DOWNLOADS: (267)

PLAYS: (1516)

Embed

Rep. Paul Ryan appeared on this Tuesday's Morning Joe and defended his latest terrible budget proposal which is more or less a repeat of the last one and that Republicans are apparently going to be willing to support again, despite the fact that once most Americans get a chance to take a good look at what he's proposing, reject the type of policies he's advocating for.

Think Progress has done a good deal of fact checking on this and flagged this portion of Ryan's appearance on MSNBC -- Paul Ryan’s Budget Includes $3 Trillion Giveaway To Corporations, The Rich:

The budget unveiled by House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-WI) this morning includes substantial changes to the American tax code, both for corporations and individuals. Ryan’s tax plan shrinks the number of income tax brackets from six to two, with marginal tax rates set at 10 percent and 25 percent. He repeals the Alternative Minimum Tax (AMT), slices the top corporate tax rate to 25 percent, and repeals all of the health care taxes contained in the Affordable Care Act. It also repeals the repatriation tax on profits corporations earn overseas then bring back to the United States.

In all, those tax breaks amount to a $3 trillion giveaway to the richest Americans and corporations, according to the Tax Policy Center. Repealing the repatriation tax would add roughly $130 billion to that.

This morning on MSNBC’s Morning Joe, Ryan insisted that the plan would generate the same amount of revenue as the government currently receives. In true Ryan form, though, he wouldn’t say how:

RYAN: We’re taking the tax system and reforming it along the way this new bipartisan compromise and consensus is showing. Get rid of the special interest loopholes, special deductions, lower everybody’s tax rates, bring in at least as much revenue to the government but grow the economy and create jobs, and get spending under control so we can pay off this debt.

SCARBOROUGH: So you say that you want to bring as much revenue into the government even with lower tax rates. There are obviously only a few ways to do that as far as eliminating tax loopholes, whether you’re talking about the home mortgage loophole, the health care loophole, or the charitable interest deductions. Which one of those do you eliminate?

RYAN: We want to do this in the light of day and in front of everybody. So the Ways and Means Committee, which is in charge of the tax system, sent us the plan here, which is a 10 and 25 percent bracket for individuals and small businesses, and then they want to have hearings and, in light of day, show how they would go about doing this.

The taxes Ryan wants to repeal all primarily impact the richest Americans and corporations. Repealing the repatriation tax, as Republicans have attempted multiple times since taking control of the House in 2011, amounts to a huge giveaway to corporations. And ending the AMT and investment taxes from the ACA while dropping the top income tax rate would give massive tax breaks to the rich. That isn’t surprising — it’s virtually identical to what Ryan attempted in last year’s budget, which he called the “Path to Prosperity.”

And here's more from their site on Ryan's budget -- The 5 Worst Things About The House GOP’s Budget:

Continue reading »

DOWNLOADS: (275)

PLAYS: (1440)

Embed

It seems Gov. Scott Walker is suddenly very concerned about how this recall election is going to adversely affect some of the vulnerable people in his state. Won't someone think of the children and seniors please?

Walker: The Recall Costs Money — Think Of The Children And Seniors:

Gov. Scott Walker (R-WI) appeared Monday on Morning Joe, discussing the upcoming recall election against him by the state Democrats and organized labor. And among other things, he said, the recall is only hurting children and seniors — by costing money.

MSNBC’s Willie Geist asked Walker: “You find yourself in the middle of this, mired in a recall election. The latest Marquette poll has you 47 approve, 47 percent disapproves, split right down the middle in the state of Wisconsin. This could be a long fight for you — a special election scheduled to take place in June, a primary in May. How distracted are you from doing the business of Wisconsin by trying to essentially win re-election in the middle of your term?” (Note: The May and June dates are not yet officially declared by state election officials, but are the likely outcome of the administrative process.)

“Well, we’re focused,” Walker responded, “but it’s a huge distraction, not just for me, for the legislature. I mean, it’s $9 million of taxpayers’ money just to run this. Think about the number of kids we could help, think of the number of seniors we could help in our state with $9 million that we didn’t have to waste on this — this frivolous recall election.

Maybe he should have thought of that first before he went on the attack of the working class and union members in his state for the benefit of his big business campaign contributors. And as TPM noted, he was also crying about the out of state money coming in from "special interests" outside of his state.

The Rev. Al Sharpton had a response to that later in the day on MSNBC, where he noted that 61 percent of the money supporting Walker is coming from outside of the state, $1 million of which is from just four donors, among them of course, the Koch brothers.

Video below the fold.

Continue reading »

DOWNLOADS: (141)

PLAYS: (658)

Embed

Stephen Colbert opined on the subject of open marriage, after first brusquely dismissing the question from Morning Joe's Willie Geist as a "garbage question". When John Heileman brought the subject up later he had a bit more to say on the subject.

STEPHEN COLBERT: "Honesty is the best policy. Here’s the thing that I don’t think Newt Gingrich gets enough credit for: a lot of politicians screw around on their wives, but he was enough of a gentleman to ask permission. That’s a Southern gentleman. That’s what Robert E. Lee would have done."

Stephen Colbert joined the set of Morning Joe live in South Carolina to discuss his "exploratory committee to run president of the United States of South Carolina" and his former Super PAC which is now being run by Jon Stewart which is urging Republicans to vote for Herman Cain, since it's too late for Colbert to have a place on the ballot in the primary.

Stephen actually made watching Morning Joe enjoyable for the close to twenty minutes he was on there, something I had previously thought was next to impossible.

DOWNLOADS: (234)

PLAYS: (1338)

Embed

Joe Scarborough did his best to attempt to rewrite the failings of conservative governance we've suffered over the last few decades along with some of his own history, surprise, surprise with a big assist by some of his fellow panel members, Jon Meacham, Mika Brzezinski and Willie Geist.

While discussing some of the right's disdain for the current crop of Republican presidential candidates, Scarborough throws out the first whopper during the segment, that George W. Bush was not really a conservative. The New Yorker's David Remnick notes that the Republican Party doesn't seem to be the “party of ideas” any more and here's how Scarborough responds.

SCARBOROUGH: Two things have happened over the last decade. One, the election of George W. Bush... a man who claimed to be a conservative, but The New Republic had it right in 2000. Bush was for big government and he was for big business. The New Republic predicted it. I remember the cover of it.

And yet conservatives went along for the ride for the better part of eight years, they let him double the national debt without complaining. They let him engage in a Wilsonian foreign policy where he spent his second inauguration talking about ending tyranny on the four corners of the globe. They remained silent. They betrayed their values. They forgot everything they said in the 1990's and they sold their soul to have power in the White House. And then Barack Obama got elected. And then they lost their mind.

These Democrats have had the Bush derangement syndrome and they did. But then what did they get? Obama derangement syndrome. So it because less about ideas and it became more about destroying Obama and Jon Meacham, that's why they stopped focusing on balancing the budget, on having restraint.

Scarborough seems to have a pretty short memory because by his own definition here, he's part of that problem he's complaining about, and he apparently doesn't remember that he claimed that we won the Iraq War back in 2003 while berating anyone who dared to speak out against it. For a reminder of Scarborough's previous statements, go read Extreme Liberal's Blog here -- Joe Scarborough – A Look Back At His Previous Statements About War! Here are a couple of the quotes from Scarborough among many that they dug up in that post:

Continue reading »

DOWNLOADS: (73)

PLAYS: (602)

Embed

T. Boone Pickens is apparently very upset that President Obama has been calling for the rich to pay their fair share in taxes and on this Wednesday's Morning Joe, he wanted to do plenty of griping about it, but wasn't willing to be straight forward about exactly how much money he earns. Scarborough for his part, did try to get Pickens to say what percentage of income he thought was a fair amount to pay, but after Pickens was only willing to throw out some obscure number of what he paid in taxes over who knows how long of a period of time, Scarborough jumped all over Mika Brzezinski for daring to try to pin Pickens down on how much income he was talking about so they could know what percentage he actually paid.

PICKENS: The President is confusing me. Every time he's on TV he says that the rich should pay their fair share.

BRZEZINSKI: What's wrong with that?

PICKENS: Well, I don't know what fair share is you see. That's what's bothering me. I always want to be fair and historically I've been a very fair guy. I'm 83. I still go to work in the morning at eight o'clock. I have 150 people work for me and some place in here I feel like I'm letting the country down and so I need to know, what they want.

BRZEZINSKI: Well, we could start with taxes.

SCARBOROUGH: Warren Buffet paid about eighteen percent of what he made... seventeen percent in taxes. Is that fair?

PICKENS: Well let me take you back. After I was 70 years old, I paid I paid $665 million in taxes, is that fair?

SCARBOROUGH: Well, you made a lot of money.

BRZEZINSKI: Well, I don't know how much you made, Mr. Pickens. Why don’t you give me the full numbers?

PICKENS: Full numbers? Tell me exactly what full number means? […] How much did I make? […]

SCARBOROUGH: You don’t have to answer that question,” interjected Scarborough. Come on! No, it’s none of your business! You going to tell everybody how much you make?

BRZEZINSKI: I’m not making an argument about how much I paid in taxes. It sounded like such a big number and then not disclosing...

PICKENS: You feel like I’m not paying my fair share after $665 million and I’m over 70 years old?
Sir, with all due respect, it depends on what you make.

SCARBOROUGH: I, for one, am glad you’re paying $665 million in the United States treasury.

Willie Geist later got Pickens to admit that he makes most of his money through investments and is probably just paying the rate for capital gains. Pickens then went on to say that he didn't pay any taxes this year because he didn't make any money and claimed they did not ask him what he made (which Brzezinski clearly did since that's what Scarborough was chastising her for).

So who knows over what period Pickens was talking about when he said he paid the $665 million since he didn't specify how many years he was talking about other than to say he paid that much after he was 70. What is clear is he came on with the intention of playing the poor over-taxed millionaire and was hoping he could just toss some meaningless numbers around and no one would call him out for it. Why Scarborough thought it was fair to ask him what percentage he paid in taxes, but that Brzezinski's follow up was not is beyond me, but not surprising coming from Scarborough.

DOWNLOADS: (230)

PLAYS: (2217)

Embed

While the Gingrich campaign might be very happy that they received the endorsement of the editorial board of the New Hampshire Union Leader, the same can't be said for Joe Scarborough or the panel on Morning Joe this Monday morning.

Scarborough blasted the paper for this statement, saying he'd like to know what conservative principles they thought Newt Gingrich stood for:

Newt Gingrich is by no means the perfect candidate. But Republican primary voters too often make the mistake of preferring an unattainable ideal to the best candidate who is actually running. In this incredibly important election, that candidate is Newt Gingrich. He has the experience, the leadership qualities and the vision to lead this country in these trying times.

Scarborough praised Mitt Romney as the GOP's best chance to beat President Obama in the general election, but he went after him for his flip flopping almost as hard as he did Gingrich during this segment. Scarborough also admitted that the conservative base hates Mitt Romney.

I'm ready to break the popcorn out if we actually see Newt Gingrich win a couple of the early primary races.

DOWNLOADS: (85)

PLAYS: (250)

Embed

I don't know if anyone else is as sick of the Tom Brokaw/Chris Matthews consecutive book tours that we've got going on at MSNBC along with a couple of other networks, but this bit from Tuesday's Morning Joe where Brokaw was pushing his book along with some Villager conventional wisdom about what needs to be done to cure our country's ails left me feeling even more disgusted than I was with him after his appearance on Meet the Press this past Sunday.

The amount of cognitive dissonance necessary for either Tom Brokaw to make these statements in the first place, or the viewers that he thinks should be buying into his clap-trap here is really quite astounding.

After being asked by Willie Geist about American's “incredible levels of cynicism in government” and our Congress' nine percent approval level rating, and how some faith is potentially restored in our government, Brokaw responds this way.

BROKAW: Well again, it really requires the citizenry from the ground up to get involved in reclaiming their government. I've used this almost everywhere I go as an example. However you feel about the tea party, they got angry. Then they got organized. Then they got to Washington and they stayed disciplined and they were having an affect, out of proportion to their numbers, frankly, in the Republican debate.

But that's a demonstration of organization and power. And the other things is that I think both parties have to look at the enormous impact of big money on politics. K Street and the lobbyists and they're in there all day, every day.

Brokaw is apparently either completely detached from the reality, or just doesn't mind lying to the viewers since he's willing to ignore the fact that the “tea party” AstroTurf movement has been organized and co-opted by... lobbyists. Dick Armey... lobbyist. Matt Kibbe... lobbyist. Tim Phillips... lobbyist. And there are a lot more there where I could go on and on with who's pumping money into this “tea party”, another of which is one we've covered here extensively, the Koch brothers.

If Tom Brokaw honestly thinks that lobbyists have too much influence on our government, then the last thing he should be doing is trying to paint the “tea party” as grass roots and a cure for getting the influence of money out of politics.

After poo-pooing agriculture subsidies as one of the problems we have with lobbying groups having too much influence, which I do not disagree with by the way, Brokaw went on to champion our government having more “public/private partnerships” and used examples such as privatizing our schools, roads and water districts.

So Brokaw thinks we need to get rid of the influence of lobbyists in our government, but doesn't seem to mind so much the commons and institutions that should belong to the taxpayers being sold off to private industry so they can make a profit off of them.

This was followed by him talking to billionaire Mort Zuckerman who was touting his usual lines about how Washington is broken and complaints that there's not enough upward mobility in the United States any more, of course ignoring the fact that trickle-down economics, a race to the bottom on wages and labor protections due to globalization, lack of regulation of the financial industry among a host of other issues are what brought us to where we are now.

Nothing like MSNBC getting the opinion of one of the “little guys” like Zuckerman to let everyone know what the opinion of the one percent is so they can have a “fair and balanced” discussion on Morning Joe. So much for that "liberal" MSNBC. A lot of MSNBC's programming is really horrid but if there was ever one show anyone could consider pre-packaged for Fox and ready to move directly over there, Morning Joe definitely qualifies.

DOWNLOADS: (214)

PLAYS: (1792)

Embed

I had the unfortunate circumstance of catching this segment first thing in the morning from MSNBC's Morning Joe where Meet the Press host David Gregory made an appearance and decided to do a little Republican messaging to smooth over the extreme amount of obstruction we've seen from the Senate since President Obama got elected.

Mediaite's Tommy Christopher did a nice job of summing up just what's wrong with just about everything that came out of Gregory's mouth here -- David Gregory Cites ‘Resonant’ Mitch McConnell: Obama ‘Got Everything He Wanted and It Didn’t Work’.

Here's part the transcript via Newsbusters, who they linked over at Mediaite, and who humorously also think it's some kind of rare occasion for David Gregory to repeat Republican talking points on the air:

WILLIE GEIST: Hey David, it's Willie. I want to ask you a fundamental question we've been talking a lot about around this table. The argument from the White House and from many on the left is that the president can't get anything done because he has a party of "no" working against him. Is that a fair characterization based on the evidence we've seen over the last two-and-a-half, almost three, years now, of the way Republicans have handled themselves? Are they out to see the president fail, or are they just standing up for their core beliefs?

DAVID GREGORY: Well, I think it's both. I think it depends how you want to cast it. I think liberals and defenders of the president will say this is the party of "no." I think conservatives would say this is the party of "we're going to stop him from doing more; stop him from hurting the economy further." I mean, the president--Mitch McConnell said something several weeks ago that I think really resonated, which is: the president got everything that he wanted and it didn't work. He got a big stimulus. He got health care reform, he got financial reform. The economy hasn't moved.

Here's more from Christopher:

Continue reading »

DOWNLOADS: (231)

PLAYS: (247)

Embed

Apparently MSNBC's resident bigot, Pat Buchanan, wasn't terribly thrilled with Warren Buffett's op-ed in the New York Times that John wrote about here earlier today -- Warren Buffett tells US Gov't: 'Stop Coddling The Super-Rich'. It seems Buchanan has a little bit of trouble understanding why taxes should not be voluntary and that just Warren Buffett and a few other willing billionaires sending some more money to the government out of the goodness of their hearts isn't going to solve our budget problems.

BUCHANAN: No, I’m writing a note to Warren Buffett. But look, I’m a little fed up with these people who come on, you know, their big op-eds, all these admonitions. Why doesn’t he set an example and send a check for $5 billion to the federal government? He’s got about $40 billion. You know, you had a plan up there, I talked to Howie Carr in Boston where the super-rich could contribute an extra amount. It was something like one-tenth of one percent did it. You get all this noise from these big rich folks. Let them send checks and set an example instead of writing op-eds. What do you think of that partner?

This isn't the first time I've heard conservatives spout this kind of nonsense. It's just a way to take a cheap shot at Buffett by pretending he doesn't care about the problem if he doesn't voluntarily send the government some more money on his own instead of urging lawmakers to actually fix the problem.

I also found it amusing to listen to Buchanan and his buddies Willie Geist, Mark Halperin and Mike Barnicle follow up talking about "tax reform" which is just code for lowering the rates on the rich even further and pretending they'll ever agree to close the loopholes that the Republicans stubbornly defended during this entire debt ceiling debacle.

Buchanan also said he thinks if the President did work with Republicans on "tax reform" and follow that with saying "now we're going to have some pain on entitlements" that the "tea party" would support him, even though his base would hate it (because there's nothing our beltway Villagers love more than some good old hippie-punching to make their day) and that if he did those two things "I'm convinced the President could put together a package that would make him a dramatic leader and to get him reelected."

Because I'm sure Pat Buchanan just has the best interests of President Obama and his reelection efforts at heart. It's time for MSNBC to retire this relic or this whole show for that matter. Morning Joe is as bad as some of the worst that airs on Fox every day, but the rest of our corporate media wants to pretend the network is "liberal."