You can view this video right here by getting the latest version of Flash Player!

DOWNLOADS: (2287)

PLAYS: (21984)

How many politicians would walk onto a set of a TV show out of the blue and eviscerate the entire pundit panel? Alan Grayson strolled out onto the stage of CNN's The Situation Room and took on their crew including Blitzer, Carville, Johns and that whack job Alex Castellanos over his remarks about the non-existent GOP health care. He started by saying "they have no plan!" and by not having a plan, they are hurting Americans. Blitzer was so shocked that Grayson actually said something nobody in the media wants to talk about.

Grayson: They just want to stop everything.

Blitzer: Has any Democratic leader asked you to apologize to the republicans.

Grayson: No and you know why? Because I'm saying what everyone else has been thinking, but no one else has been saying.

Blitzer: And so you have no intention of apologizing?

Grayson: Of course not. Apologize? I'm not the one who should be apologizing, they should be apologize to America.

Johns: Wasn't it over the top though? I mean won't you at least admit that?

Grayson: Well, Look I'm 6, 4 so it takes a lot to get over my head.

Castellanos: I'm a republican congressman and I have a question. Which particular Americans do you think I'd like to die? Can you name some?

Listen, Do you want to make sure that people have affordable universal comprehensive health care in this country, do you?
Castellanos:: Yes

Now what have you done about it?

Castellanos: Republicans have a very different approach than the democrats do but it's very concrete. Instead of a big government gamble...

Oh, please...That's amorphous nonsense

Do you really think that Tort reform is going to take care of 47 million people not having....

Borger tries to talk, but Alex cuts her off...

Shopping across state lines..

Oh and you really think that's going to solve

Letting individuals have the same advantages of buying insurances that business have

Grayson: You know, that's just helping the people who give republicans money...Let's concentrate on helping this country, saving lives and saving money and not the usual cliches.
--
Grayson: These are foot dragging, knuckle dragging neanderthals who think they can dictate policy to America by being stubborn and I think the time is over. We had an election, that's it. Now we have to move ahead in just the way the president wants us to.

I couldn't write the entire transcript, but Gloria Borger was so worried that Alan was not being civil to the poor, weak republicans and they would object. He comes right back at her, telling Borger that we are stalled and nothing is happening and he's getting us back on track while people are dying. 44,000 a year are dying; 4000 a month. And these nattering nabobs of negativism are blocking every single thing that we try to do.

And the blogosphere is chiming in and letting the congressman know that we support him.

Johns tries to say he acted like Joe Wilson and he said that he didn't insult the president in front of 40 million people. The panel said that he insulted every republican and he said that republicans are insulting every American during this health care debate.

You can view this video right here by getting the latest version of Flash Player!

DOWNLOADS: (67)

PLAYS: (145)

From the Situation Room April 21, 2009. Jane Harman is upset that her civil liberties may have been violated and wants to see those transcripts of the NSA wiretaps unredacted. So how's the support of the NSA's wiretapping working out for you now Representative?

I like Glenn Greenwald's take on this:

So if I understand this correctly -- and I'm pretty sure I do -- when the U.S. Government eavesdropped for years on American citizens with no warrants and in violation of the law, that was "both legal and necessary" as well as "essential to U.S. national security," and it was the "despicable" whistle-blowers (such as Thomas Tamm) who disclosed that crime and the newspapers which reported it who should have been criminally investigated, but not the lawbreaking government officials. But when the U.S. Government legally and with warrants eavesdrops on Jane Harman, that is an outrageous invasion of privacy and a violent assault on her rights as an American citizen, and full-scale investigations must be commenced immediately to get to the bottom of this abuse of power. Behold Jane Harman's overnight transformation from Very Serious Champion of the Lawless Surveillance State to shrill civil liberties extremist.

DOWNLOAD (36)

PLAY (83)

On The Situation Room, Mitch McConnell, now suddenly cares about executive compensation, in this interview with Wolf Blitzer:

Blitzer: There were efforts over the past several months as all of these various bailouts were going through. At least some wanted to impose some caps on salaries for CEO's and top executives of these major corporations, these major financial institutions who were receiving tax payer money. But a lot of that just simply died. Why?

McConnell: Well there's always been a big debate about just how much you can micro-manage the company and keep it profitable but the cold hard reality is, and the message to American business is if you want tax payer dollars, if you're going to have the government as your partner, you're going to have to operate in a different sort of way. I'm among those who would like to see not very many companies with the government as a partner.

But if you're going to have the government as a partner you can't operate in the same way. Obviously AIG is trying to have it both ways and I want to know directly from the Secretary of the Treasury why they got thirty billion dollars a mere two weeks ago, apparently with no strings attached.

Here's McConnell back on Feb. 4th:

On Monday, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., suggested he doesn't like the idea of limiting executive compensation.

"What you have to do, it strikes me, is have some kind of parameters that don't have the government basically running the private business," McConnell said, according to ABC News' Jonathan Karl. "It is a tough challenge. I think we are all appalled by these -- some of these executive salary arrangements and bonus arrangements and perks and all the rest. On the other hand, I really don't want the government to take over these businesses and start telling them everything about what they can do. Then you truly have nationalized the business. So it is a delicate dance to try to prevent blatant abuses and still not have the government as a result of taking an equity position in the government telling them, for example, you can't pay dividends or you can't -- I mean, things that are just ordinary business practices. We have to resist the temptation to basically dictate to these businesses how to run every aspect of their operation.”

As noted as the Huffington Post back in February, the leaders of the GOP were railing against President Obama's proposal to limit executive compensation at a half a million dollars.

Lindsey Graham on The Situation Room saying he's sorry he could not work with President Obama on the stimulus bill. Sure you are Lindsey. Not sorry enough apparently to say that South Carolina should not take some of the stimulus money.

Blitzer: Doesn't South Carolina need some help?

Graham: Yes but there's only one tax payer. This is not money we found under a tree in Washington. The money we're sending back to the states came out of the same wallet that the money going to the states came from. So yes, South Carolina needs help. I'm all for infrastructure spending. But it's got to be shovel ready. I'm for helping people sign up for Medicaid. There's ninety billion dollars in this bill. All you need to get people eligible for Medicaid in terms of new enrollees is eleven billion. I'm not for a seventy five billion dollar slush fund for states that can be spent on anything they want to spend it on including budget problems because we've got our own budget problems and you're rewarding states that have done very little to clean up their own budgets and punish states who have done things at home.

Blitzer: South Carolina will get money out of this bill. Should South Carolina take the money?

Graham: I think, yes. From my point of view, you don't want to be crazy here. I mean if there's gonna' be money on the table that will help my state, but I've got a job to do up here and that is try to help people and not damn the next generation.

He goes on to say how big the hole is we've got to crawl out of that our "gubment" has created and how ooohh sooo sorry he is that he hasn't been able to work with President Obama on the stimulus bill, but here's this big list of things he does want to work with him on because he really does have President Obama's best interest at heart. Can't you just feel the love? Yeah. You're sorry alright Senator. Where was the concern over that hole you've been cheerleading that is a bottomless money pit called Iraq?

DOWNLOAD (33)

PLAY (90)

From The Situation Room Jan. 2, 2009. Michael Steele is completely clueless. Hey Steele, weren't you drawing a government pay check at one time? Maybe that didn't qualify as a job. I think the people working for the Post Office, Parks Department, IRS....etc., etc., etc. might disagree with you.

UPDATE: John Amato:

As soon as he had the chance, Michael Steele makes it perfectly clear why he's a perfect choice for the RNC. He can lie with the best of them. This statement was utter nonsense as Wolf Blitz looked on like a blow up doll.

BLITZER: But if there's an economic recovery and there are jobs created...

STEELE: Are you taking into account inflation?
And, first off, the government doesn't create jobs. Let's get this notion out of our heads that the government create jobs. Not in the history of mankind has the government ever created a job.

Small business owners do, small enterprises do, not the government. When that government contract runs out, that job goes away. That's what we're talking about here. And those two to four million jobs that are projected won't happen. Trust me.

Wolf moved on to a new topic immediately. Maybe Blitzer had a few voices in his ear piece and didn't really listen to Steele's answer, but to sit back and not respond to a LIE that big is insane. Watching the crazy stock market shows all year, most of the time they said that because of government hiring, the job reports didn't look as bad as they should have. We all know that FDR put people to work. Did the TSA get any work because of the federal government and the strict rules in airports? Steele is a clown and this is the type of lying that needs to be exposed always.

And as Duncan properly states:

As Dean says, we're living in the Republican alternative universe where government spending isn't stimulus. Stimulus is instead... well, no one really knows. You can argue about the effectiveness of various stimulus measures. You can argue about what spending priorities should be. But anything which involves buying stuff and paying wages or otherwise putting money into the pockets of people is stimulus.

DOWNLOAD (35)

PLAY (59)

Mary Snow on The Situation Room Jan. 2, 2009 making an extremely flawed analogy.

DOWNLOAD (89)

PLAY (89)

On The Situation Room, while discussing some "implied criticism" (in Wolf's words) of the Bush administration from Barack Obama about his choice for AG Eric Holder -- who Obama says might actually adhere to the Constitution and that Hillary Clinton will restore America's diplomacy around the world -- panel members Dana Milbank and Gloria Borger let Wolf know the criticism wasn't so much "implied" but pretty straightforward.

The conversation then moved to discussing the series of exit interviews that George Bush is giving, and Bush's admission that he was not "ready for war". Stephen Hayes then fills us in with this little tidbit:

Yeah it's pretty, it's pretty amazing stuff. I mean, I think that in his discussion about immigration and regretting the tone of the debate, I mean clearly I think that was a criticism of his own party. We're going to be seeing a lot more of this and there's an ongoing Bush legacy project that's been meeting in the White House, really, with senior advisers, Karl Rove, Karen Hughes has been involved, current senior Bush administration advisers and they are looking at how to sort of roll out the President's legacy.

Milbank counters with a bit of reality:

The whole country has been on a Bush legacy project and it's not looking very good for him. I think the extraordinary thing is how does he fix from among the various things to choose from? Now he looks at immigration. Something that certainly helped to torpedo John McCain and of all things now he tells us categories to say that to say that uh....

Blitzer interrupts him before he gets to finish his point and Borger finishes by saying that how Iraq goes will determine how Bush goes down in history. Ya think?

Gloria, don't you suppose there's already enough evidence now of how that debacle, and its accompanying theft of our tax dollars, has gone to make that assessment? Just how much more proof of the Iraq war being one of the worst foreign policy decisions in the history of our country do you need, exactly, to make a call on that one?

And Bush is working on a "legacy project", with the help of Karl Rove?? Excuse me while I lay on the floor laughing about this one for awhile. Who do they think they're fooling? I guess the twenty-some percent who still to this day think Bush was a good President, but I truly hope the history books are not so kind no matter what sort of "project" they have in mind, and no matter how many soft-shoe interviews Bush decides to give before he finally does us the favor of leaving.

Legacy project? Spare me. I wonder how much they'll be paying Hayes and his buddies to help work on it along with those Bush advisers?

DOWNLOAD (56)

PLAY (70)

From The Situation Room Oct. 30, 2008. While discussing the response of Kay Hagan to the Elizabeth Dole ad calling her Godless, Wolf Blitzer actually asks Donna Brazile and Bill Bennett if it's okay for candidates to be associating with atheists. I'm not sure what's more disturbing, his question, or their answers.

Blitzer: But did she make a mistake Donna by going to that fundraiser at the home of the woman who professes that there is no god?

Brazile: You know Wolf there are a lot of believers. I'm one of them. And there are people who just don't believe in an existence of a god. I don't know why because clearly there's strong evidence that there's a god but I believe that you serve all the people. Not just those that profess to have faith but those with little or no faith. That's how you convert them.

Blitzer: Is it a problem Bill to associate with atheists?

Bennett: Well this is an active atheist. This is a woman, ah, people who are campaigning to get "In God We Trust" off the currency. You know it would have been sensible for Kay Hagan or Kay Hagan's advisers to say let's just pass on this one. That's just going to get you into the association game. You know the "house of" like Barack Obama's been tagged with for the last six months or six years.

This is just so wrong on so many levels it's hard to know where to begin. First of all Donna Brazile, yes if you hold a public office you should serve all and not just those who profess to have faith, but that's not how you convert them!! Are you kidding me??!! There are plenty of people out there who don't care to be converted thank you. I know George Bush and the GOP have blown a hole right through this but we are supposed to have separation of church and state in this country, and we don't need to have two theocratic parties. One is one too many already. And Wolf, there is nothing wrong with being an atheist or heaven forbid associating with them. There's nothing wrong with atheists that might want to..gasp.. run for office. Just like there's nothing wrong with Muslims who want to run for office, or agnostics, or Jews, or Catholics. And Bill Bennett, we do still have a thing called free speech in this country and if someone doesn't like the words "In God We Trust" on the currency, they have every right to express that view without being treated like commie pinkos. Shame on all of you for this interview.

  CNN's Christine Romans looks through the archives and finds that either the Bush administration was completely oblivious to the impending financial crisis, or were simply lying to the public. Watch and reach your own conclusion.

Download | play   Download | play  

ROMANS: It's about as dire a President can get on the economy.

PRES. BUSH: We're facing a choice between action and the real prospect of economic hardship for millions of Americans.

ROMANS: This from an administration that for months said the economy was vibrant, the financial system strong. The President didn't acknowledge 'storm clouds' until last December, By then, it was raining.

   Jeffrey Toobin injects a much-needed dose of reality into a panel discussion on "The Situation Room" about John McCain's decision to "suspend" his campaign and postpone the debate.

Download | play   Download | play   (h/t Heather)

TOOBIN: Well, can I just quarrel with the premise of this? Who says he suspended his campaign? He didn't suspend his campaign. He's been campaigning all day. He gave a speech in New York. He's giving interviews all night. He's raising money. His surrogates are attacking Barack Obama.

I think this is posturing of being apolitical. And, frankly, I think we're being kind of gullible in falling for it. He didn't stop his campaign. He's campaigning. Now whether it's successful or not...

HAYES: He's pulled his ads down, too, Wolf.

TOOBIN: No, he didn't pull his ads down. His ads have been on. And he's done exactly what Obama has done all day. And Obama admits that he's campaigning. It's the middle of the campaign. I don't see why we should treat what he's doing as anything different from what Obama is doing.

Toobin also goes on to say that McCain would look like a "chicken" if he decides to skip out on Friday's debate, which leads to a nice little exchange with right-wing water-carrier Stephen Hayes. I really don't see how it's possible for McCain to bail out. I guess we'll find out later today, but I think AL may be onto something:

Earlier today, well before the contentious meeting at the White House, I wrote this:

[H]ere's the most likely McCain play. He'll swoop in, read through the compromise proposal that's been reached and declare that it's unacceptable in its present form. He'll then demand that something either be added or removed (or both) and use his leverage (his threat to vote no) to get the bill changed. Then he'll vote for the amended bill and take full credit for having made this crucially important change (whatever it is). His surrogates will claim that the whole episode shows McCain's heroic leadership, the way he takes charge of a situation.

I still think this is still the most likely scenario. Right now the major holdouts are the House Republicans who have come up with their own half-baked alternative proposal (really just a set a talking points). Look for McCain to attempt to broker some sort of compromise whereby the existing proposal is modified in some minor way to appease House Republicans and bring a few more of them on board. Then he'll jet down to Mississippi for the debate.

Over the past few days, John McCain has launched an all-out war against Barack Obama's fitness to be commander-in-chief. In Denver on Friday, McCain claimed that in supporting the January 2007 surge in Iraq, he passed "a real-time test for a future commander-in-chief" his Democratic rival supposedly failed. That same day, McCain insisted to CNN's Wolf Blitzer, "I know how to win wars." And on ABC This Week on Sunday, McCain ridiculed over and over Barack Obama's "total lack of understanding" of the realities - and stakes - in Iraq.

As McCain put it in his address to the American GI Forum Friday, Barack Obama failed the John McCain commander-in-chief test:

"Senator Obama and I also faced a decision, which amounted to a real-time test for a future commander-in-chief. America passed that test. I believe my judgment passed that test. And I believe Senator Obama's failed."

Sadly, when it comes to the war in Iraq, it is the Arizona Republican who failed his own commander-in-chief exam. At almost every turn in the run-up to the invasion and the ensuing American occupation, McCain's judgment was almost always wrong, often disastrously so. From his predictions of a short war, claims U.S. troops would be greeted as liberators and that the U.S. would find weapons of mass destruction to his announcements of mission accomplished, his ongoing confusion over friend and foe in Iraq and so much more, John McCain the would-be wartime president gets failing marks.

 That F grade is not, as McCain insists, a "job for the historians." As his past statements show, American voters can reach that conclusion right now.

Continue reading »

As developments on the ground in Iraq and Afghanistan continue to undermine his campaign, Republican John McCain tried to play the Bin Laden card on Friday. Repeating his claim "I know how to win wars," McCain told CNN's Wolf Blitzer that "I know how" to capture Osama Bin Laden. Apparently, the McCain strategy, as he never tires of telling voters, is to follow Bin Laden to "the gates of hell."

Appearing on the Situation Room, John McCain suggested that his record on Iraq and expertise on the geography of the Iraq-Pakistan border region would allow him to succeed where George W. Bush failed in capturing the Al Qaeda chieftain:

"I'm not going to telegraph a lot of the things that I'm going to do because then it might compromise our ability to do so. But, look, I know the area, I have been there, I know wars, I know how to win wars, and I know how to improve our capabilities so that we will capture Osama bin Laden -- or put it this way, bring him to justice…We will do it, I know how to do it."

  Download | play   Download | play

No doubt, McCain hasn't been shy when it comes to explaining how he'll bag Bin Laden.

Continue reading »

I heart Granholm. When have I ever said that? She's an incredible communicator who really captures the mood of the country and blue collar workers after living under the Conservative agenda for almost eight years. In the few minutes she had on The Situation Room Monday---Governor Granholm quickly and easily deconstructed McCain's talking points on every economic issue Wolf brought up. I guess after all was said and done it comes down to one word: "McSame." Michigan is lucky to have her.

Download | play Download | play (h/t billw)

GRANHOLM: I'll tell you what blue collar American wants. They want a change in the White House. They don't want a third Bush term. Here in Michigan, in small towns across our state, where we have seen jobs go on a slow boat to China, on the Internet to India, or on a fast track to Mexico, we want to make sure that we have an investment, a manufacturing policy in this country that supports our job providers so we can keep jobs here. Bush and McCain will further the unfair trade policies that have hurt states like Michigan.

People are mad in Michigan. We're mad that the Bush administration has stood idly by while we have lost almost 400,000 jobs since Bush became president.

Can you imagine that, Wolf? Four hundred thousand jobs. That's our own version of Hurricane Katrina, only it's {trickled out} over the past seven and a half years. So we need a change in the White House. That's what people are mad at. They're mad at a White House that has not paid attention to middle America.

I can imagine it. Michigan is not the only state that has been devastated by the Bush doctrine. I love the way she made sure to incorporate the "trickle down" principals of Conservatism in her response to McCain's camp. For McCain to say that Obama is out of touch with blue collar working Americans is laughable since he has stood side by side with the conservative agenda that has been an utter failure for our country. I will say that the White House has paid attention to the fat cats on wall street. They certainly have made a killing while Bush has been in office. That's why we will constantly hear screams of "Obama is a socialist---run for the hills," by the Saturday morning zombie stock show guests on FOX.

Continue reading »

Politics makes strange bedfellows, as the old saying goes. Former presidential candidate and current professional Republican pundit Pat Buchanan is one of the few voices on the right that agrees with us on the left about the uselessness of the Iraq invasion and occupation. Unfortunately, to arrive at the same conclusion we have, Buchanan has to hop on the bus to CrazyTown, by way of Isolationist-Ville via the Godwin Express.

Buchanan has written a new book: Churchill, Hitler and the Unnecessary War where he places blame for the Holocaust and WWII at an unconventional target: Winston Churchill. Though I can't claim to be a history buff to say definitively, Buchanan's reasoning is a little shaky at best. All this time, I thought it was Hitler that caused the Holocaust. Who knew?

Download | play Download | play

Somehow, Buchanan manages to pull from this Godwin nightmare that had England not promised to save Poland, Hitler would not have exterminated 6 million Jews, and like that unnecessary World War II, the lesson that we should take from that is that Bush is making similar imperialistic entries and taking us into an unnecessary war in Iraq.

Like I said, we arrived at that conclusion without the detour into CrazyTown.

Full Transcripts below the fold...

Continue reading »

McCain Then and Now:

On Thursday, John McCain toured areas of New Orleans that are still damaged from Hurricane Katrina and tried to explain how he would have done things differently had he been President.

Download | play Download | play

John McCain: Never again will a disaster of this nature be handled in the terrible and disgraceful way that it was handled. Never again.

Dana Bash: John McCain used these vivid reminders of a stained Bush legacy to try to distance himself. President Bush famously flew over New Orleans in the days after Katrina, a mistake McCain said he would not have made.

John McCain: In all candor if I had been President of the United States I'd have ordered the plane landed at the nearest Air Force base and I'd have been over here.

Yep, John McCain would have hopped off of that plane and done what exactly? He didn't say, so we're left to guess whether he would have used Air Force One to rescue evacuees (and if so, why didn't he hop on his private jet and do so at the time? just sayin') or is it more likely he would have simply held a photo-op presser like he did yesterday and the day Hurricane Katrina hit.

Now, I guess it's asking a lot to let something like Katrina spoil his birthday plans, but if he really would have done things so differently had he been President, honestly, then why didn't he at least say something along the lines of: 'I'm flattered you still thought enough to come, Mr. President, but don't you have something more important you should be attending to?' and wouldn't he at least have exercised better judgment than to participate in a laugh-filled photo-op with the President for the historical record that fateful day?

Despite all the talk at yesterday's campaign photo-op, John McCain's actions then and since could not be more stark in contrast:

Continue reading »