Best acceptance speeches ever.

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Those protectionist Villagers are at it again, inviting one of their cocktail partners to opine on a top-rated national program, who deserves no such recognition. And shame on David Gregory and Executive Producer Betsy Fischer Martin for promoting it by inviting Ralph Reed to insult the President of the United States' honesty in his undisclosed role as proxy for the Mitt Romney campaign.

What qualifies Ralph Reed to talk about President Obama's honesty? Even last year, Steve Benen argued that any association with Reed should be toxic:

Indeed, let’s take a stroll down memory lane. Remember this one, from June 2006?

Yet another delightful characterization of Ralph Reed, courtesy of today’s McCain report on the Abramoff scandal. This one comes courtesy of Jack Abramoff himself, via his discussion with Marc Schwartz, a public relations representative for the Tigua tribe in Texas.

Let’s pick up the report on page 148. Schwartz was evaluating whether the tribe should hire Abramoff as its lobbyist: To Schwartz, Abramoff appeared to have the right credentials. Abramoff claimed to be a close friend of Congressman Tom DeLay. He also discussed his friendship with Reed, recounting some of their history together at College Republicans. When Schwartz observed that Reed was an ideologue, Schwartz recalled that Abramoff laughingly replied “as far as the cash goes.”

Or, how about this one?

Ralph Reed, email to lobbyist Jack Abramoff, 1998: “Hey, now that I’m done with the electoral politics, I need to start humping in corporate accounts! I’m counting on you to help me with some contacts.”

Or this?

E-mails and testimony before McCain’s panel showed that Reed, who once branded gambling a “cancer” on society, reaped millions of dollars in tribal casino proceeds that Abramoff secretly routed to him through various non-profit front groups. Abramoff, a lobbyist for the tribes, paid Reed to whip up “grassroots” Christian opposition to prevent rival tribes from opening casinos.

By any reasonable measure, Republicans should avoid taking this guy’s phone calls. As Dave Weigel noted last fall, “Reed was supposed to be dead, dead, dead. His 2006 defeat was covered as the effective end of a 45-year-old political strategist who was forever tainted by scandal.”

And now Republican leaders are lining up to kiss his ring and pander to his minions. It’s a reminder that there is literally nothing a conservative can do to be permanently excluded from polite company.

And of course, conservative enablers Gregory and Fischer Martin will be right there to legitimize Reed as well.

Do I care what Reed thinks of Romney's chances in the debate or how honest the President is? Hell no. And his opinion--given the massive amount of lying he himself has done to cheat others--should not EVER be given such a platform.

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I hate to break it to Paul Ryan, but Mitt Romney's comments to that audience where he didn't know he was being recorded and made his now infamous 47 percent remarks were not a "misstep" or merely "inarticulate." They were Mitt Romney saying what he actually believes. And the only reason you've got a problem with it now is because he got caught on tape doing it.

Here's the GOP vice presidential candidate on Fox News Sunday, calling it just that when asked about it by host Chris Wallace. And in regard to the poll numbers Wallace cites when he is prefacing his question to Ryan, I'd like to see what those numbers looked like if the question was something along the line of whether everyone should have their Social Security benefits taxed. I have a feeling they'd be getting some different percentages.

And speaking of polls, if Paul Ryan wants to call this a "misstep," well, it might be the "misstep" that ends up sinking his and Mitt Romney's campaign. Nate Silver has more on what those numbers are looking like since the release of that tape here -- Sept. 27: The Impact of the ‘47 Percent’.

WALLACE: Governor Romney has taken heat for the 47 percent video, where he told big -- big donors that 47 percent of the country -- it's actually 46% -- don't pay federal income taxes and view themselves as victims.

Fox News did a poll this week and they found that 79 percent think all Americans should pay at least some income taxes. Do you think it would be good if -- if every American paid federal income taxes, had -- even if it's a dollar, even if it's $2 -- had some skin in the game?

RYAN: We don't think that imposing new taxes on anybody is a good idea. Don't forget, Chris, the only person running for president who's proposing higher taxes is President Obama.

So our point is we don't want to...

WALLACE: Because he would end the Bush tax cuts for the -- for the wealthy.

RYAN: Yeah, tax rates -- he already passed all these ObamaCare taxes. About a dozen of them hit middle-income taxpayers, breaking that promise. He's proposing a massive tax increase on job creators in January.

But to go to your question, we don't think the idea or the solution is to impose new taxes on low-income people. We want to get people out of poverty, back to the middle class. And that's why our economic policies are designed to create jobs and opportunities so people can get higher take-home pay.

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It's pretty pathetic when a so-called journalist can't get a basic quote right while framing a question about the Libya attacks, but David Gregory managed to do it. The misquote is at the top of the video, where Gregory claims the "president has said as recently as May of this year that al Qaeda has not had a chance to rebuild, that al Qaeda has been defeated."

Except that's not what the president said at all. In his speech in Afghanistan on May 1st, the president said this:

But over the last three years, the tide has turned. We broke the Taliban's momentum. We've built strong Afghan Security Forces. We devastated al Qaeda's leadership, taking out over 20 of their top 30 leaders. And one year ago, from a base here in Afghanistan, our troops launched the operation that killed Osama bin Laden. The goal that I set - to defeat al Qaeda, and deny it a chance to rebuild - is within reach.

Show me where he said what Gregory said. You can't, because he didn't say it. I cannot think of one single time where the president has claimed that Al Qaeda has been defeated, nor was I able to find one. What Gregory did was subtly reinforce the right wing meme that the president did a victory lap on the anniversary of Bin Laden's death with this question, and had to actually misquote what was said in order to get away with it.

Unfortunately, the question was wrapped inside a larger question about Mitt Romney's pathetic response to the attacks. Romney has said that "the president failed to level with the American people and call this a terrorist attack" because how could he call it a terrorist attack when he declared al Qaeda defeated?

That's right out of Karl Rove's playbook, that question. Plouffe understandably took offense to it, calling it "preposterous and really offensive," focusing back on the president's actual provable record. I understand why Plouffe didn't correct him, but NBC News should really make David Gregory retract the entire claim that was the underpinnings of a disingenuous question meant to echo stupid and dangerous lies and smears, like John McCain's suggestion this morning that Harry Reid doesn't care about Ambassador Stevens' death.

Related to this, the right wing has also apparently decided that attacking UN Ambassador Susan Rice (again) is their only way to distract people from the tragedy and reality of what happened in Libya, and once again, Gregory was glad to oblige.

Susan Rice has been a target of Fox News, Jake Tapper, and now David Gregory. The right wing really, really despises her, not only because she is the ambassador to the much-hated United Nations, but because Susan Rice is adamantly anti-war, which infuriates the neocons who think we should have rode into Libya on the tails of bombers and obliterated the entire landscape to hunt those nasty SOBs down. We should be doing this while ramping up the fear here at home because everyone knows fear sells, and mobilizes the right-wing base faster than you can snap your head around and widen your eyes.

Funny how no one bothers to notice that Susan Rice, as ambassador to the United Nations, has absolutely nothing to do with security at embassies, strategy regarding Al Qaeda, or anything else that's remotely related to what they're whining about. So what grounds are they using to call for her resignation? Messaging failure. She made a statement based on the intelligence she had at the time, which has since been changed.

Let's translate those words "messaging failure." I repeat, what Susan Rice failed to do was scare the hell out of everybody and put national security teams on high alert that the terrorists were coming so the wingers could stoke up the war machine and use it as a political hammer for Mitt Romney's campaign. Since she failed to play the wingers' game, they had to turn to Fox News and David Gregory for assistance, and they obliged.

In this entire segment, David Gregory echoed the right-wing memes that emanate from Fox News and spread outward like metastasized cancer. Why can't we get a better political press corps?

Since the 1970s, the coal industry has been deploying deceptive advertising campaigns to scrub its image and delay important clean air standards. They use the same arguments year after year -- environmental protections will cripple the economy, the science behind pollution problems is inadequate, and that coal is already clean.

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On this Sunday's This Week with George Stephanopoulos, former Bush-Cheney stategist Matthew Dowd did his best to give a little cover to Mitt Romney and his presidential campaign based on an endless string of perpetual lies by playing the 'both sides" are equally terrible game.

Sadly this is the type of false equivalency we see day in and day out from the talking heads in the media, but one of the more ridiculous ones. Since when is Romney refusing to release his tax returns the equivalent President Obama supposedly not saying we're going to have to have some "shared sacrifice" when it comes to balancing our budget?

First of all, it's not even true. Unfortunately President Obama has shown more than a willingness to make a deal with Republicans, much to the ire of much of his base, and cut some sort of "grand bargain." The side which has said they refuse to budge and raise a penny in taxes has been the Republicans. Sadly I think this was an exercise in these Villagers just dying for more austerity when our country cannot afford it and insisting on balancing the budget as an excuse to destroy our social safety nets, because Republicans have always hated them since the day any of them were enacted -- as much as it was trying to muddy the waters on Romney's lies. They want the New Deal dismantled so badly, they can taste it.

Republicans never cared one iota about the deficit when their hero George was blowing huge holes in it with his tax cuts and a couple of wars he left off the books. But now what a Democrat is back in office they're all screaming to the hills about how we're "broke."

And you've just gotta' love George Stephanopoulos here saying it's not a debate moderator's job to fact-check the people debating. Sadly that's the status quo these days, but it shouldn't be.

Transcript below the fold.

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Glad Rag Doll (Deluxe Edition)

One of my favorite standards. Diana Krall has a new album out, listed below. If you purchase something through that link, it benefits Crooks and Liars.

Whatcha listening to this evening?

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This Week with George Stephanopoulos marks the passings of three service members in Afghanistan.

US Navy GM2 Dion R Roberts, 25, North Chicago, IL
US Army SSG Orion N Sparks, 29, Tucson, AZ
US Army SGT Jonathan A Gollnitz, 28, Lakehurst, NJ

According to iCasualties, the total number of allied service members killed in Afghanistan is now 3,191. This week, we mark the 2,000th American killed in Afghanistan.

In addition, the following notable names lost their lives this week:
Businessman Sam Sniderman, entertainer Andy Williams, composer Billy Barnes, former congressman Sam Steiger, actor Johnny Lewis, author Eugene Genovese, Motown producer Frank Wilson, actor Herbert Lom and New York Times publisher Arthur Ochs Sulzberger.

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Republican vice presidential nominee Paul Ryan on Sunday insisted that GOP hopeful Mitt Romney had provided specifics for his tax plan, but refused to say which deductions would need to be eliminated or provide any math to prove that the scheme works.

During an interview on Fox News, host Chris Wallace noted that a recent study showed that the Romney-Ryan plan would cost nearly $5 trillion over 10 years.

"Not in the least bit true," Ryan insisted. "That study has been so thoroughly discredited."

"How much would it cost?" Wallace wondered. "The cut in tax rates."

"It's revenue neutral... Lower all Americans' tax rates by 20 percent," Ryan replied.

"Right, how much will it cost?" Wallace pressed. "It's not revenue neutral unless you take away the deductions."

"I won't get into a baseline argument with you because that's what a lot of this is about," Ryan explained. "We're saying, limited deductions so you can lower tax rates for everybody. Start with people at the higher end. ... And every time we've done this -- whether it was Ronald Reagan working with Tip O'Neil, the idea from the Bowles-Simpson commission on how to do this -- there's been a traditional Democrat and Republican consensus: lowering tax rates, broadening the tax base works."

"But you haven't given me the math," the Fox News host pressed.

"I don't have the time," Ryan laughed. "It would take me too long to go through all the math. But let me say it this way, you can lower tax rates by 20 percent across the board by closing loopholes and still have preferences for the middle class for things like charitable deductions, for home purchases, for health care. So what we're saying is, people are going to get lower tax rates."

"If -- just suppose -- that the doubters are right, President Romney takes office the math doesn't add up... what's most important to Romney?" Wallace asked. "Would he scale back on the 20 percent tax cut for the wealthy?"

"No," Ryan said.

"Would he scale back and say, 'OK, we're going to have to raise taxes for the middle class?'" Wallace continued. "What's most important to him in his tax reform plan?"

"Keeping tax rates down," the vice presidential candidate remarked. "That's more important than anything."

During an event in Ohio last week, President Barack Obama said that Romney and Ryan had refused to provide details because it was impossible for them to reduce the deficit and cut taxes for the wealthy without also raising taxes on the middle class.

"No matter how many times they try to reboot their campaign, no matter how many times they try to tell you they’re going to start talking specifics really soon, they don’t do it, and the reason is because the math doesn’t work," Obama asserted.