good lord, the cable news is SO WEIRD lately!! this is my news thread

yeah, seriously. that they should say that after 8 years of bush/cheney is infuriating.

gah, now i remember why i don't watch this shit.

The Economy as a Bathtub
Steve Doocy explains the heady concept of spending money using a bathtub and rubber ducks.

http://i28.tinypic.com/t9a2dg.jpg

running joke on studio b/fox report where they pick up local news stories about bears, just so they can play this clip of a bear falling onto a trampoline again

and now you know the news!

san dimas bear pool news crawl rules

obama town hall in montana. let's applaud max baucus, for keeping health care negotiations secret from his fellow dems to the point where they were speculating in The Hill about whether to remove him from his chairmanship

looooooooool "give it up for jon tester!"

i like town hall policy wonk obama a lot more than grand, sweeping political speech obama

bill clinton was on point last night @ netroots nation keynote, saying look, the real danger is if we do *nothing* about health care. the status quo *is* the danger.

good stuff from obama here. somebody must've figured out that people actually pay attention when you talk about how insurance companies cancelling policies for preexisting conditions is a big problem.

NEWS ALERT:
OBAMA: MEDICARE IS A GOVERNMENT PROGRAM

state of the discussion does, indeed, make it necessary to tell people this. "the government can't run anything, and keep your hands off my medicare!"

re: some tax increases on those making 250K+ - "we gotta get over this notion that we can get something for nothing, because that's how we got into this massive debt in the first place"

obama OTM

taking a few more shots at "some of these cable shows" where people are yelling about how we can't afford this. bill o'reilly will be taking this personally, no doubt. be afraid!

cavuto hitting the point over and over alleging obama/dems have made insurance companies the 'new villain' and brings on dana perino first to attack obama, of course, and the poor insurance companies have gotten a bait-and-switch

has there ever been an occasion when cavuto had the opportunity to be critical of big business, and actually took it? like, ever?

journalism!

i really think neil cavuto is among the worst on fox, because he's allegedly a journalist doing a news show, and i'll be damned if he's ever spoken truth to power ONCE when the power in question was either big business or any conservative or republican.

he had some dem strategist on after perino and was all over his case, challenging everything and interrupting, but at the same time only coming at the guy with this vague 'i looked at the numbers and they don't add up, i checked my spreadsheet and was about to throw it out the window.' so you can't even refute him on facts, since he doesn't want to respond to specific facts, only refer to them in a vague way so he can continue to assert that obama's plan won't work.

i hate to cast aspersions like this, but come on. like cavuto really did serious homework himself, and isn't just working off talking points from whatever conservative organizations & gop communications staffers are sending his producers through the back channels.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eIP7hYqeegQ

megyn kelly's producers helpfully focus the issue by cropping out dingell's response to the man at the meeting, which was also on tape. guy alleges that "thugs" know where he lives and come visit him in the middle of the night. kelly doesn't ask for many details or specifics & throws the guy some softballs.. then they clip a video of dingell after the event and state that his comments were specifically directed at this one guy. fair and balanced!

i'm sorry, just because his son is ill and he brought his son to a meeting in order to get in a congressman's face and yell at him - this doesn't make him right. you'd think a lawyer (kelly) would recognize what's going on here.

(video is referenced in this op-ed: In America, Crazy Is a Preexisting Condition)

imho we could use a more precise definition of the term 'crazy,' i don't think the way it's used all over the place is too helpful

so this BS about 'death panels' has obviously made its way into the mainstream and is on every tv show all day. it's being debunked by a lot of reporters now, but i heard some panel @ sunday chat show yesterday all impressed by how palin got this started, via one stupid dishonest facebook post, because even if it was dishonest.. zomg! she threw the white house off message!

so.. obama administration, blame "the media" for the lies getting out there. if you are the media, blame "conservative media" or "cable news." if you are cable news, blame "talk radio." if you are a gop official caught misleading the public, blame the far left if you can (grassley, earlier today), blame both parties equally for misleading the public if you must.

seems there are all these weird unspoken rules about who you can and can't call out by name, and rules against stating that lies are, in fact, lies. i noticed chuck todd earlier saying the death panels thing circulated on talk radio, & the shep's said a couple times that health care misinformation was from talk radio, because i guess he either ignores, or can't say, that guests on cavuto are free to spout this stuff unchallenged every day, and beck and hannity constantly book professional liars on their shows. (i'm not sure how it helps conservatives in the long run to encourage their base to continue departing from facts and reality.)

my thoughts re why you can't call someone a liar:

nobody is ever seriously punished in the political/media elites for doing something wrong, screwing up, or failing; once you're in, you're in (except sex stuff and then only maybe), that's the iron law: no one is ever punished --> since everbody in the game is always going to be in the game, you may need something from someone in the future; OR you know already you will never succeed in ousting someone from their perch by accurately describing what it is they did, and you will certainly run into them again in the future --> all drama must remain at the level of symbolism, consequences fall elsewhere --> never call anyone a liar, you only look like a chump.

anyway daria i hope you can give us the rundown on how FNC covers delay's time on dancing with the stars

not long ago was a discussion with judge napolitano, about the US trying to go after people with swiss bank accounts who aren't paying their US taxes. i didn't really understand, except napolitano says there is some constitutional issue getting in the way (he always thinks this about everything). shep says this must be because the government is broke and looking for $$$ wherever they can find it, and "they could always just tax weed and then they wouldn't have to go through this." i am pretty sure legalizing + taxing weed has been raised numerous times on this show as a solution to revenue problems. but you know if that happened, there would be endless complaints about how stupid it is for cities and states to keep raising taxes on weed.

nobody has mentioned tom delay yet. is 'dancing with the stars' on fox broadcast? if so, it'll come up sometime today no doubt.

earlier: report released on space aliens in the UK
just now: dealerships using monster trucks to crush "clunkers" traded in from this program. <3 monster trucks. seems like a win all round, really.
next up: 90% bills in the US have something on them, what could it be? (btw, the answer is cocaine. i expect legalizing + taxing it won't be proposed in this case but you never know.)

still no dancing with the stars, but aliens, monster trucks, NFL, and coke all in the same show? KUDOS

i usually never ever would comment on this, but courtney friel, reporter on various things, is very blonde, very perfectly coiffed, very made up, very tan, and wearing a bright pink sundress with big white polka dots today.

that glenn beck is doing an extra special special with a studio audience, on the DEATH OF SMALL BUSINESS in america, being CRUSHED by the government, a government with blood on its hands. be afraid! i expect he doesn't have anyone in that studio who disagrees with anything he says. seems somehow essential to glenn beck world, that nobody who fundamentally disagrees with him ever sets foot in it.

plan of attack thus far: cap and trade, unions/EFCA, i expect health care reform is next.
straight propaganda

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZltKUEWXIVk

what do you want to bet dude with the assault rifle in this video is a GOP plant, just waiting for the secret service to intervene so they can all wail about how obama's going to take away your guns.

most interesting thing so far today: the shep vs WH spox bill burton re: public option. daaaaaaaaaaaamn.

"the left of your party is LIVID! did you watch MSNBC last night?!" "people voted for this president because he SAID it was ESSENTIAL! now suddenly because the republicans are running around, calling this an end-of-the-world death panel for grandma, all of a sudden it's no longer essential?!"

i guess he got my emails XD

via some conservative blog where everyone hates both these guys & is convinced shep is all pissed off because the liberals aren't winning this battle. he does manage to out-livid everyone on MSNBC in this particular clip. right on.

yo morbs! you asked for it! maddow and taibbi on the death of the public option: NO WE CAN'T
(skip to 8:15 here for the start of taibbi)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6qcx8zbg0r4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xH2EhP-5H0Q

tom delay plays HARDBALL! holds up one of the dancing shoes & says he is disappointed because a texan doesn't wear these kinds of shoes with the heels. matthews asks him if he'd be a little light in those shoes.

classy

delay then says he'd like to get rid of medicare, and that medicare, medicaid, and s-chip are responsible for driving up the costs of health care.

then, when pressed on this birther thing, delay says he'd like the president to produce his birth certficate, and that illegal aliens in the US have to produce their birth certificate, why can't the president produce his?

your former majority leader, ladies and gentlemen. i'm against gratuitously calling people crazy because of views they hold but THIS MAN IS CRAZY

or just politicallyl savvy. he knows how that shit'll play down home.

heard on the npr that state/irs have succeeded in getting switzerland to help re: going after US residents who put money in swiss banks and don't pay taxes on it. i expect judge napolitano to freak out soon about the constitution being trampled on. i appreciate the judge sometimes, since he is adamantly against the government spying on citizens, torturing people, and detaining them indefinitely, but then he gets kind of paranoid IMHO - the white house screwing up something with sending people unsolicited emails =/ the white house putting together a nixon-style 'enemies list.'

now maybe i am not too smart and what seemed like a completely new idea to me is, in fact, stunningly obvious, but.. about all these people utterly obsessed with the constitution like beck, michelle bachmann, the judge, the tea partiers, the 9-12ers. the fundamental point of departure for them is not that the government is making policies and passing laws they don't like. the point of departure is that the government is disregarding the constitution, and is therefore illegitimate. and then what do you do? stockpile weapons? and if the government is illegitimate, does it matter who won or lost an election? the outcome of an election is kind of beside the point, isn't it, if you're glenn beck and think the leadership of this country is defying the constitution. and your group might be approximately 3% of registered voters, but that doesn't matter if you're operating at the level of: the government is illegitimate and we are the only ones defending the constitution.

ok white house. guys. look. it is kind of a bad plan to change direction on an issue, then blame the news media for reporting that you did it, and then say.. you only suggested you'd drop the public option to see if you could get GOP support and make it a bipartisan bill. wait, what? after spending all day yesterday telling the media that nothing ever changed & they just reported it wrong? but wait, didn't they backtrack again today and say they want to do this bipartisan thing? and now he's meeting with religious leaders? a terrible and misguided idea imho

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hzaYnpbXGqQ
"STOP IT!" o_O looooool

robert gibbs can get a little condescending. i think tapper gets wayyy too much shit in general, he does a pretty good job imho.

msnbc is all keen on replaying this clip of barney frank snarking on some poor lady at one of these town hall meetings. her comparison of obama to hitler is obv idiotic so there's no argument here, but in general - where did this idea that barney frank is funny come from? i've never found him to be particularly funny. of course fox has played frank's answer out of context as if he responded that way to someone with a serious question.

i tried watching this ed show (well, listening to it), and i don't get it. he doesn't seem terribly well-informed.

talking points memo has more details of the crazy from tom delay on the hardball

haaa just comin here with some tpm delay business. what a sociopath

Can You Help on This One?
from TPM by Josh Marshall

We're kind of curious whether this really happened or whether it's just from some dream reverie brought on by too much dance practice. But when asked this evening whether he was surprised by recent town hall antics Tom DeLay told Chris Matthews that at one of his town halls in the 1980s protestors "brought quadriplegics in on gurneys and dumped them on the floor in front of my podium."

That sounds pretty out there.

We've done a little research and we cannot find any press reports about such a bizarre and somewhat hard to credit event. And DeLay's office has not responded to requests for comment.

Anybody help us on this one?

yeah i got nothing. it's a good thing they have a segment on the hardball called 'the sideshow' because today was all circus. the dude on prior to delay was from some gun owners' group, and after being pressed by matthews about it, said he would indeed be in favor of letting people carry firearms into presidential events. i'm bothered on a level here, on the one hand it's fair to be dogged about this, on the other, is it really a good idea to go on at length about the history of political assassinations in this country (which matthews did)

also this:

After speaking at a preventive-care conference here last week, he was swarmed by protesters. Or, in Mr. Baucus’s words, “agitators, whose sole goal was to intimidate, disrupt and not let any meaningful conversation go on.” There were a couple of people in the crowd “with YouTubes,” Mr. Baucus added (meaning cameras), and he posited that the agitators were paid and probably from out of state.

if i were a guest on the factor, every time o'reilly asked me why anything, i'd answer, 'just to piss you off, bill.'

'why is nbc comparing protestors to terrorists?' 'just to piss you off, bill.'
'why is president obama holding conference calls with religious leaders?' 'just to piss you off, bill.'
'why is fox news way ahead in the ratings?' 'just to piss you off, bill.'

because what's he going to do, get pissed off? then i'd be like, 'see, bill? i told you so.'

i guess the shep's facebook page said something about a shout-out on fox report to their facebook fans.

which was: the show ending with a very reluctant 'you know facebook? we're like, on facebook now, so if you want to search for shepard smith or whatever, you can do that. but it's not really necessary.'

come on now, this is the one guy on fox who most of the greater interwebs actually doesn't hate.

i wonder in general what the strategery minds at the fox news channel are thinking about social media and the interwebs. msnbc might be losing out in the TV ratings by a wide margin, but msnbc & cnn both *kill* fox as far as web traffic goes, and msnbc video in particular is very easy to find, can be embedded in its own player, and gets tons of plays. meanwhile fox's website is badly organized, hard to navigate, etc.

they have to care about tv news audiences getting older, while younger people are turning to the interwebs for news. i don't know why i find myself rooting for fox news to get better at new media. but they'd be heck of entertaining if they did.

wtf, Barney Frank is pretty much always funny!

i haven't ever laughed at anything he's said as i recall

obama is funny though. the clintons are too, hillary has some bad jokes in speeches, but when she's just talking off the cuff she can be very funny.

o'reilly says hey, here is a picture of me modeling the official o'reilly factor "PATRIOT" hat you can buy on our website, real macho, i might wear it in san francisco or vermont

it's stuff like this, & matthews' casual little joke earlier, that makes me look forward to the day when people from their generation have retired from tv news.

tpm followup to the delay thing yesterday. sometimes the url is the best punchline

http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2009/08/did_delays_angry_quadriplegic_protesters_tale_add.php

(obama) taking a few more shots at "some of these cable shows" where people are yelling about how we can't afford this. bill o'reilly will be taking this personally, no doubt. be afraid!

oreilly did, in fact, take it personally

fox WH correspondent garrett patiently explains to o'reilly that the white house does, indeed, take his questions

o'reilly bloviates about the white house picking a fight with fox & how it gets fox more ratings & on and on

garrett looks bored. says all the cable networks thinks obama is talking about them & that when the white house is trying to disseminate information, every administration has preferred outlets & for obama, obv, fox is not one of them

i guess it is shrewd of o'reilly to pretend that of allllll the things going on in the world right now, the white house is, in fact, preoccupied by fox news. ailes probably clued him in though.

UH
Bill O'Reilly Describes His Men's Room Encounter With Spike Lee (VIDEO)

scarbs is rude to capehart about his fashion choices, capehart is all like, whatever, they're prada

http://i25.tinypic.com/33u8js5.jpg

http://i30.tinypic.com/1zg9oxg.jpg

glenn beck, information architect XD

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dh_JXJoV2Yo

want fast food news? fox report!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZYWDdnDr9H0

it's necessary for a good conspiracy theory to be ever more vast and intricate, yes? focusing and asking precise questions is the exact wrong thing to do. if beck wants to send his audience off into the weeds for the next eight years, well, all right then. and for the leading conspiracy theorist, mr beck, suddenly i see that not knowing what he's talking about is.. an asset.

QUESTION WITH BOLDNESS AND SPEAK WITH OUT FEAR

dont even want to imagine what were going to get from fox commentators today about kennedy

fox is just not covering it full-time like msnbc is, msnbc is a nonstop kennedy wake. fox coverage is good from what i've seen. i've only had it on for the past few hours. it's been more of 'here is the legislation he passed that actually affects your life,' some comments from republicans (all positive). many noting how kennedy actually got along with conservatives irl & sort of lamenting how politics has changed.

at msnbc this morning there was more of a worshipful tone about the convergence of public service and liberal values and this one family's history and legacy, all of these things together, that goes completely lauded and unquestioned. i have a bit of an impression of noblesse oblige from this msnbc coverage. fox has been more down-to-earth.

wow - smith just now remarks on the vicious emails & internet comments, and asks why kennedy has been so demonized by the far right, d. brinkley (guest) responds by explaining the roots of it are in kennedy's work to destroy jim crow laws and his civil rights activism.

woah, i wouldn't even make that argt

wow indeeed

far as i remember, brinkley was talking historically about the *start* of the vitriol - why kennedy became such a target for the far-right in the first place. but yeah it was remarkable imho.

speculating, but watching studio b just now, i had the sense they had gotten a LOT of hate mail. wrapped up by saying both dems/republicans said that kennedy was in fact just trying to help people, and was a good man.

glenn beck show is utterly poisonous