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I don't make a habit of watching CBNC, and this disgusting display by one of their anchors, corporate CEO suck-up Maria Bartiromo is one of the reasons why. Mediaite posted this segment, and apparently the author over there didn't find anything wrong with Bartiromo's behavior and just quoted the fact that she decided to go off on Democratic Sen. Ben Cardin for not making a deal yet with Republicans during these so-called "fiscal cliff" negotiations and had the Wall Street traders cheering for her once she was done.

Roxpert over at Daily KOS had a, shall we say, slightly different reaction to this interview, which I share: WATCH!: CNBC's Maria Bartiromo attacks Ben Cardin...:

This is an example of why conservative corporate media is stoking the flames raging in America that causes some people to become unhinged. She interviewed Senator Ben Cardin this afternoon, and hardly let him speak as you'll see after the squiggle...

Maria's behavior toward Senator Cardin was over the top. CNBC has a slogan called "Rise Above" to try to be an activist network and get a compromise fiscal cliff agreement. Of course, to corporatist conservatives like Bartiromo, the DEMS are the ones in the way of any agreement and she hates, HATES, that senators actually would like to raise taxes on the rich as this video clip shows clearly...

How many times did Maria interrupt Senator Cardin, mid-sentence? How could she get away with asking him to step down if we can't get an agreement? How does she get off questioning his competence? The people of Maryland may have a different idea.

As they noted, she really owes the Senator an apology for her behavior, but I don't expect we'll get one any time soon. Bartiromo and her ilk care about protecting one thing and that's the ultra-wealthy in our society and it's a shame Cardin didn't do a better job at pushing back at her, but when you're interrupted and cut off at every turn, that's not too easy to do. He did about as well as anyone might hope for given how hostile her questioning was toward him and with how much he was even allowed to speak.

I'm also sick and tired of any of these talking heads like Bartiromo pretending that Republicans have actually put tax loopholes on the table, when they've refused to specify a single one that they would vote for. Bartiromo is being paid pretty well to make sure the interests of the 1 percent in this country are protected, and she's got that feigned outrage down pat just like a ton of Republicans we sadly get treated to on the air these days. If anyone isn't sure what a hissy fit looks like about the fact that it's possible their taxes might go up, all you have to do is watch the clip above.

Bartiromo is being paid a salary of $1 million a year and has a net worth of about $22 million. It's a shame that information isn't run in the chyron under her name on the air every time she opens her mouth so the viewers would be made aware of her conflict of interest with her so-called "reporting" every time she starts carping about taxes on the rich going up. It's her own taxes she's complaining about.

You can watch the whole interview at CNBC's site here if you've got the stomach for it.

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On this Sunday's Meet the Press, Grover Norquist repeated his claim that the so-called "tea party" is going to come back stronger than ever now that President Obama has been re-elected: Grover Norquist's Fascinating Theory:

Grover Norquist, despite what some might construe as recent evidence to the contrary, is nothing if not bullish on the future of his brand of radical anti-tax ideology:

“We are about to have a Tea Party second wave that will dwarf the first wave and that is because while ‘spend too much’ brought the Tea Party into existence, we’re about to walk into ‘spend too much, regulate too much, and tax too much,’ all together. It’s going to be a perfect storm of annoying government behavior, which is devastating to the economy, and I think the small business community which is particularly hit by Obama’s tax increases are going to lead the fight bigger, stronger, tougher than the last Tea Party.”

Yes! And then this will happen.

Look out everybody! Grover's coming with another army of angry seniors playing dress-up again! Be afraid... be very afraid! Who needs Fox when we've got Meet the Press, with two CNBC hacks, an anti-tax zealot lobbyist, and a moderator who parrots Republican talking points at every opportunity, balanced out by one Democrat.

And as a reminder, there is no "tea party." It's an AstroTurf rebranding effort designed to try to get the Bush-stink off of the word Republican.

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Here's some of how CNBC hosts John Harwood and Maria Bartiromo opened up the GOP debate in Rochester, MI tonight:

HARWOOD: The candidates will have 60 seconds to respond to questions, 30 seconds for follow-ups and rebuttals. Those will be at the discretion of the moderators.

We also want you, the candidates, to help us out a little bit, by answering the questions as directly and specifically as you can. I know you want to. You have proven that. But just in case you get off topic, maybe by accident, we may have to interrupt you.

BARTIROMO: Throughout the evening tonight we will be joined by an all-star lineup of the smartest people on CNBC.

First up tonight, Jim Cramer, the host of "Mad Money."

Jim, welcome.

CRAMER: Thank you, Maria.

Their lineup also included mister king of the "tea partiers" himself, Rick Santelli. For a little reminder of how either of those two should be treated here is John Amato's post on Jon Stewart making mincemeat of Cramer from March of 2009 on The Daily Show.

And as Think Progress reminded us in their live blog of the debate tonight:

Moderator Jim Cramer asks a question premised on his position “at the front lines” of the stock market. For the record, following his stock advice is slightly worse than picking stocks by flipping coins.

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Throughout the campaign season the audiences at Republican presidential debates haven't been shy about making their opinions known -- and Wednesday's CNBC debate was no exception.

CNBC moderator Maria Bartiromo immediately felt the crowd's wrath as soon as she asked Herman Cain about the sexual harassments allegations against him.

"Mr. Cain, the American people want jobs but they also want leadership, they want character in a president," Bartiromo noted. "Four women have accused you of inappropriate behavior. Here we are focusing on character and judgement."

The moderator was then forced to pause as the audience groaned and booed.

"You know the shareholders are reluctant to hire a CEO where there are character issues," she continued. "Why should the American people hire a president if they feel there are character issues?"

"The American people deserve better than someone being tried better in the court of public opinion based on unfounded accusations," he replied. "And I value my character and my integrity more than anything else and for every one person that comes forward with a false accusation, there are probably -- there are thousands who would say, 'None of that sort of activity ever came from Herman Cain.'"

Other GOP debate audiences have booed a gay soldier and cheered letting a man without insurance die.

(Publisher's Note) John Amato:

I think CNBC was a big loser in the debate also. It's becoming common now for audience reactions to dictate how moderators will proceed in a debate and that shouldn't be the case. If any scandal pops up and the conservative onlookers want to protect a person they shout down the host. It can happen in the general too. A change is needed to be made immediately or the following debates will get partisan and ugly moving forward.

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Repeating his questions to Mitt Romney and Rick Perry on whether companies can both be profitable and create jobs, CNBC's Jim Cramer followed up by asking former Speaker Newt Gingrich if companies can do both as well. Gingrich responded by slamming the media and Occupy Wall Street protesters for not understanding American history and Newt's view that apparently it's corporations that have made the United States the greatest country in the world.

GINGRICH: Look, obviously, corporations can and should do both and what is amazing to me is the inability of much of our academic world, much of our news media and most of the people in Occupy Wall Street to have a clue about history.

In this town, Henry Ford started as an Edison Electric supervisor who went home at night and built his first car in the garage. Now, was he in the 99 percent or the 1 percent? Bill Gates drops out of college to found Microsoft. Was he in the 99 percent of the 1 percent. Historically, this is the richest country in the history of the world because corporations succeed in creating profits and jobs and it's sad that the news media doesn't report accurately how the economy works.

BARTIROMO: Mr. Speaker, What is the media reporting inaccurately about the economy?

GINGRICH: What?

BARTIROMO: What is the media reporting inaccurately about the economy?

GINGRICH: I like humor disguised as a question. That's terrific. I have yet to hear a single reporter ask a single Occupy Wall Street person a single rational question about the economy that would lead them to say for example who's going to pay for the park you're occupying if there's no businesses making a profit?

(Publisher's Note: Please don't forget about our Sollidarity Pizza funder)

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I'm not sure what world Harold Ford Jr. (D-Wall Street) is living in, but apparently it's not one based on reality after listening to him on this Sunday's Meet the Press. When asked about the President's upcoming jobs proposal after he returns from vacation, Ford rattled off enough Republican talking points to make one's head spin. Apparently Ford thinks it's perfectly acceptable for corporations to continue to be rewarded for their offshore tax havens after hearing this statement:

FORD: And there's no doubt, I think a repatriation tax, lowering this tax so many can come back in the country, can go to the federal government, the tax dollars, and a lot of that money people worry it will be spent on dividends or it'll be spent on stock buyback. Who cares? If the money comes back to the U.S., and--U.S. investments benefit, the economy benefits because the stock market goes up.

Yeah, who cares if they just put the money back into their stock portfolios instead of hiring American workers. Maybe someone can ask Ford to read Matt Taibbi's piece at Rolling Stone -- that he discussed with Keith Olbermann earlier this month -- on why it's wrong to reward this behavior, because no one on the Meet the Press panel bothered.

Ford followed up by saying that "Wall Street and Main Street are the same." I hate to break it to him but I think the huge number of unemployed or just average citizens out there who aren't raking in billions a year after being bailed out by the taxpayers with none of them going to jail for wrecking our economy would disagree with him.

Full transcript below the fold.

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Michael Moore had a few things to say about the Dow rallying past 10,000 today on the set of Morning Joe. First on how well the markets are doing.

Moore: Oh! It’s so incredible. Yes. Fifteen million people out of work.

Scarborough: Isn’t this a perfect example for you? Isn’t this a great example of what you’re trying to say? How there’s a disconnect between what’s going on on Wall Street, 10,000, and Main Street, 10% unemployment?

Moore: Oh, it’s not a disconnect. It’s connected very well. It’s connected just the way our economic system is set up. It’s set up so that the pyramid scheme that we call capitalism—it’s become a pyramid scheme now—the very few at the top get away like bandits making billions and billions of dollars. And everybody else in the lower parts of the pyramid are told to work really hard and maybe some day they can come up and be on top of the pyramid too. Well guess what? There’s only a few people that can sit on top of the pyramid and it’s just so revolting and so immoral when we live in a country—the wealthiest country on earth—fifteen million people unemployed. One in every eight homes right now is in foreclosure or delinquency. And they’re celebrating on Wall Street? And they’re paying each other bonuses?

Surprisingly Moore gets some agreement from Joe and Mike on the disparity of wealth in the United States. Maria Bartiromo however disagrees with Moore’s view of the news on Wall Street. Shocker right? The Wall Street flack tries to come to their defense.

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Behold the cast of Morning Joe in full tizzy mode because Jimmy Carter dared to state the obvious about the not too thinly veiled racism behind the right wingers protesting President Obama at these Tea Bag protests, and with Joe Wilson's disrespectful outburst on the House floor calling him a liar.

From Media Matters who has more on Joe Scarborough and friends from the same show--Conservatives express outrage about charges that their attacks on Obama are racist.

A bit later Michael Eric Dyson joined the show and unlike Jonathan Capehart, actually tried to beat back some of Scarborough's nonsense. Joe apparently doesn't think that Rush Limbaugh has ever made any racist remarks.

Note to Eric Dyson. If Scar and Mika follow through and have you back on the show some time soon to talk about this some more, go get the mile long list of racist crap that's come out of Limbaugh's mouth that Media Matters has documented and have the list in front of you to read off to them the next time they have you on. Facts and actual quotations from Boss Limbaugh are not their friends.

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This is a typical Villager panel discussion that makes me want to throw something through the TV set. Extoll the virtues of bipartisanship for its own sake, everything is win or lose and about politics, like it's some game, and never take any responsibility for your own network not making sure the voters are more informed.

Apparently Bob Cesca felt the same way after watching a some of yesterday's media coverage of these poll numbers. They're Hurting America:

The disconnect, as John Cole points out, is the corporate media. They've been predictably covering the politics-as-sports debate, but not the intracacies of the policy, which they ought to be doing. So it's not surprising that cable news is leading the charge in suggesting that it's the president who hasn't been forthright enough. Let it be said that the media never misses an opportunity to make excuses for its massive breaches of integrity.

But let's say for a moment that the president explained reform and the public option perfectly. Exactly like the press is prescribing. Even then, they'd very likely 1) find another anti-reform meme to inject into their "smackdowns" and half-time shows, and 2) they'd still be inviting serial liars like Mike Pence, unabashed morons like Maria Bartiromo, and centrist capitulators like Harold Ford onto their air to spread misinformation about reform and further confuse viewers.

The one thing I agree with the CNN panel on though is that the President has not done a good enough job of laying out some details of what he wants to see in this legislation, and it's helped them muddy the waters. Bob's right though. It would probably make little difference with what the media coverage looked like.

MALVEAUX: Also joining me is CNN Senior Political Analyst Gloria Borger.

What does it mean, Gloria, for the president to be losing out on these Independents?

BORGER: I think it's a real possible for him. Remember that President Obama won the election with 52 percent of Independent voters. That number is down considerably to 43 percent, and Independents are the margin of difference here for him.

Now, the key to keeping those people is, right now, they are worried about the deficit. They see the president as a big spender. They see him aligned with so-called liberal leaders in the Democratic Congress. So, what he's got to do when -- after Labor Day is kind of show them that he is the kind of so-called post-partisan president that many of them thought they were electing.

The good news for President Obama in this is that they are not realigning themselves with the Republicans yet, because the Republican Party still has very high disapproval ratings.

Now, Jessica, you've been watching something as well, which it looks like to be a generational gap in these numbers.

YELLIN: Absolutely. Well, we know the president did exceptionally well with the young during the election, and that has held strong. Sixty-five percent of the young still approve of the job the president is doing, but it's seniors that we keep talking about, especially in light of health care reform.

He has only a 42 percent approval with seniors. That's very low, and that's right now. So, our numbers don't necessarily tease out that it's because of health care reform, but it's likely that this is a direct effect of the current debate. And if the president is able to get some sort of health care bill through, if he's strong on seniors, protecting them, protecting their Medicare, we could see that number rebound.

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Countdown's Worst Persons for August 24, 2009 with winner Rep. Wally Herger. Runners up Bill O'Reilly and Glenn Beck.

Uh...Keith I hate to break it to you, but you need to include your own network's Maria Bartiromo on the list if you're going to get onto Bill-O for the "trillion dollars" lie.

From Media Matters, Bartiromo falsehood: Health reform bill costs a "trillion dollars".