Breitbart is carrying on in his usual fashion. Did you know he's Juan Williams now? FWIW, Alaska's KTVA has denied all claims made by Palin and Andy.

I was asked to go on ABC's Arizona event with Breitbart and I declined. The Plum Line makes a good case on why this matters.

Time and time again, Breitbart has shown himself willing to manipulate information in order to make easily falsifiable claims, a pattern that has most news organizations displaying greater caution in adopting his "scoops."

ABC News' decision to host Breitbart isn't a matter of ideological balance, since there are conservative media critics just as partisan who aren't as prone to distorting the truth who might have been tapped.

In this context, ABC News' decision to host Breitbart, in any capacity, is a political act that extends credibility where none has been earned. It legitimizes a figure the mainstream press should have learned by now to be suspicious of. It sends the message to other media organizations that Breitbart is someone who can be trusted not to deliberately mislead an audience that is presumably coming to ABC News to be informed about matters of politics and public policy, when evidence suggests the opposite is true. Most importantly, it's the first step in Breitbart's journey back to mainstream legitimacy.

And Kos knocks down more garbage from a man who is a vicious race-baiter.

From the lying sack of crap, Andrew Breitbart, on being invited on ABC News:

Apparently, a Daily Kos blogger has also been asked to participate. Daily Kos, as many of you may know, has been widely discredited for spreading malicious falsehoods and political extremism

Ha ha ha. No, we're not going to be on ABC News website this election night. We have our own website to focus on. Nice try, trying to drag us into this, Andrew, but why would we want to share a stage with a pathological liar?

I also find it funny that Breitbart is going around bragging about being an analyst, while ABC News furiously claims otherwise. Memo to ABC News: You invite a pathological liar and paranoid schizophrenic on your network, and he will lie. Lesson learned?

Tuesday will be a busy time for this website and truth and facts do matter to all of us here. Not so much with Andrew. He's been helping to drag this country backwards in race relations since he began to selectively edit audio and video. I made the mistake of doing a panel with him for a small charity event months ago for the LA Weekly and he turned it into a farce. So I won't be part of this event. He's not interested in policy or analysis -- only smears, racial resentment and distortions. And here's some info about his pal, Dana Loesch.

Digby caught Spitzer calling Loesch out on her nonsensical spin, which he described as "hoax and hokum from the Tea Party."

I think Spitzer did the best thing -- just call it gibberish, hokum and a hoax, which it is. If you grant this crap any validity at all, you've already lost the argument.

Did Nancy Skinner Question Karl Rove’s Patriotism? Angry Bear

Cliff May thinks so:

On Fox a moment ago, liberal radio talk show host Nancy Skinner said that Karl Rove “is endangering our national security” – her short-hand reference to the Wilson/Plame brouhaha. So the left, which is always shouting: “How dare you question my patriotism!” to people who are not questioning their patriotism is now questioning the patriotism of Karl Rove and President Bush. Nice twist. This has become the left’s new refrain and a useful one it is since the left has long been seen by many Americans as not trustworthy on national security.

Of course, Mr. May questions the patriotism of liberals when there is no basis for doing so. It would seem that he and John Podhoretz want to give us ample reason to question their commitment to national security when it conflicts with their partisan garbage. I only regret that I was not watching FNC for their reaction to Ms. Skinner’s comment.

Digby has this on Roberts: "In case anyone is wondering if Roberts really is a partisan hack or not, Jeffrey Toobin's book "Too Close To Call" sheds some light on that subject:

The president's first two nominations to the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia curcuit --- generally regarded as the stepping-stone to the Supreme Court --- went to Miguel Estrada and John G Roberts Jr., who had played important behind-the scenes roles in the Florida litigation."

By the way, it's a great book.

. Powerline: The Great Unraveling

Powerline :A Sad Day

"What I don't understand is why this tragic case should be an occasion for the partisan hatred which currently bedevils our public life.

" I don't know how to account for it, unless one concludes that for some liberals, politics is about hate, period."

A picture of right wing zealots calling for Jeb Bush's head, yet it's liberals who hate.

Powerline again:

Why? Maybe they have "fallen half in love with death," as Noonan suggests? Or maybe they are just frustrated by losing elections, seeing the tide turn in Iraq and elsewhere in the Middle East (must Terri die for Bush's "sins"?), etc. Whatever the case, it makes for a sad and sorry spectacle.

A Christian conservative judge (with a price on his head) backed by the Conservative lead Supreme Court is ruling on this case, yet it's Bush hating liberals that are some how calling the shots. They should take a look in the mirror to find where the real hate is coming from.

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Rupert Murdoch believes Fox News is handily winning the cable ratings wars because all the rest of the media are so liberal.

He was on Neil Cavuto's show to brag about his newest reports on quarterly profits, and explained his company's success can be explained thus:

Murdoch: Well, I think as far as Fox News goes, it's very simple. You know, ah, it's very powerful, it's very good, and it's very balanced. And everybody else, every newspaper other than ours, and every -- it may be an overgeneralization, but by far most newspapers -- and certainly the other television networks sort of are, um, on one side, the liberal side of things, we're -- I think the population of this country is pretty worried about its direction, and you know, they turn to Fox News.

But only a few breaths before this, Murdoch bragged about all the money being brought in to Fox by James Cameron's Avatar -- about $200 million this quarter alone, with more on the way (apparently the DVD/Blu-Ray release is really raking it in).

I dunno about you, but having watched Avatar a few times, one cannot describe its political POV as anything other than "liberal." Certainly there's no question that Cameron himself is one.

So if Fox News is winning because it's conservative, why are most of his company profit's actually being generated by a liberal movie?

I think a better explanation of Fox's success is equally simple: Murdoch has discovered that news sells better as entertainment, and partisan propaganda is infinitely more entertaining than straight news. But YMMV.

US VS. THEM: This is one reason I am proud to be a Democrat:

"ABC News conducted a bipartisan experiment in which producers and volunteers went to rallies for each candidate wearing the other party's T-shirt, and found that each campaign had its own methods of preventing the shirts from being seen.

A second team of ABC News producers waited until entering Space Coast stadium before showing its Kerry-Edwards T-shirts [at a Bush rally], but was still quickly spotted and ordered out by [Lance "Chip"] Borman [a Bush campaign worker and attorney who worked for the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq], who identified himself as working for the Republican National Committee.

He said the rally of some 18,000 people was a "private event," and it made no difference that producers Christine Romo and Jessica Wang had tickets and remained silent and respectful.

"But you wore the shirts; you wore the shirts," Borman said. "And honestly, if you would have come without the shirts and sat quietly, you would have had a fun time and enjoyed it, but I mean it's not that kind of event." He then instructed the sheriff's deputies to escort the ABC News team out to the parking lot.

A Kerry staffer at an Oct. 24 Kerry rally in Boca Raton, Fla., told Bush-Cheney T-shirt wearers that the campaign held a permit to rent the site and could remove anyone who made a disturbance.

"We hold the right to remove you, but other than that, enjoy and hopefully at the end of the event you'll want to wear a Kerry T-shirt," he said.

And at Kerry's Boca Raton rally, one of the faithful Democrats could be seen calming a woman upset at the sight of the Bush-Cheney T-shirts.

"Feel proud that we let them in," he said. "That's what democracy is all about, that's what we're fighting for."

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When news came that Obama had been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, I looked at my husband and said, "just watch, the wingnuts will lose it over this." And sure enough, I was right. But what threw me for a loop was how nakedly partisan CBS's Chip Reid was in attacking Obama for having the audacity to win the Nobel Prize, something even the great St. Ronnie didn't do:

REID: I mean, most Democrats have praised it, and most Republicans have said, you have got to be kidding me -- Ronald Reagan didn't get one, but Barack Obama, nominated 12 days after he was sworn in, gets a Nobel Peace Prize. And the fear among some, even some Democrats, is that this is going to widen the partisan divide and make things even more difficult to accomplish on every front.

Really? Even more difficult than reflexively fighting *every* *single* Obama agenda item now? How is that possible?

It's touching, isn't it, to hear Chip Reid's concern that this will widen the partisan divide? After all, past winners have included Al Gore and Jimmy Carter...obviously the Nobel committee loves them some Democrats.

But here's the thing that all these insulated Beltway Villagers continually forget: Outside of DC, life is more than Republican vs. Democrat, something that Gibbs gently tries to suggest to Reid:

GIBBS: I'll leave the pundicizing to the pundits. The notion that somehow this is going to more greatly divide America, you know, I think it should be mandatory that pundits spend a certain amount of their days each year outside of the friendly confines of the viewership of the Washington, D.C., media market.

Of course, that goes right over Reid's head. For Reid, this is all about dismissing the Nobel committee -- in Norway, mind you, and not subject to the mind-numbing partisan reduction that Reid seems to breathe as oxygen -- as some liberal organization. He just can't get his head wrapped around the fact the Ronald Reagan -- the man who ended the Cold War! -- was never awarded the Peace Prize. As my friend, Steve Benen says:

A few thoughts here. First, when White House correspondents from major news outlets start sounding like members of Grover Norquist's "We Love Reagan" fan club, it's not a positive development.

Second, the notion that Reagan "helped bring the Cold War to an end" is, at best, a dubious proposition.

Actually, I think Chip Reid is unintentionally letting us into his psyche more than he realizes. He's continually been a go-to guy for Republican talking points for years. He routinely criticizes Democrats for things he lets pass by Republicans and uncritically passes on Republican attacks without context or fact-checking. And here again, he mouths the GOP mentality.

But think about it: if the Nobel Peace Prize only supports liberal causes, isn't Chip Reid admitting that peace is liberal? Then we need never look to conservatives again, because they will never bring peace. Right, Chip?

Transcript below the fold

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Tweety's as aggressive as I've ever seen him with these organized town hall hijackings. Tonight he had Max Pappas, VP for Public Policy at FreedomWorks, the astroturf "non-partisan" group founded by Dick Armey and pushing the healthcare disruptions, and Gerald Shea from the AFL-CIO, whose members will now be turning out to attend the healthcare forums. (The low-key Shea mostly sat back and watched as Matthews went on the attack.)

"You're basically plotting at stuff," Matthews accused, stabbing the air with his pen. "Are you astroturf, or are you grassroots?"

"We're not astroturf, we don't do that," Pappas said. "Ours are all volunteers." He pointed out that "their signs are hand-painted." (Yeah, because no astroturf operation ever turns out hand-painted signs to hand out.)

"You want it both ways. You want to be seen as compassionate without doing anything," he told Pappas.

I swear, I could forgive Chris Matthews every dumb thing he's ever said for the pitbull approach he took with this corporatist weasel. You go, Chris!

Wow, it's going down to the wire with many NO votes...207-226 right now.

The Market is tanking badly too...And Newt Gingrich issues a statement that I heard on MSNBC which says he would reluctantly vote for it...Hmmm....

UPDATE: It failed....No one trusts Bush and McCain did nothing....

This mess shows that Conservatism is a failure. I know we are dismayed by our politicians, but don't forget that under conservative leadership, we've had the total collapse of our financial sector and we can never stop saying that.

And if the media tries to portray Republicans as hero figures I'll start my own drinking game.

Crying Boehner is saying it's Pelosi's fault because she gave a partisan speech. What jokers. A speech made them vote against it. They are saying it is not a partisan crisis, but an economic one. Sure---that was caused by Republican/McCain hunger for deregulation.

Will McCain suspend his campaign again and try to cancel Palin's debate?

Unbelievable. Wesley Clark just destroys the media narrative that being a prisoner of war is somehow the "experience" necessary to be Commander in Chief, much to the dumbfounding of host Bob Schieffer. It's a fantastic appearance--much like this earlier one that Jesse at GroupNews recounts:

The media simply couldn't argue the POINT, which Clark made clear without saying word one directly about them to anyone with eyes to see and ears to hear, that they have been lazy goof offs who are brutally biased for McCain, against Obama, and are not doing their damn jobs. Or they would already have reported this obviously well-grounded assessment/interpretation about McCain's national security ability -- "Largely Untested and Untried" -- over which Clark was taking them to school. They couldn't argue the actual point. It was that clear, that obvious, that elegant a takedown. In effect, Clark's hit on McCain took out two targets with one shot.

So how does CNN characterize this tête-à-tête? That Wesley Clark was SWIFTBOATING John McCain!

Rick Sanchez's lead-in to his next segment just now on CNN:

"Wesley Clark tried to Swiftboat John McCain today."

I'm liveblogging. He goes on to say:

"It will reverberate for weeks. Wes Clark tried to diss McCain's military record, that his service doesn't qualify him to be president."

Rick Sanchez is mad.

No, not mad...just a huge partisan hack. Now that "swift-boating" has entered the vernacular, let us remember that the original SwiftBoat Veterans for "Truth" were for the most part neither in their hope to take down Kerry's candidacy. Has Wesley Clark in some way made any untrue allegations in saying that being a POW and a non-combat era fighter pilot does not necessarily qualify you for the highest elected office in the land?

Iraq veteran and political activist Rafael Noboa adds his 2 cents here.