NYTimes:

LOS ANGELES, May 11 - Before Hillary Rodham Clinton's former chief fund-raiser went on trial here for underreporting donations to her Senate campaign, political speculation has revolved around what if anything Mrs. Clinton knew about his alleged transgressions, as well as what if anything the trial would do to her presidential aspirations (assuming she has them)

A federal prosecutor tried to answer at least one of those questions in his opening statement on Wednesday in Federal District Court, when he told the jury, "You will hear no evidence that Hillary Clinton was involved in any way, shape or form." ....read on

Let's see how our 24/7 does with this news. They are looking to hang this case around her neck, so don't be surprised to hear the talking heads make all sorts of allegations contrary to this report.

" Mr. Fitton said he did not find the prosecutor's statement about Mrs. Clinton's lack of involvement very credible. Furthermore, he added, "The idea that David Rosen pulled a fast one on the campaign is baloney."

Thomas J. Fitton, is the president of Judicial Watch and will be all over this trial and the 24/7 toones as well.

Uptdate: Daily Howler has more: On Hardball, they strung her up anyway

The Right Is Wrong and Small As Well

With every national poll (83% opposed) condemning government interference in the Terry Shiavo matter you would think by the immense media presence of supporting talking heads that the reverse was actually true. In fact, no case in recent memory (possibly Elian Gonzales) has demonstrated the enormousimbalance between the vocal pundits of the lunatic fringe right wing and their actual lack of support bymainstream Americans.

All week long, pundit after pundit from the Right, followed politician after politician from the Right, by inundating the national media with twisted rationale and downright lies and smears of the innocent people just doing the civic jobs in a fully functioning Democracy. From one court loss to the next, the panicking pubescent pundits of the Right leaped from one cable news show to the next. An uninformed observer might believe by viewing these manic media performances that this group represented a gigantic swath of the voting populace in America. But when the dark star dust settled, there was simply no one home. In fact, no poll number in the recent history of Red State/Blue State divisive battles has reached as high as the 80% region. Clearly, the American people have spoken.

The problem is, the lunatic fringe on the right couldn't care less.

emailed by Mark G

David Neiwert and I have finished our new book and it will be released very, very soon. The graphic above is the book cover and both of us are really excited about our collaboration. We've documented much more than just the talking heads you see in "bubbles" falling off the cliff.

We'll be making a big push for it once the process begins starting with a live chat on C&L.

I think you guys will be just as proud of it as I am.

Follow me on Twitter here:

http://twitter.com/JohnAmato

This means two things: One, that it's hard to think of even one reason to keep watching CNN; and two, that the bar just got raised on the incoherent mess that is the Sunday talk shows. It'll be nice to have a show that actually addresses foreign policy for once.

And Amanpour is not going to roll over for the powerful the way so many of the talking heads do:

ABC News has poached one of CNN’s biggest stars, Christiane Amanpour.

Ms. Amanpour will anchor ABC’s Sunday morning public affairs program, “This Week,” beginning in August, the network news division announced Thursday.

A longtime foreign correspondent for CNN, Ms. Amanpour will give “This Week” a global spin.

[...] Along with “This Week,” ABC said Ms. Amanpour would also anchor “prime-time documentaries on international subjects.”

The network news division — which is reeling from an impending staff cut — has been seeking a replacement for George Stephanopoulos, who shifted from “This Week” to “Good Morning America” in December.

ABC’s gain is a serious loss for CNN, which introduced a daily show on CNN International with Ms. Amanpour as host just six months ago. Jim Walton, the president of CNN Worldwide, said in an e-mail message to staff members that “her work burnished our news brand and gave it authority. In turn, the CNN imprimatur opened doors for her around the world and provided a global platform for the intelligent, courageous, principled reporting that is her signature. CNN and Christiane helped make each other great.”

CNN said her daily show, “Amanpour,” would finish at the end of April.

In a telephone interview on Thursday, Ms. Amanpour said there were no points of disagreement with CNN that prompted her exit. Rather, she said, the job at ABC was a “once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.”

Ms. Amanpour said her mission regardless of news organization was to “make foreign news less foreign.” On “This Week,” she said, she would “focus on the intractable convergence of domestic and foreign policy.”

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Watching the talking heads on the Sunday shows can be infuriating most of the time and here's an example of what I mean. During the 2008 election, health care reform was a central issue that Americans were considering when they went to vote. It was a huge issue for the Democratic Party as all the candidates including the final three stumped for weeks on the principle of health care reform. But in the eyes of Michele Norris, that's not what happened at all and she's supposed to be the liberal on the panel I assume.

Meet the Press:

MS. NORRIS: But outside of the Beltway there's an interesting data point here that people involved in the process talk about, the fact that some 90 percent of the people who voted actually have health insurance and three-quarters of them are satisfied with what they got.

And there's different ways of looking at that. And one way to look at that is to say that perhaps there is not the public mandate for this that would dictate this sort of rush to legislation, and that's going to make it harder to make that point and sell that when they, when they...

My God, what is she talking about? There's a lot of things Villagers can say to torpedo health care reform, but this is just gibberish. America knows that our health care system is in shambles. Even John McCain campaigned on a crappy health care plan, only his idea wasn't reform at all, but how does this mean that President Obama doesn't have a mandate? Why is Congress consumed with this legislation then? It's because he has a mandate that he's doing it! That's a major reason why Obama won the election. And if we look at the 40 million or so who are uninsured, well that number is almost as big as the amount of votes John McCain tallied. And doesn't the President represent all of America?

I have pretty good health insurance that's very costly now and none of my doctors are accepting it anymore in California. How's that for health care? It's been the trend for a few years now in the sunshine state. I just had an MRI on my wrist to see if there's a ganglion cyst buried there. I had to pay over 50% of the cost and now the doctor wants to do surgery, but I have to pay at least half of that too. Guess what? I'm not going to have the surgery. Thanks a lot PPO. Oh, my health care is so wonderful that my wrist will remain in pain until..who knows...And I have a good health care plan which is better than most people have. Calling Michele Norris. Please wake up. It's the talking heads that are making Americans more worrisome about change. Anytime we make some sort of change in our own life it's pretty scary. The fear card is being played over and over again as negativity from the press pool is being trumped up too. Are they so alien to the rest of the country that they have to make a mockery of it?

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David Neiwert posted about David Zurawik's frothy appearance with Howard Kurtz last weekend as he bashed MSNBC. On 'Reliable Sources,' David Zurawik decries heated cable talk by shrieking about MSNBC's 'fascism'

Zurawik felt compelled to explain himself in a little more detail online.

As you can see from the video, I am harder on MSNBC than Fox, because this NBC sister channel has outrageously decided it doesn't have to cover news on weekends and holidays -- and yet, still calls itself a news channel.I have to admit, it is a great business moldel: Don't cover the news. let someone fulfill that expensive task. We'll just put on ideologues like Keith Olbermann and Rachel Maddow and let them mock our opponents as we opine about the news that others like CNN went to trouble and expense of gathering and verifying.

He's upset because they choose to run some of those Locked Up episodes during the weekend, really? Here's a little info for Z: MSNBC does cover the news on the weekends, they just don't do it 24/7. He should probably check their schedule sometime before making the claim that they don't cover the news on Saturday and Sunday. And WTF does that have to do with how they cover the news in general or if they are biased in their reporting? Which is worse, showing some non-news shows on the weekend, or pushing a political agenda 24 hours a day, seven days a week for as many years as they've been on the air?

Fox News tries to shrug off their right-wing bias by saying they have opinion talking heads, so they don't consider those shows to be news. But if anyone -- and that means you, David -- were to watch Fox News, starting with Fox and Friends right up through Neil Cavuto, you would see a right-wing bias that would make your head spin -- all dressed up as news reporting. Heavy anti-union messages, insane free-market Wall Streeters and anti-Obama segments dominate their coverage, but somehow Z isn't outraged by that behavior as much.

Sure, MSNBC's opinion lineup, from Hardball to Maddow is largely center-left commentators, but they start their mornings with three hours of Joe Scarborough before going into seven straight hours of news blocks that for the most part interview politicians from both parties along with the usual battle of the consultants. Andrea Mitchell has her own hour and you can't call her a lefty.

So while I agree with some of Z's complaints, please get some basic facts straight. And his criticism of MSNBC gives us a look into the window of the mind of a Villager critic.

And yes, these cable shows have hurt America, because they are always looking for a "conflict" which will increase ratings rather than examine the news and issues at hand with an emphasis to inform us rather than persuade of. This approach aided Bush and Cheney in their quest to go and invade Iraq, and look where that has taken us: Thousands dead, innocents lost, billions of dollars spent, torture, military commissions and wiretapping soon followed. Good job, cable news.

Gosh, where would we all be without NY Times columnist David Brooks to tell us what is and isn't important? After all, John McCain's statement that he was right about Iraq was predicated on the notion that the surge was successful and that troop levels are back to pre-surge numbers. The fact that he is wrong about that (both the actual troop numbers and the definition of success, come to that) is of little matter to Brooks when considering his fitness as Commander-in-Chief. Why focus on little niggling details like actual troop numbers? You nitpickers.

Download | play Download | play (h/t Heather)

Think Progress:

Contrary to Brooks’s claim that “no one’s going to care” about McCain’s reading of troop levels in Iraq, the issue is critically important. As Sen. John Kerry (D-MA) noted, “If you don’t know the number of troops it’s very difficult to make a judgment on if they are over-extended.”

Brooks claimed that McCain has a “pretty strong case” that he has been “right” about Iraq. But McCain’s gaffes are the latest in a series of ignorant comments about Iraq that raise questions about a candidate who has staked his campaign on the war.

And yet, McSame is supposed to have more credibility on Iraq than Obama, why? Could it be because the talking heads that have been wrong time and time again--and I'm looking at you, Bobo--keep telling us that a grasp of facts isn't all that important?

If you're into this, the RBC committee will be meeting in the morning to render a decision on how they to treat both Michigan and Florida. We all know by now that they both were stripped of 100% of their delegates for moving up their primary to an earlier date. Here's some info on what's happening. Here's the DNC Statement on RBC Meeting from Yahoo.

"The analysis maintains that the RBC did have proper authority and jurisdiction in imposing the 100% sanction. The RBC had wide latitude in that decision.

"The document also examines the 50% automatic sanction and how to implement such a sanction: Under this scenario, one option would be to reduce the total number of delegates by half; the second option for consideration by the RBC would be to reduce the delegation's votes by half, so that each delegate gets a half vote.

I'm not a rules guy myself. The reason I received from the DNC for their decision of stripping away 100% from both states instead of the usual 50% was to send a message to any other state considering trying to circumvent the process. In my opinion, if they had left it at 5o%, there would have been primaries there and we wouldn't be having this discussion now or the big Saturday meeting. Anyway, they are both important states to the general election.

And I feel especially bad for Florida because it was the Republican legislature that forced the move instead of the Democratic party. I mean, it's Florida after all. There's a very popular Republican Governor running the show and we all know what can happen there after the 2000 debacle.

Nancy Pelosi, Howard Dean and Harry Reid have made it clear that they want the SD's to declare ASAP. Do you think they will flood in after the primaries have finally concluded? It's being covered by cable TV with all the talking heads out to play starting at 9 am EST. I hope I haven't confused anyone on this and I got it right. Please be kind in the comment section.

Update: Watching some of the meeting today, I forgot to mention how passionate MI is over this issue and how frustrated the voters have been. Are you tired of Iowa and NH setting the agenda and almost always picking the nominees?

Thorogood was such a trooper in the 80s, playing constantly in clubs in San Francisco, that I actually thought he lived in the Bay Area. But he's from... Delaware. In the late 70's "Move It On Over" and his cover of "Who Do You Love" were hits on San Francisco radio and we were playing his high energy rootsy blues alongside the Pretenders, Clash, Blondie, Talking Heads, Generation X and (pre-Michael Savage) the Dead Kennedys. Bad to the Bone, his sixth album, came out in 1982. Here's the title track: