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After having the majority of the unequally balanced panel on the McLaughlin Group trash the stimulus package as not having worked to create jobs and being politicized, Mort Zuckerman throws this gem out there.

Zuckerman: I disagree with the way you're describing this stimulus program. It was maybe perhaps well intentioned, completely badly conceived. It did not focus on unemployment. It does not focus on those kinds of activities that in fact could create jobs.

I'm just going to remind you of one example. When you have Harry Reid, the Majority Leader in the Senate getting a $350 million grant for a UniRail to go from Las Vegas to Disneyland, you know where a lot of this money went. It's almost a farce. And we, unemployment is much worse than those numbers and it's going to be worse and be higher next year at this time than it is this year.

McLaughlin: What do you...

Zuckerman: And the Republicans are going to--34% of all people have had either a family member or close friend unemployed.

McLaughlin: If you were designing this stimulus, how would you have changed what the stimulus is?

Zuckerman: I would have put a heck of a lot more money into infrastructure development and focused on that. A lot of the money that went in for a lot of pet programs for the Democratic Party that had virtually no affect in terms of stimulating the economy and having a multiplier.

Yes, Mort Zuckerman's hatred for Harry Reid seems to have melted his brain to the point that he is complaining about an infrastructure project in one breath and saying we need more in the next. And he was McLaughlin's guest on the "left" side of the room. Zuckerman was crying about this project on one of the MSNBC programs last week as well, but I don't remember him saying we needed more infrastructure projects right after he did it.

h/t Digby

Update: h/t FilthyHarry
I appears Mort Zuckerman did do the same thing the other day on MSNBC's Morning Joe.

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John McLaughlin uses Pat Buchanan's fear mongering framing for his question on end of life counseling to begin this segment. Buchanan claims that to save money, a government official is going to visit your house if you're ill, and suggest suicide to you. Of course nitwit Monica Crowley is happy to chime right like the good little right winger that she is and agrees with him.

Eleanor Clift attempts to inject some sanity back into the conversation, but isn't helped by her supposed "liberal" (cough) on the panel, Mort Zuckerman who starts railing about whether people ought to have a right to kill themselves if they're in chronic pain, thus throwing a little red meat back to Buchanan and Crowley. Pat literally goes into a hissy fit about the government wanting to kill people to save money before the segment is over.

Does anyone else think that Pat Buchanan has just had a complete mental meltdown since President Obama got elected? Watching this guy is like looking at a car wreck in slow motion. I keep waiting for his head to literally explode on the air one of these days.

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Eleanor Clift and Clarence Page (two actual liberals for once) beat back host John McLaughlin and pundits Rich Lowry and Monica Crowley's patented GOP talking points on health care reform on The McLaughlin Group. Clift gets in the best line of the day when Lowry tried to claim that a private option would put the insurance companies out of business. Lo and behold, Lowry and Co. seemed to be reading right off of this list of health care reform myths.

Lowry: That's the entire point. Unless this is stripped down radically, that's what will happen, and that's what the liberals want.

McLaughlin: Eleanor.

Clift: There will be 40 to 50 million new customers and a lot of those customers are customers that the private market doesn't even want, and there's plenty to go around that you can coexist with add-ons, and the government is providing, is going to provide a subsidy, a very basic plan and people will buy extras. The insurance industry will flourish but, I'm with Clarence. Since when is this about protecting the insurance industry? This is about protecting people's health care. They're making a ton of money. [..]

Lowry: Do you want your insurer to go out of business, Clarence? Do you want your insurer to go out of business? You want to get dropped from your employer coverage?

Page: My coverage has been going down, Rich, and so have a lot of other people's and I'm not in bad shape....

It was pretty amusing watching Clift and Page basically get Lowry and Crowley to admit the truth: The GOP only wants to protect the private insurance companies. Even if it led to something close to single payer as Clift notes, it would not mean the insurance companies are out of business. To the horror of conservatives and the conserva-Dems who are in the pockets of the insurance industries, it only would mean they'd be making a hell of a lot less money for basic health care and offering supplemental plans to those who could afford it instead.

It was also nice to see someone take one of these talking heads to task when they bring up the Lewin Group and let them know that "non-partisan" doesn't mean "unbiased". I noticed Lowry didn't have much of a response when Clift called him on that nonsense other than to try to keep talking and pretend he didn't hear her.

I'd personally prefer that Congress focused their energies on Single Payer (as we all know, including The Lewin Group, that makes the most sense)--as would everyone who contributes at this site--but that unfortunately is not the political climate we're living in right now. Until we clean up the legalized bribery going on with corporations and lobbyists buying and selling our members of Congress, this is going to be a huge uphill battle. Until that reform happens, if ever, we need to hold their feet to the fire to do the right thing.

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Pat Buchanan continues hurling insults from his racist screed at Human Events at Sonia Sotomayor, this time on PBS's The McLaughlin Group. At least Eleanor Clift was there to attempt to keep him in check. Here are Buchanan's remarks from the segment.

Oh no she did not. She has said this six or seven times. I take the woman at her word. I believe her. I don't know why she didn't come out and defend all the experience she had, she thinks the richness of her experience had, she thought she would be an even better judge. Instead John what she did is she sat there and gave this rehearsed, robotic performance, you know, not being engaged.

It was like a junior in college who just wants to get through the oral exams on a pass fail basis. He doesn't want to get high honors, and that's what she did and quite frankly I think she diminished herself as a figure because she's a very passionate and intense person. She does believe in race based and ethic based advancement and promotion for purposes of diversity. And she didn't come off that way. I think she came off basically as look, this is Mr. Obama's choice as a Justice, and if that's what you want fine. And here's a guy, Obama, who voted against John Roberts to the Supreme Court and appointed this lady who really does not look like she fits up to Roberts' standards.

[.....]

Well, here's the problem in my view with it, and where I think the Republicans did a good job in some cases. Her whole life, I mean she goes to Princeton, first thing she does she sends a letter to HEW that they don't have enough Hispanic professors. They bring her in affirmative action to Yale. You know, they attack the Yale administration. She denounces the Bakke decision with a group of students. Her whole life....according to the New York Times!!! (crosstalk) But is she going to rule that way on the Supreme Court?

[.....]

But Mort, she comes off as Sam Alito's little sister. A strict constructionist, and I'm you know, oh yeah this law and order type. That is not why she was picked. She's a passionate Latino woman who is a liberal and I think frankly I would like to see more of her be herself.

[.....]

She'll be good for Republicans on the court in this sense because I think she is really the other, the other Sotomayor, and not the one we saw there. I think she's going to be passionate, intense. I think she's going to come down hard on affirmative action. That's what we want. If you've got a liberal judge on the court let them be like Wild Bill Douglas.

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From The McLaughlin Group March 27, 2009.

McLaughlin: Question. Are these bailouts sufficient to restore the economy I ask you Monica?

Crowley: No because you put out a consecutive list of companies, institutions, sectors that have required some money over the last couple of months. In just about every single one of those cases there was a redundancy there. AIG coming back. The auto industry coming back. What we have poured into all of these sectors has not nearly been enough and it will not be enough. This is like spitting into the ocean. It's not going to be enough to restore the economy and if we keep going down the path of having the government jackboot on the private sector, the private sector which will be the engine of this growth (crosstalk).

Clift: The government jackboot on the private sector...uh the private sector had its jackboots on American taxpayers for a good long while and we had companies like AIG basically operating like a hedge fund selling a little insurance on the side. And it is totally appropriate that we now try to get a handle on the new financial world that is...it's a titanic struggle between the Treasury Department and the financial community and who's going to run the economy.

It evolves into one of the typical shout fests The McLaughlin Group is known for. All but John McLaughlin and Monica Crowley on the panel agree that there needs to be some government regulation over these investment companies and hedge funds.

McLaughlin and Crowley both think the free market should rule at all times. Circumstances be damned and let the buyer beware. Crowley also said that the FDIC didn't do its job. Later in the show Eleanor Clift pointed out the flaw in that argument, as in they didn't have jurisdiction or they may have come in already and seized some of these companies. Somehow I doubt that will stop Crowley from repeating the line the next time she's on Fox News.

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During a panel discussion on The McLaughlin Group Monica Crowley claims that George Bush and the UAW were conspiring together to make sure that the unions didn't have to make concessions and that the only reason that most Americans oppose the bailout is because it's not a bailout of the auto industry, but the union instead. George Bush is in bed with the unions. I've heard it all now.

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From The McLaughlin Group, John McLaughlin cites a study by the Pew Research Center on the percentage of negative stories about McCain and asks his panel of the panel of Eleanor Clift, Derek McGinty, Monica Crowley and Pat Buchanan if it means the press is in the bag for Obama and of course he, Monica Crowley and Pat Buchanan all agree that they are. Monica Crowley thinks some poll of the White House press corps after the Presidential elections which shows most of them voted for Democrats proves the bias. Pat Buchanan thinks there is also some "white guilt" going on and that the New York Times covering Cindy McCain's past problems with prescription pills and not covering Obama's cocaine "problem" is the proof. Of course it couldn't possibly have anything to do with McCain doing anything to deserve the negative coverage. Oh no...

I didn't believe Driftglass when he posted that Monica Crowley called Sarah Palin "Ann Margaret in 'Kitten with a Whip!'"  But the official transcript proves that...well...she did:

MS. CROWLEY: She is Ann-Margret in "Kitten with a Whip." (Laughter.) She is fabulous, okay? And it raises the question, where has she been? The Republican Party has been craving somebody new and fresh and dynamic.

We've got video of the rest of Crowley's cravings right here:

MS. CROWLEY: ...[McCain] pulled off the nearly impossible here with the selection of Sarah Palin and in his speech, which is that he has rebranded the Republican Party as populist, as reformist, anti-establishment, anti- corruption, and -- dare I say it -- hip and cool...

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Very few television personalities make me forget my pervasive sadness that I don't have Katherine Harris and Rick Santorum to kick around anymore.  Thank you Monica Crowley, for being you.  

Download | play    Download | play   (h/t Heather)

Barack Obama may be our first post-racial politics candidate, but it's clear the media has not caught up to that paradigm, especially any show that includes John McLaughlin and Pat Buchanan amongst its panel. Kudos to Media Matters, who caught it first: 

On the edition of the syndicated program The McLaughlin Group that aired the weekend of July 11-13, while discussing recent comments made by the Rev. Jesse Jackson about Sen. Barack Obama, host John McLaughlin said: "Question: Does it frost Jackson, Jesse Jackson, that someone like Obama, who fits the stereotype blacks once labeled as an Oreo -- a black on the outside, a white on the inside -- that an Oreo should be the beneficiary of the long civil rights struggle which Jesse Jackson spent his lifetime fighting for?" 

If I had been a guest on that panel, I think my jaw would have dropped right then.  Oreo?  Really, that's the best place to take this conversation?  To his credit, Peter Beinart does tell McLaughlin that it's an unfair depiction, but McLaughlin perseveres, thinking he's caught Beinart in a rhetorical trap when Beinart dismisses the notion that Obama should give as much weight to issues of discrimination in incarceration.

BEINART: But...Barack Obama doesn't talk about jobs and healthcare? He talks about it all the time. If he wanted to talk about the fact that there are too many people in prison, then you're asking him to do something that will lose him the election. That is politically...no serious political strategist...
MCLAUGHLIN: Oh...oh...oh...[crosstalk]
BEINART: He is a man trying to win the presidency, John.
MCLAUGHLIN: But then he's exactly what Jeremiah Wright says he is. He will do whatever is necessary to win.

So hold up here, McLaughlin.  That he doesn't talk about prison rates in the black community but encourages fathers (on Father's Day, mind you) to be present in their children's lives, he's doing whatever is necessary to win?  And then you had to give the floor to Pat Buchanan:

MCLAUGHLIN: Does Jackson have a legitimate point?
BUCHANAN: No, he doesn't. I'll tell you why, John. Here's why. What Barack Obama is saying is the message that needs to be heard. It's the Bill Cosby message. It is "Look, this is our responsibility. These are our families. White society is not responsible for our kids dropping out of schools or using drugs or going on welfare. We are." What Jesse Jackson says, is the white community's responsible and they've got to solve our problems.

Oh help me. Stereotype much, Pat? This is what passes as elevated public television political debate in this country.   The omnipresent Michelle Bernard tries to get this back on track and get the old guard to catch up on post-race politics: 

BERNARD: I want to go back to the point you made about whether or not Barack Obama is an Oreo, because if Barack Obama is an Oreo, then every member of this generation of African Americans is an Oreo, because we stand on the shoulders of the people who fought for our rights and all of us say that you cannot blame "The Man" or white racism for everything that ails the black community.

Pam's House Blend looks at that "nugget of truth"...

UPDATE: Media Matters is circulating a petition to ask John McLaughlin to apologize on air.

Transcripts below the fold:

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I admit I get a slight case of schadenfreude in watching the mainstream media get forced to come around to what we in the liberal blogosphere have been saying all along: the Bush administration will be looked at as the worst ever.  As we come mercifully to the final months of the Bush presidency, The McLaughlin Group asks its panel (made up of one "liberal" - Eleanor Clift and three conservatives - Monica Crowley, Mort Zuckerman and Michelle Bernard, naturally) just how toxic the legacy of Bush & Cheney will be.  Try as they might to spin it to a more positive bend, none of the conservatives can truly deny McLaughlin's list.

Clift: Well, the notion that the terrorist threat would have been worse if he had not acted the way he did does not excuse a war of choice in Iraq that was then needlessly and poorly managed. And also you left off the list ‘shredded the US Constitution'. I thought your list was pretty good [laughter] and that's why President Bush has a 29% approval rating. He deserves it!

Big kudos to Clift as well for challenging Monica Crowley's mindless "we're winning in Iraq" meme.  The clueless award goes not to Zuckerman for his equally mindless "at least we haven't had another terrorist attack" either, but to Michelle Bernard, who seeks to give credit to Bush for bringing our collective attention to education and women's rights, especially in the Middle East.  Say what?  I guess the fact that the conversation is about how lacking the Bush policies are in those areas doesn't negate that we're at least talking about them.

Transcripts below the fold:

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Download | play    Download | play   (h/t Heather)

Gee, ya think?  The McLaughlin Group panel ponders the deep and abiding love the media has for Republican presidential candidate John McCain, affectionately known to him as "his base". 

True love.  The press has found it.  Smitten by the Republican nominee, John McCain, maverick, here's a sampling of journalists saluting McCain in their own words in recent days:

Kind of like a Martin Luther [Chris Matthews - Hardball]

A man of unshakable character, willing to stand up for his convictions [R.W. Apple, NY Times]

An affable man of zealous, unbending beliefs [Richard Cohen, The Washington Post]

The hero who still does things his own way [Richard Cohen, The Washington Post]

Rises above the pack-eloquent, as only a prisoner of war can be [David Nyhan, The Boston Globe]

The perfect candidate to deal with what challenges we face as a country. [Mika Brzezinski, MSNBC]

Blunt, unyielding, deploying his principles, what he does do is what he's always done, play it as straight as possible.  [Terry Moran, Nightline]

Wordly-wise and witty, determined to follow the facts to the exclusion of ideology. [Michael Hirsh, Newsweek]

Willing to defy his own party and forge compromise. [Michael Hirsh, Newsweek]

Pragmatic in the service of the national interest, rises to passion when he believes that America's best values are at stake. [Michael Hirsh, Newsweek]

The maverick candidate still.  [Terry Moran, Nightline]

It's enough to make you lose your dinner, I tell you.  Michelle Bernard claims that they are just as exultant over Obama, and Pat Buchanan insists the McCain Media love affair is "over. Done. Gone."   I'm not sure I'm buying that just yet...