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With Rick Santorum out of the Republican primary race and Mitt Romney now the presumptive nominee, Chris Hayes discussed the conventional wisdom that Romney will now inevitably attempt to "pivot" back to the middle and soften some of the very extreme positions he's taken while trying to get through their primary race. Hayes played a series of clips both from President Obama and Romney. He reminded us of some of Obama's broken campaign promises and followed up with some of the things Mitt Romney's said on the campaign trail.

Hayes has a point: it doesn't matter much what Romney says once he attempts to moderate some of the things he's said in those clips because today's Republican Party is not going to allow him to govern as a moderate.

HAYES: The President is a product of the party that nominates him and the party that will nominate Mitt Romney is unwaveringly committed to a singularly regressive agenda. No post election private reversion to the moderate meme will change that. So, as we enter the era of the pivot, don't listen to what Mitt Romney says. Look at what his party is doing.

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I try to monitor C-SPAN's morning call-in show Washington Journal when I get a chance just to see what viewers of that network and the public are saying about the topics of the day and this one jumped out at me this morning as being from someone who's been watching too much Fox News or for that matter possibly a lot of the rest of our corporate media with the right wing talking points this woman rattled off when weighing in on this debt ceiling kabuki theater.

How someone comes off thinking that President Obama sounds like a partisan when he has, to the dismay of liberals, bent over backwards to make concessions to Republicans, or says he's playing the "class warfare card" is beyond me, but obviously this person has no idea what "class warfare" even means, or that they're probably losing that war.

She also was informed enough to realize that there was a deficit commission put together that went nowhere and in her defense, the one thing she said here that I agreed with completely is that doing that again may very well be a colossal waste of time, but then she lost me with saying she really didn't understand this whole concept of the debt ceiling at all, and even though she admitted she was clueless on what they're debating about, claimed the whole thing is just some scare tactic by both sides.

It goes without saying that since she does not understand what the debt ceiling is and thought it was about future spending, she obviously has no clue that this is about approving raising the debt ceiling for spending that the Congress has already approved, and not what they might spend in the future. It also seems pretty obvious she did not listen to the president's speech at all this week or she would already know that.

It pains me to hear just how misinformed our citizens are in the United States and this is just one example coming from someone who actually knows just enough to know that a deficit commission existed but not a whole lot else on the specifics of what's going on in this debate. This is your brain on Fox or after hearing too much right wing propaganda from somewhere else. There is class warfare going on. Unfortunately too many people don't even understand what that means or who is waging it.

Rough transcript below the fold.

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Time for your weekly podcast with The Professional Left, otherwise known as our own Driftglass and Bluegal. Have a great weekend and enjoy the podcast everyone.

I would imagine most of the readers of this blog can relate to or has their own story about how they responded to right wing chain emails that show up in our inboxes forwarded from family members or friends. My dad used to send me right wing chain emails that some of his buddies sent him once in a while and a couple of replies to all debunking what was in them put a stop to that. I don't know how many of them he still receives, but if he's still getting them, he's not passing them along to me any more.

You can listen to the archives at http://professionalleft.blogspot.com/ and you can also make a donation there if you'd like to help keep these podcasts going and help Fran and Driftglass with their fuel expenses so they can afford to go to Netroots Nation this year.

Open Thread below...

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On Fox News Sunday, Juan Williams is asked why so many people believe that President Obama is a Muslim and Williams states the obvious, the right-wing media are the ones pushing this lie.

Behind Obama Muslim myth stands the right wing:

Two recently released polls show that an increasing number of Americans believe the falsehood that President Obama is a Muslim. According to the Pew Research Center, 60 percent of people who believe this false claim cite the media as the source of that information -- and, indeed, the right-wing media have incessantly promoted this lie.

Right wing media relentlessly drive Obama-Muslim falsehood

Right-wing media have relentlessly pushed the myth that Obama is a Muslim. In the past two years, the conservative media has continued to lie about Obama's personal history, dishonestly distorting his faith to claim that he is in fact a Muslim and not a Christian. Those untruths have run the gamut -- from outright claiming that Obama is a Muslim to alleging that he "is a Christian that Christians don't recognize"; from using his family and upbringing in Indonesia to portray him as an "Islamist" to claiming he has an agenda that shows he has a "preference of Islam over Christianity"; and from distorting comments Obama or his administration has made to picking out symbols associated with his administration to perpetuate the lie about his faith. Conservatives have even used the Pew and Time polls today to further rehash these falsehoods.

Go read the whole post. Media Matters has a very long list of examples documented there.

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Here's our own Nicole Belle and this week's Fools on the Hill segment with Nicole Sandler. It’s Not a Mosque, and it’s Not at Ground Zero!:

Of course, the “Ground Zero Mosque” came up on the Sunday talking head shows, so we’ll revisit it with Nicole Belle of Crooks & Liars when she joins in for our regular Fools on the Hill segment. (** We didn’t have time to get into this story, but you should definitely check out who the top Right Wing bloggers consider the 25 worst figures in America. Wow.

You can listen to the entire show at Nicole's site here. You can also visit there and show Nicole some love if you'd like help her keep these wonderful podcasts going. We don't get any of that George Soros money around here and neither does she.

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I know it's his job as Chair of the NRSC to paint a happy face on this, but Sen. John Cornyn does his best to pretend that the right wing Tea Party candidates who are pushing the Republican Party even further to the right aren't going to do any damage to the chance of them regaining a majority in the Congress this mid-term election.

As Steve Benen pointed out after the hacks over at The Politico called some of the GOP right wing candidates "offbeat", the party's run to the right might not work out so well for them:

But there's one point I'd disagree with here. The crux of the piece is that the "offbeat" candidates are winning because they bring a non-traditional background to the table. This year, the argument goes, credible, relevant experience in public policy and/or government is a turnoff to voters seeking a wholesale break with the status quo.

That's not a bad argument, but I don't see the landscape this way. These bizarre candidates won major primary campaigns because of their far-right, often radical, ideologies. That they're coming from outside the world of government and politics is just gravy.

Did Linda McMahon win in Connecticut because she ran a wrestling company? No, she won because she spent a lot of money, and convinced Republicans her primary opponent was too moderate. Ken Buck won in Colorado for the same reason -- his party-preferred rival was deemed insufficiently right-wing. Dan Maes got a boost from McInnis' plagiarism scandal, but he capitalized because the party's base appreciated his extreme ideology.

And in Kentucky, Rand Paul didn't thrive because primary voters were impressed with his "outsider" ophthalmological background; they liked his radical worldview.

This isn't, in other words, a year for "offbeat" candidates to thrive; it's a year for right-wing candidates to win GOP primaries, without much regard for electability.

John Cornyn also claims that we need more Republicans in the Congress to move President Obama "toward the middle". I'm not sure what he's been smoking if he actually believes that himself, but sadly the propagandized viewers at Fox will believe his bull pucky.

Transcript below the fold.

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This is good news. Looks like Cenk Uygur of The Young Turks is going to get another chance to guest host on MSNBC. He filled in for Dylan Ratigan for part of the week while he was gone on vacation and then for Chris Jansing last week and now he's going to get a chance to fill in for Ed Schultz next week. Good for Cenk. As I said before, MSNBC needs to just go ahead and give him his own slot and it would help make up for them canning David Shuster. We need some more progressive voices on our cable news shows and this makes me about as happy as I was when I found out Rachel was going to get her own show on there. Maybe we'll find out soon that Cenk is going to get his own show as well.

Cenk laid out one thing he wants to do while he's filling in for Ed.

Uygur: For example next week, what I'd love to do, is I'd love to punch Ronald Reagan's ghost in the mouth, okay. Not Ronald Reagan himself. God bless him. He's passed on to greener pastures alright, but the ghost of Ronald Reagan.

Oh, Ronald Reagan was awesome! No he wasn't. Okay, I'm going to show, we'll get an opportunity next week and I'm coming and we are going to do the Ed Schultz show and I hope I can do these segments for you guys to show you how Ronald Reagan was unelectable by today's standards, not as a Republican, even as a Democrat, totally unelectable, okay, would never make it through the primaries, wouldn't make it through anything.

He'd get destroyed by Fox News. Now why do I want to get that message out and why is it important we do it on national T.V.? So that the rest of the country can wake up, these guys in power, the media, the politicians, etc. and say "Hey wait a minute now, maybe this country has shifted way over to the right. Maybe we've lost our bearings. Maybe the center of the country is nowhere near where we are now."

Because if Reagan is unelectable as a Democrat today, then where the hell is the country? It's off the charts to the right wing.

I could not agree more. If they're going to make him go up against Ed's usual guests that should be interesting, most of whom I can't stand and who IMO ruin the show a lot of times since Ed's way too friendly to the wingers he regularly has on his show. We'll see if Ron Christie, Heidi Harris, Scott Hennen and Ernest Istook think it's such a great idea to go Ed's show if it's Cenk they have to debate. Note to Ed Schultz... get some better guests buddy. I'd rather see you having on some good progressive voices that don't get enough air time than you trying to argue with those wingnuts any day of the week.

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It appears CBS has themselves a good little Republican water-carrier in the form of their legal correspondent Jan Crawford. Crawford apparently thinks that the Supreme Court has been politicized not by the fact that our court now is one of the most right wing, pro-corporate courts in history, but instead politicized because the Democrats had problems with the nomination of Sam Alito.

I hate to break it to Jan Crawford but if the Supreme Court looks politicized right now, that's because it is. It's extremely politicized in that everything corporate America does is right and anyone opposing that power is wrong. And you don't have to have the mentality of a 12 year old to hope to see that trend reversed and to know that Alito and Roberts were going to do nothing but continue to take the court in the direction that favors the corporate elite above average citizens.

Quite frankly I don't think most Americans are even paying attention to the hearings now, didn't pay attention to Sam Alito's nomination and couldn't tell you how many votes Alito got. I don't think sadly most Americans can even tell you who's on the Supreme Court and who nominated them, much less how many votes they got when they were confirmed.

What I can tell you is that even the people I work with that don't follow politics much do know that the Supreme Court just gave corporations the right to buy our elections, and don't like it.

Media Matters has done a good job of following Crawford's hackery and given her past reporting, this newest clap-trap of comparing Senators who had legitimate concerns about where a nominee is taking the Supreme Court to 12 year olds shouldn't come as much of a surprise. She looks like she's getting her talking points right out of the latest RNC email of the day.

Transcript via Lexis Nexis below the fold.

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As Susie already noted, the Washington Post contributor and frequent Countdown guest Dave Weigel resigned over a dust up after his private emails were released by Betsy Rothstein and Tucker Carlson and the right wing unleashed their flying monkeys to attack him. Keith calls out Rothstein and Carlson for releasing the private emails and also hammers the Washington Post for buying into the notion that you cannot fairly cover conservatives without sharing their ideology.

OLBERMANN: But our winners the manager at the Washington Post, a Betsy Rothstein of Fishbowl D.C. and Tucker Carlson of the website Daily Caller. Dave Weigel who's been a frequent guest on this program since he was with the Washington Independent is now no longer affiliated with the Washington Post. Ms. Rothstein posted a series of Weigel's private emails from one of the private listservs run by Ezra Klein that is also a guest on this program often. Mr. Carlson then posted more of the private emails.

None were complimentary to the conservatives that Weigel has covered for his own blog, for the Right Now blog at the Post and for us. Today, Dave resigned from the Post. Rothstein and Carlson define what it is to not understand the concept of private but at the heart of this is the Post.

Ben Smith of Politico quotes Post national editor Kevin Merida's web chat in April. He was asked if the post would be "adding more conservative/Republican voices to better balance what is now your predominately liberal/Democratic leaning coverage?” Merida answered “[W]e recently have added to our staff the well-regarded Dave Weigel, and also mentioned columnists Kathleen Parker and Charlies Krauthammer."

Somebody at the Post and most of the people critical of David Weigel today seem to be under the impression that to cover conservatives you have to be one and you cannot be critical of them, even in a private setting. Nonsense. Weigel was a blogger and he made no bones about it, offered a subjective but thoroughly reported view of the conservative world and on occasions, on this program defended conservatives when he'd thought I'd gone too far in criticizing them.

We asked Dave to join us tonight. He didn't want to. He wanted to take the high road. It's too bad the Washington Post and especially Fishbowl D.C. and the Daily Caller did not. We will keep asking Weigel back because he does a hell of a job, a unique and an invaluable one.

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Bill Maher talked to Philippe Cousteau, grandson of Jacques Cousteau about his recent trip to the Gulf where he was as Karoli wrote trying to see if BP's application of the dispersant Corexit was effective or more harmful. Maher asked him if it looked like the federal government or anybody were in charge down there and about the talking point that the oceans will "take care of themselves" after these disastrous oil spills.

Cousteau: It’s getting better. You know I was down in Grand Isle, LA about three days ago now working with some folks in wildlife and fisheries from the state of Louisiana and what I was hearing on the ground was a lot of frustration that for about a month—we’re into what? 38 days now—for about a month nothing was happening and it took the… Jefferson Parish down there, some of the authorities to commandeer the equipment from BP and the contractors to start doing something… Now they’re trying to. It’s a little too late now.

Maher: I hear this on the right wing media outlets. The ocean is so vast and I’ve heard the phrase “It will take care of itself”. That’s bullshit, right?

Cousteau: Yeah. Of course. Of course. Listen…

Maher: I thought so….

Cousteau: The perfect word is… bullshit.

Maher: …is bullshit.

Cousteau: Listen, you know I could cut my leg off, I could cut my arm off, I could gouge my eye out, I’d still probably survive, but not very well, and that’s what we’re doing to the ocean. It’s the life support system of this planet. We’ve been dumping in it. We’ve been polluting it, we’ve been destroying it for decades, and we’re essentially maiming ourselves.

Maher: What is the tipping point? I mean, I don’t know how we had a spill like this, obviously the Exxon Valdez, there was an even worse one in Mexico in 1979.

Cousteau: Yeah.

Maher: But where, that was all those years ago, did that come back, that area of Mexico?

Cousteau: Well you know it’s…

Maher: Do these areas ever come back?

Cousteau: That’s the question. That’s the issue Bill. You know the Florida Keys, third longest barrier reef in the world is a dead zone. 90% of the big fish, the tuna, the sharks and everything are already gone in the ocean. There’s a dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico every summer the size of New Jersey where there’s not enough oxygen for things to live. So it’s not a question of can the oceans can take any more. The ocean can’t take any more. They couldn’t take any more fifty years ago. The question is, when are we going to stop?

Like I said, I’ll survive without a leg and an arm and an eye and all these kinds of things but it’s not going to be pretty and that’s what we’re doing to the oceans. It’s not a case of can they take it any more. They can’t take it any more.