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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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This weekend on PBS's The McLaughlin Group, we were treated to host John McLaughlin hoping for the return to the days of special prosecutor Ken Starr investigating another sex scandal. McLaughlin asked his panel what the probability that another special prosecutor would be assigned to investigate the recent sex scandal with members of the Secret Service hiring prostitutes and was met with a resounding "No!" by every one of his guests.

Pat Buchanan, who is still a weekly regular on this show on PBS despite his firing from MSNBC, told McLaughlin that there's no need for a special prosecutor unless the government is failing to do their job and investigate the matter themselves, which is not the case here. And Mort Zuckerman, who they had placed on the wrong side of the aisle as usual with Eleanor Clift, responded that "one Ken Starr was enough" in his lifetime.

That did not deter McLaughlin from proclaiming that there was an 80 percent chance that one would be assigned.

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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:

Continue reading »

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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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During a discussion on PBS's The McLaughlin Group where the panel of Tim Carney and Pat Buchanan on the right and weekly lonely representative of the left Eleanor Clift and someone that didn't belong there with her on the left side of the aisle as usual, billionaire Mort Zuckerman, I caught something unusual that we don't hear every day when Zuckerman is allowed on the air, and that's someone asking him just what he's worth.

John McLaughlin did just that during a discussion on President Obama campaigning on the co-called "Buffet rule" and asking millionaires and billionaires to start paying their fair share in taxes. Zuckerman really did not want to discuss just how much money he makes every year, but said he was more than happy to discuss Warren Buffett's finances if McLaughlin wanted to do so.

Zuckerman also resorted to the usual nonsense that we'd have actually gotten some meaningful "reform" on taxes done if President Obama had just gone to the Republicans in private and asked them kindly if they'd be willing to quit obstructing and trashing him in public on a weekly basis and kissed their rings to get some "bipartisan" cooperation on changing our tax code.

As Clift rightfully pointed out here, it's been obvious for a long time that they're not willing to work with him on anything, even when it's him embracing what were formerly their policies, so he's basically been left with no choice but to take his case to the voters for the next election.

Excuse me please if I share Clift's sentiments here that heaven forbid we hurt these poor rich people's feelings by asking them to think they should contribute to our society in America by some similar or greater percentages than the middle class and the poor are taxed right now.

Of course, Zuckerman claimed that he supports the rich, such as himself paying their fair share as well, but I'd be curious if anyone pushed him on the specifics of that support on just what those specifics would be just how well that claim actually holds up. Of course none of those specifics were asked for by McLaughlin here.

Zuckerman was a lot more interested in bashing the president for supposedly not trying to work with Republicans, when he has, and pretending like the Republicans in the Congress are ever going to work with him no matter what he does, and having a hissy fit about that supposed lack of cooperation during this segment.

How pathetic is it that we've got in the United States a network, PBS, that is trashed as being liberal by Republicans, when it's not and someone like a billionaire Mort Zuckerman allowed to supposedly represent the "left side of the aisle" of the political spectrum, instead of this show ever putting anyone that you could rightfully call a progressive on the air in one slot, much less two of them?

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I've heard some really crass assessments on what game the Republicans should be playing with on whether they're going to raise the debt ceiling or not, but this one by Pat Buchanan on PBS's The McLaughlin Group has to take the cake. He apparently thinks that Republicans should continue to do their hostage taking on the debt ceiling to force cuts to our social safety nets for years to come as a means for political gain and that somehow voters might not eventually decide that's a bad thing.

I guess if you're some relic like Buchanan who is receiving his wingnut welfare and having anyone from MSNBC to PBS to right wing sites employ you where you don't have to worry about whether you'll be starving on the streets when you get old, this world view somehow makes sense. If you're someone who believes in taking care of the least among us and that we should be our brother's keepers instead of saying I've got mine and F-U, this sounds pretty crass and frankly pretty disgusting as far as political games go.

I'm also sure you won't hear one peep out of Buchanan or any other Republican if the debt ceiling needs to be raised once a Republican regains the White House, just as you never heard about this from them under Bush while he was breaking the bank with tax cuts for the rich and waging invasions of other countries that he kept off our books.

Someone needs to be asking not just MSNBC, but PBS as well why they feel the need to continue employing this racist, fearmongering liar at both networks.

MCLAUGHLIN: Question. Why has the debt ceiling caused a political impasse, Pat Buchanan?

BUCHANAN: A couple reasons. One is the Democrat's really don't want to give up on their entitlement programs and take the cuts in things like Medicare. Secondly and probably more important, Republicans aren't going to give them a dime in tax hikes John.

But I'll tell you who's going to win this. Boehner you see has more confidence. You see the president talking in panic. What Republicans are going to do, is they're going to wait until July 20th, and then they're going to take the Biden cuts, all the Biden cuts in social programs, they're going to tie them to the debt ceiling and pass them in the House and send them over to the Senate. So you've got your debt ceiling raise for one year, with the Biden cuts.

I think that Democrats, the President of the United States, will have to sign that. Republicans have an enormous weapon here and they've got the whip hand. By just sending over these debt ceiling increases with cuts on them again, and again, and again. That's how it's going to play out.

MCLAUGHLIN: Are you saying that the Senate's going to become part of the annual budget?

BUCHANAN: I think the debt ceiling battle could, it could be a six month thing. It could be a one year thing every year. Republicans have the whip in here John to force cuts in social spending, year after year after year if they play the game right.

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While discussing the current crop of Republican presidential candidates being forced to run even further to the right because of the "tea party" demanding that they yield to their demands, John McLaughlin asks the Financial Times Richard McGregor "who looks the cleanest to you as far as tea party invulnerability is concerned.” McGregor points to Michele Bachmann as the likely candidate, but also points out that she’s the last candidate that any of them want to win the primaries.

To which Sarah Palin fan-boy Pat Buchanan responds:

BUCHANAN: She and Sarah Palin are both, uh, tremendously acceptable to the tea party, but they don’t pass yet the threshold of being seen as a president by the…

MCLAUGHLIN: Why?

BUCHANAN: Well because they just haven’t gotten there yet.

MCLAUGHLIN: Why?

Buchanan follows up with saying that they’ve yet to prove themselves in debates, like Ronald Reagan did, as if that’s ever going to happen. And McGregor and Eleanor Clift point out the obvious. McGregor says they’re not serious candidates and Clift asks just how much time it will ever take whether it’s Trump or any of the rest of them touting this birther nonsense to ever achieve that level where they’re taken seriously and says “I don’t see that coming.” Thanks for pointing out the obvious Eleanor.

When she also points out that these TeaBirchers might be able to win Congressional districts, but they’re not going to win a presidential election, the best that Buchanan and Monica Crowley can come up with in response is that they’re going to have to cater to that crowd to get through the primaries.

I think sadly they’re right and they are going to have to cater to that crowd, and so are Clift and McGregor in pointing out that it makes anyone who does unelectable. I’m just curious how if the winner ends up being someone who felt forced to move that far into wingnut land, how they attempt to bring themselves back where they don’t look like they're just full out birther conspiracy theory nuts.

This segment just served as a reminder of just how crazy the Republican presidential primary is going to be this year with their TeaBircher, Libertarian, birther wingnut base demanding the type of purity tests out of the candidates that were discussed here.

And that doesn’t even begin to address the fact as Steve Benen wrote about this weekend that the supposed “main stream” Republicans have basically decided that openly admitting that their party wants to increase unemployment and lower wages at the same time is somehow a good idea.

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During this weekend's McLaughlin Group, Monica Crowley did her best to continue the fearmongering that we've heard out of her fellow Fox contributors about how the Muslim Brotherhood is going to take over the Egyptian government if they're allowed to have fair and free elections.

CROWLEY: Remember that President Bush began this public discussion about economic political liberalization in the Middle East. You had the Iraq War. But understand something, that yes the regimes in the Middle East from Jordan's King Abdullah to Saudi King Abdullah, all across North Africa and the Middle East they have to be very worried about the impact of this. But remember that the only Arab democracy that we currently have in the region is the one built by the United States in Iraq.

So when we talk about democracy the way we talk about it here in the west has a fundamentally different meaning than it has in the Middle East and because you have so many devout Muslims across this whole region, if they are given the vote, the chances are you're not going to get a Jeffersonian democracy. John you are going to get very strong Islamists influences. Just as we saw in 2006 with a vote in Gaza. Remember we're hearing the same kind of talk now with the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt.

We hear now that the Brotherhood would only get 20-30% of the vote. That's the exact same percentage we were told Hamas would get in Gaza and guess what? They got 70% of the vote. Tread very carefully here.

You've got to love these conservatives. They only like democracy when it's at the point of a gun or when we get the results we want from another country's elections. Otherwise we're content to keep their dictators propped up and bought off. Robert Dreyfuss has a really good article at Mother Jones on the Muslim Brotherhood, sans the fearmongering -- What Is the Muslim Brotherhood, and Will It Take Over Egypt?

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When Monica Crowley puts up the same kind of list with supposed liberal violence or rhetoric that Digby linked in her post here with what we've seen from the right since they've lost their damned minds after President Obama got elected, then maybe I'll take her flame-throwing false equivalencies seriously.

Crowley decided to play the "all sides are equal" game on PBS's The McLaughlin Group and did one major job of projection here.

CROWLEY: I think it was a good, well modulated speech and I think the tone was perfectly appropriate. And I do think this was a presidential moment for him because, really for the first time in two years, he spoke on behalf of all of the American people, not just on behalf of his party, not just on behalf of the left, but really spoke on behalf of all of us. So I think it was an important moment.

I do think he missed two opportunities. The first one is, I think he waited too long to deliver the message. Another memorial service was scheduled for Wednesday, but he could have come out on Sunday or Monday with a message to his own side telling them to cut it out when they were drawing this very sort of malicious and vicious lies that somehow conservative talk or our political climate have caused this particular act of violence which even he admitted later did not. He let his side run wild for days with this malicious lie.

The second thing is, I think even though he did give an effective beat down to his own side by saying this does not… there is no direct correlation between this act of violence by a lone psychopath and our political climate. I think he stopped full of a full rebuke of the complete irresponsibility of folks on his own side that still continue to try to link this act or other things with political talk on the conservative side.

Eleanor mentioned Roger Ailes at Fox and Sarah Palin’s web site, but I would like to see the left take the lead in moderating their talk, because for every one example you can give from the right, there were plenty of examples on the left of the most vile, vicious and even violent kind of rhetoric coming out of the left.

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He just can't stop himself, can he? Sorry Pat, but no one's coming for Sarah Palin, Glenn Beck or Rush Limbaugh with hangman's nooses. This feigned victim-hood game for these narcissistic bullies is getting real old real quick. And leave it to the likes of Buchanan to bring something as offensive as lynchings into the conversation.