The progressive  "journo/blogospere" is sharply split over the Senate health bill.  Some, like Jane Hamsher and Matt Taibbi, are saying "kill it."  Others, like Paul Krugman, Ezra Klein, and Jonathan Cohn, are saying "pass it" - as is.  Steve Benen says " it's worth appreciating the vibrancy, energy, and seriousness with which progressives are engaging in the debate." 

I say maybe - but there's been a lot of condescension and hostility, too.  And what bothers me even more is the tendency of some bloggers - good people, people who are seen not only as advocates but as as information gatherers on health policy- to ignore data that undercuts their position while pushing a false political choice.  I'm not saying their decisions are deliberate,  and I assume they're not.  But it's disappointing, and it's worth discussing. 

It's difficult for me to name names, since I respect their work a lot, but I'm talking about people like Jonathan Cohn, David Leonhardt of the New York Times, and Ezra Klein (who has been very friendly and helpful to me since the beginning.)  Since I know they're people of good will, I can't help wondering if the polarized nature of this debate has something to do with what's been going on.

I've been working on a campaign to resist the excise tax, which I have long thought was based on flawed logic and would turn out to be counterproductive both as politics and policy.  (Let the first part of that statement - "I've been working on a campaign" - serve as a disclaimer and full disclosure regarding what follows.)  Both Klein and Leonhardt have written admiringly about the tax's ability to "bend the cost curve," but a broad range of studies have been released that challenge that assumption, whole polls have shown that its likely to be highly unpopular politically. 

These are not unscientific, flaky studies.  Two papers were published in the highly respected journal Health Affairs.  These are studies from respected firms that seem to overturn the conventional economic wisdom behind the excise tax.  Citizens for Tax Justice has reviewed data from the Joint Committee on Taxation (pdf) and drawn negative conclusions about the tax. Other studies by top benefits consulting firms like Martin E. Segal, Watson Wyatt, Mercer, Towers-Perrin, and Hewitt (whose livelihood depends on a corporate clientele)  challenge the arguments made in support of the tax, while polling from a well-regarded firm suggested the tax would have a devastating political impact in front-line states.  So how much have Klein, Leonhardt, or Cohn written about all of this new and revelatory information?

As far as I can tell, not a word.

The silence bothers me more than disagreement ever could.  These guys are viewed as experts in health policy and as gateways and interpreters of the latest research.  Sure, they've come out foursquare for accepting the Senate bill, but does that really excuse the silence?  Maybe they're too busy to write about these reports.  Maybe they haven't seen them (although I sent a few links to one of them.)  Maybe - and I hope this isn't true - they're so concerned about ensuring that a bill passes that they'd rather not muddy the waters with new data that undercuts that position.

Or maybe I'm out of line.  Maybe people don't see them as reliable sources for all the new health policy info.  Perhaps they're perceived as strong advocates for a certain position, with no newsgathering brief.  If so, I apologize - sincerely.  But, if I'm right, they really need to address these studies.  They can argue that they're methodologically flawed , or that they're inconclusive, or that it's too late to change anything now.  But ignore them?  That's disturbing.

"Gah," writes Paul Krugman, who also presses for passing the Senate bill.  "I see that some people are still using the Rasmussen polling on MA’s health care reform. You shouldn’t do that ..."  I'm one of those who has used those polls - but I've written about and linked to his critique, which includes another poll he likes better.  That's what we should all be doing if we want to have a serious debate.  (Now, as it turns out, I don't interpret the poll data the same way he does - but I'm acknowledging its existence, responding, and letting people decide for themselves.)

I identify with Prof. Krugman's frustration, though.  Gah, why are people still saying the excise tax "bends the curve"?

There's a basic structural flaw in the Klein/Cohn/Krugman position, too:  that it's either this health bill or nothing.  I believe that's a false choice.  Opponents of the Senate draft don't all believe that no reform is better than this bill.  But they should act as if they do.  Once you say the Senate bill is good enough, the negotiations with the left are over.  

The Senate health bill has been improved in some areas, including strengthening the Medicare cost containment commission and - most critically - once again lifting lifetime caps on coverage.  Like McJoan, I believe that's a direct result of the outcry on the left.  Fear of a progressive backlash has already improved this bill, and it may continue to do so - if we don't back down too soon.  In a very practical sense the Deans, Hamshers, and Taibbis are accomplishing more than any other progressives to get a better bill.

There are many people who disagree vehemently with that statement.  By all means, let's keep talking about it.  But let's do so openly, with all the information at our disposal, and without either hostility or manipulation.  I'm not out to antagonize anyone here.  I'd really like to see debate that's based on data and grounded in strategy - and not in false choices.

Digby and I have talked a lot about the mandate issue being presented by the health-care bill for months now, and a lot of great blogs have been hitting it too. A new poll done by Research 2000 for the PCCC and DFA says American voters will hate this bill if there are mandates and no public option.

If American voters aren't going to see any immediate pluses to their overall health care and are forced to pay into the mandates of the health care bill then how will the voters feel about the new outlay of cash? A good many will probably just pay the penalty instead of signing up and will be just as pissed, and that's coming from the left. The right-wing crazies will hate it even if it significantly helped their lives. so the debate has really focused on the differences on the left. We have captured the debate.

Duncan writes:

I know I'm a broken record on this subject, but I do think it's the thing most lacking from the insider conversations on HCR. Not that I really know, because I'm not an insider, but occasionally I get a wee sense of what's actually occupying staffers in various places. "Voters liking this thing" seems to be at best an afterthought.

It's sorta weird, really, because on most subjects it's the first thing they think of, both about the policy itself and the myriad imaginary attack ads that can be run based on the policy. If voters don't like this thing, it'll likely be repealed before most of it even takes effect, either because Republicans take over or because frightened members of a Dem controlled Congress do so. Sure, there's the optimistic view that it could be "made better" instead of repealed, but I'm not really feeling all that hopey.

No matter what the tosser Ron Brownstein says, liberal activists want health-care reform much more than Villagers can imagine, but we don't want it if it does nothing more than enrich insurance corporations and in the end never accomplish much of the goals that the defenders of the Senate bill are saying.

Lieberman and the Villagers are more interested in protecting the DC insider crowd than they are reforming health care for America.

And to show how lacking his argument is, Brownstein tries to paint us as the racists. Brownstein should check out a few teabagger rallies. And to dismiss the complaints we have as "ideological" shows how petty the elitists truly are.

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Information always has a soothing effect on me, and I'm feeling much calmer after tonight's White House conference call. Obama advisor David Axelrod and White House Health Reform Director Nancy-Ann DeParle took the time to answer our questions.

I started by asking about the recent maneuver to block imported drugs. I said it was "shameless," not only because Candidate Obama ran on the issue of allowing Americans to buy cheaper drugs from Canada, but because the FDA already does site inspections in those same plants they were calling unsafe. (Basically, in order to sell any drugs in America, your manufacturing facility must meet the same standards as an American plant.)

I was pleasantly surprised to hear that they would be submitting an HHS bill in the near future - they'd "just this week" gotten funding to address any safety concerns, but more importantly, to start putting an infrastructure in place to import drugs.

My other question (as a former reporter who frequently covered insurance corruption) was about using state insurance commissioners to enforce new insurance regulations.

I said that in many states, insurance commissioners were pretty much owned by the local insurance companies, and I was skeptical as to whether making them the enforcers would actually work.

DeParle said HHS Sec. Kathleen Sebelius, a former state insurance commissioner, was not one of "those" commissioners, and she would be overseeing state departments. Sebelius already met with state insurance commissioners, she said, and having found a wide discrepancy in authority from state to state, got language inserted in the bill that would give them additional powers. (DeParle noted that the West Virginia commissioner didn't even have the authority to see if insurance companies were solvent.)

DeParle said this was the widest expansion of insurance regulation in 20 years.

David Axelrod also chimed in, noting these changes were part of the reason why the insurance industry has opposed the bills so stringently. If this was a giveaway, he said, they wouldn’t be lobbying so hard to defeat the bill.

I have to give it to Axelrod on this: Without even a little exaggeration, I'd say that standardizing state oversight is probably the insurance industry's worst nightmare. They've always taken advantage of a hodgepodge of weak state regulations, sprinkling generous political contributions along the way to buy off state legislators. So this bill is really what you want from federal regulation: Overriding weak state laws that trample consumers.

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Nate Silver has written a piece called "Why Progressives Are Batshit Crazy To Oppose the Senate Bill."  He says we need to stop being "polite" (who's polite these days?) and start being "real."  In the spirit of impoliteness and reality (realness?), he offers some numbers in order to argue that the Left is nuts not to embrace the Senate health reform bill.

In that same "no-politeness" spirit, here's my response:  Garbage in, garbage out.  Is that "real" enough for ya?   Progressives - and everyone else, for that matter - should keep fighting.

Silver's heart may be in the right place, and his math is right, but many of his assumptions are flat-out wrong.  More importantly, he fails to place his work in the proper human and political context.  It's like this:  You can build the best model in the world for predicting the outcome of hockey games.  But if you knew that sometime during the third period Rahm Emanuel was going to drive out on the ice in a Zamboni and flatten your team's entire defense, wouldn't that change your model a little?  And if you knew half the hockey players would wind up bleeding and broken ... (Oh, wait - they do. Bad example.)

Progressives would be insane to do as Silver suggests.  He tells us that "a picture's worth a thousand words"  (and then gives us 1,795 words - but who's counting).  Let's review both his analysis and his conclusions.   

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A few days ago Sen. Ben Nelson said he wasn't sure how he'd vote on the confirmation of Judge Sonia Sotomayor:

Sen. Ben Nelson said Wednesday he has not decided whether he will vote to confirm Sonia Sotomayor's nomination to the U.S. Supreme Court.
Nelson said he'll delay his decision until next week's scheduled Senate vote.

"I accept her judicial philosophy of fidelity to the law," Nelson said during a telephone conference call from Washington. Nelson said he also believes Sotomayor is committed to supporting settled judicial precedent.

But, he said, he needs to "convince myself she won't be an activist" on the court. "I need an opportunity to review a few things," the Democratic senator said.

What a guy. He makes sure to use republican talking points about activism, but when he had to consider John Roberts he said would take him at his word.
On September 22, 2005 - before the Senate Judiciary Committee's confirmation hearings for John Roberts had even been completed - Sen. Ben Nelson stated on the floor of the U.S. Senate:

"Only time will tell where Judge Roberts will come down on the prevailing legal matters that come before the Roberts Court. I can only take him at his word that he will approach his role on the court without a pre-determined agenda, without activism, and with only the intention to balance the scales of justice for all Americans.....

I will vote to confirm Judge John Roberts as Chief Justice of the Supreme Court."

And he said the same thing about Alito.

At the time, the Associated Press reported:

Sen. Ben Nelson of Nebraska on Tuesday became the first Democrat to announce he will vote to confirm Supreme Court nominee Samuel Alito. Nelson, one of the most conservative Democrats in Congress, said in a statement that he had made up his mind to support Alito "because of his impeccable judicial credentials, the American Bar Association's strong recommendation and his pledge that he would not bring a political agenda to the court."

Now, not to be undone by the Nelson gasbag is Max Baucus, the man who wants to undermine health care reform.

He's undecided as well.

Sen. Max Baucus (D-Mont.) said Thursday he hasn’t made up his mind on whether he will vote to confirm Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor.

Baucus this summer has infuriated liberals on and off Capitol Hill by working to strike a deal with Republicans on healthcare reform. A “no” vote on Sotomayor would be adding fuel to the left’s fire at the Finance Committee chairman.

Baucus on Thursday twice told The Hill he is undecided on next week’s floor vote on Sotomayor.

Talk about slapping their president in the face. If Goober Graham said he's voting for Sotomayor then what is their hesitation except from a narcissistic ego trip to get more ink from the media. I wonder if Nelson is a racist or just hates women or both since he gave his vote to two white men so easily.

Dave N.: According to Ian Millhiser at ThinkProgress, all of this waffling by Senate Dems -- which includes Alaska's Mark Begich -- is a result of pressure from the National Rifle Association, which indeed promised it would work to stop the Sotomayor nomination very early on; the NRA's Wayne LaPierre went on Glenn Beck and promised that if Sotomayor didn't agree to every jot and tittle of their agenda, they would denounce and oppose her. This is why so many Republicans grilled Sotomayor with questions about the Second Amendment.

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During her now 10 month-long media victimization campaign, Sarah Palin has time and again revealed her fundamental misunderstanding of the First Amendment and Americans' free speech rights. Now as she prepares to exit the Alaska Governor's mansion, her confusion - and thin skin - is again on display.

On the Fourth of July of all days, Palin's lawyer Thomas Van Flein issued a warning that his client would bring defamation claims against bloggers and media alike speculating on rumors of a criminal investigation involving the Governor:

To the extent several websites, most notably liberal Alaska blogger Shannyn Moore, are now claiming as "fact" that Governor Palin resigned because she is "under federal investigation" for embezzlement or other criminal wrongdoing, we will be exploring legal options this week to address such defamation. This is to provide notice to Ms. Moore, and those who re-publish the defamation, such as Huffington Post, MSNBC, the New York Times and The Washington Post, that the Palins will not allow them to propagate defamatory material without answering to this in a court of law. The Alaska Constitution protects the right of free speech, while simultaneously holding those "responsible for the abuse of that right." Alaska Constitution Art. I, Sec. 5. http://ltgov.state.ak.us/... These falsehoods abuse the right to free speech; continuing to publish these falsehoods of criminal activity is reckless, done without any regard for the truth, and is actionable.

As Moore herself noted regarding her reference on MSNBC to the lingering questions surrounding the construction of the Palin home and the Wasilla sports complex (a story first raised last year by the Wayne Barrett in The Village Voice):

"I haven't defamed the governor, I reported on speculation and rumor in Alaska. ... It's not my rumor; it's been out there for 10 months and the First Amendment protects me," Moore said. "Even if I didn't say it's 'rumors and speculation,' I'm still protected -- I would just lose credibility, which I'm not willing to do."

UPDATE: For its part, as the Los Angeles Times reported Sunday, "the FBI's Alaska spokesman said the bureau had no investigation into Palin for her activities as governor, as mayor or in any other capacity."

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Is Sanford completely off his rocker? I understand about love, but why is he giving passionate interviews with the AP? And does he think he'll save his marriage by telling them that his lover is his "soul mate?"

South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford called his Argentine mistress his "soul mate" Tuesday, but said that he would try to fall back in love with his wife.

Sanford also admitted Tuesday that he saw Maria Belen Chapur more times than previously disclosed, and that he had "crossed lines" with a handful of women other than his mistress in the past -- but never had sex with them.

In a lengthy and emotional interview with The Associated Press in his Statehouse office Tuesday, the governor described five meetings with Maria Belen Chapur over the past year, including two romantic, multi-night stays with her in New York before they met there again intending to break up.

He said he met her two other times -- their first meeting in 2001 at an open-air dance spot in Uruguay and a coffee date in New York in 2004 during the Republican National Convention. He said neither time was romantic.

It was the first disclosure of any liaisons with Chapur in the United States and contradicted a public confession last week during which Sanford admitted to a total of five encounters over their eight-year relationship...read on

He's lied so many times already about this that it's hard to keep up. Did anyone really believe he saw her only three times in eight years? And now he admits to reaching out to other women too.

Sanford also said he had "let his guard down" with some physical contact with women other than Chapur and his wife, but "didn't cross the sex line." He wouldn't go into detail. Sanford said the casual encounters happened outside the U.S. while he was married but before he met Chapur.

Did Sanford tell the AP what the Bible says about "letting his guard down?" What does that even mean? It means that he's a player and has been for a long time.
Will his wife think he should be given a second chance after reading and hearing about all of this? Sanford is a mess and can't stop talking about "Maria." Isn't there a show on the BBC about Maria?

'How Do You Solve a Problem Like Maria?'

I think there's a reality show in this somewhere. Does Sanford really want to stay married? It certainly sounds like he'd rather have the media send love notes to Maria, his true soul mate than make up with his wife.

Poor Tucker Carlson, even after he had a makeover it still didn't help his nonsensical arguments. His knickers are in a bunch over Jon Stewart's skewering of CNBC's Jim Cramer. He's mad as hell and not going to take it anymore. That evil Jon Stewart needs to be stopped, I say! So Tucker took his complaints to The Daily Beast.

Before Cramer could defend himself, Stewart moved on to a new charge: Cramer and his colleagues at CNBC had known that the financial sector was in imminent danger of collapse, but had pretended otherwise—a ruse that Stewart described as “disingenuous at best and criminal at worst.”

Cramer was sure ready to pounce on the very mean Stewart until he blindsided him with a clever ruse. But a little later Carlson says this:

No matter. Cramer was almost incoherent by this point, cringing and apologetic. Stewart was becoming furious. “I understand you want to make finance interesting,” he said, “but it’s not a fucking game. And I, I, I—when I watch that, I can’t tell you how angry that makes me.”

Are you telling me that the brillant Jim Cramer was incoherent from a diversionary tactic Jon used to trip him up? Hmmm, maybe it was because Jim had no defense and was guilty as charged.

If you didn’t actually see the show, you wouldn’t know any of this, since there is a virtual ban on critical stories about Jon Stewart in the press. Nobody in memory has received a longer free ride. (CNBC stands in such awe of Stewart, the network hasn’t even tried to defend itself, even against his claim that its programming might be criminal.)

The entire cable news media was silent about the Cramer segment. It was like there was a virtual ban (except for CNN's Reliable Sources where Carlson called Stewart a "partisan Hack." Now that was comedy gold.) on this critical story of CNBC and the business world. Yes, the press is way too easy on him. Damn comedian gets away with telling the truth about the Cross Fire's of the TV world. He needs to get the full Gary Condit treatment. Send him to Gitmo and have Cheney waterboard him.

Before Cramer could defend himself, Stewart moved on to a new charge: Cramer and his colleagues at CNBC had known that the financial sector was in imminent danger of collapse, but had pretended otherwise—a ruse that Stewart described as “disingenuous at best and criminal at worst.”

This was even more farther-fetched. A ratings-hungry TV network had the scoop of the decade but decided to sit on it? Why? In order to curry favor with soon-to-be-disgraced corporate executives? It didn’t make sense.

Sure, Stewart is out of his mind because he put together a montage of outrageous behavior of CNBC talking heads after Rick Santelli of CNBC screamed at President Obama not to help the "losers" who would get assistance to try and save their homes: 'Screw them, it's their fault that the housing crisis had happened anyway, so why should we rich and smart people, the winners of our society, chip in?' Blaming homeowners who couldn't pay their mortgages for the housing crisis. And CNBC happens to represent the Wall Street media to most Americans. They cheered him to the high heavens like a Messiah that had come from the Gods.

CNBC simply didn't practice real journalism during the entire sub-prime mortgage crisis and traded in their journalistic integrity because profits were good and the ideology of most on the shows and reporters was geared towards free market capitalism that should never be regulated. There were a few appearances by guests who tried to warn the Kudlow's of the impending doom, but they were practically laughed off the set on opinion shows which featured the infamous: Decagon.

The Daily Show has about 23 minutes or so and uses usually the last third of the show for interviews. Carlson complains that he gave a puff interview with Obama, but he doesn't mention that John McCain was one of his most frequent guests and most of the time he played very nice with him too. But that doesn't count. He has Bill Kristol on every few months and they make him appear a lot of the time look like a normal person with sound ideas, but that doesn't count. No, Jon Stewart is a partisan hack.

I could go on and on taking his rubbish apart, but since he tells you a behind-the-scenes story about Stewart -- after he ripped Crossfire a new one -- I'll tell you a similar little story about Tucker. I met him in the green room of Bill Maher's Real Time on October 21, 2005. I went with Arianna Huffington during the Valerie Plame scandal and he was one of the guest panelists. We met and talked for about 15 minutes about trivial things. The way you do with people you meet for the first time.

He knew my blog when I told him what I did and he complimented me on it. As he talked about California, I was stunned that he was acting like a nice, normal guy too. A charming man who was not a Republican, but simply an ideologue with principles, and he was very friendly. Then it was time for the show to start and he went onstage and acted like a jerk for the entire show. He came back into the green room and said, "That was fun." I was like, "What did you turn into, dude?" He left stage right.

   Joe Scarborough goes after bloggers (I mean, who else is watching your show, Joe?) on a regular basis, denigrating us as Cheetos-eating Star Wars fans living in our mothers' basements.  Joe's court jester Willie Geist interviews bloggers in the DNC Big Tent, and finds very few bloggers who fit Joe's slurs. 

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As with most issues, what Joe says as opinion, is simply contrary to fact.   Surveys of top political bloggers (here and here) in 2006 found that most are male, white, well-educated, around 45 years old, and earning above-average income.  Kinda exactly like you, Joe.  We also have extensive activist experience (I shook Ted Kennedy's hand at 18 and haven't really washed under the nails since), and we have an addictive level of news consumption (which is the only explanation I have as to why we get up to watch Morning Joe).

As an Ivy-educated middle-aged mother-of-three homeowner who does not own any Star Wars memorabilia, I can see why you might be jealous of bloggers, Joe.  Few of us have to deal with little niggling details like dead staff in our office or having to carry the water of the Worst. President. Ever. 

Also, as a blogger, I can tell you in the presence of my considerable, well-educated audience, to kiss my liberal elite blogger ass.  

  Bill O'Reilly has officially lost it. In his warped little mind, bloggers who organize and engage in public advocacy for causes they believe in like universal healthcare and an end to unnecessary and dumb wars are the same as Klansmen who used to lynch black people. Seriously. How can you logically make that connection? Dumb question.

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"Obama must condemn organizations like MoveOn and DailyKos if he truly wants to run without a race component. These are the people who are dividing Americans along racial lines. It is not a stretch to say MoveOn is the new Klan."

Here's a fun game to play in comments, kids. Finish this sentence: 

"Bill O'Reilly is the new _______ "

Enjoy!

  On "Morning Joe," seemingly in response to this C&L post, Joe Scarborough denies he was talking about his colleague Keith Olbermann when he referred to a pundit who "ignorantly" reported on McCain's Anbar gaffe, and then goes on a hysterical little rant about the "Cheetos Brigade" without mentioning who he was talking about. 

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"I was talking about someone on another network. [...] But again, you know the problem is when you're in the basement and you're blogging and you're eating Cheetos, sometimes the Cheetos dust goes up, ya know, and you get two choices: You can either keep typing, or you can stop for a second and wipe the Cheetos off your chest, clear out your ears and take a closer listen. But they don't do that. And therein lies the problem with the 'Cheetos Brigade.'"

What other cable news host reported on the story Tuesday night that Joe could have been talking about? Was it Andersen Cooper? We'll probably never know because although Joe may not be a keyboard-carrying member of the "Cheeto Brigade," he sure doesn't have the courage to name names.

Maybe Joe can lament about the evil bloggers with Brian Williams at the next DC cocktail party. I can just picture them yukking it up about guys named Vinny with "Cheetos-stained" shirts in their pathetic "efficiency apartments." Maybe our pads would be a little nicer, Joe, if we were handsomely rewarded for being wrong about everything like you are. Then again, I'll take my snack food, modest housing and clean conscience over your mansion and war-cheerleading record any day of the week.

Be back in a minute....my fingers are orange and the bag is empty.  [Blue Gal has a Cheetos message for Joe, too]

John McCain, Town Hall Meeting, Merrimack, NH 12/29/07

Hey right wing bloggers. I think he's talking about you too.

JOHN MCCAIN: "Now we've got the cables. We've got talk radio. We've got the bloggers. I hate the bloggers. We've got all kinds of sources of information."

I'm giddy with the thought that he isn't very fond of me.

On Tuesday's "O'Reilly Factor," BillO went after DailyKos founder Markos Moulitsas for having the audacity to run a site where people are free to write posts like this one, in which dKos member Mahler3 <gasp> juxtaposed photos from Jenna Bush's wedding with graphic pictures from Iraq. This was not a recommended diary, by the way, and was almost universally panned in the comments section.

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Transcript via MediaMatters:

O'Reilly: And Newsweek magazine, by the way, has legitimized him by giving him a columnist position. I talked to the editor by email, and I said I can't believe that you're -- that's like hiring David Duke. Again, I use Duke too much, but I have to -- the level of hatred coming out of that website is unprecedented. Isn't it?

Markos responds here with some friendly and hate-free emails he got from O'Reilly viewers.

C&L'er Bill W writes:

Somehow Newsweek shouldn't have hired Kos because of what other people say in the comments or post in their user blogs, but of course he's okay with their hiring Rove who has been involved in scandal after scandal. Who's more like David Duke? Kos, or the guy behind the robocalls that said McCain had an illegitimate black child? I'm just sayin'.

Building on his extensive resumé of ambush journalism, Bill O'Reilly sends one of his flunkees "producers" to confront Arianna Huffington over cherry-picked comments left by an anonymous person on HuffPo.

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Arianna responds:

I find it laughable to be lectured on hate speech by Bill O'Reilly, who has done as much if not more than anyone else in the media to debase the public dialogue. He spews hate as readily as he breathes. It's his lifeblood.

O'Reilly's relentless crusade to smear Arianna should finally leave no doubt that he has absolutely zero journalistic standards and/or shame.

As John Amato just documented with some original reporting, FOX News allows hate-filled-racist comments on their own website. You know, the kind BillO says is ruining our country. We're still waiting for O'Reilly to clarify those comments or deem them really not hateful at all. Will Howard Kurtz include them in his next column also?

Exit question: If you ambushed the Falafel King and got to ask one question, what would it be? I think I would ask what he meant when he told Andrea Mackris that Al Franken was going to "get a knock on his door" one day and have his "life change forever."

On Wednesday, Bill O'Reilly continued defending his slanderous assault on Arianna Huffington, repeatedly comparing her to the KKK and Nazis after blaming her personally for a handful of cherry-picked comments from readers of her website, The Huffington Post.

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What makes O'Reilly's phony outrage all the more ridiculous is the fact that his own site has been caught spewing even worse comments from his 'premium' members than the few from HuffingtonPost that he's pretending to get all riled up about. Let's recap just a few of the comments about Hillary Clinton from billoreilly.com:

If Hillary wins, I will be respectful of our leader. If you could read my thoughts, I would be on the SS [Secret Service] watch list.

As a woman, i would open the door for her.....now, if there was nothing on the other side but empty space and a 50 foot drop into a moat filled leeches and (gulp) rats...well, I can't be held responsible.

If Hillary wins which I hope she won't. My guns are loaded for the revolt are yours?

Pot, meet kettle ...

Why Fox News, or any network, would continue to allow someone with such a long history of racist remarks even before his Sylvia's restaurant rant which gained so much attention, much less the same man who just two weeks ago threatened "to go on a lynching party against Michelle Obama," to get away with baselessly and repeatedly calling anyone a racist genocidal murderer on air is shocking.

As Media Matters notes, "O'Reilly frequently attacks those with whom he disagrees, comparing them to the Nazis or the Ku Klux Klan." Last year it was the DailyKos, now it's HuffingtonPost. I'm really quite surprised he hasn't set his sights on C&L by now. Perhaps it's because he knows we're well versed here in the 'three magic words' guaranteed to keep BillO at bay: Malmedy, Mackris, and loofah (and for those of you taking notes, falafel will work just as well).