Of all the petty things Phil Griffin could do, this is on top of the list.

In case you were wondering why you haven't seen me on MSNBC recently, it seems that Joe Scarborough, he of the lowest rated morning show in cableland, has blackballed me. And Phil Griffin, the alleged president of MSNBC, is going along with it.

It all began May 29, with Joe Scarborough taking to Twitter to whine about the media coverage of the supposed Sestak scandal (remember that one?):...read on

I met Scarborough at a book party and he was very nice to me and actually praised C&L's coverage of him. He thought we were fair to him even though we do criticize him so I found this whole episode quite sad.

Digby explains the entire scenario:

So the most famous blogger in the world has been banned from MSNBC after Joe Scarborough pitched a fit about a passing comment on twitter nobody even paid attention to. It's hard to believe that anyone in politics or the media would be so incredibly stupid as to draw attention to the fact that he had a forgotten scandal in his past by forcing a public spectacle of it, but there you go. Of course, he is a Republican.

Those of you who don't know about Joe Scarborough's dead intern problem probably didn't start reading the internet regularly until after 2002. Certainly the mainstream press didn't cover it. You see at the time the entire village was hysterical over the disappearance of congressman Gary Condit's mistress, a woman who happened to work in his office and who seemed to remind everyone of Monica Lewinsky, which naturally made them come completely unglued. The media, with the help of the family, pretty much convicted Condit of murder in one of the most revolting displays of railroading ever seen in American politics. Even when the actual murderer was revealed years later, the worst of the perpetrators refused to back down.

Meanwhile, that same summer, star up-and-coming Republican Congressman Joe Scarborough, recently divorced under charges of infidelity, had unexpectedly decided to resign from office six months after being re-elected. Shortly thereafter an intern on his Florida staff was found dead -- in the office -- under mysterious circumstances with allegations of cover-ups by the local authorities and the quack medical examiner. And nobody in DC even raised an eyebrow.
...read on.

It was silly for Scarborough to have that type of reaction to a Twitter response. Lighten up, dude.

Greg Sargent reminds us of the double standard that applies to liberals when it comes to the media.

It's funny. I don't recall the chief of MSNBC publicly banning Liz Cheney from appearing on the network when she cut an entire Web video "publicly antagonizing" Keith Olbermann and Chris Matthews for allegedly being too frightened to debate her about terrorism ...

See, conservatives are expected to demonize the media, and can always count on being granted a platform by the same major networks they hammer publicly on a regular basis. It's all part of the game, get it? But it seems Markos got publicly dressed down and banned by the president of the network, no less, all because he got under Scarborough's skin with a few nasty little Tweets.

Conservative pundits can say anything at all and are never held accountable for their actions. That's a sad fact that we see over and over again.

slacktivist: The Republican Party of 2010 is anti-Lincoln, anti-Reconstruction, anti-13th, 14th and 15th Amendment.

Barefoot and Progressive: Why does Rand Paul's new campaign manager work with a white supremacist?

Pharyngula: Republicans discover sarcasm, don't like it much

The Impolitic: Plame was a scandal. Sestak, not even particularly interesting

TalkLeft: Facebook revamps privacy settings

HOLY CRAP: Fundamentalism's sci-fi roots...South Dakota scofflaws...Fischer really outdoes himself...Christian History on TeeVee...Searching for Jesus...Suicide school...Praising the symptoms of disease...Subsidizing religion...The End of the World...Commandments not in the Constitution...Hungup on Religion ...Morally bankrupt...partisan prayer...Priestly justice...

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I went to the Arlen Specter/Joe Sestak Q&A panel today at Netroots Nation that was led by our own Susie Madrak. Specter answered questions about why we should trust him since he switched parties and he made his case. He's a skilled politician and did a pretty good job trying to defend his lefty creds. We didn't act like the Beckerwocky teabaggers do and he was treated with dignity, even if most of the audience supports Joe.

When he was questioned about Chuck Grassley's ""We should not have a government program that determines if you're going to pull the plug on grandma" he adamantly said Grassley was wrong and he said he would speak to him later today. I yelled out "call him now!" and several other audience members also yelled the same thing. I waved my phone and said, "You can use my cell phone!" He said he would call him right away.

I followed him to the back of the arena and a bunch of us surrounded him as he made good on his promise. He tried to reach Grassley, but got no answer. As he was leaving, I was able to ask Specter if President Obama should kick Grassley out of the negotiating position he has for spreading egregious statements and falsehoods about health care.

Specter said that we shouldn't kick Grassley out of the Finance committee because senators are wrong at times, but he promised to stay after Grassley. I think Obama should have Baucus kick him out of the negotiating process because he's violated his duty by spreading lies about a health care bill he's trying to legislate over.

UPDATE:

John Amato: Senator, one more quick question. I'm John Amato of CrooksandLiars. Does Senator Grassley's irresponsible statements and the fact that he's on the committee that's negotiating for this health care bill, doesn't that disqualify him, in other words, shouldn't Obama say, why should I even have him at the table if he's going to make such outrageous statements?

Specter: Does it disqualify him, no. When he made that statement, it's wrong. If you disqualified every Senator who is wrong about something, there wouldn't be any Senators.OK?..

Well, now Specter and Grassley are involved in a Twitter war:

Well, Grassley never picked up. So Specter tweeted all about it.

And Grassley is not pleased.

And in a narrow sense, Grassley's right. He didn't use the term "death boards" or "death panels." He said "There is some fear because in the House bill, there is counseling for end-of-life. And from that standpoint, you have every right to fear.... We should not have a government program that determines if you're going to pull the plug on grandma."

But in the broader sense, Specter's got Grassley pegged.

Citizen journalism rocks! We proved that once again.

Guess who said this?

“Congressman Sestak is a flagrant hypocrite in challenging my being a real Democrat when he did not register as a Democrat until 2006 just in time to run for Congress. His lame excuse for avoiding party affiliation, because he was in the [military] service, is undercut by his documented disinterest in the political process.”

Wait for it....

Continue reading »

AttyTood:

"Why give your vote to a president who has taken you into a tragic misadventure in Iraq?"

-- Joe Sestak as a Democratic candidate for Congress, Oct. 6, 2006.

Rep. Joe Sestak of Delaware County is my congressman. OK, let me rephrase that, actually. Joe Sestak is the congressman in the 7th Congressional District of Pennsylvania, where I reside.

I stopped calling him "my congressman" about two hours ago. Read on...

It appears nothing is off-limits. Even a sick child with a brain tumor.

The Hill:

"Weldon also suggested Sestak should have sent his daughter to a hospital in Philadelphia or Delaware, rather than the Washington hospital. Sestak said that as soon as doctors give his daughter the all-clear, he’ll buy in Pennsylvania."

Read Sestak's response to Curt. Here's a snipet.

"I believe these medical choices should be left in the hands of parents and family members throughout the country and not in the hands of beauracrats, special interests and especially not in the hands of politicians like Curt Weldon...read on"

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It's always fun to watch Election Night on Fox, especially when they get their hopes all fired up and things kind of fall flat instead.

They wanted to get all excited about Rand Paul's big win in Kentucky -- but then there's the little problem with Paul's win being a big fiasco for the GOP establishment. So the excitement was a little muted there.

What was unmentioned: If you look at the complete Kentucky results, the liberal Democrat, Jack Conway, who Paul will face in the general election collected about 22,000 more votes than Paul, and Democrats in general garnered about 170,000 more total votes than Republicans. No one should start assuming that the seat is Paul's just yet.

It was also tough to spin Blanche Lincoln's almost-certain runoff with progressive Bill Halter in Arkansas as a conservative win, considering that Lincoln had screwed herself with the Democratic base by playing games with health-care reform and financial reform. Mostly that race went ignored.

And then there was Joe Sestak's win over Arlen Specter in Pennsylvania. Again, it was a little difficult to spin this as a win for conservatives, considering that Sestak is a progressive Democrat and Specter had just switched parties after decades as a Republican. Instead we heard a lot of talk about "anti-incumbent sentiment."

But the biggest deflation of the Tea Bag came in Pennsylvania's 12th District, where Republican Tim Burns -- a Tea Party fave who got heavy media play at Fox for the past couple of weeks -- still couldn't pull off the victory against Democrat Mark Critz, a longtime John Murtha staffer who leaned heavily on his old boss' legacy to keep his seat. This was a race that had been touted on Fox and elsewhere as a likely pickup for Republicans. Quoth Tory Mazzola, spokesman for the National Republican Congressional Committee, which dumped $200,000 into the race: "The fact that we have a strong GOP candidate, Tim Burns -- committed to job creation and repealing ObamaCare -- combined with a favorable Republican environment has turned this historically Democratic seat into a swing district."

RNC chairman Michael Steele had even guaranteed a Burns victory. Ooops.

So of course, having invested heavily in promoting the "Mini Super Tuesday" election as a referendum on President Obama, Fox had to figure out some way to spin the results that way. This meant getting out their spinmeister "pollsters", Frank Luntz and Doug Schoen.

Luntz managed to turn PA-12 into an anti-Obama referendum by pointing out how Critz ran to the right during the campaign. (Um, OK, Frank, whatever. Tea Party Dude still lost.)

Schoen even more bizarrely tried to claim that Specter's loss was "anti-Obama," because the president had endorsed the converted senator. Um, so, lessee if we have this straight: In DougSchoenland, Pennsylvania Democrats rejected a conservative ex-Republican and replaced him with a progressive Democrat not because he was a piss-poor Democrat, but because he wasn't right-wing enough? Come again?

OK, you knew they had to spin it as a victory for the Tea Partiers somehow. It just took some ... imagination.

From what I hear, despite Arlen's efforts to reassure state Dems, Sestak is running anyway. Should be interesting!

A few days after he switched parties, Sen. Arlen Specter went on Meet the Press and hotly denied reports he had promised President Obama he would be a "loyal Democrat."

In dozens of conference calls and meetings since then, Specter has been trying to reassure Democratic elected officials, county chairs, and party activists around Pennsylvania of the opposite proposition: that he can be counted upon to support the president.

Participants in these efforts say that Specter has been relaxed and direct as he lays out his case, dwelling on instances in which he bucked his former Republican Party during a 29-year Senate career. Specter has been received well, they say, though some skeptics are eager for a Democrat with a more liberal record to challenge him in the 2010 primary.

"I've read about his diligence before, but I've been really impressed to see how they're reaching down to the very base of the grass roots," said Jack Hanna of Indiana County, chairman of the state party's Southwest caucus, who was on two conference calls with Specter. "The guy's on top of it."

This weekend, Specter faces the biggest public test so far of his appeal to party regulars, appearing at the Democratic State Committee spring meeting in Pittsburgh. He is scheduled to host a dessert reception after a fund-raising dinner tonight and to make a major speech tomorrow.

U.S. Rep. Joe Sestak of Delaware County, who has said he intends to run against Specter for the Democratic nomination, also plans to attend.

On Monday, Specter had a breakfast meeting with Democratic leaders in Montgomery County, moved on to Delaware County for lunch, and met with Chester County leaders in the evening.

At the Montgomery gathering, held at the Hilton Garden Inn in Fort Washington, Specter faced a couple of challenging questions about his support for key elements of former President George W. Bush's agenda, including the tax cuts for the wealthy and the Iraq war.

"He was one of the enablers in the Senate because, as a moderate with a lot of seniority, he was in a position to stand up to Bush," said Montgomery County Commissioner Joe Hoeffel. "I have a hard time getting past that."