Wow, what did Rick Sanchez find in his cornflakes yesterday morning? He seems just a bit cranky:

CNN’s Rick Sanchez is not happy with being made fun of constantly on The Daily Show and Colbert Report. It is from this jumping off point that he absolutely unleashed on Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert, and at times his own network, on Pete Dominick’s satellite radio show yesterday. The big takeaway – Sanchez calls Stewart “a bigot,” then walks it back a bit, and he implies CNN is run by Jews.

Pete Dominick pushed back on Rick Sanchez's unbelievable and slightly bizarre rant (ostensibly carrying a fairly large chip on his shoulder about Stewart because he didn't like being the butt of jokes on The Daily Show) and Sanchez walked it back to call Stewart "prejudicial" and unable to be fair to anyone who doesn't come from a white, educated background. Even still, the criticism is manifestly and provably false as anyone who watches The Daily Show knows. And even if Sanchez had a reasonable beef with being pigeonholed out of a higher profile position with the network, there's no denying that he let slip some serious ugliness and anti-Semitism lurking in his psyche.

And as it turned out, this little slip was all CNN needed to give Sanchez his walking papers. According to an insider, the reason that Sanchez wasn't being considered for a more prominent role at CNN may have had less to do with his Cuban, working class background and had everything to do with him being a jerk. Which is something this little rant did little to dissuade.

Now if only we could get MSNBC to do something similar with Pat Buchanan...

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While CNN's Rick Sanchez isn't exactly an imposing media figure, and his "List" schtick doesn't exactly shake the world, but it does have an interesting quality -- it's drawn to a large extent from viewer input.

And so it was interesting that Glenn Beck's attack on Malia Obama and his subsequent lame-ass apology that really angered CNN's viewers. So Beck wound up on Sanchez's "List U Don't Want 2 Be On" this week:

This is apparently what many of you've been waiting for. It's around this time every day when I tell you who is on my list that you don't want to be on.

Sometimes we debate this throughout the day with my staff, our producers. Just about everybody gets in on the conversation. We take this pretty seriously, because it casts the person in a rather bad light oftentimes.

There seems to be, today, no debate, not from my staff, not from writers, not from my producers. And judging from what I'm reading here throughout the day on Twitter, not from you. In fact, you could say today's is a slam-dunk.

We are talking about the Fox News host and the radio jock who has been known to take repeated shots at President Obama, most notably at one point calling the president a racist. Defenders of this popular TV and radio personality say it's simply part of his schtick, but now many of you on Twitter and on blogs that I've been reading have come to the conclusion around the country and are saying that in this one case, he has gone too far.

Glenn Beck went on relentlessly last week on his radio show making fun of Malia -- Malia, the president's daughter. It seemed to go on and on and on, while Beck seemed to be literally -- you'll hear it for yourself, folks -- cracking himself up at the expense of an 11-year- old.

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Alan Grayson really lets this Young Americans For Freedom twerp have it on a CNN interview hosted by Rick Sanchez:

SANCHEZ: Well this is what a lot of the Democratic congressmen, folks like Alan Grayson, says proves that the Republican Party is not only in line with the tea party movement but has actually created the heated rhetoric that has caused some of those acts of incivility that we have seen. How would you respond to that?

MARKS: Well, I would hate to believe that Chairman Steele, an African-American, would go and be one of the people to incite these, you know, the responses and really the disgusting behavior of a few individuals. I don't think he --

SANCHEZ: Wait a minute. Are you saying that because Chairman Steele is an African-American he's incapable of using heated rhetoric that may cause someone to become or say something racist?

MARKS: Well, I don't think he was calling for people to have racist response.

SANCHEZ: Well, I'm not talking about Chairman Steele. I'm not talking about Chairman Steele.

MARKS: OK.

SANCHEZ: I am talking about the congressmen who were outside. And I don't know, do we have that picture? We don't have that. All right.

MARKS: I mean, are you going to judge the entire Democratic Party by a few people that hold up Nazi symbols at their rallies? I don't think -- I think this is a double standard that we're seeing here.

(CROSSTALK)

GRAYSON: That's ridiculous. That's absolutely ridiculous.

MARKS: And to say it's because of the ideology to point to the ideology, this is the actual prejudice that conservatives face on college campuses --

GRAYSON: Oh, how sad.

MARKS: -- in the nation to say automatically anything that you say is going to be considered racist.

SANCHEZ: No, no, we weren't saying that. I wasn't. But let me just ask you --

MARKS: Well, I think Congressman Grayson was.

SANCHEZ: What Democratic congressman has held up a swastika?

GRAYSON: It's never happened. He's lying. Stop lying.

MARKS: I never said the congressman held up a swastika. But what Republican congressman did you see holding swastikas. And wasn't it a Democrat Senator Byrd that was a member of the KKK? Are you going to hold the entire party accountable because of that?

SANCHEZ: Senator -- I mean, Congressman Grayson?

GRAYSON: Well, that's premature. But listen, we have now reached the point of absurdity. OK. The right has fomented a national nervous breakdown. They keep pushing the panic button on their followers over and over and over again, trying to get them stoked on hatred and on fear. And they've succeeded. They've succeed in driving these people to the point where they're threatening my 5- year-old son.

Now why don't you just say you're sorry? That's what you ought to be saying, I'm sorry. Don't try to push it off on the Democrats. Say you're sorry. Apologize to my 5-year-old.

MARKS: Tea party should not be accepting responsibility for this. The Republican Party should not be accepting responsibility for this.

GRAYSON: Well, look --

MARKS: The Democratic Party should not be accepting responsibility for this. Individuals need to accept responsibility. When you -- when you --

GRAYSON: You're not accepting responsibility.

MARKS: When you said that the health care bill is similar to a holocaust, they didn't hold the Democratic Party responsible.

GRAYSON: You were in that crowd. You were cheering.

MARKS: You went ahead and apologized for your individual remarks. Am I wrong? Did you apologize for saying that this health care bill is going to cause, if it's not passed it's going to cause a holocaust? And you apologized for it, is that right?

(CROSSTALK)

GRAYSON: You know, listen, people like you -- people like you -- and it's very apt that your name is Marks -- people like you, your dreams turn into other people's nightmares. And it's time you owned up to it.

MARKS: We as conservatives believe we have winning principles and we stick by these principles. Small government.

GRAYSON: Your principles are violence.

MARKS: I don't think anyone and my principles are --

GRAYSON: Anger, hatred and violence.

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(h/t CSPANjunkie)

I caught this on Tuesday and it's not shocking. I mean, the Secret Service agent's reaction to the psychos is not shocking. It's sane. Remember sanity?

CNN's Rick Sanchez had on a former Secret Service agent named on his show to talk about the psycho gun-toting teabaggers showing up at presidential events. You would never see this behavior under a Republican president because: A) They like Republicans. B) The Republicans would never allow it. You needed to sign loyalty oaths just to go to Bush/Cheney events.

Joseph Petro explains that this is insane behavior and it's an intimidation tactic by these yahoos, plain and simple.

Digby:

Former USSS officer: If the police have to go out and deal with these foolish gun nuts with exposed weapons in public crowds, they are being taken awy from activity that is much more important and that is to keep our president safe and to kep the public safe.

Rick Sanchez: In all your years as a Secret Service agent have you ever seen anything like this? Ten to twelve people yesterday were walking around this venue where the president was, walking outside, and they were packing. Have you ever seen a situation like that?

USSS: No, I've never seen or heard of anything like that. And I think it's, you know, I think all of us should be concerned about this. What's the next step? Are they going to ride around in pick-up trucks with automatic weapons? it would be like Somalia.

We're a democratic country. And we should be better than this. And what's the point? What's the point of them carrying these things? It's intimidation. Why hsould we tolerate that?

Sanchez: It's free speech and their point is that "we've got a right to come out and show everybody that we're for a constitution that gives us a right to bear arms.

USSS: It's probably also not against the law to bring a can of gas and a match into an event. Is that a good idea? No.

Having exposed weapons at public events, and it's not just presidential events, I would say this at any public event, particularly where people are disagreeing, it's really a formula for disaster.

Why does the picture of a bunch of yahoos driving around in pick-up trucks with automatic weapons not sound all that far fetched to me? And when you add the gasbags shrieking about liberals being the enemy all day long, this doesn't seem so far-fetched either.

People are going to either get hurt or die and the media still will whiff on this because they act like cowards.

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My first week on the job here at Crooks and Liars, I went on CNN Newsroom with Rick Sanchez to talk about an investigative piece co-written with Max Blumenthal about Sarah Palin's longtime dalliances with Alaska's far-right elements, particularly the secessionist Alaska Independence Party.

At the time, the McCain campaign blew us off publicly. And unfortunately, none of our colleagues in other media settings picked up on the story and asked further questions about the issues it raised -- particularly at a time when the McCain campaign was busy accusing Barack Obama of "palling around" with "terrorists" and extremists.

Now, it turns out that my short appearance on TV threw Sarah Palin into a tizzy and provoked a quarrel with Steve Schmidt of the McCain campaign. This from a CBS story by Scott Conroy and Shushannah Walshe:

Internal campaign e-mails exchanged three weeks before Election Day offer a rare look at just how frustrated then Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin had become with the manner in which top McCain campaign aides were handling her candidacy. The e-mails, obtained exclusively, also highlight the power struggle and thinly veiled acrimony that pervaded the relationship between Palin and the campaign's chief strategist, Steve Schmidt.

The episode in question began when an investigative report published on the left-leaning Web site Salon.com raised questions about Palin's relationship with members of the Alaska Independence Party (AIP) when she was mayor of Wasilla. The AIP's platform calls for a vote giving Alaskans the option to secede from the United States. It had already been widely known that Todd Palin was a registered member of the AIP from 1995 to 2002 and that Governor Palin had taped a recorded greeting at the party's 2008 convention.

On the morning of Oct. 15, Palin was aboard her campaign jet and en route to New Hampshire when she happened to catch a disparaging CNN segment that touted the Salon.com story, complete with a provocative graphic at the bottom of the screen reading, "THE PALINS AND THE FRINGE."

While shaking hands after a rally later that afternoon, someone on the rope line shouted a remark at Palin about the AIP.

The comment set her off. She worried that the campaign was not sufficiently mitigating the issue of her alleged connection to the party, which despite a platform that harkens more to the Civil War than the 21st century, continued to play a serious role in Alaska politics.

Palin blasted out an e-mail with the subject line "Todd" to Schmidt, campaign manager Rick Davis and senior advisor Nicolle Wallace, copying her husband on the message (all of the e-mails are reprinted below as written).

"Pls get in front of that ridiculous issue that's cropped up all day today - two reporters, a protestor's sign, and many shout-outs all claiming Todd's involvement in an anti-American political party," Palin wrote. "It's bull, and I don't want to have to keep reacting to it ... Pls have statement given on this so it's put to bed."

Schmidt hit "reply to all" less than five minutes after Palin's e-mail was sent. "Ignore it," he wrote. "He was a member of the aip? My understanding is yes. That is part of their platform. Do not engage the protestors. If a reporter asks say it is ridiculous. Todd loves america."

This clear cut response from the campaign's top dog carried an air of finality, but it did not satisfy Palin. She responded with another e-mail, adding five more names to the "cc" box, all of whom traveled on her campaign plane. They included her senior political adviser Tucker Eskew, senior aide Jason Recher, the lone traveling aide from her Alaska office Kris Perry, press secretary Tracey Schmitt and personal assistant Bexie Nobles.

Palin's insertion of the five additional staffers in the e-mail chain was an apparent attempt to rally her own troops in the face of a decision from the commanding general with which she disagreed. Her inclusion of her personal assistant was particularly telling about her quest for affirmation and support in numbers, since the young staffer was not in a position to have any input on campaign strategy.

"That's not part of their platform and he was only a 'member' bc independent alaskans too often check that 'Alaska Independent' box on voter registrations thinking it just means non partisan," Palin wrote. "He caught his error when changing our address and checked the right box. I still want it fixed."

Now, the problem with this response is that it's just factually false. Palin's connections with the AIP ran much, much deeper than Todd's paper affiliation. As we explained in the Salon story:

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Matthew Balan at Newsbusters is unhappy because a CNN chryon identified Shawna Forde's killer-Minuteman gang "extremists", while Rick Sanchez talked a bit about how Forde had been a player in the movement:

A chyron which accompanied a report on CNN’s Newsroom program on Wednesday about the arrest of a leader of an organization inspired by the Minuteman Project, referred to her and her accused accomplices as “extremists.” Despite qualifying how the largest Minuteman organization had distanced itself from the suspects, anchor Rick Sanchez questioned how she became a “player in the anti-immigration movement.”

OK, so if Balan doesn't want to call Forde's gang of thugs "extremists," what would he call this?

Accused ringleader Shawna Forde told her family in recent months that she had begun recruiting members of the Aryan Nations and that she planned to begin robbing drug-cartel leaders, her brother Merrill Metzger said Monday in a telephone interview from Redding, Calif.

"She was talking about starting a revolution against the United States government," he said.

... "She sat right here on my couch and told me that she was going to start an underground militia. This militia was going to start robbing drug-cartel dealers — rob them and steal their money or drugs," Metzger said.

... Investigators think the May 30 robbery was intended to be the first in a series of such attacks intended to fund the border-watch group and a new venture, O'Connor said. Forde planned on starting a business of helping free kidnap victims in other countries, he said.

Oh, and then they shot a 9-year-old girl and her father to death in cold blood.

And yes, Forde indeed was a player in the Minuteman movement, appearing on TV as a Minuteman spokesperson and onstage with Jim Gilchrist here in the Northwest.

What, exactly, does Balan think Sanchez should have reported?

Now, Sanchez never suggests that the larger Minuteman movement might be riddled with extremists, but that seems to be what Balan is accusing him of doing. Or at least sidling up too close to that proposition.

Well, tell ya what, Matthew: We'll gladly say it here. The Minuteman movement is and always has been an extremist movement, and so it is no surprise to see it devolve in its decaying phase into a radical and violent one.

Oh yes, and you know what else? It's a big moneymaking scam, too.

But I guess you're unhappy unless they're described as a big "neighborhood watch." Yeah, that fits 'em to a T, eh?

Here's what's actually noteworthy about all this: Unlike CNN, you'll never see this story reported on Fox. In fact, I haven't seen a single mention of this story on Fox TV. Gee, I wonder why that is. Well, no I don't.

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CNN's Rick Sanchez played a portion of Arlen Specter's press conference to South Carolina's Jim DeMint and asked him if Republicans are weeding out the moderates from the party -- and isn't that a bad thing?

Sanchez: Republicans are making it very difficult for other Republicans because, and he said this on several times, you tell me what you think of it. You're shrinking the electorate to an extreme, to a point that a regular republican can't win. What do you make of that argument?

DeMint: Oh, that's quite the opposite. We're seeing across the country right now, the biggest tent of all is freedom and what we need to do as Republicans is convince Americans that freedom can work in all areas of their life, for all Americans, whether it's education or health care or creating jobs...

Sanchez: What the hell does that mean? The biggest tent is freedom. FREEDOM, I mean, you gotta do better than that.

DeMint: No, what it means is what has worked in America, free people, free markets for years.

Conservatives always say that there problems aren't really problems at all. It's Freedom baby, Freedom is our Big Tent party! That freaked out Sanchez -- understandably, because DeMint's answer made no sense. See, Specter leaving the Republicans is a good thing because he's free to do what he wants. His defection is just an application of their Freedom principle. I'm surprised DeMint didn't paint his face blue and don a kilt for this performance.

And DeMint actually says that Club For Growth's Pat Toomey is a mainstream American. Yeah, a Grover Norquist mainliner, he means. CFG is very upset that they are being attacked. He also blames Democrats for the auto companies falling apart.

Piece. Of. Work.

Fun with Twitter (Actual tweets). Open thread below...

Rick Sanchez used some air time today to help expose the insanely irresponsible behavior of all the members of the Limbaugh National Committee and their preachers of paranoia. Sanchez played some extremely disturbing video from Youtube by the patriot militia crowd and went over the high volume of shootings that are spreading across the country.

Our pal Mr. Gottlieb, of the Second Amendment Foundation, a gun toting, more extreme version of the NRA joins CNN with Media Matters' Eric Boehlert, who just wrote a piece called Glenn Beck and the rise of Fox News' militia media which piggybacks off of David Neiwert's reporting to debate the merits of the fringe right being terrified that President Obama will take away their guns. This is, of course, leading right-wing talkers to elevate their rhetoric in attacking President Obama and liberals in general, which seems to be having a very dangerous influence. (rough transcript)

Boehlert: Well I think people on the right, the single issue passionate people are desperate to find some sort of opening so they can push this narrative. I mean, Glenn Beck yesterday on his radio show said Barack Obama will take away your gun anyway, one way or another, he's going to take away your gun. This message has been on FOX news for weeks and months and it's not just the gun control issue. They are painting this doomsday scenario, almost mainstreaming this militia idea of tyranny and totalitarian state in America and it's incredibly irresponsible.

Rick: Alan, what do you think of that? Because you know, any independent person that looks at this coverage that we've been seeing, not just on FOX News, but other places as well. It seems alarmist, it almost seems...

Gottleib: Well, I think the alarming thing is not that there's a doomsday scenario, but there's no doubt, nobody can argue that the government isn't growing at alarming rates, at record levels of spending, record levels of...

Rick: It GREW during the Bush administration, where were your concerns then?

Gottelieb: I had concerns then too. but they're not growing at the alarming rate they are right now. Government regulations, controls---everything on individuals is significantly going in the direction to more and more government. Nobody can deny that. And of course, that goes right into the argument of more gun control as well when government wants to regulate people.

Boehlert: Saying government is growing in size is a lot different than saying they're going to come knock on your door and take your gun, that democracy in America is on the wane and that we're going to turn into a socialist or Marxist or fascist, depending on what week it is to Glenn Beck. That's quite a leap and again, it's incredibly irresponsible. We've never seen a television news outfit sort of exploit these kinds of fears before and they're doing it on a daily basis and again, they are basically mainstreaming this militia movement and this militia rhetoric. It's wildly irresponsible.

Gottelieb: I mean you're trying to label everyone in militias being evil, crazy people out there. There are 90 million gun owners out there and they're nor members of militias.

The Pew research Center did a poll that says President Obama is the most polarizing president we've had in four decades..

Rick: Hold on Alan, that's not fair. How can he not be polarizing when people are saying those messages that we have been talking about? If I was to get on the air and start saying horrible things about anyone day and and day out and scaring the bejesus out of you and telling you that the world was going to end as a result of this particular politician, maybe, whether he’s on the right or on the left, on in the middle, don’t you think he would be polarizing?

Gottlieb didn't have much of an argument in this segment. When more government is needed to save a country, how does that justify the hate and vitriol being spewed out by the right especially with no facts to back them up? And without regulation, the entire world almost collapsed under Bush, so if there hadn't been any government intervention, Gottleib wouldn't have an issue to fight against because he'd be out on the street like many Americans are now.

And that Pew research study makes no sense. It tracks approvals between Democrats and Republicans. The republican party is not the same party it used to be and it's a very silly poll to be honest. There is no merit to it. How is a president with a 66% approval rating considered polarizing so early in his term?

Go get him Rick. I saw the Nixon criminal---G.Libby doing a commercial pimping gold too and throwing the American dollar on the floor on FOX News. They are such good Americans, aren't they?

More on Stanford Financial

Stanford Financial Group, which federal regulators say is involved in a massive investment fraud, has described members of its board of directors as seasoned financial minds overseeing the bank's executive team.

In fact, two of those members who live in this dusty Central Texas town are octogenarians who live in quiet retirement. One of them is a stroke victim who hasn't communicated with anyone in almost nine years.

The other is James Stanford, the 81-year-old father of the central figure in the alleged fraud, R. Allen Stanford. The elder Stanford keeps a small office in Mexia (pronounced Muh-HAY-uh) with a sign that says "Stanford Financial Group" outside but who readily acknowledges he just uses it as a place to "hang out."

James Stanford said he couldn't believe the allegations against his son and would be heartbroken if they were true. But he added his advice: "Do the right thing."