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Laura Ingraham, filling in for Bill O'Reilly along with one of their pundits, Dr. Marc Siegel painted the attacks on Michele Bachmann as being sexist and that it's just that evil nonexistent "liberal media" and the left wing that are going after her for her problem with having migraine headaches, although Ingraham did bring up what a shame it was that the "very nice" Tim Pawlenty was using it as a campaign issue.

Somehow they both forgot to mention that the story originated on their fellow Fox contributor Tucker Carlson's rag, the Daily Caller. Imagine that? Before either of these two hypocrites go asking why liberal women aren't more outraged at this low blow going after Bachmann, maybe they should give their buddy Tucker a call and ask him who told him to run the story so we can find out who really wanted to undermine her. As Susie already noted here, it's more likely Karl Rove and his organization than the "liberal media" that doesn't want to see her nominated.

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Republican operative and CNN political commentator Alex Castellanos plays a nice little game of false equivalencies when talking about the chances of right winger Christine O'Donnell and whether that GOP/Tea Party candidate might upset Mike Castle in the Delaware Republican primary race for the U. S. Senate. Never mind the extremism of the right wing and the teabaggers and who is funding that movement, the left wing blogosphere is just the same thing when it comes to the fringes of either party.

I take Castellanos to task for a few things here. One, the teabaggers out there are not some movement that started from a grassroots political uprising. They are a movement that wanted to re-brand the Republican Party so it got the taint of the Bush stink removed from it and that want to pretend they are something different than just the rabid right wing base of the Republican Party. They're sponsored by Dick Armey and Tim Phillips and every other Republican front group that is taking advantage of these seniors that they're busing out there to participate in their protests.

The left wing blogosphere is not some organized group that walks in lock-step with the Democratic Party and pretends like everything the leadership is doing is alright with them. To compare the two is utterly ridiculous but of course no one was going to point that out on Cooper's show.

COOPER: Well, Alex, if she does win the Republican Party nomination, it does say -- does it say much about the power of Sarah Palin? I mean, how much do you think she would owe that victory to Sarah Palin?

CASTELLANOS: Oh, I don't think -- I think this is much bigger than Sarah Palin.

Republican primaries like this one, closed, are a little bit like private clubs. Only Republicans get to vote. So, even if it's Delaware, a left-of-center state, you can still have a very right- leaning primary. And that's what you have here.

Now, the left has the blogosphere. The right has the Tea Party. And they're a little bit like the lines on the side of the road. You're glad you're there. They tell you how far you can go, but you don't necessarily want to drive there all the time.

I do think the Tea Party's detriment, their -- the liability of the Tea Party is overstated by the media. Tea Party candidates are running ahead in places like Colorado. Ron Johnson is running even with Russ Feingold.

So, the Tea Party -- if you ask Americans, hey, do you agree with the Tea Party, 60 percent say yes. And it's because of Washington. This is an anti-Washington election. So, don't count these candidates out yet.

COOPER: So -- so, you think she could still win in that state, even if she gets the Republican nomination?

CASTELLANOS: Oh, I think she could, but I think it's -- Paul is right. It's much tougher. In a general election, it's not a private club. And it is a left-of-center state, and it would be much tougher. There's no question.

But, you know, here's what Republicans say. What good would it do us to have an Arlen Specter in the Senate? And that's the way many Republicans up there look at Mike Castle. You know, we had to ship Arlen Specter back over to the Democrats, where he was much more comfortable. What good would it do to try to build a new Republican Senate majority around that?

From Matt Osborne at http://www.osborneink.com/ -- Vast Left-Wing Conspiracy:

The 2010 Netroots Nation gathering investigated! Is George Soros paying for the beer? Because he sure isn't paying the bloggers...

We're still waiting for that check from George Soros too Matt.

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Arianna Huffington sparred with Liz Cheney during the panel segment on This Week over whether the Bush-Cheney administration deserves part of the blame for the disaster in the Gulf with Cheney of course coming to the defense of her father and Halliburton. Rather than address Huffington's points about deregulation and the mess that the MMS had become under their watch, Cheney accused her of repeating left wing talking points and just wanting to demonize the Bush administration.

After Huffington said Halliburton was responsible for the cementing on the rig and had defrauded the U.S. government out of hundreds of millions of dollars, Cheney cut her off and said her assertions had no relationship to the truth. They both said they looked forward to PolitiFact fact checking the show.

PolitiFact's Truth-O-Meter page for This Week is here. I don't think Liz Cheney is going to fare too well there once they update the site for this panel segment.

One other note on Cheney's appearance on This Week, if she's going to be allowed to filibuster the show and talk about half the time and over the other guests, why even bother to have a moderator?

HUFFINGTON: George, the truth is that right now we have precisely the regulatory system that the Bush-Cheney Administration wanted -- full of loopholes, full of cronies and lobbysists filling the very agencies they're supposed to be overseeing --

WILL: So it's Bush's fault.

HUFFINGTON: -- the industry.

WILL: Just clear this up.

HUFFINGTON: It is absolutely 1000 percent Bush-Cheney's fault, plus the fact that the Obama Administration has not really done enough fast enough to change what's happening at the MMS agency, at all sorts of other agencies. Not just when it comes to the energy problems, when it comes to Wall Street, all over, we are seeing the complete success of the kind of regulatory system that Bush-Cheney wanted. And we're seeing this is the inevitable result of what they wanted.

CHENEY: You know, it's truly amazing. I mean I actually heard George Bush was responsible for the breakup of Tipper and Al Gore's marriage too. I mean it's incredible the extent to which people are now trying to shift blame. And frankly --

Continue reading »

Scarborough uses this interview with Evan Bayh to attack bloggers on the left for being too mean to his buddy Evan Bayh and play more of this can't we all get along game Bayh's been singing since he announced his retirement.

Bob Cesca hit the nail on the head with this "half a loaf" nonsense out of Bayh today:

Bayh is really pathetic. While chickening out because being in Congress is so hard and people argue about important issues, he scolded the left by suggesting, "Some progress is better than none." And, "Half a loaf is better than none."

Well, first, I would argue that half a loaf is better than none, only if the goal is to always shoot for for the full loaf (damn I hate the "loaf" metaphor, by the way). Bayh, on the other hand, routinely aims for just the half a loaf.

Exactly. He's done nothing but undermine the agenda of the Democratic Party. "Half a loaf" for progressive Democrats who want some actual reform is the public option, since single payer would be the whole loaf. And of course in the clip above when Katrina Vanden Heuvel tries to ask Evan Bayh about the real problem with the Senate which is the filibuster and the money influencing its members, Joe and Mike make sure the segment ends before she can do any follow up. Scarborough needs to just move on over to ClusterFox where he belongs.

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ConservaDem Evan Bayh just can't help himself can he? On Fox News Sunday when asked about the President's proposed non-security discretionary spending freeze, Bayh sides with the likes of Paul Ryan and calls critics of the spending freeze 'far-left'.

Wallace: First of all Sen. Bayh, Congressman Ryan this question as to whether or not the spending freeze and the President's ideas for fiscal discipline are real or a sham, go at it.

BAYH: Well, if you look, I suspect Paul does not, but if you look at the far left-wing blogs and that kind of thing they're severely criticizing the president for being too fiscally austere. My own take on this, Paul is right. Domestic discretionary spending increased last year. I voted against the omnibus, I voted against the "minibus", I voted against the bus... and so, that's last year. The question is where do we go here from now?

This freeze is important. He's identified $20 billion which if you aggregate over the next ten years is $250 billion less spending. Does that solve all our problems? No. But it's a step in the right direction and his use of the veto pen -- you asked if it's a wake-up call Chris. It is, but it's important Congress not hit the snooze button. So we need to implement these cuts and look for long-term solutions to get spending and the deficit down.

I wonder if Bayh was referring to Paul Krugman and his criticism of the freeze which he called 'appalling on every level'. Or Rachel Maddow who took Jared Bernstein apart when he tried to explain the rationale behind the decision. I'd like to see Bayh go on Maddow's show and try to explain himself to her. I don't think he'd fare very well. She might actually ask him to follow up and explain who he was talking about and why he thinks they're wrong.

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Ron Reagan Jr. and Joan Walsh on Hardball reminding Chris Matthews that reality seems to have a liberal bias. As they both point out, once again, the Villagers were wrong, and the "loony left," as the media likes to dismiss any of us as, were right.

I disagree with both of them on one point, though. There is nothing "honorable" about what Tom Ridge is doing. He didn't quit and speak up when he was first asked to do this. And now that he's got a book to sell, suddenly he's feeding the public some half truths about what went on to gin up some interest in it.

Glenn Greenwald and Marcy Wheeler have had a bit of an interesting exchange with The Atlantic's Marc Ambinder over his reaction to Ridge's latest revelation that are well worth the read on the topic of how the Villagers treat the left.

Greenwald: Fringe leftist losers: wrong even when they're right:

Just as is still commonly said about opponents of the Iraq War (even though they were right, they were still wrong and unSerious because their motives were bad), Ambinder acknowledges that Bush critics were right that the terror alerts were being manipulated for political ends (he has no choice but to acknowledge that now that Ridge admits it), but still says journalists like himself were right to scorn such critics "because these folks based their assumption on gut hatred for President Bush, and not on any evaluation of the raw intelligence." As always: even when the dirty leftist hippies are proven right, they're still Shrill, unSerious Losers who every decent person and "journalist" scorns.

Wheeler: Ambinder: Sorry I Was So Stupid, But I Was Right To Be Stupid:

Mark Ambinder takes the opportunity of Ridge's confirmation that the terror alerts were one big political game to claim he was justified in believing that we DFHers were wrong about the alerts--and in doing so, demonstrates what is so wrong with so much of Village journalism.

Be sure to check out the rest of both posts if you haven't already. Reagan and Walsh should read them as well if they haven't. By showing such deference to Ridge they're simply feeding into the narrative they're attempting to beat back here.