Sigh. ABC's This Week can't quit you or the word "exclusive," John McCain. And the dulcet wingnut tones of DeMint/Lieberman on Fox News Sunday will make yer Sabbath hangover feel like a Swedish massage by comparison.

NBC is celebrating Independence from Great Britain Day this year by broadcasting tennis from Great Britain. At least they have an actual "exclusive" on it.

ABC's "This Week" - EXCLUSIVE Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz.

CBS' "Face the Nation" - Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C.

NBC's "Meet the Press" and "The Chris Matthews Show" - Pre-empted by coverage of Wimbledon tennis.

CNN's "State of the Union" - Said Tayeb Jawad, Afghanistan's ambassador to the United States; Reps. John Boccieri, D-Ohio, Duncan Hunter, R-Calif., and Mike Coffman, R-Colo.

"Fox News Sunday" - Sens. Joe Lieberman, I-Conn., and Jim DeMint, R-S.C.; Kenneth Feinberg, administrator of fund set up to compensate Gulf oil spill victims.

What catches your eyes and ears this morning?

A heads-up to Republicans: You guys need some serious therapy. Remember now, this is the anti-abortion, love-the-children, wave-the-flag and raise-'em-Republican party. Duncan Hunter, one of our lovely Congressman from down south where the politics get distinctly weird, actually stood in front of a group of people and said that American citizens should be deported, too.

Okay, what he actually said was that the debate wasn't about immigration; it was a national security issue. A "real, serious national security issue." When pressed to expand and provide some specifics, especially about those children of immigrants born in the United States. Those children are, of course, United States citizens.

“Would you support deportation of natural born American citizens that are the children of illegal aliens?” a man in the audience asked.

“I would have to, yes,” Hunter said.

“You can look and say, ‘You’re a mean guy. That’s a mean thing to do. That’s not a humanitarian thing to do.’ We simply cannot afford what we’re doing right now.

Hunter then blames immigrants for California's budget crisis. I'd argue that tax-dodging rich folks have more to do with the budget crisis than immigrants.

Is there a problem and costs associated with illegal immigration? Sure, but most of them have been created by the xenophobes who hate government regulation until it is used to exclude or otherwise discriminate against immigrants.

Yes, there's a problem with immigration. But to listen to the Duncan Hunters of the world, it's all the fault of Mexico, the only bad immigrants are Mexican immigrants, and the only real US citizens are those American children born to parents who aren't brown.

As to national security, just give me a break. The 911 crew was in the US legally, not illegally. The guy who flew into the Austin IRS building? A genuine white US citizen. There's more of a national security threat from citizens who descend from Mayflower families than there is from Mexican immigrants.

(h/t Alan Colmes)

Having gays not be afraid to openly talk about themselves is really freaking out the conservative movement. Don't you remember when anything that a military leader said was sacrosanct when a Republican was president? That doesn't count anymore.

Duncan Hunter makes a fool of himself on NPR, and although the host didn't point out the flaw in his argument, she just repeated his words back to him as if saying, "Is this guy kidding me?"

Hunter: No, because I think it's bad for the cohesiveness and the unity in the military especially those that are in close combat, close quarters in country right now, it's not the time to do it. I think the military is not civilian and I think the folks that have been in the military in very close situations with each other, there has to be a special bond there and I think that bond is broken.

If you open up the military to transgenders, to hermaphrodites to gays and lesbians.

Host: Transgenders and hermaphrodites?

Yea, that's going to be part of this thing. It's not just gays an lesbians, it's this whole thing.

My GOD, where's Rick "man on dog" Santorum when you need him? Pretty soon the entire military will be banging cats and dogs and soon will be trying to marry their pets.

For conservatives, it's never the time to do anything. And you know just being next to teh Gay will rub off on the next soldier and he may want to just start making out as heavy artillery falls. That could happen, couldn't it? I know James Dobson's BFF Tony Perkins probably thinks so.

Pam's House Blend has more.

Nothing, it would seem, pleases the Republican mind more than regurgitating demonstrably false and shockingly mean-spirited talking points. So Nevada Republican Senator John Ensign must been ecstatic to score a twofer last week. In a single sentence, Ensign not only faithfully reproduced the GOP's "Club Gitmo" talking point, but resuscitated the old Republican claim that there is no health care crisis.

Ensign's back-handed jab at the American health care system came even as he was insisting the Guantanamo Bay detention center needed to remain open. Following hot on the heels of his Senate colleague Jeff Sessions' (R-AL) comment that terror suspects "wouldn't be treated any better in the United States, and they wouldn't have the tropical breezes blowing through," Ensign claimed Gitmo was to-die for:

Ensign said the facilities at Gitmo are nicer than prisons in the United States, and said the food detainees were served was better than what he and the traveling lawmakers ate.

"They get better health care than the average American citizen does," Ensign said.

That Ensign praised the Club Med atmosphere at Gitmo comes as no surprise. John Boehner (R-OH), Duncan Hunter (R-CA), Mel Martinez (R-FL), Mike Huckabee (R-AR) and Dick Cheney are just a few of the legion of Republicans who lauded Guantanamo as "more like a Boy Scout camp than it is a prison camp" and "if anything, it's too nice."

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Oh boy, where to begin? Tweety asks Duncan Hunter about John McCain's chances in the general election after a new NY Times poll came out saying that Obama has a 13 pt lead: 52-39. Hunter says McCain was way down before and while not eloquent, he knows how to spell the word "win" and his foreign policy background is a winning issue. Typical surrogate talk and then Matthews brought up the fact that the Rick Davis-led campaign never focused on Iraq, but instead hit the very petty, low brow personal attack points that we've seen many times before.

Matthews: ....all these diversions they've used. The fact that he might be anti-American...this whole thing about socialist. Joe the plumber. What's that got to do with the security issue you say?

Hunter: I think John is wrong in that case. I think he has been tested. He was tested on Iraq. And here was a guy with great teeth, great speaking style, excellent politician and a superb debater, but when it came to the major issues...

Matthews:...we just heard from Congressman Hunter that the winning piece of this man's vocabulary, the winning piece of his resume is that he has a nice smile, he has good teeth. Is that your assessment of Barack Obama, he's the first African American with a real shot to be President of the United States and is 13 points ahead of his Republican rival, that he has good teeth?

Hunter: Also a good debater and very eloquent.

Sounds like Duncan Hunter is describing an award winning horse. Even Matthews caught on and when he called Hunter on the "teeth" remark, Hunter didn't try to say he misspoke, only that Obama is a good debater and very eloquent.

Putting New Hampshire in perspective, a commenter at Street Prophets pointed out early last night,

With about 10-11% reporting...Hillary has more than twice as many votes as McCain...Obama has far more than twice what Romney has...Edwards is nearing three times Huckabee's numbers...Giuliani's with a handful more than Richardson...Paul has twice Kucinich...[and] Grampa Fred is beating Duncan Hunter by more than 2 to 1!

However… write-in’s are beating Fred.

Open Thread below...

Last week, at the debate for Republican presidential candidates, Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-Calif.) made the ridiculous claim that U.S. troops and their families are, by their very nature, conservative. “[M]ost Americans, most kids who leave that — that breakfast table and go and serve in the military and make that corporate decision with their family — most of them are conservatives.”

That certainly fits in with the conventional wisdom. We've all heard the narrative -- there's a tie between the Republican Party and the military. The troops and their families prefer the GOP to Democrats.

Fortunately, that's just not true.

Laura Rozen:

What do you bet that duPont found other, as yet undiscovered, off the book ways to reward Hunter -- and perhaps Cox and Cunningham too -- for their loyal support and earmarks for the worthless plane that couldn't fly, that the Pentagon didn't want?

The Left Coaster has more on Duncan Hunter's Personal Science Project.

The third GOP debate is underway and the subject quickly moved to Iran and nuclear weapons. Candidate Duncan Hunter stated that he believes the the U.S. has the right to preemptively strike Iran to prevent them from developing nuclear weapons, using nuclear weapons, if necessary. While Rudy Giuliani thought conventional weapons would do the trick, he wouldn't take any options off the table. Rudy then jumps off into fantasy land, claiming Iran can deliver a nuclear missile even though the studies from UN inspectors who have actually been in Iran have said that Iran is years away from having that capability. Then he bizarrely accuses the Democrats of living in the Cold War era of the 1990s. (Earth to Rudy: hard to give Reagan credit for ending the Cold War if we were still living it in the 90's) Closing strong, Giuliani then attempts to link it all to the alleged "terror plots" at Fort Dix and JFK (see Keith Olbermann's commentary for how valid the threats were) proclaiming it's a real war, not a bumper sticker.

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