Video Clip of the Day

Al Franken appeared on "Late Edition" with Wolf Blitzer

Video

We had many requests for this segment!

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.

Some Oleta Adams to start your day. Love her voice...

The Sunday Talking Head line-up is up and ready for reading. One wonders if Blitzer will bother asking Armitage about his outing of Valerie Plame Wilson and what he coughed up to keep his ass out of the indicted chair. But I'm not exactly holding my breath on that one. Other than that, it's a Presidential candidate-o-rama on most of the shows: Dodd, Paul, Huckabee, Richardson, Biden, McCain and Obama.

What's catching your eye on the blogs or in the news this morning?

(Photo of hands warming up on a cuppa hot coffee via di+mars.)

The Sunday Talking Head thread is up and ready for perusal this morning.  It's a whole lotta Iraq and bloviating, and not much else, frankly.  But there could be some interesting sparks on CNN's Late Edition if Rep. Tom Lantos gets asked about why Rush Limbaugh is an ill-informed, bloviating moron.  (Here's hoping Blitzer gives him the chance...but I'm not exactly holding my breath.)   I wanted to highlight a story from Nova Scotia that one of my readers (Audrey -- thanks!) linked up in my comments.  It makes for much better Sunday morning contemplation.  Via the Chronicle Herald:

Two students at Central Kings Rural High School fought back against bullying recently, unleashing a sea of pink after a new student was harassed and threatened when he showed up wearing a pink shirt.

The Grade 9 student arrived for the first day of school last Wednesday and was set upon by a group of six to 10 older students who mocked him, called him a homosexual for wearing pink and threatened to beat him up.

The next day, Grade 12 students David Shepherd and Travis Price decided something had to be done about bullying.

"It’s my last year. I’ve stood around too long and I wanted to do something," said David.

They used the Internet to encourage people to wear pink and bought 75 pink tank tops for male students to wear. They handed out the shirts in the lobby before class last Friday — even the bullied student had one.

"I made sure there was a shirt for him," David said....

So, what's catching your eye in the news and on the blogs this morning?

(Cafe au lait photo via Bizzy Girl. Looks good this morning...)

The Sunday Talking Head Thread is up and ready for your perusal. It's a mixed line-up -- some old pros, some of the usual Sunday hot air crowd, a few celebrities thrown in for flavor.

The line-up says to me: immigration, the Middle East, Wolf Blitzer scored an exclusive with the leader of VietNam and perhaps a bit of disgust with the DOJ and Vice President Cheney, all rolled into one morning package and spread out over several shows. Oh, and Ed Koch and Ed Rollins will talk about how their political wisdom is better than anyone else’s.

What’s catching your eye on the blogs or in the news this morning?

(Double shot of espresso via ASurroca.)

Double up on the caffeine this morning. The Sunday Talking Head listings are up and ready for reading.

Don't know about you, but it's an awful lot of Condi Rice to deal with first thing in the morning. I'm going to need way more coffee...although I'm sure hanging out in the Green Room with Jack Murtha will do wonders for her, too, today. Will Blitzer ask Adam Putnam about his comment that AG Gonzales should resign? That could make for a fun interview moment with the Representative from Howdy Doody.

Somehow, today seems like a good morning to go out for breakfast. How is everyone else doing this morning? Anything catching your eye in the news or on the blogs?

Truly Equal: Wacky Catholic Cardinal warns of an Antichrist who is "a pacifist, ecologist and ecumenist". And Jerry Falwell tells us that we really gotta watch out for those environmentalistguys? Hey Jerry, here ya go.

There is no Blog: Memo to Harry Reid--Joe Lieberman is NOT a Democrat.

Busy, Busy, Busy : Wolf Blitzer is shocked, I tell you! Shocked!

Wait, did somebody say free cookie?

The as-if-you-haven't-had-enough-Holy-Crap "Cameron! Find Jesus, find Jesus, boy! Good dog!" Special Edition: Dr. Zaius, President Monkey, Public Eye, Guns n' Butter, Boiled Dinner,Cause for Concern.

--
Blue Gal
http://bgalrstate.blogspot.com

Wolf Blitzer apologized to Barack Obama for misspelling Osama's name on a graphic yesterday during a broadcast on The Situation Room.

Download | play -WMP Download | play -QT

A contact at CNN told me they were aware of the gaffe yesterday and this morning emailed me this transcript.

WOLF BLITZER, CNN ANCHOR: One additional note, I just want to make a correction, an apology, Soledad, for what we did yesterday. In "THE SITUATION ROOM," we had a bad typographical error in one of ourgraphics. We were doing a piece on the hunt for Osama bin Laden in this new year 2007.

Unfortunately there was a graphic, instead of saying where is Osama, it said where is Obama. We want to apologize for that bad typo. We want to also apologize personally to Senator Barack Obama. I'm going to be making a call to him later this morning to offer my personal apology --Soledad.

Good for them. It's not too hard to set the record straight when mistakes are made, In Barack's case, the right wing is making his name part of their slime machine now...

UPDATE: A Dkos diarist wrote about this too... Raw Story says that: Obama thanks blogs for response to CNN Osama-Obama snafu; Senator sees no malicious intent

I really had to laugh at this interview between Mark Halperin and Hugh Hewitt the other day. He's the political director at ABC and engaged in a whining email exchange trying to prove that he's not part of the "liberal" media to the likes of Hewitt. Now that's good fun. Usually a person with Halperin's job would know that the Cowardly Lion is one of the most biased and dishonest right wing talkies there is.

It makes no difference what Halperin does or says to Hewitt. NONE. He will ridicule Halperin no matter what. It's part of the conservative shtick, but what's so telling about this exchange is that Halperin actually thinks he'd be allowed into their club. Mark, please wake up. Wolf Blitzer was just treated the same way by Lynne Cheney and yet he expressed similar outage that the Lynnster would question his patriotism. As Greenwald says:

Isn't there something extremely unseemly about the political director of ABC News engaging in such an intense campaign to win the approval of one of the most blindly partisan, extremist Bush followers in the country?

As Ezra notes:

It is now a matter of public record, however, that Mark Halperin is writing with an eye towards Hugh Hewitt's approval. Everything he writes must be judged through that lens. Much of it must be discarded for that reason. He's no longer a journalist, can no longer protect his pretensions of intellectual independence. He's no longer, if he ever was, worth reading.

Is there any clearer indication why our media is so screwed up?

Our Liberal Media taking charge:

On the dominant issue of our time, the president is in denial.

You might think that the enormous gulf between Bush's perceptions and reality on such a life-and-death topic would be, well, newsworthy. But if members of the Washington press corps consider it news at all, apparently it's old news. They report Bush's assertions about Iraq without noting that his fundamental assessment of the situation is dramatically contradicted by the reporting from their own colleagues on the ground.

And in the rare circumstances when they directly confront the president with observations that conflict with his own, they let it drop too quickly.

BUSH: You know, it's interesting you quoted Kofi. I'd rather quote the people on the ground who are very close to the situation, and who live it day by day, our ambassador [Zalmay Khalizad] or General [George] Casey [the top U.S. military official in Iraq]. I ask this question all the time, tell me what it's like there, and this notion that we're in civil war is just not true according to them. These are the people that live the issue. . . .

"The Iraqi government and the Iraqi military is committed to keeping this country together. And so therefore, I reject the notion that this country is in civil war based upon experts, not based upon people who are speculating. . . .

"That's how I learn it. I can't learn it -- I can't -- frankly, can't learn it from your newscasts. What I have got to learn it from is people who are there on the ground."

Blitzer let the issue drop....read on