Chris Wallace has been whining at an accelerated pace lately about President Obama and that doesn't bode well for him or his show.

WALLACE: ...That’s exactly my position: I think Fox News Sunday is a truly fair and balanced show.

O’REILLY: You’re not an ideological show at all.

WALLACE: No. And it’s like they refuse to take “yes” for an answer. There’s a kind of childishness or pettiness about them…

O’REILLY: You know, that’s a…it’s an immaturity that if you don’t …if you don’t hold our line, we’re just gonna ice you.

He used to maintain the appearance of a neutral talk show because the media would never dare to call out a fellow Villager even though we've been exposing him for years now as a political hack.

Here he is again whining the night away on his own show:

Chris Wallace continued to criticize the president Sunday. "Every president is thin-skinned, but I wonder whether this administration, this White House, has a particular problem with criticism," he said.

His rating were always terrible for FOX on the Sunday Talk Show circuit and on Sept 13, he remained firmly at the bottom of the barrel. And ratings are the GOD that drives all TV shows, but I still find it unlikely that Rupert will fire him.

Eric Boehlert's column hits the mark on Wallace:

The subsequent whining and childish name-calling from Fox News Sunday's Chris Wallace became incessant and, of course, revealed more about the bitter and bruised host than it did the White House. No doubt the pity party that the thin-skinned journalist threw for himself in the wake of the embarrassing snub was genuine. But it went on for so many days and became so consuming that it seemed there was more to it than Wallace being forced to watch the Obama newsmaking parade from the sidelines. I think the slow-motion temper tantrum perhaps reflected Wallace's larger realization that his days of being taken seriously as a journalist are fading and that he can no longer be associated with the collectively unhinged Fox News family and maintain any dignity in the process.

{}
By contrast, Fox News anchor Shepard Smith had the courage and the decency earlier this year to call out the right-wing "crazies" on the fringe who targeted Obama and were feeding off incessant, conspiratorial hatred -- hate "that's not based in fact," as Smith stressed. (Naturally, right-wingers online immediately called for Smith's firing.) At least that Fox anchor expressed a commonsense concern about what that kind of raw, irrational hostility does to a democracy. But not Wallace. He knows to sit on his hands and to keep his mouth shut.

Except, of course, when he's not busy spreading nonsense like the charade about the "death book," an absolutely absurd conspiracy theory that Wallace must have known came without even the faintest hint of reality to it. (Here's the theory: In order to contain health care costs, the federal government under Obama is using a booklet on end-of-life counseling to urge U.S. veterans to kill themselves; it's trying to convince them that their lives aren't worth living.)

It was the type of patented foolery you'd expect a proud partisan like Sean Hannity to push. But it was Wallace who signed on as the smear's chief sponsor. It was Wallace who sat through two Fox News Sunday segments teasing out purposefully ignorant questions about how bureaucrats were trying to off veterans. Wallace played dumb like it was an Olympic sport. While the other Sunday shows were at least trying to engage in actual civic debate, Wallace spent his Sunday clowning on air.

And as a bonus, Wallace may have made the single dumbest statement uttered on a Sunday-morning talk show this year. Playing dumb, Wallace wanted to know why anyone would think about end-of-life counseling unless they're, you know, dying [emphasis added]:

Usually people don't even contemplate end of life until they're in an irreversible coma.

Flash to Wallace: When somebody slides into in "an irreversible coma," it's a little late for them to begin end-of-life counseling.

With the "death book" production, Wallace didn't merely engage in lazy journalism or allow his guest to sidestep important questions, he served as archetype -- as a co-sponsor -- of the debacle. He plucked the story (a smear campaign, really) from relative obscurity, and then he trampled the facts in hopes of launching the story nationally...read on

Maybe FOX will decide to bump him and make Glenn Beck the host of their Sunday Morning talk show. You know, a kind of Jerry Springer format for politics where white supremacists come on and throw chairs at African American guests and other guests call each other racists and socialists and Beck hands out apple pie to them as long as they agree to spend a week in his imaginary FEMA camps whose existence he can't disprove.

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Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the latest in GOP talking points trying to take the conversation off what health care reform really means to Americans:

MCCONNELL: Well, look. I think attacking citizens in our country for expressing their opinions about an issue of this magnitude may indicate some weakness in their position on the merits.

That makes sense. If you are troubled by being likened to Nazis, being shouted down and mobbed by people bussed in to be disruptive or having you or your staffers threatened, then it's your position that's weak.

Really? Um, how about if you're so scared of honest facts (as opposed to scare tactics about euthanasia) that you need to shut down discussion, maybe it's your position that's weak? Of course, there was no discussion of weakness of merits when Bush required loyalty oaths during his Social Security-palooza tour. Consistency, the GOP rarely knows ye.

And let it not go unmentioned that Wallace focuses solely on the Democrats calling these mobs "Nazi-like" without acknowledging the full blown mob materials in all its Godwin-esque glory (link goes to LGF). What was that about the liberal media again?

Transcripts below the fold:

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Heather already posted on this segment, but I wanted to make an additional point. When I saw that Mike Pence was getting a full segment by himself I was a little upset because he had the floor to himself on FOX which usually leads to unfiltered right wing talking points becoming gospel and I imagine that's how he viewed it as well. But when Chris Wallace read off a litany of his failings he had no coherent response. He never answered any of the questions and sat there as a true representative of the conservative movement. They are barren of ideas, obstruct all meaningful legislation and have absolutely nothing to add that will try and dig this country out of the hole the Bush administration put us in.

WALLACE: Congressman, isn't the recession leveling off? And doesn't President Obama deserve some credit?

WALLACE: But nobody -- excuse me. Nobody said that the stimulus bill was going to stop the recession.

WALLACE: But I want to ask you about another report, and we're going to put it up on the screen. More than 2,400 people are now at work on federal-stimulus-funded roadway projects in Indiana.

"What's clear is that the stimulus projects have boosted an industry otherwise floundering in Indiana." And that is not from the DNC. That's from the Evansville, Indiana Courier & Press.

WALLACE: First you're saying the stimulus is bad. Now you're saying you're just not getting your fair share of it.

Watch the segment and watch him flail away like an old man trying to hit a 95 mph fastball. He whiffed and looked bad doing it. The conservative mantra of tax cuts alone would not have done anything to fix our problems but only deepened them.
And the cash for clunkers program as Chris Wallace repeatedly brought up has been a big hit, but you'll never get him to admit that.

-- Ford Motor Co. will post its first monthly U.S. sales increase since 2007 as the government’s “cash-for-clunkers” incentives boosted industrywide deliveries of new vehicles to the highest levels of this year.

Details will be released today when Ford joins automakers in announcing July deliveries, said Ken Czubay, the company’s U.S. sales and marketing chief. He disclosed the year-over-year improvement in an interview yesterday without giving specifics.

Industry sales probably ran at an annual rate of more than 10 million autos, 2009’s best showing, after the trade-in credits stoked consumers’ interest, said George Pipas, Ford’s sales analyst. Such a result may indicate a bottom in the market’s worst slump since 1976.

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Head. Slams. Against. Keyboard.

What world do Republicans live in? Apparently one in which Welfare Queens drive Cadillacs and Latinos and illegal immigrants routinely ace God-fearing white Americans out of their rightful jobs. Where uppity women don't realize their place is supporting the men in their lives and flounce about, getting abortions willy-nilly? Where laws are really only intended for the unwashed masses and the oligarchy they reinforce are above such mundane concerns.

Indeed, if you listen to Sen. Judd Gregg, it is also a world where 20 million young people make over $75,000 a year and choose not to get health insurance, frittering it all away with their fancy cars and electronic cell phone/camera/potato peelers, I'm sure.

WALLACE: Well, you say that you would like to see the 40-plus million -- there are arguments about specifically how many there are, but the 40-plus million uninsured get coverage. Under your idea, how would they get it? How would the government help them get it? And how would you pay for it?

GREGG: Well, first, it’s not a monolithic group. About 20 million of those folks earn more than $75,000. They’re basically young people who opt to spend their money on something other than health care insurance.
The way we would cover those folks is we would require them to buy health care policies for catastrophic events. They would have to self-insure under that.

Say it with me now: WTF???? Good to know that this is the man Obama wanted to head the Commerce Department, isn't it?

Since he's used these numbers (or a variation of them) before, for a split second, I thought about searching for where Gregg got his "facts", but honestly, I just don't want to be that close to Gregg's nether regions, because that's the only place such a ludicrous claim could come from.

Here are some real facts that Gregg might want to chew on:
CDC: Percentage of Americans With Private Health Insurance Hits 50-Year Low

Some experts blamed the faltering economy and corporate decisions to raise health insurance premiums — or do away with employee coverage — as the main drivers of the recent data. They say coverage statistics for 2009 may look even worse.

However, public coverage of adults is rising in some states, due to programs like Medicaid expanding eligibility. So not all the adults without private coverage are uninsured, Thorpe said

.
Income Gaps Hit Record Levels In 2006, New Data Show
Rich-Poor Gap Tripled Between 1979 and 2006

The data reveal starkly uneven income growth over recent decades. Between 1979 and 2006, real after-tax incomes rose by 256 percent — or $863,000 — for the top 1 percent of households, compared to 21 percent — or $9,200 — for households in the middle fifth of households and 11 percent — or $1,600 — for households in the bottom fifth. [..] In 2006, the average household in the top 1 percent had an income of $1.2 million, up $63,000 just from the prior year; this $63,000 gain is nearly two times the total income of the average middle-income household. [1]

In addition, the share of national after-tax income going to the top 1 percent of households more than doubled between 1979 and 2006, rising from 7.5 percent to 16.3 percent. Taken together with prior research, the new data suggest greater income concentration at the top than at any time since 1929. [2]

But Gregg thinks the answer is to mandate insurance and tax benefits:

GREGG: Well, that’s going to cost money. That’s going to cost money, and the way we pay for it is by limiting the deductibility of high-end health insurance premium plans.

So we do pay for it, and we do cover everyone, and we put in place a replacement of the reimbursement system so we reimburse doctors on the basis of quality and outcomes rather than on the basis of the number of procedures.

Uh huh. That'll work. Hey Judd, how 'bout you do some reading:

The Economist: The REAL cost of American health care

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Boy oh boy, look at all of the patented Frank Luntz-crafted GOP talking points the Fox "Power Panel" (*cough, cough*) can regurgitate to sabotage the public option: It won't work! You're stealing from Grandma and Grandpa! We're taxing HALF A TRILLION DOLLARS to pay for it! We're putting an unfair burden on small business owners! You'll have less choices! Rationed care! Congress will decide what health care services you'll get! Doctors will make less money!

Oy.

The list goes on and on, and even the weakest tea representing the left side of the aisle--Juan Williams--thinks they're bordering on ridiculous:

WILLIAMS: Boy, these are scare tactics we’re hearing this morning.

KRISTOL: But wait a minute.

WILLIAMS: “Oh, we’re going to take away the Medicare people.”

(CROSSTALK)

WILLIAMS: “Oh, we’re going to tell you you can’t have a hip replacement.” This is -- this is wild.

But one thing you hear from the White House is if you like your doctor, if you like your insurance plan, you’re going to be able to keep it.

(CROSSTALK)

INGRAHAM: But then we heard the stimulus is going to work.

LIASSON: That doesn’t mean they’re going to pay for everything that...

WILLIAMS: No.

LIASSON: ... people want. That...

WILLIAMS: It doesn’t mean -- but it -- it certainly does not mean that we have to resort to these scare tactics.

INGRAHAM: Do you think, Juan...

WILLIAMS: The only reason that we hear these scare tactics this morning is because people say, “You know what...”

INGRAHAM: Juan, do you actually think...

WILLIAMS: “... stay with the status quo.” The American people aren’t buying this.

I'll clue you in, Juan. When you have NOTHING to justify your side--because we have the highest per capita spending and the worst outcomes off all Western nations--then all you have to fight what is right, moral and small d democratic is to scare the crap out of people.

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I'm not sure by whom I am more annoyed in this clip: Cryin' John Boehner, Steny "Bipartisanship Trumps All" Hoyer or Fox "Pravda" News. If it's Fox News and it's a Republican politico, I EXPECT lying and partisanship. In that sense, Boehner doesn't disappoint. But then again, I've come to expect rather milquetoast-y appearance from Dems too, and Hoyer fulfills that expectation nicely as well. So therefore, I fall to my default position that FoxNews framing is ridiculously insulting to the intelligence of any sentient being who happens to be watching.

Like the proverbial toddler deprived of a cookie, host Chris Wallace stamps his feet and whines why isn't everything better RIGHT NOW?!?! Just six months into a presidency that inherited the worst economic conditions since the Great Depression and damn it, that watered down stimulus bill--that HAD to include tax cuts demanded by the GOP that does little to nothing to stimulate--isn't giving us immediate gratification and relief? Amazing!

Never mind that Obama had to deal with governors refusing stimulus money to score cheap points with the base and that some states are using the stimulus money to shore up budget shortfalls. Never mind that economists said it would take 12-18 months to see results, the WATBs of Fox/GOP want our results NOW!!!!

Cryin' John's appearance was so full of lies and half-truths, it's hard to know where to begin:

This was supposed to be about jobs, jobs, and jobs. And the fact is it turned into nothing more than spending, spending, and more spending on a lot of big government bureaucracy.

I know you're not this obtuse, but just playing the partisan game for those of your base not capable of thinking for themselves--but let's try this again: Government projects means hiring people to do those projects.

In Ohio, the infrastructure dollars that were sent there months ago -- there hasn’t been a contract let, to my knowledge. And the fact is -- is I don’t believe it will create jobs.

Is that so? No contracts? And you don't think it will create jobs? Really? Your nose is growing, Boehner.

And, Steny, the real question is where are the jobs. You can’t spend $800 billion of taxpayer money and not create jobs when you say that’s what the goal was. We haven’t seen the jobs yet.

Of course, if you had a shred of intellectual honesty, you'd admit that the White House said we wouldn't really see job creation until 2010. It's much better to play dumb and pout about not seeing immediate results magically.

BOEHNER: If you really want to get the economy going, you have to trust small businesses and the American people to reinvest their own money. So we (inaudible) into this bill and allow them to keep more of what they earn.

HOYER: John’s plan was what they proposed in 2001. Chris, I don’t want to look back.

BOEHNER: It created 5 million new jobs.

Uh huh. Paul Krugman called it correctly:

You can offer various excuses and explanations, but how anyone can suggest that Republicans are more committed to and/or credible about job creation is a mystery

.

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The Patron Saint of the GOP Ronald Reagan had one unalterable law of politics, his Eleventh Commandment: Thou shalt not speak poorly of your fellow Republicans.

And for those of us well-practiced in the art of reading between the lines of Conservo-speak, it's quite humorous to see the lengths the GOP bobbleheads will go to spin Sarah Palin's cutting and running in a positive light.

Soon-to-be successor Lt. Gov. Sean Parnell tries to spin this as a cost-saving measure, as the state has been paying dearly for the cost of all the ethics investigations. Now the fact that people feel it necessary to actually conduct ethics investigations seems to matter less than the cost of them. Karl "I belong in jail" Rove finds Palin's move "perplexing," worrying that it sends a message that you can drive an executive out of office through ethics investigations. Um, isn't that what your party tried to do for eight years with Clinton, Karl? I don't think Palin is the precedent here.

But former Arkansas governor and current FNC pundit Mike Huckabee all but calls Palin a wimp for her "risky strategy", claiming that he had it far tougher in Arkansas than she has it in Alaska, and her actions will do nothing to keep her and her family from being chased by the media:

WALLACE: Governor Huckabee, almost every politician is on the firing line. You may not have been to the degree as governor of Arkansas that Sarah Palin was once she achieved national prominence. But what about this argument, “I’m doing this for my state because the attacks against me are getting in the way?”

HUCKABEE: Well, if that had been the case for me, I’d have quit about my first month, because I was a Republican governor in a state where 89 percent of my legislature were Democrats.

I had constant ethics complaints filed against me, even by newspaper editors, and a lot of it was because if they can’t attack you on policy, what they do -- they just absolutely bombard you with personal attacks and keep you tied up in court, make you hire lawyers. Been there, done that.

Arkansas was a tough political environment, period, even tougher for a Republican, and one of the things you have to do is just decide, “Look, they’re not going to, you know, chase me out.”

Now, what they do -- they throw all this stuff at you, and then they say, “Oh, there’s a pattern of ethical issues.” Actually, what the pattern is is a pattern of phony charges being filed by the opposition party.

The danger that Sarah Palin faces -- and let me be very quick to tell you, in the way of full disclosure, I’m a Sarah Palin fan. I like her personally. I like her points of view. I think she’s right on the issues. The challenge that she’s going to have is that there will be people who say, “Well, look, you know, if they chase you out of this, it won’t get any easier for you at other levels of the stage.”

While neither pundit will actually admit that Palin's bizarrely rambling and incoherent speech on Friday was a boneheaded move on her part, both do admit that it raised more questions than answers and in national politics, that can be the kiss of death, as her ill-fated campaign for the VP slot showed.

HUCKABEE: Well, it’s a risky strategy, and nobody knows whether it’s going to pay off or not. And even if she did get out, primarily because of the -- a feeling of being chased, that’s not going to stop if she continues in politics.

The only way that stops is for her to completely exit the stage and the spotlight. And on that point, I totally agree with Karl.

I think the one thing that I wondered about tactically was hastily calling a news conference that ended up raising more questions than it did answer them.

And my political mentor, Ed Rollins, the other day on his radio show brought that up, that you don’t call a press conference that creates questions. You call one to resolve them.

No one could have predicted that Palin was completely out of her depth for national politics, could they?

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Oy. Only on FoxNews.

EASTON: Well, I thought this whole -- the two speeches this week were just a high-pitched -- unfortunate high-pitched partisan duel between the two of them.

I know the press focused a lot on -- and has focused a lot on Dick Cheney and his provocative comments that the administration is keeping us less safe. And frankly, I think Cheney should give this president some credit on things like his very difficult decision to not to release the photos of alleged detainee abuse, for example, his flip on military tribunals.

But if you look at the Obama speech, that was equally partisan, and there wasn’t a lot of focus on that. I mean, he talked about this mess that he had inherited. He talked about the administration sort of fitting facts for an ideological agenda.

Why can’t this president give the previous president credit for keeping us safe for seven years? And by the way, we know from the C- SPAN interview that he’s in touch with President Bush. They’ve actually talked since he’s been in office.

But I think it would carry this White House a long way past the problems that Ceci talks about and get the support of somebody like McCain, Senator McCain, or Senator Lindsey Graham , who also supported closing Gitmo and also had concerns about enhanced interrogation techniques.

I think it would buy him a lot of credit or a lot of good will on the other side of the aisle and with centrist Democrats if he gave this -- he gave the Bush administration some credit.

Actually, I think considering the mess that Obama was left (something that is indisputable) and the grief he's been getting, not only from Cheney but the rest of the Party of No, he's been remarkably reticent on blaming the Bush administration for anything.

But I tell you what, Nina, we'll give the Bush administration credit for keeping us safe in the last seven years (although residents in the Gulf Coast might quibble) IF you and your entire FoxNews bobblehead crew admit that they quite stubbornly and fatally did NOT keep us safe for that first year despite warnings that Bin Laden was determined to strike and that we lost 3,100 Americans because of that blindness.

Deal?

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Will Rogers famously said that he wasn't a part of an organized group, he was a Democrat. Sadly, when it comes to Sen. Ben Nelson (D-NE), that's even more true. I understand that Nelson is a conservative Democrat and comes from a historically conservative state, but there's no excuse for his abject stupidity in discussing Guantanamo and how to deal with the detainees there.

What's so odd about Nelson's NIMBY attitude is that he himself points out the flaws in his logic: we have and are successfully housing some really dangerous men (including both foreign and domestic terrorists, like Moussaoui and Eric Rudolph) in prisons on American soil without incident. Nelson just doesn't want them here.

Well, Sen. Nelson, I'd prefer that we have a country that wasn't full of criminals and people who wish us harm too. But unfortunately, that isn't reality. I live within 30 miles of San Quentin prison and Bay Area residents (for as liberal and hippy as our reputation is) do not seem to be all that concerned about our collective safety. The fear that these people will be on American soil so that we deal with them as befitting our justice system forgets that they will also be under heavy lock and guard as well.

And then in another annoyingly wrong nod to bipartisanship, Nelson lends credit to the Republican meme of Jack Bauer/the-ends-justify-the-means issue of keeping American safe is somehow the moral equivalent of respecting the rule of law:

WALLACE: Senator Nelson, who’s right about the balance between, on the one hand, keeping the country safe and, on the other hand, living up to our values?

NELSON: Well, they probably both are in some -- to one degree or another. I don’t think anybody wants to see this country attacked again. And I think it’s also a question about whether or not it is held against us because these tactics have been used.

But look, the president, when he was running, said that we’re going to stop waterboarding. John McCain has said it’s torture. I think what we have to do is understand that this decision apparently was decided last -- last November.

But what we need to do is make sure that the intelligence information that’s gathered is accurate, that we do everything within our power to get good intelligence, and it may or may not consist of coming from enhanced techniques.

Oh holy FSM. I'm so tired of this dishonesty. NOTHING of value came from torture, and to suggest that it might is accepting the Republican framing of this issue. Nelson should be ashamed of his ignorance. If we had to torture three people over 30 days more than 200 times looking for some way to connect Iraq to 9/11 (unsuccessfully, too), then how can anyone with the least bit of common sense much less intelligence think that it kept us safe? Does Nelson actually think that the 108 detainees killed via "enhanced interrogation techniques" have actually deterred terrorism?

Think about it, Sen. Nelson, before you spout off on television again, hurting your party and the President's stance: If your son, brother, cousin or friend (even if he had jihadist tendencies--something we have not yet proven) was killed in the name of the American "War on Terror", would you be inclined to be sympathetic to the American cause, or would you too seek revenge for the US's dehumanizing treatment?

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(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.

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Christine Romer, head of the White House Council of Economic Advisers, told Fox's Chris Wallace that she was confident that the economy would begin to grow again in the next year.

WALLLACE: In 15 seconds, how confident are you that if we sat down here a year from today, and it's a date, that you'll be able to say, you know what, our policies have worked?

ROMER: Incredibly confident. I -- I truly believe that's why we're taking them. We absolutely think that they are going to do the job for the American economy and so I'm happy to see you a year from now.

WALLACE: And that a year from now we'll see the signs.

ROMER: We will -- I feel very confident we'll be seeing the signs that the economy is -- has turned around and is growing again. Of course, it will take time before we're really back to normal, but I think we will absolutely see signs that everything is working.

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From Fox News Sunday March 15, 2009. I think the only interests Chris Wallace may have in mind during this line of questioning are his own as he hammers Austan Goolsbee about a line in the introduction of the President's budget.

Wallace: Finally I want to get into a little bit of the Obama budget with you. 3.6 trillion dollars which calls for major tax increases on the wealthy. And I want to read you something from...the President's budget. "While middle-class families have been playing by the rule, living up to their responsibilities as neighbors and citizens, those at the commanding heights of our economy have not."

Mr. Goolsbee, it's a blanket statement from the Administration. People who make money have not played by the rules?

Goolsbee: I think you're stretching a little bit the blanket statement. It's not saying that it's been illegal. It's saying the rules of the game that the American economy has followed for decades is that the core strength of the economy is middle class workers. Over the last eight years before this President came into office we saw an unbelievable squeeze on the middle class like nothing we have seen in decades.

We go through the first boom in recorded economic history of the country where the median family income falls by $2000 while corporate profits and overall GDP rise dramatically.

Wallace: But, but...

Goolsbee: The President is saying in his budget that he is carrying out the recovery package and in the budget giving a tax cut to 95% of working people and that people who make more than $250,000 a year will go back to the rates that they were at the end of the nineties. That they pay a bit more. That isn't going to bring the economy down. And that style of thinking that it's going to trickle down and we should just keep cutting taxes at the top got us where we are today. It didn't solve the problem.

Wallace: But Mr. Goolsbee, again I'm quoting directly from the President's budget here, this is page five of the President's budget. Again he's saying those at the commanding heights of our economy, I assume that means people who are more than middle class have not played by the rules and then again let's go to this statement from page five "There's nothing wrong with making money, but there is something wrong when we allow the playing field to be tilted so far in favor of so few."

And again I guess what I'm asking is there seems to be a moral argument here that somehow people who have made money have done something wrong and need to pay for it and what you're saying, you say "there's something wrong when we allow the playing field to be tilted". The argument seems to be there's something wrong when the government allows people, rich people to keep their own money.

Goolsbee: Well we cut taxes by trillions of dollars for people making more than a quarter million dollars a year over the last eight years. That wasn't a magic elixir for growth. It was a very week recovery and we stumbled into the worst economic crisis in multiple generations.

Wallace: Why make the..I understand the economic argument. Why make that a moral argument? Something wrong. People at the commanding heights of the economy have not played by the rules. Why the moral argument?

Goolsbee: Well look you're taking a line from the introduction that sets the stage for the discussion which is we need to go back to an issue of balance. So in the nineties we had a more balanced view. We've gotten out of balance. People at the commanding heights of the economy with incomes over $250,000 a year have been receiving trillions of dollars of tax cuts while the middle class has been squeezed like never before. That squeeze on the middle class is what got us into this crisis. It's why the President is committed to renewable clean energy that makes us secure from foreign energy dependence. For reforming the education system. For health care. All of those things are about relieving the squeeze on the middle class so we don't get into this again.

Wallace: Simple question. Do you think maybe this is over-written?

Goolsbee: I think it's very well written.

Wallace: Did you write it?

Goolsbee: No.

As long as Wallace plays the good water carrier for the haves and have mores I'm sure his anchor chair is safe at Fox News.

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Sen John McCain has been acting not like a statesman or a man who got his ass kicked in the general election, but like a spoiled rich kid who is angry that his daddy didn't buy him a new Corvette for spring break. I've never seen the loser of a Presidential election so quickly oppose everything the winner is proposing and ran on in their battle for the presidency. Usually they will have more dignity and honor as the new term begins.
FOX News has been relentless in it's 'Just say No to Obama,' coverage in what they try to pass off as a news channel and today Wallace tried to reach for the stars in idiocy with this exchange. At the end of the interview he asked McCain how he thought PRESIDENT Obama was doing in the job and then said something I had to rewind a bunch of times to see if I wasn't hallucinating.

Wallace: How do you think he's doing so far?

McCain: I think he's working very hard. I think he continues to have the support of the majority of the American people. I think he's making very serious mistake in this budget which will have very dangerous consequences in increasing taxes no matter who it is....

Wallace: You ever feel like saying ' I told you so?"

McCain: Oh, I'm sure that would be pleasant feeling, but the point is we're in such a severe crisis....

"I told you so?" WTF is that? How dare Wallace ask that question? Have you no decency, sir? President Obama barely has had a chance to sit down in the Oval office and grab a cup of coffee and this jerk is basically calling him a failure and touting John McCain's ideology as the correct one even though it was that ideology that got us into this mess.
And America solidly rejected John McCain and Sarah Palin to run this country. And it's the same ideology that is being used to obstruct every move Obama makes to try and dig us out.

Do these right wing hacks understand that Obama's legislation hasn't had time to work or even fail at this point? There basis of criticism is all the about the stock market. The "STOCK Market!" The gasbags in suits that put us in this position. Do they also not understand that America hates Wall Street at this point?
And then Wallace asked McCain about his daughter's dating problems. Wow, the daughter of a beer heiress multi-millionaire whining about her love life because guys want her to be their Cindy. I'll have more on that one in due time.

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Brit Hume got very honest for a change on FNS when he closed his "gold buying" rant by the rich with this:

...they fear a wave of inflation or hyper inflation, so the people who are voting with their money are not voting in favor of these policies.

Decoded: The very rich hate Obama just like they hated FDR. Under FDR we saw the expansion of the middle class and a shrinking of the Court of American Royalty.

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From Fox News Sunday, "Big Bad" John Cornyn is worried about the cencus being politicized if it's moved away from the control of the Commerce Secretary.

Wallace: Sen. Cornyn we now learn that the Obama administration is going to have the Director of the Census Bureau report not only to the Commerce Secretary, but also to the White House. What's wrong with that?

Cornyn: Well ordinarily this has been something that the Commerce Secretary's done and I think it ought to be done on a competent as much as possible non-partisan basis and to shift it to the White House to me just politicizes the census which is not something we should be doing.

Wallace: What's the danger briefly of politicizing the census?

Cornyn: Well because of course that determines who gets what Congressional districts. States like Texas were going to get probably at least three new Congressional districts based on the reproportioning and of course in drawing those lines, redistricting within states it's all based on those census figures. So if you cook the figures up front I think it distorts that process going forward and undermines the concept of one person one vote.

Coming from Texas, John Cornyn should know all about gerrymandering after what happened there in 2003. Hyprocrisy thy name is Republican.