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From Nicole Sandler's Radio or Not, here's our own Nicole Belle's weekly segment called Fools on the Hill. If you try to catch the show live she's moved to a new time, 10am ET. You can listen to the entire podcast here.

Here's more from Nicole Sandler's blog:

And we’ll continue our Monday tradition of getting together with Crooks & LiarsNicole Belle to dissect the Sunday talking head shows, in a segment we call “Fools on the Hill.”

Here’s what she sent me for today’s show, complete with links to all the clips we’ll comment on today so you can play along at home:

I guess since this weekend marked the 9th anniversary of the 9/11 tragedy, our relationship to the Muslim community was a large theme of the day.

Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, the chairman behind the Cordoba House, was on This Week and called the attacks now on the Park51 center—especially by partisans like Palin—are “disingenuous”:

http://videocafe.crooksandliars.com/david/imam-rauf-palin-attacks-islamic-center-are-0

Reza Aslan did the imam one better. During a roundtable of Meet the Press, Aslan cut down to the essence what many of us who are trying to make a distinction between terrorism and Muslims in general:

http://videocafe.crooksandliars.com/heather/reza-aslan-if-you-are-painting-15-billion-

The answer is kind of simple, actually: Islam. But let’s call a spade a spade for a moment. If you are painting 1.5 billion people with the same brush of violence and, and, and extremism, you’re a bigot. And I think what’s, what’s disturbing is the way that that’s become part of the, the, the natural discourse now.

To punctuate this point, Dave Neiwert did a post on 9/11 that noted that the Bipartisan Policy Center just recently released a report titled “Assessing the Terrorist Threat”, and did not note a single homegrown terrorist of a radical, right wing or Christian background, like the guy who wanted to shoot up the Tides Foundation, or Dr. Tiller’s assassination, or the shooters at the Holocaust Museum, the Universalist Unitarian Church, or the Hutaree militia.

http://crooksandliars.com/david-neiwert/assessing-threat-despite-rise-right-

Then we have the same old lies to the people on taxes. I think that this is being calculated as a the biggest arrow in the Republican quiver. I mean, when you have tea party types saying they’ve been taxed enough already (and they’ve already gotten a tax cut by Obama and would not be included in the expiration of the Bush tax cuts) and yet, we’re still having partisans telling us that repealing Bush tax cuts will affect small businesses:

http://videocafe.crooksandliars.com/heather/peter-morici-repeats-lie-repealing-bush-ta

Chris Wallace tries to do it too, and new chair of the President’s Council of Economic Advisers Austen Goolsbee sets him straight:

http://videocafe.crooksandliars.com/heather/austan-goolsbee-calls-out-chris-wallace-sm

And then finally, Howard Kurtz calls out Hannity for his “deceptive” editing of Obama’s Labor Day speech, ignoring that this is a standard operating procedure for Fox News:

http://crooksandliars.com/david-neiwert/kurtz-calls-out-hannity-his-deceptiv

It’s an exciting time for me. Thanks for bearing with the changes…. radio or not!



Fools on the Hill: Nicole and Nicole on the Radio 8-23-10

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In case you missed it like I did, here's our own Nicole Belle with Nicole Sandler with their Fools on the Hill Sunday talking heads show roundup from past Monday. Nicole Sandler has more here: Grayson & Tudor – Florida Progressives!

And in hour two, Nicole Belle of Crooks & Liars returns for our weekly Fools on the Hill segment, discussing the Sunday talking head shows. Here’s her take on the Sunday shows:

So I think today’s theme is cluelessness:

Chris Matthews asks his panel if the Tea Party will have veto power over the 2012 GOP nominee. First and foremost, they are using Sarah Palin as some benchmark of influence, which is ludicrous. Her endorsement is by no means a shoo-in for any candidate right now, and there’s nothing that says her influence will strengthen in the intervening years. If anything, if she opts to pursue a national candidacy herself, I suspect that the media scrutiny will result in her having even less credibility.

http://videocafe.crooksandliars.com/node/39178

It also gives the tea party itself far more credit than they deserve. I think we’ve seen middling electoral success from them in primary races, but they have yet to show themselves successful in full elections and given the polls for Angle, Paul and others, I don’t think they should crow just yet.

Which segues nicely into Howard Dean. He points out to Candy Crowley that although the conventional wisdom is that the party in power suffers electorally in mid-terms, when your alternative is the Party of No, conventional wisdom may be wrong.

http://crooksandliars.com/nicole-belle/howard-dean-name-one-thing-republican

And then we have Dick Armey, the corporate head of the Tea Party, spouting off some truly unbelievable stuff:

http://crooksandliars.com/karoli/dick-armey-medicare-trashes-constitution

He says that Medicare trashes the Constitution. Huh? What does he think those lazy, entitled senior citizens should do? Work to pay for their Alzheimer’s treatment? For proof, he brings up the example of “the” Christian Scientist, whom we apparently should feel bad is being forced to sign up for a doctor to get Social Security. Of course, no one says he has to GO to the doctors, just sign up for Medicare. But again, David Gregory falls down on the job of calling out this crap, and lets Armey filibuster through the segment and not allow Granholm to respond.

And then, in light of the protests on the Cordoba House in NYC over the weekend, Fareed Zakaria wants to remind Americans that we are not in a war with Islam and that al Qaeda hates factions of Islam as bad as they hate us.

http://crooksandliars.com/nicole-belle/fareed-zakaria-gps-al-qaeda-vs-islam

By the way, a commenter made this video of the NYC protests when the haters went after a passerby, who happened to be a construction worker at Ground Zero and not a Muslim.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EwaNRWMN-F4&feature=player_embedded

George Will thinks that the Mideast peace process is the biggest obstacle to Mideast peace.

http://videocafe.crooksandliars.com/node/39185

Amazingly, I actually agree with him if only for this story:

http://crooksandliars.com/ian-welsh/israeli-pm-natanyahu-america-easily-move

I think if we really want to see Mideast peace, then the US needs to come to grips with the dichotomy between what Israel officially tells us and what they say behind closed doors.

And then Fox chooses to use Judith Miller of all people to discuss the study that American people have lost faith in broadcast news

http://videocafe.crooksandliars.com/node/39175

Really, what can you say about them using the person the Bush White House used to feed propaganda about invading Iraq to?

Our own Howie Klein and Rep. Alan Grayson joined the show this week as well. Go over to Nicole's site to listen to the whole show.



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Deputy White House Communications Director Dan Pfeiffer told ABC's George Stephanopoulos that Republicans owed Susan Rice an apology after they misled the country about the Benghazi emails -- a story that was hyped by his network's correspondent Jonathan Karl. After Stephanopoulos feigned ignorance on the matter, Pfeiffer should have told him ABC owes her an apology as well.

Karl gave a sorry excuse for apology this weekend, saying that he regrets that "the email was quoted incorrectly." More like he regrets getting caught. So to sum things up after reading his statement and listening to this interview -- not only is ABC refusing to come clean about the names of the Republicans who lied to them and conned them into hyping and giving new life to this so-called scandal that was being ignored by most of the networks other than Fox until Karl and ABC decided to lend it some credibility -- Stephanopoulos decides to sit there and pretend he doesn't have any idea why someone might want Republicans to apologize to Susan Rice after what they did to her.

Instead he decided to ask Pfeiffer about the emails without a word on Karl's "apology" or any acknowledgement of his network helping to spread lies for Republicans by hyping doctored versions of them. Stephanopoulos should have been opening This Week with a statement from the network on their shoddy "journalism" and with Karl's statement instead of trying to pretend it didn't happen.

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The Nation editor Katrina Vanden Heuvel on Sunday said that Republicans were succeeding at using "weapons of mass distraction" to obstruct President Barack Obama's second term agenda.

During an ABC News panel discussion about the a number of scandals that Republicans are using to attack the Obama administration, Washington Post columnist George Will asserted that IRS scrutiny of tea party groups was like Watergate because "it's the use of the federal machinery to punish enemies of the administration."

"Watergate? Seriously, George?" Vanden Heuvel replied. "I mean, Watergate was a scandal unique in its depths of criminality. You had a president at the heart of the White House directing the subversion of the FBI and other institutions, including the IRS... And the key scandal -- which you will disagree with -- is that we had after Citizens United a flood of money coming in, and you had groups which were clearly political and partisan trying to use this 501(c)4 [tax-exempt] categorization to escape political scrutiny."

Vanden Heuvel went on to point out that the Republican Party was trying to substitute the so-called scandal at the IRS, attacks in Benghazi and the Justice Department's seizure of Associate Press phone records for a real political agenda.

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Rand Paul Continues Attacks on Clinton Over Benghazi

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Sen. Rand Paul continued with his charges from earlier this week that former Sec. of State Hillary Clinton had "her fingerprints all over these talking points" on the Benghazi attack and claims that she never "really accepted culpability" because she failed to resign shortly after the tragedy. When CNN's Candy Crowley asked Paul if he was worried about appearing to politicize the controversy by making his remarks in Iowa and other presidential battleground states, Paul dismissed the notion that his remarks were based on politics.

It's laughable that anyone expects us to believe that Republicans care one iota about this trumped up Benghazi story for any other reason than to muddy up Hillary Clinton, because they all assume she's going to be the front-runner for the next presidential election.

And I'd say it's safe to assume Rand Paul is going to take up his father's mantle and make a career out of perpetually running for president as a fundraising scheme. It worked out pretty well for his dad and the press is already propping him up because of it -- with this being the latest example -- so why not?

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Republican strategist Karl Rove says that Crossroads GPS, which is a part the American Crossroads super PAC that he founded, is a legitimate tax-exempt organization because it promotes "social welfare" like the NAACP.

During a panel discussion on Fox News Sunday about the IRS scrutinizing tea party groups, host Chris Wallace asked why Rove's political action committee qualified as a tax-exempt status as a social welfare group.

"Didn't the IRS have a problem in the wake of the Citizens United Supreme Court ruling in getting a handle on the question of what groups did and didn't qualify under the tax code for 501(c)4 status?" Wallace wondered.

"Look, 501(c)4s have been around for a long time," Rove explained. "And the Democrats and the left have used these for years, these social welfare groups to do some politics and a lot of social welfare. NAACP voter fund, for example, ran a $10 million advertising blitz in 2000 against George W. Bush. The League of Conservation Voters, the Sierra Club, Planned Parenthood, National Abortion Rights Action League and so forth. All of them are 501(c)4s, and there are pretty clear rules about what you can and cannot do. You have to spend a majority of you money on social welfare and a minority of your money on political activity."

"So what happened is the Democrats had this for decades -- literally decades -- and no criticism at all, and then Republicans began in 2010 to say if it's good enough for them, we'll duplicate that structure as well. And then suddenly we get what we get, which is a huge bunch of activity aimed at conservative groups that are filing as 501(c)4s."

"The only advantage of a 501(c)4 is it allows you to take your contributions and not pay taxes on them," Rove insisted. "That's the one advantage that this allows you to do."

"And also the donors aren't revealed," Wallace pointed out.

"Well, because again, it's a social welfare organization," Rove agreed. "This literally goes back to the 1940s when criminal penalties were added for the revelation by the IRS of donors because southern attorneys general were attempting to get the donors to the NAACP."

After criticizing President George W. Bush's administration, the NAACP was hit with an audit in 2004 over accusations of improper political activity. At the time, the IRS insisted that the audit had been initiated by the Kentucky office and was not done for political reasons.



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Yes, who better to ask about "government accountability" than war criminal Donald Rumsfeld? It seems the producers of Meet the Press and host David Gregory are doing their best to become a parody of Fox "News" - because that's certainly what they gave us this Sunday by allowing Rumsfeld on there for this softball interview.

We didn't get any questions about the invasion of Iraq, or torture, or whether Rumsfeld has any remorse about his actions during the Bush administration, but we were treated to him being asked about sexual assaults in the military, the IRS, Benghazi and of course he got plenty of time to hawk his new book.

Note to David Gregory: Here's how an interview with Donald Rumsfeld should be conducted if you want to call yourself a "journalist." -- Kai Ryssdal asks Rumsfeld some of the questions we've all wanted to ask.

UPDATE: Here's the transcript if you don't have the stomach for watching the clip.

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Former Republican vice presidential candidate Paul Ryan (R-WI) on Sunday used the news that the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) had scrutinized tea party groups to slam the agency's connection to President Barack Obama's heath care reform law.

Host Chris Wallace pointed out to Ryan on Fox News Sunday that the Treasury inspector general had suggested that a recent IRS scandal had been a "bureaucratic snafu" because tea party groups only represented 96 of the 298 groups that received special scrutiny about their tax-exempt status.

Ryan, however, insisted that the IRS had targeted conservative groups based on their political beliefs and "to suggest that this is some bureaucratic snafu, that's already been disproven."

"The other point I'd say is that as bad as this is, the person in charge of this bureaucratic snafu is now been put in charge of implementing Obamacare," he continued. "I mean, the IRS is now going to be granted huge amounts of unprecedented power over our health care in the implementation of Obamacare."

"And so this is just rotten to the core. This is arrogance. This is big government cronyism. And this is not what hard-working taxpayers deserve."

CBS News observed last week that there was no evidence that Sarah Hall Ingram, who headed the IRS office overseeing tax-exempt organizations between 2009 and 2012, "sanctioned or was even aware of the targeting practices."



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White House Senior Adviser Dan Pfeiffer on Sunday told Fox News host Chris Wallace that it was "offensive" to suggest that President Barack Obama had allowed last year's attacks in Benghazi that killed four Americans.

In an interview with Pfeiffer on Fox News Sunday, Wallace explained that there were "lingering questions" about where the president was and what he was doing on Sept. 11, 2012 when the attacks happened.

Pfeiffer pointed out that Republicans had been spinning a "series of conspiracy theories," but the president had been updated about the attacks throughout the night by his national security team.

"Was he in the [White House] Situation Room?" Wallace pressed. "Do you not know?"

"I don't remember what room the president was in," Pfeiffer replied. "And that's a largely irrelevant fact. The premise of your question is that there is something that could have been done differently, okay, that would have changed the outcome here. The accountability review board has looked at this, people have looked at it, it's a horrible tragedy what happened. What we have to do is make sure it doesn't happen again."

"No one knows where he was or how he was involved or who told him there were know forces," the Fox News host insisted.

"The suggestion of your question is that somehow the president allowed this to happen," Pfeiffer observed. "The assertions from Republicans here that somehow the president allowed this to happened or didn't take action is offensive. It is absolutely offensive. And there's no evidence to support it."



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While others in the media are finally acknowledging that the Benghazi "scandal" which Fox has been pushing for months on end is nothing but a witch hunt and that ABC's big "scoop" on White House emails just left egg on their face and was nothing but lies being fed to them by Republicans, what are they doing over at Fox?

You guessed it... still scandal-mongering over Benghazi. And of course there was no acknowledgement by anyone on the panel of Fox News Watch this Saturday that the Republicans were caught feeding lies to ABC News. In Fox-land, the talking points by Susan Rice are still supposedly a scandal. They're carping that the White House doesn't treat the press nicely enough to suit them and that they don't know how to handle their messaging properly -- because we all know if they were better at messaging and nicer to the press, Fox would then give them a fair shake, right? They haven't managed to make this fake scandal of theirs stick, but they're still grasping at straws to be outraged about.

I thought that maybe they would just move on, since they've got themselves a couple of new drummed up "scandals" to chase after as well, but apparently they're not ready to let this witch hunt go any time soon.