DOWNLOADS: (338)

PLAYS: (3067)

Embed

Keith Olbermann didn't parse any words during his Worst Persons segment on Countdown this Thursday and went after Sen. Tom Coburn for his eliminationist rhetoric where he said that “It’s just a good thing I can’t pack a gun on the Senate floor." And then as John already noted, proceeded to attack President Obama as an affirmative action recipient and claimed the country was better off before we had Medicare in place.

Keith called for Coburn to resign and I agree with him. Not that he's going to care what anyone thinks since he's not running for reelection anyway.

OLBERMANN: But when he moved from health care and casual racism to the debt ceiling deal, Sen. Coburn took a step down from the simply mean spirited, out of touch, whiny elitism which has marked his political career and moved towards ineligibility for the office which he holds.

He called his colleagues “cowards” and then added “It's just a good thing I can't pack a gun on the Senate floor.”

Yes it is, but apparently that's insufficient protection for the rest of us. For a sitting U.S. Senator to say in public that he even daydreams or jokes about the prospect of shooting other Senators is not just to ignore the supposed lessons of the shooting of Congresswoman Giffords and the other victims of Tuscon. It is not just to ignore the years before the Civil War when Congressman Preston Brooks of Georgia went up to Senator Charles Sumner of Massachusetts in the Senate chamber and beat him into unconsciousness with a cane and kept him out of office for a year.

Continue reading »

DOWNLOADS: (708)

PLAYS: (933)

Embed

Chris Matthews and his producers apparently just can't quit having on affirmative action expert and resident MSNBC racist Pat Buchanan to weigh in on matters regarding racism and social justice. Eugene Robinson deserves better than having to argue with this bigot when it comes to matters of race relations in the United States.

As I've said already, why MSNBC feels the need to keep bringing this relic on who's still fighting the battles we should have settled ages ago is beyond me. He does nothing but race bait every time they allow him on the air for one of these discussions.

MATTHEWS: Back to Hardball. On Friday, Democratic senator Jim Webb of Virginia tackled Affirmative Action in "The Wall Street Journal." Senator Webb wrote, quote, "Those who came to this country in recent decades from Asia, Latin America and Africa do not suffer discrimination from our government, and in fact, have frequently been
the beneficiaries of special government programs. The same cannot be said of many hard-working white Americans, including those whose roots in America go back more than 200 years. Beyond our continuing obligation to assist those African- Americans still in need, government-directed diversity programs should end."

Is Senator Webb right? MSNBC`s analyst -- political analyst Eugene Robinson is a Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist for "The Washington Post." And Pat Buchanan is an MSNBC political analyst, and very important figure in American life, I should say.

Pat, let me start with you and this question. I`m not even sure, since this subject has only been brought up today, over the weekend...

PAT BUCHANAN: Right.

MATTHEWS: ... how much is left of Affirmative Action in terms of -- I know schools, private schools look for diversity because they think it helps all their students.

What`s left that bothers you in terms of Affirmative Action, that you think...

BUCHANAN: Right.

MATTHEWS: ... should be gotten rid of, along with, apparently, Jim Webb, who wants -- the Virginia senator -- wants to get rid of? What`s left as a remnant of Affirmative Action you want to see gone?

BUCHANAN: Well, there`s an enormous amount of it in the federal government and the federal workforce. I`ve been looking at that as part of a book. But Chris, let me say this. Jim Webb`s point is important and courageous. What he`s saying is, Don`t treat white America as a monolith. The folks he came from Scots-Irish Southerners, mostly Appalachia -- those folks never benefited from the WASP ascendancy in Boston and New York. They were the victims of that form of discrimination. And they are today the victims of the form of discrimination practice and Affirmative Action, quotas, set-asides and things like that.

And ask yourself, Chris, what is the morality? What is the justice of discriminating against Appalachian white folks, whose father may have fought in Vietnam, whose grandfather fought in World War II, in favor of folks, say, from El Salvador or from Ethiopia or from Asia, India, something like that, discriminating against them, when those newcomers never suffered under slavery, never suffered under Jim Crow. They simply happen to be people of color who are here.

What is the argument for discriminating in favor of a person from Puerto Rico and against a person from Portugal?

Continue reading »

DOWNLOADS: (648)

PLAYS: (1553)

Embed

During the panel segment on This Week, Cynthia Tucker explains why we're not likely to see Michael Steele go even after this latest dust up where so many are calling for him to be removed as chairman of the RNC. As she wrote in her column back in April, affirmative action hire gone bad, they're stuck with him.

TAPPER: Cynthia, you once called -- and let me underline -- you once called Michael Steele an affirmative action hire gone bad. What's your take on this?

TUCKER: Well, Michael Steele is a self-aggrandizing gaffe-prone incompetent who would have been fired a long time ago were he not black. Of course, the irony is that he never would have been voted in as chairman of the Republican Party were he not black.

Let's remember how the party wound up with Michael Steele. In November 2008, the party was devastated that the Democrats had elected the nation's first black president, while the Republican Party was stuck with being seen as largely the party of aging white people, with good reason, a party that was hostile to people of color, especially blacks and Latinos.

So the party needed a new face, preferably a face of color, and they didn't have very many officials to choose from, so they came up with Michael Steele. And it is very ironic, since the Republicans have been so critical of affirmative action, to watch them stuck with their affirmative action hire that they dare not get rid of, because that would generate even more controversy.

DOWNLOADS: (1253)

PLAYS: (6784)

Embed

Rachel Maddow corrects Pat Buchanan's racist statements he made on her show last week. Classy as usual, she manages to do it without attacking Buchanan, but just pointing out the fact that he lies like a rug by debunking his B.S..lol.

Maddow: It's not cool to talk about guests after their segment is over. It's also not fair to re-litigate these arguments in the absence of one of the parties who participated in the argument, and I will not try to do that now. But what I do feel obliged to do is to correct some of the things that were said in the course of my argument with Pat that were stated as fact, that were not true. I feel an obligation just to correct the factual record as we would with anything else that was stated as fact on this show that was not true.

Rachel goes on to debunk Pat's statements about whether Sotomayor has ever written anything in terms of a law review article, how Sotomayor got on the Yale Law Review, that the United States was not "built by white folks", his statements about who died for the United States in combat, his statement that he was not in favor of affirmative action, when he himself promoted affirmative action for Catholics, that the United States track team in the Olympics is not "all black folks", and the Olympic hockey team is not all from Minnesota.

DOWNLOADS: (2762)

PLAYS: (11307)

Embed

During what was at times a bit of a heated exchange, but way too chummy in general -- given the type of browbeating Pat Buchanan actually deserves for his continued racist remarks on MSNBC -- Rachel Maddow ends up telling Pat Buchanan to quit living in the 1950s, and that he's fanning the flames of racial hatred with his rhetoric. Before that, she gives him ample opportunity to put on full display, again, just how horribly he thinks the poor, downtrodden white man is being treated in America.

Some of Pat’s "finer" moments during the interview.

-- Comparing Sonia Sotomayor to Harriet Miers.

-- Calling her a purely affirmative action candidate by the President and completely dismissing her academic accomplishments.

-- Saying that “white folks” built this country.

-- Calling Bork and Scalia “real scholars” and "tremendous minds" and saying Sotomayor hasn’t risen to their level.

-- Saying the only reason she was appointed to the bench was because of affirmative action.

-- Complaining about Sotomayor getting a chance to go to the best schools and knocking out someone who might have gotten better grades than her. When has Pat Buchanan ever complained about the likes of George Bush and other legacy children being allowed into the best schools because of who their parents are, and knocking other kids out? I would guess he has not. I’ve certainly never heard him bring it up. Rachel should have called him on that one if he'd let her get a word in to do it.

When asked if she got the grades she did in college because of affirmative action, saying that in the Ivy League schools, half the kids graduate cum laude now. Really? So they're raising students' grade point averages in college now and no one told the rest of us about it? Then retreating to saying he bet he graduated higher in his high school class than she did, and going so far as to say he probably did better than she did in college as well, but he doesn't think he's qualified to be on the Supreme Court.

So being a judge for seventeen years doesn't count for anything in Pat's world. And Pat says he did better than she did in school, without backing that up with any specifics. If anyone knows just what his grade point averages were in high school and college, I'd like to find out.

He compared the track team at the Olympics potentially being all black or a hockey team being all white to the racial make up of the Supreme Court. Yeah, that's exactly the same thing, Pat. He seems to have forgotten that there was a time not all that long ago that blacks in America were not even allowed to play on the same team as white people.

And he refused to say there is anything wrong with the fact that the Supreme Court has been made up almost entirely of white men for all these years and might benefit from other races being represented. He dodged back opining over the firemen they trotted out there as a political game at the hearing rather than answer the question.

I really don't understand why Rachel felt the need to bring him on if she was going to let him lie and talk over her for the better part of the interview. She's just not aggressive enough to deal with the likes of this bully, and he knows it. MSNBC has allowed Buchanan to become a racist sideshow on their network. As Media Matters has wondered: What would Pat Buchanan have to say to get himself fired from MSNBC?