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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.

(h/t Heather.)

One of the things I learned early on in my journalism career is that words have power. They also have consequences. Fortunately, I have a conscience. I credit my Catholic upbringing for that.

I found so much to admire in the concepts of social justice and compassion with which I was raised, and even though I'm not longer a Catholic, I still take exception to the way these so-called Catholics distort the faith.

It infuriates me when I see people like these distort and twist the truth about healthcare reform - for what reason? I mean, they're pretty much the scrubs of the right wing, a bunch of has-beens and wannabes. Do they do it to feed their egos? To keep the cocktail-party invitations flowing? Let's look at this group of "moral" leaders who are fighting so desperately to save the elderly from socialist liberal euthanasia.

It's mostly older people who watch "The McLaughlin Group," I think, so the antics of these clowns mostly fly below the radar - just like talk radio.

John McLaughlin is the former Jesuit priest who cared so deeply about God, he quit the order rather than give up his speechwriting gig with Richard Nixon.

Pat Buchanan, a good friend of McLaughlin's and the Nixon speechwriter who got him the job, is a product of Jesuit schools and presents himself as a Catholic so conservative, he still goes to the Latin Mass. He has occasional lapses in which he actually tells the truth, but these are so few and far between, it's not worth mentioning. Pat is generally is so willing to distort reality, it's a given. If Pat vehemently tells you the sky is blue, stick your head out the window and check.

Monica Crowley, another Nixon employee, is a Fox News "analyst" - i.e. someone paid to twist and mold the truth into something to inflames passions against Democrats. (By the way, her sister, Dr. Jocelyn Crowley, is married to Hannity's former co-host, Alan Colmes.) Apparently she's pretty good at distorting truth:

Crowley was accused of plagiarism in 1999 for an article she authored titled "The Day Nixon Said Goodbye" that appeared in the The Wall Street Journal. After accusations of plagiarism from at least one reader, an acknowledgement of "striking similarities" between Crowley's article and an article by Paul Johnson titled "In Praise of Richard Nixon" in the October 1988 issue of Commentary Magazine was published. A Journal editor stated, "Had we known of the parallels, we would not have published the article."

Crowley acknowledged the similarity between the pieces, and said "there are clear similarities in the language. I have wracked my brain, and I can honestly tell you that I have not read [Johnson's article]."

An article in Slate Magazine detailed five specific passages in Crowley's article that contained identical language and phraseology to Johnson's piece, and concluded that "it just isn't possible for Crowley not to have read Johnson's article."

There is something called "The Ten Commandments," and Christians generally agree that it's important. John, Pat, Monica and their ilk simply ignore any of those commandments that are politically inconvenient ("Thou shalt not bear false witness") or they apply them selectively ("Thou shalt not kill" only applies to fetuses, and not Iraqi children). They dig out obscure parts of the Old Testament they insist mean Jesus condemned gay people, and yet they still eat shrimp and lobster - condemned in the same book of the Bible.

We already know they will do or say anything that will further their political cause and erode ours.

So spare me the wide eyes and crocodile tears. No one's suggesting we off old people, and they know it. They're just so shameless and cynical, they couldn't resist.

Everyone knows if liberals really believed in killing people when they're no longer productive, people like McLaughlin and Buchanan wouldn't be here.

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John McLaughlin uses Pat Buchanan's fear mongering framing for his question on end of life counseling to begin this segment. Buchanan claims that to save money, a government official is going to visit your house if you're ill, and suggest suicide to you. Of course nitwit Monica Crowley is happy to chime right like the good little right winger that she is and agrees with him.

Eleanor Clift attempts to inject some sanity back into the conversation, but isn't helped by her supposed "liberal" (cough) on the panel, Mort Zuckerman who starts railing about whether people ought to have a right to kill themselves if they're in chronic pain, thus throwing a little red meat back to Buchanan and Crowley. Pat literally goes into a hissy fit about the government wanting to kill people to save money before the segment is over.

Does anyone else think that Pat Buchanan has just had a complete mental meltdown since President Obama got elected? Watching this guy is like looking at a car wreck in slow motion. I keep waiting for his head to literally explode on the air one of these days.

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Eleanor Clift and Clarence Page (two actual liberals for once) beat back host John McLaughlin and pundits Rich Lowry and Monica Crowley's patented GOP talking points on health care reform on The McLaughlin Group. Clift gets in the best line of the day when Lowry tried to claim that a private option would put the insurance companies out of business. Lo and behold, Lowry and Co. seemed to be reading right off of this list of health care reform myths.

Lowry: That's the entire point. Unless this is stripped down radically, that's what will happen, and that's what the liberals want.

McLaughlin: Eleanor.

Clift: There will be 40 to 50 million new customers and a lot of those customers are customers that the private market doesn't even want, and there's plenty to go around that you can coexist with add-ons, and the government is providing, is going to provide a subsidy, a very basic plan and people will buy extras. The insurance industry will flourish but, I'm with Clarence. Since when is this about protecting the insurance industry? This is about protecting people's health care. They're making a ton of money. [..]

Lowry: Do you want your insurer to go out of business, Clarence? Do you want your insurer to go out of business? You want to get dropped from your employer coverage?

Page: My coverage has been going down, Rich, and so have a lot of other people's and I'm not in bad shape....

It was pretty amusing watching Clift and Page basically get Lowry and Crowley to admit the truth: The GOP only wants to protect the private insurance companies. Even if it led to something close to single payer as Clift notes, it would not mean the insurance companies are out of business. To the horror of conservatives and the conserva-Dems who are in the pockets of the insurance industries, it only would mean they'd be making a hell of a lot less money for basic health care and offering supplemental plans to those who could afford it instead.

It was also nice to see someone take one of these talking heads to task when they bring up the Lewin Group and let them know that "non-partisan" doesn't mean "unbiased". I noticed Lowry didn't have much of a response when Clift called him on that nonsense other than to try to keep talking and pretend he didn't hear her.

I'd personally prefer that Congress focused their energies on Single Payer (as we all know, including The Lewin Group, that makes the most sense)--as would everyone who contributes at this site--but that unfortunately is not the political climate we're living in right now. Until we clean up the legalized bribery going on with corporations and lobbyists buying and selling our members of Congress, this is going to be a huge uphill battle. Until that reform happens, if ever, we need to hold their feet to the fire to do the right thing.

Continue reading »

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Pat Buchanan continues hurling insults from his racist screed at Human Events at Sonia Sotomayor, this time on PBS's The McLaughlin Group. At least Eleanor Clift was there to attempt to keep him in check. Here are Buchanan's remarks from the segment.

Oh no she did not. She has said this six or seven times. I take the woman at her word. I believe her. I don't know why she didn't come out and defend all the experience she had, she thinks the richness of her experience had, she thought she would be an even better judge. Instead John what she did is she sat there and gave this rehearsed, robotic performance, you know, not being engaged.

It was like a junior in college who just wants to get through the oral exams on a pass fail basis. He doesn't want to get high honors, and that's what she did and quite frankly I think she diminished herself as a figure because she's a very passionate and intense person. She does believe in race based and ethic based advancement and promotion for purposes of diversity. And she didn't come off that way. I think she came off basically as look, this is Mr. Obama's choice as a Justice, and if that's what you want fine. And here's a guy, Obama, who voted against John Roberts to the Supreme Court and appointed this lady who really does not look like she fits up to Roberts' standards.

[.....]

Well, here's the problem in my view with it, and where I think the Republicans did a good job in some cases. Her whole life, I mean she goes to Princeton, first thing she does she sends a letter to HEW that they don't have enough Hispanic professors. They bring her in affirmative action to Yale. You know, they attack the Yale administration. She denounces the Bakke decision with a group of students. Her whole life....according to the New York Times!!! (crosstalk) But is she going to rule that way on the Supreme Court?

[.....]

But Mort, she comes off as Sam Alito's little sister. A strict constructionist, and I'm you know, oh yeah this law and order type. That is not why she was picked. She's a passionate Latino woman who is a liberal and I think frankly I would like to see more of her be herself.

[.....]

She'll be good for Republicans on the court in this sense because I think she is really the other, the other Sotomayor, and not the one we saw there. I think she's going to be passionate, intense. I think she's going to come down hard on affirmative action. That's what we want. If you've got a liberal judge on the court let them be like Wild Bill Douglas.

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From The McLaughlin Group March 27, 2009.

McLaughlin: Question. Are these bailouts sufficient to restore the economy I ask you Monica?

Crowley: No because you put out a consecutive list of companies, institutions, sectors that have required some money over the last couple of months. In just about every single one of those cases there was a redundancy there. AIG coming back. The auto industry coming back. What we have poured into all of these sectors has not nearly been enough and it will not be enough. This is like spitting into the ocean. It's not going to be enough to restore the economy and if we keep going down the path of having the government jackboot on the private sector, the private sector which will be the engine of this growth (crosstalk).

Clift: The government jackboot on the private sector...uh the private sector had its jackboots on American taxpayers for a good long while and we had companies like AIG basically operating like a hedge fund selling a little insurance on the side. And it is totally appropriate that we now try to get a handle on the new financial world that is...it's a titanic struggle between the Treasury Department and the financial community and who's going to run the economy.

It evolves into one of the typical shout fests The McLaughlin Group is known for. All but John McLaughlin and Monica Crowley on the panel agree that there needs to be some government regulation over these investment companies and hedge funds.

McLaughlin and Crowley both think the free market should rule at all times. Circumstances be damned and let the buyer beware. Crowley also said that the FDIC didn't do its job. Later in the show Eleanor Clift pointed out the flaw in that argument, as in they didn't have jurisdiction or they may have come in already and seized some of these companies. Somehow I doubt that will stop Crowley from repeating the line the next time she's on Fox News.

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On The McLaughlin Group, John McLaughlin starts off his panel discussion by citing the nonexistent CBO report debunked by the Huffington Post, but since that is the Republican talking point du jour McLaughlin's not going to let a few facts get in the way of his spin.

The other thing that really irks me about his show is that he constantly puts conservatives on the "left" side of the panel with Eleanor Clift. What, you can't find even one milk toast liberal to fill that seat John? This week's choice was Mort Zuckerman. Four conservatives (well three actually and one batshit crazy wingnut in the form of Monica Crowley) and one liberal. Fair and balanced huh?

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During a panel discussion on The McLaughlin Group Monica Crowley claims that George Bush and the UAW were conspiring together to make sure that the unions didn't have to make concessions and that the only reason that most Americans oppose the bailout is because it's not a bailout of the auto industry, but the union instead. George Bush is in bed with the unions. I've heard it all now.

December 12, 2008 PBS McLaughlin Group

Heather: Pat Buchanan is correct that the Southern Republicans are doing their best to kill the last of the manufacturing base in this country. Pat Buchanan and Eleanor Clift both agree that Bush is doing the right thing by considering using some of the TARP money to bail out the auto industry. Hell has surely frozen over since I heard Eleanor Clift use the words "George Bush is my new best friend". Never thought I'd see the day that happened. Monica Crowley as usual has lots of criticism with little else to offer. One last note on this. Is it a pathetic day when Pat Buchanan is speaking out more forcefully about what's going on than the Democrats in the Congress are? Every Democrat should be borrowing Pat's words here and calling the southern Republicans the "Toyota Republicans" as well and repeat it until it sticks.

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From The McLaughlin Group, John McLaughlin cites a study by the Pew Research Center on the percentage of negative stories about McCain and asks his panel of the panel of Eleanor Clift, Derek McGinty, Monica Crowley and Pat Buchanan if it means the press is in the bag for Obama and of course he, Monica Crowley and Pat Buchanan all agree that they are. Monica Crowley thinks some poll of the White House press corps after the Presidential elections which shows most of them voted for Democrats proves the bias. Pat Buchanan thinks there is also some "white guilt" going on and that the New York Times covering Cindy McCain's past problems with prescription pills and not covering Obama's cocaine "problem" is the proof. Of course it couldn't possibly have anything to do with McCain doing anything to deserve the negative coverage. Oh no...