DOWNLOADS: (498)

PLAYS: (1355)

Embed

Of course you knew that no matter what President Obama did in regards to Libya, right-wingers were going to slam him for it -- damned if he did, damned if he didn't. But few have been quite as naked in their two-faced hypocrisy as Newt Gingrich.

Via George Zornick at ThinkProgress, here's Gingrich giving Greta Van Susteren his prescription for dealing with Libya two weeks ago, on March 7:

Exercise a no-fly zone this evening. Communicate to the Libyan military that Gadhafi is gone, and that the sooner they switched sides the more likely they were to survive. Provide help to the rebels to replace him. I mean, the idea that we're confused about a man who has been an anti-American dictator since 1969 just tells you how inept this administration is. They were very quick to jump on Mubarak, who was their ally for 30 years, and they're confused about getting rid of Gadhafi. This is a moment to get rid of him. Do it. Get it over with.

… We don’t need to have the United Nations. All we have to say is that we think that slaughtering your own citizens is unacceptable and that we’re intervening.

Then there he was last night on Fox News with Sean Hannity:

HANNITY: So, did he make a mistake by not seeking Congress' authorization, and do you view that as a violation of the War Powers Act?

GINGRICH: Well, no, the War Powers Act technically gives him 45 days. But it's a violation of common sense.

And then he went on Today this morning with Matt Lauer and actually said he wouldn't have intervened:

GINGRICH: The standard [Obama] has fallen back to of humanitarian intervention could apply to Sudan, to North Korea, to Zimbabwe, to Syria this week, to Yemen, to Bahrain. … The Arab League wanted us to do something. The minute we did something, the Arab League began criticizing us doing it. I think that two wars in Iraq and Afghanistan is a lot. I think that the problems we have in Pakistan, Egypt — go around the region. We could get engaged by this standard in all sorts of places. I would not have intervened. I think there were a lot of other ways to affect Qaddafi. I think there are a lot of other allies in the region we could have worked with. I would not have used American and European forces.

Of course, what else do you expect from Newt Gingrich? If nothing else, we can always count on him to explore new depths in naked hypocrisy.

If you haven't been watching Rachel Maddow's stellar reporting on Afghanistan, get thee to The Maddow Blog and watch the clips there. Her remarkable reports are worth every second of the time you spend to watch.

This is the first time I've seen a journalist really try to get beyond the basics of the Afghan war and into the details of what our military is actually doing, what they hope to accomplish, and how they're going about accomplishing it. Rachel Maddow is hardly a hawk, so part of the remarkable quality of her reporting is seeing her come to an understanding that much of what's being done involves helping people, not killing them.

This clearly doesn't fit the story they want to tell on The Today Show. Watch the video as Rachel is questioned about the July deadline and the supposed "delayed Kandahar strategy."

Maddow's answers are clear: You're not going to see a war movie in Kandahar, and the deadline is an absolute necessity to keep pressure on the Afghan government to get in line and work to get the people they govern on board. But watch Ann Curry try to get her to get all rah-rah about combat and the deadline.

Continue reading »

I love Google, don't you? It's so handy. Why, if I were a Republican presidential nominee and I didn't know who to select as my running mate, I too might use teh Google to determine my pick.

John McCain did that very thing when he selected Sarah Palin. On the Today Show, when Matt Lauer questioned him on his pick, he said that he "wouldn't know." Jesus. McCain tried to bring up the war to divert Lauer from pushing him, and to Lauer's credit he didn't back down.

John McCain refused to comment on it. That is insane.

Lauer asked, that the vetting of Sarah Palin was so woefully inadequate that no one from the campaign traveled to Alaska to interview her husband or any of her political opponents?

"I wouldn't know," McCain said. "The fact is that I'm proud of Sarah Palin, I'm proud of the campaign we waged, she energized our party, she will be a major factor in American politics in the future, and I'm proud of our campaign."

Somewhat taken aback, Lauer told McCain that he found it "somewhat surprising" that he didn't know anything about the vetting process, adding "You were the presidential candidate."

McCain testily shot back by saying that he had no intention of "looking back over what happened over a year ago," adding, "I'm sorry, you'll have to get others to comment on it."

Really? That's all Mr. Straight talk had in him? And it's embarrassing that they were so desperate for a female candidate that they actually had to Google Chick-Repubs to see who was available.

Among their revelations is how McCain's campaign manager, Rick Davis, spotted Sarah Palin while searching the Internet for possible female vice presidential candidates.

"Rick Davis saw one interview she did with Charlie Rose where she was very much the Sarah Palin that people find appealing. She was lively, she was engaging, she popped off the screen. And he said, 'Wow, she jumps out,'" Halperin said.

"McCain boxed himself in. He needed a game-changing pick for vice president. And that left them with a last-minute pick of someone who was, to McCain, a virtual stranger, and was, to his senior staffers, an absolute stranger," he added.

Gawker writes:

McCain knew Bristol Palin was pregnant, Republicans insisted. But suddenly stories were all-but-implying that McCain's campaign—the campaign of serious grown-ups—basically Googled Palin a couple weeks ago and decided she looked clean enough for the job. As John Dickerson puts it, Republicans are not being complimentary when they quietly call McCain "reckless."

Why didn't Davis just go to Hannidate or Match.com to find a running mate for McCain? I'm sure Laura Ingraham would have jumped at the chance too.

Obviously, Jeffrey Immelt feels more than a little pressure to prove that NBC is not the liberal bastion (and messenger of Obama's secret army) that the unapologetic righties like to whinge about, otherwise there's really no excuse for this latest hire:

Journalism continues staggering pushes forward on an otherwise ordinary Sunday! In the great "tradition" of mixing up people like Matt Lauer and Meredith Viera with public drunks like Hoda and Kathy Lee, The Today Show's newest hire? Jenna Bush. Whee!

Absolutely, completely, 100% true. Here's looking at you, NBC, via the AP report:

...a 27-year-old teacher in Baltimore, [Bush] will contribute stories about once a month on issues like education to television's top-rated morning news show, said Jim Bell, its executive producer.

"It wasn't something I'd always dreamed to do," she said. "But I think one of the most important things in life is to be open-minded and to be open-minded for change."

Not to put too fine a point on it, but the spawn of the guy who mangled the English language so often that it was painful to listen to him speak and who is personally responsible for the grammatically-odd statement above is going to cover educational issues?

That's like asking the spawn of Darth Cheney, Liz Cheney, on her opinion about Obama's foreign policy, or lifelong government-paid health insurance recipient John McCain about his opinion on the public option...oh wait.

As Atrios tweeted yesterday:

I look forward to seeing Jenna Bush interview Liz Cheney on The Today Show, being introduced by Luke Russert

Unqualified nepotism: Conservative values at their very best.

DOWNLOADS: (1504)

PLAYS: (2386)

Embed

(h/t Heather for the vid)

ON FOX News Sunday, Chris Wallace really got into Joe Biden's remarks from the Today Show about the flu and ran with them pretty hard. It's been almost a week and the administration has clarified his statements, but that didn't stop Wallace from FOXing them up.

First he brought up a conspiracy theory that says the Vice President slipped up and was giving us information that the government didn't want Americans to know. Namely, that the swine flu is highly contagious and you had better stay in your house and lock your doors.

Wallace: I have to tell you, some people have said to me since Vice President talked. Maybe you guys are telling the public one thing, but at the highest levels of government you've heard something else, no -- you're saying to me that everything the Vice President Biden said, I'm not talking to the travel to Mexico. Being in a confined space, being in a classroom. Being in a school. Being in a subway, no health danger to any of that?

Sebelius: Again, with, we're letting the science lead this investigation and trying to be prudent...

Second, he asked if Biden was just insane.

Wallace: So why would the Vice President tell his family that? Are we to believe that the Vice President of the United States is a crackpot?

Sebelius: I think that each member of our country makes decisions about themselves and their family and about safety and security. What we're telling you is what the science says.

Kathleen Sebelius should have gotten up in his grill on that last point, but she's trying to be reassuring to the American people. We hope the next time a talking head gets out of line she will call them on it.

Wow, Chris Wallace had plenty of good reasons to call out Dick Cheney on a host of topics, but he never would have ever used that language to describe a "Vice President" of the United States during Cheney's tenure. FOX News has completely gone off the rails since President Obama was elected. They were always a propaganda arm for the GOP, but the ad hominem attacks have escalated to monumental proportions among their talk-show hosts.

And a new day is born.

Ann Coulter was scheduled to appear on the "Today" show Tuesday morning to promote her new book, "Guilty." But it's now been canceled, according to her website.

"I guess this ends the 'they just want to get ratings' argument about liberal media bias," Coulter wrote underneath.

As County Fair notes:

Coulter is still scheduled to appear on CBS' Early Show tomorrow, according to her web page. This follows the recent revelation that CBS considered including Coulter on the "independent" panel it created to investigate a 60 Minutes report on President Bush's National Guard record.

Matthews will still beg for her to come on Hardball I would imagine.

The Huffington Post:

MSNBC announced a slate of changes this afternoon, leading with their new election-themed show: "Race For The White House" with David Gregory. The NBC White House correspondent has been a utility player at NBC/MSNBC for some time, regularly stepping in as a guest host — and demonstrating his range — on the "Today Show" and "Meet The Press." Gregory also took over the timeslot left vacant by Don Imus last April, temporarily stepping in to the breach before the network began trying out different hosts in that timeslot. The show will premiere on March 17th. Read on...

He's no Rachel Maddow, but perhaps MSNBC believes she needs more camera time before she's ready for her own show. Gregory has blamed the blogs for the polarization of American politics and is hit and miss in the reality based, hard hitting journalism arena so we'll have to keep an eye on him. This is a real missed opportunity for MSNBC.

Bill Donohue is now NBC's resident expert on the Middle East and higher learning issues in college campuses.<snark> How do I know? He was on with Matt Lauer Monday and told me so. Bill does seem to know a lot about propaganda though...And I thought he was just trying to save Christmas. Check out his violent rhetoric here---here---here---and don't forget that he blamed the kids for allowing Mark Foley to molest them. Some expert.

Download | play Download | play

Since Noah Oppenheim has become a producer for TODAY, it has become littered with extreme right wing pundits. I watch it almost everyday because they feature hard news in the first hour. Read this detailed piece about Noah in the TV Newser. There seems to be a little tension there.

A 'Today' staffer says the assertion that his program is full of liberals is nonsense. He believes the editorial staff is 50/50, left and right. The show is fair and middle-of-the-road, and that's why Oppenheim's appointment is nerve-wracking: He seems unable to shed his political leanings and remain unbiased.

We all don't care what his politics are as long as he keeps them out of his segments. And now you'll understand why the Donohue's are on so much.

Please email Phil.Griffin@nbcuni.com and ask him why he's giving so much power to (read this Weekly Standard article) Noah Oppenheim, who used to be the EP for Scarborough. (Please be polite!) They are making a mockery out of the Today show. And this morning---guess who they had on as a very serious political analyst to tell us how the campaign trail for President is going? Bill Kristol.

 It's Blooper time.....Someone left Tim Russert's mic live during the Today Show Sunday morning before Meet the Press aired....

Download | play Download | play

Something about shining shoes...I always post bloopers when I find them...

...who the first person the TODAY Show interviewed----(play Jeopardy Think music)---

Here's a hint: It wasn't Nancy Pelosi or Harry Reid....Got it yet? Here's one last hint. It was a Republican....Time is up...

(Answer below the fold)

Continue reading »