Watch this video and tell me what Joan Walsh did to elicit an over the top, bizarro-world reaction from the right-wing blogosphere. Are they so desperate for anything that they'll eat the scraps off a toilet bowl?

I met Mika and Joe at a book signing in LA and they were very friendly. Joe said that he appreciated the fact that CrooksandLiars has been very fair to him over the years, unlike a lot of other sites, but that being said ... why was Mika mocking Joan Walsh in such a childish fashion?

JOE SCARBOROUGH: ...I think it helps us all to say there are extreme voices on the left, there are extreme voices on the right, and it's our responsibility to call out people, I believe, on our side.

JOAN WALSH: Who would you have me call out? I mean who would you say on the left is comparable to Rush and...

SCARBOROUGH: Don't do it.

MIKA BREZEZINSKI: Mmm-mmm! No thanks, Joan. We're good. We're good.

SCARBOROUGH: Can we talk about the Chinese now?

MIKA: I think it's all very obvious.

WALSH: Is it obvious? Who on the left is comparable to Rush and Glenn on the right?

MIKA: Okay, Joan, if it's not obvious to you I'll talk to you off-set. I mean, my God! Alright so let's read from the Washington Post...

SCARBOROUGH: We'll talk off-set.

WALSH: Okay...

MIKA: Seriously, it's like BLIP... BLIP... BLIP... right in front of you and you're like [imitates willfully clueless Walsh] "I'm sorry, I don't see it!"

Joe plays the Republican game of false equivalency when he says that we need to call out the extremists on both sides. Joe isn't a dumb man. He knows that there's nothing on the left that even approaches the hate filled extremist nuts that have been polluting the tea party crowd alone. Couple that with FOX News, Limbaugh and the rest of his wannabe imitators and there's more hate than can be measured on the Richter scale being piped into our airwaves all day long. There isn't anyone on the left that acts like Rush or Beck and Mika and Morning Joe know it.

It appeared that Mika might be referencing Joan as some sort of left wing extremist in the mold of Beck, but that's pretty ridiculous since she's very grounded in her media appearances. Or were they referencing Keith Olbermann and just too chicken to say his name?

Well, if I had the chance to debate the likes of the sleaze known as Dick Armey, I wouldn't have the same composure she showed.

DOWNLOADS: (997)

PLAYS: (2879)

Embed

Walsh: But this is serious business. The economy is a wreck, (Armey laughs) it's been wrecked by the Bush White House and by Republicans in Congress with a lot of help Democratic help, with (Armey makes more noises and sighs) --

Armey: Oh, give it a rest.

Walsh: President Obama -- Please stop saying 'give it a rest.' Do you have any anything else to say? -- President Obama has a mandate for change. (Armey laughs again) Your people have stood in his way. They are standing in his way in Capitol Hill right now and Rush Limbaugh is making ridiculous statements and Republicans are crawling to him and groveling. That's the state of our economy and our world right now Rep. Armey and it's sad.

Armey: I'm so glad that you could never be my wife because I surely wouldn't have to listen to that prattle from you every day.

Walsh: Well, wow that makes two of us sir, that was really an outstanding comment...

Armey: Look ma'am, you're talking like a paid political hack making your political points.

Poor lost wingnuts. They get their kicks out of a minute and a half know-nothing exchange.

DOWNLOADS: (799)

PLAYS: (2747)

Embed

Pat Buchanan unleashed his inner Tea Partier yesterday on Hardball, telling Chris Matthews that he would campaign for Tea Party challenger J.D. Hayworth over John McCain in their Arizona primary race. Hayworth, you may recall, recently voiced support for the Birthers on the same show:

MATTHEWS: Where are you on McCain versus Hayworth?

BUCHANAN: If I‘m out in Arizona, I would vote for J.D. Hayworth, who is a friend of mine and a conservative. And if he lost, I would vote for John McCain.

MATTHEWS: OK, we know where you stand.

Joan Walsh took him to task for it:

WALSH: We absolutely know where you stand. He‘s a birther. He‘s an extremist. Thank you, Pat.

The "Birther" matter is only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to Hayworth. Back in 2006, en route to losing his congressional seat, Hayworth tried to revive Henry Ford's program of "Americanism," which you may recall was actually a code word for anti-Semitic eliminationism; it was also a favorite program promoted avidly by the Ku Klux Klan in the 1920s.

Hayworth lost that race, in no small part because of voters were repelled by his lame denials about the "Americanization" program.

Of course, none of this would bother the author of State of Emergency: The Third World Invasion and Conquest of America, would it?

But because he's still our avuncular Uncle Pitchfork, he of course resorted to the standard retort of conservatives when confronted with the realities of the extremists in their midst:

BUCHANAN: This is why you lose—do you know why you lose these people? Because you show contempt for them. You call them birthers. You call them names. I‘m talking about the people, the Tea Party people. All they want, Joan, is respect. And you liberals never give it to them. You call them all names. No wonder they go over to the Republican party.

Walsh then took Buchanan apart:

Continue reading »

DOWNLOADS: (1641)

PLAYS: (6818)

Embed

If you happened to see Bill O'Reilly wanking ever onward Monday night in recapping his confrontation with Joan Walsh on Friday, you probably got the same low mordant chuckle out of his self-serving edit of the interview. After all, it gave him a chance to repeat three more times his leading "When did you stop beating your wife?" question.

But as we noted at the time, Walsh at critical junctures of the exchange handed O'Reilly his lunch -- especially when she zeroed in on his irresponsible, violent and often eliminationist rhetoric directed at the objects of his ire, and his refusal to man up to the predictable (and now manifest) consequences of that.

Indeed, O'Reilly (as usual) edited the video to make him look triumphant against the hapless liberal. But in reality, Walsh seriously called him out at key moments and kicked his butt -- especially at the end.

So we decided to offer our own Crooks and Liars Special Edition Video of the showdown. In which Walsh shines triumphant. It's not quite the whole story, but it's a lot closer to what actually happened than O'Reilly's pathetic whinefest.

Speaking of O'Reilly whinefests, I've also compiled a collage of his recent whining about left-wing meanies who have the audacity to call him out for nastiness -- denouncing in particular the "politics of ridicule" and the "demonization" of the opposition that those hateful far-left liberals employ. This includes some footage of one of his ambush crews attacking a woman at her car -- for having simply criticized O'Reilly.

And then it's capped off by a couple of his nastier "Pinhead" segments. Who's demonizing who?

DOWNLOADS: (660)

PLAYS: (4034)

Embed

DOWNLOADS: (1164)

PLAYS: (5406)

Embed

How do you know that you've made Bill O'Reilly feel like a chump? When he decides that he's going to re-run his interview with you, without you there to defend yourself, and then selectively edit the footage and ignore large swaths of actual fact-based information (as opposed to the largely non-fact-based "reporting" so prevalent to Fox News). Such is the case with Salon.com's Joan Walsh, who so thoroughly humiliated Billo on Friday that I'm sure he stewed over it all weekend and decided that he had to reassert his lost manhood by bringing on sycophantic Mary Katherine Ham and Juan Williams to reassure him that Billo was still da man.

Note Bill's disingenuous framing of the whole interview: it's all about how the crazed liberals have no regard for the rights of the unborn from being murdered for callous reasons. Never mind that his producers sandbagged Walsh by telling her that she was on to talk about right wing violence. Never mind that the procedure that Dr. Tiller performed was not only legal, but highly regulated, and exceptionally rare. The 60,000 casual late term abortions that Billo cites is pulled from his rather constipated posterior region and doesn't pass even the most basic math logic test (That would mean that Tiller performed 16 late term, casual, abortions every day, 7 days a week, for TEN YEARS). Never mind that Dr. Tiller was acquitted by a Kansas grand jury for not violating the law (after only deliberating for an hour) and that the principal expert cited by O'Reilly, Dr. Paul R. McHugh, has his own controversies that call his agenda to question (McHugh, a former member of Bush43's Council on Bioethics, is a Vatican witness called to dismiss claims of DID in victims of priest molestation and has publicly scorned transsexuals and called for the end of gender reassignment surgery).

Yet for Bill, it's all about the babies. These poor, non-existent, viable fetuses that are being thrown out by their mothers (no doubt liberals) and enabled by the insidious Dr. Tiller. Doesn't Joan Walsh understand how wrong it is to blame Bill O'Reilly for his inflammatory rhetoric over completely fabricated and untrue circumstances that may have resonated so much with someone with only a tenuous grasp on ethics that he may have actually taken an innocent man's life? How dare Walsh be so intolerant?

By the way, Walsh herself had a little fun on Twitter over Billo's antics:

Continue reading »

DOWNLOADS: (7608)

PLAYS: (74594)

Embed

God bless Joan Walsh. She finally did what I thought no one in the media was capable of doing: She shoved Bill O'Reilly's vicious words back in his face.

Or more correctly, she smacked him with the evil consequences of his reckless and irresponsible rhetoric, manifested in the case of Jim David Adkisson, the Knoxville shooter. And rather than respond, he simply shut up. If there had been more time, I expect he'd have cut her mike.

It was a thing of beauty.

Here are the lines Walsh, who was nastily attacked by O'Reilly the day before, delivered on-air last night on The O'Reilly Factor, to his face, that most of have wished someone would say someday:

Walsh: And you routinely attack, you routinely attack, people on the left, Janeane Garofalo, Michael Moore, who you think their rhetoric leads potentially to acts of violence. It never has led to one act of violence. But you've already driven that crazy guy in Knoxville last year who read your writings and then went and shot up a church and shot liberals, that's already happened once, and you don't feel any responsibility at all, now that it's happened a second time, Bill? Talk about blood on your hands.

The best O'Reilly could muster:

O'Reilly: Miss Walsh, I appreciate you coming on the program. I think everybody knows exactly where you're coming from.

If you watch the video -- I've included the entirety of his exchange with Walsh -- you can see that what led up to this was nine minutes of vintage O'Reilly: nasty, bullying, demanding quick answers to ridiculously leading questions. It started reaching quite a pitch near the end:

Walsh: And look, Bill, you crusaded against him, he had been shot twice already, his clinic had been exploded, his place had been attacked, bombed, vandalized --

O'Reilly: I'm sorry about that. I'm sorry about that. But my constitutional right says, I can say what I say, you can say what you say, as vile as you say it, you can say it, and I would never condemn you for saying it. You are misguided, you have blood on your hands because you portrayed this man as a hero, when he killed late-term babies for casual reasons.

Now, that's just bizarre: He calls someone's words "vile" and declares they have "blood on their hands" in the same breath in which he declares "I would never condemn you for saying it".

Bill O'Reilly "would never condemn" someone for saying what they think? That's perhaps the most outrageous lie, among a steady stream of them, that O'Reilly has ever uttered. O'Reilly regularly, steadily, and remorselessly condemns people for saying what they think. Garofalo and Moore are only the most frequent examples. Hell, that's what his entire show is predicated upon. The reason his ambush crews are so problematic is that they hunt down and harass private citizens merely for saying things Bill O'Reilly doesn't like.

I've known Joan Walsh for many years, and have always thought well of her, despite some philosophical differences -- including, I've thought, not showing enough toughness at times. But after last night, all I can say is:

God bless Joan Walsh.

BTW, below the fold you can see the clip of Falafel Bill setting up this segment in his "Talking Points Memo". It is almost as nastily delusional as what follows:

Continue reading »

DOWNLOADS: (5600)

PLAYS: (3954)

Embed

Gee, surprise surprise. Bill O'Reilly took extreme umbrage at Salon's Joan Walsh speaking the truth about his role in inspiring acts of domestic terrorism.

Here's what she said:

WALSH: Exactly. I was watching MSNBC all day today, Chris. And there were a couple of experts on these right wing groups saying, this guy was known to authorities. He went to jail in the ‘80s for an assault on I think the Federal Reserve Bank. This is not a lone wolf who has never come into contact or expressed publicly expressed his hateful views. He published a book.

I think there is a certain amount of surveillance that would have been wise. How somebody like that gets a gun when he used a gun in his prior crime—all these things, I think, should be looked at. I support the Second Amendment, but I think guns are too easy to get. All these things will come into play.

And I will say, you know, I do hope that some conservatives stand up. I don‘t blame them. I don‘t blame mainstream Republicans, by any means, for this. I want to be clear. But they could help in ratcheting down some of the rhetoric. When Bill O‘Reilly goes on TV every night and calls Dr. Tiller a baby killer and a Nazi and a Mengele, and shows where he works, why do we put up with that? Why is that entertainment in our culture? It's demonizing a private citizen for doing a lawful job. Why are people doing that? Why is that acceptable? I would like to see a debate about that.

O'Reilly dismissed her point by saying: "Private citizen? Sounds like he sells insurance." Because, in O'Reilly's world, a person's occupation makes all the difference in whether or not he should violate basic precepts of journalistic ethics by holding him up for public demonization and suggesting that someone oughta take him out.

But then he and Laura Ingraham decided to embark on attacking Joan Walsh instead -- by bringing up Salon's coverage of the Jeff Gannon fiasco:

Ingraham: Look, Joan Walsh -- I did a little research for you, OK, tonight. Joan Walsh -- this was in 2005, in a Q&A with the Columbia Journalism Review, she justified what Salon had done to that reporter, Jeff Gannon, that White House reporter who Salon published accounts of as outing! Outing his sexuality, I guess, because of who he was or what he was doing, what he wasn't saying to the White House. And she said, look, it was justified because it was, the White House wasn't very forthcoming with information it was giving reporters, and it apparently didn't even know who this Jeff Gannon was, and he was a fraud, blah blah blah.

So let's be clear: The Left uses, quote, hateful rhetoric when the Left thinks it's justified. So the Left on MSNBC will call President Bush a war criminal, a liar, the most hateful comments about people like Karl Rove, et cetera, et cetera. But when these comments are directed by you -- about you, or people like Rush Limbaugh, as this Joan Walsh character did last night, that is -- well, they deserved it.

Um, Joan Walsh didn't accuse Jeff Gannon of being a mass murderer or a baby killer. She didn't suggest someone should do away with him. She and her reporters just pointed out that Jeff Gannon was a fraud of a reporter to whom the Bush White House gave unbelievable access -- which wasn't a controversial matter at all, but rather a simple fact. It certainly didn't constitute hateful speech.

The same, it must be added, can be said about the rest of Ingraham's examples. She's going to have to work hard to come up with an example of any anchor at MSNBC, let alone any guest, actually spewing hateful rhetoric. Calling Bush a war criminal isn't hateful speech; there in fact is a complete legal case to be made that Bush is indeed a war criminal. And whatever might be said about Rove or Limbaugh pales in comparison to their own daily foul emissions.

But when you're backed into a corner and exposed for the hatemongers you are, you grasp for whatever straws you can. Sorry, Laura. That was an Epic Fail.

Continue reading »

DOWNLOAD (606)

PLAY (823)

During a debate about Rush Limbaugh's influence on the GOP and Phil Gingrey's boot licking apology for crossing the almighty Rushbo, Dick Armey, former GOP leader with Newt proved the point that Limbaugh's piggish views are the benchmark for conservatives when he insulted Joan Walsh as they debated the stimulus package. As she was making an informed argument, Armey started interrupting her as is typical with Republicans who never want to take any responsibility for their destructive policies that almost destroyed America, but really lost it with this exchange.

Walsh: Who are the income redistributionists?

Armey: Who, what..

Walsh: Who are the income redistributionists?

Armey: Well the biggest income redistributions was a Republican congresswoman, urr. Senator, but Charlie Rangel cracked me up, Charlie said you guys are giving her things that I wouldn't even ask for.

Armey: I don't want to get into that because then the controversy is that Dick Armey is assaulting somebody. There are income redistribitionsts that think they are going to curry favor with a voting blocks in both parties and it's wrong policy whether it comes Republicans or Democrats, it makes no sense. Armey's axiom. Don't let politics define your economics. Don't let politics define anything. Politics is silly, it's inane. Take what amusements you can from them but don't take them seriously.

Walsh: But this is serious business. The economy is a wreck, (Armey laughs) it's been wrecked by the Bush White House and by Republicans in Congress with a lot of help Democratic help, with ( Armey makes more noises and sighs)

Armey: Oh, give it a rest.

Walsh: President Obama, please stop saying 'give it a rest.' Do you have any anything else to say? President Obama has a mandate for change. (Armey laughs again) Your people have stood in his way. They are standing in his way in Capitol hill right now and Rush Limbaugh is making ridiculous statements and Republicans are crawling to him and groveling. That's the state of our economy and our world right now Rep. Armey and it's sad.

Armey: I'm so glad that you could never be my wife because I surely wouldn't have to listen to that prattle from you every day.

Walsh: Well, wow that makes two of us sir, that was really an outstanding comment...

Armey: Look ma'am, you're talking like a paid political hack making your political points.

Walsh: Am I sir?

Armey: Are we going to talk seriously...

Walsh" No, I actually care about social justice, I care about jobs, I care about the economy.

Not only does Armey whip out the sexist card, he then calls her a paid political hack which is what he was for the Republicans for many, many years. What a creep. He was part of Newt's take over so he sure knows about political hacks. Tweety should have made him stop and apologize right there, but he can't do that to one of the Old Boy's Republican club.

David writes:

In a later segment on the same show, New York Times columnist Bob Herbert called Armey's remark sexist. "Dick Armey was so far out of line in the last segment with his sexist comments and he owes Joan Walsh and your viewers an apology," said Herbert. Chris Matthews, host of Hardball, eventually remarked that Armey's comments were "overboard."

When Christopher Hitchens practically starts foaming at the mouth with Clinton Derangement Syndrome while on the topic of President-elect Obama's national security team, a very calm Joan Walsh takes him to woodshed and appears to get him pretty flustered. Fireworks start around 9:25 in.

Hitchens: "[Choosing Hillary Clinton] still divides us between those who think a job must be found for Hillary Clinton, that the country would somewhat be disgraced if she wasn't in an important position and those of us who could do without her."

Walsh: "But that second group is a very small group. It's a group of eccentric Clinton haters who have made a living out of trashing the Clinton. It's a small group. It's not an important group in American foreign or domestic policy."

Hitchens: "Which group are you talking about?"

Walsh: "The group of people who would rather see Hillary Slinton off the world stage. I don't think Barack Obama was thinking about that at all because that group of people are eccentric, they are devoted to looking at everything the Clintons do in the worst possible light, and hes trying to solve problems."

Awesome.

As Media Matters notes: Why does MSNBC continue to invite on Christopher Hitchens to bash Hillary Clinton?

Click on image for full strip

Joan Walsh at Salon:

Last week we told you that Salon was running two "Opus" cartoons, featuring spiritual seeker Lola Granola's stint as a "radical Islamist," that many newspapers, including the Washington Post, declined to publish. This week, Salon is running Berkeley Breathed's original, unedited version of the Lola Granola finale, and it's slightly different from the one approved for distribution to newspapers by the Washington Post Company.[..]

As I noted last week, Editor & Publisher and others reported that some newspapers had concerns about running a cartoon that might somehow be construed as insensitive to Muslims. I'd like to insert a line here about Salon's courage in running these two strips, but I didn't see anything that made me think twice about them -- except the news that others wouldn't publish them. We're proud to have Breathed as a contributor, and sad about what this episode says about newspaper publishing today.