Are "Mama Grizzlies" who oppose state children’s health insurance programs (S-CHIP) and teachers’ unions unfaithful to their maternal name? CNN anchor Kiran Chetry joined Newsweek’s Lisa Miller Monday in wondering if that is so. Miller appeared on CNN’s "American Morning" to feature her most recent piece on "Mama Grizzlies," prominent female conservatives in the vein of Sarah Palin.

"All the candidates that we – whose records we looked at, are against the Obama health plan in general, and yes, the CHIP program in specific," reported Miller, a senior editor for Newsweek. "There are rising numbers of poor children in this country, a quarter of America’s children are poor. It seems like a funny way to say that you’re for kids, and be against all of these programs."

Miller ultimately concluded that the "Mama Grizzlies" movement will fall short of its political goals, because "the issues facing the country are complex, and bears are not."

"Do we really want bears to solve our problems?" Miller quipped at the end of the segment.  

Kiran Chetry agreed that the candidates’ positions may contradict their maternal title. "I guess if you strip away the core message of the Tea Party candidates, which Sarah Palin has really helped endorse, they just want less government, they want less spending. That, unfortunately at times, butts up against things that many say would be good for kids."

Among the examples of "Mama Grizzlies" failing to help America’s children? Both Miller and Chetry noted the candidates’ opposition to S-CHIP programs, teachers’ unions, Pell Grants, and Obamacare as evidence.

Nevada Republican Senate nominee Sharron Angle’s opposition to a domestic violence bill in the Nevada state legislature and Minnesota Republican Rep. Michelle Bachmann’s vote against a federal parental-leave policy drew some attention as well.

So who on the Democratic side would make a good "Mama Grizzly?" Miller said Hillary Clinton would, being a "powerful woman and a mom," although she wouldn’t admit it.

A partial transcript of the segment, which aired on September 27 at 8:14 a.m. EDT, is as follows:

KIRAN CHETRY: It’s interesting, because when you take a look at some of the candidates she’s referring to, and we can talk about some of them, they aren’t necessarily all on the same page with each other when it comes to some of these issues. I mean, is this sort of a coherent set of ideas, or is it more of a marketing tool?

LISA MILLER, Senior Editor, Newsweek: Right, well, I mean, I would say – and we say at the end of the story that it is really more of a marketing tool. It’s a very compelling image, right? Everybody who’s a parent has that feeling of wanting to protect their kids. And if we make it America’s kids, or our kids, you know, our future, it’s a very powerful image.

On the other hand, you know, Christine O’Donnell for example isn’t a mom. So she talks about our grandchildren in speeches, but she’s not actually a "Mama Grizzly." And then on things like education, the "Grizzlies" are really all over the place. You know, Sarah Palin is actually quite progressive on education. She has always talked about paying teachers more. In Alaska, she ramped up the budget for the Department of Education over and over again before she left the position of Governor of Alaska. She promised a big infusion of money to the schools. Whereas Angle and Bachmann are known for sort of hating the teachers’ unions, fighting back against lobbyists. All of them, many of them, have this anti-Department of Education position, you know, parents know what’s good for kids, and administrators and bureaucrats should get out.

CHETRY: Right, but just because you’re against the Department of Ed doesn’t mean you’re not for kids getting a better education.

MILLER: I guess that’s true. On the other hand, you know, a lot of them have voted for – against things like Start, programs for poor kids, Pell Grants, which are to help, you know, poor kids get college education –

CHETRY: Right, and this is the interesting part. Because, I mean, I guess if you strip away the core message of the Tea Party candidates, which Sarah Palin has really helped endorse, is they just want less government, they want less spending. That, unfortunately at times, butts up against things that many say would be good for kids. We have Bachmann, Michelle Bachmann in the Congress, and Nickie Haley who are both against the State Children’s Health Insurance Program, that provides health care to poor children.

MILLER: All the candidates that we – whose records we looked at, are against the Obama health plan in general, and yes, the CHIP program in specific. There are rising numbers of poor children in this country, a quarter of America’s children are poor. It seems like a funny way to say that you’re for kids, and be against all of these programs.  

CHETRY: Yeah, the other issue that you talked about is the voting against – was it Angle who voted against a Domestic Violence bill in the Nevada legislature?

MILLER: Yes, and Bachmann voted against a federal parental-leave policy for federal employees. So when you have a new baby, time off. That seems like a good thing for kids.

CHETRY: Is there a Democratic equivalent to the "Mama Grizzly" phenomenon on the other side?

MILLER: Well, I mean, I think, you know, you could call Hillary Clinton a "Mama Grizzly," right? She’s a powerful woman, she’s a mom. But I don’t think she would ever call herself a "Mama Grizzly." She doesn’t fit in to this demographic.

CHETRY: You wrote in an interesting line at the end of the article that said in the wild, real "Mama Grizzlies" are known to be aggressive, irrational, and mean. The issues facing the country are complex, and bears are not. So what is the upshot of this?

MILLER: Well, I mean, I think, you know, it’s a great marketing tool, as we said at the outset. You know, calling upon women’s primal maternal instincts is a good thing, but let’s think about it. I mean, this is a very divided country, and we have some big problems to solve. Do we really want bears to solve our problems?

According to a recent poll, likely voters get their political news primarily from cable television. Among cable channels, 42 percent, a plurality, watch Fox News for its political coverage. Only 12 percent said they watched MSNBC. What’s more, most likely voters don’t like or have never heard of MSNBC’s prime time talent.

The poll, conducted by Politico and George Washington University, used a sample split evenly between political parties – even slightly favoring Democrats in some areas: 41 percent of respondents identified as Republicans, while 42 percent said they were Democrats. Forty-four percent said they usually vote for Republicans, while 46 percent answered Democrats. Forty-eight percent voted for Obama, while only 45 percent voted for McCain.

Even among this group, Fox News is by far the most popular cable outlet. CNN comes in at second, with 30 percent. A sorry MSNBC brings up the rear.

Among cable news personalities, FNC’s Bill O’Reilly – consistently the highest-rated cable news talker – is the most popular. Forty-nine percent of respondents said they thought O’Reilly has a positive impact on the American political conversation. Thirty-two percent said he has a negative impact.

Interestingly, respondents – again, split evenly among the two parties – thought all three of Fox’s evening opinion commentators (O’Reilly, Glenn Beck, and Sean Hannity) have a net positive impact on the national debate. All three have a positive spread in the category. Also of note, for none of the three did majorities answer "never heard of".

MSNBC’s hosts are a different story. Only 23 percent said Keith Olbermann has a positive impact on the debate, while 25 said he has a negative one. A plurality, 42 percent, had never heard of him

But at least it was only a plurality. Majorities said they have never heard of Ed Schultz or Rachel Maddow – 70 percent and 55 percent, respectively. The positive impact/negative impact responses were split down the middle for both.

In other words, the vast majority of likely voters either do not like MSNBC’s prime time talkers, or have never heard of them (with the notable exception of Chris Matthews, whose name was not included in the poll).

"How did it get to this state?" wonders Ed Morrissey.

After all, NBC had a long history in television news, starting decades before CNN and even longer than Fox. Its partnership with Microsoft should have given the cable news network a distinct advantage in the New Media world. Their roster of news anchors, present and future, should have immediately challenged CNN for primacy and marginalized Fox, who may have had cash but relatively fewer newsgathering resources in the US when it launched.

Under the direction of GE’s Jeff Immelt, though, NBC’s cable network went for the full-insane demographic. Fox took CNN’s talking-head format and simply reversed the bias, although Fox rightly argues that it presents more opposing viewpoints than CNN did as part of their establishment talent and not just occasional guests and party spinmeisters. NBC decided to emulate Air America with its cable lineup instead, perhaps seeing some opportunity in the last Bush term to capitalize on his unpopularity and become a center of opposition opinion.

Rather than accomplish that, the decision by NBC and its parent GE has not just destroyed MSNBC’s credibility but also NBC’s as well. With the exception of Joe Scarborough, who is hard to pigeonhole but certainly isn’t a hard-Left hysteric, the entire lineup is exactly what one would find on the failed libtalker radio network. It’s no coincidence that two of its featured hosts come straight out of Air America, Rachel Maddow and Ed Schultz. Maddow has, at least, produced a watchable show, albeit with a hard-Left tilt that clearly is out of touch with the mainstream, but Schultz is barely coherent. Top that off with a daily "news" broadcast from Keith Olbermann that almost literally consists of a Two Minute Hate (Olbermann’s WPIW lists), and it’s a recipe for the kind of disaster that only political hacks could love. The wonder is that GE and NBC apparently seem content to alienate 88% of the viewing audience with its trainwreck theater.

CNN’s Kyra Phillips gave a ringing endorsement to a Christian minister and his heterodox views on homosexuality on Monday’s Newsroom. Phillips interviewed televangelist Bishop Carlton Pearson, who, in her words, went "out on a limb…[to] say gays are accepted in heaven," and concluded the segment by stating how she "respect[s] very much" what he preached on the highly-debated moral issue.

The anchor led the 10 am Eastern hour with the allegations against Bishop Eddie Long, who has been sued by four young men so far who accuse him of coercing them into sexual relationships. Four minutes into the hour, Phillips introduced Pearson as a "pioneering black televangelist and a close friend of Eddie Long’s…[who] lost a lot of his flock when he began preaching that everyone has a place in heaven, including gay people." She first asked the bishop, "Why did you go out on a limb and say gays are accepted in heaven, something that the black church disagrees with?"

Pearson lauded his "gay friends" as "some of the most sensitive, loving, creative, ingenious, generous people" and touted how he "started preaching the Gospel of inclusion" and criticized how supposedly "the devotion to the devil and hell is stronger, or as strong as anybody’s devotion to Jesus in many of the Christian circles." After spending some time discussing what Pearson knew of Long, Phillips posited what would happen if the accused minister came out as a homosexual: "What if he does come forward, Bishop, and say, I told you I wasn’t a perfect man and I’ve been- I have been struggling with this issue, and he does say that he’s gay. What if this story changes? How will you deal with that? Will you accept him? Will you embrace him? How would you counsel him as his friend?"

The CNN anchor’s guest devoted some of his subsequent answer to again criticizing the traditional Christian teaching on homosexuality and sexuality in general: "How do we deal with our sexual side, our sensual side, our spiritual side? They- because they interplay. They interact. So, it’s- it’s wrong for- I’m not for Christian cannibalism, eating our dead or dying, destroying them the way we do so many people."

Phillips and Pearson devoted most of the second half of the segment to discussing and critiquing black cultural attitudes towards homosexuality:

PHILLIPS: You’ve talked about this as well, the issue of being a black gay man, especially in the Church, and a man within ministry- gospel music. There have been allegations that have come forward, there have been individuals that have come forward and said, I’m gay and have been completely shut out of the black church because of that.

PEARSON: Yes.

PHILLIPS: Why is it so unacceptable to be a black man and to be gay and to lead a flock? Why is it so taboo?

PEARSON: Well, first of all-

PHILLIPS: It’s not just biblical. I mean, there’s a cultural feeling here.

PEARSON: Of course. Yes. That’s for white folks. Y’all are supposed to do, when in comes to that. We don’t do that kind of stuff. We [are] real men. That’s- I said that in jest, but that’s the underlying-

PHILLIPS: No, but that’s interesting. That’s what’s going on.

PEARSON: Yes. That’s we don’t do weird stuff. Now, the other hypocritical aspect of that is our churches, Kyra, are filled with same gender loving people, from the music department to the pulpits- black music, church music- where would it be without our same gender loving or gay musicians and singers? Not all of them are.

PHILLIPS: But many have come to you and said, I’m gay, but I can’t come out.

PEARSON: Oh, yes. Oh yes.

PHILLIPS: And we’re talking very powerful people in the gospel industry.

PEARSON: Yes, ma’am.

PHILLIPS: I’ve met them.

PEARSON: Yes, ma’am. With tears in their eyes, they were afraid. There are people who’ve come to me and say, I embraced your gospel of inclusion, Bishop, but I can’t- it’s not a theological issue with me. It’s a business decision. I’ll lose my flock. I’ll lose my money. I’ll lose my parishioners. I’ll lose myself. I can’t love everybody. I can’t even love me, he would say. And I want to say to that group- and this is a wake-up call. Until the church, black or otherwise- confronts- not combats- confronts this issue of human sexuality and homosexuality, which is not going away- homosexuals and homosexuality is not going away- if every gay person in our church just left or those who have an orientation or preference or an inclination, or a fantasy, if everyone left, we wouldn’t have a church.

The bishop even specifically targeted the Catholic Church in his criticism of traditional Christianity:

PEARSON: There are gay doctors, police officers, attorneys, priests. Look at the whole Catholic Church. All this idea of celibacy. It’s not even natural, but it’s out. It’s like the Christian Church is having to confront its issues, its platonic, plastic, superficial portrayals of an angry God, a vicious God, an eternal place where everybody’s going to burn and this God with this terrible anger management problem who’s going to get you and then He’s going to turn you over to the devil, who’s going to accuse you to Him, and it’s fairy tale stuff. But we bought into it, and now we’re having to face the fact that maybe we missed it on many of these issues.

Phillips enthusiastically responded to Pearson’s out-of-the-mainstream theology at the end of the interview: "Well, I respect very much what you’ve preached, so I look forward to talking to you more about this." This stance isn’t at all surprising, as the CNN anchor endorsed three of her previous guests who hold similarly heterodox views inside Christianity during a March 26, 2010 segment. She even brought back two of them a month later.

CNN, as a whole, has latched onto promoting the agenda of homosexual advocacy groups during 2010. On August 4, the day that a federal judge overturned California’s Proposition 8, the network leaned mostly towards those who opposed the voter-approved amendment which bans same-sex "marriage." A month and a half earlier, senior political analyst Gloria Borger gave a glowing profile of Ted Olson and David Boies, the two main attorneys who worked to overturn Prop 8. CNN also premiered their pro-homosexual parenting documentary, "Gary and Tony Have a Baby," on June 24 and promoted it with a series of pro-homosexual agenda segments during that month.

On CBS’s Sunday Morning, correspondent Martha Teichner promoted left-wing class warfare talking points from former Clinton Labor Secretary Robert Reich: "[He] in a new book points out another ominous parallel between the Great Depression and the ‘Great Recession,’ its cause." Reich proclaimed: "More and more of the income that was generated by the economy went to people at the top." [Audio available here]

Teichner worked to bolster Reich’s argument: "In the last century, there were only two years, in 1928 just before the great crash, and then again in 2007, during which the richest 1% were taking home nearly a quarter of the entire income of the nation." Reich continued his assault on upper income earners: "Last year, when most Americans were suffering, the top 25 hedge fund managers each earned $1 billion. A billion dollars would pay the salaries of something like 20,000 teachers."

Again, Teichner made sure to back up Reich’s assertions: "That wage inequality, Reich argues, is at the heart of our economic woes. And to fix things, we need to pay those teachers and the rest of the middle class more, not less, so they can spend enough to kick-start the economy. And yes, that means higher taxes for the rich."

For a brief moment, the segment featured the opposing side, in the form of Republican Senate Minority Leader Mitch Mcconnell warning that increasing taxes on the rich could further harm the economy. However, Teichner quickly dismissed such a notion, in favor of liberal economic dogma: "In the partisan battle over the future of the Bush tax cuts, Reich disagrees." Reich claimed: "We provided a huge tax cut to the rich and nothing trickled down. After 2001, median wages actually dropped."

Teichner tried to suggest that any tax increases would be modest compared with past tax rates: "The top tax rate now is 35%. If the Bush tax cuts are allowed to expire, nearly 40%. For the record, under President Eisenhower, a Republican, the top rate was 91%. Really. Middle class wages were rising and the rich actually got richer."

As NewsBusters’ Brad Wilmouth earlier reported, giving commentary later in the broadcast, Syfy Channel producer Linda McGibney attacked economist and Sunday Morning contributor Ben Stein for opposing a tax increase on the wealthy. In part, she ranted: "I suppose he thinks he’s beyond sharing his good fortune with the rest of Americans who are suffering financially or he just doesn’t care about them. … I have always understood that the have’s are greedy. This is the first time I’ve heard one of them express it out loud so openly."

Here is a transcript of the September 26 exchange between Teichner and Reich:

9:08AM ET

ROBERT REICH: Typically in a business cycle, we get back to the same economic path we were on. People get their old jobs back or nearly their old jobs. But this time around, very much like the Great Depression, we are not going to be able to go back on the same road.

MARTHA TEICHNER: Former Clinton Labor Secretary Robert Reich in a new book points out another ominous parallel between the Great Depression and the ‘Great Recession,’ its cause.

REICH: More and more of the income that was generated by the economy went to people at the top.

TEICHNER: In the last century, there were only two years, in 1928 just before the great crash, and then again in 2007, during which the richest 1% were taking home nearly a quarter of the entire income of the nation.

REICH: The typical CEO is up to 350 times the salary and benefits of the typical worker. Last year, when most Americans were suffering, the top 25 hedge fund managers each earned $1 billion. A billion dollars would pay the salaries of something like 20,000 teachers.

TEICHNER: That wage inequality, Reich argues, is at the heart of our economic woes. And to fix things, we need to pay those teachers and the rest of the middle class more, not less, so they can spend enough to kick-start the economy. And yes, that means higher taxes for the rich.

REICH: The economy depends – 70% of demand – on consumers and those consumers are essentially the middle class. People who are very rich, they spend a much smaller proportion of their income.

MITCH MCCONNELL [SEN. R-KY]: No recovery will take place if we impose new taxes on the people we need to create jobs.

TEICHNER: In the partisan battle over the future of the Bush tax cuts, Reich disagrees.

REICH: We provided a huge tax cut to the rich and nothing trickled down. After 2001, median wages actually dropped.

TEICHNER: The top tax rate now is 35%. If the Bush tax cuts are allowed to expire, nearly 40%. For the record, under President Eisenhower, a Republican, the top rate was 91%. Really. Middle class wages were rising and the rich actually got richer.

REICH: Henry Ford understood this. He paid his workers $5 a day at the Highland Park Model-T plant. That was a lot of money. That was about twice as much as the typical worker was earning. He said, you know, I’m going to make a lot of money because my workers are going to earn enough that they can turn around and buy the Model-Ts that they are making. You know something, Henry Ford was right.

Prior to tonight’s debut of Lawrence O’Donnell’s new show, The Last Word, MSNBC has been running promos where O’Donnell proclaims how much "political pressure there is on everyone involved" in governing decisions and that it leaves him "respecting every one who steps into that room to do that," adding he’s "gonna disagree with some of those people" but will always "respect the strength it takes to go on in there." Well "respect" was the last thing O’Donnell displayed to a couple of guests that appeared with him on various MSNBC programs.

Back on the February 12 edition of Morning Joe, he was such was in such a rage against former George W. Bush speechwriter Marc Thiessen, going as far as to blame that administration for the 9/11 attacks, host Joe Scarborough actually had to call the proverbial whistle on him and stop the program, to let him cool down. However, when they got back from a commercial break O’Donnell launched into yet another tirade as he called Thiessen a "torture-monger." (video below the fold)

Perhaps O’Donnell’s worst performance came on the October 22, 2004 edition of Scarborough Country when he want lashed out against Vietnam veteran John O’Neill of the Swiftboat Veterans for Truth for daring to challenge then presidential candidate John Kerry’s veracity, as he repeatedly called him a "liar" and charged he did nothing to stop the war.

The following are transcripts of those unhinged attacks by O’Donnell:

First up O’Donnell’s rants against Thiessen on the February 12, Morning Joe:

O’DONNELL: You as a former speechwriter in the White House, you took an oath of office, when you took that job, that you might or might not remember. You actually published a book that says that the President of the United States, on its title, the President is inviting the next attack. Isn’t it true that the President you worked for invited the first attack, by having no idea what was going on with al Qaeda. You just admitted that when you were hit on 9/11, you just said, "We didn’t know who hit us." You said, "We didn’t know who hit us." You were told who was going to hit you before we were hit on 9/11. Your administration invited the first attack, for which you should live in shame!

MARC THIESSEN: Lawrence, Lawrence, Lawrence.

JOE SCARBOROUGH: Go!

THIESSEN: Listen here’s the record. When the, when the, when the Obama administration approach, the law enforcement approach was first working the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. The bombing of the USS Cole, the bombing of our embassies in…

O’DONNELL: Talk about the Bush presidency from the day he was sworn in!

THIESSEN: …and, and, and the 9/11 attacks.

(CROSSTALK)

SCARBOROUGH CUTTING IN: We’re, we’re going to break right now! We’re, we’re going to break right now. We’ll be right back and I’ll be interviewing Marc by myself. We’ll be right back.

…

SCARBOROUGH COMING BACK FROM BREAK: So here we go. Lawrence you have 30 seconds and then Marc gets a response. Ready? Go!

O’DONNELL: Marc I’m wondering about your own personal experience with torture. I know you grew up in the richest zip code in America, in the upper East Side. You went to the only boarding school in Connecticut that I know of that has a golf course as well as two skating rinks.

THIESSEN: Oh my goodness…opposition research.

O’DONNELL: And then you went to Vassar and of course like all the torture-mongers in the White House, the Cheney family included, you never served a day in the military. Never considered that.

THIESSEN: What does that prove Lawrence?

O’DONNELL: Well I’m wondering with that background what is it that gives you an expertise on torture? What makes you love it so much?

Now to O’Donnell’s, October 22, 2004 Scarborough Country, rampage against Vietnam veteran John O’Neill for his part in the Swiftboat Veterans for Truth:

PAT BUCHANAN: Al lright, let me ask you, Lawrence O’Donnell, I mean is this, clearly, Kerry has expressed anger about these ads. And he said later, "I should have answered them earlier in August, and we didn’t do it, and they clearly hurt." But Max Cleland was very public. He went down to Crawford, Texas, to the ranch. Why has Kerry not only ignored the ads, but almost dropped all references? You know, at the convention, it was the convention, "John Kerry, reporting for duty." Why has he dropped all of that now? Are they just trying to sweep that aside or what? 

LAWRENCE O’DONNELL, MSNBC SR. POLITICAL ANALYST: Well, let’s get back to the truth. The fact of the matter is that John O’Neill on MSNBC had to face—debate an argument with Kerry’s bands of brothers people who served with him in Vietnam and knew him well, and plenty of the people who served on that boat with him have come on MSNBC and other networks and refuted much of what’s in that book. And then John O’Neill’s own sources, like Larry Thurlow, turned out to be nuts. He turned out to claim in John O’Neill’s book—and Pat Buchanan and I have both written nonfiction books, and we write them to a very high standard, not this O’Neill standard, where he never tells you in his book that Thurlow got a Bronze Star for the same thing that Kerry got a Bronze Star for, the same encounter with the enemy. And that citation says that there was enemy fire. And the guy, and this Thurlow, who received this Bronze Star, wants us to believe that 35 years had passed and he had never read the words on his own citation. It’s one of the many lies that the book advances. To me, the most interesting lie, John O’Neill, that I would submit to you that you should answer is, you make a lying claim that John Kerry’s anti-war activity prolonged the amount of time that prisoners of war were held in Vietnam. You know the truth is what got them out of Vietnam was ending the war. You know the truth is that John Kerry helped end that war sooner through the protests. And I’d like to ask you, John O’Neill, when you got back from Vietnam, what did you do to save a single life that you left behind in Vietnam? What did you do to get the American soldiers out of Vietnam? 

(CROSSTALK)

BUCHANAN: Hold it. Okay go ahead, John O’Neill.

JOHN O’NEILL, AUTHOR, UNFIT FOR COMMAND: I’d like to respond. First of all, Larry, I don’t think there’s a thing you said that wasn’t a lie in everything you just said. To start off with, with respect to John Kerry, John Kerry’s anti-war activities didn’t get any POWs home. The Treaty of Paris got the POWs home. 

(CROSSTALK)

O’DONNELL: Ending the war, ending the war which you didn’t do a thing to do. You didn’t have the courage to lift a finger against it.

(CROSSTALK)

BUCHANAN: Look, he has got a right to respond. I was in the White House at the time. Nixon had brought half the troops home by the time Kerry made his protest. Go ahead, John O’Neill.

O’NEILL: What actually happened, Kerry wanted to abandon ship and leave the POWs there.  We negotiated a treaty that brought them home. That’s why they’re all here. If Kerry had helped them out, they wouldn’t be in that photograph with us. Kerry’s a guy they’ll never forget. He wanted to leave them behind.

(CROSSTALK)

O’DONNELL: That’s a lie, John O’Neill. Keep lying. It’s all you do.

BUCHANAN: Hold it, John O’Neill. How do you justify the—how do you justify the statement you just made that Kerry wanted to leave the POWs behind? 

O’DONNELL: Lies. He doesn’t justify anything.

BUCHANAN: Where did he do that? 

O’NEILL: On the Dick Cavett show and elsewhere, John Kerry’s position was that we should accept the Madame Binh seven-point proposal, which called for unilateral withdrawal, setting a date after which at some future time, we’d negotiate the return of the POWs. So we would set a date. We would withdraw and then we would begin to discuss how to bring them home. That would have never worked. Our position was, you had to have a deal where the POWs came home. The POWs know that. This is like trying to claim—that’s why they’re all with us, because he would have let them rot in jails.

(CROSSTALK)

O’NEILL: With respect to the rest of what you said, Larry-

(CROSSTALK)

O’DONNELL: What did you do to get them out? What did you do to end the war? What did you do to get them out? What did you do to end the war? You didn’t lift a finger.

O’NEILL: Oh, you’re wrong. You’re exactly wrong, Larry.  First of all, I spent 12 months there.  I wasn’t a fake who spent three months, like John Kerry.
O’DONNELL: What did you do to end the war, not what you did to fight it? What did you do to end it?!

…

BUCHANAN: Tell me, tell me John, about—did not the citation Thurlow got say that they were taking fire?

O’NEILL: It said under fire. That’s true. It was based upon Kerry’s own after-action report.

O’DONNELL: That’s a lie. It’s another lie. That’s a lie.

O’NEILL: Which said there had been 5,000 meters of fire. 

O’DONNELL: Absolutely lie.

(CROSSTALK)

O’DONNELL: You lie in that book endlessly claiming that reports belonged to Kerry that don’t have his name on it, John O’Neill. You lie about documents endlessly. His name is not on the reports. You’re just lying about it. 

(CROSSTALK)

O’DONNELL: And you lied about Thurlow’s Bronze Star. You lied about it as long as you could until the New York Times found the wording of what was on the citation that you, as a lying writer, refused to put in your pack-of-lies book!

(CROSSTALK)

O’DONNELL: Disgusting, lying book!

BUCHANAN:  John, let me ask you this.

O’NEILL: And you, Larry, are a professional liar. 

(CROSSTALK)

O’DONNELL: You have no standards, John O’Neill, as an author. And you know it. It’s a pack of lies! You are unfit to publish! 

(CROSSTALK)

O’NEILL: There are 254 of us, Larry. It’s a little hard to call us all liars. 

BUCHANAN: All right, John O’Neill, let me ask you a quick question. How do you know for certain that John Kerry wrote the after-action report that said the boats were under fire? 

O’NEILL: It has been tracked down specifically in…

O’DONNELL: Lie!

(CROSSTALK)

BUCHANAN: Oh, let him talk.

(CROSSTALK)

O’DONNELL: He just lies. He just spews out lies.

(CROSSTALK)

O’DONNELL: Point to his name on the report, you liar! Point to his name, you liar! These are military records. Point to a name!

(CROSSTALK)

O’NEILL: I will, if you’ll shut up, Larry. You can’t just scream everybody down.

(CROSSTALK)

O’DONNELL: There’s no name. You just spew lies! 

(CROSSTALK)

O’NEILL: -let everybody talk, isn’t-

(CROSSTALK)

BUCHANAN: Look, Lawrence, take it easy. You’ve made your point. We’re going to take a break. We’re going to give John O’Neill a chance to answer that when we come back. We’ll continue this discussion after the break.
…
BUCHANAN: Welcome back. We’re talking with the author of "Unfit For Command," John O’Neill, and Lawrence O’Donnell is with me here in the studio Washington. We have an e-mail, Lawrence, that says: "Why is Mr. O’Donnell so angry? In fact, why are Democrats so angry?  If they don’t calm themselves down, they’re going to have a heart attack."

O’DONNELL: I just hate the lies of John O‘Neill. 

(CROSSTALK) 

O’DONNELL: I hate lies.

BUCHANAN: I know. Now, you’ve argued that these are lies, but let me suggest…

O’DONNELL: It’s not an argument. They’re proven lies. Every single journalistic look at this book has ripped it apart, left it in shreds. O’Neill is a liar. He’s been a liar for 35 years about this.  And he found other liars to…
…

O’NEILL: Can I say one thing?

BUCHANAN: John O’Neill, go ahead, John.

O’NEILL: Pat, Mr. O’Donnell has certainly shown he has a good pair of lungs. But to try and return a little bit to just basic information, you asked the question, how do we know the report was written by Kerry? The first way we know that is that the other four officers that day, all four of them, say Kerry wrote it. The second way we know it is the journalist Tom Lipscomb tracked the report to a Coast Guard cutter and proved that the only one on the cutter to write the report was John Kerry. Third, the report is compatible with John Kerry’s account, which as late as the Democratic Convention.

O’DONNELL: What are the initials on the report? What are the initials on the report? What are the initials?

(CROSSTALK)

BUCHANAN: Let him finish, Lawrence.

(CROSSTALK)

O’DONNELL: Lies.

O’NEILL: Mr. O’Donnell, this is what you all did to the POWs. 

(CROSSTALK)

O’DONNELL: Just tell me the initials, you liar, creepy liar.

O’NEILL: You’re afraid of the American people getting the truth. That’s why you scream and you yell.

Monday brings the debut of CNN’s new “Parker Spitzer,” an 8pm ET political discussion program hosted by columnist Kathleen Parker and the ex-Democratic Governor of New York Eliot Spitzer, who resigned two years ago in the midst of a prostitution scandal.

The new show was championed by then-CNN President Jonathan Klein, who was fired by the network on Friday. “Eliot Spitzer still has a lot of ideas to contribute and a lot of things to say. And I think our viewers are going to find him a very interesting person to tune into every night,” Klein enthused back on June 27 on CNN’s Reliable Sources.

As a reality check on CNN’s effort to rehabilitate this scandal-scarred liberal, MRC intern Alex Fitzsimmons and I pulled together quotes from CNN’s coverage of Spitzer’s scandal back in March 2008. MRC video editor Bob Parks turned the clips we found into a polished video presentation documenting how the infamous “Client #9” was mocked and derided by the anchors and correspondents who are now his colleagues. (Video after the jump)

Quotes from March 2008:

TOM FOREMAN (This Week in Politics, March 14): Governor Spitzer, the politician who has given room service a whole new meaning.

ANDERSON COOPER (AC360, March 11): It seems like Eliot Spitzer, according to allegations, was spending a fair amount of time on his job figuring out ways to hire hookers.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Purchasing a human being should not be allowed in any society.
CAROL COSTELLO (Larry King Live, March 13): Eliot Spitzer at one time understood that.

ANDERSON COOPER (AC360, March 11): According to this criminal complaint, Client Number 9 had a reputation for being difficult and reportedly not wanting to practice safe sex.

WOLF BLITZER (CNN Newsroom, March 12): You’ve got to be a psychiatrist, I think, to basically understand this. And I’m not a psychiatrist by any means.

ANDERSON COOPER (to Dr. Drew Pinsky on AC360, March 12): What do you think is going on with Eliot Spitzer? I mean, people talk about narcissistic personality disorder. Is that what’s involved here?

ANDERSON COOPER (to sex addiction expert Robert Weiss on AC360, March 11): In your blog for us tonight, you suggest that what he’s allegedly done has revealed his "fully-blown narcissistic and addictive, emotional pathology."

JACK CAFFERTY (The Situation Room, March 10): Well, you know, go figure, right? Sometimes these moralistic, holier-than-thou, self-righteous folks get caught up — hoisted on their own petard.

JASON CARROLL (AC360, March 10): He was also called Mr. Clean, and promised in his campaign ad to bring passion back to the state. Instead, he has brought shame.

JOHN ROBERTS (American Morning, March 11): His reputation is ruined and he could lose his job. Could the next stop for Eliot Spitzer be prison?

HEIDI COLLINS (CNN Newsroom, March 13): Sex, scandal and shame. The Eliot Spitzer era comes to a humiliating end in New York.

JACK CAFFERTY (The Situation Room, March 12): One other thing that stuck out watching his announcement today is how absolutely ice cold he was — no remorse, no compassion, no emotion. Didn’t even look at his wife for the entire — reading the thing like he was doing the luncheon speech at a Rotary Club in Bayonne.

JOHN KING (CNN Newsroom, March 12): He does not have a lot of friends, because of how he conducted affairs, how many would use the term how self-righteous and self-assured he was in doing so.

JACK CAFFERTY (The Situation Room, March 11): Nobody likes this guy.

So does anybody think that first staff meeting might be a little awkward?

Gee, I wonder which "cable news show" Joe had in mind . . .

In a seeming shot at Keith Olbermann, Joe Scarborough has predicted that "certain cable news shows" will stir up a "fake controversy" tonight over whether Sarah Palin was booed on Dancing With The Stars [she wasn't].

Here’s the background: Bristol Palin performed on DWTS last night, and Sarah was there in the front row to support her.  Jennifer Grey [of Dirty Dancing fame] also competed last night.  Her backers in the audience began to boo when her scores, which they judged to be too low, were announced. That happened just before the show cut to an interview with Sarah Palin.  Some have tried to suggest that the audience was in fact booing Palin.  But the crowd in fact cheered when Sarah appeared, and as Willie Geist said "my staff and I have studied the tape.  They were not booing [Palin]."

That served as preamble to Joe’s prediction . . .

JOE SCARBOROUGH: You watch this happen.  You watch. You watch on certain cable news shows.

MIKA BRZEZINSKI: No!

SCARBOROUGH: Seriously: you just watch. Fake controversy at its best.

Check out Mika’s body language.  She clearly doesn’t want Joe venturing out into MSNBC’s internal-politics minefield, where Olbermann’s best-among-the-also-rans ratings make him a powerful player.

Note: speaking of Olbermann, Lawrence O’Donnell’s new MSNBC show debuted last night.  I’m counting on Crazy Larry to provide some good manic moments between now and election day.  At the very least, I figured the show would be an Olbermann-free zone.  But: argh!  During last night’s debut there was Olbermann droning on during two segments.  Miss Precious Perfect marking her territory?

Liberals are never so alive as when they’re speaking out against anachronistic straw men. That’s why, in their estimation, the Tea Parties are racist lynch mobs and conservatives who wonder about President Obama’s ties to anti-American radicals are sinister McCarthyites.

So it’s not surprising that The Huffington Post is making a big deal of “Banned Books Week.” The house organ for the self-important Hollywood left – you know, all those “artists” constantly threatened by censorship – featured a string of articles on various aspects of the banned book topic. The week, according to contributor Jonathon Kim, “celebrates the wonderful freedom of being able to read whatever one likes, and reminding us that it’s a freedom that must be fought for constantly.” Kim’s article had to do with a new movie about the 1950s obscenity trial of beat poet Allen Ginsburg’s work, “Howl.” (To their sorrow, an awful lot of English majors know first-hand that Ginsburg won.) Elsewhere, HuffPo linked to a New York Times article that suggested “Ten Ways to Celebrate Banned Books Week.” These are for readers to do “with your students, your children and anyone who believes in having ‘the freedom to read.’”Readers can adopt a “challenged” book (one that parents or civic groups have demanded be removed from school or public libraries). They can “create a map of challenges to demonstrate that book bans and challenges are not isolated phenomena, even in the United States.” (In other words, even parents who don’t live in jerkwater conservative areas care what their kids read.)

The Huffington Post included an article from the head of the liberal American Library Association. “Yes,” warned ALA President Roberta Stevens, “there is still book banning in the United States.”

Stevens wrote that there have been 11,000 reported challenges to books in the United States since 1990 – three fourths of them over books on school library shelves. “Unfortunately, losing the right to choose reading materials for ourselves and our families is a reality in the United States,” Stevens wrote. She then gave the example of a book removed “despite community outrage” by a local school board over “the board’s views on offensive language and sexual content.” School boards, of course, are elected from among the community, and hear the concerns of parents daily. Still, the liberals at the ALA know best.While HuffPo did feature a link to an article that wondered if some books actually should be banned, the rest toed a typical liberal line. In Stevens’ words, it’s a question of “allowing others to decide for us and our communities which reading materials are appropriate!”It doesn’t matter that asking that a book be removed from a school library is far different from banning it, or that school boards, local library boards and municipal councils who decide such things are usually reflecting the democratic will of parents and local residents. The right to give children dirty books is absolute! And that’s what banned books week is about. For every “To Kill a Mockingbird” or “Harry Potter,” there are 10 “The Perks of Being a Wallflower” or “Kissing Kate.” The former was challenged “for its depictions of “homosexuality, sexually explicit, anti-family, offensive language, religious viewpoint, unsuited to age group, drugs, [and] suicide,” the latter “for offensive language and nudity.” The Huffington Post itself has praised teen books that push the gay agenda, and the American Library Association routinely awards gay-themed books.Whatever the Huffington Post and the ALA say, America doesn’t ban books. Concerned parents worry about certain books being where children can access them. Banned Books Week is about the left knocking down a long-dead straw man.

Eric Bolling’s new show on the Fox Business Channel, Money Rocks, saw a significant display of fireworks this evening.  During a discussion of some already controversial statements made by Democratic strategist, Bob Beckel, a very heated exchange developed involving Beckel and Atlas Shrugs publisher, Pamela Geller.

The controversy started when Bolling played a clip of Beckel’s previous appearance on the show in which he stated:

"Look, at some point, I know it’s sensitive here in New York and probably New Jersey, but we have to get over 9/11."

What did he mean by ‘we have to get over 9/11′?  According to Beckel, this was simply an expression of frustration for a variety of things, such as extra security at airports and a few other minor inconveniences designed to catch "a bunch of non-existent terrorists." 

The short list of ‘non-existent terrorists’ since 9/11 that Mr. Beckel must be referring to, include the Madrid train bombers, Russian train bombers, Shoe Bomber, the Lackawanna Six, Fort Hood assassin, the Virginia ‘Jihad’ Network, Christmas Day bomber, Fort Dix plotters, and the Times Square bomber.

Beckel might have been feeling the stress of trying to defend such a blatantly insensitive statement, by providing a blatantly inaccurate defense, as he experienced a misogynistic meltdown directed at Geller in the middle of the segment in which he said:

"You’re a woman, you better be careful about saying who I carry water for."

Clip and partial transcript below…

Over at Atlas Shrugs, Geller asserts that Beckel’s sexist rants were not limited to the on-air conversation.  Prior to the show, she claims:

"I was the only female on the panel and as we were prepping (getting mic’ed etc) for the show, Beckel was regaling his victims (Bob Hemmer, David Webb and Bolling) with sordid tales of pole dancers and the like.  Grotesque and deliberate."

Geller states that the confrontation continued after the break:

"When we cut to break, Beckel chided Bolling for not bringing ‘Jewish slumlords’ on the show (referring to Bolling’s segment on Imam Rauf’s status as a New Jersey slumlord, so named in a lawsuit against Rauf by Union City.)  When I heard Beckel’s Jew hating belch, I said ‘and you’re an anti-Semite.’  He told me to ‘kiss his ass’ to which I responded that he would never get anyone anywhere in the world to get with that."

Beckel’s appearances on FNC have been infuriating at times, but mostly for ideological reasons.  He is, after all, a liberal.  But he clearly crossed a line tonight with his uncharacteristically aggressive attacks on Geller.  Even Arlen Specter knows that you don’t start any argumentative statement with the words ‘you’re a woman.’

For your added nauseating pleasure, please watch the lead-in 11 minutes to this incident, in which the ever-bigoted Ahmad Rehab defends radical Islam by calling everybody else (particularly Geller) a bigot.  That’s what racists do though; they refer to everybody else as the racist.

Racists, and bigots, and radicals.  Oh my!

Enjoy…

Relevant clip at (11:00 – 11:45)

Geller:  I would like to address Mr. Beckel’s point.  I don’t know why you’re carrying water for the most radical, intolerant ideology in the world today.  There have been 20,000 documented radical Islamic attacks since 9/11.  Each one with the imprimatur of a Muslim cleric…

Beckel:  You better be very careful.  You’re a woman, you better be very careful about who you say I carry water for, because you have no idea what you’re talking about.  (Points emphatically at Geller).  And don’t start putting me in the middle of your crap!

Geller:  Don’t you point to me!

Beckel:  I’ll point to you all I want!

Geller:  Don’t you point to me.  You’re a misogynist.

Beckel:  You’re getting yourself fifteen minutes, you get yourself fifteen minutes of fame because you’re (Bolling) picking on a bunch of Muslims.

Geller:  You’re picking on a bunch of women.  You’re a woman hater.

Beckel:  A woman hater?  A woman hater?

Geller:  Look how you’re talking to me.  It’s outrageous.

Beckel:  You are nuts.

Geller:  Yea, I’m nuts.

Please contact Rusty at The Mental Recession, or on Twitter @rustyweiss74

I found Jeremy Williamson on Twitter. But if you read fitness magazines, watch Drop Dead Diva on Lifetime television, or follow the annual “Model Universe” competitions, you may have run into this type 1 diabetic hottie already. Jeremy is a 34-year-old native of Augusta, GA, who attended bible college in Tulsa, OK, and worked as [...]