it wasn't a scandal.

NOONAN from 2002: It was a mistake. It wasn't a disaster, but it was a mistake.

STEWART: Mistake! It's like writing the wrong date on a check... or writing the wrong address on a box marked weapons. Oops...

So how about Obama? Is he off the hook then for his mistakes?

Of course it goes without saying that those two aren't held the same standard in Noonan-world. After reading some of her book about her imaginary boyfriend, Stewart wrapped things up by noting:

STEWART: But here's the deal. You can't really get so upset about Obama if you've written the book, Fifty Shades of Greygan.

DOWNLOADS: (166)

PLAYS: (2540)

Embed

Conservative radio host Laura Ingraham on Sunday pointed to the roots of Southern strategy of the late 1960s -- which appealed to racism in the South -- as an example of how the Republican Party should reform itself after President Barack Obama won re-election.

"If the reaction to the election is let's dig into our core principles and try to remake them, I think the GOP will lose even more seats in 2014," Ingraham told Fox News host Chris Wallace. "If it becomes a bidding war with Republicans in either this group or that group -- whether it's Latinos or women -- we're going to give you more stuff or we're going to do amnesty plus... it's not going to work."

"The Republicans have to take a lesson from -- and I hate to bring up Reagan again -- when Goldwater got shellacked in '64, Bill Buckley and Brent Bozell Sr. and all these conservatives got together and they said, we're going to figure out how to sell this idea of economic conservatism and the conservative framework to new voters. And they went into the South and they transformed Mississippi and Alabama, all these places where people had never voted Republican before."

In his book "From the New Deal to the New Right: Race and the Southern Origins of Modern Conservatism," author Joseph Lowndes points out that William F. Buckley used the National Review to argue that southern whites were superior to blacks and Brent Bozell wrote that the federal government had no right to end segregation.

The National Review later moved away from overt racism and supported Barry Goldwater, whose presidential run became the template for the "Southern strategy" to appeal to white voters in the South.

DOWNLOADS: (398)

PLAYS: (6183)

Embed

In the foreign policy section of the Republican debate, Michele Bachmann once again acted as spokeswoman for the Dominionists worldwide as she castigated Ron Paul for saying we should withdraw aid from Israel. She then went on to say that Libya and Afghanistan Iraq should reimburse us for "liberating them", and finally declared flatly that the US never, ever negotiates with terrorists for hostages or anything else.

The Bachmann doctrine: We're gonna come in and strafe your country, kill tens of thousands of your people, and you will be so grateful you'll offer to reimburse us for that!

In between this and the next segue, Herman Cain calls the Guantanamo Bay detainees hostages, and declares he would never release them. Um, ok. They'd be our hostages, then.

To which Ron Paul asked all of them whether or not they denied that Ronald Reagan negotiated arms for hostages in the 80s.

You could have heard a pin drop in that Republican audience. I don't think anyone was prepared for it. And then Rick Santorum began to hem and haw and admit that there were indeed such negotiations because Iran is a sovereign state.

Indeed, Iran is (and was) a sovereign state. A sovereign state who took diplomats hostage. Even in war, it's accepted that diplomats are untouchable. Send them home, make them persona non grata, but taking them hostage is just not done. Until Iran did it.

Newt then made some lame comment to rehab Ronnie, saying it was really just all part of a plot that he didn't know about at the time, but when he discovered it, he was appalled. Alzheimer's excuse, Newtie?

I think it's remarkable to hear the audience react with stunned silence when Ron Paul speaks the truth about what Saint Ronnie did and did not do. Guess Michele ought to brush up on her Reaganalia before she opens her mouth at another debate.

Update: I replaced the clip so that the entire exchange is now there, including Herman Cain's declaration that Guantanamo Bay detainees are hostages, along with Ron Paul's pointed question about Reagan. Apologies for the confusion.

Transcript follows:

Continue reading »

DOWNLOADS: (167)

PLAYS: (1548)

Embed

If you needed yet more evidence of how desperate Republicans are for a savior next year you only had to watch the worshipful embrace of Gov. Christie tonight at the Reagan Library. After his speech no less than three of the five questions he took were from audience members imploring him to reconsider and enter his name for the Republican presidential nomination.

"Your country needs you!" (to run for president), said one lady, beseechingly. And with rapturous applause, the audience rose as one for yet another standing ovation.

All a bit surreal to watch.

DOWNLOADS: (234)

PLAYS: (225)

Embed

On CNN's Reliable Sources, Matt Lewis is asked to weigh in on the media narrative that President Obama is out of touch with voters because he doesn't look like he's angry enough at BP for this disaster in the Gulf. Even though Lewis repeats the typical Republican clap trap that of course all Democrats whether they served in the military or not are somehow out of touch with "real Americans" and Republican's like Reagan and Bush are just men of the people, he does admit one thing here that might get him in trouble with the rabid right wingers out there.

KURTZ: But in terms of words mattering, I see a lot of commentators, particularly on your side, talking about Obama is now Jimmy Carter; this is Obama's Katrina.

I mean, it seems to me that some conservative pundits who never liked Obama -- you feel like the press is catching up -- are really using this disaster to pile on.

LEWIS: Oh, sure, and some of it's hypocritical and some of it's just politics, plain politics.

KURTZ: Why is it hypocritical?

LEWIS: Well, you know, first of all, I do think that if this were George W. Bush, it would be worse, and so a lot of Republicans and a lot of conservatives are saying, they beat up on my guy, so I'm going to beat up on their guy, even if it's not fair.

I await Limbaugh's attacks after he gets back from his honeymoon that I don't even want to think about. There's not quite enough brain bleach for that one. Maybe Lewis will luck out and he missed it.

DOWNLOADS: (230)

PLAYS: (426)

Embed

This interview is an example of why I hate seeing liberals go on Fox even if Thom Hartmann did get to make a few good points during the segment. The interviews are always stacked against them with the framing from the host as it was here and Hartmann really doesn't get a chance to fully explain why former Bushie Brad Blakeman is a huge flaming hypocrite even though he does get the shot off at the end that he agrees with him with his "full-throated" call for big government.

Blakeman and Hartmann were asked to comment on President Obama's response to the disaster in the Gulf and to some of Reagan flack Peggy Noonan's column criticizing the President. Blakeman responds with a whole lot of projection and calls President Obama incompetent and demands that the government should be doing more about the spill.

Thom Hartmann admits that President Obama has not done everything he could have when it comes to managing the PR on the response, points out that it was the limit on the cap for liabilities that encouraged the oil industry to take these kind of risks in the first place, that it was the Dick Cheney energy policy that allowed for them to not install the acoustic blowout preventers that might have averted the accident like they have in Norway and Brazil and that if we had some of the regulations like they have in Canada where they're required to drill a relief well has to be drilled at the same time as the main well in environmentally sensitive areas this disaster would not have happened.

After another attack by Blakeman where he completely ignores everything Thom just said, Hartmann notes that he's glad to see Blakeman now supports big government coming in and helping to fix the problem.

Note to Thom Hartmann... if you're going to go on Fox, don't say you agree with Brad Blakeman about anything. And when he does something like he did here and starts screaming about how the government needs to fix industries' screw ups after government fails to regulate them, call him a hypocrite to his face and ask him if he now supports regulating the oil industry since they're obviously not capable of regulating themselves and forcing them to put the safety measures in place which is the only thing that would have prevented this. Not screaming that the government didn't do enough later.

I keep hearing these people from Mary Matalin to Blakeman to you name it saying the government needs to do more, but they rarely say what those things are. Any time any of these anti-regulation hypocrites opens their mouth on the television, they need to be asked specifically what they think the government should be doing.

I'm no expert but I've done posts on Kevin Kostner's oil-extracting machine, Mike Papantonio and the Shell Oil exec suggesting bringing tankers in to clean out the oil that's already in the ocean. I also posted on Think Progress' suggestion that we get other experts in there besides BP to help take control of this mess since BP is obviously too invested in worrying about their own liability right now to be trusted.

There's been plenty of criticism as to whether any of those ideas will work or not to clean up the mess and I don't mind that one bit. We're all looking at this from the outside and just trying to make sense of what's going on.

Sadly if liberals had their way, we would not even need to be discussing those options right now. The industries would be regulated in the manner Thom suggested and that the oil industry flack Rayola Dougher scoffed at and called impossible while crying about more regulations when asked about drilling relief wells at the same time as the main wells. Heaven forbid other countries are doing this but we can't. Instead we're left watching this oil pour into the Gulf and sitting there helpless for months while they drill relief wells that they could have had in place already but the industry didn't want to spend the money to do that.

Until the Brad Blakeman's of the world and his cohorts explain to us how government acting after the fact and not before an emergency is the way to go and exactly what they would be doing now to fix this, they have no credibility to complain about government not doing their part now.

They don't want government to work to prove that private industry should rule the world unfettered and safety, worker's rights, regulations and concern for anything besides profit be damned. Well, you got your wish Brad. Here's your free market in all its glory, except it's not free is it? Now you're calling the President of the United States incompetent because he can't fix your free market disaster after it blows up in your face. Quit telling us we don't need any stoplights and then bitching about the car accidents after they happen and someone was stupid enough to listen to you. It's extremely tiresome.

DOWNLOADS: (850)

PLAYS: (1445)

Embed

John Fund at Americans for Prosperity's Right Online Conference cites Nate Silver's predictions for 2010, and the possibility of the Democrats losing 20-50 seats in the House. Nate talked about this with Ron Reagan Jr. on his radio show the other day and wrote about it at his blog Likely Voters and Unlikely Scenarios where he qualifies his predictions with this:

Is it possible that the electorate which is voting in November 2010 will be so down on the Democrats that they trust Republicans more on issues like these? Sure, it is possible -- if the enthusiasm gap is wide enough, if Obama's approval is low enough, if the health care debate has been bungled enough, and if the economy is still hemorrhaging jobs. But I'd consider it something of a worst-case scenario. That's probably the best way to regard these Rasmussen polls for the time being.

So maybe not quite as doom and gloom as Fund is making it out to be. As for the rest of his nonsense, well that's another matter. Fund goes on to claim that the Democrats' problem is they don't know how to govern as moderates. Heh. That's rich. Yeah, here we are again as Fund says, but not because the Democrats are governing from the left, but because they're governing as triangulating corporate "centrists".