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I would normally not post one of these annoying, snarky "Pete on the Street" segments from John King's show on CNN because they are generally about as unfunny and uninformative as the Jeanne Moos segments on Blitzer's show.

That said, how pathetic is it when the John King "color guy" is making you look like an idiot if you're one of the people claiming the Islamic center is going to be built at ground zero?

And note to the press, quit calling it a mosque. A prayer room on top of a rec center is not a mosque.

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Well, it looks like Turdblossom isn't too good at doing right wing radio during his stint filling in for Rush Limbaugh, but that wasn't going to stop Bill O'Reilly from goading him that he should have gotten more money for his three hour appearance for which he was paid $1,650 to sub for Limbaugh for three hours. That means they were paying him the pittance of $550 an hour for his time. Who knew substitute propaganda paid so much?

I'm not sure where Bill got his numbers from on Limbaugh's salary, but if they're right the $550 an hour they paid Rove was a pittance in comparison. Isn't it wonderful that these millionaires are pretending to speak for every day Americans and what we're going through? I'm just not quite sure how Rove is going to get by with only making as much in a couple of hours as most families make in a week. I guess he'll manage somehow. In the mean time he can cry about how underpaid he was for his time along with Bill-O on ClusterFox.

Ed Schultz whacked him for how terrible of a job he did filling in for the Drugster as he likes to call Limbaugh. It's too bad more Americans can't make Rove's "princely sum" for their time as well. I guess if the rest of us just figured out how to latch onto that gravy train that's called right wing radio all the problems with our economy would be solved. We can all be rich and no one will ever have to actually work for a living any more and we can all earn our living like Rush Limbaugh and Karl Rove shoveling the latest bullshit to anyone who's willing to listen.

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Transcript from Ed's show below the fold.

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Even Fox News' own poll says plurality of Americans want some Bush tax cuts to expire and one host just can't believe it.

50 percent of Americans favor letting taxes increase on at least the richest Americans, according to a Fox News and Opinion Dynamics survey taken July 27-28. 44 percent want to keep the lower tax rates for everyone.

Of the Americans that favored raising taxes on some Americans, 36 percent want to keep the tax cuts for people making less than $250,000 while 14 percent want to let all the Bush tax cuts expire.

"I'm astounded that a plurality there, 50 percent, said they should go up on some level," said Fox News host Alisyn Camerota Monday.

"Asking people if they like tax cuts is asking if they like chocolate ice cream. Everybody likes tax cuts yet 50 percent there -- if you added the bottom two categories together -- think there should be some tax hike of some kind," she explained.

Fox News host Steve Doocy took the opportunity to speak for Americans. "Because ultimately we would like to keep our own money because ultimately we don't trust Washington to spend it effectively," he said.

"Indeed," Camerota agreed. "That was your campaign speech. Nice."

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As Blue Texan at FDL noted, Al Franken laid waste to the GOP's anti-Thurgood Marshall Campaign and as they called it, their minority outreach program. Franken gives his "good friend" Lindsey Graham and the Republicans a little history lesson on what an "activist judge" is and why Justice Thurgood Marshall wasn't one of them.

Franken: You said there are three things that judges hold to when they’re not activists. You said that they respect precedent. They make narrow decisions and they defer to the political branches, in other words the legislature. And there are a lot of recent cases that we’ve been talking about that instinctively strike me and a lot of other people as falling outside of these three guidelines. And I think that in these cases the Supreme Court was legislating from the bench, which is being activist.

Franken goes on to discuss why the decisions in Circuit City v. Adams, Gross v. FBL Financial Services, Rent-a-Center v. Jackson, Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, Leegin Creative Leather Products, Inc. v. PSKS Inc., the Supreme Court would have fit into Kagan’s guidelines of what would define an “activist court” and noted that Republicans all “seem to like” those decisions. He went on to explain why there is no way that Brown v. Board of Education should be lumped in with those other cases and how it was “an exemplar of overturning a precedent that needed to be overturned.”

Franken: There are certain situations where the Supreme Court really should subject the law to a heightened scrutiny and this is what I think Justice Marshall was talking about when he said that the court should show “special solicitude for the despised and disadvantaged, the people who went unprotected by every other organ of government and who had no other champion.”

Now in the opening statements you were criticized for admiring Justice Marshall for believing this, but I actually think that this belief, Justice Marshall’s belief is just good, Constitutional law.

Are you familiar with Carolene Products… Carolene Products case of 1938?

Kagan: Yes sir.

Franken: Are you familiar with Footnote Four of that decision?

Kagan: Yes sir.

Franken: And you’re familiar with that because the footnote’s really important, isn’t it? It’s often taught in Constitutional law classes, whether they be in the first year or the second year or the third year, right?

Kagan: It is.

Franken: Can you tell me what that footnote says and why it’s important?

Kagan: Senator it seems as though you have it in front of you and you’re going to do a better job of it than I am at this moment.

Franken: You’re a mind reader. Footnote Four basically says that when courts interpret the Constitution and try to figure out whether a law complies with the Constitution, courts should give special scrutiny to laws that violate a specific part of the Constitution, that restrict the political process and that affect “religious, national, racial and discrete and insular minorities” who have a really hard time getting help through the normal political process.

Now to me discrete and insular minorities sounds a lot like the despised and disadvantaged that go unprotected and have no other champion. Is it safe to say that Justice Marshall’s belief is consistent with Carolene Products?

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How can a company allegedly responsible for killing 17 unarmed civilians in Baghdad in 2007 continue to get State Department and CIA contracts? CIA Director Leon Panetta says there is "not much choice" because few companies have the capabilities of Blackwater.

"Since I have become director, I have asked our agency to review every contract we have had with Blackwater and whatever their new name is now, Xe, to ensure first and foremost that we have no contract in which they are engaged in any CIA operations. We're doing our own operations. That's important that we not contract that out to anybody," Panetta told ABC's Jake Tapper Sunday.

"I have to tell you that in the war zone, we continue to have needs for security. You've got a lot of forward bases. You've got a lot of attacks on some of those bases. We've got to have security. Unfortunately, there are few companies that provide that kind of security," Panetta continued.

"State Department relies on them. We rely on them to a certain extent. So, we've bid out some of those contracts. They provided a bid that underbid everyone else by about $26 million and a panel that we had said that they can do the job, that they've shaped up their act," he said.

"There was really not much choice but to accept that contract," said Panetta.

"But having said that, I will tell you that I continue to be very cautious about any of those contracts and we're reviewing all of the bids that we have with that company," he concluded.

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Snooty George Will apparently couldn't decide which side of his mouth to talk out of, so he chose both. Sorry George but if anything what's happened during this spill just proves that conservatives view of government which is to dismantle it and make sure it can't function, is a failure. This is your free market no regulation heaven George. Why don't you go down there and swim in it and let us all know how wonderful it is?

The people in government are not miracle workers George. They can only do so much to take care of things once businesses f**k up this badly. If you and your ilk would allow them to regulate businesses in the first place we wouldn't have to be listening to the "drill, baby, drill" crowd scream and kick and cry now about that big evil "gubment" not doing enough to help them now.

TAPPER: So, George, let's start with -- with oil, with the oil spill. Is President Obama being unfairly blamed or is this just part of the job?

WILL: He's being unfairly blamed, and it sort of serves him right. I'll tell you what I mean by that. June 3, 2008, the end of the Democratic primaries, he gives a speech in St. Paul and he said, "This is the moment at which people will say the rise of the oceans began to slow," in other words, a kind of grandiosity has been part of his and the modern presidency's narrative.

Progressive politics from Woodrow Wilson to Obama have said concentrate power in Washington, concentrate Washington power in the executive branch, concentrate within the executive branch lots of experts, and there's no telling what wonders government can do. This just strikes at the narrative of competence that all of this depends on.

From our own Mugsy who did a fine job with this video mashup.

Where's the oil? Right Wing pundits dismissed spill.:

In the weeks immediately following the sinking of the Deepwater Horizon oil platform on April 20, 2010, Conservative pundits quickly tried to minimize the amount of damage we could expect from all that oil washing ashore, comparing it to "natural seepage" from the ocean floor. Then the oil started washing ashore, and suddenly this was "Obama's Katrina".

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Former President Bill Clinton hopes that President Barack Obama will expand his search for a new Supreme Court Justice to those that haven't been a judge.

"The important thing, you think they are smart, competent and understand the lives of ordinary people," Clinton told ABC's Jake Tapper.

"One thing I think you should think about is, we've gotten -- have we gone too far in this process, that, assuming only judges can be elected, that somehow you're not qualified if you weren't a judge. Some of the best justices in the Supreme Court in history have been non-judges," said Clinton.

Bill Clinton doesn't consider himself or his wife, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, suitable choices for the high court.

"I'm already 63 years old. I hope I live to be 90. I hope I'm just as healthy as Justice Stevens is but it's not predictable. I would like to see him put someone in their late 40's or early 50's on the court, and someone with, you know, a lot of energy for the job," Clinton explained.

Clinton says there was a time that his wife would have liked to serve as a Justice but that time has passed.

"Oh, she would be great at it but -- and I think at one point in her life she might have been interested in it. But she's like me, you know, we are kind of doers, we like to be out there doing things, rowing our own boat, and making changes we can see happen. And again, I think if she were asked, she would advise the president to appoint someone 10, 15 years younger," he said.

Cenk does a great job of reflecting how I feel about the media's treatment of Evan Bayh and his retirement from the Senate. They never bring up all the money his wife has made working for WellPoint -- Evan Bayh's Wife Reaping The Benefits Of Health Care Reform. And they continually call these ConservaDems who are corporate Democrats "centrists" which drives me as crazy as it does Cenk.

Cenk also points out that unlike the main stream media the HuffPo was willing to ask Bayh if there's one job he won't rule out after leaving office and they got their answer here -- Evan Bayh Won't Rule Out Becoming A Lobbyist After His Term Ends.

And for more here's Cenk's post on the subject at hand -- The Media's Billion Dollar Ad for Evan Bayh:

The mainstream media has been giving Evan Bayh a big fat sloppy wet kiss for the last 24 hours. Every single story is about how moderate and centrist and independent he is. Golly gee willikers, Evan Bayh is such a pure and innocent person and he just couldn't take the corruption of Congress anymore. He was so fed up with the partisanship and like any great man decided he must strike out on his own and leave DC.

Come on, are these people this naïve or do they have a stake in this? Do you really think Evan Bayh only has pure motivations and was the last good man in Washington? This is absolutely absurd, and on many fronts it's the exact opposite of the truth. No one made a deal with corporate lobbyists faster than Evan Bayh. He wasn't sick of the problems of DC, he was the problem of DC. Read on...

As Cenk notes, like about half of the people who leave Congress, Bayh is just another name on a long list who might be looking for a big payday after their retirement from "public service". All of this might be just slightly easier to stomach if these assholes weren't lining their pockets while the rest of the country rots beneath them.

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I still can't understand why David Gregory has a job, when it takes another reporter from another network to show the hypocrisy Gregory's own guests are displaying right at his Meet The Press desk.

Fareed Zakaria argued on February 4 that the budget Obama inherited was completely broken in the first place, first by the Bush tax cuts and secondly by the prescription drug plan for the elderly and two wars that were "off budget." The Bush Administration set the next several generations up with a massive budgetary mess that will not go away with politics running the governmental show.

But Zakaria points out that even those who are NOT elected officials, including Hank Paulson and Alan Greenspan, are so subservient to the corporate overlords that they will not hear of rescinding the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy even after they wail over the horrible-ness of the deficits.

Until some grown-ups run the show in Washington, our Federal financial house will be a condemned hovel.