From The Washington Independent:

At a briefing for conservative bloggers at the Heritage Foundation today, Rep. Michelle Bachmann (R-Minn.) dismissed MSNBC as a network neither she nor “most of the American people” paid attention to.

“Quite honestly I don’t even know anything about MSNBC,” said Bachmann. “It’s not a network that I watch, and most of the American people agree with that assessment. They aren’t watching it either. And that’s why Fox’s ratings — I mean, it’s like, CNN, CNBC, MSNBC combined. I think Fox even exceeded one of the major networks last week. They’re on the ascendency.”

Bachmann praised conservative bloggers for getting out the truth past the filters of the old media. “I didn’t fear my own editorial boards in Minneapolis-St. Paul when I lived there,” she said. “I’m certainly not going to fear the likes of Keith Olbermann.”

h/t The Political Carnival

Paul Krugman says that the main Republican strategy to fight climate change legislation will be to attack it as hurting the economy:

By 2050, when the emissions limit would be much tighter, the burden would rise to 1.2 percent of income. But the budget office also predicts that real G.D.P. will be about two-and-a-half times larger in 2050 than it is today, so that G.D.P. per person will rise by about 80 percent. The cost of climate protection would barely make a dent in that growth. And all of this, of course, ignores the benefits of limiting global warming.

So where do the apocalyptic warnings about the cost of climate-change policy come from?

Are the opponents of cap-and-trade relying on different studies that reach fundamentally different conclusions? No, not really. It’s true that last spring the Heritage Foundation put out a report claiming that Waxman-Markey would lead to huge job losses, but the study seems to have been so obviously absurd that I’ve hardly seen anyone cite it.

Instead, the campaign against saving the planet rests mainly on lies.

Thus, last week Glenn Beck — who seems to be challenging Rush Limbaugh for the role of de facto leader of the G.O.P. — informed his audience of a “buried” Obama administration study showing that Waxman-Markey would actually cost the average family $1,787 per year. Needless to say, no such study exists.

But we shouldn’t be too hard on Mr. Beck. Similar — and similarly false — claims about the cost of Waxman-Markey have been circulated by many supposed experts.

A year ago I would have been shocked by this behavior. But as we’ve already seen in the health care debate, the polarization of our political discourse has forced self-proclaimed “centrists” to choose sides — and many of them have apparently decided that partisan opposition to President Obama trumps any concerns about intellectual honesty.

So here’s the bottom line: The claim that climate legislation will kill the economy deserves the same disdain as the claim that global warming is a hoax. The truth about the economics of climate change is that it’s relatively easy being green.

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From AC360, David Gergen takes Heritage Foundation and Townhall contributor Peter Brookes to task over the release of journalists Laura Ling and Euna Lee, and whether the American government gave anything up in the negotiations to get them back to the United States.

I think it's about time we're talking instead of the aggressive tone we've taken under the Bush administration, where the first reflex is to threaten to drop a bomb on someone's head, or label them part of an "Axis of Evil", and then wonder why they might want weapons of their own.

Of course nothing the Obama administration does is going to satisfy any of the right wingers out there, especially if it involves Bill Clinton to boot. Had this been St. Ronnie making this deal, they'd have been singing his praises to the heavens.

HILL: They are home now.

Digging deeper, though, on the global implications of how they got home, what Tom Foreman was talking about before the break. Of course, this meeting all happened at a time when North Korea hasn't hesitated to test nukes and missiles and on the heels of news that three more Americans are now being held in a country America also does not have a diplomatic relationship with, Iran.

So, does this pump up one dictator and perhaps embolden others?

We're joined now by senior political analyst David Gergen, and Peter Brookes, former Pentagon official in the Bush administration and also currently with the Heritage Foundation.

Gentlemen, good to have both of you with us.

PETER BROOKES, SENIOR FELLOW, HERITAGE FOUNDATION: Good evening.

HILL: David, I want to start with you. It -- it's almost impossible to ignore the message many people are saying this sends to North Korea and, for that matter, to other nations, as we just mentioned, who may be on shaky ground with the U.S., that, the next time they have U.S. citizens in their custody, they can use them as bargaining chips for perhaps access to high-level U.S. politicians, essentially rewarding bad behavior.

So, David, how does the U.S. keep that from happening?

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HOURS DECLINE FOR EMPLOYED

"The humanitarian benefit of unemployment insurance also causes people to look with less intensity for a new job." - James Sherk, labor economist at the conservative Heritage Foundation.

Don't you love it? Record layoffs, hiring contractions everywhere, and the wingnuts blame people who can't find the non-existent jobs. Or, even worse, the people who can't afford to work for $5 an hour. Geeze, they're all about economic self-interest: "What should I do - keep the unemployment checks that at least cover the bills, or take a minimum wage job that puts me in the red?" Wouldn't you think they'd get that simple equation?

These people are either nuts, or just plain amoral. What do you think?

People who still have jobs are faring worse than at any time since the Great Depression, a USA TODAY analysis of employment data found. Furloughs, pay cuts and reduced hours are taking a toll on workers who so far have escaped job cuts.

The employed worked fewer hours in May — an average of just 33.1 hours a week — than at any time since the Bureau of Labor Statistics began counting in 1964. Part-time work is at a record high. Overtime is at a record low.

The magnitude of job losses — 6 million jobs gone, a 9.4% unemployment rate — has overshadowed the groundbreaking nature of the nation's employment troubles, especially the financial decline of those still working.

"You can rip a whole chapter out of your Economics 101 textbook because the job market isn't behaving the way we were taught," says David Rosenberg, chief economist at money manager Gluskin Sheff and Associates.

Even working people have less to spend.

Businesses cut total wages at a 6.2% annual rate in the first quarter. Federal, state and local governments increased spending on wages by 6.1%, offsetting some of the decline.

The use of pay cuts — the last choice at most companies after hiring freezes, salary freezes and layoffs — shows how the recession is unlike any since the Depression, says Laura Sejen of compensation consultant Watson Wyatt.

"The recession has been broad, deep and long. No one has been immune," she says.

Baby boomers— 79 million people born from 1946 to 1964 — have been hit particularly hard.

Unemployment rates for workers 45 and older have soared to their highest level since at least 1948, when the government started tracking it.

Job losses for baby boomers come at a difficult time: during the traditional peak earning years, as retirement nears.

"It's hard for an older worker to compete in the job market with younger guys and women. The jobs may not pay what they were making," says Austin Sargent, an economist with Utah's Department of Workforce Services.

The average time a person has been out of work is at a post-Depression record of 22.5 weeks.

Congress' approval of higher and longer unemployment benefits may contribute to the extra time spent between jobs, says James Sherk, a labor economist at the conservative Heritage Foundation.

"The humanitarian benefit of unemployment insurance also causes people to look with less intensity for a new job," he says.

Because I just don't think you can see Jon Stewart smack down Tucker often enough. Have I properly whetted your appetite for some serious mocking? Because this is just laugh-out-loud funny:

Pundit Tucker Carlson publicly announced Tuesday that a right-leaning news site resembling the Huffington Post he's been planning will go live within weeks.

Carlson will launch TheDailyCaller.com, which he said would focus on reporting on the Obama administration and "adding facts to the conversation."

*snicker* Oh...facts. You know, I've watched Carlson for way more years than it should be healthy to do so and I've come across very few times where Carlson has had even a glancing grasp on facts.

"We are a general-interest newspaper-format style site," Carlson told conservative bloggers at the Heritage Foundation on Tuesday. "There just aren't enough people covering this administration and telling the people what's going on."

Carlson, a former conservative and libertarian pundit (most notably on CNN), touted his site as a home for basic reporting.

"Tell the truth, and be accurate," Carlson said of the venture's goals. "It's very important to live up to the basic standards of journalism."

ROFL....basic standards of journalism? You mean the kind that discloses that your dad's position on the Libby Defense Fund while reporting on the Plame outing? Or denies global warming a week after denying that he'd ever been a global warming denier? Or calls Jon Stewart a partisan hack for daring to show Jim Cramer's own videos? That kind of basic standard of journalism?

Carlson said that the site's reporters would share in the profits based on how much traffic is drawn in by their work. He said the site would seek to "drive" the news, similar to the Drudge Report, the Huffington Post, the New York Times, and other major news outlets. (The site's motto, Carlson said, is "every seven minutes," and seeks to be "even faster than Drudge.")

One of these things is not like the other...nice to see Tucker aiming so high.

Predictions of success? Yeah, not so much.

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Fox News Sunday decided to use its "Power Player of the Week" segment to let everyone know just how great the conservative movement is still doing in this country. Their proof? The Heritage Foundation is picking up lots of new membership.

Does anyone think Fox News would ever do a similar piece on a liberal think tank? Or would they rather settle for letting Bill O'Reilly go stalk their members instead?