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You've just got to love this framing for Chris Matthews' first panel segment on his weekend bobble head show. Does President Obama have the "bedside manners" to tell the left they're not going to get a public option? How about this one instead Chris? Does President Obama have the "bedside manners" to tell anyone who wants to filibuster a public option to break out the cots and the Depends? How's that for a different lead in to this segment Chris? In case you didn't notice, it takes 51 votes to get something passed in the United States Senate, not 60. It's time for the Democrats to quit allowing these silent filibusters.

INTRO: Bedside manners--the time is coming when our Democratic President will have to break the bad news to his liberal supporters and have to tell them that they can't get the kind of health care bill on which they have set their hearts. Does he have the strong bedside manner to give them the bad news and still keep their spirits up?

[...]

MATTHEWS: Boy, Dan, this is a rock and a hard place. The liberals in the Congress are pushing and pushing, and the president has to face reality. He needs 60 senators, 218 members of the Congress.

Mr. DAN RATHER: Uh-huh.

MATTHEWS: Can both meet peacefully?

Mr. RATHER: No. The president isn't going to get a--the--what's been described as a public option. He may get something close to that, something he can camouflage up as if--he isn't going to get it. And this is going to take a long time, Chris. I wouldn't be surprised if we aren't talking about this same subject late into December. And there is the question of public fatigue. I think he will get a bill, I think it will be progress along the lines of health care reform, but he's going to need a health care reform number two. And whether he can get that in an election year of 2010 is a real open question.

MATTHEWS: Kelly, you cover it all the time, and my question is, can you square a circle? You've got people on the Republican side now, Olympia Snowe, who's aboard so far. Maybe Susan Collins, the other senator from Maine. Maybe, maybe. But you've also got Joe Lieberman of Connecticut saying, `I'm here for the--for the insurance industry of Hartford. I'm not going to be for this bill as it stands.'

Ms. KELLY O'DONNELL: Well, getting all the Democrats will be tough if you're talking about a government insurance plan. That is going to be difficult because not only Joe Lieberman, but there are a number of moderates. When you're talking about Olympia Snowe or Susan Collins, the Republican ladies of Maine who get a lot of attention, they're kind of--they're using their influence really effectively right now. They still can have a phone call with the president, a one-on-one meeting with the president, which most Republicans don't have any chance of having, and they're still also talking to Republicans, expressing concerns about what it would cost, how big the change would be, could government be competent to have this kind of a program. So they're keeping the conversation going. In the end you could see Snowe, you could see Collins joining on, but that might be crucial to get to 60 because you may lose some of the moderate Democrats.

MATTHEWS: Right. Well, that's what I don't get here. Helene, jump in here. I mean, you cover the White House. How in the world does this president deliver health care if the price is a public option, when so many people who will have to vote for this to pass are against it? I don't see how it works.

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From The Cafferty File:

The news media are fighting to survive — and Dan Rather thinks the government should help rescue them. The former CBS anchorman is calling on President Obama to create a White House commission to help save the press.

Rather says such a commission could make recommendations on saving journalism jobs and creating new business models to help the industry survive. He says there are precedents for this kind of national commission — which have helped other failing industries.

Rather says the stakes couldn’t be any higher. He told the Aspen Daily News: “A truly free and independent press is the red beating heart of democracy and freedom.” And he says it’s not just journalists who should worry about the fate of the press; but rather every citizen.

He also talked about “the dumbing down and sleazing up” of what we see on the news; and blames that on the blurry line between news and entertainment — along with corporate and political influence on newsrooms. He claims about 80-percent of the media is controlled by a handful of corporations.

Rather also talks about the decline in investigative and international reporting; and says the loss of reporters covering the two ongoing wars hurts our nation.

The bottom line as he sees it: If somebody doesn’t step in and take action… the nation will lose its independent media.

Here’s my question to you: Should the federal government be involved in saving the news media?

Jack misses the mark here. It's not a matter of opinion whether 80 percent of the media is controlled by a handful of corporations. It's simply a fact. A better question would have been should these companies be broken up, but of course Jack would never be allowed to ask that question. His responses below the fold.

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While I think it is premature to write an obituary for the Republican Party, it's hard not to watch this clip and not come to the conclusion that the party is in critical condition.

What is a consensus amongst the talking heads is that the GOP is lost today: no leader, no clear idea of what values to champion, no clear idea if it should be centrist or move even further to the right. Of all the things that the Bush administration destroyed in their term of office, their own party is probably the most surprising.

And who is it poised to rise again like Lazarus to prove the divine right of the GOP, according to those Beltway insiders? Newt "Love means never having to say I'm sorry to my other wives" Gingrich. Even Chris Matthews cannot hold back his patented guffaw at the thought.

Ultimately, the group agrees that it remains to be seen whose idea will resonate with the general public, but it appears that no one currently vying for the top role has been able to offer an idea that we haven't seen for the last 30 years. So have I got this straight? No obvious leader, rudderless and no new ideas?

Awwww....couldn't happen to a more deserving party.

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One of the more laughably adolescent and petulant aspect of Bush's Farewell Legacy Tour is the refusal to examine any aspect of his presidency, brushing it off with a "Well, you may not agree with me, but you have to agree that I made tough decisions."

Maybe it's not so surprising that the guy who got to Harvard and Yale on legacy and who needed to be bailed out by Daddy and friends on every business he attempted thinks that he deserves credit for merely sticking it out and not pushing off "hard" decisions to others. Certainly, that has been his modus operandi before public office. But clearly, that excuse isn't flying with the media any longer, as exemplified from this segment of The Chris Matthews Show, which highlight the fatal flaw of Bush's reasoning: you don't get credit for making the tough decisions, you get credit for making the right decisions.

KAY: Of course he had to face tough decisions. Because that’s the job of the American president, you have to face tough decisions. And you have to face them well and make the right decisions. I think the trouble is in all the interviews he’s given—these farewell interviews—he still really hasn’t answered satisfactorily the central question of his presidency: Why did he invade Iraq? It’s not enough to say it was a tough decision, so I made it, you have to say it was the right decision. [..]

RATHER: As far as it goes, it’s a fair estimate that great presidencies are made out of crises. If you come up with the right answers. The business of tough decisions, every president has tough decisions to make. Herbert Hoover had tough decisions to make. He made some of the wrong ones. Gen. Grant, for all his generalship when he was president, made tough decisions, but made the wrong decisions. This is the way history goes, fairly or unfairly. It seems to me, you make the wrong decisions, you pay the price. [..]

WHITAKER: Chris, you know, Bush likes to think of himself as the Great Decider, but I think one of the things that history is going to record is how indecisive he was at key moments. You think about Katrina, and handling that crisis. You think about the current economic crisis, that he’s leaving and how he was sort of asleep at the switch as that all happened. And even on Iraq, even though he was decisive on going to war, he was incredibly indecisive about the aftermath of the war. And I think that that’s the root of a lot of the problems we’ve had there.

Wow, you know, these Media Elite types are actually starting to sound like us DFHs, aren't they? Too bad their honesty only kicked in as Bush got kicked out.

Transcripts below the fold

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The wingnuts have been proudly displaying Dan Rather's scalp on their trophy wall ever since they chased him out of CBS with the "Memogate" nonsense. But this particular scalp may be about to turn out not to be so dead after all.

Last year Rather filed a lawsuit against CBS that mostly drew derisive snorts from both the wingnuts and the Village Idiots, but which in fact promises to be very interesting indeed if the trial takes place. As things stand now, it's set to go to trial in February.

But already some noteworthy items are seeping out.

Felix Gillette at the New York Observer got a look at some of the documents and found a list of names that CBS executives had compiled for its "independent panel" to examine the claims against Rather.

The list includes Mr. Boccardi's name as well such seemingly reasonable potential candidates as David Gergen, Gene Roberts (former managing editor of The New York Times) and Dick Wald (former president of NBC News).

Then things get a little bit more conservative. Under the category "others" are the names of potential candidates such as… Matt Drudge, Ann Coulter, and Rush Limbaugh.

Herein, CBS’s full list of "others":

* William Buckley
* Robert Novak
* Kate O’Beirne
* Nicholas Von Hoffman
* Tucker Carlson
* Pat Buchanan
* George Will
* Lou Dobbs
* Matt Drudge
* Robert Barkley
* Robert Kagan
* Fred Barnes
* William Kristol
* John Podhoretz
* David Brooks
* William Safire
* Bernard Goldberg
* Ann Coulter
* Andrew Sullivan
* Christopher Hitchens
* PJ O’Rourke
* Christopher Caldwell
* Elliot Abrams
* Charles Krauthammer
* William Bennett
* Rush Limbaugh

At the very bottom of the list, someone wrote in one more name. "Roger Ailes."

What, Torquemada wasn't available?

Eli has more.

  When asked for his opinion on the whole Jesse Jackson/Barack Obama dust up, Dan Rather talks about his admiration for the legendary civil rights activists, and says Osama bin Laden wouldn't be possible without him. Say what?

Download | play   Download | play (h/t Bill W)

I can understand accidentally mixing up Obama and Osama. It happens. What I don't understand is how Dan Rather could make the mistake of actually calling him the full Osama bin Laden. More astonishingly, how can the entire"Morning Joe" cast sit there and not correct him? Stupefying.