I found this clip this morning and thought I'd share it here at C&L. The clip is from 1990 when a much younger Rush Limbaugh got owned by the studio audience during his very brief career in television. The crowd eventually becomes so incensed by his nasty attacks on women that he can't get a word in edgewise and they are forced to clear the studio in order for Rush to actually finish the segment.

Rush has challenged President Obama to a debate, but only because he knows there isn't a hope in hell it will ever happen. He knows he wouldn't stand a chance, but that's not going to stop him from rallying his ignorant minions. He cares nothing for his party, this nation or its people, he's out for power,money and fame -- much like the party he now leads.

If you've ever wondered why cowards like Limbaugh, O'Reilly and those of their ilk never debate anyone of any substance, watching this clip will help you understand. When exposed to the average American, hate merchants and propagandists like Rush don't stand a chance.

el Rashbo hasn't changed much in the past twenty years and neither has the GOP. I wouldn't advise the president to lower himself to debate this idiot, but in my heart of hearts...oh, nevermind!

David Vitter will not be investigated.

The Senate Ethics Committee has decided not to investigate Louisiana Senator David Vitter.

The Republican was linked to an elite Washington prostitution ring owned by Deborah Jean Palfrey. Palfrey committed suicide May 1st, two weeks after being convicted of racketeering and money laundering.

The bipartisan ethics panel says it decided against a probe because the conduct occurred before Vitter became a senator. And it says it didn't result in any criminal charges or involve the improper use of his public office or status.

He gets off on a technicality. Wow, another shocker. CREW sums it up nicely:

“The Senate Ethics Committee has once again done what it does best: nothing.

I wonder if the Senate Republicans gave him another standing ovation? That might be something. And poor Mr. Super Tuber just can't get no respect from his buddies.

To be sure, the real outrage in the scandal surrounding trumped up charges against former Alabama Gov. Don Siegelman (D) are the charges themselves. Local Republican officials, in apparent conjunction with Karl Rove, railroaded a sitting governor because he was a Democrat. It was political corruption at its most pernicious.

But if we also take a moment to consider the Alabama media, the decisions of WHNT, the CBS affiliate in northern Alabama, are almost comical in their ineptitude.

In 1955, when WLBT-TV, the NBC affiliate in Jackson, Miss., did not want to run a network report about racial desegregation, it famously hung up the sign: “Sorry, Cable Trouble.” Audiences in northern Alabama might have suspected the same tactics when WHNT-TV, the CBS affiliate, went dark Sunday evening during a “60 minutes” segment that strongly suggested that Don Siegelman, Alabama’s former Democratic governor, was wrongly convicted of corruption last year.

The report presented new evidence that the charges against Mr. Siegelman may have been concocted by politically motivated Republican prosecutors — and orchestrated by Karl Rove. Unfortunately, WHNT had “technical problems” that prevented it from broadcasting a segment (the problems were resolved in time for the next part of the show) that many residents of Alabama would no doubt have found quite interesting.

After initially blaming the glitch on CBS in New York, the affiliate said it learned “upon investigation,” and following a rebuke from the network, that “the problem was on our end.” It re-broadcast the segment at 10 p.m., pitting it against the Academy Awards on rival ABC, before Daniel Day-Lewis won the best actor Oscar. As public criticism grew, it ran it again at 6 p.m. on Monday.

WHNT’s president and general manager assured viewers that “there was no intent whatsoever to keep anyone from seeing the broadcast.”

No, of course not, it was only the most remarkable set of coincidences in modern broadcast history.

Continue reading »

Via The New York Observer:

On Feb. 3, a k a Super Bowl Sunday, in an original News Corp. smorgasbord, reporters from FOX News will be teaming up with reporters from FOX owned and operated stations from around the country for a three hour broadcast event, focusing on—USA! USA!—presidential politics and professional football.

As the anchors toggle back and forth between discussion of the Super Bowl and Super Tuesday, they will chew over political dispatches from FOX Broadcasting reporters from around the country.

FOX Super Sunday will also include a behind-the-scenes look as the action gets underway for the Superbowl. Meanwhile, FOX Business Network's Alexis Glick will offer a peek at the best commercials and the economics behind the biggest sporting event of the year while FOX News correspondents Carl Cameron and Major Garrett will provide live updates from the campaign trail alongside correspondent Bret Baier in Washington, D.C. Read on...

FOXNews hates the fact that Keith Olbermann's popularity has skyrocketed and that he appeared on NBC's Sunday Night Football this season, so I suppose this shouldn't come as much of a surprise. It will be interesting to see just how partisan things get, as of now it doesn't appear as though BillO or Hannity will be involved. Sports fans, what do you think about this mixture of FOXNews and the Super Bowl?

The right's biggest book publisher is apparently having trouble with some of the right's biggest authors. It could get ugly -- and for some of us, entertaining.

Five authors have sued the parent company of Regnery Publishing, a Washington imprint of conservative books, charging that the company deprives its writers of royalties by selling their books at a steep discount to book clubs and other organizations owned by the same parent company.

In a suit filed in United States District Court in Washington yesterday, the authors Jerome R. Corsi, Bill Gertz, Lt. Col. Robert (Buzz) Patterson, Joel Mowbray and Richard Miniter state that Eagle Publishing, which owns Regnery, “orchestrates and participates in a fraudulent, deceptively concealed and self-dealing scheme to divert book sales away from retail outlets and to wholly owned subsidiary organizations within the Eagle conglomerate.”

[Richard] Miniter said, “It suddenly occurred to us that Regnery is making collectively jillions of dollars off of us and paying us a pittance.” He added: “Why is Regnery acting like a Marxist cartoon of a capitalist company?”

As Kevin Drum put it, "[I]f a conservative is a liberal who's been mugged, what do you call a conservative who's come face to face with the naked face of vertically integrated capitalism?"

Yesterday, Wall Street Journal reporters from across the country staged a surprising walk-out to protest Rupert Murdoch’s impending takeover of the newspaper. After seeing some of the comments Murdoch made to Time’s Eric Pooley, it’s hardly a mystery why WSJ professionals are worried.

“CNN is pretty consistently on the left, if you look at their choice of stories, what they play up. It’s not what they say. It’s what they highlight.” (CNN, which is also owned by Time Warner, hotly disputes this charge.) Then he mumbles conspiratorially, “And if you look at our general news, do we put on things which favor the right rather than the left? I don’t know.” Has Murdoch just said what I think he said? Has he flirted with an admission that Fox News skews right? If so, he quickly backs away. “We don’t think we do. We’ve always insisted we don’t. I don’t think we do. Aw, it’s subjective. Neither side admits it.”

Murdoch is usually more careful than this. “Neither side admits” what, exactly? Murdoch didn’t say. Then again, he didn’t have to.

In the meantime, Bill Moyers is weighing in on the pending sale: “Rupert Murdoch has told the Bancrofts he’ll not meddle with reporting. But he’s accustomed to using journalism as a personal spittoon,” Moyers says. “His worst offense with Fox News is not even its baldly partisan agenda. Far worse is the travesty he’s made of its journalism."

Paul Krugman is weighing in, too. This may seem like a business story regarding one major corporation dealing with a different major corporation. The stakes are higher than that.

John Amato: Let's not forget that Murdoch already admitted manipulating the news in Davos...

I knew talk radio in this country skewed heavily to the far-right, but I had no idea it was this bad.

While progressive talk is making inroads on commercial stations, right-wing talk reigns supreme on America’s airwaves. Some key findings:

* In the spring of 2007, of the 257 news/talk stations owned by the top five commercial station owners, 91 percent of the total weekday talk radio programming was conservative, and only 9 percent was progressive.

* Each weekday, 2,570 hours and 15 minutes of conservative talk are broadcast on these stations compared to 254 hours of progressive talk — 10 times as much conservative talk as progressive talk.

* 76 percent of the news/talk programming in the top 10 radio markets is conservative, while 24 percent is progressive.

That’s astounding. America embraces progressive ideas on almost every issue of national significance, but according to this report (.pdf), prepared by the Center for American Progress and Free Press, progressive ideas have practically been wiped from the radio dials.

CREW:

CREW released, Family Affair, our first-ever analysis of the misuse of power by the chairmen and ranking members of all House of Representative committees and subcommittees, as well as top leadership positions, to financially benefit their family members. The new report names 96 members from 33 states: 44 Democrats and 53 Republicans. Again, these 96 members constitute only those U.S. Representatives holding key positions in the House.

USA Today published an exclusive article about Family Affair in Monday's edition of the paper:

Seventy-two members of the House of Representatives spent $5.1 million in campaign funds to pay relatives or their relatives' companies or employers during the past six years, a liberal watchdog group says in a report to be released Monday.

Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) found nearly $3.5 million in campaign payments to relatives during the past three election cycles, from 2001 to 2006. Campaigns paid about $1.6 million to firms owned by or employing the lawmakers or their relatives, the group found.

While these numbers don't quite work out for me...(new math?)...there's no denying that this is a problem that having a working ethics committee (Tom Delay anyone?) might have curtailed.

(Photo of some yummy looking cafe con leche y Napolitana via Prioggie.)

The Sunday Talking Head line-up is ready for reading this morning.

I can tell you what I will not be watching -- Meet the Press. I can't think of a show less worth viewing with that line-up: Matalin, Carville, Shrum and Murphy. Lordy. They should start calling it "Meet My Cronies." If Mary Matalin opens her mouth and says "no underlying crime" or "he's a good, good man" like she always does and there is no pushback from her husband (ha!) or Bob Shrum (HA!) about the fact that a multiple felony conviction on a matter of national security is not only serious but ought to be punished to the fullest extent of the law for an officer of the court who ought to have known better...I'd say Russert ought to call her on it, but he's owned by Dick Cheney.

So, what is catching your eye this morning on the blogs or in the news? If you missed Bob Geiger's political cartoon round-up, do go take a peek. Great stuff this week.