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From this Saturday's Fox & Friends, regular guest and host of his own show on the weekends, Mike Huckabee is very sad that there are people "on the left" who are making him feel bad about being able to demonize Muslims. Here's what he said while discussing the aftermath of the Boston Marathon bombing:

HUCKABEE: But they still don't want to just come out and say, we have a serious threat because of radicalized Islam. Not all Muslims are terrorists, for heaven sakes. No one I know of suggests that. But it's just, it's dishonest and disingenuous for us to continue to say, right after the bombing, this is probably the work of some right-wing anti-tax, anti-government person when no one knew.

And there was never like an on-air apology from some of the people who made those ridiculous speculations. That's why I think that it's very important that Americans understand, we do have a threat. That threat is jihad. It is not about what we've done to them. That's nonsense. It is a fundamental part of their doctrine to believe that we're all infidels and that we must die. [...]

Well, take it a step further. Christians who are still, you know, holding to old fashioned traditions about marriage for example are cast as bigoted homophobes. Now, what is the position in Islam regarding homosexuality? Not same sex marriage. Just homosexuality. It's death by stoning.

I don't understand. We have a very harsh, radical, carried out kind of zaniness going on. Same thing with honor killings.

CARLSON: If these radicals came to the United States, the first people to be executed would be liberals.

HUCKABEE: Yeah.

CARLSON: So I don't understand why they don't perceive the threat for themselves.

HUCKABEE: There is no rationale for the way in which the left basically treats Islam in the public square. It just doesn't make any sense.

Sorry, but there are plenty of reasons for treating every citizen, no matter what their religion, the same under the law and it has nothing to do with what "liberals" want, unless of course you think just wanting everyone to obey our laws is somehow a "liberal value."

And to Huckabee's remarks, he wants to pretend we've never had any "Christian" terrorists like abortion clinic bombers doing harm to or killing their fellow citizens. Huckabee needs to go take a good long look in the mirror when it comes to domestic terrorism. He's right up there with Bill-O when it comes to whipping up the hatred with the extremists on that issue.

In the mean time, he's happy to play the victim card for his audience while pretending Muslims are the only people capable of committing acts of domestic terrorism.

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I'm quite sure that there are plenty of constructive things you could say about President Obama's recent trip to Mexico and what policies would actually benefit the citizens of both countries, such as our trade laws and our drug policies among other things, but you weren't going to find that on this Saturday's Fox & Friends.

Hosts Tucker Carlson, Alisyn Camerota and Clayton Morris opened up the segment by using the speech as an opportunity to trot out the old "apology tour' attacks. Then after playing a portion of President Obama's speech where he said this:

In the United States, we recognize our responsibilities as well. We understand that the root cause of much of the violence here—and so much suffering for many Mexicans— is the demand for illegal drugs, including in the United States. [...]

We also recognize that most of the guns used to commit violence here in Mexico come from the United States.

...they of course had to bring up one of Fox's other favorite faux scandals, the trumped up Fast and Furious failed gun trafficking sting. And for good measure, heaven forbid a former Mexican diplomat and writer that Obama quoted in his speech said something critical about the United States thirty years ago, so therefore Obama must be siding with anti-American radicals.

They did their best to twist what the president said in his speech as well, and claimed that his comments about the drug trade and guns meant he was blaming the United States for all of their problems, which, as anyone can read for themselves, is not exactly what he said to the audience there, to put it charitably. He said we shared some responsibility for those specific problems.

As I already said, there are plenty of legitimate items to criticize about our relationship with Mexico. You'd never know it listening to the garbage being spewed by these clowns.

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Fox News host Tucker Carlson on Saturday asserted that a Phoenix program to hire more black and Latino lifeguards at public pools was the "same rationale that propped up Jim Crow for 80 years."

NPR last month reported that the city of Phoenix had set out to hire more minorities because more than 90 percent of the swimmers at some pools were black or Latino, but a majority of lifeguards were white.

On Saturday, Crystal Wright, editor of ConservativeBlackChick.com, snarked to Fox News that "if you're downing, you want to relate to a lifeguard that's going to save you, right guys?"

"Is there any social science evidence that shows that people don't want to be saved by people who have a different melanin content from they do?" Carlson wondered.

Wright said that Phoenix "would rather have people drown or risk drowning in our pools all in the name of diversity. It's the most perverse thing I've ever seen."

Co-host Alisyn Camerota pointed out that Phoenix had not said that children would be put in danger by diverse lifeguards, but that the program would help overcome a language barrier for Latino children with poor English skills.

"I'm a black American, I have no language barrier with a white person," Wright replied. "I'm talking to you and Tucker right now, we seem to be speaking English."

"This is the same rationale that propped up Jim Crow for 80 years, right?" Carlson opined. "You want to swim in a pool with people who look like you. You want to sit in the same bus or the same movie theater or use the same water fountain as people who look like you. It's diversity."

"Segregation," Wright agreed. "My parents grew up during segregation and they didn't really like to be on the beach and at pools and seeing white people be able to use a different beach. Phoenix is making no sense, and they're forcing some kind of segregation."

Wright added that the Phoenix program was not like former Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney's so-called "binders full of women," which she said was "common sense."

"Hispanics and blacks tend to not be as good swimmers as whites, and many more black Americans and Hispanics, actually those kids don't know how to swim," Wright concluded. "This is just putting -- it's not good."

(h/t: Media Matters)

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Democratic strategist and CNN contributor Paul Begala participated in a debate with The Daily Caller's Tucker Carlson at the Conservative Political Action Conference this Thursday. He actually got in some good shots at Carlson when he called out the Republicans' hypocrisy with their carping about our debt and deficit.

BEGALA: Let me quote a conservative hero, Dick Cheney, who said Ronald Reagan taught us that deficits don't matter. As he was about everything, Dick Cheney was wrong. He was wrong then and he's wrong now. Of course deficits matter, but any one of you who supported the Bush tax cuts, the Bush war in Iraq, or the Bush prescription entitlement plan, has no business talking about debt. Now sit down, shut up and let the grown ups handle it.

You're welcome. I helped Bill Clinton balance the budget and build a surplus -- why? Because we had good economic times. In good economic times you pay down the deficit, as Clinton did, but Reagan did not and Bush did not. In bad times, you do have to stimulate in the near term, as thank God President Obama is doing.

But any of you who caused this deficit, this debt and deficit... no, no. You forgot the rule. You have to hush up if you supported creating the deficit. It's like listening to lectures on hygiene from Typhoid Mary.

For the most part, this debate of theirs was a good reminder of why Crossfire is no longer on the air and left me pining for Jon Stewart to intervene.

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I have no idea whether the death threats against our first black president have been bad enough that the Secret Service actually has decided to employ a food taster to make sure that he isn't poisoned, but as Tommy Christopher pointed out, if it is true, he wouldn't be the first. That didn't stop the likes of Swanson heir Tucker Carlson and his rag, The Daily Caller, along with every other right-winger on the Internet from going crazy and using it as an excuse to attack President Obama for acting like "royalty."

Here's more from Wonkette: Sequester Eliminates Position Of White House Taster, President To Starve:

Bammerz is still holding his lame ass meetings with Congressional Republicans in his latest flailing attempt to show them that he too wants to inflict as much needless pain on the vulnerable with stupid spending cuts. Apparently it was Susan Collins’ turn to have her special day with the President and as such she brought a Maine-themed feast full of shellfish and blueberry pie. However the President didn’t touch this succulent lunch, and not because he felt uncomfortable with Senator Collins bringing him a big plate of aphrodisiacs:

“Unfortunately, you know, the president can’t….He looked longingly at it..He honestly did look longingly at it, but apparently he has to have essentially a taster, and I pointed out to him that we were all tasters for him, that if the food had been poisoned all of us would have keeled over so, but he did look longingly at it and he remarked that we have far better food than the Democrats do, and I said that was because I was hosting.”

Okay it seems that we’ve learned a few things from this. First of all thanks to the President we now know that Senator Klobuchar’s “Taconite Tater Tot Hot Dish” is as gross as it sounds. Secondly: Obama has a food taster? Oh sweet Indonesian Curried Dog Stew we are never going to hear the end of this.

Sadly, despite the fact that story first came from the incredibly accurate source known as the Daily Caller and has since hit the right wing echo chamber thanks to AIM Investigative Reporter of the year Jim Hoft, it seems that the President is protected by a food taster. Why the nation’s first black president would feel compelled to employ someone meant to protect his food in this wonderful era of complete racial transcendence and political civility is beyond our comprehension, but it does automatically mean that Obama is an evil aristocratic dictator whose tyranny is only matched by his disdain for the common people. Read on...

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This story looks like it's about to get more interesting. I wonder if we're going to find out who paid the Dominican hooker to try to frame Sen. Bob Menendez. Report: Dominican Escort Now Says She Made Up Menendez Claims:

One of the women who appeared in a video last fall claiming Sen. Robert Menendez (D-NJ) paid her for sex has now told a different story to the police in the Dominican Republic, The Washington Post reported on Monday.

According to affidavits obtained by the newspaper, the woman said she and a friend appeared in the video after being approached by a lawyer. That lawyer, meanwhile, said a second lawyer provided him with a script and paid him to find the women.

The Post report, which also cites two people “briefed on [the woman’s] claim,” does not identify the women or the lawyers by name, nor does it detail what court the affidavits were filed in, or what kind of proceeding they are related to. It is also not clear how the Post obtained the documents.

The videos referred to in the report are apparently the same ones that appeared, at least in part, on the conservative website The Daily Caller in November. The Daily Caller did not identify the women, and their faces were blurred.

The story was initially ignored by much of the press. But in late January and early February, the rumors resurfaced, in the form of an anonymously posted WordPress blog containing a shadowy tipster’s correspondence with a watchdog group, ABC News and an apparent FBI agent. The tipster said he had information that Menendez had slept with prostitutes while vacationing in the Dominican Republic, where he stayed at the home of Dr. Salomon Melgen, a Miami ophthalmologist and businessman who is both a friend and political donor of the senator’s. In late January, the FBI raided Melgen’s Miami offices, reportedly as part of parallel investigations into potential Medicare fraud and Melgen’s relationship with Menendez.

Wonkette has more here: Daily Caller’s Menendez Hooker: I Can’t Believe We Made Up The Whole Thing.

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Mike Huckabee appeared on Fox & Friends this Saturday to complain about the tax-exempt status of the new non-profit political action committee, Organizing for Action, which as we already noted here will build on infrastructure of President Obama's campaign apparatus. Funny I don't ever seem to recall Huckabee, or anyone else at Fox for that matter having any issues with Karl Rove and his tax-exempt PAC, even though it appears they've broken the law and not complied with the rules they were supposed to be following.

And as Media Matters pointed out, Huckabee hasn't minded taking advantage of those same laws in regard to his own organizations: Mike Huckabee's Poor Grasp Of Tax Law And Irony:

Fox News host Mike Huckabee is irked at President Obama for converting his campaign apparatus into a tax-exempt non-profit advocacy group. Appearing on Fox & Friends Saturday, the former Arkansas governor admonished the president by saying: "Fine, go ahead and have your organization. Pay taxes on it like the rest of us have to when we get out and speak in our businesses and personal lives."

This is nonsense. Huckabee has his own tax-exempt political action committee, Huck PAC, that he has hyped up on Fox News and uses to "promote conservative principles and help elect conservative candidates at every level of government." Indeed, Huckabee has made ample use of tax-exempt groups throughout his political career and actually has a sketchy history with non-profits.

Back when he was lieutenant governor of Arkansas, Huckabee and his allies formed a non-profit group that had just two functions: to pay for Mike Huckabee to travel across the country bashing health care reform, and to pay Mike Huckabee. The New York Times reported in December 2007, when Huckabee was running for president, that Huckabee had been losing money serving as lieutenant governor, and "to bridge the gap between his income and his expenses, Mr. Huckabee and a few close political advisers came up with a plan. They formed a nonprofit organization that raised money for Mr. Huckabee to travel the country promoting conservative politics to fellow ministers and attacking Hillary Rodham Clinton's health care plan."

The group, Action America, existed for only three years and paid Huckabee a total of $61,500 -- money that Huckabee failed to disclose, drawing a "letter of caution" from the Arkansas Ethics Commission. Read on...

As always, IOKIYAR. And as the Media Matters post noted, the PAC has said they're going to disclose all of their donors and the people drawing a salary there are certainly going to be paying their individual income taxes.

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Conservative Daily Caller founder Tucker Carlson on Sunday suggested that the reason he had been unpopular with liberals for years was because "people despise you when you wear a bow tie."

"How boring is it to wear a hoodie to work?" Carlson asked during a Fox News segment about how Americans were revolting against the tradition of dressing casually on Fridays. "If you are truly cutting edge you will wear gloves. White gloves."

One viewer in London noted that "bow tie Thursdays" were becoming popular at his workplace.

Carlson, who wore a bow tie for years while working as a host of CNN's Crossfire, noted that he could have been "pummeled" for wearing the formal necktie if he had not believed in self defense.

"People despise you when you wear a bow tie," he explained. "Not in Charleston, not in Newport, Rhode Island. There little strongholds of bow tie-philia. But the rest on the country -- especially the Big Apple -- not for the bow ties."

"I mean, if you're a Nation of Islam guy -- in fact, they would come up to me often. They were so nice to me, it was unbelievable. The Nation of the [Louis] Farrakhan guys, they loved the bow tie."

"Was your behavior better when you were wearing a bow tie?" Fox News co-host Alisyn Camerota wondered.

"Oh, no," Carlson admitted. "It was much filthier because, look, you're wearing a bow tie so nobody suspects it."

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Just in case anyone didn't think that Michelle Malkin's display on Fox & Friends was quite enough with them carrying water for Wayne LaPierre and the NRA, they decided to bring in for good measure right wing rag The Daily Caller co-founder, and heir to the Swanson food fortune, Tucker Carlson, to lay the blame for the school shooting at Sandy Hook at the feet of President Obama, Democrats and Hollywood liberals. Because we all know that guns don't kill people, people who watch violent movies do.

Tucker Carlson: Obama Ignores Violent Media Because ‘Hollywood’ Donates To The Democratic Party:

The Daily Caller’sTucker Carlson appeared on Fox & Friends this Saturday and slammed President Obama for refusing to acknowledge the media’s role in our violent culture for fear of losing “Hollywood” donations. “Hollywood is one of the largest donors to the Democratic Party,” Carlson said, and because of this, the Obama administration ignores the violent media.

Host Dave Briggs asked Carlson if he thought Hollywood was “hypocritical” in speaking out against gun violence but never admitting their contribution to the problem. Co-host Alisyn Camerota suggested Hollywood is a “powerful lobby” that “bears some responsibility for the culture of gun violence”. According to Carlson, the main question Hollywood should be asking is whether “watching violence movies” and “playing violent video games” affects children. Carlson admitted “we don’t know” whether the media desensitizes people to violence but he believes “common sense suggests maybe.”

Carlson lamented that the role of media in America’s violent culture hasn’t been examined fully. He underscored his point that the reason for this is because Hollywood makes large contributions to Democratic to Democratic candidates:

“This is something Hollywood should be taking a close look at it. There ought to be some soul-searching. There ought to be, in the words of the left, some corporate responsibility here. And yet, you do not hear members of Congress on the Democratic side suggest this because they’re taking hundreds of millions of dollars from Hollywood.”

I'm not going to defend children being allowed to watch violent movies or play violent video games, but when it comes to controlling what adults watch, I guess Tucker suddenly doesn't like that "freedom" he and his fellow wingnuts are always railing about. Sadly no one bothered to ask Carlson why people in other countries manage to watch these same movies or play these same games, and somehow they don't have the same level of gun violence that we do here in the United States.

I'd also like to know just what they think any Democrats are supposed to do about what movies Hollywood puts out there. They seem to love the 2nd Amendment, but think it's perfectly acceptable to throw out the 1st if it suits their political agenda on any given day of the week, and as long as it means protecting the gun manufacturers in America and their profits.

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This Wednesday evening's The Daily Show was recorded before the first presidential debate and rather than focus on what was depressing a lot of us with the sheer volume of lies Mitt Romney was allowed to get away with that night, they were still talking about the previous day's drummed up non-controversy over at Fox.

Jon Stewart and his "great American black panel" did a really good job of making a mockery of Hannity, Carlson and Drudge for their over the top, naked race-baiting and the treating five year old footage of President Obama like it's "breaking news."

As Stewart noted, President Obama was just echoing the same sentiments of the "notorious black liberation theologist George W. Bush" when it came to his remarks on the response to the hurricane in New Orleans they were freaking out about.

I'll just add one last note and that is thank you to The Daily Show and your panel for calling Hannity and Carlson out in no uncertain terms for being exactly what they are:

STEWART: Watching that Hannity piece, watching that Hannity, it's almost unbelievable to see such naked race-baiting on television. Black people talk wierd. What is that?

CENAC: It's some bulls**t.

WILLIAMS: Yeah, f**k Hannity. Your October surprise is that the President is black?

WILMORE: They are some desperate mother f**kers.

Desperate about sums it up with that clown show.