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After talking about how the Democrats and Republicans took symbolic votes this week on oil-company subsidies and increased offshore drilling, both of which are expected to go nowhere, Andrea Mitchell brought on T. Boone Pickens to discuss drilling for natural gas as an alternative.

Pickens proceeded to tout the plus side of turning to natural gas rather than our dependence on foreign oil and talked about our need for a real energy plan here in America, which I don't disagree with.

Pickens defended the use of fracking for natural gas and claimed that those problems have been limited to eastern Pennsylvania and that there have never been those same kind of problems in the areas where his company has done business.

While I have not come across any articles to the contrary as far as Pickens' businesses go, that doesn't mean that the natural gas industry is being properly regulated to assure we won't see more nightmares with people across the country having their drinking water contaminated like we have in the NY-NJ-PA watershed, as Susie wrote about in her post on the documentary GasLand here at C&L.

I think we suffer from the same kind of problems we've seen with offshore oil drilling when it comes to natural gas exploration. We've got lax regulatory agencies and companies that are willing to cut corners to make a buck and no real penalties after they screw up and destroy the environment because someone didn't bother to make sure that a well was properly cemented, or they don't put enough safety measures in place if it's going to cost them a buck.

It's penny-wise, pound-foolish to the extreme, with no consequences because we've also got our politicians railing against the evils of government regulation destroying our economy. Never mind the damage done by lack of regulation. And -- par for the course -- the bad actors never get punished properly for their malfeasance. If you're a large corporation that kills people or destroys the drinking water in an area, nothing happens to you because you can afford enough lawyers to hold things up in court forever until those suing you are dead or you buy off enough politicians so that what you're doing is not considered illegal in the first place, but if you're a common criminal, look out. The full force of the law is going to come down on you.

And what Mitchell and everyone who brings this guy on to defend his "energy plan" for America always ignores is that he's also interested in doing a huge water grab where he wants to put some of his wind farms.

If we're going to have an "honest discussion" about America's energy needs and what our alternatives are, that ought to start with what the true motivations are behind those like Pickens and the policy changes he's advocating for.

Here's more on Pickens and his "blue gold" that Mitchell didn't bother to ask him about.

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Boy, I'm really disappointed at Chris Matthews for this interview with Rep. Marsha Blackburn. He made all of the right points about what Paul Ryan's proposed budget is going to do to the Medicare program and that seniors are not going to be able to afford to pay for their health care if they're forced to shop for private insurance, but he allowed her to keep repeating her talking points without challenging her and had to throw a line in there about how much he respected her.

This is not exactly the treatment we've seen him give others on a regular basis on his show. Normally you can't stop him from interrupting and talking over his guests. Makes me wonder why he decided to handle her with kid gloves.

It would have been nice to see her challenged about how seniors were supposed to afford their care when Ryan's plan is not going to keep up with the rate of medical inflation. Maybe someone could ask Matthews to watch Jon Stewart's segment on Paul Ryan's sham of a budget from the previous day before he has another Republican on his show defending it.

The Republicans are desperate to pretend like they're not really getting rid of Medicare, but I don't think all of the interviews like this one in the world are going to help them once people start taking a good look at Ryan's proposals. Blackburn also made sure to add the caveat that this isn't going to affect anyone over the age of 55. Does she think those people don't care about what happens to their children and grandchildren? And does she think anyone under 55 isn't going to care that those benefits aren't there for them any more?

MATTHEWS: OK, let`s talk about the two big issues. Let`s talk about Medicare and defense. Medicare -- everybody knows that`s driving the budget. Let me ask you this right now. Can we tell seniors that instead of paying for their health benefits, which we do now -- the federal government does now under Medicare -- that we`re going to give them a check which will pay a portion of their medical cost, and then they have to go out and find an insurance company to insure them. Do you think that`s good idea? That`s the Ryan idea. Is that a good idea?

BLACKBURN: What we have in the Ryan budget, where seniors have more options, more -- things that are -- more familiar to them via Medicare Advantage. What you`re going to see is more options for seniors, but these won`t kick in until you get to -- I think it`s 2021. So people that are under 55, 54 years old --

MATTHEWS: Right.

BLACKBURN: -- are going to see a change and it will be --

MATTHEWS: What`s the option here?

BLACKBURN: -- similar to the Medicare Advantage program.

MATTHEWS: Tell them there`s no more Medicare -- but you say they have an option, but they don`t have an option of keeping Medicare as it is. They don`t have that option under the Ryan plan.

BLACKBURN: They have an option of expanding the coverage that they have. Talk to people that are in the Medicare Advantage program. It works.

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Somehow I don't think former Rep. Bob McEwen will be coming in the air with Cenk Uygur again any time soon. He and Cenk go at it over privatizing Social Security and whether the trust fund is bankrupt or not, and it gets pretty contentious. His rant before the former Congressman came on the air was spot on as well. The Obama administration's constant catering to conservatives while they decide to kick the dirty f-ing hippies in the teeth is well past growing old. All that does is give conservatives talking points and excuses to validate their failed policies.

Cenk has been filling in again on MSNBC for Dylan Ratigan. Keep giving them hell Cenk. Anyone, and I mean anyone who wants to go on the air and say it's alright to never pay that trust fund deserves to be taken to task for it.

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How would you like to be Gov. Jennifer Granholm and get stuck debating Dick Armey after the way he treated Rachel Maddow after their appearance together on Meet the Press and Joan Walsh on Hardball? I sure as hell don't envy her. For a little reminder of why no woman should ever want to appear on the air with the aptly named Dick Armey, he told Joan Walsh on Hardball "I'm so glad that you could never be my wife because I surely wouldn't have to listen to that prattle from you every day." Then after Rachel Maddow dared to challenge him for calling Medicare "tyranny" on Meet the Press, he insulted her at one of his phony astroturf teabagger rallies held by Americans for Prosperity and called her "some woman named Rachel Maddox" who "has a Ph.D. in something that doesn't matter." What a guy.

Granholm did a pretty good job of beating back teabagger Dick Armey's ridiculous arguments on Social Security and Medicare when Armey and David Gregory would let her get a word in. Armey's pretty good at filibustering for someone who came out of the House and not the Senate. You can't shut him up and he interrupts the other guests at every opportunity, which seems to be standard operating procedure for most Republicans when they go on television.

Americans do not want to see their benefits cut so the rich can keep their Bush tax cuts and to pay back the deficit after the treasury's been looted paying for these wars and tax cuts for the rich.

MR. GREGORY: Talking about your folks, you're talking about tea partiers around the country and the movement that you've written about. One of the arguments that Democrats make about some of the candidates who are supported by the tea party is that they're, frankly, too extreme for the--even the mainstream of the Republican Party. And I want to go through some of the top races and have you respond to that.

REP. ARMEY: Yeah.

MR. GREGORY: Colorado U.S. Senate race, Ken Buck, Republican nominee. He wants to eliminate the Energy and Education Departments, says separation of church and state is too strictly enforced. To Kentucky, Rand Paul, tea party candidate in the Senate race, critical, of course, of the minimum wage law, civil rights law, supports cutting back on unemployment insurance, calls Medicare socialized medicine. Nevada, Sharron Angle, for the Senate again, talks about no adoption for same sex couples, the U.S. should pull out of the U.N., privatize Medicare and Social Security. And finally, in Utah in the Senate race, you've got Mike Lee. He wants to repeal the progressive income tax, supports changing the 14th Amendment of birthright citizenship. If this is the tea party's impact on national politics, there's certainly a lot of Democrats who say too extreme for the mainstream of the political country.

REP. ARMEY: Well, first, first of all, each one of these candidates won a Republican primary as a Republican candidate with a variety of different stresses on different issues. I am not going to take the Democrat Party's characterization of a Republican Party candidate's position on any issue as the gospel truth. I don't know if you've noticed, but politicians say insincere things; and, frankly, I don't quite listen to the Democrats on the candidates. But the voters paid attention to the candidates and made their choice. Now, the Democrats are--they have a guy down in, in South Carolina who wins the primary and, and is then convicted of a felony. They ought to concern themselves with, "What is the quality of our candidates, and can we meet the challenge of trying to race against these candidates?" who are going to beat their person in the, in the fall.

MR. GREGORY: Governor, is this an example of what, what they've called a mainstream political movement, some of these candidates and their views?

GOV. GRANHOLM: Well, you know, no. I think it's far outside the mainstream. In fact, one of the things--you just held up Paul Ryan's, you know, proposal regarding Medicare and regarding Social Security. I think a lot of which you've jumped onto as well. But there was a recent poll out that said that 85 percent of Americans don't want to see Social Security cut to solve the, the deficit. The reality is, you know, as a governor of the state that has had the toughest economic go-over the past eight years, I'm just really interested in what works to create jobs, what works. And the proposals that are coming from these candidates are not proposals that work. This is the laboratory of the states right here, and I can tell you what has worked. What has worked is the government smartly intervening to save the auto industry; smartly, strategically, surgically intervening to invest with the private sector to create, for example, the electric batteries for the vehicles; smartly intervening with the private sector to be able to do the breakthrough technologies that the private sector doesn't have the funds to be able to do. That's what other countries are doing. And we've got to realize that these economic models that just say, "We've got to cut, cut, cut, cut, cut," you know, who's applauding most is China. They're happy that this movement is happening...

MR. GREGORY: But there's...

GOV. GRANHOLM: ...that's going to continue to cut away.

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Cenk filled in for Dylan Ratigan again and wrapped up Friday's show with a spot praising the Democrats for finally looking like they're striking the right chord with their latest political ad going after Republicans for their views on privatizing Social Security and handing the funds over to Wall Street with a few very huge qualifiers following that praise that I could not agree with more.

Uygur: Finally, the Democrats getting it. This is such an obvious winning strategy and the Republicans gave you the Queen here when John Boehner and Mike Pence came out and said, hey you know what, maybe we should raise the age of Social Security before you even get it, or when they said maybe we should cut your benefits.

You know what the numbers are? The American people hate that idea. A new AARP poll says 85% of the country oppose cutting Social Security. 68% say even though the budget is really important, that we shouldn't cut Social Security or Medicare to trim the deficit according to a recent Greenberg poll.

Look, the American people are absolutely clear on this. When the Republicans asked over and over as Bush did and now Pence and Boehner are doing, "Hey can we cut your Social Security?" the American people say "Hell no you can't!" to quote John Boehner.

So given this golden opportunity, why don't you attack on this? Make Boehner the new Gingrich and say if Boehner is in charge of the House, what he's going to do is he's going to come after your Social Security?

That has the added benefit of being true. But how do the Democrats screw this up? Look, it's a good ad and a good campaign to start with but they've already shot themselves in the foot because already Steny Hoyer who's one of the leaders in the House came out and said "Well maybe we should consider trimming Social Security or raising the age that you would have to retire and then James Clyburn came said very similar things.

Now that's the trouble for the Democrats in the House, but how about Obama? Obama, a Democratic President that promised change has got a deficit commission where 14 out of the 18 people involved in the commission are fiscal conservatives.

The likely result of that deficit commission is, they're going to come out and say let's cut Social Security.

That's insane!

Yes it is. As Cenk said it's not too late for them to make this a defining issue if they had an ounce of political sense at all. Given Gibbs brain dead remarks this week, I've got to wonder. I've said this before and I'll say it again, if they think the public is going to sit quietly if they decide that the Social Security trust fund doesn't have to be paid back after they raided it or that Americans are going to be duped into turning it over to Wall Street, they've got another thing coming. Get rid of the cap and make the rich start paying their share. And while you're at it lower the rate for all of us when you do that.

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Thom Hartmann takes on the CATO Institute's Tad DeHaven over whether we should privatize the United States Postal Service. When I get a chance to catch Hartmann on my satellite radio, his daily segment such as this one, where he takes on these right wing think tank hacks are some of my favorite portions of his show.