Tea Partiers and Conservatives live in their own reality, especially when it comes to numbers. They find an easily digestible sound-byte line and they repeat it into the ground. Florida's Marco Rubio, or Mr. Tea Party, refused to back Paul Ryan's budget mess when asked if he supported it on MTP and then made up his own numbers pertaining to Medicare and what the Ryan budget actually does. David Gregory asked Rubio questions and instead of answering him outright, he deflected the question and said he's for anything that will fix the budget. Oh, where's the love? Here's the CBO on RyanCare:

Under the proposal, most elderly people would pay more for their health care than they would pay under the current Medicare system. For a typical 65-year-old with average health spending enrolled in a plan with benefits similar to those currently provided by Medicare, CBO estimated the beneficiary’s spending on premiums and out-of-pocket expenditures as a share of a benchmark: what total health care spending would be if a private insurer covered the beneficiary. By 2030, the beneficiary’s spending would be 68 percent of that benchmark under the proposal, 25 percent under the extended-baseline scenario, and 30 percent under the alternative fiscal scenario. … CBO estimates that average spending in traditional Medicare will be 89 percent of (that is, 11 percent less than) the spending that would occur if that same package of benefits was purchased from a private insurer.

Rubio makes up magical numbers to defend cuts to Medicare and said that Ryan's budget actually increased funding to Medicare while sticking to the previously debunked notion that HCR will cut 500 billion out of Medicare.

Rubio: The Ryan plan doesn't cut Medicare, it actually increases funding in it and the only people in this town that have voted to cut medicare that are the people who supported Obamacare, that cut half a trillion dollars for the next ten years from medicare.

Political Correction has all the details of that lie:

FactCheck.org: Cost Saving Provisions "Not A Slashing Of The Current Medicare Budget Or Benefits." According to FactCheck.org: "Whatever you want to call them, it's a $500 billion reduction in the growth of future spending over 10 years, not a slashing of the current Medicare budget or benefits. It's true that those who get their coverage through Medicare Advantage's private plans (about 22 percent of Medicare enrollees) would see fewer add-on benefits; the bill aims to reduce the heftier payments made by the government to Medicare Advantage plans, compared with regular fee-for-service Medicare. The Democrats' bill also boosts certain benefits: It makes preventive care free and closes the 'doughnut hole,' a current gap in prescription drug coverage for seniors." [FactCheck.org, 3/19/10]

Screaming that Medicare is going broke must be Frank Luntz' instructions to Conservative since that's all Rubio kept coming back to. But that ignores the second half of the sentence: "...under current revenue structures." How does privatizing this system (which then builds in corporate profits rather than the pay for service system now) make things better? What happens to seniors who can't afford the additional costs imposed upon them by the Ryan plan? Proposing ludicrous ideas are not brave.

Jonathan Chait debunks Paul Ryan in an interview he conducted with the Wisconsin Congressman in a post called: Debunking Paul Ryan's Latest Spin

John Cohn takes apart the idea that Ryan's plan would even decrease the federal deficit one iota.

“Only” is a slightly misleading term here, since $4.5 trillion dollars would still represent a large spending cut. But wait! The House Republican budget also calls for tax cuts—$4.2 trillion of them. In other words, the tax cuts in the House Republican budget would very nearly offset the spending cuts, leaving just $380 billion in additional savings over ten years.

It would be nice if our beltway media would arm themselves with enough facts about this entire debate so that when Conservatives lie about the numbers they could actually correct them on the spot and not at a later date or if ever. I know it's a bit complicated, but letting lies go unchallenged is not an option either.

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After the unquestionably tragic (but not entirely unprecedented) events in Benghazi, former ambassador Thomas Pickering was named to chair an accountability panel to investigate the event. Pickering is hardly someone who could be characterized as partisan, having served under presidents of both parties and in multiple "hot" zones, such as El Salvador, Israel and Russia. He has spent his more recent, post-retirement years focusing on national security for different think tanks. So he comes to the task with no political agenda, but an ongoing concern for the importance of the diplomatic corps and the safety and security of American interests in a decidedly bipartisan fashion.

Pickering's board findings are available to everyone online. In it, the board found systemic failures throughout the State Department and inadequate allowances for security. But what they did not find is any evidence of a conspiracy to cover up or politically spin the attack, or of an overt attempt to make or let the attack happen nor did they find then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton personally culpable for failures in the State Department. The fault lay, according to the report, with bureaucratic levels far below the Secretary level.

But Republicans never let facts get in the way of a good ol' witch hunt which has the double effect of keeping the sitting President on the defense as well as getting in some potentially fatal licks on the 2016 frontrunner. So Oversight Committee Chairman and Chief Witch Hunter Darrell Issa (R-CA) keeps droning on and on his conspiracy talking points to mouthpiece cypher David Gregory until Thomas Pickering can take it no longer.

After Issa asserted that Pickering had refused to testify in front of his committee, Pickering breaks his silence and off camera interrupts with a "That's not true." Watch Issa's face as the camera goes wide, revealing Pickering sitting right next to him. Pickering then reveals that he was told his testimony was 'not welcome', leaving Issa sputtering about protocols (how ironic!) and how the minority party could have called Pickering as a witness, proving once again that the goal is not fact finding, but a witch hunt.

Pickering will end up testifying in front of the committee this week. However, I don't think that Issa should feel confident that this will at all help his cause, as Pickering has been quite clear about his disgust about this politicking:

“Let me say that I hope the chairman has read our report,” the co-chairman of State Department Accountability Review Board on Benghazi aid on NBC's “Meet the Press.” “Our report has 29 recommendations. The bulk of them concern the insufficiency of the State Department's preparation of that post to deal with the security challenges. I don't think that there is any other explanation. And I can't believe that, in fact, he still sits here and makes those charges.”

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With the nostalgia borne of five years of non-stop partisan bickering and traditional media's 180 turn to focus on deficits, the rehabilitation of George W. Bush, whom historians nearly unanimously rank at or near the bottom of American presidents, is in full-court press. Of course, the opening up of his library--which includes an interactive exhibit that asks you if you'd make the same choices as Bush did for certain events and then tells you you're wrong if you didn't choose as he did--is part and parcel of this race to soften the image of the man who spent trillions of dollars enriching his cronies and killing thousands of Americans in two unnecessary wars and ineptly-managed disaster relief while almost causing a global financial crash, which drove an wealth disparity in this country not seen since the Gilded Age.

Those are messy facts that are hard to dismiss. But they're easy to ignore. Especially when you decide to focus on a completely irrelevant aspect of George W. Bush: how nice he is on a one-on-one basis. So, of course, this is the tactic Dancin' David Gregory takes in interviewing GWB's Iraq War bestie, former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair:

GREGORY: You saw President Bush up close as a man during very difficult times for any leader. Talk about your relationship, what it was like to sit there today and this moment of finality even for a former president at the dedication of his library.

MR. BLAIR: Well, I thought it was a great (Unintelligible) for America today by the way. I mean, you had five presidents including President Obama, and all behaving with a sort of graciousness and-- and civility towards each other. I thought it was fantastic. And President Obama actually put his finger on it when he said it’s impossible to know George Bush and not like him. So, you know, often people say to me back home, they say, come on, you didn’t like him really, did you? And I say, you can totally disagree with him but as a human being he is a someone of immense character and genuine integrity. So, you know, you can say-- people have different views about decisions, but there’s a very few people who-- who don’t like him and respect him as a person.

I'm sorry, but what a load of crap that is. I'm sure that there were contemporaries of Millard Fillmore and Warren G. Harding who found them charming and friendly and enjoyed their company personally. Fillmore was able to charm and romance his schoolteacher into marrying him. Harding was famous for his poker parties while corruption ran rampant during his Prohibition years.

But despite those warm, personal relationships, neither Fillmore nor Harding could ever be considered good presidents. Why? Because those close personal relationships didn't translate into acting well on behalf of the larger nation. In that, their personal charm failed them--and the country--utterly.

And it is the same with Bush. So no, I don't care if Tony Blair found him likeable on a personal level. "The kind of guy you want to have a beer with" is not what should measure George Bush's presidency. What I --and what David Gregory should -- care about is whether the presidency of George W. Bush actually benefitted the nation at large.

By any measure, that answer is no.

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The media narrative around the Boston marathon bombing is beginning to coalesce: Older brother Tamerlan Tsarnaev had recently embraced fundamentalist and radical Islamic thought after a trip to Russia, starting a YouTube channel that pointed to jihadist videos. Such was his interest that he became a subject of an investigation by the FBI, reportedly at the request of the Russian government. Angry, isolated and increasingly radicalized, he enlisted the services of his younger, idolizing brother to fulfill the jihad here in the US, of whom he felt used the Bible "as an excuse for invading other countries".

Never mind that Tamerlan cannot speak for himself (nor at this point can Dzhokhar, who reportedly has neck injuries that may prevent him from ever speaking). This narrative can be built without any actual facts, much like the common wisdom behind Columbine shooters Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris, and it serves its purpose: to marginalize and demonize the suspects and not look at the larger environment in which we all contribute and how that can possibly radicalize those who feel oppressed by it.

Surprisingly, Tom Brokaw broke away from the surging media narrative to bring a rare moment of tempering during the Meet the Press panel. And even more amazingly, he pointed to a very specific foreign policy that may be driving more and more people against this country:

MR. BROKAW: But I think that there’s something else that goes beyond the event that we’ve all been riveted by in the last week. We have to work a lot harder as a motivation here. What prompts a young man to come to this country and still feel alienated from it, to go back to Russia and do whatever he did and I don’t think we’ve examined that enough? I mean, there was 24/7 coverage on television, a lot of newspaper print and so on, but we have got to look at the roots of all of this because it exist across the whole subcontinent, and the-- and the Islamic world around the world. And I think we also have to examine the use of drones that the United States is involved and-- and there are a lot of civilians who are innocently killed in a drone attack in Pakistan, in Afghanistan, and in Iraq. And I can tell you having spent a lot of time over there, young people will come up to me on the streets and say we love America. If you harm one hair on the-- on the head of my sister, I will fight you forever and there is this enormous rage against what they see in that part of the world as a presumptuousness of the United States.

Knock me over with a feather. Never thought I'd hear a member of Beltway Privileged class acknowledge something that liberals have been saying for a long time: Our drone policy is actually fomenting anti-American sentiment and helping radicalize even more Muslims against us.

Oh that master journalist David Gregory. He always has his finger on the pulse of what matters to Americans. The critical issues. The discussion around the kitchen table. The items debate in the halls of government everywhere.

You know, important things like how Marco Rubio feels about Jay-Z and Beyonce taking a vacation to Cuba.

DAVID GREGORY: You were critical of the administration this week after a trip down to Cuba by Beyonce and Jay-Z. They were seen, you know, vacationing there, walking through the streets. It was sanctioned by The Treasury Department. Isn't the broader issue here, Senator, what, if anything will it take to get more normal relations with Cuba and the United States?

MARCO RUBIO: Well, that's up to Cuba. If Cuba wants normal relations, there's certain things they need to do like become a normal country that respects the rights of their citizens. I thought it was hypocritical for Jay-Z and Beyonce to go down to Cuba. There is, in fact, a rapper right now in Cuba who's and a hunger strike and has been persecuted because of his lyrics.

You know, Jay-Z's a guy that wears the Che Guevara t-shirt and he doesn't realize Che Guevara was a racist. Che Guevara was a murderer and a killer. So look, he's an entertainer, obviously. He's not in the middle of any public discourse here. But I think it's important to point out when people take stances like this that are absurd.

Beyond that, I would say that the fundamental problem is not Jay-Z and Beyonce. The fundamental problem is that these trips to Cuba are being abused. They are not people to people trips. They are tourist trips that are providing hard currency for a dictatorial, tyrannical regime to get hard currency that it uses to oppress its people. And that's why these trips need to be carefully scrutinized.

Whew! That's some hard-hitting journalism there. I'm curious why Gregory thought it appropriate to ask Rubio about this. Could it be because Rubio is of Cuban descent, although he was born here? Gosh, does that mean that if I got on the MTP panel, I could expect to have to answer for President Obama's meeting with Danish Prime Minister Helle Thorning-Schmidt, a (gasp!) socialist democracy with a high top marginal tax rate? Quelle horreur! I hope that neither makes the mistake of wearing a highly iconic tshirt that would indicate radical tendencies, because you know that an expert journalist like David Gregory wouldn't miss such critical information for the American zeitgeist.

Sigh. Reason #134,298,234 of how the media is continually failing us.

I realize this will not be a terrible shock to anyone who pays attention to Sunday talking heads shows, but lean in for the secret anyway. Yes, it's true. With only a couple of exceptions, the Sunday shows are full of old conservative white men who outnumber progressive/liberal voices by a substantial margin. If one were to split the "neutral" classification down the middle on the graph at the top, it would still leave conservatives as the dominant voice on Sunday television.

MediaMatters studied all of the guests on the Sunday shows from the beginning of January through April 5th. They concluded that Sunday shows need a major facelift in terms of ethnic and diversity and much more balance in terms of the ideological points of view represented.

In the first three months of 2013, the broadcast networks' Sunday morning talk shows once again skewed strongly to the right and featured a startling lack of diversity among guests. For better or worse, these shows -- ABC's This Week, CBS' Face the Nation, NBC's Meet the Press, and Fox Broadcasting Co.'s Fox News Sunday -- occupy an elevated space in the national political discussion. This is where influential people -- like senators, representatives, presidential administration officials, Fortune 500 chief executives, and leaders of prominent non-profit organizations, for example -- get to set the terms of debate and frame the issues of the week. The shows enjoy considerably high ratings as well -- approximately 10 million weekly viewers collectively, according to recent numbers from TV Newser.

With that in mind, who the broadcast Sunday shows invite on as guests has significant implications for how discussions on major issues are framed. And once again, Republicans and conservatives have an edge over Democrats and progressives on these programs.While our report found that elected and administration officials hosted on these shows were much more likely to be Republican than Democratic, between the lines is an even more salient point: The findings run in stark contrast to previous trends and statements from the networks themselves.

The numbers on how women and minorities are represented on these shows are striking, and that runs across all of the networks with one exception: Up with Chris Hayes and Melissa Harris-Perry both defied the norms on MSNBC. It would be good for other networks to pay heed and consider shaking up their bookers' contact list a bit.

The entire report is fascinating. You can read the full report here.

While still a positive, there's no question that last month's jobs report was disappointing. And financial soooper-gen-i-us (/sarcasm) Jim Cramer knows who to blame. None other than Our Lady of the Sherry, Peggy Noonan.

GREGORY: Let’s look at the numbers here; the unemployment right now is 7.6%, only 88,000 jobs created. You look at the context in terms of recent months, we have that chart as well, you’ve got much fewer than we’ve seen. What’s going on?

CRAMER: This is stunning. Stunning. I think a lot of it had to do with fear-mongering. Remember we had Peggy Noonan on? Not that I don’t…she’s the fear monger in chief. The president did make people feel everything is going to shut down in the country because of the sequester. A lot of the CEOS were scared; a lot of the small business people held back, bankers would tell you that. Only Ben Bernanke, Fed Chief, got this right. He seemed to understand that the country’s hiring is really coming back down.

I know it will shock and surprise you that Peggy Noonan's appearance on last week's Meet the Press included absolutely zero comments on jobs and the sequester, proving once again that Jim Cramer cannot think his way out of a paper bag.

Jim Cramer did also call out President Obama's fear-mongering as well, which frankly, proved to be accurate when he warned that the sequester could hurt jobs. Evidential proof is a concept largely foreign to Cramer. It's interesting that Cramer adopts the framing of right wing blogs to implicate Obama.

There is little doubt that the obstruction and gamesmanship in DC surrounding the sequester, the trumped-up deficit "crisis" and absolute demand from within the Beltway for austerity measures has made an impact on hiring and jobs. Who has confidence in these yahoos in DC anymore to work on behalf of Americans? Paul Krugman:

That deficit has declined from 5.6 percent of potential GDP in 2011 to 2.5 percent in 2013 — that’s 3 percent of GDP, which is a lot of austerity. Not all of that cut has even hit yet — the sequester isn’t in the macro numbers yet — but the rise in the payroll tax is very clearly driving the latest bad numbers, which show big declines in retail.

This is really stupid; as long as we’re at the zero lower bound, austerity is a huge mistake. Yet for what, the third time since 2009, all discussion in Washington has turned away from job creation to deficits (even though the debt problem has largely faded away) and the need for an early Fed exit from stimulus (even though unemployment remains high and inflation low).

Clearly, the answer is to cut Social Security!

Would it be too much to ask NBC News to stop propping up someone with little understanding like Jim Cramer and actually be informative for their viewers?

Is there any economic issue that Jim Cramer actually understands well?

Clearly, his stock tips prove that his understanding of investments leaves a lot to be desired. Jon Stewart simply eviscerated him on The Daily Show, leaving him a quivering mess. Now one would think that would cause Cramer to look much more seriously at his body of work, to show that he actually merits having his own financial show on a financial channel.

But that presumes far too much when it comes to Jim Cramer. Jim Cramer's idea for President Obama to 'fix' the economy? The Keystone XL Pipeline!

You want to put 60 thousand people to work in this country in four weeks because these jobs are there? Keystone Pipeline. But this is a fossil fuel vs greens debate. Why do I say the pipeline does work? Because these pipelines have been the creators, the largest creators of jobs in the last four years. You may hate fossil fuel. You may think it’s ridiculous to be able to have it so that oil and gas are in charge of hiring in this country. But we’ve got tons of oil and gas in the wrong places. You put people to work on pipelines, $60,000 is the minimum that you pay a pipeline worker. You put people to work all over this country. That’s what needs to happen.

Is anyone surprised to hear that just like his stock predictions, Cramer's assessment of the KXL pipeline is similarly pulled from his posterior?

First, TransCanada, the Canadian company seeking permission to build the KXL, estimates only 15,000 temporary jobs, which is only a statistical drop in the bucket when looking at the unemployment rolls, according to a Cornell University study on the impact. Moreover, the same Cornell study claims that long-term, the pipeline could prove to be a job-killer through higher fuel costs (remember, this pipeline is intended for Canadian tar sands oil to get to the Gulf of Mexico to sell to the highest bidder on the WORLD MARKET--none of this benefits directly US oil costs) and potential environmental disasters. One only needs to look at Arkansas to see how no matter how much Washington DC and TransCanada pooh-poohs the risk, the potential is devastating.

And guess what, Cramer? Top job creators in this country? Not oil companies.

But seriously, does anyone expect him to understand anything well any more?

NOM President Brian Brown is deeply offended.

What has him clutching at his pearls and reaching for the smelling salts? The notion that giving gay Americans the right to have a legally recognized union is somehow a civil rights issue, akin to the struggle African Americans in this country had to not be treated as a second-class citizen. How dare those gays ask for equal protection under the law? Why, that's just a slur against all those right-minded voters who came out to vote against them.

Well, I think it’s a slur on the Americans, the majority of Americans who stood up to vote for what President Obama a year ago agreed to, what Secretary Clinton agreed to two weeks ago, that it takes a man and a woman to make a marriage.

It’s a slur on them to somehow say that opponents of redefining marriage are in the same boat as those who oppose interracial marriage. That is just a slur. It’s an assertion. What we are fighting about is, is there a civil right to redefine marriage? We say no. There is no such civil right. The laws against interracial marriage were about keeping the races apart. Marriage is the union of a man and a woman. It’s about bringing the sexes together. That is a good and beautiful thing, and I think it’s a slur to say that it’s bigotry to stand up for this truth.

The truth hurts, doesn't it, Brian?

I'm a little tired of these fallacious logic circles justifying a policy that creates inequality. Marriage is the union of a man and a woman, and you can't just redefine that? Bullpucky. Marriage is a legally recognized union, yes. But the legal definition of marriage has changed over time. Besides striking down anti-micegenation laws in 1967, this country has also changed and established legal rights of women within marriage as well, giving them more equality.

Thank the FSM that Al Sharpton was there to set Brown in his place:

It was a battle on interracial marriage of people saying that traditional marriage in this country was between people of the same race and that others that were supreme had the right to decide what the tradition was. They had the right to tell others they were inferior, they couldn’t marry who was superior. What we are fighting here is the rights of people to be protected. It is not the same thing as racial but it’s the same thing when you have others decide the prerogative of people’s lives and you cannot fight for one’s rights without fighting for everyone’s rights. And I think it is absurd for people to say we’re going to stand for people to have the right to determine their lives irregardless, rather, of race, but they can’t do it regardless of sex. And it’s a cop-out to have a civil union. Just shack up. Don’t get married. People have rights but they don’t have rights. They have the right as long as it meets your moral standard.

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It cannot be repeated enough: He who frames the argument wins the debate.

And so it is telling how the networks wish to frame the debate for marriage equality. Who do they book?

• Meet the Press: Ralph Reed, head of the Faith and Freedom Coalition, and who narrowly missed conviction for his role in the Jack Abramoff scandal.
• Face the Nation: Tony Perkins, whose Family Research Council is listed as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center for their persistent and ongoing hate speech against the gay community.
• and Austin Nimocks of the Alliance Defending Freedom, who also showed up on CNN’s State of the Union.
• Fox News Sunday: Gary Bauer, president of American Values

With the exception of Hilary Rosen on Meet the Press, did the news shows bother to book a gay person whose life and rights are directly affected? Pffftt...silly liberal!

What really matters is how conservative Christians who are out of step with the majority of Americans (no matter how much they want to deny it and not have that challenged), doncha know?