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Amazing, how concerned bobbleheads become about the deficit right after the Republican administration that created it has left the scene of the crime. As people like Paul Krugman keep reminding us, there are obvious economic reasons the deficit cannot be the priority during a major recession. But those facts seem to elude David Gregory during this NBC News’ “Meet the Press” interview with Tim Geithner:

DAVID GREGORY: Let me talk about the deficit and the debt. These are alarming numbers. You've said they are. Let's look at the deficit-- since inauguration day. $1.2 trillion, now $1.4 trillion. It's up 17 percent. The overall debt, inauguration day, $10.6 trillion, now, $11.9 trillion. What's it gonna be a year from now?

TIMOTHY GEITHNER: Well, it's gonna have to come down now. It's-- it's too high. And I think everybody understands this. You know, we got these two central imperatives. Restore growth, create jobs. But make sure people understand we're gonna have to bring those fiscal deficits down as growth recovers. First growth, though. Without growth, you can't fix those long term fiscal problems. But you're not gonna have a recovery that's gonna be strong enough unless people are confident we're gonna have the will to go back to living within our means.

DAVID GREGORY: How do you bring it down, though? Do taxes have to go up?

TIMOTHY GEITHNER: Well, we're gonna have to do-- we're gonna have to make some hard choices. But we're not really at the point yet, David, where we're gonna know what's gonna be the best path forward. The President's very committed to bringing down these deficits. He's very committed to doing so in a way that's not gonna add to the burden of people-- people making less than $250,000 a year.

DAVID GREGORY: I mean, I think a lot of people - I think its fair to say - what are hard choices? I mean, what hard choices have been made so far? Are you gonna raise taxes?

TIMOTHY GEITHNER: We're gonna have to bring our resources and our expenditures more into balance.

DAVID GREGORY: So, it's possible.

TIMOTHY GEITHNER: Well-- again, the President's committed to make sure we get this economy back on track. We'll bring down deficits over time. And--

DAVID GREGORY: But Mr. Secretary you talked about hard choices. So, why can't you give a straight answer as to whether taxes have to come up, when you have a deficit this big?

TIMOTHY GEITHNER: Because David, right now we're focused on getting growth back on track. Okay? And we're not at the point yet where we have to decide exactly what it's gonna take. And I just want to say this very clearly. He was committed in the campaign to make-- he said in the campaign. And he is committed to make sure we do this in a way that is not gonna add to the burden on people making less than $250,000 a year. Now, it's gonna be hard to do that. But he's committed to doing that. And we can do that.

DAVID GREGORY: You can do it. But it's still a chance that you'd have to raise taxes and go back on that, if you've got a debt this big?

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It's a little weird to be posting a video that features me as a guest on Washington Journal (not the least of which is that it feels really creepy to be writing headlines about myself), but here goes: On the whole, I'm happy with my segment. (Except for the part where I missed it that a caller said he was reading the Drudge Report to find out what was going on. Arggh. I missed a real opportunity to educate him.) You can see Parts 2 and 3 here. (Thanks, Heather!)

My favorite part is when I call Glenn Beck "a nut, we all know he's a nut".

Among the other issues addressed: Netroots "Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow" Syndrome; healthcare reform; network news "analysts," and much more. Enjoy!

And as I mention in the closing segment, I was interested to note that the Republican and Democratic callers all expressed similar concerns.

The Daily Show With Jon StewartMon - Thurs 11p / 10cBrian Williamswww.thedailyshow.com

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The unctuous Brian Williams tells Jon Stewart how much he looked up to Walter Cronkite - "He was a man I wanted to be" - and Stewart responds: "How does it feel, to fall so short?"

Smackdown!

Stewart then asks, "Do you think Walter Cronkite would be happy with what he sees in the news now?" Williams says yes, except for ... well, a lot of stuff that Cronkite didn't like about today's news biz.

And really, that's what it's all about, isn't it? All these media types and politicians paying tribute to a man who would absolutely horrify them if he were still alive - and still practicing journalism.

Instead, we have journalism by sound bite, by press release, by chummy relationships and the search for access.

Yes, heroes are much better when they're dead and gone, and not annoying career talking heads who aspire to gravitas without earning it.

(h/t Media Matters)

Washington Independent:

Much remains unclear about the substance of the “significant actions” that CIA Director Leon Panetta conceded that the agency didn’t sufficiently brief to Congress. What’s absolutely crystal clear is that for days on end, MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough popped off at the mouth about how the CIA would never ever never mislead Congress and how House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) “needs to shut up” instead of saying otherwise.

What? Expecting Joe Scarborough to be intellectually honest and acknowledge his role in the smearing of a Democratic politician? *Snort* Like that will ever happen.

Attempting the political equivalent of relaunching the Hindenburg, soon-to-be former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin hosted ABC, Fox News, CNN, Time, the AP and other media outlets while fishing Tuesday. But even as she proclaimed of her abrupt resignation, "politically speaking, if I die, I die," Palin reminded Americans once again why she so deserves that fate.

By claiming the nonexistent "Department of Law" in Washington would protect her from the kind of ethics woes she encountered in Alaska, Palin demonstrated her continuing ignorance of American government and public policy alike. Of course, it's far from the first time.

Here, then, is a look back at Sarah Palin's Greatest Hits:

"I think on a national level, your department of law there in the White House would look at some of the things that we've been charged with and automatically throw them out." (July 7, 2009.)

"It's all for Alaska." (Asked by Time why she resigned, July 7, 2009).

"In what respect, Charlie?" (Asked by ABC's Charles Gibson if she agreed with the Bush Doctrine, September 11, 2008.)

"Let me speak specifically about a credential that I do bring to this table, Charlie, and that's with the energy independence that I've been working on for these years as the governor of this state that produces nearly 20 percent of the U.S. domestic supply of energy..." (Misunderstanding Alaska's 3.5% share of U.S. domestic energy production, September 11, 2008.)

"We believe that the best of America is in these small towns that we get to visit, and in these wonderful little pockets of what I call the real America." (October 16, 2008.)

"A task that is from God." (On the war in Iraq, June 8, 2008.)

"I think God's will has to be done, in unifying people and companies to get that gas line built, so pray for that." (June 8, 2008.)

"To me, it motivates us, makes us work that much harder. And it also strengthens my faith, because I'm going to know, at the end of the day, putting this in God's hands, that the right thing for America will be done at the end of the day on Nov. 4. So I'm not discouraged at all." (Asked if she was discouraged by polls showing the McCain-Palin ticket trailing, October 22, 2008.)

"As for that VP talk all the time, I'll tell you, I still can't answer that question until somebody answers for me what is it exactly that the VP does every day?" (August 1, 2008.)

"That's something that Piper would ask me!...[T]hey're in charge of the U.S. Senate so if they want to they can really get in there with the senators and make a lot of good policy changes that will make life better for Brandon and his family and his classroom." (asked by third grader Brandon Garcia what the Vice President does, October 20, 2008.)

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South Carolina residents have been riveted by the unstable behavior of their Governor Mark Sanford, but they have other things to be very nervous about and they should be.

Terrified residents canceled Fourth of July plans and holed up in their homes Friday as investigators hunted a serial killer believed to have shot four people to death.
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Plenty of evidence links the killings, though officials have not yet determined how the victims are connected or if they knew whoever shot them, said Cherokee County Sheriff Bill Blanton.

"Yes, we have a serial killer," he said at a news conference in this rural community 50 miles south of Charlotte, N.C.

So far, all investigators have to go on is a sketch of a suspect and a description of a possible getaway vehicle, though police would not say who provided that information.

The latest victims were found in their family's small furniture and appliance shop near downtown Gaffney around closing time Thursday. Stephen Tyler, 45, was killed, and his 15-year-old daughter was shot and seriously injured. Tyler's wife, his older daughter and an employee found them in Tyler Home Center, County Coroner Dennis Fowler said.

A day earlier and about seven miles away, family members found the bodies of 83-year-old Hazel Linder and her 50-year-old daughter, Gena Linder Parker, bound and shot in Linder's home. Blanton would not say if Tyler and his daughter were also bound. The killing spree began last Saturday about 10 miles from Tyler Home Center, where peach farmer Kline Cash, 63, was found shot in his living room. Blanton said the killer may have first spoken with Cash's wife about buying hay. She left and came home a few hours later to find her husband's body. Investigators said it appears he was robbed, but they have not determined if anything was taken in the other killings.

The John Douglas book called Mind Hunter, is a pretty fascinating look (it gets interesting about 80 pages in) at how the FBI developed the profiling methods we see used today. Robert Ressler coined the term "Serial Killer," and also wrote a book about his experiences: Whoever Fights Monsters: My Twenty Years Tracking Serial Killers for the FBI. He interviewed many of these killers in jail to better understand their behavior. He was interviewed by Thomas Harris, who then wrote two of the greatest novels on the subject, Red Dragon and Silence of the Lambs. Both were made into excellent movies, (Who can forget Hannibal Lecter in Manhunter or SOTL's?) but South Carolina hopes that's not the case here. Let's hope he's caught quickly.

During her now 10 month-long media victimization campaign, Sarah Palin has time and again revealed her fundamental misunderstanding of the First Amendment and Americans' free speech rights. Now as she prepares to exit the Alaska Governor's mansion, her confusion - and thin skin - is again on display.

On the Fourth of July of all days, Palin's lawyer Thomas Van Flein issued a warning that his client would bring defamation claims against bloggers and media alike speculating on rumors of a criminal investigation involving the Governor:

To the extent several websites, most notably liberal Alaska blogger Shannyn Moore, are now claiming as "fact" that Governor Palin resigned because she is "under federal investigation" for embezzlement or other criminal wrongdoing, we will be exploring legal options this week to address such defamation. This is to provide notice to Ms. Moore, and those who re-publish the defamation, such as Huffington Post, MSNBC, the New York Times and The Washington Post, that the Palins will not allow them to propagate defamatory material without answering to this in a court of law. The Alaska Constitution protects the right of free speech, while simultaneously holding those "responsible for the abuse of that right." Alaska Constitution Art. I, Sec. 5. http://ltgov.state.ak.us/... These falsehoods abuse the right to free speech; continuing to publish these falsehoods of criminal activity is reckless, done without any regard for the truth, and is actionable.

As Moore herself noted regarding her reference on MSNBC to the lingering questions surrounding the construction of the Palin home and the Wasilla sports complex (a story first raised last year by the Wayne Barrett in The Village Voice):

"I haven't defamed the governor, I reported on speculation and rumor in Alaska. ... It's not my rumor; it's been out there for 10 months and the First Amendment protects me," Moore said. "Even if I didn't say it's 'rumors and speculation,' I'm still protected -- I would just lose credibility, which I'm not willing to do."

UPDATE: For its part, as the Los Angeles Times reported Sunday, "the FBI's Alaska spokesman said the bureau had no investigation into Palin for her activities as governor, as mayor or in any other capacity."

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Wow, we know how much the extreme right hates this man and now Dr. Tiller has been killed:

WICHITA, Kansas - Media reports say that abortion provider Dr. George Tiller has been shot and killed at his Wichita church. Tiller has been among the few U.S. physicians performing late-term abortion. His clinic has repeatedly been the site of protests for about two decades. He was acquitted in March of misdemeanor charges stemming from procedures he performed, but moments after the verdict the state’s medical board announced it was investigating allegations against him that are nearly identical to those the jury had rejected.
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Tiller has been a favored target of anti-abortion protesters, and he testified that he and his family have suffered years of harassment and threats. His clinic was the site of the 1991 “Summer of Mercy” protests marked by mass demonstrations and arrests. His clinic was bombed in 1985, and an abortion opponent shot him in both arms in 1993.

There's not enough information in about this yet, but BillO. certainly has made him a huge target.

Here's More:

Wichita television station KAKE-TV reported that police were looking for a blue Ford Taurus with a K-State vanity plate, license number 225 BAB. Police described him as a white male in his 50s or 60s, 6 feet 1 inch tall, 220 pounds, wearing a white shirt and dark pants.

UPDATE: Scarce just posted about this on Video Cafe too.

I listened to this Planet Money interview yesterday and it wasn't even close. Elizabeth Warren, a class act in every sense, totally destroyed the host's argument that concerning herself with the economic health of the American family was somehow her liberal "pet cause" and outside her bailiwick as TARP oversight chair. Not that it made any difference in his evident scorn!

NPR may have some nice little essays, but the only time their hosts show anything resembling teeth is when they attack... people who attack corporate interests! From the Columbia Journalism Review's "So That's Why The Press Won't Cover Elizabeth Warren!" by Ryan Chittum:

A couple of times in the last few months I’ve taken the press to task for ignoring the Congressional Oversight Panel and its report on the TARP. I’ve talked to reporters in the biz since and got the impression that many of them don’t really take it seriously because its chairwoman Elizabeth Warren is a liberal who, they say, pushes her agenda.

So it’s worth listening to this entire Planet Money podcast from NPR, where Adam Davidson badgers Warren for more than an hour to justify her existence, so to speak.

If you want a peek inside business-press mentality, and why certain stories get reported and others don’t, you can do worse than start here. It sees Warren as an outlier whose views, based on decades of research, are suspicious. It would never, ever have badgered a former bank exec, say, like this if one had been chairman of the panel. Davidson, like the reporters I referenced above, has been talking to too many bankers and insiders who sneer at someone not inside their bubble. Perhaps he’s trying to prove his objective journalist bona fides at “liberal” NPR by taking it to a liberal.

Warren isn’t legitimate in the eyes of the press, so it just pretty much ignores her—even though she and her co-panelists were selected by Congress to oversee whether the Treasury is spending the $700 billion we gave it in a way that’s best for the economy.

This interview is really cringeworthy stuff from Davidson, who comes out looking pretty bad (which makes it all the more admirable that NPR runs the entire tape). Warren takes this fight going away.

Really, go read the whole thing - and if you have the time, listen to the podcast. The comments are also smart, and this one summed it up nicely:

Adam Davidson essentially admits his own insider-oriented, in-the-bubble reporting style. His comments reflect not so much on Elizabeth Warren but on the breadth and depth of his own Rolodex.

Via Democracy Now!, David Simon, former Baltimore Sun reporter and creator of the HBO series "The Wire," testified Wednesday at a Senate hearing on the future of journalism. He warned that "high-end journalism is dying in America."

"And unless a new economic model is achieved, it will not be reborn on the web or anywhere else. The internet is a marvelous tool, and clearly it is the information delivery system of our future. But thus far, it does not deliver much first-generation reporting. Instead, it leeches that reporting from mainstream news publications, whereupon aggregating websites and bloggers contribute little more than repetition, commentary and froth. Meanwhile, readers acquire news from aggregators and abandon its point of origin, namely the newspapers themselves. In short, the parasite is slowly killing the host.

He points out that most bloggers aren't hanging out at City Hall or at cop bars, trying to cultivate sources:

"... High-end journalism is a profession. It requires daily full-time commitment by trained men and women who return to the same beats day in and day out. Reporting was the hardest and, in some ways, most gratifying job I ever had. I’m offended to think that anyone anywhere believes American monoliths as insulated, self-preserving and self-justifying as police departments, school systems, legislatures and chief executives can be held to gathered facts by amateurs presenting the task — pursuing the task without compensation, training or, for that matter, sufficient standing to make public officials even care who it is they’re lying to or who they’re withholding information from.

Well, yeah. But let me point out here that naive and inexperienced reporters are not unique to blogs. When I was a journalist, I used to run into neophyte Ivy League-grad reporters all the time, and I'd have to explain the simplest things to them. They were baffled when I'd call out some elected official for violating the state Sunshine Act: How did I know that? I'd carefully explain that reporters had attended all the public work sessions, a topic had never been discussed on the record, but there was just a unanimous vote in its favor - with no apparent discussion.

"Oh!" they'd say. But they didn't really understand, and didn't seem to care, either.

Simon also points out that old media can't completely blame new media for the financial pressures that led to its current state:

Anyone listening carefully may have noted that I was brought out of my reporting position in 1995. That’s well before the internet began to threaten the industry, before Craigslist and department store consolidation gutted the ad base, before any of the current economic conditions applied. In fact, when newspaper chains began cutting personnel and content, the industry was one of the most profitable yet discovered by Wall Street. We know now, because bankruptcy has opened the books, that the Baltimore Sun was eliminating its afternoon edition and trimming nearly a hundred reporters and editors in an era when the paper was achieving 37 percent profits.

In short, my industry butchered itself, and we did so at the behest of Wall Street and the same unfettered free market logic that has proven so disastrous for so many American industries. Indeed, the original sin of American newspapering lies in going to Wall Street in the first place.

When locally based family-owned newspapers like the Sun were consolidated into publicly owned newspaper chains, an essential dynamic, an essential trust between journalism and the community served by that journalism was betrayed. Economically, the disconnect is now obvious. What do newspaper executives in Los Angeles or Chicago care whether readers in Baltimore have a better newspaper, especially when you can make more money putting out a mediocre paper than a worthy one? Where family ownership might have been content with ten or 15 percent profit, the chains demanded double that and more. And the cutting began, long before the threat of new technology was ever sensed.

I would really love to sit down and have a beer with this guy.

Why oh why can't we have a better press corpse? Glenn Greenwald:

Indeed. Perish the thought that a reporter should point out when government officials are making "bogus" claims and are lying a country into a war. That is "not their role," says the New Tim Russert (and, unsurprisingly, the Old Tim Russert wholeheartedly agreed). I don't know whether Gregory's public advocacy for a meek and polite press corps that would never be so rude as to point out when government leaders are lying is what sealed the deal for his new promotion to Meet the Press -- a show which centrally depends on having powerful politicians know that they can come on and, as Dick Cheney's top communications aide put it, "control the message." But I'm quite sure that it didn't hurt.

To see what Cheney aide Cathie Martin meant when she explained that Cheney knew he could go on Meet the Press and "control the message" -- and to see in action David Gregory's model of sycophantic, unchallenging "journalism" -- one could do no better than to examine Gregory's embarrassingly deferential "interview" yesterday with Israel's Foreign Minister, Tzipi Livni. It's a perfect template for how our American press corps (with some rare exceptions) functions.

Whatever one's views are on Israel's attack on Gaza -- pro, con or otherwise -- there's no denying that it's an extremely controversial matter -- at least it is in the world that exists outside of mainstream American political discourse. Even within Israel, there are scathing criticisms of what the Israeli Government is doing -- on both strategic and moral grounds. Yet none of those objections made their way into David Gregory's interview of Livni. He didn't present her with a single argument against the Israeli attack. He didn't challenge a single word she uttered. He was even more sycophantic with her than the average American journalist is with the average American political leader.

[...] There are good reasons why the media's reverent 2003 treatment of Bush matches its 2008 deference to Israeli claims. In 2003, claims about Iraq from the Bush administration -- just like claims from Israel now -- were not aggressively challenged or disputed in good company; their pronouncements were mandated orthodoxy, pieties of the highest order. And the one thing our media stars are good at doing -- what, above all else, they're programmed to do -- is to amplify and pay homage to prevailing establishment pieties. To do otherwise, as Gregory revealingly explained, "is not their role."

While it's true that blogs are dependent upon the mainstream media to an extent, it's because the media's hackery is so widespread, so consistent that consumers need us to explain exactly why they're so full of crap. (I mean, we do reward people who get it right by regularly linking to them, thus showing blog readers just who gets our respect.)

The members of the press corpse don't seem to realize that no matter who signs their paychecks, they have a moral obligation to serve as a check on government. The last eight years have proven they don't.

I think this is my favorite piece of video footage since Jon Stewart told off Tucker Carlson on Crossfire.  Seriously, watch it again and again, it just gets better. 

At the National Conference for Media Reform, Bill O'Reilly producer Porter Barry ambushes journalist Bill Moyers and asks him why he won't appear on The O'Reilly Factor.  Moyers, a class act to the last, makes Barry look like the small and petty man he is.  But the joke is on Barry, because other journalists, including Uptake correspondent Noah Kunin, who got this raw footage, turned tables on ol' Porter and gave him a little taste of the FOX News-style ambush journalism.  I don't think he liked it much.

By the way, Moyers gave an absolutely inspirational keynote address at NCMR2008.  You can view it on YouTube.

I'm sure (well, not really) that it's just a coincidence that as the FISA/telecom immunity debate comes to a head, the journalist who helped bring Bush and Cheney's illegal domestic spy program to light has just been subpoenaed.

Jon Perr has a most excellent write-up about it:

That cheering sound you may have heard this morning was conservatives' applauding the news that New York Times reporter James Risen has been subpoenaed in an effort to force him to reveal his confidential sources. But while Republican rage may be temporarily muted over the inquiry into Risen's 2006 book, many on the right won't be satisfied until Risen goes to jail for his cardinal offense, revealing President Bush's illegal domestic surveillance program.

The subpoena James Risen received from a federal grand jury last week did not concern his 2005 reporting on the NSA domestic spying program. Instead, the Justice Department wants Risen to divulge his sources for a chapter on Iran's nuclear program in his 2006 book, State of War. In it, Risen describes CIAs unsuccessful efforts during the Clinton and Bush administrations to infiltrate the Iranian nuclear program. ... (do read on)

Lest anyone be confused, this is quite the opposite situation from when former NYT pseudo-reporter/White House shill, Judy Miller, was subpoenaed and went to jail for failing to reveal her sources in the CIA leak case. In her case she was refusing to name White House officials who were involved in government wrongdoing in which she had a role. In James Risen's case, he exposed government wrongdoing that had been shrouded in secrecy, which is quite simply the most meritorious and patriotic deed a journalist can do, and is exactly why the fourth estate deserves to have a federal shield law to prevent government retaliation for exposing their crimes.

Click for larger...City Hall Flag by Zen Sutherland at Zenography, a nice collection of photos worth the click.

A friend told me yesterday he stopped reading The Onion when he found he couldn't tell if they were kidding or not. In that vein, Media Bloodhound has the 2007 Fact or Fiction Challenge. See if you can spot the true stories/headlines and diss the fake ones.

Shuster asked the right question of Rep. Blackburn and predictably the attacks followed. (Newsbusters) Whenever someone leaks info to right wing blogs---red flags should go up. Via Blue Texan:

Shuster's apology [re: Marsha Blackburn] may have been premature. The tiny hamlet of Bon Aqua, Tenn., is where Bohannon lived in the months immediately prior to entering the Army. The Census Bureau places his home in Blackburn's 7th Congressional District.

Media Bistro asks a good question:

Why did MSNBC rush Shuster to apologize? And, more importantly, who made him do so? Or did Shuster and MSNBC just not have the info (or didn't do the research) that Scripps dug up?

We know that Scooter Libby isn't around anymore to call NBC and complain to the Russert's of the world---so who is the new contact from the WH that's putting the heat on?

UPDATE: Oye:

FishbowlDC hears that MSNBC General Manager Dan Abrams asked David Shuster to apologize for Wednesday's Rep. Marsha Blackburn incident and even wrote the bulk of Shuster's on-air apology...read on