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Chris Matthews' wants to discuss Harry Reid's slavery remark and who better to bring in than flaming racist Pat Buchanan.

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Andrea Mitchell, Pat Buchanan, the Morning Joe crew and Bloomberg's Al Hunt were fawning over Sarah Palin's visit to the Gridiron Club over the weekend. It's interesting that she went to talk to the group of people she says she despises the most. An outside observer would say that Sarah is trying to butter them up so they will report her in a much more sympathetic way. And looking at Al Hunt's literally foaming at the mouth over her indicates that her ploy is working out perfectly.

Mika: He escorted Sarah Palin to Saturday Night's Gridiron dinner.

Joe: How exciting.

Mika: That's a black tie event for the media and she was pretty good I hear.

Hunt: I did, ahhh she went into the lions den and I gotta tell you something, the lions were absolute pussy cats.

Group laughing and howling: Ahhhh, hahahaha

Hunt: They wanted to have their picture taken with her. They wanted to have her autograph and it was just say I thought we, being the Grid Iron Club did as well as ever. Our two speakers were Sarah Palin representing the republicans and barney Frank representing the Democrats. Can you think of a better pair than that? They both were quite good.

I'm sure they were, Al. Did you get a snapshot with her? She should have charged 20 bucks for a Polaroid and would have made a killing from these journos. The media were just such pussycats to Palin even though she's making her living off of blaming them for every mistake she's made or problem she's created for herself. She's a lion I tell you. And you wonder why America is so ill-informed...

Here's some coverage from US News:

"Who would have guessed I'd be palling around with this group?" she asked, and surely there are Sarah fans wondering why she was there going vogue, instead of rogue. Well, a gal's gotta make her millions, and the media helps sell books. Besides, being anti-everything can wear a person down. "The view is so much better from inside the bus than under it," she noted.

The only mousse was for dessert (rim shot, maestro please), but Palin did some field-dressing of her egotistical audience. It was fun to be among the capital's "leading journalists and intellectuals," she said. "Or as I like to call it, a death panel."

She noted that the journalists may have missed out on the policy prescriptions in her memoir, Going Rogue, when focusing instead, as they are apt to do, on how many times she mentioned their names. What a group of heavy thinkers, Palin said: "You read a book in its entirety—from the first page of the index to the last."

She'll keep reaching her hand out to the media; they will take it and then she'll bite it firmly and painfully. And then they will stick out their other hand and ask for more...

Palin's book tour had the media also fawning over her, which has helped her with a small bump upward in a CNN poll. Now only 46% of people have an unfavorable opinion of her while 46% approve her.

That's a small jump after the media gave her the Anna Nicole Smith coverage. She's had the best coverage she will ever get. And what's up with the hat?

(h/t Jamie)

Founder of the blog Little Green Footballs, Charles Johnson has seen the light and decided he can no longer support the right wing of his party and makes no bones about why:

1. Support for fascists, both in America (see: Pat Buchanan, Robert Stacy McCain, etc.) and in Europe (see: Vlaams Belang, BNP, SIOE, Pat Buchanan, etc.)

2. Support for bigotry, hatred, and white supremacism (see: Pat Buchanan, Ann Coulter, Robert Stacy McCain, Lew Rockwell, etc.)

3. Support for throwing women back into the Dark Ages, and general religious fanaticism (see: Operation Rescue, anti-abortion groups, James Dobson, Pat Robertson, Tony Perkins, the entire religious right, etc.)

4. Support for anti-science bad craziness (see: creationism, climate change denialism, Sarah Palin, Michele Bachmann, James Inhofe, etc.) Read on...

Conservatives like Kathleen Parker and Christopher Buckley found out that leaving the GOP fight club isn't easy -- and Johnson will undoubtedly suffer the same fate. Johnson is taking major heat for his defection, which comes as no surprise, and comments like these at Politico merely prove his point.

I don't expect to see Charles Johnson showing up with Code Pink at any war protests any time soon, but this post covers much of what C&L and other progressive blogs have been saying about the GOP for some time now. It is a dying party that has been taken over by religious extremists, bigots, conspiracy theorists and worse.

Johnson's observations about his party mirror those of my conservative friends and family...well, most of them. They wonder what happened to their party and where they belong in the political spectrum.

I agree with Nicole Belle who wrote backstage - "I don't want him on the left. But it's nice to see someone on the right injecting a little sanity into the discussion."

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After playing part of old "Five Deferments" Dick Cheney's radio interview with right wing radio host Scott Hennen, Andrea Mitchall asks if President Obama is "acting more like Hamlet than the Commander in Chief". This from the supposed "liberal" network, MSNBC.

Jeez, between this guy and Pat Buchanan, what is up with NBC Universal?

Over the weekend, Meb Keflezighi became the first American to win the New York City Marathon since 1982. But CNBC's Darren Rovell isn't impressed. Darren Rovell doesn't think Keflezighi is really an American.

On his Twitter account yesterday, Rovell wrote "NYC Marathon winner Keflezghi may be a citizen, but can't count as American."

Rovell explained his bizarre views in an article on CNBC's web site:

It's a stunning headline: American Wins Men's NYC Marathon For First Time Since '82.

Unfortunately, it's not as good as it sounds.

Meb Keflezighi, who won yesterday in New York, is technically American by virtue of him becoming a citizen in 1998, but the fact that he's not American-born takes away from the magnitude of the achievement the headline implies.

"Technically American"? No: Keflezighi is American. Not on some technicality or by virtue of a loophole. He is, simply, an American -- and he isn't any less American simply because he did not share Darren Rovell's great good fortune to have been born in the U.S.

For the record, Keflezighi was born in Eritrea, but has been a naturalized citizen for 11 years, having immigrated to the US twenty-two years ago at the age of 12.

As the daughter and wife of naturalized American citizens, I find this wholly offensive, although I suspect that had Keflezighi had the Scandinavian looks of my husband, there would be absolutely no qualification of his citizenry.

UPDATE: Rovell apologizes:

All I was saying was that we should celebrate an American marathon champion who has completely been brought up through the American system.

This is where, I must admit, my critics made their best point. It turns out, Keflezighi moved to the United States in time to develop at every level in America. So Meb is in fact an American trained athlete and an American citizen and he should be celebrated as the American winner of the NYC Marathon. That makes a difference and makes him different from the "ringer" I accused him of being. Meb didn't deserve that comparison and I apologize for that.

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Morgan Weiland at Media Matters summed up this segment nicely--Memo to the media: This has been a great week for health reform:

Discussing health care reform today on Morning Joe, co-host Joe Scarborough and NBC White House correspondent Chuck Todd agreed that "[t]his week has been a mess for the Democrats." Todd added that "it does seem like they decided to take two steps back after they took one step forward because now they got a trillion dollar bill in the House, which is about $150 billion more than they said, than the President said that he wanted, and now they've got to have this back and forth and figure out how to get six to 10 moderate Democrats and Olympia Snowe on board."

I'm going to have to respectfully disagree that the past week was "a mess for the Democrats." Speaker Pelosi reported out a full House bill, the American Affordable Health Choices Act (H.R. 3962), that achieves a number of key fiscal goals that only this summer many in the media were insisting were out of reach. The Congressional Budget Office found that the bill reduces the deficit by $104 billion over the next decade, and continues to chip away at it in the subsequent decade. Plus it comes in under the magic $900 billion number for the net cost of coverage expansion over 10 years -- a cost that is, in CBO's words, "more than offset." And these achievements are doubly important because they satisfy President Obama's must-have requirement that reform "[w]on't add a dime to the deficit."

If anything, all of this adds up to a big step forward -- arguably a bigger one than has ever taken to achieve comprehensive health care reform in this country.

Not in the Villagers on Morning Joe's world though. In their view it's just terrible that the Democrats are breaking with the White House and their obsession with bipartisanship and catering to Olympia Snowe and her love of the trigger. They're more worried about advancing the meme that the Democrats are in disarray and everything is smelling like roses for the Republicans.

Of course we’re not going to get any sort of substantive debate about what’s actually in these bills and what those changes might mean to the American public. No, we get horse race coverage and meaningless talking points churned out as Chuck Todd whines about being criticized for the way they're covering the issue.

They also never talk about what it would mean if Harry Reid forces an actual filibuster--if he would make any of these Senators who are opposed to the bill have to stand up and debate until they dropped. Later in the segment Sheldon Whitehouse was asked if this could still be dragging along as it got close to the holiday break and would Harry Reid consider keeping all of them there instead of going home. He said this could very well go into the holidays or even the beginning of next year.

I wonder how that would play out? Tell them if they want to filibuster the bill, they're welcome to do it all week Christmas week, and let's carry it into New Years week for good measure. If Reid would grow a spine and actually do that I think I'd consider it a holiday gift, not that it's going to happen. It seems Reid and the media are more than content to pretend that Reid's silent filibuster is the norm. What does anyone think would have happened to the Civil Rights Act of 1957 if we'd had a Harry Reid around back then to deal with the likes of Strom Thurmond?

I'll gladly reserve judgement as I would expect everyone will as well on whether we should be clamoring for that or not after we see what makes it to the floor for a final vote. If they go back to either opt-in or Snowe's trigger I don't see how that's a step towards reforming the current system. The other compromises are bad enough already away from single-payer, which is what we should have.

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Chris Matthews cites a recent Gallup poll in the beginning of the segment—Conservatives Maintain Edge as Top Ideological Group—which shows those who would describe their political views as conservative at 40%, moderate 36% and liberal 20%. He goes on to take this leap about just what that poll means later in the segment which Bob Herbert rightly calls him on.

Matthews: There’s a big disconnect here in the polling and I’m looking at the NBC poll, we’re going to have it more here tonight, I’ve looked at the Gallup numbers—here’s the disconnect—the Republican Party is a lousy brand name right now. It is way down below one in five, but on every issue from semi-automatic weapons to traditional values to abortion to every…regulation of business…

Buchanan: Immigrants…

Matthews: …every issue the country is lurching to the right in ideological terms at the same time as the base of the Republican brand. How do you explain that Rob?

Herbert: Are you saying the country’s lurching to the right?

Matthews: On every issue—look at the Gallup polls.

Herbert: I completely disagree with you on that.

Matthews: Ugghh…

Herbert: You’re giving too much credence to this poll. Pat just said a moment ago…

Matthews: Why don’t you look at the polls?

Herbert: …that the Republicans can unite behind all these issues for the off year elections—they can’t even—they haven’t even been able to unite in this upstate Congressional district in the Congressional election that’s coming up next week. You’ve got Republicans lining up behind the Conservative Party candidate who’s putting the knives in the back of the Republican candidate. So where’s the unity?

Never one to let logic get in the way of his preconceived notion Matthews asks if this means the conservatives are more “powerful than ever” if they’re the spoilers in Republican elections. Herbert reminds him that turning the Republican Party hard to the right is not good for them winning elections nationally. Earlier in the segment he also reminded Matthews that Republicans are not leading in a related poll about who Americans trust to run the country.

Of course Pat Buchanan, ever the staunch Sarah Palin fan-boy thinks the party needs more ideological purity and goes on to call the Republican candidate from NY-23 a liberal. As Herbert notes, Buchanan's got a pretty strange notion of who should be called a liberal these days. I would imagine the false memes continually put out by or MSM has a lot to do with people's perception of whether they are liberal or conservative or not, as was reflected in that poll. When people continually hear unions bashed and liberal treated as though it were some sort of dirty word, it's little wonder they might shy from the label.

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Good for Joe Conason for pointing out that Pat Buchanan of all people has no business complaining about the Obama administration daring to point out that Fox News is an arm of the Republican Party after all of the things the Nixon administration did that Buchanan himself was involved in. Chris Matthews sure wasn't going to do it.

Media Matters has a nice run down of why this latest meme by the right calling the Obama administration "Nixonian" is utterly ridiculous.

Conason wrote about many of the points he attempted to make to Buchanan during this segment in his column at Salon this week--

Criticizing Fox News isn't "Nixonian." But Fox News is:

With outraged Washington journalists and Republican politicians crying "Nixonian!" over the public scuffle between the Obama White House and the Fox News Channel, what began as a mundane spat is turning into a cosmic jest. Somewhere, Nixon himself is enjoying a mordant laugh to hear this shrill defense of his old servant Roger Ailes, the television wizard whose deceptive campaigning ushered him into the presidency more than 40 years ago -- and who then became the living symbol of everything negative and nasty in American politics during the two decades that followed.

To understand what is going on today, it is essential to remember that where Ailes came from, "Nixonian" was not an insult but a badge of honor -- and seething hatred and even persecution of the press, rather than mere criticism, was a way of life.

Whatever the merits or defects of the strategy pursued by Obama's communications office in pushing back against Fox News, the furious backlash inside the Beltway is badly overwrought. Mainstream defenders of the conservative cable channel suddenly seem to be afflicted with a strange amnesia, causing them to forget not just the numerous episodes of partisan distortion that have permanently pocked its reputation, but the dirty war against the press and the First Amendment that was waged by the Nixon gang in the late '60s and early '70s. That lost memory does a disservice to journalism and history.

Continue reading...

Transcript via Lexis Nexis below the fold.

Continue reading »

Mock Paper Scissors: Day Seven of the Vitter-Bardwell Watch

TBogg: Does Joe Lieberman have any goals beyond promoting Joe Lieberman?

Instaputz: OY. Another gal who can't write is expected to produce a book for an audience who can't read? Sarah Palin will plotz!

Rude Pundit: Hoo boy. Pat Buchanan's paramilitary heroes are to teabaggers what a gay rights parade is to that parade's extra special leather contingent.

Evil Slut Clique: Think Before You Pink, a comprehensive overview.

Mike is at a music gig this week; send tips [with subject heading ROUND UP] temporarily to bluegalsblog AT gmail.

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From Hardball Oct. 16, 2009. Pat Buchanan cites the Willie Horton ad as one of the reasons the "Tea Party people" liked George H.W. Bush and says it hit one of their "themes". When Matthews points out the overt racism in the ad, Buchanan back tracks and tries to say the ad had nothing to do with race, but only with turning murderers loose on weekend passes.

Pat Buchanan must think most MSNBC viewers have no idea who Lee Atwater is.

MATTHEWS: Pat, I have heard that some of the people that you`re in touch with on the right, the people -- the Tea Party people, they began to get disillusioned with the Republican party, as you did, I believe, personally, when Bush came in, Bush I came in. They don`t think he was one of them culturally, ideologically, whatever.

BUCHANAN: It wasn`t when he came in, Chris, because he had a lot of support from conservatives. He beat Dukakis by running -- remember those ads, the flag thing, Willie Horton and all that? He hit all these themes that hit these people when he won. When we broke with him and Perot broke with him, he was a big spender. He was adding regulations. He had a quota bill in. He had all these different bills, legislation. He was working with the Congress.

He became a man of the city of Washington, D.C. And these folks are anything but. At one point when I was running in may of 1992, Chris, Perot was leading in the polls, a three-way race with Clinton and Bush. He had 40 percent. That`s who these folks are.

MATTHEWS: If Perot hadn`t proven he was a bit off the beam, he might have went down better. But didn`t you just make a mistake there, Pat? You said, as long as he was against Willie Horton, he was OK with the Tea Bag guys. A lot of people thought that Willie Horton thing smacked of tribalism?

BUCHANAN: Willie Horton was, in fact, a big Massachusetts liberal, turning murderers loose on weekend passes. He`s nuts. If it would have been Charlie Manson, they would have said the same thing.

MATTHEWS: Pat, clinically, you`re right. But that Shroud of Turin picture -- that Shroud of Turin picture of Willie Horton had an aspect to it that went to criminal justice. Let me go to -- and responsible justice.

For a Politico feature asking TV hosts who their favorite guests were, one might expect to hear big dogs like Bill Clinton or George HW Bush (Greta Van Susteren's favorite), or Jon Stewart (Howie Kurtz's) or even a little starstruck eye candy like Angelina Jolie (Wolf Blitzer's). But Mika Brzezinski's answer scares me most of all:

Brzezinski jumps at the chance to name Pat Buchanan “because he says what we are all thinking.” But as her father is former National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski, she has to pause: “Should I say my dad?”

Oh holy FSM. Buchanan says what we're all thinking? Does that mean that we're all a bunch of misogynistic, isolationist , Hitler-apologizing bigots, or can we just limit that to Uncle Pat and Mika?

We all think like Pat Buchanan? As David Weigel says, I don't think that's true.

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Poor, poor old Pat Buchanan thinks that Fox News has "objective" reporters... like Chris Wallace... and that the White House was completely unfair "to say that the Fox News reporters sittin' in there are the Republican opposition". Chris Wallace huh? Have you even watched his show Pat? For that matter have you turned their station on lately as I unfortunately have?

I have watched Wallace's show on Sunday just about every stinking week for the last several years since I've been helping Mr. Amato out with video at this site, and the words "objective" or "reporter" are not what come to mind for me when watching Chris Wallace in action. Hack, partisan, corporate lackey and Republican shill are some of the kinder terms that come to mind for the likes of Wallace and his buddies over at ClusterFox.

Since Pat would probably be more comfortable in a chair at Fox rather than MSNBC which is trying to paint itself as a "liberal" network, his response is not surprising. Of course the rest of the panel chimed in that this smack down by the White House of Fox was just terrible for them. Heaven forbid they might eventually say something about what has happened to all of the rest of our sorry excuse for "news" shows which have been turned into info-tainment instead of something designed to inform their viewers.

If either the Democrats or the Repulicans cared at all what's happened to our media in this country, they'd be doing something to break this up. When six companies control the majority of what most people watch on the television, see at the show, read in the newspaper and listen to on the radio, we are no longer a democracy. Buchanan and his ilk are just a one part of a bigger problem we have, which is something that is allowed to pass itself for "news" is designed keep the American public dumbed down, ill-informed and more worried about the latest celebrity gossip than anything that will affect their daily lives.

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After having the majority of the unequally balanced panel on the McLaughlin Group trash the stimulus package as not having worked to create jobs and being politicized, Mort Zuckerman throws this gem out there.

Zuckerman: I disagree with the way you're describing this stimulus program. It was maybe perhaps well intentioned, completely badly conceived. It did not focus on unemployment. It does not focus on those kinds of activities that in fact could create jobs.

I'm just going to remind you of one example. When you have Harry Reid, the Majority Leader in the Senate getting a $350 million grant for a UniRail to go from Las Vegas to Disneyland, you know where a lot of this money went. It's almost a farce. And we, unemployment is much worse than those numbers and it's going to be worse and be higher next year at this time than it is this year.

McLaughlin: What do you...

Zuckerman: And the Republicans are going to--34% of all people have had either a family member or close friend unemployed.

McLaughlin: If you were designing this stimulus, how would you have changed what the stimulus is?

Zuckerman: I would have put a heck of a lot more money into infrastructure development and focused on that. A lot of the money that went in for a lot of pet programs for the Democratic Party that had virtually no affect in terms of stimulating the economy and having a multiplier.

Yes, Mort Zuckerman's hatred for Harry Reid seems to have melted his brain to the point that he is complaining about an infrastructure project in one breath and saying we need more in the next. And he was McLaughlin's guest on the "left" side of the room. Zuckerman was crying about this project on one of the MSNBC programs last week as well, but I don't remember him saying we needed more infrastructure projects right after he did it.

h/t Digby

Update: h/t FilthyHarry
I appears Mort Zuckerman did do the same thing the other day on MSNBC's Morning Joe.

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From Hardball Oct. 6, 2009. Pat Buchanan claims President Obama has a 'messiah complex'. Seems Pat can't quit repeating John McCain campaign slogans.

Matthews: Do you believe he turned over too much power to the hill?

Fineman: I think there’s a way he’ll get a bill but he’s not going to get the bill he should have gotten by the way he’s doing it.

Buchanan: I don’t think he—I don’t know that he really cares. I think he says here’s the Congress… here’s the Congress and you guys put together this bill. Get all your people in there. Get it together. Get it down to me and I’ll sign it.

Matthews: Okay that gets the voters.

Buchanan: He’s got a messiah…

Matthews: But does he have a motive, does he have a clear cut policy motive like Reagan did or…

Buchanan: No, I think he’s got a messiah complex.

Matthews: What’s that mean?

Buchanan: It means he has succeeded by being President of the United States. His very presence there and who he is and who Michelle is has elevated this country, and he can get things done because of who he is.

Matthews: So you’re saying he’s just a prom king?

Buchanan: I think there’s an awful lot of that, you know, walking across big man on campus about him.

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(VP Spiro Agnew - ran around threatening revoked FCC licenses)

At the height of the war between the White House and the Media, The National Press Club ran a panel discussion featuring Bill Monroe of NBC News, Ben Bagdikian and Fred Friendly of CBS. Members of the White House Communications staff were invited; Herb Klein, Pat Buchanan and Dean Burch, but declined. The subject was The Media and The Administration and a few interesting myths were put to rest.

Ben Bagdikian: “The fact is, that the press of this country is overwhelmingly conservative and Republican. We are in danger of not enough criticism of government, not too much. Most of the new that leaves this town (D.C.) is pretty much what public officials say, with not enough time and energy put into testing the validity of what they say. It’s only human that a public official wants it that way, but it happens to be lousy journalism and bad for democracy. Now Democrats weren’t in love with the press either in their time. And we shouldn’t expect to be loved. We dish it out and we ought to be able to take it when it’s given back to us. But when it comes to the press, I think there’s a difference between Republicans and Democrats. The Republicans have had a sympathetic press for so long and in so many places, that they now regard any departure from this as a theft of a natural right. Now it’s not really the Republicans fault either. It’s the fault of the majority of papers in this country who’ve conditioned their local conservative readers to believe that it is the natural born duty of every publication to support Republicans. Let me be specific: a paper’s endorsing a Presidential candidate in 1968, 80% endorsed Nixon, which is about what it’s been with one exception, for Republican candidates in every Presidential race in this generation. And its not just the small town papers. Endorsement by circulation size is about the same percentage. And if we’re talking about a press out of step, how about 80% for Nixon, while the readers vote 43 ½% for Nixon?”

Bagdikian says pretty much what most everyone felt, even as far back as 1972. The idea that mainstream media is a bastion of liberal thought is really a myth cooked up by the GOP. And it's plain to see this myth still holds true today, even more so.

It's interesting to note that the systematic dismantling of network news departments and FCC regulations being abandoned really started with the Nixon administration. It's only been the past 20 odd years we've actually witnessed the long-term effects of those massacres.