Since we're already seen so much innuendo and the "how do we know whether this guy was a terrorist?" routine from the "get it quickly if not accurately" television news, I thought readers would be interested in a more human slant on the Ft. Hood tragedy:

Reporting from Al Birah, West Bank - When Rafik Ismail Hamad last traveled from the West Bank to visit relatives in America, he was struck by the pressures one of his nephews was facing.

The younger man, an American-born Muslim of Palestinian descent, spoke to his uncle of ethnic taunts by army colleagues. He was haunted by the wartime disabilities of soldiers he treated as an army psychiatrist, Hamad recalled, and was overwhelmed by a growing caseload he felt unable to manage.

On top of that, the uncle said, Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan had drifted apart from his family; he was a sensitive, solitary man bearing his burdens alone.

Late Thursday, Hamad was home in the West Bank town of Al Birah when he heard the news on television: A shooting spree at Fort Hood, Texas, had left 13 people dead, and Maj. Hasan, wounded and in a coma, was being accused of the killings.

"The whole family is in a state of denial," Hamad said today. "We don't believe he is capable of doing something like that. I was amazed and shocked, because it's not him. He's very quiet, gentle."

"Maybe it built up together -- the harassment, too many patients, the workload, the tragedies his patients brought to him," said the 65-year-old retired real estate broker. "Whatever it was, it must have been big pressure, something terrible he couldn't handle."

[...] Hamad described his nephew as a gentle soul who once, as a young adult, mourned for three months after rolling over during a nap and crushing his pet parakeet. During medical school, the uncle said, Hasan switched his major to psychiatry after fainting at the sight of blood while delivering a baby.

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Dear 24 Hour Cable News Channels:

I understand your dilemma, I really do. You have 44 minutes on the hour to fill with content. And it has to be compelling stuff, so that the viewer isn't tempted to channel surf to your rivals. In the situation like the Fort Hood shootings, where news is coming scattershot and conflicting, it's even more difficult.

See? I get it.

But having said that--and I say this with love and respect--PLEASE, SHUT. THE. F#@K. UP. Don't spend time guessing on motivations when there is so little information available. Don't surmise terrorist intent when you can't possibly know. And for the love of everything holy, don't go to criminal profiler Cliff "A Hammer Sees Everything As A Nail" Van Zandt (a crime of which Keith Olbermann is also guilty) to make up utter bovine excrement.

At the time that Van Zandt was waxing rhapsodic over possible terrorist inclinations, remember, the news was that there were two or three shooters, one of whom was dead (Hasan, the single shooter, was alive and being treated at the time). That Maj. Nadil Hasan was of Jordanian, Arab, or Palestinian birth (he was born in Virginia of Palestinian immigrant parents), that he was a recent Muslim convert (he had been a practicing Muslim his whole life), that he was suffering from PTSD, or secondary PTSD from his work with returning vets in Virginia, that he was sympathetic with suicide bombers, angry at bad evaluations, upset at being deployed to Iraq, frustrated by the Army's dismissal of the harassment he got at Ft. Hood about his faith and/or desperate to get out of his upcoming deployment.

Bottom line: we didn't know enough. It was irresponsible of you to try to make suppositions when the information (including the fact that he was alive) was so sketchy.

And to focus on the one known of his name and then presuming his faith (A lot of 2nd and 3rd generation immigrants don't necessarily practice the religions of their grandparents, yet still have Middle Eastern names, and I will reiterate, in those early hours, WE DIDN'T KNOW) to then suggest jihadist and/or terrorist sympathies was to give legitimacy to all those hate-mongers like Michelle Malkin and Fox & Friends anchors Doocy and not-Doocy to once again, call into question ALL Muslims.

Don't you get it? "Terrorism" is not defined as "any violence by any Muslim anywhere at any time for any reason." If it's true that Hasan had been the victim of harassment because of his religion and that contributed to his state of mind, then those who create and foster an environment that makes it acceptable to demonize and dehumanize Muslims were right there with him, pulling the trigger. To focus on Hasan's faith as you did in those early hours was the lazy approach and avoids the deeper reasons:

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Fox's Catherine Herridge has been reporting for a couple of weeks about the White House's change of policy regarding reporters' access to detainees at Guantanamo Bay, which while problematic from a journalist's perspective has all the earmarks of a classic bureaucratic conflict with reporters.

Herridge ran an update yesterday on Fox's Live Desk with Marsha MacCallum, including a clip of a Pentagon spokesman being short with Herridge, evidently, over her persistent questions on the issue. It looks like a tempest in a teapot, but Herridge is a serious reporter and her beef has some legitimacy, especially when it comes to transparency for this White House.

The interesting part of this report, though, came immediately after Herridge's report, when MacCallum hosted our old friend Judith Miller, the woman who helped bring you that six-years-and-running disaster on wheels known as the Iraq War. Miller decided that this Pentagon spokesman was in need of upbraiding:

MacCallum: What did you think of the Pentagon response there to Catherine's question?

Miller: You know, I thought, it's very combative. Excuse me, Mr. Pentagon Spokesman, for Fox doing our job. We're supposed to be there, we're supposed to be reporting on what the Pentagon is doing to and for these prisoners, or detainees, as they prefer to be called. And if he doesn't like our going back and back to look in on those people, well, maybe we should just believe everything they put out.

I found it completely combative, unnecessarily so.

So now we're being lectured on the relationship of reporters to official sources by the woman who was the faithful stenographer of Bush's Pentagon -- particularly Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld -- in selling the public on the notion that there were indeed weapons of mass destruction in the hands of Saddam Hussein. The woman who -- after the utter mendacity of her sources was revealed -- told an interviewer:

"[M]y job isn't to assess the government's information and be an independent intelligence analyst myself. My job is to tell readers of The New York Times what the government thought about Iraq's arsenal."

I don't have a problem with Fox reporters pushing for transparency from the Pentagon. I do have a problem with Judith Miller telling us how we should do that.

It sure is heart-warming, after all, to see Miller get concerned about looking into the accuracy of Pentagon claims -- though it does seem rather convenient that this is a concern of hers only now, now that we have a Democratic administration.

If she had demonstrated even an ounce of this concern during the Bush years, the nation might not have been talked into an outrageous, costly, and wholly unnecessary war.

James Moore wrote the ultimate survey of Miller's journalistic miscreancy.

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David Axelrod backed up Anita Dunn on ABC's THIS WEEK by saying that he believes FOX Noise is not a news station. It's taken a while for them to say this publicly and at least Axelrod didn't back off her comments.

“I’m not concerned, Mr. Murdoch has a talent for making money,” Axelrod said.

“The only argument that Anita was making is that they are not really a news organization, if you watch even its not even their commentators, but a lot of their news program. It’s really not news, it’s pushing a point of view and the bigger thing is that other news organizations like yours, ought not to treat them that way. And we’re not going to treat them that way, we’re going to appear on their shows and participate, but understanding that they represent a point of view.”

It's much more than a point of view. FOX News should be considered a right wing PAC. They actively set up rallies and protests. When will they start raising money for republican candidates? Will FOX advertise a big network special and take a full day out of their schedule and raise money for the 2010 mid terms? Hannity already does republican fundraisers. I might have given them an idea...

CNN's media critic, Howard Kurtz, came up with THE answer to all our complaints:

KURTZ: And if liberals or conservatives like David Brooks don't like what the high-decibel pundits say or think they're peddling misinformation, they should go after them in the media marketplace, not with boycotts or name-calling or screaming or shouting, but on the battlefield of ideas.

Wow, that's so simple. Why didn't anybody think of that? Wait a second. Just hold on there. Isn't organizing a boycott an actual idea which then takes a ton of work to be successful? Isn't leading a boycott against a Glenn Beck or a Lou Dobbs actually going into the media marketplace and hitting them right in the pocketbook?

Can Howard suggest what battlefield of ideas I should go on? Does he consider Reliable Sources one of those battlefields? Can Howard help fund a radio program for me that will air either before or right after Sean Hannity, on all the same nationwide affiliates so I can at least partially compete with Hannidate's audience and have a chance to express my ideas at his level?

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Granted, it's hard to hear because the voices speak over each other, but the graphics are pretty clear: this ad for Anderson Cooper 360 was meant to claim that Anderson Cooper challenges the status quo and goes beyond partisan spin. Whether the ad is true or not is arguable, but the fact that it mentions both the right and the left is not.

Which makes this op-ed in Time Magazine by Michael Scherer that much more puzzling:

White House Communications Director Anita Dunn appeared Sunday morning on Howard Kurtz's CNN show Reliable Sources to discuss her comments in my TIME magazine story this week. She continued her criticism of Fox News[..].

The ironic part came later, during the commercial break. All morning, CNN has been intermittently running a promo for Anderson Cooper 360, a show that has long billed itself as a classic straight news program with an investigative front man who digs "beyond the headlines" with "many points of view, so you can make up your own mind." The new promo, by contrast, consists of a woman's voice, pitching Cooper's show as, essentially, a liberal alternative to Fox News: "I'm a lifelong Democrat," she says, "and that's why I watch Anderson Cooper." Hmmm. The voice goes on to say that Cooper is the person she can turn to hold "right wing" conservatives accountable. Cooper is not exactly aiming for the political middle ground here.

But then who is? MSNBC's Keith Olbermann, Rachel Maddow and Ed Schultz are committed liberals, increasingly focused on the dual project of holding President Obama to a liberal line and attacking his detractors. Fox News, on the other hand, is, well, Fox News. Dunn, on Kurtz's show, made a point of criticizing Fox News Sunday's Chris Wallace for "fact checking" an Obama administration official but not its other Republican guests. So it goes.

Interesting. So Scherer thinks that Cooper is playing to the left like those other "committed" liberals on MSNBC. And lemming-like, here comes Dan Abrams, tweeting from his new gig at Mediaite:

UPDATE to WH-Fox 'Gloves off' post: CNN promo calls Anderson Cooper left's answer to FNC.

The only problem? There's no there there. Cooper wasn't playing to the left, as Scherer was forced to acknowledge in an update:

CORRECTION: Ahh, the pitfalls of technology. In the post below, I wrote about an ad that kept running Sunday morning on CNN, which I watched in the background as I scribbled away at my office. Several times, I heard an ad for Anderson Cooper's show that included a woman's voice talking about being a "lifelong Democrat" and watching Cooper because he called out the "right wing." But that's not the whole story. I was told Monday by CNN that I only heard half the ad, which was dubbed in stereo. (Apparently my television is mono.) The other half of the ad had a male voice saying he was a Republican who turns to Anderson Cooper because he holds accountable "left wing politicians." The two voices are recorded to be talking over each other, reaffirming CNN's place in the center of the cable news spectrum. This makes my subsequent analysis largely wrong. Cooper was not signaling a shift to cater to a left-wing audience. He was signaling that he wanted both a left-wing and a right-wing audiences at the same time. The CNN dream of post-partisanship, in other words, is still alive.

Actually, Michael, your analysis is not largely wrong, but completely wrong. As polarized as this country is now (a fact for which I hold the media mostly accountable), it is not the desire of the entire country to get their news filtered through ideological lenses, confirming their pre-conceived notions. Fox unapologetically fills a niche for a select few, who cannot stand to have their ideas challenged. But MSNBC, despite shows with Maddow (the only self-professed liberal listed), Olbermann and Schultz does not cater to the left. If they did, would they fill 15 hours every week (the same as Maddow, Olbermann and Schultz put together) with Scarborough?

And for what its worth, I actually watch Maddow not for a liberal slant, but because she strives to actually present the news, not propaganda. But that seems to be a dying breed in your industry, doesn't it?

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Do ya think? Not only did Anita Dunn take a really strong stand for President Obama over the Roger Ailes run FOX Noise Propaganda Network, she also called out the conservative-teabagger movement in its entirety.

Dunn: A week ago many conservative commentators had been rejoicing in the fact, celebrating in the fact that the United States didn't get the Olympics, one week later they seem to be somewhat bitter at the fact that an American President was awarded the Nobel peace prize. So I think people will draw their own conclusions abut the reflexive negativity on the part of some commentators regardless of what happens...

Dunn held back no punches and stated fact. That's nice to see.
Howard Kurtz was pretty comical with his questions, but he was trying to provide some pushback, I guess.

KURTZ: You were quoted this week in Time Magazine as saying of Fox News, it's opinion journalism masquerading as news. What do you mean, "masquerading"?

See what I mean? But he did have to ask that.

DUNN: Well, you know, Howie, I think if we went back a year ago to the fall of 2008, to the campaign, that, you know, it was a time that this country was in two wars, that we'd had a financial collapse probably more significant than any financial collapse since the Great Depression. If you were a Fox News viewer in the fall election, what you would have seen would have been that the biggest story, the biggest threats facing America were a guy named Bill Ayers and something called Acorn, when the reality of it is that Fox News often operates almost as either the research arm or the communications arm of the Republican Party.

Yep, that sums up FOX Noise. Then she delivered the knockout punch.

Think Progress writes:

Last month, President Obama appeared on five Sunday morning talk shows, including Univision’s Al Punto. He rejected Fox, however. Dunn revealed this morning that Obama did not appear on Fox because of its reflexive, partisan opposition to Obama. Obama will go on Fox in the future, Dunn said, but when he goes on, “he’s going on to debate the opposition.”

And then after Kurtz asked her if the president would go on FOX ever again, she said this too:

Dunn: That when he goes on FOX, he understands he's not going on, it really isn't a news network at this point, he's going to debate the opposition and that's fine.

The opposition, I loved that.

Howard asked someone from FOX to appear on Reliable Sources, but they refused and instead issued their usual statement. They'd rather have BillO speak to his audience than have anybody debate the facts -- especially, of course, on another network. FOX gives their usual argument that while they do have news, people really rely on their opinion programs. That's stunning really. MSNBC has their lefty hosts too, but during the day, you'll hear all the news and not MSNBC's opinion version of the news.

Kurtz did his best to find a few reporters that he thought weren't corrupted by Ailes so he mentioned Major Garrett. Do you think he's fair...Please say he's fair...Oh please oh please oh please. And Anita then calmly explained why they didn't go on Chris Wallace. Good for her.

And I told Major quite honestly that we had told Chris Wallace that having fact-checked an administration guest on his show -- something I've never seen a Sunday show do. And, Howie, you can show me examples of where Sunday shows have fact-checked previous weeks' guests, and I'd be happy to see those. We asked Chris, for an example, where he had done that to anybody besides somebody from the administration in the year 2009. And we're still waiting to hear from him.

She didn't stop there.

Dunn: Let's be realistic here, Howie. They are widely viewed as, you know, a part of the Republican Party. Take their talking points, put them on the air. Take their opposition research, put them on the air, and that’s fine. But let’s not pretend they’re a news network they way CNN is.

Kurtz did his best to try and get her to differentiate between the Beck's show and their little news nuggets, and she wouldn't back down. Where's the John Ensign coverage? she asks Howie. Hmmm, you won't see it much -- if at all -- on FOX. And that's only one example out of thousands.

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Chris Matthews is getting all hot and bothered because liberals in Congress and from the netroots are pushing hard to get a public option included in health care reform. That's called legislating, Chris. It's a long, hard process sometimes.

The Village really gets upset when dirty f*&king hippies get uppity and speak out on issues that matter. Villagers don't care that America voted in Obama with a mandate on health-care reform. Villagers don't care that America rejected conservatism, which practically caused the world to almost spin off its axis. It's getting to the point that Tweety is pulling stuff out of his pie hole because he hates us so much. And apparently Tweety forgot that "the left" was elected in droves in 2008. "The Left" is not a fringe teabagger, tax evading group, it dominates the House of Representatives. Here he is on Andrea Mitchell talking about Obama and Afghanistan and see where Tweety goes with it all.

Matthews: Everybody is doing their politics here. She represents San Francisco and she represents, I know the Speaker's role. you have to respond to the nosiest elements in your caucus, and the most passionate and apparently, I assume just knowing the Democratic House, the voices she's hearing from every single day are the left who want out. Now this president never promised to get out of Afghanistan. And he's not gonna...

He never promised to pull out, that was the good war, the necessary war. Oh, by the way he never ran on the public option. Somebody's got to tell these people on the left and the netroots and some of our colleagues, yeah, he might like the idea of a public option, he may prefer it. He didn't run on it. He didn't get elected for it. So this idea that he somehow betrayed a left wing mandate is nonsense.

Where to begin. Why is it OK to attack Nancy Pelosi for representing San Francisco? What did they ever do to Bill O'Reilly and Tweety? Aren't they part of the US of A too? That she is from the Bay Area somehow minimizes the fact that she's the Speaker. On Afghanistan, he's right. President Obama did not promises to withdraw from there. That's why we on the left have to put pressure on the administration or we could be there for decades.

But President Obama did campaign on the public option., It was part of his health-care plan that he unveiled in the primaries. I asked Ezra Klein to verify it for me and he did.

Berkeley's Jacob Hacker, who was the first to persuasively articulate it; to the Economic Policy Institute, which fleshed out the specifics; and to the Campaign for America's Future, which took the lead in selling it to advocacy groups and the presidential campaigns. John Edwards picked it up and made it central to his proposal, and the other candidates followed suit to protect their left flanks.

And I found that Paul Krugman has it also.

The idea of letting individuals buy insurance from a government-run plan was introduced in 2007 by Jacob Hacker of Yale, was picked up by John Edwards during the Democratic primary, and became part of the original Obama health care plan.

Tweety needs to apologize to President Obama, the netroots and the liberals in Congress who he just smeared in this clip. We are fighting for real health-care reform in America and not some mythical-bipartisan Beltway compromise bill that is completely useless to all the real working families that the Villagers like to pretend they speak for all the time.

(h/t Heather at Video Cafe)

Following in the footsteps of the Washingtn Post, The NY Times mad fools of themselves when they suddenly decided that Glenn Beck and his right wing cohorts like Andrew Breitbart are credible news sources.
Eric Boehlert explains in his excellent article: The NY Times' pointless pursuit of right-wing "buzz" stories

Jill Abramson, the managing editor for news, agreed with me that the paper was "slow off the mark," and blamed "insufficient tuned-in-ness to the issues that are dominating Fox News and talk radio." She and Bill Keller, the executive editor, said last week that they would now assign an editor to monitor opinion media and brief them frequently on bubbling controversies.

-- New York Times public editor Clark Hoyt, September 26 column [emphasis added]

Talk about great timing!

Just after The New York Times announced it would appoint somebody to monitor the partisan opinion media more closely, and right after editors were chastened for reacting too slowly to buzzworthy news scoops launched by the conservative media, the right-wing press went into overdrive last week.

Like a proud peacock showing off its feathers, the right-wing media was in full bloom, showing the Times all the tricks that have made the movement's trade so renowned. There was outright lying, lying by omission, attempted guilt-by-association, U.S.-bashing, hateful smear campaigns (lots of those), fearmongering, incompetence, and just batshit crazy stuff. (Did I mention the heavy dose of crazy?) All the key notes were hit -- and in just one epic week. I hope the Times is enjoying its new-found, front-row seat to the right-wing media's slow-motion crack-up...read on

Please read the entire article for a list of lies the right has been pimping. Does the media really have to ask why Americans don't trust the traditional media as much anymore? When the Washington Post and the NY Times turn to FOX Noise for what the now seem to believe is legitimate news sourcing one has to wonder what ever happened to the meaning of the word "journalism." Acorn, dudes!

I had a very interesting tête-à-tête last week that I thought I'd share. As you may have guessed, I'm on the email distro lists for all the major Sunday shows and cable news networks, and I get email notifications for who the scheduled guests will be as well as transcripts, p.r. pieces and the like. Last week, when ABC sent me an email that John McCain was going to be their guest again, I sent back a snarky reply asking if they ever had John Kerry on after he lost the election to George Bush as often as they've had McCain, and why, when there are so many actual issues about which the public needs to be informed, they gave so much air time to GOP obstructionism. Normally, I shoot off those emails just as a private protest, but this time, I got a reply back from the executive producer:

Thanks very much for your email. I’d have to take issue with your suggestion that “so much time is given to GOP obstructionism.” Week to week we maintain a balance between Democratic and Republican guests. It’s not always a perfect balance – airtime often tips toward the party in power because the mission of our program is to ask questions of those who are in decision making and policy making roles. Our guest selection is also determined by the news stories we cover. As the ranking member of the Senate Armed Services Committee Senator McCain is clearly the appropriate Republican guest to follow the Secretary of Defense in a discussion of US Afghanistan policy.

Well, if you've ever seen me in the comments, you have to know I'm not going to let a steaming pile of Village B.S. like that go unchallenged:

Thanks for your response.

The notion of a "balance" between Democratic and Republican guests is a false equivalence too often used in lieu of actual journalism. If you put brought on a creationist to discuss the fossil record with Stephen Jay Gould, are you serving your viewership well for balance?

With all due respect to Sen. McCain---and knowing full well how much he cultivates a good relationship with the media (I'm sure Mr. Stephanopoulos enjoyed his weekend in Arizona with the McCains when health care was the prime topic in the country)--his purpose as a follow up to Gates is to simply toe the GOP line of disagreeing reflexively with any agenda the President sets. My site, Crooksandliars.com, has been documenting this for the last five years.

How about instead of reducing every issue to a simplistic binary equation of Republican vs. Democrat, you seek to actually inform your viewership with people who have real background in Afghanistan or could bring a different (and not partisan) perspective? For example, Paul Rieckhoff of IAVA could discuss it from a soldier's POV. As a blogger involved in many journalism listservs, I personally could put you in touch with people far more versed in the history and the actualities in Afghanistan which would provide far more cogent and *informative* information than you will see from the man who tried to tell Americans that Baghdad was as safe as Main Street with his contingent of soldiers and helicopters guarding him.

Further, your insistence that this is the best person to follow up on Gates is disingenuous at best, when looked at the history of who THIS WEEK has booked. I've been a media analyst and political advocate for several years and my memory is not that short. John Kerry was on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee during Bush's presidency. How often did you ask Sen. Kerry on to discuss foreign policy as a response to Bush? Rarely.

And why is McCain on as *a response*? Why isn't he on first and then give Gates--as the person who can actually make policy, as opposed to the minority party--the opportunity to address the issues afterwards? Because air time tips to the party in power? Last time I checked, Americans have pretty decisively said that they weren't happy with the GOP being the party in power, not that we can tell from your bookings. It's bad enough that you give air time to George Will every week to spread disinformation (and if you'd like, I'm only too happy to provide you with at least 10 examples in the last year of things George Will has been factually wrong about), but to actually tell me that air time tips to the party in power when you have notoriously been favoring Republicans makes me question how forthright you're being about your booking choices. Let's see you book a Democratic blogger even once to "balance" your egregious booking of the completely factually-challenged Michelle Malkin. Or maybe it's just that *informing* your viewership is secondary.

Funnily enough, the producer didn't really have much response to that, simply thanking me for the input. Honestly, I wasn't really happy with the dismissive little pat on the head from the Villager who thought that little blogger me couldn't understand why McCain was a reasonable booking. So I thought I'd give him a suggestion as to real balance:

Here is a segment I would LOVE to see you do with Sen. McCain: why don't you invite my colleague, David Neiwert, author of The Eliminationists, on to discuss how the violent rhetoric that used to be relegated to the fringes of the Republican Party which has been mainstreamed since Obama's election and let Sen McCain respond to that? After all, he is the one who brought Sarah Palin to the national stage (and as I recall, actually said on your program that Palin was his "soul mate" after having only had one phone conversation and a short meeting with her before asking her on the ticket) and there is no other politician who has tapped so proficiently into that zeitgeist. I think it would be beneficial for Americans to hear someone of Sen. McCain's gravitas and stature disavow the kind of violent and racist rhetoric we've all seen. I'm more than happy to provide you with contact information for Mr. Neiwert if you are so inclined.

But if you're not interested in putting Sen. McCain on the spot, perhaps next time you do a show on the problems we're facing in Afghanistan, the "balance" you seek would be better achieved by putting on a politician who favors withdrawal, like Rep. Alan Grayson, instead of two hawks who will both say that the most important thing is "winning" in Afghanistan without actually explaining what "winning" means or how we can achieve it militarily. Where's the balance in that for your viewers?

Are you surprised that he had no response to that? Nah, me neither. I don't know if it impacted him at all, but I'm hoping that from now on he has a small voice inside his head reminding him that some of his viewers actually think critically and realize how badly he's--and all the rest of the bobblehead media--doing his job.

UPDATE: Glenn Greenwald looks at the sources that our liberal media uses to discuss the issues of the day.

The Politico's Roger Simon wasted no time on Hardball in smearing Rep. Alan Grayson after the Florida rep. went on the offensive against republicans over health care

"like a guy on crack who's always searching for a bigger high"

It's one of the first times that Alan has ever gotten any national exposure before so how does he even make a case that Grayson is a media hound? Matthews at least thought what he said was true about the republicans just say no stance on health care reform, but James Warren also attacked him as has most of the Villagers. They sure don't like uppity liberals, but if you're a nut job conservative you can say anything at all on TV, in Congress or on radio.

And the money keeps coming in for Rep. Grayson.

I think the blogosphere appreciates a liberal with guts.

That the elderly of all groups of Americans most strongly oppose President Obama on health care reform shows the success of Republican fear-mongering over supposed Medicare cuts and "death panels". And on Monday, the Washington Post did the GOP a great service in a piece titled, "On Medicare Spending, a Role Reversal." While exploring the impact of projected savings in the program that serves 46 million Americans, the Post left unchallenged the Republicans' laughable claim to be the new protectors of Medicare after decades of war against it.

Readers who stopped after the first two paragraphs could be forgiven for wrongly assuming that the party that brought you Medicare would now kill it but for the stalwart defense of the Republican Party. After the subhead declaring, "Republicans, Not Interest Groups, Fight Plans to Cut $400 Billion Over 10 Years," the Post's Lori Montgomery concluded:

After years of trying to cut Medicare spending, Republican lawmakers have emerged as champions of the program, accusing Democrats of trying to steal from the elderly to cover the cost of health reform.

It's a lonely battle. The hospital associations, AARP and other powerful interest groups that usually howl over Medicare cuts have also switched sides.

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The Sunday talk shows certainly love John McCain. It's a joke that ABC has John McCain on as its guest almost weekly. He was just on August 23rd. Didn't he lose the general election? Being a guest once in a while is no biggie, but ABC's slavish behavior towards Sen. McCain is disturbing. They should just consummate their love affair and have him on every Sunday if they think his opinion outweighs all others.

I sure don't remember the media putting on John Kerry every week after he lost to Bush in 2005.

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So Tweety, all worked up about next year's mid-term elections, asks his panelon this week's "Chris Matthews Show" how many House seats will the Dems lose in the upcoming election and quotes some of Charlie Cook's predictions.

He blames high unemployment and healthcare reform for impending losses, and then notes how many seats Reagan lost and how many Clinton lost. What it's going to be like "after next November when the Democrats have to pay the piper for high unemployment, for questions - in fact, anger that you've all expressed in the last section about the healthcare bill and all those kinds of problems?"

TIME editor Richard Stengel praises Rahm Emanuel, saying how brilliant it was that Rahm put Democratic conservatives in conservative districts. (Buttering up the chief of staff for access, Richard?)

Washington Post columnist Kathleen Parker says House Democrats are concerned because they "walked the plank for Nancy Pelosi on cap-and-trade and now they've got to go with health care, the people are raising Cain about it at home, and so they're in a terrible bind and yes, they want to be team players so I think you're going to see a lot of fallout come this term."

Matthews says any House Democrat who puts their "yea" on health care reform "has got to be thinking 'I'm a target'".

CNBC's Trish Regan says that's because health care reform is an unpopular program (well, Trish, I'm guessing it is among your constituency, but there's a lot more of us than there are of them) and claims that voters are "more worried about spending and the deficit" and says there's a feeling their politicians are not doing what they want.

She says President Obama needs to make this health care program more popular, and Matthews agrees.

Andrew Ross Sorkin, the Wall Street beat reporter for the New York Times, says "People are voting with their wallets next time. That's what this is. This is all about 'am I richer, am I poorer' and you know, everybody remembers how rich they were - ah, I don't know how rich they were, but only a year or two ago and unless Obama can get Democrats and get us back to that place next summer, I think it's going to be a tough road."

Matthews says, So the Republicans are promising to get it back for you?

Sorkin: Absolutely.

Then Parker add this final dollop of smug Villager "wisdom."

"There was never a constituency for health care. Let's remember that. When you have eighty five percent of Americans who are pretty satisfied with their policies, their insurance coverage and their health care, where was this constituency that we have to overhaul the system? It never was there."

Whoa, Nellie! Are you kidding me? Hey Kath, did you happen to notice that health care was the main issue in last year's election? Have you been reading all those health-care sob stories on the front page of your own paper? Can't wait until your ass-kissing paper closes and you're out on the street, hustling freelance work to cover your bills. Imagine, life where you can't afford a pedicure!

Matthews agrees. "Right. And I see trouble for the Democrats."

I'm going to make a different prediction. If the Democrats pass healthcare reform with a real public option, Democratic popularity will grow and we'll do well in the next election, with minimal losses.

We constantly are seeing polling down from the major news services that follow President Obama's approval ratings and it is an important stat to keep track of, but can you tell me what the media is not covering? How low the Republicans have been polling ever since they became the party of "Waterloo."

The Democratic leaders do have terrible polling numbers, Nancy Pelosi has a 34% approval rating in DKOS's new poll and Harry Reid has a 31% approval rating, but let's take a look at the Republican leadership, shall we?

Mitch McConnell is polling at an 18% approval rating. That's eighteen percent. John Boehner is polling at 12% approval rating. Just think about that one. And it doesn't take much to make him cry. Mitch and Boehner are viewed less favorably than Dick Cheney was during the dark days of the Bush administration. Why don't we hear about that on teevee?

The overall approval ratings of Congressional Republicans is 17% as a party! The Dems are taking their lumps over this chaotic time, but nowhere near the kinds of wounds the GOP are suffering. The media make it appear that all these teabaggers are rallying around the RNC and the country just loves the Beltway elites' favorite party, but that's not true at all.

Let's see if we hear any of this on the Sunday talk Shows. But I won't hold my breath.