I thought Brit Hume was done littering our airwaves with conservative talking points since he gave up his show to Mr. Baier, but no, he's still going to be a lead talking head for FOX. And boy is he ever wanking. With a straight face and not in clown make up, Brit Hume said this:

HUME: That's right. Well, then, the New Deal -- everybody agrees, I think, on both sides of the spectrum now, that the New Deal failed. The debate is over why it failed. People on the left believe it failed because Roosevelt, at the end of the day, really didn't do enough spending, that it simply wasn't spending -- he was not spending, whether deficit spending or not, on a scale grand enough to lift the damaged U.S. economy out of that depression.

There are people on the other side of the spectrum who would say, maybe, but look at this as well. President Roosevelt waged what could only be called a jihad against private enterprise. He prosecuted leading figures in it, Andrew Mellon being a conspicuous example. He prosecuted little companies, butcher shops in New York, as has been laid out in Amity Shlaes' book about the new -- book about the history of the Great Depression.

The problem FDR had was that he got caught up in being more conservative with the budget in '38, which slowed it down---still---the NEW Deal rescued America out of the depression and was so successful that conservatives have been trying to destroy every part of it ever since. Bush's lame attempt at dismantling Social Security was a humiliating defeat for him right after he won reelection in '04. He thought he had all that political capital to spend and he turned his attention on Social Security. There's one thing you can't fool with. That is Social Security benefits. Americans will never take that risk. .

Can you imagine if the people had actually been hoodwinked into believing Bush and went along with the mantra that they should invest their Social Security into the stock market? There may have been an armed march into DC, not by Blackwater type militia's, but by the AARP crowd that would have been screwed by the market meltdown. But it will not stop clowns like Brit Hume from trying to rewrite history about FDR.

I agree with Digby when she says:

...Brit Hume's mendacity is approaching Holocaust denial territory. Talk about intellectual violence.

The conservative elite appear to have decided on a strategy of making Obama's recovery plan fail so that they can blame the Democrats, seize power and start a world war.

I keep thinking I can't be any more shocked by their audacity. But they always exceed my expectations.

David Shuster had a knock-down, drag-out fight with wingnut extraordinaire John Ziegler over his new pseudo-documentary about the supposedly unfair mediatreatment of Sarah Palin:

Professional right wing angry person John Ziegler (remember his potty-mouthed but fact-light challenge of 538.com's Nate Silver?) is busy as a beaver, creating the "documentary" Media Malpractice... How Obama Got Elected about how that "librul media" (*sigh* Can that phrase be retired yet?)

Shuster started off by telling Ziegler that Palin thought Ziegler mischaracterized her in his promos. You can't make this stuff up folks, but when it comes to right-wing apologists, anything is possible. (very rough transcript and not in order)

Shuster: Sarah Palin says your decision to post excerpts out of context on YouTube led to misleading reports. Your take?

Ziegler: I'm sorry that she feels that way. I don't believe that's the case..

Shuster then brought up Ziegler's idiotic statement when he said that the media was "assassinating Palin." Right-wing propagandists will cry "victim" everytime.

Shuster: Wait as second, wait a second. You think it's accurate to use the word 'assassinate'? Regardless of the heavy criticism, doesn't it diminish real assignations when you throw out the word 'assassinate' because Sarah Palin didn't like some of the questions she got in an interview?

Ziegler: I believe her character was assassinated, David, and I believe this network played an enormous role in that process and you took the clip of the Katie Couric out of context.[..]

Shuster: But John, even in the documentary, at least in the clips that you've released, she still can't answer, at least it takes her several opportunities, she still really can't say what she reads. Does Sarah Palin take any responsibility....

Ziegler: David, that's ridiculous. Apparently you didn't watch the clip.

Shuster: I did, She talked about news articles that are widely circulated in Alaska

Ziegler: You're a joke.

Shuster: John, the joke is the fact that you and Sarah Palin can't take any responsibility for the fact that she wasn't prepared to run for vice president. Does she ever acknowledge that in any of your interviews?

Ziegler: Did you not watch the clip?...This is clearly an agenda by MSNBC... Really? So is that your opinion, David? Is that your opinion,

Shuster: No, I'm asking you

Ziegler: As an alleged news person, is that your opinion? That she was unprepared to be vice president of the US? That doesn't seem very objective to me...

Shuster: John, it's the opinion of 65% of the people...

Ziegler: It's not your opinion, it's everybody's opinion.

Shuster: It's everybody's opinion that's had an opportunity to interview her, except for you and my question is, when you interviewed her, did she ever express any responsibility for her own shortcomings, any?

Ziegler: I feel like this is OJ Simpson interviewing the Cobbs

Shuster: It's a simple yes or no answer....

You see, with guys like Ziegler---when he's confronted with facts that disprove his propaganda, he gets abusive. Where have we seen that before? And I find it laughable that Palin and her supporters will not admit that she was ill-prepared to run and hasn't taken responsibility for her own actions, but yet they ask average Americans who are losing their jobs to take responsibility for their own failings.

Anyway, Ziegler will be on again for Round 2 with Shuster at the 3/6PM hour. It will probably be plenty entertaining. The right-wingers are so worried about the Fairness Doctrine being pulled, but in reality, when they are given time to explain their positions, that's when they are exposed as the whack jobs they really are like....John "The Joke" Ziegler.

More to come....

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All the discussion has been about Obama's selection of Leon Panetta and what it means for the CIA, but the most significant part of today's announcement was the statement that leads off this video:

The United States does not torture. We will abide by the Geneva Conventions. That we will uphold our highest values and ideals.

Meanwhile, all the fussing about how folks in the CIA feel about Panetta's imminent appointment is put in perspective, I think, by Melvin Goodman of the Center for International Policy, himself an intel veteran:

DeYoung and Warrick disingenuously repeated the assertion of one senior CIA officer that the “agency was neither consulted nor informed” about the Panetta nomination. More balderdash! The CIA has never been consulted about the nomination of a CIA director nor should it. It is unlikely that Foreign Service Officers were asked to vet the selection of Senator Hillary Clinton as secretary of state or that the Joint Chiefs of Staff were asked if they would support the nomination of Donald Rumsfeld as secretary of defense in 2001. Civil servants have no role to play in the selection of senior officials of the government, and their professionalism requires support for their leadership, regardless of political beliefs. We certainly expect U.S. military officers, who are overwhelmingly members of the Republican Party, to support the national security policies of Democratic administrations. We should assume that CIA officers will do the same.

His piece is really about how the media -- and the Washington Post in particular -- are in fact being played by CIA operatives in their reportage on this.

MSNBC:

Hustler's Larry Flynt and "Girls Gone Wild's" Joe Francis say it's the adult entertainment industry's turn for a bailout, TMZ reported.

The economy has hurt their businesses, too, Flynt and Francis said -- sales of XXX DVDs are down 22 percent -- and they want $5 billion from the government.

Congress must "rejuvenate the sexual appetite of America," Flynt said.

I'm pretty sure that Larry isn't actually looking for money so much as looking to make a statement on how the bailouts have thus far been handled, but (and forgive me, it's too easy a joke) if the porn industry goes down, how long will it take before America goes down as well?

NPR has more.

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We knew this was coming:

SPRINGFIELD---In a historic vote, the Illinois House has impeached Gov. Rod Blagojevich, directing the Senate to put the state’s 40th chief executive on trial with the goal of removing him from office.

The vote by the House was 114-1 and marks the first time in the state's 190-year history that a governor has been impeached, despite Illinois' longstanding reputation for political corruption.

Meanwhile, it appears that Roland Burris may have been less than forthcoming about his contacts with Blago:

For the first time, Burris indicated that he asked Blagojevich's former chief of staff and college classmate, Lon Monk, to relay his interest in the Senate seat to the governor last July or September.

"If you're close to the governor, you know, let him know I'm certainly interested in the seat," Burris said he told Monk.

That testimony appears to differ from an affidavit Burris submitted to the impeachment panel this week in which he stated he spoke to no "representatives" of the governor about the Senate post prior to Dec. 26.

What else would you expect from a guy who would take this appointment under these circumstances anyway?

I used to work for an consulting firm that specialized in FDA compliance for pharma and medical device companies, and I can tell you the consultants had no faith whatsoever in the FDA approval process during this administration. Looks like their concerns were warranted:

WASHINGTON (AP) — In an unusually blunt letter, a group of federal scientists is complaining to the Obama transition team of widespread managerial misconduct in a division of the Food and Drug Administration.

"The purpose of this letter is to inform you that the scientific review process for medical devices at the FDA has been corrupted and distorted by current FDA managers, thereby placing the American people at risk," said the letter, dated Wednesday and written on the agency's Center for Devices and Radiological Health letterhead.

[...] The FDA declined to publicly respond to the letter, but said it is working to address the concerns.

In their letter the FDA dissidents alleged that agency managers use intimidation to squelch scientific debate, leading to the approval of medical devices whose effectiveness is questionable and which may not be entirely safe.

"Managers with incompatible, discordant and irrelevant scientific and clinical expertise in devices...have ignored serious safety and effectiveness concerns of FDA experts," the letter said. "Managers have ordered, intimidated and coerced FDA experts to modify scientific evaluations, conclusions and recommendations in violation of the laws, rules and regulations, and to accept clinical and technical data that is not scientifically valid."

A copy of the letter, with the names of the scientists redacted, was provided to The Associated Press by a congressional official.

"Currently, there is an atmosphere at FDA in which the honest employee fears the dishonest employee, and not the other way around," the scientists wrote.

Professional right wing angry person John Ziegler (remember his potty-mouthed but fact-light challenge of 538.com's Nate Silver?) is busy as a beaver, creating the "documentary" Media Malpractice... How Obama Got Elected about how that "librul media" (*sigh* Can that phrase be retired yet?) failed to do their job and resulted in Barack Obama's election. Yeah, that liberal Fox News and Rush Limbaugh...I'm sure it had nothing to do with the epic failure of the Republican Party.

But who better to get on camera and grouse about the mean ol' media than Sarah Palin?

A new video interview with the governor, who talks at some length about media coverage during and after the campaign. The interview is by conservative broadcaster John Ziegler, who is producing a documentary, "Media Malpractice ... How Obama Got Elected." It was done at her Wasilla home on Monday, and posted clips on YouTube yesterday.

A big chunk of the YouTube clip is Palin teeing off on media coverage of her family. She talks about a double standard between coverage of her family and Obama's, and suggests a double standard between scrutiny of her and Caroline Kennedy (who's pursuing a New York Senate seat) because of her social class. "When I heard Barack Obama state in one of his interviews on national television that his wife was off limits, meaning, family's off limits -- you know, 'Attack me, I'm the public official, come after me, I can handle it and we'll duke it out if need be, but family's off limits' -- I naively believed, OK, they respected that in him and his demand for that to be adhered, naively believing that must apply to all of us, right? But it didn't apply."

On Kennedy: “I’ve been interested also to see how Caroline Kennedy will be handled and if she will be handled with kid gloves or if she will be under such a microscope also. It’s going to be interesting to see how that plays out and I think that as we watch that we will perhaps be able to prove that there is a class issue here also that was such a factor in the scrutiny of my candidacy versus, say, the scrutiny of what her candidacy may be.”

Oh yeah, the media has been so kind to Caroline Kennedy. And don't get me started on that "Shriekin' Evil" Keith Olbermann. The ridiculous lengths Republicans will go to retain their victim status.

Celtic Diva's Blue Oasis has more...

They gave us a republic: UN Relief workers in Gaza attacked by Israeli forces

Connecting.the.Dots: No revolution for the Health Czar

Pruning Shears: Rockefeller and Feinstein: Preserving the Bush Legacy

skippy the bush kangaroo: Note to Republicans

The Aristocrats: Dept. of "I sh*t you not"

Bitter Lawyer: Loose Ends

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In the previous night's edition of Talking Out My Hindquarters (aka The O'Reilly Factor), BillO The Clown got into a hilarious Ego Pie Fight with Ann The Bozo over some advice he wanted to pass along from a fellow wingnut buffoon, Bernie Goldberg (Coulter just snorted and said she only listened to people who sold more books than she her, which I guess means she's listening closely to Stephen King and Danielle Steele).

So BillO, kindly fellow that he is, had Goldberg on tonight to finally make his offering (not before, of course, noting that both he and BillO's books have sold better than Coulter's):

Goldberg: Here's the advice I would have given: Go on with liberal journalists. And tell them: "Yeah, do I go over the top sometimes? Do I say things that perhaps don't sound civil? Yeah. But I do it to point out your hypocrisy. Because if Al Franken came on, or Bill Maher -- two really nasty guys as far as I'm concerned -- you would sit there and giggle with them, you liberal anchor. But when I come on, you're all over me. That's why I do it -- to point out your liberal hypocrisy."

That was my only advice.

O'Reilly: And that was great advice.

Goldberg: Perhaps she'd want to listen, perhaps not. I agree with Ann Coulter 90 percent of the time.

O'Reilly: I think that Ann Coulter is watching right now. And she should do that, because that is devastating. That is absolutely devastating, when the liberal people go after her, say, hey, if it were Franken or Maher here you'd be yukkin' it up.

Yeah, that would have been devastating, just devastating.

Unless, of course, the "liberal" (read: non-wingnut) show host/journalist had two brain cells to scratch together (not always a given) and could muster a response along the following lines:

"Sure, Ann, but neither Franken nor Maher -- nor for that matter any liberal you can name -- have ever joked about bombing thousands of people at the New York Times Building, or urged their audiences to act like violent thugs against their political opponents, or proudly trumpeted the use of ethnic slurs, or extolled the virtues of 'local fascism.'

"We're not talking about your political views, Ann -- we couldn't care less if you're right, left, center, or upside-down. We're talking about fundamental human decency. You plainly lack it. Franken and Maher may offend, but they don't descend into the sewer from which you regularly come crawling."

Something like that. It could be simpler. But you get the idea.

And I suspect Coulter -- unlike her grandfatherly advisers -- is smart enough to know that, which is why she doesn't bother.

Awwwww ... and I was so looking forward to covering Sen. Tweety.

MSNBC host Chris Matthews put an end to speculation that he was considering a bid for the U.S. Senate, telling his producers Wednesday that he had decided not to jump into the 2010 race in his home state of Pennsylvania.

In a routine production meeting before his daily show "Hardball," Matthews informed the staff that he was not going to pursue the seat, network spokesman Jeremy Gaines said. The cable host, who is negotiating a new contract at MSNBC, declined to comment.

For the last several months, Matthews toyed with taking on Republican Sen. Arlen Specter. He went so far as to talk to state Democratic power brokers about what it would take to challenge the five-term senator.

Matthews' interest in the seat put MSNBC in an uncomfortable position as reports mounted that he might run. In recent weeks, executives told him that he needed to make up his mind quickly and let them know his plans.

According to this less-than-flattering profile of Matthews in the NY Times, Matthews' contract is up in June and neither side seemed inclined to renew it, despite this report to the contrary. I wonder what changed Tweety's mind. Maybe he realized the kind of coverage he'd be subjecting himself and his family to, the kind he's been doing himself. Ah, sweet irony.

Ann Coulter and SENATOR Al Franken discuss which historical figure they would want to be. (h/t Media Bloodhound)

Open thread (except for transsexual jokes, which will be deleted as usual, why do you waste your time?) below...

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I just got back from a visit to Mali and music was one of the highlights of the trip. I wrote about some of my musical adventures in Mali at my travel blog. Anyone who follows world music knows there was no way I could have experienced the music of Mali's greatest contemporary musician, Ali Farka Touré, since he died in 2006. (He's the one who Martin Scorsese pointed out carried the "DNA of the blues.") His 1994 collaboration with Ry Cooder, Talking Timbuktu, won a Grammy and he's widely recognized as the most important bridge between traditional African music and the American blues. I was in a 4WD vehicle as I trapsed around Mali and the CD player would only play the first song of any album. I listened to "Bonde" from Talking Timbuktu at least 100 times. I hope you'll find it as enjoyable as I did.

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January 07, 2009 C-SPAN

Republican leaders talked about the introduction of the Broadcaster Freedom Act on the floor of the U.S. House. The Broadcaster Freedom Act would prevent the Federal Communications Commission from implementing the Fairness Doctrine without an act of Congress.

Dave N: It's getting comical, really, how many right-wingers are working themselves up into a fine froth over this. I just got a frantic e-mail from Ann Coulter touting a new "Human Events" report on this dread threat to conservative airwave hogging values. (Image here.)

Funny thing: There really isn't anyone seriously advocating the reinstatement of the Fairness Doctrine, but it's the boogeyman du jour. Matt Yglesias has more. Ron Chusid at Liberal Values has a roundup.

Well, I say let 'em expend all their energy on an issue that isn't one.

Digby has some good news:

More good news on the progressive front:

A group of progressive operatives from MoveOn and labor circles have teamed with a prominent Internet pioneer to try to give the Sam Bennetts of the world the final push they need -- and send even more Perriellos to Congress. The organization will be the first of its kind exclusively to focus on electing progressive Democrats in congressional elections.

It won't focus its energy on unseating conservative Democrats, but Green, a cofounder, didn't rule out the possibility. Instead, it will prioritize competitive open-seat primaries and help general election candidates like Bennett and Perriello run effective campaigns.

The group's first forays are likely to be in the Illinois district vacated by Rahm Emanuel, who left to become Obama's chief of staff. Green says the group is in talks with a progressive labor lawyer, Tom Geoghegan, in that district. Another potential target: the California district emptied by Hilda Solis, who's been tapped to be labor secretary. "Our belief is there are many more Tom Perriellos out there who are on the cusp of winning," says Green. "There's a pattern of progressive candidates who are written off in the beginning and who come inches away from victory, but lose due to inefficient campaigns.

Check out the 'Bold Progressives' website:

The PCCC is a new PAC dedicated to helping bold progressive candidates run first-class campaigns and win.

Yet another from the over-stuffed cabinet of Iraq invasion and occupation "nobody could have anticipated" files. And another sign that all is not the rosy victory that the right would wish us to believe it is. (h/t Kat)

Marine Maj. Gen. John F. Kelly told The Associated Press that his greatest "mission failure" was his inability to bring together the government in Baghdad and the Sunnis in Anbar to take advantage of the steep decline in violence.

"What the Iraqi government in Baghdad should have done is said Anbar is getting peaceful, let's commit," Kelly told the AP in a telephone interview from his headquarters southwest of Baghdad, as he begins to make preparations to hand over command of 23,000 Marines next month to Maj. Gen. Richard T. Tyron.

"It drives me to distraction," he said. "I would count it as a mission failure."

Reconciliation? Meh, not so much. The many faction feuds and sectarian rivalries which helped make Iraq so bloody are still there, just tamped down for a while - hopefully long enough for the US to declare victory and (pretend to) withdraw. I'm mostly OK with that, since it's the Iraqi people's "pottery barn" and it should always have been their perogative to break it more or mend it as they see fit. I just wish the US government, politicians, militrary and mainstream media would be honest about it.

By the time it flares up again, US leaders appear to be hoping, those troops left in Iraq will be rebranded as trainers and securely inside fortified bases where they can get on with their original primary mission, as conceived by neo-whatevers from left and right, of being the US dog in the Gulf manger.

And I fully expect the Obama administration's strategy for Afghanistan to be doing exactly the same thing there.