Okay, I admit for being a sucker for Fourth of July shows. Stirring songs and fireworks wend their way into my cynical soul and I shake free those constraints to really, really love celebrating our independence. I grew up with a family tradition of a picnic under the stars and the fireworks show at the Hollywood Bowl. At least, that's what I used to do. Last night, I had to content myself with the Boston Pops on TV while comforting my frightened puppy; my husband got to take the kids to a bluff not far from our home where they could watch three different fireworks shows along the bay.

This morning, it's me cowering, wishing I could hide under the sofa at the prospect of the Sunday shows. It's safe to say that Sarah Palin's inexplicable "I'm saving Alaska by quitting early" move will be at the forefront of the conversation, especially on FoxNews Sunday, having bagged successor Lt. Gov. Parnell. VP Joe Biden will be on This Week, but he'll be followed by the intolerable roundtable featuring Tony Blankley and George Will, opining on Iraq, Palin and Franken. The only saving grace? We are spared David Gregory and Meet the Press, which is pre-empted for Wimbledon coverage.

ABC's "This Week" - Vice President Joe Biden.

CBS' "Face the Nation" - Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff; Sens. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, and Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y.

NBC's "Meet the Press" - Pre-empted by coverage of Wimbledon tennis.

NBC's "The Chris Matthews Show" - Panel: Gloria Borger, Bob Woodward, Joe Klein, Tina Brown. (repeat)

CNN's "State of the Union" - Former Secretary of State Colin Powell; Mullen; Queen Noor of Jordan.

CNN's "Fareed Zakaria GPS" - Fareed speaks to British Foreign Secretary David Miliband about why Iran is so angry at Great Britain. Plus, a discussion on aid in Africa -- are celebrities throwing money at the problems or making an actual difference?

"Fox News Sunday" - Mullen; Reps. Steny Hoyer, D-Md., and John Boehner, R-Ohio; Alaska Lt. Gov. Sean Parnell; former Gov. Mike Huckabee, R-Ark.; and former George W. Bush adviser Karl Rove.

So, what's catching your eye this morning?

You can view this video right here by getting the latest version of Flash Player!

DOWNLOADS: (1678)

PLAYS: (2954)

The panel on This Week wasn't much better than the one on Fox News Sunday with their whitewashing of torture and whether there should be investigations. The worst of them being George Will and Peggy Noonan. When asked about whether there will be prosecutions for those that devised the policies on torture George Will thought the Obama administration was striking the right "balance".

Will: Yes. His balance was right. Whether Congress will stick to it or not, the New York Times and others of that faction are inciting Congress have hearings on this and perhaps they will. Perhaps they should. The problem with transparency is it's transparent for the terrorists as well and as you had a clip on here of former Secretary of Homeland Security Chertoff saying, the bad guys train to resist what they know we can use and they are helped by when they are captured knowing what we cannot use. So this has a cost.

No George. They already knew that we were waterboarding. Your argument is bunk. You and Brit Hume really need to get with the program here. Next on the list is Cokie Roberts who is just oh so glad that those CIA tapes were destroyed.

Roberts: That's certainly true but we don't have, give them ammunition, and you know whoever at the CIA destroyed the tapes of the waterboarding, it was the wrong thing to do but I'm really glad they did it because I would hate to have those tapes out on the Internet and people uh, being using those because I think they would be wonderful recruiting tools for terrorists and the truth is we do wonderful work all around the world, this country, people in this country, organizations in this country, the US government get no credit for it, partly because of these kinds of techniques and just getting them out of there I think is just tremendously helpful.

So Cokie, do you really think that the terrorists don't know what went on because those tapes aren't there to watch? Do you really think this was not already a recruiting tool without the tapes? I fail to follow your logic here. The only thing not having the tapes out there assures is that the people who were in them are never held accountable for what they did.

Then we have Sam Donaldson who throws out the whole Nuremberg trials argument in one fell swoop by giving the CIA agents a pass who tortured prisoners.

Continue reading »

You can view this video right here by getting the latest version of Flash Player!

DOWNLOADS: (2099)

PLAYS: (9350)

Heh. Sam Donaldson really smacks down the ever-unctuous (and historically inaccurate) George Will on This Week's roundtable discussion about the teabaggers:

WILL: What this was about, as was the original Boston Tea Party - which was barely about taxes but about Parliament's role in their lives, was a view that we're now in something called the "third wave" of government. You had the expansion of the New Deal, you had the expansion of the Great Society to complete the New Deal, what those people who rallied there were saying this is something different, this third wave is to erase the distinction between the public and private sectors, and that frightens them.

DONALDSON: Oh, they weren't saying that, George. What they were saying is, we don't like Obama. And this is a proxy way to say that. Because it's true, he's going to lower taxes on 95% of the American public, and the rest are going to have higher taxes. You were quite correct, it's not about the level of taxes. Those rallies were mainly, it seems to me, organized to say, "We don't like Obama" across the board.

Peggy Noonan, believe it or not, is the one who more accurately nails the mood as anti-ruling class. Unfortunately, Fox News- and talk-radio voters are invariably under-informed as to the root causes of our economic woes.

Notice that when it comes to conservatives, they always consistently attack the legitimacy of any Democrat who wins the White House. So no Democrat is ever really the President, and should be challenged at every turn! There, wasn't that easy?

DOWNLOAD (25)

PLAY (64)

I don't think Tim Geithner is the right person to fix the mess we're in since he's too close to those on Wall Street that caused the problem to begin with, but how ridiculous is George Will in this clip? Even after the giant mess that the "markets" have created with no regulation, Will is still doing his best job of channeling Ronald Reagan's mantra of let the markets take care of themselves and government can't solve our problems because it is the problem. Whether Geithner can fix the mess or not we sure need regulations put back in place and quickly IMO which will be up to the Congress to get passed. Will does his best to conflate Geithner's troubles with government regulation being bad.

Will: This is a complicated society with trillions of decisions made every day driving this. That's why you have markets rather than bureaucrats to allocate wealth and opportunity.

Reich: The markets failed George. Let's be clear about that. The markets failed.

Will: Just you wait till the government gets at it. If you think that this is a failure, just you wait.

Reich: Well it's already failing. Look at, we have the worst economic conditions we have had. We had a market fundamentalist as President. We had market fundamentalism as the guiding economic philosophy and what happened? We got in this mess George.

Will: Sixty two days ago Mr. Geithner was the indispensable man and never mind his little tax problems, he was indispensable. As de Gaulle said---graveyards are full of indispensable men.

Is Will an indispensable man too? Raise your hands. Geithner... bad. Therefore regulation... bad. Free market... good. Bad man trying to mess up free market...very bad.

To listen to Will is like listening to a man who has been living in a cave and totally cut off from society and all forms of communication these last eight years. The financial sector has already melted down and we're hanging on by a thread, but not in Will's alternate reality. Does he really want to live in a society where the free markets rule everything and the government takes care of nothing? Apparently so. I'd like to see him try to live in a place that actually espouses the virtues he holds so dear.

Need a cop to come to your house??..you're on your own and buy more guns. Want some traffic lights working in your neighborhood??...just call in Blackwater. Want to drive on any of the roads in this country??...pay a toll and hope they don't jack up the prices too high. Want your phone to work??...well the phone company decided that your area isn't profitable enough to keep service there so too bad. Want your lights turned on?...well the electric company decided that a big industry was more profitable than you were to provide service to.

Don't you dare let the government interfere in any of those free markets....right George Will? Heaven forbid who knows what might happen if they did.

(John Amato helped with the post)

Lucky Andy Alexander. Even before he introduced himself as the new Washington Post Ombudsman, replacing the embattled Deborah Howell, he has already stepped into a rather steaming pile of dung. Sadly, instead of discerning the truth for the readers of Washington Post, Alexander opted to compound the error:

As numerous progressive and science bloggers have pointed out, Washington Post columnist George Will misused data and distorted statements made by climate experts in order to suggest that human-caused global warming is not occurring. Moreover, in his reported response to criticism of Will's column, Post ombudsman Andy Alexander falsely suggested that a statement by the Arctic Climate Research Center (ACRC) supports Will's claims about sea ice levels when, in fact, the ACRC statement rebuts the very argument Will was making. Indeed, contrary to Will's suggestion that ACRC data on global sea ice levels undermine the overwhelming scientific consensus that humans are causing global warming, the ACRC document Alexander cites actually states that the sea ice data are consistent with the outcomes projected by climate-change models and studies.

In his February 15 column, Will suggested that ACRC data undermine the case for the existence of "man-made global warming":

As global levels of sea ice declined last year, many experts said this was evidence of man-made global warming. Since September, however, the increase in sea ice has been the fastest change, either up or down, since 1979, when satellite record-keeping began. According to the University of Illinois' Arctic Climate Research Center, global sea ice levels now equal those of 1979.

In response, the ACRC reportedly stated:

We do not know where George Will is getting his information, but our data shows that on February 15, 1979, global sea ice area was 16.79 million sq. km and on February 15, 2009, global sea ice area was 15.45 million sq. km. Therefore, global sea ice levels are 1.34 million sq. km less in February 2009 than in February 1979. This decrease in sea ice area is roughly equal to the area of Texas, California, and Oklahoma combined.

It is disturbing that the Washington Post would publish such information without first checking the facts.

Responding to criticism of Will's column and of the Post's refusal thus far to correct it, Alexander reportedly suggested in an email to The Wonk Room's Brad Johnson that Will's "conclusion" is supported by a January ACRC document.

Not a very auspicious start for Alexander. Wonder if he'll start referring to readers with as much snide disdain as Howell did.

Is it me or are all these authoritarian conservatives just losing their nuts now? George Will's latest column in Washington Post (*sigh* again? Katherine Graham must be spinning in her grave. The same paper responsible for taking down the Nixon presidency is now serving up fact-free and bizarre rantings of regressive conservatives) jumps all over Russ Feingold for his proposed change to the 17th Amendment, ending gubernatorial appointments to Senate vacancies, and requiring special elections to fill the seats. Will thinks we'd be better off just getting rid of the 17th Amendment:

A simple apology would have sufficed. Instead, Sen. Russ Feingold has decided to follow his McCain-Feingold evisceration of the First Amendment with Feingold-McCain, more vandalism against the Constitution.

The Wisconsin Democrat, who is steeped in his state's progressive tradition, says, as would-be amenders of the Constitution often do, that he is reluctant to tamper with the document but tamper he must because the threat to the public weal is immense: Some governors have recently behaved badly in appointing people to fill U.S. Senate vacancies. Feingold's solution, of which John McCain is a co-sponsor, is to amend the 17th Amendment. It would be better to repeal it.

What? Hold on...are you kidding me? We don't want no stinkin' voters deciding their representatives now? For those unfamiliar with the history, prior to the ratification of the 17th Amendment in 1913, the individual states' legislatures (not the voters) elected Senators to represent the states. It worked reasonably well until the Civil War, and then all hell broke loose:

This process worked without major problems through the mid-1850s, when the American Civil War was in the offing. Because of increasing partisanship and strife, many state legislatures failed to elect Senators for prolonged periods. For example, in Indiana the conflict between Democrats in the southern half of the state and the emerging Republican Party in the northern half prevented a Senate election for two years. The aforementioned partisanship led to contentious battles in the legislatures, as the struggle to elect Senators reflected the increasing regional tensions in the lead up to the Civil War.

After the Civil War, the problems multiplied. In one case in the mid-1860s, the election of Senator John P. Stockton from New Jersey was contested on the grounds that he had been elected by a plurality rather than a majority in the state legislature.[1] Stockton defended himself on the grounds that the exact method for elections was murky and varied from state to state. To keep this from happening again, Congress passed a law in 1866 regulating how and when Senators were to be elected from each state. This was the first change in the process of senatorial elections. While the law helped, there were still deadlocks in some legislatures and accusations of bribery, corruption, and suspicious dealings in some elections. Nine bribery cases were brought before the Senate between 1866 and 1906, and 45 deadlocks occurred in 20 states between 1891 and 1905, resulting in numerous delays in seating Senators. Beginning in 1899, Delaware did not send a senator to Washington for four years.

Now given all the games the Republicans have been playing in the two short years that they have not had the majority in Congress, does this seem like a smart thing to regress to? Of course, that could be Will's point/desire:

Although liberals give lip service to "diversity," they often treat federalism as an annoying impediment to their drive for uniformity. Feingold, who is proud that Wisconsin is one of only four states that clearly require special elections of replacement senators in all circumstances, wants to impose Wisconsin's preference on the other 46. Yes, he acknowledges, they could each choose to pass laws like Wisconsin's, but doing this "state by state would be a long and difficult process." Pluralism is so tediously time-consuming.

Irony alert: Feingold's amendment requiring elections to fill Senate vacancies will owe any traction it gains to Senate Democrats' opposition to an election to choose a replacement for Barack Obama. That opposition led to the ongoing Blagojevich-Burris fiasco.

By restricting the financing of political advocacy, the McCain-Feingold speech-rationing law empowers the government to regulate the quantity, timing and content of political speech. Thanks to Feingold, McCain and others, the First Amendment now, in effect, reads: "Congress shall make no law . . . abridging the freedom of speech unless it really, really wants to in order to guarantee that there will be only as much speech about the government as the government considers appropriate, and at times the government approves."

Now Feingold proposes to traduce federalism and nudge the Senate still further away from the nature and function the Framers favored. He is, as the saying goes, an unapologetic progressive, but one with more and more for which to apologize.

Oy, there's so much disingenuousness and anger there, it's hard to believe this joker passes as A. Very. Serious. Villager.

Open Left dismantles Will far better than I could.

Get Energy Smart Now!

The Washington Post editors are, in essence, going silent when it comes to George Will’s use of their pages for disinformation on global warming issues. And, from that silence, the Post’s Ombudsman emerged to embrace the Will-ful deceit. And, for whatever reason, unlike the myriad other times that Washington Post opinion pages have been handed over to truthiness from global warming deniers, skeptics, and delayers, this occasion is seeing a bit of a blogosphere wide expression of outrage.

GESN! has an impressive list of fact finders who debunk all of Will's truthiness. But it's more than just Will's truthiness. WaPo has a long history of fact-light reporting when it comes to the environment, as A Siegel documents:

• WashPost complicit in disinformation of explicit collaboration?, 15 Feb 09
• Washington Post global warming reporting fair and balanced, 27 Jun 08
• Fair and Balance strikes WashPost global warming reporting again , 26 June 08
• Will-fully ignorant, 3 June 06
• Truthi-Samuelson strikes again, 30 Apr 08
• Truthiness strikes the Post again, revisited, 15 Oct 07
• Truthiness strikes the Post again, 14 Oct 07
• J’accuse! Robert J Samuelson. J’accuse!, 15 Aug 07
• Krauthammer’s fact-free foray into energy issues, 1 July 07
• Washington Post’s schizophrenic approach to global warming, 4 Feb 07
• J’accuse! Distorting reality in global warmings’ real inconvenient truth, 5 July 06

In short, the problem is not just the Post’s relationship with George Will, but the Post’s utter failure to hold their columnists to any reasonable standard in terms of evidence when it comes to climate change and energy pieces.

I'm working on a new blues tune. It's called "I've Got the Bi-Partisan Blues." I know all about the keep your enemies close bit from the Godfather, but how does this actually help Obama?

The president-elect tonight is having dinner with some ideological adversaries: four of the most widely-read conservative columnists.

I remember when we were up in arms because George Bush invited the right wing radio buffoons at his place once again.

For the second year in a row, President Bush called some of his closest radio friends to the White House for an off-the-record briefing and discussion.

Mark Levin and Sean Hannity of WABC (770 AM) were among the 10 conservative talk-radio hosts who met with Bush in the West Wing yesterday, according to Talkers magazine. The others were Glenn Beck, Neal Boortz, Hugh Hewitt, Scott Hennen, Bill Bennett, Michael Medved, Lars Larsen and Janet Parshall.

Bush met with five hosts last fall, including Boortz, Hannity and Medved, Talkers noted, "to discuss issues and gauge the conservative talk-radio audience's feelings about issues and policies." None of the hosts told their audiences about the meeting prior to its occurrence.

I'm not sure what Obama's end game is with this move. Is he expecting them to give him a break during his first year in office? At least that made sense for Bush. They were being rewarded for spreading conservative propaganda throughout the land and they did it well, reaching millions of listeners a week. And make no mistake about it. These talk show hosts embody conservative philosophy entirely. They are not mere comics, clowns and wingnuts. They are the true face of the Republican party. I wonder why they haven't had to explain themselves to their listeners since they sold them down the river along with Bush, Cheney and his merry band of Neocons.

I will always remind the media of this fact. Too often the conservative party is not held accountable for the association they have with right wing radio. So here's a news flash: They are one and the same.

UPDATE I am organizing a request for a meeting with Obama and left wing bloggers that supported his effort and were on the front lines during the general election---beating back all that nasty conservative misinformation. It's all in the name of bi-partisanship after all.

DOWNLOAD (41)

PLAY (58)

Paul Krugman takes on George Will on This Week about the very serious consequences to our economy if GM is allowed to go into bankruptcy.

Stephanopoulos: Let's move now to the economy. The other big issue of the week and Paul Krugman let me bring you in and get you to respond to McCain's defense of not rescuing the auto companies. He's saying basically until they change their ways and the way they do business we shouldn't be stepping in.

Krugman: The problem is time. The problem is yeah we ought to have, and I think a lot of people are talking about structuring something where we're calling it a structured bankruptcy, maybe it won't be called that, but a reform, get current management down, abrogate a lot of the contracts, probably a lot of the benefits to retirees where one way or another it could be shuffled off to the tax payers. All of this stuff to keep those companies going with but ah you know a lot of give backs, but it can't be done over night and the problem is these companies are on the verge of disappearing over night. This was, everything he said was an argument for why you should give them a short term bridge loan but nothing more than that and we can do the right thing.

But you can't expect them to come up with a plan before Christmas that's going to do everything he's saying and they should have done it years ago but they didn't and that's where we are now. Are you prepared to let probably a million plus jobs disappear in the middle of the worst recession since the nineteen thirties.

Stephanopoulos: So isn't it a sad policy the times demand it?

Krugman: It's a question of the policy giving you a little bit of time to work out the good policy. It's you know, this is, these are not normal times.

Will: Paul refers to the companies and all three are in the same boat in a sense but this is all about General Motors. Ford is not asking for money now. It only wants access to a line of credit in case there is what it calls a major industry event which means the bankruptcy of the, well the failure, General Motors is bankrupt but that is General Motors not being able to pay its bills to the three thousand parts suppliers in this country to which the three companies today owe thirteen billion dollars which is one billion dollars short of the fourteen billion dollars they're asking for.

Krugman: But that's exactly the point. We have an industry that's highly interdependent. These are not stand-alone integrated companies. They draw on the same network of suppliers. If any one of them goes down, and in particular General Motors goes down, all three go down. And so the point is, we need to work this thing out. We can't do it before… before January 20th. Um, are you prepared to make the awesome decision to allow the core of the traditional US auto industry to disappear because you weren't prepared to - you know, you wanted everything on your plate all at once - or are you prepared to pay all the …

Will: (crosstalk) But it won't …

Krugman: … It will. The suppliers will disappear. The companies will - you know, the plants will disappear, it will be a shell of its former self. We will have and continue to have an industry, the new auto industry.

The lead to the opposition to the bailout was lead by the, ah Senator Corker the Senator from Nissan which has two plants in its national headquarters in Tennessee so we will, it's not the whole industry but it's a very important part of US industrial structure. Do you want to make that decision by default?

DOWNLOAD (17)

PLAY (45)

Damn it, it's a center-right nation, and don't you forget it!

I swear to you that is the editorial slant taken by pretty much all the bobbleheads, but none so nakedly as This Week with George Stephanopoulos. Note the make up of the panel is basically four Republicans to one Democrat (with all their concern trolling, I generously figure that Brazile and Stephanopoulos together equal just one Democrat). What's with that ratio? The American public has soundly and decisively voted against the GOP policies and the Bush doctrine, so what are frightened little Villagers to do but put on some former Bushies, Matthew Dowd and Torie Clarke, along with conservative stalwart George Will.

George Will, the sagest one of all, metaphorically pats Donna Brazile on the head and suggests that perhaps all the doom and gloom on the economy is unnecessary, as if Donna Brazile is the one to blame for the bearish outlook. He suggests that the foreclosure rate isn't as bad as everyone seems to think, that the unemployment rolls aren't that bad (WTF? 94% of the people who want to work are working? WANT to work?) and that this is strictly a financial sector problem, ignoring the fact that if the financial sector cannot lend money, it becomes a disaster to the consumer and small business owner as well. Typical Republican missing the forest for the trees.

Meanwhile, former Pentagon spokesperson Torie Clarke rings the warning bell that all these bailouts (not questioned when AIG and BearStearns came a-calling, mind you) are going to cause us to "out-France France"! Quel horreur! And Matthew Dowd insists that if Obama really wants to represent change from how things are done in Washington, he's going to have to reject a Democratic party-led program.

Um, huh? The logic of this escapes me. The American public has rejected GOP policies and rule and so therefore, Obama must reject a Democratic program? I have an idea for you, Matt (along with all of the ABC news bookers): how about we give a Democratic program (and a Democratic panel) a try for once? THAT would be a change.

DOWNLOAD (34)

PLAY (77)

From the man who called the union benefits at automotive companies a "welfare state," we have George Will on This Week showing his compassionate conservative side yet again. I would like to see George Will working on an assembly line until the age of 65 and then let him speak out about someone retiring before that age or receiving benefits that they somehow don't deserve. Working for thirty years at a company while giving your blood in the process is not enough for these people.

John Amato:

Conservatives love to rewrite history so they can trumpet their own philosophy. Paul Krugman explains to George Will how FDR got America out of the Depression. Conservatives have been trying to unravel the New Deal ever since.

Krugman: There was a collapse of the financial system which was not restored for a long time. There was a deep slump in consumer demand and therefore no investment demand so we were stuck in this trap.

Update: The video links with the correct video should be working now.

DOWNLOAD (20)

PLAY (50)

The panel on This Week discussing what McCain needs to do to pull out this election and apparently the last argument they feel he or any of the Republicans has left is fear of lack of a divided government. It amazes me that these talking heads in the media didn't have this mortal fear when the Republicans had control of everything. After admitting that the Republicans are losing the independents and the middle George Will makes this observation near the end of the discussion:

The need to Sen. McCain to rally the base and appeal to the base, first of all even though the base is as you said in the earlier segment much smaller than it was then, was implicit in the numbers from 2006, in 2006 Republican candidates in the off year elections got more votes from Evangelical Christians than Democratic got from African Americans and labor union members combined. Evangelical Christians by....(crosstalk)..I'm just telling you..that base is not just the base. It is almost the Republican party.

(h/t FDL)
You knew it was coming. To the conservatives that populate pollute the airwaves, Colin Powell's endorsement of Barack Obama could only be because he is black:

STEPHANOPOULOS: We just found out that former Secretary of State General Colin Powell has said he's going to vote for Barack Obama. Big impact?

WILL: Some impact. And I think this adds to my calculation -- this is very hard to measure -- but it seems to me if we had the tools to measure we'd find that Barack Obama gets two votes because he's black for every one he loses because he's black because so much of this country is so eager, a) to feel good about itself by doing this, but more than that to put paid to the whole Al Sharpton/Jesse Jackson game of political rhetoric.

First, I'm not even sure what "put paid to the whole Al Sharpton/Jesse Jackson game of political rhetoric" means. And what do either of them have to do with Powell's endorsement?

Is Will trying to suggest that Powell has some variation of "white man's guilt" and is seeking to mollify it by endorsing Obama? Clearly, Will does think that the endorsement is more based on skin color than anything else, a projection that I find more illustrative of the simple-minded Republican groupthink support than anything else. It shows just how insulated and isolated the GOP is from the real world, where people look at more than just how much someone looks like you and considers larger issues.

Just as predictably, Rush Limbaugh chimes in as well:

Rush Limbaugh said Colin Powell's decision to get behind Barack Obama appeared to be very much tied to Obama's status as the first African-American with a chance to become president.

"Secretary Powell says his endorsement is not about race," Limbaugh
wrote in an email. "OK, fine. I am now researching his past endorsements to see if I can find all the inexperienced, very liberal, white candidates he has endorsed. I'll let you know what I come up with."

Um...hey Rush, how about George W. Bush in 2000? Maybe he wasn't "very liberal" (although he certainly portrayed himself as more centrist than he is in actuality), but he was definitely considered inexperienced on the national scene and you don't get much whiter than the Bush clan. Rush continues:

"I guess he also regrets Reagan and Bush making him a four-star [General] and Secretary of State and appointing his son to head the FCC. Yes, let's hear it for transformational figures."

Really, you want to go diving into that "how ungrateful that black man is for all the white men have done for him" abyss? It's frightening to me how these conservatives don't to even try to hide their white hoods any more. Rush, I know that conservatives value ignorance, but you have to know that becoming a four-star General is not a political appointment. Powell earned that rank, and to suggest otherwise now because he doesn't agree with your water-carrying is just more of the Republicans' sick tactic of smearing the messenger.

  It's a cold day in hell when the entire "This Week" panel rails against John McCain and his utter confusion when it comes to the economy. Cokie Roberts raises the specter of Herbert Hoover, Donaldson rightfully pins the deregulation racket on McCain and Republicans, calling McCain's promise to champion regulation a "hard pill to swallow,"  and George Will says McCain acted "unpresidential" and that the issue of age should re-enter the debate over whether McCain is fit for the job.

Download | play   Download | play

Quote of the segment, from George Will of all people:

John McCain showed his personality this week and made some of us fearful.

The Conservatives are out in force trying to bail John McCain out from Phil Gramm's ridiculous comments---you know---about calling us all a bunch of whiners.

Download | play Download | play

Think Progress:

"Phil Gramm was right of course," Will declared. "Absolutely

WILL: On two points. ... We're not in a recession as commonly defined. That is two consecutive quarters of negative growth.

STEPHANOPOULOS: We may be running there though. Even Bernanke says so.

WILL: We're not however. Unemployment is just about the post-war average at 5.5 percent. His second point that we're a nation of whiners: we are the crybabies of the western world. In fact, we have an extraordinarily low pain threshold.

Heather says:

Stengel follows with saying that no one wants to be called a whiner and cites one of their polls on the public perception of the economy and says those statements weren't helpful. You, think? Brazile notes that McCain had to distance himself from Gramm and says Phil is mental. Roberts follows with saying that it's just the old harsh style of politics and it's the wrong year for that. Oh, and the public doesn't understand McCain's jokes.