DOWNLOADS: (167)

PLAYS: (2617)

Embed

On Friday November 30th, Charles Krauthammer got so frustrated with Bill Kristol's appearance on the All-Star Panel of Fox News Special Report that during the last segment of the show he called Kristol a socialist.

KRISTOL: I'm continuing my class warfare theme here. The winners I think are the 19 top executives at Hostess brand who may get bonuses worth up to almost $2 million as the company goes out of business, for managing, going out of business – while the workers', of course, pension funds haven't been filled up for, a year.

And the losers, uh, the workers of America, because you know, in this budget deal everyone's talking about, the one tax that everyone agrees should go up, apparently on the Democratic and Republican sides, with a couple of outliers, is the payroll tax – Social Security payroll tax – so there's going to be a two percent, there is going to be tax increases January, unless someone steps up and says, “Wait a second, we're giving everyone else a tax break and everyone's Social Security taxes go up.”

BAIER: Winners and losers.

KRAUTHAMMER: Kristol's turning into a Socialist... He's the Secretary of the Treasury sitting right over there. Worker's champion.

Kristol has been standing by his position that conservatives should not look like the party of the 2% and fight for millionaires and instead acquiesce over raising tax rates, but the nail in the coffin came when Kristol then defended workers yet again.

What chapped Dr. Strangehammer was that he attacked the Twinkified executives of Hostess for getting a $2 million bonus for destroying the company, and then called the workers the real losers because ownership pillaged their pension benefits along the way. Good on you, BIll. Even if it is but a fleeting moment, I'm enjoying Conservatives carving each other up. (h/t Heather for coming up with a great video clip for me)

DOWNLOADS: (140)

PLAYS: (2419)

Embed

I went to Real Time with Arianna Huffington and hung out with Tucker Carlson in the green room during the Valerie Plame story. We talked for about twenty minutes and he seemed like a really nice guy. Unfortunately he's not the same person on teevee. He joined Bret Baier on Fox News' Special Report yesterday and made the ludicrous assumption that some independents would vote for Romney because the ugly images on their TVs would hammer home the sense that America is going in the wrong direction. It was so stupid that Bret Baier felt the need to push back against his analysis, and I don't think I've ever seen Baier do something like that.

Carlson: I think on the margins this probably hurts Obama a little bit in that it adds to the general feeling that things are amiss in American. In specific terms I think in one swing state affected by the storm, Pennsylvania. And if there’s one place you could see the effect of the Hurricane hurting voting turnout would be in Philadelphia, maybe on the margins that helps the Romney campaign in the state of PA.

Baier: Let me push back. It hurts because ‘things are amiss in America,’ because a hurricane --

Carlson: Look, I’m in no sense suggesting people are rationally going to conclude Obama is responsible for the hurricane, of course not. But, if you are looking for a key candidate, the incumbent, and asking, ‘Am I happy with the state of the country right now?’, it’s possible on the margins to affect a tiny group of undecided voters at this stage that, the fact that there’s a hurricane and ugly pictures on television will add to the cumulative effect that America isn’t going in the right direction.

Baier: Although response and how the response has gone arguably you had New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, who said the president's done very well and it's going smooth.

My God, being made to look like a dummy on Fox is something a host will rarely do to a conservative guest, but in Tucker's case Bret made the exception. Having to explain that you weren't in any way channeling Pat Robertson made him look feeble. Carlson, please go back to attacking Jon Stewart for bashing CNBC and Jim Cramer.

DOWNLOADS: (131)

PLAYS: (1464)

Embed

So the conventional wisdom is that President Obama won the third debate, correct? I've read all the articles and watched the debate and I also concluded the same thing. Here's a rundown of all the snap polls conducted after the debate. They conclude that Obama won easily. So I was interested to see how Bret Baier's Special Report roundtable discussion handicapped the final debate. I expected some disagreement, but what I heard was downright other-worldly. Did they watch the same thing over 50 million Americans watched?

Here are some excerpts. The entire "all star" roundtable video is posted for you to peruse.

Some choice quotes:

A.B. Stoddard: I thought President Obama at times was defensive and a little bit desperate. He was obnoxious but I think he won the debate in that he did not lose the debate.

Stoddard did say that Romney flip flopped around on many issues, but then said: "But he did not make a mistake and he did not fall on his face. He did not want to get into a fight with Obama."

Charles Krauthammer: Obama I think was attacking all the time, interrupting a lot, and the clip we saw about the Navy stuff was a perfect example of why I think he (Obama) failed last night. It was small, condescending and off the mark.

Stephen Hayes: Mitt Romney was playing to not lost the debate and I don’t think he lost it. President Obama was playing very seriously to win the debate and I don’t think he won the debate. Does the President’s condescending and disrespectful treatment of Mitt Romney hurt him with Independents? I think there’s a real chance that it could. This was so far beyond the line of acceptable Presidential behavior in my view. The mocking you just played there...

The all-star panel agreed that the moment of the night was when Romney attacked Obama for going on an apology tour, and they thought he was devastating -- without even mentioning that he also happened to be lying outrageously. This segment is so insanely out of touch with reality that it reminded me of what happened to Captain Kirk and his mates when they beamed up on an evil doppleganger ship and crew from another reality.

I've been watching the immediate reaction by the Beltway villagers after the final presidential debate and I have to say I'm dumbfounded. Mitt Romney instantly morphed from his Neocon cocoon and instead of wanting to nuke Iran, he turned into a butterfly of world peace. He even brought his tie dye shirt with him. Not a peep of outrage from the media.

If President Obama suddenly changed every position on foreign policy in the final debate the media would be destroying him. FOX News would be calling for a Darryl Issa investigation and then claim liberal bias if Obama wasn't hearing calls of impeachment from the entire media for having the audacity to lie to the American people at, of all things, a presidential debate, the holiest of holy traditions in American politics.

On top of that, Romney has crafted a narrative that has him now winning the election handily. I'm not kidding, but why should it surprise anyone? It's what conservatives do.

(h/t Heather for the video)

DOWNLOADS: (368)

PLAYS: (3363)

Embed

It's been quite a whirlwind the past couple of weeks, watching Donald Trump wow the Republican world with his dazzling mixture of aggressive ignorance and utter crassness. He's like Sarah Palin on steroids.

But Palin herself remains a potent spokesperson for the forces of ignorance. And while a lot of her apologists and defenders like to claim that Palin is unfairly victimized by quick sound bites, she really makes a much bigger impression -- as someone so utterly clueless they should never be permitted near any public office again -- in longer formats, such as her wide-ranging and rambling interview yesterday with Fox News' Bret Baier.

It produced little exchanges like this one, on increasing the debt ceiling:

PALIN: Hells no. I would not vote to increase that debt ceiling. Otherwise it just shows the American public we're not serious yet. We're still gonna incur more debt. No. And we don't have to increase the debt ceiling here in the next few weeks. It turns my stomach to hear this assumption articulated that, well, we have to despite the fact that we're raking in, the federal government, six billion dollars a day.

Take that money and service our debt first! And pay down some of that debt. Make sure that we're showing the international financial markets and our lenders that we're serious about getting our debt and our deficit problems under control.

BAIER: So, what would you say to the Republicans who do vote for it, on the advice of some experts on Wall Street and around the country who believe that not increasing it would really hurt the economy and create a disaster?

PALIN: I would say, before you seriously think about voting to increase the debt limit and incur more unsustainable, immoral, unethical debt that is really going to ruin our country, to continue down this path -- prioritize, service the debt first, pay for the very essential services that are constitutionally mandated.

Let the states take care of a whole lot of these services and projects, and if a state wants to do something a little bit special, like some extra roads or some extra museums and monuments and cowboy poetry, let that state figure out how they're gonna pay for it.

Palin also sort of weighed in on the other presidential candidates, though you'll notice she actually says nothing at all about any of them, other than that she respects them because they're good Republicans and by golly she loves to see them running; and then remains firmly noncommittal about her own prospects for running.

Then she wraps it all up by suggesting that President Obama had foreign money flowing into his campaign accounts in the 2008 election -- which would, of course, be a crime. Baier asks her:

BAIER: Before I let you go, are you suggesting that the FEC may find that foreign money got into the Obama campaign in 2008?

PALIN: Am I wrong to bring up the fact -- and maybe, Bret, at this point you have more information than I do on where a lot of those dollars were that were unaccounted for. Remember that we saw much proof of a lot of the donations to Obama's campaign -- credit-card contributions under fake names, addresses that perhaps weren't even real addresses in the U.S.

You know, I hope that we don't just give up on making sure that we have free and fair elections -- not just Obama's! Heck, some on the GOP too! Uh, on the GOP side. Let's make sure that rules are being followed. We are a land of laws.

Methinks she's been dipping into Pam "Atlas Wanks" Geller's beandip again.

DOWNLOADS: (188)

PLAYS: (1166)

Embed

Fox News has adopted the Karl Rove playbook laid out for them earlier this week with regard to the Wisconsin protests. Watch as the Very Serious Conservatives talk about President Obama's statements with regard to the ongoing labor protests and pontificate. For them, it's all about consolidating labor union support for 2012 without any real issues.

That was just on. Earlier today, Megyn Kelly was shocked -- SHOCKED -- that Wisconsin Democrats would dare to leave the state in order to delay the vote on Governor Walker's union-buster bill. Here she is, wringing her hands with wide-eyed fury over such a terrible thing. I guess she forgot that it's been done before.

Continue reading »

DOWNLOADS: (1285)

PLAYS: (1440)

Embed

If anything makes me feel warmer and fuzzier about the GOP presidential field for 2012 than Sarah Palin, it's when they seriously discuss Haley Barbour, the Mississippi governor, as Fox News has in naming him one of their "12 for 2012" likely presidential candidates.

Yesterday, Bret Baier hosted a segment featuring Barbour. It included this brief and hilariously whitewashed discussion of Barbour's years as a lobbyist and Republican political kingpin:

In the 60s Barbour worked on President Nixon's campaign. In the 80s he was President Reagan's director of politic affairs. In the 90, he served two terms as chairman of the RNC. He joined the ranks of the Washington animal, the K Street lobbyists.

LARRY SABATO, UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA: He was one of the premiere lobbyists of Washington, D.C.

BAIER: Larry Sabato says that could hurt Barbour if he were to run.

SABATO: Given the American public's view of lobbyists, it's difficult to imagine he would be elected with that qualification.

BARBOUR: "Washington insider" to some people means corrupt or bad. For other people it means knows how to get things done, can get the ball in the end zone.

Actually, that's not the half of it: Barbour's tenure as RNC chief was made particularly memorable by the incident in which he propped up the RNC by borrowing millions from a Chinese businessman -- and then welshing on the loan:

Twice in two years Hong Kong businessman Ambrous Tung Young bailed out the party at crucial moments: first freeing up as much as $2 million in the final days before the G.O.P.'s 1994 sweep of Congress; then eating $500,000 in bad debts, rescuing Republicans in the last weeks of the 1996 contest. The conduit for the money was a U.S. firm with little income and few assets, but quietly backed by an aviation-services and real estate-investment company controlled by Hong Kong and Taiwanese businessmen. The money passed through a Republican think tank that granted big donors more influence over party policy in return for more money. For Young, the arrangement also opened diplomatic doors. In Washington, Young met face to face with the lions of the G.O.P. just as they were taking over Congress. In Beijing a year later, he escorted G.O.P. chairman Haley Barbour in a meeting with Qian Qichen, Foreign Minister for the People's Republic of China.

Continue reading »

DOWNLOADS: (711)

PLAYS: (1297)

Embed

Coming on the heels of last weekend's arrests of a group of a militiamen in the Midwest for plotting to kill law-enforcement officers, you'd think people in positions of responsibility would take seriously some of the rising threats from right-wing extremists. And, judging from the story in the Washington Post, it would seem at least the FBI is:

The FBI is warning police across the country that an anti-government group's call to remove governors from office could provoke violence.

The group called the Guardians of the free Republics wants to "restore America" by peacefully dismantling parts of the government, according to its Web site. It sent letters to governors demanding they leave office or be removed.

Investigators do not see threats of violence in the group's message, but fear the broad call for removal of top state officials could lead others to act out violently. At least two states beefed up security in response.

But over in the FoxNewsiverse -- which operates on separate plane in which everything up is down -- it's not really a big deal. Just about the only discussion of the story on Fox yesterday came in the "All Star Panel" section of Special Report with Bret Baier, and it mostly elicited a big yawn.

Stephen Hayes of the Weekly Standard didn't really know what to make of it, but at least there seemed to be some agreement that even if these were just "kooky people," sometimes "kooky people" can inflict serious harm. Except for Charles Krauthammer, who thought it was all a non-story -- because, of course, activity by right-wing extremists is always a non-story to conservatives:

Krauthammer: Oh, come on. I get e-mails like that every week, and I don't even hold any office. And they don't always include the legally remove you, either.

... And lastly, loony anarchists aren't new in America. We've had 'em since Sacco and Vanzetti. It didn't start with health care reform.

Except, Charles, that these aren't anarchists. These people call themselves "constitutionalists". Just like your Fox colleague, Glenn Beck.

And yes, they've been known to blow stuff up, too.

As Lee Fang at Think Progress explains, the group making the threats is in fact a classic right-wing extremist organization:

Continue reading »

DOWNLOADS: (558)

PLAYS: (890)

Embed

Boy, President Obama had better hope his three-dimensional chess skills are better than they look in his environmental policies -- especially yesterday's announcement about his offshore drilling plan, which was basically a gift to the oil industry and their conservative allies.

Because afterward, they showed their appreciation by largely savaging Obama, as John Boehner did in denouncing the policy for not going far enough. ("Far enough," in Republican parlance, means "total capitulation".)

And then there was yesterday's Special Report with Bret Baier -- you know, one of Fox News' vaunted "hard news" shows that's supposedly really "fair and balanced" -- discussing the policy, which brought on a fellow named Patrick Creighton from the Institute for Energy Research (an oil-industry front group), who made the following comparison:

Creighton: We call it the Tonya Harding approach, where you break your opponents' kneecaps to get ahead. This president and his environmental allies continue to tout that wind, solar, and other renewable fuels will displace fossil energy -- and that's just not the case.

Afterward, Bret Baier chortled over it with reporter Jim Angle:

Baier: The Tonya Harding approach. [laughs]

Angle: [Prolonged laughter]

And then they wonder where all those nutcase Tea Partiers get the ideas for their nutty signs.

Meanwhile, what Rachel Maddow and Chris Hayes said.

DOWNLOADS: (736)

PLAYS: (3013)

Embed

The conservative blogosphere is abuzz over the Bret Baier's contentious interview Wednesday with President Obama. Of course, Baier's repeated interruptions and confrontational tone should come as no surprise. After all, the Fox News hatchet man established his partisan bona fides two years ago in an exclusive interview with President Bush titled, "George W. Bush: Fighting to the Finish." And in that lovefest which Fox News deemed a "historic documentary" (and which is available from Amazon.com for $19.95), Baier compared Bush to Abraham Lincoln.

Mercifully, you don't waste your money or your time listening to a fawning Bret Baier toss George W. Bush softball questions or lay rhetorical rose pedals as his feet during that 2008 hagiography. After his "unflinching, fair and balanced interview with the 43rd president," Baier explained how Bush "was inspired by the writings and deeds of Abraham Lincoln":

"We talked a lot about President Lincoln. And there's going to be a lot of people out there who watch this hour and say, is he trying to equate himself with Lincoln?

I tell you what - he thinks about Lincoln and the tough times that he had during the Civil War. 600,000 dead. The country essentially hated him when he was leaving office.

"And the President reflects on that. This is a President who is really reflecting on his place in history."

That Lincoln didn't "leave office" but was instead assassinated just one month after his second inaugural is one of the more humorous errors produced by Fox News in its ongoing efforts to rewrite history on behalf of President Bush and the Republican Party.

As I documented previously, throughout his second term Dubya sought to equate himself with the Great Emancipator. As ThinkProgress noted in January 2008, "the list of conservatives who have sought to frame Bush as Lincoln is long; it includes Newt Gingrich, John Gibson, David Brooks, and Rudy Giuliani." In February of that year, former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales during an address at Washington University "repeatedly made references comparing himself and the Bush administration to the presidency of Abraham Lincoln, suggesting that Lincoln was highly criticized during his presidency and is now highly revered."

Meanwhile, over at the National Review, Seth Liebsohn was ecstatic, crowing that "Bret Baier just concluded the single best interview of President Obama in a year, by any reporter." And no doubt, it was the best interview of any president since Bret Baier described George W. Bush as the second coming of Abraham Lincoln.

(This piece also appears at Perrspectives.)

DOWNLOADS: (1842)

PLAYS: (2796)

Embed

[Heather noted this earlier, but it deserves its own post. -- ed.]

While the other cable-news networks ran President Obama's conversation yesterday with House Republicans in its entirety, Fox News cut in midway -- particularly as it was becoming startlingly clear that Obama was making eminent sense and scoring Republicans for the phony "solutions" they keep throwing up to counter his health-care proposals.

Best of all, Fox's Trace Gallagher immediately leapt in with a popular GOP talking point -- namely, that Obama was "lecturing" the congressmen:

Gallagher: The President at times being a little bit combative, and supporting -- I mean, he did acknowledge a couple of mistakes along the way, but much like he did in the State of the Union, has very much held firm to the beliefs in what his administration has done.

I want to bring in the host of Special Report, Bret Baier, he's with us now. He has watched along with us. And the Republicans, before they went into this session had said, you know, we don't want to be lectured by the president. There was a little bit of lecturing there, and the president was a little bit combative at times.

Baier: Yeah, a little bit of that, Trace, but I also thought there was a decent, good give and take on the specifics.

Just remember: All the partisanship at Fox is on their "opinion" shows. Their news shows always play it straight and objective. Or, ah, fair and balanced.

Right.

Amanda Terkel at Think Progress points out that Fox then turned to Rep. Peter King, who then slagged Obama, for the duration of the event. She has screen shots of the other networks during that same time period.