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(Chuck Todd: Republicans will give Democrats all the revenue they want, if they just agree to raise the retirement age. Trust them.)

I don't know about anyone else, but as someone who has actually worked at one of those jobs where you take a shower at the end of the work day and not before you go in, I'm sick to death of watching these overpaid television pundits and their counterparts in the Congress, nonchalantly discussing raising the retirement age. It may not matter much to them, but there are real economic hardships involved when you force the average wage earner out there to continue to work until they drop dead if the retirement age is raised any higher than it already is now.

If our beltway Villagers and politicians really believe that it's no big deal to raise the retirement age for the rest of America, how about we ask them to walk a mile in our shoes? I wonder if any of them would decide that maybe it's not such a great idea to be doing physical labor well into your late sixties if they were the ones actually having to do those jobs?

I wonder if Chuck Todd would be a little more worried about when he might be able to retire if he were say, some migrant worker picking berries and in need of daily visits to the chiropractor he can't afford because his back is screaming all day from being bent over?

Or how Mrs. Greenspan would feel if she were working at Mickey-D's flipping burgers and serving fries and standing on a ceramic floor, with her varicose veins getting worse by the minute?

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Here's a little bit of entertainment for a slow news day when most of our politicians and pundits have taken the day, the week, or more off for the holiday. The Young Turks Cenk Uygur and Ana Kasparian had a bit of fun with this Buzzfeed article featuring pictures of politicians and political figures from their high school days.

I think it's fair to say that Buzzfeed has their post incorrectly titled, since you should not be calling Glenn Beck and Rachel Maddow "politicians," but here's the link to the post with all the photos: 69 Politicians As They Were In High School.

I was really amused by David Axelrod's photo, who looked like some long haired stoner in the picture they posted. Eric Cantor reminds me of the James Spader character in Pretty in Pink. And I don't even know what to say about Rick Santorum and those plaid pants with the white socks, or Rand Paul happily dissecting a cat. On the other end of the spectrum, Nancy Pelosi was absolutely gorgeous. The woman really looked like she could have been a leading actress in a Hollywood movie.

All in all, I think these photos reinforce notions about what these public figures might have been like as a kid.

H/t Raw Story

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After being asked by George Stephanopoulos during the ABC GOP presidential debate who is the most consistent conservative among that group that would be best able to defeat President Obama, Mitt Romney rattled off a list of reasons for nominating him, among them being that Romney's "spent his life in the private sector" and "understands how the economy works."

Gingrich responded with this zinger which drew a few moans from the crowd.

GINGRICH: Let's be candid. The only reason you didn't become a career politician is you lost to to Teddy Kennedy in 1994.

(Met by groans from the audience.)

ROMNEY: Now wait a second.

GINGRICH: Do I get to continue?

ROMNEY: No please.

GINGRICH: And I'm just saying I looked at it. I'm a citizen and I've served the country in many ways. You're a citizen and have served the country in many ways. But it's a bit much. You'd have been a seventeen year politician by now if you'd won. That's all I'm saying.

Time for your weekly Professional Left Podcast with our own Driftglass and Bluegal.

Links for this podcast include:

Bernie Sanders and Lockheed Martin

US Taxpayers build an unnecessary Iraqi prison.

Daily Kos cartoon on Zip Houses with comment from Blue Gal.

Distribution of Wealth in the US (chart).

You can listen to their archives at The Professional Left Podcast and there's a link to donate there if you'd like to help keep these going. And you can follow them on Facebook at The Professional Left Podcast with Driftglass and Blue Gal.

Happy Labor Day weekend everyone and enjoy the podcast.

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Politicians on both sides of the aisle have questioned an Obama administration plan to try Guantanamo Bay detainees in civilian courts. But the alternative -- military tribunals -- may prevent suspects from being sentenced to the harshest of penalties.

Attorney General Eric Holder told CBS News Sunday that it may not be possible to sentence detainees to death if they plead guilty in a military tribunal.

"Can you, in fact, seek the death penalty when you take someone before a military tribunal?" asked CBS' Bob Schieffer. "I know you can in a civilian court because I've had some lawyers tell me that that might not be possible [in a military tribunal]."

"You can seek the death penalty," explained Holder. "There's a real question as to whether someone can plead guilty and get the death penalty on the military side. You can certainly do that in a civilian setting."

"It's interesting nobody has made much of that. That this is so controversial. I'm surprised that those of you that favor the civilian trial haven't said to some who want to put these people before a military tribunal, 'look, we might not get the death penalty,'" noted Schieffer.

But Holder resisted using the death penalty as an argument for civilian trials.

"One of the thing that is particularly bothersome to me, this is something that has become political. The politicization of this issue when we're dealing with ultimate national security issues is something that disturbs me a great deal," said Holder.

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Bill left out George Allen's Macaca moment among a few others, but he's right, it's harder to lie now that everyone's recording everything, not that the Republicans will ever care. They're shameless and they have ClusterFox to cover for them.

New Rule: Politicians Must Be Informed of Their Rights: "Everything You Say Can and Will Be Used Against You in a Google Search":

New Rule: Before running for office, politicians must be informed of their rights: that "Everything you say can and will be used against you in a Google search." Now, of course, we all embellish our resumes a little. In college, I described my job of pot dealer as "regional sales associate for a large multi-national firm." But we just had the fifth anniversary of YouTube and the twelfth of Google, and between them, they're killing off a great institution: lying. You just can't lie anymore -- facts are too easy to check, everything is on video, and your wife put a GPS in your glove compartment. Our privacy is gone, our Internet conversations are forever. I even have reason to believe I'm being recorded right now...

Jesus once said that there was nothing hidden that would not some day be revealed, but if he was alive today, and walked on water, it would be instantly on YouTube between a skateboard accident and a turtle biting a baby's ass. And the first comment would be "fag." Twenty-four hours of new video is posted on YouTube every 60 seconds. Mostly of a girl named Kelly, showing off things she bought at Forever 21, but still...

Read on...

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The media was out to destroy Sarah Palin and now they are out to destroy Rand Paul if you believe the former Republican vice presidential candidate.

In an interview with National Public Radio, Paul criticized some aspects of the 1964 Civil Right Act. Paul indicated that privately-owned businesses should be free to be able to discriminate against minorities. In his view, businesses that don't treat all patrons equally will suffer in the marketplace but the federal government should have no role in enforcing fairness.

Based on Paul's comments on NPR, he faced tough questioning later that evening by Rachel Maddow. And Palin believes that Maddow was out of bounds.

"Rand Paul had anticipated he would be able to engage in a discussion, he being a libertarian-leaning Constitutional conservative, being able to engage in the discussion with a TV character, a media personality who perhaps had an agenda in asking the question and then interpreting his answer in the way that she did," Palin said of Maddow Sunday.

At that, Fox News' Chris Wallace prompted Palin to blame the media for the missteps she suffered after becoming the Republican vice presidential candidate. "Do you see some similarities to what politicians and the press did to you in the fall of 2008?" asked Wallace.

"Yeah, absolutely," replied Palin.

"So, you know one thing we can learn in this lesson that I have learned and Rand Paul is learning now is don't assume that you can engage in a hypothetical discussion about Constitutional impacts with reporter or a media personality who has an agenda, who may be prejudiced before they even get into the interview in regards to what your answer may be," she continued.

"Then the opportunity that they seize to get you. You know, they are looking for the gotcha moment. That's evidently appears to be what they did with Rand Paul and I'm thankful he was able to clarify his answer about his support for the Civil Rights Act," Palin concluded.

(Nicole:) Um, no. Palin has been on Fox News too long if she thinks that any politician should be able to say any crazy thing that comes into his or her head and expect no follow up from people interested in presenting actual news. "Let me understand how far you're willing to take this ideology you profess" is not a "gotcha" question. And like you, Failin' Palin, if Rand Paul can't take the questions, maybe he shouldn't be in politics.

John Amato:

Any reporter or pundit who ask Baby Paul to clarify his whacky beliefs is out of bounds for Palin. And basing a future interview on a previous one is definitely off limits too.

Just assume that Baby Paul will stick to FOX News and an occasional CNN spot. He was also too scared to show up to MTP today so if he can't face David Gregory then....

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Mike Papantonio talks to Ed Schultz about British Petroleum's political tactics and the use of their "flying monkeys" as he calls them such as Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity and "heck of a job" Brownie to do the fear mongering for them that the right wing extremists of this country and the tea bag crowd respond to. Ed said he'd have Pap on every night if that's what it takes to get something done about this disaster and to continue to draw attention to how the oil industry is handling it.

I think that would be a good thing since Papantonio unlike 99.9% of the guests you're going to see on cable "news" basically broke down their tactics pretty well. Misdirect anger, use corporate shills for your defense, focus on the Obama administration instead of industry, misdirect and basically try to scare the hell out of everyone about getting off of fossil fuels and if that doesn't work, bring god into it.

As Pap noted, BP probably doesn't have enough enough money to throw at this problem to make it go away this time, but that hasn't stopped them from dispatching their lobbyists to converge on the politicians in Washington D.C.

Sadly unlike Ed's show and a few scant others we're not going to hear much about corporate America's influence on the Washington D.C. and how that influence has led us to stay dependent on oil and to give little care for things called oversight and regulation. Businesses need rules of the road. When you take those road signs down, they're always going to abuse them. This BP disaster just looks like another example where we need to get the money out our of politics if we're ever going to reign them in and actually get us off of oil while making this industry act responsibility in the mean time.

I'm not holding my breath. Sadly it's looking like even one of the worst spills in history still isn't enough for the right wingers in the House and the Senate who are still pushing for more drilling offshore.

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Rachel Maddow recounts the lip service given to the need for our country to get off of its oil dependence by our political leaders while one disaster after another continues to wreak havoc our environment.

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March 26, 2010 FOX News

Musician Ted Nugent tells FOX News’s Neil Cavuto, “I’m the expert on the health care bill because I kill pigs.” And it’s the “communist, Mao, Che agenda of the communist, Mao, Che fans in the White House. They’re pigs, Neil! We gotta kill the pig.” Nugent claims the health care law is about the redistribution of wealth.

h/t Alan Colmes for the partial transcript.

Dave N.: Of course, this is all just a big joke, gathering from Cavuto's reaction.

Ha. Ha. Ha. We're not laughing.