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Now that we've just had the opening of the George W. Bush library this Thursday, The Daily Show's Jon Stewart had field day with the former president and what he's been doing with his time compared to his counterparts, who are devoting themselves to public service or doing NGO work, in sharp contrast to Bush, who told CBS that he was painting "two or three hours a day."

STEWART: Sometimes it seems only a gallon of paint can... drown out the screams of those I've wronged. Plus, sometimes they let you use your fingers.

Stewart showed a portion of the softball interview with Bush given by Charlie Rose this week, asking him if he's getting any better at his painting and Bush responding that "It's all in the eyes of the beholder." Stewart concluded, "So in other words, art history will be the judge."

After showing news footage that the library is going to contain over 43,000 "artifacts" from the Bush presidency, Stewart concluded:

STEWART: So it's basically the Hard Rock Cafe of catastrophic policy decisions.

Stewart went on to take some shots at Bush and the reports on his rising poll numbers and why, and then wrapped things up with his "Senior Correspondent" Al Madrigal and the ridiculous "Decision Theater" on display at the library, or as they rightfully dubbed it here, "Disasterpiece Theater."

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The Krugman-bashing on Morning Joe continued unabated Wednesday, following Joe Scarborough and Paul Krugman's debate the other night on Charlie Rose's show. It seems the right has been looking for countries to prop up to prove that their calls for more austerity measures in the United States are not going to harm the economy and they've found at least one in the tiny Baltic nation of Estonia.

Scarborough started things off in the clip above by writing off our current economic circumstances as just another "period of deleveraging" where the United States needs to get its fiscal house in order with absolutely no reference to the fact that we should not be taking a series of booms and busts as the norm, or the part that deregulation and the dismantling all of the protections that were put in place following the Great Depression to attempt to prevent these types of cycles from happening again have played.

After Scarborough pointed out the fact that Americans and particularly young people are not longer racking up debt, but are also not spending and pumping money into the economy, his guest and CNBC regular Miles Nadal then moved onto the Krugman bashing:

NADAL: So when you say, are you positive on the economy, I'm positive in a cautious kind of way, but as Joe articulated on The Charlie Rose Show, which I thought was really a terrific debate, there are things on the horizon that are very scary. And I thought Paul Krugman's perspective was kind of, a little frightening in the sense that he didn't see any possibility of any Black Swan on anything that's happening and if you talk to any informed business person, that's not possible that you could completely eliminate the probability that nothing, including this multi-trillion dollar deficit would have no impact.

And as we articulated in the green room, nobody could run a company or a home the way the government is running things.

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I guess PBS decided that "Fix the Debt" campaign's Steve Rattner wasn't getting quite enough air time, what with his near daily appearances on MSNBC's Morning Joe, because Charlie Rose and his producers gave him some unfettered air time Monday evening.

Rose asks why President Obama should care about the "Democratic wing of the Democratic party" thinks about his policies, and whether he's willing to go after our social safety nets. I'd love to know the last time Rose asked whether a Republican president should just ignore the base of his party and suggested that what they think doesn't matter all that much. To his credit, Rattner did admit that President Obama has good reason to pay attention to those that just reelected him, and that they should not be ignored.

He also briefly alluded to the conversation he had during the panel segment on This Week, where his fellow guest Steve Brill rightfully pointed out that lowering the Medicare age would actually save money, but rather than getting into the weeds on that discussion, Rattner only admitted that maybe raising the age might not be "such a good idea." Heaven forbid anyone might actually discuss the heart of Brill's arguments, because it runs counter to the Villager narrative that we must raise the Medicare eligibility age in order to control our health care costs.

Instead, the conversation turned to whether President Obama is entitled to change his mind on the issue or not and with Rattner again pushing for "significant changes to entitlements" as long as there "was a reasonable response from the Republicans on revenues." The idea that Republicans are ever going to come around on taxes seems pretty ridiculous, and as Karoli noted here on our health care costs, the problem is not with the cost to administer Medicare or with the consumers out there, it's with the providers Congress refuses to reign in.

Rose and Rattner were also extremely dismissive of Paul Krugman, who has written extensively about the fact that the debt and the deficit are not urgent issues now and not what we should be focusing on, with Rose calling him "a Nobel Prize winner, but also a minority opinion."

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I'm not sure why PBS and CBS News feel that the public needs to be treated to yet another fawning interview with former Vice President Dick Cheney, but maybe they're hoping to pick up some of that Fox viewership, because Charlie Rose's hour long disgrace propping this guy up is what we're usually treated to on that network.

Apparently Cheney doesn't mind the drone program and called it a "good program" -- but what bothers him about it is not what should disturb most of us, like whether it's legal, the lack of oversight, overreach by the executive branch and the fact that dropping bombs on civilians' heads is just going to create more enemies and potential blowback when people rightfully get sick of watching their friends and their family members killed.

No, Cheney doesn't care about any of that. What bothers him is that we're killing these supposed terrorists instead of torturing them as we were doing under the Bush administration.

Cheney: Obama wants to weaken U.S. role in world:

Cheney insists that Obama's worldview and foreign policy is making the U.S. "vulnerable to the future."

And while Cheney voiced support for Obama's use of drones -- calling it a "good program" -- he said the president's national security nominees reflect "choices ... based on people who won't argue with him" and in the case of Hagel, "I think he wants a Republican to be the foil ... for what he wants to do to the Defense Department, which I think is to do serious, serious damage to our military capabilities."

Turning to a controversial policy of the George W. Bush administration, Cheney defended the use of enhanced interrogation techniques, saying that officials engaged in a "very long, difficult and elaborate process" with the Justice Department to determine "where the red line is."

"And we got approval for the programs that did go, that they were quote 'not torture,'" he said, but added that ultimately the administration stopped the use of waterboarding "because there was so much flak over it."

Rose did actually ask Cheney why he won't call the program torture during the interview, but there was zero follow up to this response. You can add this interview to the mile long list of evidence that proves that anyone who claims that PBS is some "liberal" network deserves to be mocked roundly for such a ridiculous assertion.

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The Daily Show's Jon Stewart gave former Vice President and chickenhawk Dick Cheney some of the lack of respect that he deserves after he was out there going after President Obama for his national security nominees at a speech he gave in Wyoming over the weekend and his subsequent interview with the entirely useless Charlie Rose on CBS this Tuesday.

Here's more on that from our friends at Raw Story:

“You know,” said Stewart, “Cheney’s really confident in his opinions and analysis, probably forgetting that he sucked at this.”

He added, “Like, he was a shitty vice [president], but even if Obama wanted to take our standing in the world down a peg he couldn’t ’cause the Bush-Cheney Administration left him with no peg room. I guess Obama could’ve created lower peg space, maybe invest in deep sea peg-hole drilling technology, but unfortunately he can’t afford to because the previous administration left us in a bit of a cash crunch.”

“And by ‘previous Administration, I mean these motherf**kers,” Stewart added. “Where does he get the balls?” Steward wondered, admonishing his audience, “Please don’t say ‘cadavers.’”

“This guy was wrong every time,” Stewart continued, after showing clips of a few of Cheney’s less-than-accurate statements about Iraq that led the country into war. “Every time he analyzed it, he was wrong. You try that at work, see if you get to keep your job and be wrong every f**king time.”

As Stewart correctly pointed out here, there is no penalty in our corporate media for always being wrong. They should be ashamed of themselves for giving the likes of Cheney air time in the first place, but I've given up on the notion a long time ago that we're ever going to see that come to a stop any time soon. Once again, we're left with the fake "news" show making a mockery of one that actually considers themselves a news outlet --and rightfully so.

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Former Vice President Dick Cheney is a fan of Barack Obama's decision to use drones for the targeted killing of American citizens, but says that the president "wants" to do "serious, serious damage to our military" by nominating former Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-NE) to be secretary of defense.

"I think it’s a good program and I don’t disagree with the basic policy that the Obama administration is pursuing now in those regards," he told CBS host Charlie Rose in an interview that aired on Tuesday.

But Rose wondered if there should be some "checks and balances" by another branch of government on the president's ability to "take out" American citizens overseas.

"When we hire the president of the United States he gets to live in a big house, makes all that money, he’s getting paid to make difficult, difficult decisions," the former vice president explained.

The CBS host also asked Cheney to defend his accusation that Obama was appointing a "second-rate people" like Hagel and Secretary of State John Kerry to his cabinet.

"I’m very, very concerned, Charlie, about what I see happening in the national security arena, I think the administration’s policies are very flawed," Cheney declared. "I think the president’s performance by my standards in the international arena, in the middle East and so forth is worse than many of my friends and colleagues deem his domestic policies.”

"If you look at what the president's motives are for picking Chuck Hagel, I think he wants a Republican to go be the foil, if you will, for what he wants to do to the Defense Department, which is I think to do serious, serious damage to our military capabilities."

(h/t: The Hill)

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New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R) is advising his party not to "cater" to women with a different message than men because it would be "condescending."

During an interview on Tuesday, Christie told CBS host Charlie Rose that there was a "fallacy about having to cater to a particular sector of the electorate."

"For instance, I hear people talk all the time about female voters," he said. "I think it's condescending to women to say we have to have a different message for women than we have with men."

Christie explained that the way to get the support of women voters was just to tell them that "this is the message for our party."

"I'm going to lay out a message for our party tonight [at the Republican convention] that I think will resonate just as much with women voters as it will with men voters."

A poll released by Lifetime Television on Monday found that presumptive Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney had a real problem winning over women voters. He trailed President Barack Obama, 36 percent to 52 percent.

While 50 percent of the women surveyed gave Obama positive marks as president, only 31 percent thought that Romney would do a better job.

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House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA) on Friday refused to condemn Rep. Michele Bachmann's (R-MN) suggestion that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s deputy chief of staff, Huma Abedin, had infiltrated the U.S. government on behalf of radical Islamists in the Muslim Brotherhood.

Last week, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) accused Bachmann and four other Republican lawmakers of “specious and degrading attacks” after they called on inspectors general in the State, Homeland Security, Defense and Justice departments to investigate “potential Muslim Brotherhood infiltration” of the Obama administration by Abedin, an aide to Secretary Clinton and wife of former Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-NY).

McCain was just the first in a series of Republicans -- including House Speaker John Boehner, Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, Wisconsin Congressman Jim Sensenbrenner and former Bachmann campaign manager Ed Rollins -- who spoke up to condemn the anti-Muslim accusations.

Although Cantor had recently said his party needed to be more tolerant of LGBT people and Muslims, he seemed on Friday to legitimize Bachmann's call for an investigation.

"If you read some of the reports that have covered this story, I think that her concern was about the security of the country," the Virginia Republican insisted to CBS host Charlie Rose. "So, that's about all I know."

In an interview with BuzzFeed last week, Cantor called on Republicans for an "acceptance of diversity."

"I’ve always said we need to be a party of inclusion not exclusion," Cantor explained. "We need to be promoting tolerance and, you know, as someone who is a religious minority, I sort of grew up with having that mindset, knowing full well that I am in a very distinct way from a religious background, separate and apart from the mainstream of this country."

He added that it was "absolutely wrong to stereotype or look badly at anyone because of their religion."

(h/t: Think Progress)

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Why does Michelle Malkin hate working people? Apparently Malkin thinks it's an insult that President Obama's supporters are the types that have "spent their entire lives signing the back of" a paycheck in response to the President's remarks that Mitt Romney's time in the private sector doesn't necessarily qualify him to be the "Mr. Fix-It on the economy."

Malkin was asked on this Saturday's Fox & Friends to weigh in on President Obama's interview with Charlie Rose: Obama: Romney not necessarily qualified to think about "economy as a whole":

"When some people question why I would challenge his Bain record, the point I've made there in the past is, if you're a head of a large private equity firm or hedge fund, your job is to make money," Mr. Obama said. "It's not to create jobs. It's not even to create a successful business - it's to make sure that you're maximizing returns for your investor. Now that's appropriate. That's part of the American way. That's part of the system. But that doesn't necessarily make you qualified to think about the economy as a whole, because as president, my job is to think about the workers. My job is to think about communities, where jobs have been outsourced." [...]

Rose asked Mr. Obama for his take on Romney's qualifications to lead the country: "Do you believe his presidency would be a disaster? Because this is a man who's been a successful businessperson. Does that disqualify him or make him appropriately a candidate for a political office? How do you take the measure of his business experience?"

Mr. Obama said, "I do not think at all it disqualifies him. But I also think it's important if that's his main calling card, if his basic premise is that, 'I'm Mr. Fix-It on the economy, because I made a lot of money.'"

Malkin responded by pretending our centrist President is some sort of left-wing radical who hates the private sector, capitalism and business, ignored completely Republicans' responsibility for the unemployment numbers and then wrapped things up by insulting everyone who has worked their whole lives drawing a paycheck and painted all of us as too stupid to figure out that what Romney did for a living isn't necessarily good for the American economy or American workers.

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Charlie Rose actually broke from his standard fare which is generally populated by the likes of David Brooks and Tom Friedman and their cohorts in the corporate media and had a conversation with authors Eric Liu and Nick Hanauer about their new book, The Gardens of Democracy: A New American Story of Citizenship, the Economy, and the Role of Government.

After watching this interview, I don't think Mitt Romney will be recommending this particular edition of Rose's show as required viewing any time soon. Both men discussed the fact that if we truly want to get our economy moving, those "job creators" are middle class consumers and the fact that when all of us are doing better and there is shared prosperity. That is something that is still completely lost on our political class these days, with way too many of them still pushing the idea that austerity and tackling our debt without putting Americans back to work is going to solve our problems with our sluggish economy.

If anyone has any doubts about why austerity measures like those pushed by the conservatives both here and in the U.K. are not a model we want to follow, just go look at the chart and read Steve Benen's post here -- Why the U.K. recession matters in U.S. politics.

They cited Henry Ford's theory that it was better to overpay his workers so that they could afford the product they were producing and advocated for taxes going up on the rich and for the taxes on investments to be raised, even if they're kept just slightly lower on those on wages and labor, so not to stifle the incentive for investments in America.

Whether anyone agrees or disagrees with all of the authors' points made during this interview, I think it was a whole lot more healthy discussion than what we're typically treated to from our corporate media. I don't think Rose made up for the countless hours he's allowed of Brooks and Friedman and their ilk to be spouting nonsense on his show unchallenged with this interview, but he certainly took a step in the right direction with having them on and with allowing a conversation where what we've been hearing over and over from Republican politicians on how jobs are created in our economy is challenged.

They both thoroughly debunked trickle-down economics and why it does not work and why Mitt Romney is full of crap with his talking points about being a “job creator” while he was at Bain during this interview.

Here's a short description of their book from Amazon:

American democracy is informed by the 18th century’s most cutting edge thinking on society, economics, and government. We’ve learned some things in the intervening 230 years about self interest, social behaviors, and how the world works. Now, authors Eric Liu and Nick Hanauer argue that some fundamental assumptions about citizenship, society, economics, and government need updating. For many years the dominant metaphor for understanding markets and government has been the machine. Liu and Hanauer view democracy not as a machine, but as a garden. A successful garden functions according to the inexorable tendencies of nature, but it also requires goals, regular tending, and an understanding of connected ecosystems. The latest ideas from science, social science, and economics—the cutting-edge ideas of today--generate these simple but revolutionary ideas:

True self interest is mutual interest. (Society, it turns out, is an ecosystem that is healthiest when we take care of the whole.)

More of their interview below the fold.

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