DOWNLOADS: (497)

PLAYS: (6335)

Embed

With the Supreme Court agreeing to take up the issue of gay marriage in their next term, The Daily Show's Jon Stewart reminded his viewers just what we're up against in the coming years no matter how the court ends up ruling on the cases.

He took some shots at Lindsey Graham, who when appearing with his "two amigos," Droopy Dog Lieberman and Grandpa McGrumpy on Piers Morgan's show earlier this week, compared gay marriage to polygamy. And then there's Antonin Scalia, who left little doubt about how he's going to rule, when he compared homosexuality to murder.

DOWNLOADS: (92)

PLAYS: (636)

Embed

The Morning Joe crowd got a big laugh over John Heilmann's seeming word stumble this morning, with Scarborough in particular busting a gut. In the subsequent re-airs, and on the web this part was edited out, as first noted by TV/Newser

via Greg Mitchell

John Heilemann, very early on Morning Joe today, in a discussion about opposition to Susan Rice, suggested that Sen. Lindsey Graham is, essentially, a "woman." This was in the context of Sen. Kelly Ayotte replacing outgoing Joe Lieberman in the "three amigos" grouping (McCain, Graham, Lieberman). Heilemann said that now two of the three are actually "women." Well, Joe Scarb had a good laugh about it right on camera and then they moved on. And, as Mediaite just noted, that bit was pulled when the segment was re-aired after 8 a.m.

DOWNLOADS: (128)

PLAYS: (1004)

Embed

As John Aravosis noted here, if we weren't already sure what Lindsey Graham has been up to with exploiting the tragedy in Libya, we have our answer now -- GOP Sen. Lindsey Graham running campaign ads on Benghazi tragedy:

For anyone still wondering why Republican Senator Lindsay Graham has taken the lead for the GOP, along with John McCain, on trying to exploit the deaths of four Americans in Benghazi, Libya two months ago, we now have our answer.

Lindsey Graham is using our dead ambassador for his re-election campaign.

Even Mitt Romney wasn’t this morbidly brazen.

But the evidence is incontrovertible. Lindsey Graham is running campaign ads about Benghazi. One such ad was found by Alvin McEwen of Holy Bullies and Headless Monsters on the Talk Points Memo site, and another on Daily Kos (Alvin forwarded them to me): [...]

And when you click on the ad, it takes you to a petition on LindseyGraham.com, the Republican Senator’s campaign site that asks you to “sign the petition if you want answers”: [...]

Oh we’d like answers all right.

Starting with why the Republicans keep treating the deaths of four Americans as if they’ve won the lottery. Who does Lindsey Graham think he is, Mitt Romney?

As Steve Kornacki at Salon informed us this spring, Graham is likely to face a "tea party" primary challenger in 2014. So here he was on Meet the Press this morning, continuing to beat the drum on Benghazi and demanding that a select committee be formed, even though he and McCain's third amigo, Joe Lieberman already threw them under the bus -- Lieberman: Select Committee on Benghazi Not Needed.

DOWNLOADS: (141)

PLAYS: (1368)

Embed

Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT) is known for backing Sens. John McCain (R-AZ) and Lindsey Graham (R-SC) on hawkish national security policies but on Sunday said that "my two amigos" were wrong to call for a Watergate-style investigation into September attacks that killed four Americans in Benghazi.

During an interview on Sunday, Fox News host Chris Wallace asked Lieberman and Sen. Saxby Chambliss (R-GA) if they agreed with the demand that Congress create a joint select committee like those used to investigate Watergate and the Iran-Contra affair.

"The committees within the United States Senate are very capable of investigating this in the right way, and this is one time I have a slight disagreement with my good friends," Chambliss explained.

"Yeah, I respectfully separate myself from my two amigos on this and agree with Saxby," Lieberman agreed. "This was a tragedy but it doesn't rise to the level of 9/11 in [2001]. Our committees can handle this and come up with answers."

"If for some reason our colleagues think when we're done that we haven't done a good enough job, well let them think about a special committee then."

(h/t: Politico)

DOWNLOADS: (191)

PLAYS: (2471)

Embed

Say what?

The Hartford Courant provided this summation of Sunday morning's debate between Republican Linda McMahon and Democrat Chris Murphy who are vying for the U.S. Senate seat from Connecticut being vacated by retiring Joe Lieberman.

As noted in the piece, the World Wrestling Entertainment mogul has based her entire campaign on personal attacks, resorting to the typical Republican boilerplate devoid of specifics when asked about policy. On Sunday morning that strategy met with a resounding thud.

[N]othing really explains her astonishing moment of blankness when asked about same-sex marriage. She stumbled through an answer in which she affirmed her support for “America’s same sex marriage law.” There is, of course, no such thing, unless she means DOMA, which is sort of the opposite. And then she just stopped, with probably more than a minute left on her clock. Nobody does that. If you’ve got a short answer, you pivot and talk about something loosely related with your remaining time. She seemed inexplicably rattled by this benign, predictable and routine question. (This is what happens when you spend your whole campaign dodging the press. You turn into the kind of candidate who can’t improvise.)

As the issue-based battles started slipping away from her, McMahon upped the ante on the personal attacks. If you’re a little tired of the way this campaign has been almost exclusively about attacks on character and very little about the issues, let the word go forth that McMahon was far more reliant on this strategy than was Murphy on Sunday. Paradoxically, late in the debate she unsheathed a new kind of negative rhetoric, claiming that Murphy had expected a coronation and instead found himself in a tough campaign with a serious woman. The paradox: never before in this campaign had she seemed less like a serious woman. She seemed like a silly woman who had attempted to substitute recent study sessions for the years of immersion one might expect an aspiring senator to have had.

DOWNLOADS: (178)

PLAYS: (624)

Embed

Independent Connecticut Sen. Joe Lieberman on Sunday insisted that President Barack Obama and the White House should be held accountable for a sex scandal within the Secret Service and for lavish spending at the General Services Administration (GSA).

"It would be unfair to hold President Obama responsible for this outrageous behavior at the Secret Service and the GSA, but it is fair to hold the president accountable," Lieberman told Fox News host Chris Wallace. "What do I mean when I say the president should be held accountable? The buck stops at the president's desk. He's the leader of our government. He now has to be acting with a kind of relentless determination to find out exactly what happened and to make sure the people who work for him at the Secret Service and the GSA and everywhere else in the government don't let anything like this happen again."

The Connecticut senator also called for an investigation to determine whether White House staff were involved in the incident where Secret Services agents allegedly solicited prostitutes in Columbia ahead of the president's recent visit there.

"I'd say it's a reasonable question," Lieberman explained. "I think the White House ought to be conducting its own internal investigation of White House personnel who were in Cartagena just to makes sure that none of them were involved in this kind of inappropriate behavior."

"I understand a White House advance person doesn't have quite the same range of responsibility as a Secret Service agent does. On the other hand, a White House advance person knows exactly where the president is going to be at any time. ... So, that's an important question and the White House ought to be taking [Republican Iowa Sen. Chuck] Grassley's inquiry not defensively, but making sure they answer the questions."

DOWNLOADS: (174)

PLAYS: (1955)

Embed

Jon Stewart blasted the Congress and their unwillingness to really do anything about the insider trading which was featured in that badly flawed 60 Minutes piece on the subject and the watered down language in the STOCK Act they just passed.

It's a shame Stewart referenced the 60 Minutes piece since it was riddled with inaccuracies as we noted here, but that didn't make me any less happy to see him go after the Congress with their hypocrisy and unwillingness to do anything meaningful to prevent them from engaging in activities that would have the rest of us serving some jail time.

DOWNLOADS: (94)

PLAYS: (710)

Embed

The heckling and jeering was well-deserved, as Mr. Independent from Connecticut does indeed suck. He looked none too pleased by being bombed. I love this report by ace reporter Ellen Scott for WUSA.

Text via WUSA. Video by YouTube user OccupySD99.

Tonight some of the most powerful people in America met at the 99th Annual Alfalfa Club dinner. This club is made up of some of the most influential people in America, including President Obama. Occupy DC decided to show up to the meeting as well.

Occupy DC Protesters tested the patience of Metropolitan Police Officers tonight when they threw water and glitter at guests, including Senator Joe Lieberman. Officers did their best manning the two square block perimeter around the Capitol Hilton.

The mostly young crowd turned the protest into what they called a street party for the 99 percent to counter the Alfalfa Club's one percent. The rowdy, topless, and sometimes pot-smoking protesters were not arrested.

Codepink's Alli McCracken tweeted this bit of whimsy last night:

DOWNLOADS: (308)

PLAYS: (2836)

Embed

So much for caring more about keeping teachers, firefighters and police officers working. The Republicans in the Senate with some help from the usual suspects when it comes to blocking anything that might help everyday Americans -- Ben Nelson (Neb.), Mark Pryor (Ark.) and Joe Lieberman (Conn.) -- blocked the passage of a portion of President Obama's jobs bill this Thursday night.

Lawrence O'Donnell showed us some of Vice President Joe Biden's speech from the day before, urging members of the Senate to support the bill -- Supporting middleclass over millionaires:

Vice President Joe Biden eloquently offers Republicans a simple choice: support your local sheriffs or support your local millionaires. MSNBC's Lawrence O'Donnell explains in the Rewrite.

Here's more from The Hill on the vote -- Senate deals second defeat to Obama's 'jobs' plan:

For the second time in two weeks, Senate Republicans voted in a unison to block “jobs” legislation, which the Obama administration and Senate Democratic leaders have made central to their agenda.

The measure, a piece of President Obama’s larger jobs package, failed by a tally of 50 to 50 after several Democrats joined with Republicans to the Senate from moving to the measure.

Democrats Ben Nelson (Neb.) and Mark Pryor (Ark.), who voted last week to block Obama’s full jobs measure, again sided with Republicans.

Sen. Joe Lieberman (Conn.), an independent who caucuses with Democrats, also said no, citing concerns about the legislation’s cost effectiveness.

As with last week’s vote, Democrats failed to woo a single Republican vote. The staunchly unified GOP opposition calls into question whether the Democratic strategy has been able to exert the intended pressure on centrist Republicans. [...]

The $35 billion Democratic measure was designed to prevent layoffs of teachers, police officers and firefighters in cash-strapped states. Most of the funding, $30 billion, would have gone to saving teaching jobs and the rest to first responders.

The most controversial element of the bill was a plan to pay for it by raising taxes on income over $1 million by 0.5 percent. Republicans argued that it would put more pressure on small businesses that are already having difficulty maintaining cash flow because of the tight credit market.

Republicans said the latest Democratic jobs measure is a replay of the $787 billion stimulus Congress passed at the beginning of 2009, which they argue had little impact.Senate Democrats say they will bring additional pieces of the president’s jobs bill to the floor. One measure will likely include infrastructure spending; another would extend the payroll tax holiday and extend it to employers; a third would extend unemployment insurance.

Democrats expect to propose the same pay-for — raising taxes on income over $1 million — for each.

And here's more from Greg Sargent on what the blocking of this bill means for the people that these Senators are supposed to be representing, the topic of which, sadly, we now have the answer to -- Will Senators do the right thing on jobs, or will they shaft thousands of their own constituents?:

Continue reading »

DOWNLOADS: (284)

PLAYS: (2278)

Embed

MSNBC's Rachel Maddow wasn't surprised Tuesday to find out that "sort-of Democratic" Sen. Ben Nelson had been seen cheering then-Godfather's Pizza CEO Herman Cain during his 1991 parody of John Lennon's "Imagine."

Talking Points Memo spotted then-Nebraska Gov. Nelson in the video after it surfaced Monday.

"Do you see who that is?" Maddow asked. "Politics geeks of the world, do you see who that is standing and enthusiastically cheering on Herman Cain? That is Ben Nelson, now a sort-of Democratic senator from the great state of Nebraska, but at the time of this video in 1991 he was the sort-of Democratic governor of the great state of Nebraska."

While the cheering of Cain was telling, it was Nelson's intention to vote against President Barack Obama's jobs bill that really illustrated why he was deserving of the "Conservadem" label, according to the MSNBC host.

"Conservadems like Jon Tester and Ben Nelson and Joe Lieberman are siding with the Republican senators, who are siding with no voters -- not even their own!" Maddow exclaimed, noting a recent CNN poll that found that 63 percent of Republicans favored saving the jobs of teachers and first responders.

"Conservadem senators like these guys always try to get ahead by trashing their own party. That is what makes them Conservadems in most cases."