More of Michele Bachmann's nuttery from last night's Larry King Live. Bachmann singing the praises of Hannity, Limbaugh, Levine and Beck and calling their followers who are as King points out, 2% of the country, a "critical mass" and a "movement".

KING: Congresswoman Bachmann, I would gather from your political end of the -- of the spectrum, you enjoyed that?

BACHMANN: Well, sure. Republicans like humor, too, Larry. And so it's fun to see -- it's fun to -- it's fun to watch that show. And I think that what we're seeing now is after nine months, "Saturday Night Live" has decided to take on the president, too. I think that's good for everyone.

KING: Well, but here's what might not be so good for everyone. Senator Lindsey -- GOP Senator Lindsey Graham recently blamed the current lack of civility in U.S. politics on voters electing confrontational representatives, faulted the 24 hour news cycle -- hello us -- talk radio and groups like MoveOn.org.

Did he have a point, James?

Are we -- have we gotten vituperative?

CARVILLE: Well, yes. But I mean to some extent, too, the politicians are -- are playing along with this, too. Yes, I think so. And I think Senator Graham, like a lot of people in the Republican Party, everybody keeps one-up in Rush, one-ups Glenn Beck or one-ups Sean or one-ups the next guy to see who can say the nuttiest thing. And I think people like Senator Graham or -- or a congressman from Michigan, a fellow by the name, I think, of McCarter, who called Senator DeMint nuts. I think people in the -- there's some people in the Republican Party who want to get that party in a methadone clinic so they can get off of the heroin and all of this crazy talk that comes out of all these people. And so that's what's going on here.

BACHMANN: You know, Larry, one thing...

KING: Ari, are the...

(CROSSTALK)

KING: Are the...

(CROSSTALK)

KING: ...as he calls them, are the nutty -- Ari, are the nutty people, frankly -- and some of them go a little wacko -- hurting you?

FLEISCHER: I'm glad to see that James just played his part in lowering the temperature.

Look, Larry, I take these things with a grain of salt. You know, in the -- in the election of 1800, it was said you couldn't walk across the street without fear of being caned by people from what was then the opposite party. This has been a part of the lifeblood of a noisy democracy forever.

What's happened today is just with the speed of communications, it gets reverberated and echoed faster.

But here's the bigger point -- and I say this with all respect. The evening cable show that has the most viewers has three million viewers in a nation of 300 million. And so I think a lot of people are pretty sensible, don't pay attention to all the noise and all the shouting. And I'll take this country with its noisy democracy over any other country any other day. BACHMANN: And, Larry, if I could just add...

KING: There was a "New York"...

BACHMANN: ...there's no -- Larry...

KING: Go ahead, Michele.

BACHMANN: Larry, if I could just add, the shows that have had the greatest ratings increases in recent time have been Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity. People go where they think they're going to hear the truth. And that's why they're going to those shows.

KING: But -- but, Congresswoman, as Ari points out, they're talking about 1 percent of the population. They had no effect on the election. And to the -- wouldn't -- wouldn't you, as a Republican, would you want them to be the voice of the Republican Party?

BACHMANN: Well, still, it's their ratings that are going up. And I think you have to look at the reality of ratings...

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From Larry King Live Oct. 6, 2009. Congresswoman Michelle Bachmann does her best to avoid answering the question first of all on whether she agrees with the birthers or not on where the president was born, and she completely dodges answering, with the help of GOP flack Ari Fleischer, whether she thinks the birthers are nuts or not.

She also claims that the only ones who are raising the issue are those on the left and is nearly laughed off the set. It's clear Michele didn't want to completely piss off her wingnut base while doing her best to try to appear sane on Larry King's show.

It's hard to say what was worse. Bachmann's dodge or Ari Fleischer trying to compare those on the left who were upset about the stolen presidential election to the wingnut birthers. NOT the same thing Ari. Epic fail there bud.

KING: James, were you going to comment on some of this falderal?

CARVILLE: I would love to comment on (INAUDIBLE), where you left off.

FLEISCHER: So would I.

(CROSSTALK)

FLEISCHER: Go ahead, James. You go first.

CARVILLE: Well, first of all, there are seven Republicans in the House that have birther legislation before there. And one of the things that people don't like is that politicians get a simple yes or no question and they try to evade it, just like I heard Cong -- the Congresswoman do. She's known to be very outspoken...

BACHMANN: Oh, not at all. I answered.

CARVILLE: I can't believe that she doesn't have the courage just to give us a simple yes or no answer -- do you believe that these birthers are plum crazy, because that's what Senator Graham was saying?

And it's a simple question -- do you believe that they're crazy or not?

KING: But that was the only question...

FLEISCHER: Let me -- let me jump in.

KING: (INAUDIBLE).

(CROSSTALK)

KING: Do you think they're nuts?

All right, go ahead, Ari. Go ahead.

FLEISCHER: I -- I think this movement is nutty. I think this is nutty. I think there's no evidence and people shouldn't waste any time on it.

But I want to point out something that is a terrible hypocrisy about all of this. When George Bush was elected, there were many people who called him illegitimate and said that he lost Florida despite there being no evidence of that being the case.

CARVILLE: I was one.

FLEISCHER: But nobody...

CARVILLE: I was one.

FLEISCHER: But hold on a second. Hold on, James.

CARVILLE: Yes. OK. I was one of them.

FLEISCHER: Hold on. Nobody blew the whistle and started to say, well, wait a minute, aren't these people on the left nutty?

It always seemed that people said George Bush was a divider, not a uniter and they didn't talk about the tactics of the left being the problem.

Now, when people on the right are making claims that are not supported, it's as if all the media referees now can't wait to blow their whistle and throw their flags and say the problem is on the right.

That's hypocritical. And if you ask me, there's -- there's a loony factor in both parties. And I'd say for everyone who's a little lulu on the left, there's -- I mean on the right -- every one who's a little lulu on the right, there's about 1.8 who's lulu on the left.

CARVILLE: Well, I was one.

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I do think it's rather silly for the Democratic Party to pledge money and support for (D) Arlen Specter to run in 2010, especially when it involves the Employee Free Choice Act and his career was hanging by a thread. I thoroughly enjoyed yesterday's coverage of the Republicans spinning in circles trying to come up some kind of coherent response to Specter's defection. If you watched FOX News at all they acted like spoiled little children who didn't get their candy as they lined up Bush thug after Bush thug to refute him starting with Karl Rove, Ari Fleischer and so on. They literally were dumbstruck by the fact that he left the GOP behind.

A bigger problem I have is that Specter will be given a huge megaphone by the Villagers to voice his "independence" and denounce any policy he so chooses whenever he wants without a second thought about it. He said over and over again that John Kennedy believed the party can ask too much of you. He'll have more power as a new Democratic politician than he ever did as a Republican.

As Digby says:

I confess that I'm more than a little bit irked that the Democratic Party has already pledged to support Specter against a primary challenger. It's fundamentally undemocratic, not to mention dumb. Specter now has carte blanche to remain an incoherent obstructionist for the next two years when they could have at least let us pull him to the left with a primary challenge.

My pal Adam Green has a good idea.

On the very day Arlen Specter became a Democrat, he lamented that not enough right-wing Bush judges got confirmed, he opposed workers' right to organize, and he compared himself to Joe Lieberman. The DSCC and Pennsylvania Democratic Party will be supporting Specter in the primary.

If there is a potential progressive challenger to Arlen Specter in Pennsylvania, they are probably scratching their head right now asking, "Would I have any chance at all if I ran, or is the fix in?"

What can progressives to do create an environment where this person feels they can run?

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We made a mistake the other day when Paul Begala left Ari Fleischer dumbstruck by saying:

BEGALA: We -- our country executed Japanese soldiers who water- boarded American POWs. We executed them for the same crime that we are now committing ourselves. How do you defend that?

We chided Begala slightly because we thought he wasn't quite right on the facts:

Actually, Fleischer could have countered Begala by pointing out that we didn't actually execute the Japanese soldiers convicted of the war crime of waterboarding American prisoners -- we just sentenced them to 15 years' hard labor.

But now, Begala makes clear he knew whereof he spoke:

But I was not referring to Asano, nor was my source Sen. Kennedy. Instead I was referencing the statement of a different member of the Senate: John McCain. On November 29, 2007, Sen. McCain, while campaigning in St. Petersburg, Florida, said, "Following World War II war crime trials were convened. The Japanese were tried and convicted and hung for war crimes committed against American POWs. Among those charges for which they were convicted was waterboarding."

Sen. McCain was right and the National Review Online is wrong. Politifact, the St. Petersburg Times' truth-testing project (which this week was awarded a Pulitzer Prize), scrutinized Sen. McCain's statement and found it to be true. Here's the money quote from Politifact:

"McCain is referencing the Tokyo Trials, officially known as the International Military Tribunal for the Far East. After World War II, an international coalition convened to prosecute Japanese soldiers charged with torture. At the top of the list of techniques was water-based interrogation, known variously then as 'water cure,' 'water torture' and 'waterboarding,' according to the charging documents. It simulates drowning." Politifact went on to report, "A number of the Japanese soldiers convicted by American judges were hanged, while others received lengthy prison sentences or time in labor camps."

The folks at Politifact interviewed R. John Pritchard, the author of The Tokyo War Crimes Trial: The Complete Transcripts of the Proceedings of the International Military Tribunal for the Far East. They also interviewed Yuma Totani, history professor at the University of Nevada-Las Vegas, and consulted the Columbia Journal of Transnational Law, which published a law review article entitled, "Drop by Drop: Forgetting the History of Water Torture in U.S. Courts."

We apologize to Begala for the error.

We'll be waiting a long time, I expect, for all those right-wingers out there who claim waterboarding isn't torture to apologize to the world.

April 21, 2009 CNN

Dave N: Paul Begala and Ari Fleischer debated the release of the Bush torture memos -- and President Obama's indication that prosecutions of the architects of the torture regime may yet face prosecution -- on Anderson Cooper's 360 yesterday.

The fireworks erupted when Fleischer decided that the best defense was to claim that waterboarding really isn't torture:

FLEISCHER: No, again, Anderson, your premise is that it is torture. And I think the only people who can determine that are people from the Department of Justice.

COOPER: But it's interesting, though...

FLEISCHER: If it is torture, if it is torture...

(CROSSTALK)

COOPER: ... when the Khmer Rouge did it, when the Khmer Rouge did it at Tuol Sleng prison, and you can go there, and you can see the instruments they used to water-board people, I mean, we labeled it as torture.

FLEISCHER: And, Anderson, that's why I said the only people who are in a position to make an authoritative judgment on it should be career, independent-minded people at the Department of Justice, without anybody at the White House interfering or anybody else interfering.

And then, if they decide it was, then they have got a very careful decision to make about how far and extensive do you prosecute people. Is it the people who did it? Is it the Democrats and Republicans on Capitol Hill who were briefed on it and didn't object to it? And who in the administration would you have to apply that standard to?

This is where this whole thing can go.

But, going back to the memo, and going back to bipartisanship, you know, it's not just the Bush people who said it was wrong to release that memo. Bill Clinton's head of the CIA said it was wrong to release those memos, because you're teaching al Qaeda operatives exactly what our techniques are.

And why do we want anybody in al Qaeda to know what the limits of our techniques are, Paul?

BEGALA: The techniques that -- the techniques that we no longer use, the techniques that were in "The New York Review of Books" and half of the newspapers and magazines in North America, Ari. I mean, it is...

FLEISCHER: Paul, it was your administration's head of the CIA who objected to the release of those memos.

BEGALA: It doesn't -- it doesn't make...

FLEISCHER: It's a Clinton official who said that.

BEGALA: It doesn't make him right. Torture is always wrong, Ari. We executed...

FLEISCHER: I agree with you that torture is always wrong.

BEGALA: Excuse me for talking while you're interrupting.

(CROSSTALK)

COOPER: Let Paul finish.

BEGALA: We -- our country executed Japanese soldiers who water- boarded American POWs. We executed them for the same crime that we are now committing ourselves. How do you defend that?

The most awkward silence imaginable follows. Finally, Fleischer is able to eke out:

FLEISCHER: Well, again, Paul, I guess you already are the jury, the prosecutor, the judge, and a citizen all rolled into one. You have already pronounced judgment that it is a crime.

Actually, Fleischer could have countered Begala by pointing out that we didn't actually execute the Japanese soldiers convicted of the war crime of waterboarding American prisoners -- we just sentenced them to 15 years' hard labor.

But then, as the New York Times reports this morning, this White House's legal team didn't even bother to research the legal history of waterboarding before issuing their Excuse From Mom.

Waterboarding always was a crime -- until these characters came along. Maybe that's why Ari didn't really try to argue the point any further ...

The truth may set you free, but not if you're a Republican and the subject is taxes. After all, 95% of American families as promised received a tax cut from the Obama stimulus package. And while three-quarters of Americans support President Obama's proposal to roll back the Bush tax cuts for those earning over $250,000 to their Clinton-era levels, it turns out that affluent voters, too, chose Barack Obama over John McCain. Making matters worse, a Gallup poll Monday revealed that Americans' "views of income taxes among most positive since 1956."

So as their furious followers head off to their April 15th orgy of tea-bagging, the leadership of the GOP and its amen corner in the right-wing media have instead turned to tall tales on taxes.

Here, then, are 10 Republican Tax Day lies:

1. President Obama will raise taxes on small businesses.
2. The estate tax devastates small businesses and family farms.
3. 40% of Americans pay no taxes.
4. Tax cuts always increase revenue.
5. The GOP is the party of fiscal discipline.
6. Ronald Reagan was the greatest tax cutter of all time.
7. FDR caused the Great Depression, or at least made it worse.
8. Obama's cap-and-trade plan will cost each American family $3,100 a year.
9. Obama's tax proposals will undermine charitable giving.
10. The rich pay too much in taxes already.

For the details behind each of the GOP's Tax Day deceits, continue reading.

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Our new C&L pal Jon grabbed this video from CNN and it's pretty awesome. As the panel was discussing Micheal Steele's idiotic critique of President Obama. (You remember how the extreme right wing lunatics like Sean Hannity dishonestly edited Obama's words so they could misquote his speech to Europe?)

Begala: I'll give Michael Steele a pass on this.

Blitzer: But you're not giving Ari Fleischer a pass.

Begala: Ari just helped Ruin The Country, Michael Steel is trying to save a dying party...

Ari had no response to that charge because he's "guilty."

You Tube

Matthews smacks down Ari Fleischer who's been out on a Bush redemption media blitz of late for his Bush kept us safe from a terrorist attack nonsense. He obviously got under Fleischer's skin since Fleischer got pretty snitty with him for daring to challenge his talking points.

Matthews did a pretty good job here but as friend of the site and fellow contributor Jon Perr pointed out to us Matthews has disappointed in the past and is sure to continue to in the future.

For all his ferocity towards Fleischer today and his claim about the Bush White House in 2007 that “they won’t silence me,” Chris Matthews spent an awful long time calling George W. Bush and his friends, “good guys.”

As Jon noted at Perrspectives back in 2007 Chris Matthews: Bush White House "Good Guys" Won't Silence Me:

But what we do know is that Chris Matthews likes George W. Bush and the "good guys" of his White House - a lot. They may be, Matthews now suggests, thugs and criminals, but they are thugs and criminals you want to drink a beer with all the same:

"I thought in listening to the president, I was listening to one of the great neoconservative minds. We were given a rare opportunity to hear the real philosophy of this administration with regard to the war in Iraq." (August 9, 2007)

"I like him. Everybody sort of likes the president, except for the real whack-jobs, maybe on the left." (November 28, 2005)

"Sometimes it glimmers with this man, our president, that kind of sunny nobility." (October 25, 2005)

"We're proud of our president. Americans love having a guy as president, a guy who has a little swagger, who's physical." (May 1, 2003)

"For example, George Allen is a lot like George Bush. He's friendly. He's a jock in a way. He's happy go lucky. He's a good guy to hang out with, kicks back." (May 24, 2006)

"They're very adept politically, this White House. And whatever you think of Karl Rove, he is good and he is tough." (October 29, 2004)

"Tony [Snow] has no regrets, nor do any of us for being his friend. Good guy, he has been, he is, and he will be." (September 4, 2007)

"And as we sign off today, it was the last day on the job for White House press secretary, the very likable, the very good guy, Tony Snow." (September 17, 2007)

"Tom DeLay, you are not in this buisness for the money. You live modestly. You commute back and forth from Washington to Houston, Texas. Why? What drives you every day?" (January 24, 2006)

"We'll be right back with House Majority Leader John Boehner. You can see this man's greatness." (March 6, 2006)

"And Republican Senator Pete Domenici of New Mexico - a good guy, by the way - intends to retire from the Senate when his term ends next year." (October 3, 2007)

"I think you beat a good guy [Jim Talent]. I looked at all the Republican candidates running for election in tough elections. I thought he was probably the best of them." To Missouri Senator-elect Claire McCaskill, (November 28, 2006)

"Mike DeWine, a good guy." (February 9, 2007)

"Chris Shays, actually a good guy, we'll see how he deals with this thing." (August 28, 2006)

So today we get a smackdown from Matthews. We'll see what tomorrow brings. If anyone would like to watch the entire segment instead of my mash up my friend CSPANJunkie has it up in two parts.
Part 1
Part 2

March 11, 2009 MSNBC Keith Olbermann

You Tube [H/t Heather]

Oh, this one was fun to watch. Ari jumped onto the ice with a Hypocrisy Double Axel, immediately attacking the Obama administration and the "Democrat" party for... wait for it... being childish!

Yeah, Ari, because calling the Democratic Party the "Democrat Party" is so awesomely mature. (I know you are, but what am I?)

But that was just the beginning. Ari was spinning and leaping all over the place as he clutched his pearls, wondering over and over what happened to the "post-partisan" Obama? To hear him talk, he was puzzled and hurt by the vicious slash and burn tactics of the president and his party, and kept repeating how "childish" it all was.

Shuster wouldn't stand for his nonsense, though. He cited chapter and verse, including the time Ari attacked Move On and the entire Democratic party as "unpatriotic" over the General Petraeus ad.

Just go watch it. If this is the best media spokesperson the Republicans can throw at us, we're in good shape.

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As part of the GOP strategy of trying to regain the upper hand in this whole Rush Limbaugh "leader" debate, Ari Fleischer went on "1600 Pennsylvania Avenue" last night to debate the issue with David Shuster.

Shuster really let him have it. He attacked the hypocrisy of the GOP decrying "partisan politics" when Fleischer himself did the same thing over the MoveOn.org ad about General Petraeus.

The Republicans don't know anything but partisan politics. To hear them crying about it is really something else. I can't blame them for desperately wanting to try to change the subject from how Republicans are kissing Rush's boots. They must believe the country was asleep for the last eight years if they think their crocodile tears over partisanship are going to do them any good now.

Keith's Still Bushed for Feb. 23, 2009 with Karl Rove blowing off the House Judiciary Committee again, Ari Fleischer for his interview with D.L. Hughley and George P. Bush, Jeb's son for ripping Charlie Crist and calling him "D Light" for not acting like the rest of the "just say no" obstructionist Republicans. Just what we need. More Bushes with political ambitions. God help us.

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Ari Fleischer on D.L. Hughley Breaks the News talking about the White House press corps and how "tough" David Gregory was on him but a straight shooter when it came to his reporting.

Fleischer: David Gregory D.L., he started out in Albuquerque, New Mexico. I knew him a long, long time ago and he worked his way up and became a White House reporter and then became the host. But what you have to understand is that room is a TV show. It's not the reality. This is where they posture. They show I'm tougher. They know their editors are watching and they know their colleagues are watching. So they're going to show I'm the toughest guy. I can take down the Press Secretary.

Hughley: Who irritated the hell out of you? Somebody had to.

Fleischer: David Gregory. Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha. But, having said that, that's because that was a TV show in that room. David was the toughest interrogator I had but when it came time to go on the air the man was always fair. What he put on the air was straight down the middle. So that's the bigger story about life at the White House. They can be one thing in that room. The reality is when they come into your office ten times a day and are talking to you privately. They're gathering facts and background information, that's the real work that goes on and most of them are actually pretty polite at that point in their lives, but they're not so polite in that briefing room.

Greg Mitchell has a slightly different take on that in his article at the HuffPo:
Ari Fleischer Defends Press Coverage of Iraq -- Wrong Again!.

That was written back in June of 2008. I see some things never change. Fleischer is still using the same tired talking points and claiming Gregory did his job as a reporter. I think if that were true, he might have spent a little bit of time covering this-- Pictures of Anti-War Protests from Around the World-- and a little less time doing this.

As noted by Think Progress Fleischer was also still claiming that Saddam Hussein was at fault for our invading Iraq: Fleischer: On Iraq, ‘Saddam was the big liar.’.

Fleischer: We were wrong about weapons of mass destruction being in Iraq. […]

Hughley: When you found out that you were wrong, how did that make you feel?

Fleischer: You just scratch your head and say, “How could we be wrong?” It wasn’t just us that thought he had weapons of mass destruction. The Egyptians thought it, the French thought it, the Germans thought it the United Nations thought it, Bill Clinton’s CIA though it. We all thought it. Saddam was the big liar here.

Nothing like a little revisionist history on those weapons in Iraq Mr. Fleischer. And could D.L. Hughley have given this man any more of a softball interview? Hell he was harder on Bay Buchanan than he was Fleischer.

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Keith takes Ari Fleischer and Bill-O to task in this edition of Still Bushed. They seem to have selective memory when it comes to who a certain shill was from a from fake news organization that the last administration let into the White House press corps to lob softballs before choosing to mock President Obama for giving Sam Stein from the HuffPo a chance to ask a question, and a tough one at that.

I'm not sure why anyone would take either of these clowns seriously. Neither have an ounce of credibility.