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From this Saturday's Weekends with Alex Witt on MSNBC, former Deputy Assistant and Deputy Press Secretary to George W. Bush, Tony Fratto took part in a discussion on Chuck Hagel's confirmation hearing for Secretary of Defense and while I agree on the fact that Hagel's performance during that hearing was less than stellar to put it mildly, I've got to say, sorry Tony, but we don't have anyone on the Democratic side of the aisle that is the equivalent of that nasty piece of work, John McCain.

The media just can't stop giving undue deference to John McCain no matter how badly he behaves. Maybe we'd see less of that sort of nastiness out of him if he weren't continually rewarded for how he acts, but instead we see him given a complete pass and are told it was just payback that was somehow justified -- and no one was really paying attention anyway. Oh, and Democrats do the same thing, so it's no big deal.

Given the Republicans' propensity for feigned victimhood and pearl clutching at every turn for even mild chastising, I wouldn't even want to see their reaction if someone on the Democratic side of the aisle -- or who they perceive as aligned with them like Hagel when he turned against the Iraq war -- acted the way McCain did here:

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Sadly it seems MSNBC has found yet another former Pennsylvania Democrat to come on the air to advocate for rewarding Republicans for their obstruction and intransigence over the last four years. We were already treated to "Fix the Debt" corporate shill Ed Rendell arguing for cutting benefits to our seniors with the chained CPI as way to figure the cost of living increases for Social Security and for raising the age for Medicare eligibility. And in a subsequent interview, he was not only pushing to cut our social safety nets, but to help get more Republicans elected to office as well.

This Saturday, former Rep. Joe Sestak took up Rendell's mantle and recommended that President Obama nominate former Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison for transportation secretary. I probably would not be as irritated at Sestak for this interview had I not heard him earlier this week talking about how reasonable cutting the benefits to our seniors would be and that Democrats are going to have to give into the idea that this chained CPI is coming and there's nothing they can do about it if we want to fix our deficit problems. Never mind that Social Security does not add a dime to our deficit. He did the same thing a little later in this segment but wasn't quite as specific as he'd been in the previous interview on which cuts are going to have to be made to our social safety nets.

Sestak took to the air here to call for more privatization of our infrastructure and nominating a Republican who could get that passed as the solution to fixing our crumbling roads and bridges. It makes me start to wonder if anyone besides MSNBC is signing a paycheck for him just like they are for Ed Rendell, because these sure as hell aren't positions Democrats who don't want to have themselves considered as Republican-lite should be advocating for.

As long as we've got Democrats like Rendell and Sestak shilling for Republicans and their policies on that so-called "liberal" network MSNBC, who needs Republicans?

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First we've had these clowns doing their best to try to downplay Todd Akin's remarks on abortion and rape by comparing it to a gaff by Joe Biden as we saw from hate monger Tony Perkins the other day. Now we've got some GOP operative from South Carolina named Wesley Donehue – the likes of which or his bow tie I've been fortunate enough not to have watched before this Saturday – apparently doing some consulting work for Todd Akin, and trying to compare Akin's remarks to the now infamous "Dean Scream."

Thankfully Howard Dean was right there to shoot down the false equivalency on this Saturday's Weekends with Alex Witt where they were discussing the Republicans Akin problem, woman problem and their upcoming convention:

DEAN: The problem with the Akin remark is Akin is not an outlier in the Republican Party. Paul Ryan, Romney's running mate voted for the same stuff that Akin voted for, which is outlawing abortion with no exceptions for rape and incest. This is not exactly a pro-woman party and it shows by the ticket, so I think this is a problem for the Republican Party everywhere, not just Missouri.

After being asked how things were going for Romney as we head into the convention with his racist “joke” and Akin's remarks and whether he should have seen “the backlash coming,” Akin consultant Wesley Donehue responded.

DONEHUE: Listen, first off, Mitt Romney... he likes to joke around. I was watching a special on MSNBC where his sons say, listen my dad likes to joke around and sometimes those jokes don't come across the way they need to. I think it was a very human moment for him, just like it was a very human moment for Todd Akin.

I want to go back to what Gov. Dean said. You know, I think trying to label our party as anti-woman because of one comment is insane. I mean look, Gov. Dean's entire presidential campaign was ruined because of one moment. That's like saying the “Dean scream” crazy moment was indicative of the entire Democratic Party. He lost the presidency because he looked insane. That didn't mean the entire Democratic Party was insane because of one moment. That was absolutely a ridiculous comment!

Host Alex Witt stood back and allowed Dean to reply.

DEAN: I think that's silly. I lost the Democratic nomination because I came in third in Iowa and I was supposed to come in first. That was the problem. And I also think it's not very nice to George Bush to say I would have kicked his butt as well. We don't know that. But leaving all that aside, the fact of the matter is Todd Akin is not an outlier.

Boehner's bill which Ryan voted for and all the Republicans in the House or virtually all the Republicans in the House voted for is exactly what Akin said. (crosstalk) No exception for rape. No exceptions for incest. This is a party that doesn't value women and that's just a fact.

DONEHUE: And you're a party that doesn't value life. (crosstalk)

DEAN: They voted that way again and again and again (crosstalk). It's in the Republican Party platform. So I think this just makes this a party a very hard sell for women.

Donehue has the the feigned indignation game down pat and tried to defend the Republicans with a version of I have one black friend, or in this case, we elected a woman who is a minority to be a governor and some black Congressmen, therefore we can't be sexist or prejudiced, or racist.

Dean did a nice job of pointing to their policies and the fact that they seem like they'd be a whole lot comfortable living in the '50's... as in the 1850's. He also made note of the fact that when you look at their ranks like those delegates filling their convention floors, it's almost all white whether they've got some diversity at the top as figure heads or not.

I don't know what Akin is paying this guy, but whatever it is, it's too much. I was waiting for him to stick out his tongue and wave his fingers next to his ears and say "I know you are, but what am I" before this was over. He was no match for Dean when it came to trying to make his party's case on women's issues or to defend Akin. Trying to pick a fight with Dean with a ridiculous, childish false equivalency is no argument.

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Heaven forbid MSNBC can't have a discussion on immigration issues without rolling out their favorite bigot, Pat Buchanan. Sadly he his prediction was right and the DREAM Act went down in the Senate.

DREAM Act Dies in the Senate:

(CBS) The DREAM Act, a bill to provide a path to citizenship for some illegal immigrants who entered the United States before age 16, died on the Senate floor on Saturday morning.

The failure of the bill - amid widespread opposition from Senate Republicans - is a major disappointment for Hispanic activists, who have grown increasingly frustrated with the lack of progress on immigration reform under President Obama.

The vote to end debate on the Dream Act and move to a final vote received only 55 votes, short of the 60 votes needed to overcome a Republican-led filibuster. Forty-one senators voted no.

Three Republicans - Indiana's Dick Lugar, Utah's Bob Bennett and Alaska's Lisa Murkowski - were among the yes votes. Six Democrats voted no: Joe Manchin of West Virginia, Max Baucus and John Tester of Montana, Kay Hagan of North Carolina, Ben Nelson of Nebraska, and Mark Pryor of Arkansas. The bill had already passed the House and is supported by President Obama.

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MSNBC terrorism analyist Evan Kohlmann responds to Lindsey Graham's fear mongering and talking points that we need to have suspected terrorist tried in military tribunals and why it is ridiculous that we cannot have the trials in New York. Sadly the administration looks like they're waivering on this one.

Witt: You are perfectly comfortable with it being held in a civilian court in lower Manhattan, absolutely comfortable that we would have the security with which to keep New Yorkers…

Kohlmann: We’ve got trials going on right now here in New York involving hard core, well trained, highly trained senior terrorists. I mean just a few days ago the wife of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed’s cousin, or nephew was just convicted, here in New York—right here in the southern district. No one said anything. There were no riots. There were no terrorist attacks. The world didn’t come to an end.

Witt: Well perhaps the focus wasn’t… I mean the media scrutiny wasn’t as great.

Kohlmann: Right. But that’s the point is that this was Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the wife of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed’s nephew. This woman was captured outside of a U.S. base in Afghanistan with information about terrorist attacks here in the United States. You couldn’t imagine someone to be more hard core than that. She was convicted resoundingly. She tried turning the trial into a circus. The judge immediately told her “You’re outta’ here”. He kicked her out of court. He only let her in when she agreed to calm down. The answer is that we’re already doing this. We’ve been doing it for years. There is absolutely no reason we can’t do it again.

Kohlmann goes on to point out that this is of course, all about politics. Alex Witt later in the broadcast brought in her “boys” Grandpa Pat Buchanan and some guy who they call a “Democratic strategist” who’s always on with Buchanan on the weekends, who actually said that terrorists shouldn’t get lawyers no matter what our Constitution says. Witt, of course, during that interview seemed to completely forget she even had this conversation with Kohlmann.

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Think Progress has more on this--Republicans dismayed by Obama’s strong performance, say it was a ‘mistake’ to let cameras roll. Apparently things were going so well for the President that ClusterFox decided they had better cut away from their coverage and proceed to bashing him--Fox Cuts Away From Obama-GOP Conversation In Order To Get A Head Start On Attacks: He Was ‘Lecturing’. Somehow I doubt the Republicans are going to want to do this again, or at least with the cameras on, any time soon.

RUSSERT: On the bigger picture though that I found extremely interesting today is the decision to allow the cameras present for the Q&A. Last night the White House called the GOP leadership and requested this. It obviously turned out to be a brilliant political move.

Tom Cole — former head of the NRCC, congressman from Oklahoma — said, “He scored many points. He did really well.” Barack Obama, for an hour and a half, was able to refute every single Republican talking point used against him on the major issues of the day. In essence, it was almost like a debate where he was front and center for the majority of it.

It's very, very interesting to see what this will do to the political dialog for the rest of next week. Final point on that I do believe one Republican said to me, off the record, and saying behind closed doors: “It was a mistake that we allowed the cameras to roll like that. We should not have done that.” Very interesting.

WITT: Why? Why? Because they didn't fire away the way they really wanted to for fear of repurcussions you know, ala Joe Wilson "You lie" if there was disrespect shown?

RUSSERT: Well, when the Democrats did this they had a closed camera session right, when he had a meeting with the Democrats last month...

WITT: Right...

RUSSERT: By allowing these cameras to roll, it allowed Obama to sit there for an hour and a half refuting every single Republican talking point, which he really has not had an opportunity to do in his campaign rally speeches that he's been doing in Florida yesterday, that he's been doing addresses in the White House. He was able to directly refute Republicans to their face for an hour and a half on T.V. I think he scored a lot of political points.

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Yeah, I just love the sound of fingernails across a chalkboard too, Harold. It's hard to feel good about these two leading the fundraising effort for Haiti knowing full well the damage they helped heap upon that country, but not for Harold Ford Jr. He's just lovin' that bipartisanship, don't you know... and the sound of George Bush's voice. Good grief.

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From MSNBC's weekend morning show with Alex Witt and her "boys" Pat Buchanan and Peter Fenn, while discussing the retirements of Chris Dodd and Byron Dorgan, Pat Buchanan is asked if the Dems losing their 60 seat majority in the Senate means that business on Capitol Hill comes grinding to a halt, to which Buchanan gleefully replies "Hopefully".

Peter Fenn begs to differ and thinks that the Democrats are going to "call the Republicans bluff" and things will return to normal business in the Senate. I think Fenn is kidding himself. The Republicans do not care about governing if they think it scores them political points. We can't get much in the way of decent legislation passed with the Conserva-Dems we've got now in the Senate. Replacing them with Republicans isn't going to make that any better.

And I don't see the Democrats calling anyone's "bluff". If they were going to do that they'd have done it already. The Republicans were good at ramming through every piece of crappy legislation they wanted to get passed with Bush with less than a filibuster proof majority in the Senate, but we never heard any talk of the government "grinding to a halt" from the Senate obstructing when they were in charge. The Democrats have too many awful members who may as well be Republicans within their own caucus to do the same thing.

h/t to GottaLaff at The Political Carnival with her "Shallow Thought" for the day on MSNBC giving air time to the likes of Buchanan in the first place for catching this one. And I agree with this completely:

Punditiots who advocate government failure should be given less, if any, air time, not more. Vigorous debate is a good thing, and freedom of speech should continue to be alive and well.

But to warmly welcome noxious obstructionists like Buchanan to the airwaves does not serve what's left of the news media well, because he does not inform, he infects. And that is destructive to a healthy democracy.

I hear ya' Laffy but they're not about democracy or any type of honest debate in this country. They're all about the ratings. I do hope Peter Fenn is right in this regard. If the Republicans over play their hand with their obstruction, maybe it finally becomes politically untenable for them to continue to do so, but I'm not holding my breath.

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From MSNBC's Morning Meeting Oct. 16, 2009. Dylan Ratigan explains how Goldman Sachs managed to make $3 billion in three months investing our tax dollars sent to keep them afloat with no strings attached.

For more you can read his entry at the Huffington Post Goldman Sachs' Black Magic, Here's How They Did It.

Goldman at the apex of the crisis is delivered this money -- which they then use to borrow against at $20 or $30 for every $1. Which at 30x equals $2.1 trillion in available capital.

As one of the only banks in the world with money at the time, Goldman Sachs was able to buy billions in distressed assets around the world at record low prices -- only to watch $23.7 trillion in US taxpayer money be deployed during the past year to re-inflate the asset's values that Goldman had purchased with our tax money.

The question is not why did we bail out the banks.

The question is why did we give the banks billions of our money so they could then buy assets by the trillions with our money and they keep the profits?

The answer is Henry Paulson, former Goldman Sachs CEO who ran the US Treasury, and Tim Geithner, current Treasury Secretary who at the time ran the New York Federal Reserve, willingly delivered Goldman Sachs the $70 Billion -- with no strings attached.

So what can we do?

1. We must demand the return of those investment gains made with America's money - it was stolen from us and we can get it back. Demand Claw Backs - and not from the future but from the past - That is where our money is.
2. We must have an exchange for all credit derivatives -- the current version is riddled with loopholes that let banks avoid transparency by mobbing offshore and prohibiting government regulators from being able to force the use of the exchange by the banks.

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Working for MSNBC has been bad for Chuck Todd. I really used to like his analysis back when he was just weighing in during the mornings on C-SPAN and writing for The Hotline. Chuck seems to think that Sarah Palin has now had some magical pixie dust scattered on her that makes her immune from the same scrutiny other politicians have to endure because she has become....a celebrity. Isn't that special?

Chuck Todd seems to have forgotten what he wrote back on Aug. 2, 2008, when John McCain ran his "celebrity" ad against then candidate Barack Obama.

The hardest thing to do in politics is campaign as someone you aren't.

People can spot an imposter from a mile away.

The most successful politicians are the ones who embrace their best traits while turning their liabilities into loveable attributes.

And yet, many a candidate tries to run as something they aren't simply because the strategy dictates it. And when even a good strategy doesn't match the candidate, the result can be a disjointed campaign that produces a lot of uncomfortable moments.

Unless, somehow, the candidate figures out how to embrace the strategy.

Are we seeing this happen right now to John McCain?

If you were to diagnose the best way to go at Obama in the midst of this disastrous Republican environment, you might come up with the tactics the McCain brain trust unveiled this week: Paint Obama as a bit full of himself, over-confident, elitest and out of touch.

There are a number of ways to paint that picture, including attacking Obama for his celebrity. America has a love-hate relationship with celebrity. We love to follow celebrities but we also love to mock them. And secretly we believe we're better than they are.

Making light of Obama's pop icon status and trying to use it as a way to undermine his serious presidential credentials is a good one. The latest McCain ad did just that. We may love U2 and we may love Bono's humanitarian efforts, but do voters in Youngstown want him as president?

But the flaw in this attack from McCain is that it doesn't fit who he is. This is a guy who hangs out with Warren Beatty. This is a guy who is married to a wealthy beer heiress. This is a guy whose senior adviser was Arnold Schwarzenegger's campaign manager. This is a guy who owes much of his success in national politics to marketing himself as a political celebrity.

And attacking Obama’s celebrity is just one part of the playbook. There are two more plays: attacking his experience and attacking his common touch.

So now that Sarah Palin is a "celebrity" in Todd's eyes, it's all good. Not something to potentially attack someone for. When asked why he thought Palin was leaving the Governor's office, Todd seemed to think it was all about that great conservative value, lining ones' own pocket. I'm sure they'll all be trying to spin that into something positive for her as well. She just needs the money since that evil liberal media, and those evil folks who kept filing those darned ethics charges against her made her need to quit and go make some money instead of paying fines for politicking when she was supposed to be governing.

Transcript below the fold.

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