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McCain wants to make sure no one in the Congress quits paying attention to that propoganda machine out there because his constituents are watching it.

Van Susteren: President Obama said to the Democrats today that they need to stop paying attention to cable news and we didn’t get singled out in particular this time.

McCain: I don’t know they were referring to.

Van Susteren: I think he actually said CNN and Fox News. But he said they need to go out and pay attention to their constituents. Is this President paying attention to his constituents and are those members of the House, both parties paying attention to constituents or not?

McCain: Well, first of all, I advise my friends to go ahead and watch the cable news because our constituents are. Listen…

Van Susteren: I’ll take that plug.

McCain: Yeah. Listen I’ll walk down the street in Phoenix and they’ll say “I saw you on Greta” you know. They may say lousy job but they’ll say “I saw you on Greta”. People watch and people get a lot of their news and information and opinion from cable news. So I would advise members of Congress just the opposite because we want to know what information that your constituents are getting.

Second of all it’s always the way that we have, politicians do in all due respect—shoot the messenger. Shoot the messenger, don’t worry about the message. And the message is that we’re hearing that they’re sick and tired of business as usual. Some polls have the approval rating of Congress in single digits and that you get down to blood relatives and paid staffers. The message I think may come in this November and it might be the most interesting political election that you and I have seen.

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From the President's meeting with the Senate Democrats, Sen. Pat Leahy asks about the GOP obstructing the President's judicial nominations and what can be done about it. As President Obama noted, it's not just judicial nominations that are being stalled, but all of them. He promised to reach out to Republicans and make getting nominations through a "priority". Yeah, like that's going to work. When President Buah wanted to get some horrid appointment through that the Democrats didn't want, like say John Bolton, he did a recess appointment. If the Republicans are going to continue to obstruct the way they have been, I'd like to see President Obama finally say enough is enough and do the same thing. It's not like they aren't going to call him every name in the book anyway for playing nice with them.

From The Daily Show Feb. 1, 2010. Why is it we have to go to The Daily Show to get the best mash up and run down of what happened when the President made mental midgets out of the House Republicans at their retreat?

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Steve Benen made a really great point about this segment from Meet the Press yesterday.

The remarks should make it pretty clear that Republicans have no interest in working with Democrats on finding solutions to pressing policy challenges. But here's the thing that so often gets lost in the discourse: Republicans are the minority party, which means it's their job to oppose the majority's agenda.

[...]

But if Boehner's right about this -- and I believe he is -- then why in the world is it incumbent on the Democratic majority to work with Republicans to find "bipartisan" answers to every question? If Boehner has no intention of "coming together" with Dems in the middle -- a reasonable, albeit rigid, position -- why must the political establishment maintain the fiction that the governing majority is doing something awful unless they bring the discredited minority on board with every proposal? Read on...

Good question Steve. If Republicans can't even be honest with their arguments and have to continue with this "most liberal Senator" lie and calling compromised positions "leftist" and have made it crystal clear that they aren't going to work with Democrats, why are the Democrats constantly propping up the minority when they don't have to?

Transcript below the fold.

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Our own Bluegal and Driftglass with a bonus edition of their weekly podcast weighing in on the President's visit to the Republican retreat and why the media is already ignoring it.

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Sean Hannity and Newt Gingrich attack the President's State of the Union address as angry, whining, self-justifying, not exactly honest, petulant and unpresidential. Project much boys? Of course no mention of the verbal beating the House Repubicans took from the President during their retreat that Fox decided to quit airing after it was obvious it wasn't going well for them. Hannity was too busy doing what looked like a Presidential campaign ad for Newt when they weren't attacking Democrats for the better part of this segment instead.

In case you missed it or if you caught it and just wanted to watch it again, the White House has published the entire video and transcript of President Obama with the House Republicans.

The video is also available here--President Obama Takes Questions at GOP House Issues Conference and there are quite a few ways to either share, embed or download the video there. The full transcript is available here--Remarks by the President at GOP House Issues Conference. Enjoy.

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While speaking today at the House Republicans' retreat in Baltimore, President Obama explained something to his questioners I wasn't sure he actually understood until now: That he wasn't going to accept Republican bills or amendments that simply didn't work, just so he could claim bipartisanship.

Whew! It's about time.

He also said that he had, in fact, integrated many Republican ideas in the healthcare bill, and proceeded to list them. In fact, he did a great job. He was calm, engaging and evenhanded. And I don't even care if no Republican votes will change as a result - the rest of America saw it, live on TV and then on the news all night.

He was truly excellent.

And in perhaps his best moment, he called Republicans out on blaming him for the deficit:

THE PRESIDENT: Jeb, with all due respect, I've just got to take this last question as an example of how it's very hard to have the kind of bipartisan work that we're going to do, because the whole question was structured as a talking point for running a campaign.

Now, look, let's talk about the budget once again, because I'll go through it with you line by line. The fact of the matter is, is that when we came into office, the deficit was $1.3 trillion. -- $1.3 [trillion.] So when you say that suddenly I've got a monthly budget that is higher than the -- a monthly deficit that's higher than the annual deficit left by the Republicans, that's factually just not true, and you know it's not true.

And what is true is that we came in already with a $1.3 trillion deficit before I had passed any law. What is true is we came in with $8 trillion worth of debt over the next decade -- had nothing to do with anything that we had done. It had to do with the fact that in 2000 when there was a budget surplus of $200 billion, you had a Republican administration and a Republican Congress, and we had two tax cuts that weren't paid for.

You had a prescription drug plan -- the biggest entitlement plan, by the way, in several decades -- that was passed without it being paid for. You had two wars that were done through supplementals. And then you had $3 trillion projected because of the lost revenue of this recession. That's $8 trillion.

Now, we increased it by a trillion dollars because of the spending that we had to make on the stimulus. I am happy to have any independent fact-checker out there take a look at your presentation versus mine in terms of the accuracy of what I just said.

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Think Progress has more on this--Republicans dismayed by Obama’s strong performance, say it was a ‘mistake’ to let cameras roll. Apparently things were going so well for the President that ClusterFox decided they had better cut away from their coverage and proceed to bashing him--Fox Cuts Away From Obama-GOP Conversation In Order To Get A Head Start On Attacks: He Was ‘Lecturing’. Somehow I doubt the Republicans are going to want to do this again, or at least with the cameras on, any time soon.

RUSSERT: On the bigger picture though that I found extremely interesting today is the decision to allow the cameras present for the Q&A. Last night the White House called the GOP leadership and requested this. It obviously turned out to be a brilliant political move.

Tom Cole — former head of the NRCC, congressman from Oklahoma — said, “He scored many points. He did really well.” Barack Obama, for an hour and a half, was able to refute every single Republican talking point used against him on the major issues of the day. In essence, it was almost like a debate where he was front and center for the majority of it.

It's very, very interesting to see what this will do to the political dialog for the rest of next week. Final point on that I do believe one Republican said to me, off the record, and saying behind closed doors: “It was a mistake that we allowed the cameras to roll like that. We should not have done that.” Very interesting.

WITT: Why? Why? Because they didn't fire away the way they really wanted to for fear of repurcussions you know, ala Joe Wilson "You lie" if there was disrespect shown?

RUSSERT: Well, when the Democrats did this they had a closed camera session right, when he had a meeting with the Democrats last month...

WITT: Right...

RUSSERT: By allowing these cameras to roll, it allowed Obama to sit there for an hour and a half refuting every single Republican talking point, which he really has not had an opportunity to do in his campaign rally speeches that he's been doing in Florida yesterday, that he's been doing addresses in the White House. He was able to directly refute Republicans to their face for an hour and a half on T.V. I think he scored a lot of political points.

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Well, Nicole was right...kind of. No apologizing the next day. Just some 'splainin' the very same night. I'm pretty sure Tweety knew he stuck his foot in his mouth right after he said it. If not, someone on the set probably told about it. I do believe his explanation though. This man just always lets his mouth get about five miles ahead of his brain and spouts off before he thinks about how what he's saying is going to come off.

Matthews: Can I say one more point? I think something that I mentioned earlier tonight and I’m very proud I did it and I hope I can say it the right way. You know this country’s been, and I grew up in a country that’s been driven apart by race right until the 60’s, you couldn’t have a black member of the United States Cabinet, there were no black Cabinet members in the Kennedy administration. It has been such a big part of our life in big cities, this sort of ethnic debate, ethnic fighting. And then to see a President of the United States who, who is African American, and I was thinking tonight, this isn’t even an issue tonight.

How far we’ve come in just a year where it was a campaign issue in some parts of the country. It was talked about as something that would hurt him and it wasn’t in the room tonight. You could feel it wasn’t there tonight. And that takes leadership on his part to get us beyond these divisions—really national leadership and I felt it wonderfully tonight. It was almost like an epiphany and I hope it’s true. I hope what I saw is true that we’ve gotten beyond it. At least, well at the Presidential level I think. It’s still going to be out there in American life.

But I think he’s done something wonderful. I think he’s taken us beyond black and white in our politics, wonderfully so in just a year, I think.

Maddow: Chris Matthews of MSNBC…

Matthews: And I’m lovin’ it.

Maddow: …who’s fun to talk to and a big thinker on these things and willing to talk about stuff that’s hard to talk about sometimes on T.V….

Matthews: It is.

Maddow: Chris I appreciate it. Thanks a lot.

Matthews: Thank you.

Sadly the country is not where Matthews hopes we are and the Sarah Palins, the GOP and the Tea Baggers are more than happy to make sure we don't get beyond race in our politics.

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Much to the shagrin of Justice Samuel Alito, President Obama called for Congress to pass a bill to correct some of the problems that will be caused from the awful Supreme Court ruling in the Citizens United v. FEC case. Whether they'll listen is another story. I would hope this is one issue where they can get some Republicans to come along and get some legislation passed. When even Jim DeMint looks like a deer caught in the headlights over the issue of foreign companies being able to meddle in our elections I would certainly hope so.

That’s what I came to Washington to do. That’s why – for the first time in history – my Administration posts our White House visitors online. And that’s why we’ve excluded lobbyists from policy-making jobs or seats on federal boards and commissions.

But we can’t stop there. It’s time to require lobbyists to disclose each contact they make on behalf of a client with my Administration or Congress. And it’s time to put strict limits on the contributions that lobbyists give to candidates for federal office. Last week, the Supreme Court reversed a century of law to open the floodgates for special interests – including foreign corporations – to spend without limit in our elections. Well I don’t think American elections should be bankrolled by America’s most powerful interests, or worse, by foreign entities. They should be decided by the American people, and I urge Democrats and Republicans to pass a bill that helps correct some of these problems.

(Scarce Edit: This year's Joe Wilson moment? Not as major, to be sure, but just as telling. Alito seems to be saying "No way. Not true.")

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Looks like Grandpa McCain has got himself a birther challenger to run against in the Arizona Republican Senate primary race. Given Hayworth's ties to Jack Abramoff and the PAC payments made to his wife, it looks like he's counting on the voters of Arizona to have short memories if he hopes to get elected.

MATTHEWS: Most people will look at this race as John McCain being a -- somewhat of a middle-of-the-road conservative, I guess a mainstream conservative, and you as a bit further right than him. I most people will look at that.

Are you as far right as the Birthers? Are you one of those that believes the president should have to prove he`s a citizen of the United States and not an illegal immigrant? Are you that far right?

HAYWORTH: Well, gosh, we all had to bring our birth certificates to show we were who we said we were and we were the age we said we were to play football in youth sports. Shouldn`t we know exactly that anyone who wants to run for public office is a natural-born citizen of the United States, and is who they say they are?

Let me pause and make another point, because I`ve read --

MATTHEWS: No, I`m reading your letter that says the president should go back and get his birth certificate from the governor of Hawaii. You dated this November 6th, 2000. I`m just asking, do you stand by this letter? Should the governor of Hawaii produce evidence that the president is one of us, an American? Do you think that`s a worthy pastime for the governor of Hawaii right now?

HAYWORTH: No, look --

MATTHEWS: Should she do it?

HAYWORTH: I`m just saying, the president should come forward with the information. That`s all. Why must we depend on the governor of Hawaii?

MATTHEWS: OK.

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Bill Moyers sat down with Eric Alterman and Melissa Harris-Lacewell to discuss President Obama's first year in office. This portion is where they get into his attempts at bi-partisanship and the fact that it's not working out very well for him and the failure of the media to paint Republicans as the obstructionists they are. I will disagree with Alterman on one point. I don't excuse any of the mainstream media for their behavior and I think it's ridiculous to assert they don't know what they're doing. They know exactly what they're doing and it's pushing a corporate agenda that's good for their bottom line. Being not as bad as Fox is a pretty low bar to hurdle. Sadly many of them are barely hurdling it and right behind them with being a propaganda machine for anyone looking out for corporate America's interest, whatever letter is behind their name.

Good stuff all in all. You can watch the entire interview at the Bill Moyers Journal site.

BILL MOYERS: Is it the problem that we lay too much on any President? It's only been a year this week that he was inaugurated. And yet, one year after he took the oath of office, he's being repudiated. Repudiated for what?

ERIC ALTERMAN: Well, it the narrative of the media go from one form of hysteria to another. And what you need if you want to be an effective President is a theory of change. How do you move the system? I thought Barack Obama had a brilliant theory of change as a candidate. He said we're all friends here. We're all Americans. We're all basically interested in the same thing. Let's stop fighting with each other the way the Bush Administration wants us to do. And this nasty Dick Cheney fellow is always trying to get us riled up. Let's find what we agree on and move forward.

And then I thought that once he became President he could say, okay, I tried. I tried it the nice way with these people. But they just won't cooperate. Now it's time to slap them around a little and get something done. He hasn't taken that step. He's giving the impression that he can be pushed around. And I think he needs to push some people around, even at a short term political cost, just to show that there's something to fear with this President.

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According to Fox's veteran propagandist reporter Carl Cameron, the rally Sunday with President Obama for Senate candidate Martha Coakley was ill-attended, with plenty of empty seats. That bit of "news" would no doubt surprise the several thousand who could not get in to the full to capacity event. Or the 500 who had to sit in the overflow room.

The line, running around several blocks all the way down Huntington Ave.

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Why does this not make me feel any better? And now we're going to get to see The Shrub as Molly Ivins nicknamed him on Meet the Press. Oh goodie. I don't want to disparage the relief organizations being touted, but putting Bush out there to "make sure the money is spent wisely" is the last thing I want to hear. You and Cheney going to get Haliburton down there for us George? Word is they're already "protecting" one of our media outlets down there. I'd love to know which one.

Our own web master and computer guru extraordinaire Jamie at Intoxination has a fundraiser going at his blog if you'd like to donate to MercyCorps. I welcome anyone else who has a charity they'd like to recommend to help the people of Haiti to add their links in the comments section.

Back to the subject of Bush and being subjected to hearing him speak again. I already posted Harold Ford Jr.'s nauseating response to listening to W's little speech today. Thanks Harold for making me almost as ill as I felt after hearing him talk with your fawning over him. Back when this clown was still running the country, or pretending to when it was probably actually Darth Cheney operating from his secret bunker calling the shots, I used to play a little game with some of my conservative co-workers.

I've got an XM radio at work and whenever C-SPAN or any of the news networks would have him on, I'd make sure I turned up the volume just high enough that they could hear it if they weren't too far away from the radio to see if they could stand to listen him talk since they voted for this idiot. It was always a sure way to clear the room or at least move them to a spot far enough away where they could not hear what he was saying without fail.

It just always killed me that those co-workers of mine who were these "values voters" were letting their churches tell them how to vote against their own economic interests and the interest of our union and supported Bush refused to listen to him talk. As much as they played apologists for his policies, even they couldn't stomach listening to him. Hearing him speak today just brought all of that back for me.

I really do not understand why the Obama administration thought bringing Bush or Clinton back into the mix with helping the people of Haiti was a good idea, but as was pointed out with Democracy Now's coverage, if this possibly forces the media to have to take a look at why that country is so impoverished, maybe that ends up being a good thing.

Jamie also sent all of us a really excellent post about the media and Haiti and the choice all of us need to make right now.

Media Promotes Flawed Haiti Narrative:

The paradoxes of Haiti are not all historical:

We can send money to Haiti, but Haitians can't seek refuge here.

We can support Haiti's efforts at democracy, but only if Haiti supports unfettered access by foreign capitalists to their workforce and their resources.

[...]

And in the meantime, while we are pushing for the real story, we can begin to practice pushing our own narratives instead of repeating the carefully manufactured storylines from the nightly news.

[...]

If you are not willing to press for a political advantage while you have the stage, this same tragedy will very likely happen again. If we are saving people today so they can die in sweatshops for our corporations later, THAT is a travesty

So press on, people. Press on.

Go read the whole post here.

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