MSNBC's Chris Matthews used to get a thrill up his leg when he heard Barack Obama speak.

After Thursday's pathetic presidential press conference, the "Hardball" host compared Obama to a "lousy" new car that ended up being  a "clunker," and then asked the Huffington Post's Jennifer Donahue, "Are you going to buy one next year?" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

CHRIS MATTHEWS, HOST: Let me tell you the problem with Obama. If you bought a car this year, a Ford or a Chevy, whatever you bought, and it was lousy. It turned out to be a clinker, a clunker. Are you going to buy one next year?

JENNIFER DONAHUE, HUFFINGTON POST: No.

MATTHEWS: Okay, that's the problem. Thank you, Jennifer Donahue, and thank you, Mark McKinnon. That is the problem, he's got to win the argument. “My heart next year, my model next year is going to be so good. Let me show it to you,” and convince us that what he's telling us about the next four years is so compelling, so winning, that we say, “Okay, we know we got a bad model this year, but we’re going to get a good one next year.” I’m just looking at it. He's got to really make this case to win this campaign. It's up to him to do it. He can do it, but what a challenge.

As Matthews would say, wow!

Even more surprising, the host wasn't the only liberal on Thursday's program expressing doubt about Obama.

In an earlier segment, New York magazine's John Heilemann and the Huffington Post's Howard Fineman discussed how the president during Thursday's press conference looked like a man that's really not interested in getting reelected.

Later, the Washington Post's Dana Milbank observed that if this is the kind of fire Obama's got in his belly, it looks like he's taking too much antacid.

Add it up, and on Thursday's show, four Obama-loving liberals were quite unenthusiastic about the object of their affection.

Once again, wow!

In a report filed at the Los Angeles Times's Politics Now blog earlier today, Washington Bureau reporter James Oliphant relayed a number of whoppers delivered by Vice President Joe Biden without anything resembling a challenge.

Breaking Biden's bilge into three sections, they involve his claim about the historical origins of the Tea Party, which Biden characterized as a collection of "barbarians" only a month ago (and as "terrorists" two month ago); his hit at Bank of America and its $5 monthly fee for debit-card use; and the nature of the "bailouts" which followed the passage of the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) in the fall of 2008. In this first part, I will go after what Biden said about the Tea Party. An excerpt from Oliphant's writeup follows the jump (bolds are mine throughout):

---

Biden likens Occupy Wall Street to tea party, blasts BofA

Vice President Joe Biden likened the Occupy Wall Street movement to the tea party at a forum in Washington on Thursday, saying both were driven by middle-class frustration with government bailouts of corporate America.

“What is the core of that protest, and why is it increasing in terms of the people its attracting? The core is that the bargain has been breached with the American people. The core is that the American people do not think the system is fair or on the level," Biden said at forum sponsored by the Atlantic magazine and the Aspen Institute at the Newseum in Washington.

“There’s a lot in common with the tea party,” Biden said. “The tea party started why? TARP. They thought it was unfair we were bailing out the big guys.”

(Uh, just out of curiosity, didn't both Joe Biden and his boss Barack Obama support "bailing out the big guys" and for TARP? Why, yes they did.)

Citizens' underlying frustrations origins indeed began with TARP, but the frustration didn't begin jell into organized protests until February of 2009 in direct response to imminent passage of the Obama administration's stimulus plan. The St. Louis Tea Party tells us that "The 2009 Stimulus helped inpire the Tea Party movement in February 2009." Oliphant's own paper noted the following on February 27, 2009:

… a wave of images, blog posts and videos from a nationwide protest has been washing across the Web. The protests, dubbed "tea parties" by participants, were held Friday in several U.S. cities including Portland and Washington, D.C. as a response to what demonstrators see as unfettered spending and encroaching government as represented by President Obama's economic recovery plans.

An Associated Press photo at the beginning of the item has the following caption: "Protesters rally against the stimulus plan in Hartford, Conn." The word "bailout" and "TARP" do not appear in the Times's article. That's because it was the Obama administration's "economic recovery plans," which came to be known as "stimulus," which drove everyday Americans to demonstrate.

Jim Geraghty's take on the Tea Party's origins at National Review in January of this year mentions TARP, but in context the actions of the Obama administration in its early months dominate his treatment, and clearly were the organizing motivator:

You didn’t see the demographics that make up the GOP base – small businessmen, parents, members of the military – marching and waving signs because they were too busy working for a living.

… Enter the Obama administration.

Like most successes, at least a thousand figures are claiming fatherhood of the Tea Party phenomenon, but a key moment came Feb. 19, 2009, from an unlikely source: CNBC correspondent Rick Santelli, who launched into an off-the-cuff rant when asked to evaluate the initial moves from the Obama administration to deal with a housing market that had plummeted. “The government is promoting bad behavior!” Santelli shouted, accusing the administration of a plan that amounted to “subsidizing the losers’ mortgages.”

… Listen to a discussion of the debt and deficit at a Tea Party meeting, and you won’t hear a lot of numbers; instead, it is articulated as a moral issue, and a national moral failure. The spending spree of TARP and the stimulus — and a deficit exacerbated by plummeting tax revenues — is spurring Americans to look at the debt as a great horror inflicted upon their children and grand children.

Again, while TARP has been a particular source of concern among Tea Party sympathizers, it is not, as Biden claims, the reason why Tea Party activism began. It began in earnest as a result of the stimulus plan, and the sudden prospect, since fulfilled for three years running, that the nation was facing trillion-dollar budget deficits as far as the eye can see. Assuming he reads and remembers what has been written in his own newspaper, James Oliphant should know that, in my opinion probably does. But he still let Biden's babble and his sudden fake respect for the "barbarians" in the Tea Party go unchallenged.

The Occupy Wall Street crowd, in total contrast to Tea Party sympathizers, seems singularly uninterested in the size of the government's annual deficits. The only things the two groups appear to have in common is that their participants breathe in oxygen and breathe out carbon dioxide. As to who the real "barbarians" are, well, that determination has become pretty easy given the conduct of many in the OWS contingent.

Later this evening, Part 2 will deal with Biden's comments on Bank of America, while Part 3 will address the largely untold story of the original bank bailouts.

Cross-posted at BizzyBlog.com.

It's becoming quite clear that there's no rock some members of the media won't crawl from under to trash Sarah Palin.

Case in point – MSNBC's Martin Bashir used his final segment Thursday to eulogize Apple's Steve Jobs as "the very best of American exceptionalism" while in the same breath attacked the former Alaska governor as "the very worst form of American opportunism" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

MARTIN BASHIR: Today, we’ve marked two important stories. The tragic and sad passing of a true creative genius at the age of just 56, and hopefully the end of a charade that’s been going on for three years. One individual represents the very best of American exceptionalism: brilliant, determined, creative. The other represents the very worst form of American opportunism: vacuous, crass, and according to almost every biographer, vindictive, too.

He played himself to the very end, casually dressed and solely focused on producing product after product that would literally transform culture, information, and our social interactions. Over the last three years, she created nothing, produced nothing, and served no one but herself.

And while the vast majority of consumers have expressed high levels of satisfaction with the products he produced, imagine how her most ardent followers must feel today. They were misled into buying ghost-written and vainglorious books that attempted to create the illusion of leadership and character. They bought tickets to see a documentary that ignored facts and was a celluloid whitewash of her life. Even on the day she confirmed what all of us knew, that she wouldn’t be running for president, she still dropped a video asking for more donations. Amazing.

But although the death of Steve Jobs coincided with Sarah Palin’s announcement, it has been a helpful accident of fate because it allows us to realize and commemorate the greatness of one individual’s contribution and the utter futility of the other. May he rest in peace.

What kind of a person mixes his admiration for a dead man with his contempt for another human being that had absolutely no connection to one another?

Exactly what has Palin done to folks like Bashir to make them completely lose all sense of decency and morality when her name comes up?

He claimed that over the last three years Palin's created nothing. But her first book "Going Rogue" was number one on the New York Times best seller list for six weeks eventually selling over two million copies. Her second, "America By Heart," hit number two on that list eventually selling about one million copies.

Is that nothing, Mr. Bashir?

As for television, this pompous commentator could only dream of getting the five million viewers Palin did for the debut of her show on TLC.

And maybe that's at the heart of all the media's hatred of this women: it's not her politics, but how so many more Americans are interested in her views than theirs. Because her opinions are so diametric, these insecure souls somehow feel better about themselves by tearing her apart on national television.

This certainly was not the first time Bashir took petty swipes at Palin. As NewsBusters previously reported, he went after her in May:

Vindictive attacks, conspiracy, paranoia, and a single-minded ambition. It's all part of daily life as a Sarah Palin staffer, according to a scathing new tell-all. Some 60,000 e-mails are the basis for a book in which a former aide portrays Palin as incompetent and ethically compromised during her tenure as Alaska governor.

Now, over four months later, with Palin's presidential candidacy announcement coming coincident with the death of one of the greatest inventors in decades, Bashir chose to honor Jobs in virtually the same breath as he attacked her.

I'd register my shock and dismay, but nothing that happens on this joke of a network or is uttered by its stable of faux pundits is at all surprising anymore.

As for Bashir, he told Jobs to rest in peace. This would have been far more heartfelt and respectful if his eulogy didn't include contempt for someone the Apple creator probably never met and likely had absolutely nothing to do with.

Makes you wonder how he looks himself in the mirror when he brushes his teeth.

CNN's financial guru Ali Velshi admitted that the press didn't really challenge President Obama's proposal for tax hikes after his Thursday press conference on his jobs bill. Velshi, perhaps going soft himself, noted during the 12 p.m. hour that Obama's speech "seemed like a bit of an economics lesson" how the President attacked Republicans and their demands on the count that they don't create jobs.

"He spoke very little about the actual tax increases, and there wasn't a lot of challenge from the reporters," Velshi explained, "which leads me to believe that people either think that the jobs bill really is dead in the water, or they realize that most Americans, according to our polling at least, support the idea of a tax on people making more than a million dollars." [Click here for audio.]

Anchor Suzanne Malveaux opted for the image of a "homework assignment" the President has given to the press, to have the jobs bill analyzed by economists and prove his jobs-creating agenda wrong.

Perhaps Obama and members of the press haven't read or acknowledged the conservative critiques of the President's jobs proposal. The Heritage Foundation's provided a devastating critique of the plan, but the AP's fact-check shortly after the President initially introduced his plan wasn't so nice either.

"It’s hard to see how the program would not raise the deficit over the next year or two," the AP wrote, "because most of the envisioned spending cuts and tax increases are designed to come later rather than now, when they could jeopardize the fragile recovery."

The AP also cast doubt on the notion that all the proposals would quickly create employment. "One is to set up a national infrastructure bank to raise private capital for roads, rail, bridges, airports and waterways. Even supporters of such a bank doubt it could have much impact on jobs in the next two years because it takes time to set up."

Meanwhile, the Heritage Foundation's senior analyst in Tax Policy, Curtis Dubay, ripped the plan as "poorly crafted and contradictory."

"Since it is likely President Obama's job proposals would create few, if any permanent, positions, taken together with the tax hike on job creators, his plan would likely reduce employment in the long term," Dubay summarized.

A transcript of the segment, which aired on October 6 at 12:12 p.m. EDT, is as follows:

SUZANNE MANVEAUX: The President clearly putting the onus on Congress to answer to this jobs bill and why Republicans do not support the jobs bill. The President trying to portray himself as someone who has an open door to the White House, one who is negotiating instead of campaigning, and even offering, Ali, a homework assignment to us, to take the Jobs Bill, take a look at it, go to these economists, have them analyze it, and prove him wrong that this is not going to create some 1.9 million dollar – jobs, rather – for the American people. What did you hear in the President's case that he made here, first of all, and secondly, was there anything that you heard that would allow the Republicans to jump on board here and to negotiate, to compromise, on his Jobs Act?

ALI VELSHI, CNN chief business correspondent: Largely, to your second question first, no, not really. In fact, there was nothing particularly surprising. The one piece of news we were sort of expecting to hear, he kind of buried, about the 5.6 percent on people on over $1 million worth of income. I'll tell you – and I don't mean this in a bad way, Suzanne – but it seemed like a bit of an economics lesson. He was giving a lot of answers to reporters explaining supply and demand, and basic economics, and using the argument that so many of the things that the Republicans have been demanding, particularly to see in something like a jobs bill, he argued, don't create jobs.

So he says if you want to reduce regulation on air quality and climate, or you want to reduce regulation on financial institutions, how does that create jobs in the short term? And he was sort of challenging them to do that. He made that point. He spoke very little about the actual tax increases, and there wasn't a lot of challenge from the reporters, which leads me to believe that people either think that the jobs bill really is dead in the water, or they realize that most Americans, according to our polling at least, support the idea of a tax on people making more than a million dollars.

He also was asked, as you know, a couple of times about the "Occupy Wall Street" protest, and he made the point that the one thing that would help protect consumers against financial institutions and their behavior would be this consumer financial protection board, which the Republicans stood in the way of – initially the formation of, and then the appointment of Elizabeth Warren to the head of, and now the appointment of a new candidate.

So he made the point that there is some avenue whereby consumers can feel more protected from financial institutions, but that the Republicans haven't gotten on board to support that. So sort of a wide-ranging economics lesson if you will, but I don't know that he won any Republicans over with it.

Washington (CNSNews.com) – A draft of the Labor, Health, and Human Services Funding Bill for fiscal year 2012 blocks Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) funding for National Public Radio (NPR) programming.

The draft of the U.S. House bill states that “none of the funds made available to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting … may be used to pay dues to, acquire programs from, or otherwise support National Public Radio.”

CPB funding reaches NPR chiefly through public radio stations that pay to air NPR programs.

The publicly-funded corporation will provide $102.4 million in community service grants to more than 400 public radio stations nationwide in FY 2012, according to its 2012/2014 appropriations justification report.

Stations use that money to acquire programming from national sources like NPR, Public Radio International (PRI), and American Public Media (APM) – although exactly how much is unclear.

“NPR programming continued to be the single largest source of programming on NPR member stations (in terms of quarter hours) in the spring of 2011,” according to Kyle Anderson, Democratic communications director for the House Administration Committee.

“NPR programming composed 30.1 percent of the programming for NPR member stations during this period," he said.

Public radio stations produce only about 29 percent of their own programming, according to the CPB Web site.

While all public radio stations rely on CPB funds, rural stations tend to be more dependent than urban stations due to factors like a lower population density and limited potential for private support.

The appropriation report said that, according to the CPB, “in FY 2009, 108 rural stations relied on CPB for at least 25 percent of their revenue; while 22 rural stations, many on Native American reservations, relied on CPB funding for at least 50 percent of their revenue.”

CPB has also awarded grants to NPR to perform research projects and develop programs, but this income formed a negligible portion of NPR’s budget.

“From fiscal year 2006 through fiscal year 2010, NPR received approximately $6.4 million from 14 CPB grants to conduct high-definition radio research and development, carry out public media projects, and produce nationally distributed programs,” according to a May 2011 report by the Government Accountability Office.

Those grants formed about 1 percent of NPR’s operating budget in 2010, it said.

The Appropriations Committee’s subcommittee on Labor, Health, and Human Service released a draft of the bill on September 29.

The draft will go through subcommittee markup before being put to the full committee for recommendation to the House. The bill will then require Senate approval before it reaches the president’s desk.

Originally posted at our sister site, CNSNews.com.

A bad joke about President Obama that involved Adolf Hitler is apparently unpardonable to ESPN, whereas a crass sexual reference about former Gov. Sarah Palin (R), well, that may actually be riotously funny to some at the network.

ESPN today announced that it will no longer use Hank Williams Junior's "Are You Ready for Some Football" to promote the network's "Monday Night Football" programming after Williams's comment on Monday's "Fox & Friends" comparing the famous Boehner/Obama golf outing to Adolf Hitler playing golf with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

On Monday the network pulled Williams's promo for the October 3 game by saying in a statement, "We are extremely disappointed with his comments, and as a result we have decided to pull the open from tonight's telecast."

Yet to our knowledge, we at NewsBusters are unaware of any similar edict by ESPN to prevent former boxer and convicted rapist Mike Tyson from returning on the network's programming or of any disciplinary action against the radio hosts who allowed Tyson to Palin "met the wombshifter" when she allegedly had a fling with basketball player Glen Rice.

Indeed, as the Sister Toldjah blog noted on September 20, ESPN radio host Mitch Moss tweeted his approval of Tyson's crass humor:

WOW! @miketyson just made his most epic appearance ever with Gridlock! #wombshifter??! Are you serious?! My head hurts from laughing.

Mitch Moss is still co-hosting Gridlock on ESPN 1100 in Las Vegas and can be found on Twitter here. It appears he's since thought better of his Tyson tweet and deleted it.

You can find the screen capture on Sister Toldjah's blog, however.

During the "Psycho Talk" segment of The Ed Show on Thursday, MSNBC host Ed Schultz complained that Massachusetts Republican Senator Scott Brown "has degraded women" as he highlighted liberal criticism of Senator Brown for a joke he recently made about Democratic Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren.

Schultz noted that Brown is the successor to former Democratic Senator Ted Kennedy, as if to suggest that he were a disgrace to the former Democratic Senator.

After introducing the segment by charging that the Republican Senator "is starting to hit below the belt," the MSNBC host showed a clip of Warren taking a crack at Brown at a Democratic debate by declaring that she kept her clothes on during her time in college rather than pose nude to pay for classes. Then came a soundbiteof Brown being asked if he had responded to her jab at him, with the Massachusetts Republican joking, "Thank God," that she had kept her clothes on.

Schultz then brought up former Senator Kenendy as he accused Brown of having "degraded women." Schultz: "So this is a guy who took over Ted Kennedy's Senate seat? And this isn't the first time Scott Brown has degraded women in public."

As if to suggest further evidence that Brown is tainting Kennedy's Senate seat, the MSNBC host then played the famous clip of Senator Brown teasing his daughters about being "available" during his victory speech in 2010.

Schultz continued:

Uh, yeah, Scott Brown might have gotten into a lot more trouble with his latest comment. The National Organization of Women and Emily's List have condemned his remarks about Warren and suggested that he drop out of the 2012 race. I don't think that's going to happen. For the guy who stripped for a magazine to take such a low blow at a female opponent is desperate psycho talk.

Below is a complete transcript of the "Psycho Talk" segment from the Thursday, october 6, The Ed Show on MSNBC:

ED SCHULTZ: And in "Psycho Talk," tonight, Massachusetts Senator Scott Brown may be in danger of losing his Senate seat in that state. Polls are showing that he's running neck and neck with Democrat Elizabeth Warren. So the guy who once posed nude in a magazine is starting to hit below the belt. It all started with Elizabeth Warren's answer to this question during a recent Democratic debate in Massachusetts.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE MODERATE IN DEBATE: To help pay for his law school education, Scott Brown posed for Cosmo. How did you pay for your college education?

(AUDIENCE LAUGHTER)

ELIZABETH WARREN, MASSACHUSETTS DEMOCRATIC SENATE CANDIDATE: I kept my clothes on.

(AUDIENCE LAUGHTER)

SCHULTZ: Scott Brown responded on a Boston radio show today.

AUDIO OF UNIDENTIFIED MALE HOST OF RADIO SHOW: Have you officially responded to Elizabeth Warren's comment about how she didn't take her clothes off?

AUDIO OF SENATOR SCOTT BROWN (R-MA), LAUGHING: Thank God.

SCHULTZ: So this is a guy who took over Ted Kennedy's Senate seat? And this isn't the first time Scott Brown has degraded women in public. Remember what he said about his daughters during his victory speech last year.

BROWN: Just in case anybody who's watching throughout the country, yes, they're both available. No, no, no. Only kidding. Only kidding. Arianna is definitely not available, but Ayla is. I can see I'm going to get in trouble when I get home.

SCHULTZ: Uh, yeah, Scott Brown might have gotten into a lot more trouble with his latest comment. The National Organization of Women and Emily's List have condemned his remarks about Warren and suggested that he drop out of the 2012 race. I don't think that's going to happen. For the guy who stripped for a magazine to take such a low blow at a female opponent is desperate psycho talk.

Strangely claiming to still be an "independent," actor-slash-Obama-advisor Kal Penn wrote for the God's Politics blog on September 29 that his heart was broken by the crowds at Republican debates, but urged  Obama's young voters it's "time to re-engage!" That doesn't sound very "independent" of Obama at all.

But, then "Kumar" of the marijuana-addled "Harold and Kumar" movies has only donated to Democrats. That would include this piece:

It broke my heart when I watched the Republican presidential debates and saw some people in the audience applaud the notion that young Americans without health care should be left to die. It saddened me this week when they booed a brave service member fighting for us overseas just because he happens to be gay.

Whether you’re a Democrat, a Republican, or an Independent like me, our generation cannot let the president’s strong vision be undone after everything we have fought for and won. We inherited debt, wars, a bickering political system, and a dangerous growing gap between those at the very top and everyone else. But we have achieved incredible successes, and have so much more left to still do. It’s not right to roll that back.

I’ve been motivated by the reality that progress is possible with a leader who understands what’s at stake. But progress is never easy, which is all the more reason to keep a focus on positivity and abandon cynicism.

Penn even thinks the media isn't pro-Obama enough:

The news media rarely cover good stories about youth issues these days, but recently, several outlets did report on the success of the Affordable Care Act and its impact on young adults. Since the bill’s passage in 2010, nearly one million more young adults have obtained health care coverage.

By giving people under 26 the security of knowing they can use their parents’ insurance policies, our generation will no longer be at the mercy of insurance companies and won’t have to go without health coverage as we start our careers. These reported numbers of newly insured young people are incredible, and clearly illustrate how President Obama’s vision for a country with quality and affordable health care for all is becoming a reality.

Despite these big steps in the right direction, our work is far from over. If some members of Congress or other presidential contenders get their way and repeal important legislation such as The Affordable Care Act, or reinstate Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, these positive changes will be taken away from millions of Americans who have new found security.

Twenty years ago, Senate Democrats and National Public Radio reporter Nina Totenberg colluded to try and ruin the Supreme Court nomination of Clarence Thomas by promoting the never-substantiated sexual harassment allegations of Anita Hill. If a woman ever claimed Barack Obama talked up Long Dong Silver porn films to her, you can bet it would be seen as an ugly, racist right-wing smear promoted by crackpots. But the liberal media presented Hill as a sober and centrist Saint Anita, not part of a lie-manufacturing left-wing conspiracy. (See Totenberg's activism in our new Special Report as one of the top 20 liberal excesses of public broadcasting.)

Hill strongly denied to the Senate Judiciary Committee that she was making these allegations for her own benefit or that she would be making any hay out of her time in the spotlight. Then at the end of 1993, news broke that she struck a million-dollar-plus book deal with Doubleday. On Friday, The Washington Post's Krissah Thompson filed a report that celebrated "her role" in the hearings, and completely sidestepped whether she was lying her face off.

The headline on the front of the Style section was "Anita Hill and a hearing that never adjourned." This is a laughable headline, considering that liberals and feminists all developed a feverish amnesia when in 1994, Paula Jones accused President Clinton of dropping his pants and telling her to "kiss it" in a Little Rock hotel room  in 1991 when he was governor. Their feminist consciousness completely vanished in 1999 when Juanita Broaddrick's tale of Bill Clinton raping her at another Little Rock hotel in 1978 surfaced. The hearings were "adjourned" throughout Clinton's presidency. Anita Hill was not sought out for comment on Clinton.

If the "hearing never adjourned," then we might have learned how Hill's story surfaced in the liberal media — but then, in an epic triumph on NPR transparency, Nina Totenberg shredded documents to avoid legal scrutiny.

Thompson utterly ignored Hill's millionaire payday, still presenting Hill as some kind of victim for what she tried to do to destroy Thomas's career:

For many, Hill embodies the fight against sexual harassment and gender discrimination, even as she triggers vitriol from others who dismiss her testimony as a partisan attack against Thomas.

“The hearing had for me an unexpected consequence,” Hill said in an interview. “I just didn’t have any sense that it was going to resonate in the way that it did. It has been kind of difficult for me.”

…As a key witness at his nomination hearings, she brought graphic accusations against him before a Senate panel, detailing lurid and harassing sexual statements, which Thomas vehemently denied. The controversy gripped the country.

The hearings also changed the trajectory of Hill’s life. The questioning by the Senate Judiciary Committee, then a panel of white men, was “hurtful,” she said, and she does not believe a white woman would have met the same reception. But she also said she does not regret her involvement.

Thompson ignores that the confirmation hearings were over when Hill's unproven tale surfaced on NPR, which forced a special weekend of additional hearings. Other than a few snatches of quote from Justice Thomas's autobiography, there was no conservative or Republican or Thomas supporter in the article to dispute Hill's charges or her lucrative career or her liberal objectives. Instead, liberal D.C. Delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton is brought forward to speak for the Sisterhood:

For years after the hearings, Hill focused her scholarly work on issues of sexual harrassment, saying she felt compelled to raise the matter. Looking back, she and others believe the hearings were something of a turning point on gender.

“Sexual harassment was something women didn’t even want to speak about,” said Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-D.C.), one of the speakers at a day-long event Thursday at Georgetown Law Center titled “Context and Consequences: The Hill-Thomas Hearings Twenty Years Later.”

“They felt cornered by it. They felt trapped by it,” Norton said. “Something had to be done. We had to talk about it.”

…Norton, one of seven women in Congress who publicly demanded that the Senate hear from Hill, said the “most important” result of the hearings was the large number of women elected to Congress in 1992.

“It is very hard to think of any legal proceedings that had the effect of the Anita Hill hearings in the sense that women clearly went to the polls with the notion in mind that you had to have more women in Congress.”

This is the same tone the media had in 1991 — Hill's accusations were treated as something to be supportively sensitive about — and whether the allegations were true was utterly beside the point. Did Eleanor Holmes Norton make a scene at the Capitol in 1994 or 1999 as she had with the other feminists in 1991? Did she or any of the female Democrats elected in 1992 care whether President Clinton was a rapist? Try and find the evidence. The Post article closed with a supportive flourish:

Speaking Thursday at the gathering, Hill sounded almost celebratory.

“I could not be happier than I am right now because I know that testimony, no matter what anyone said and no matter who sits on the bench today, I know that testimony was not in vain,” she said as she closed the conference. “I have lived with the issues of the hearings for 20 years now. I know the work that is being done and as I hear it I am encouraged.”

Liberals are always encouraged by the sympathetic publicity provided by the Washington Post.

In a report filed at the Los Angeles Times's Politics Now blog earlier today, Washington Bureau reporter James Oliphant relayed a number of whoppers delivered by Vice President Joe Biden without anything resembling a challenge. In Part 1, I noted how Biden, who in August described Tea Party sympathizers as "terrorists" and in September as "barbarians," today spoke in complimentary terms of how much the Occupy Wall Street crowd has in common with them. In Part 2, I dealt with the Veep's hit at financially struggling Bank of America for having the nerve to try to recover some of what the Dodd-Frank "financial reform" legislation took away by charging some customers a $5 monthly fee for debit-card use.

This final part will deal with Biden's rendition of how the "bank bailout" portion of TARP operated, which is quite different from the reality. The relevant excerpt from Oliphant, which necessarily overlaps the first two parts, follows (bolds are mine throughout):

---

… “There’s a lot in common with the tea party,” Biden said. “The tea party started why? TARP. They thought it was unfair we were bailing out the big guys.”

… “Banks are part of the problem in the economy,” he said. “The American people know — they don’t guess, they know — the reason the CEO of the Bank of America, or anybody in that business, is in the business is because they, that guy making 50,000 bucks bailed him out, bailed him out. Put his financial security on the line when his government said we’re gonna come up with a trillion-plus dollars to bail him out.”

Of Bank of America, Biden said, “At a minimum, they are incredibly tone deaf. At a minimum. At a maximum, they are not paying their fair share of the bargain here. And middle-class people are getting killed.”

The fact is that the TARP was twisted by Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson into something completely different than what was intended (or at least as advertised), and that the banks were forced to do his bidding whether they wanted to or not.

Here, from the TARP roll call vote — which both President Obama and Biden supported — is the description of what the law was supposed to encompass:

(A bill to provide authority for the Federal Government to purchase and insure certain types of troubled assets for the purposes of providing stability to and preventing disruption in the economy and financial system and protecting taxpayers, to amend the Internal Revenue Code of 1986 to provide incentives for energy production and conservation, to extend certain expiring provisions, to provide individual income tax relief, and for other purposes.)

The introductory section of the bill (full text here) makes it clear that congresspersons and senators believed they were voting for a measure involving purchases of "troubled assets," principally delinquent and defaulted-upon mortgages:

The Secretary is authorized to establish the Troubled Asset Relief Program (or ‘‘TARP’’) to purchase, and to make and fund commitments to purchase, troubled assets from any financial institution, on such terms and conditions as are determined by the Secretary, and in accordance with this Act and the policies and procedures developed and published by the Secretary.

The bill's specific definition of "troubled assets" was:

(A) residential or commercial mortgages and any securities, obligations, or other instruments that are based on or related to such mortgages, that in each case was originated or issued on or before March 14, 2008, the purchase of which the Secretary determines promotes financial market stability; and (B) any other financial instrument that the Secretary, after consultation with the Chairman of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, determines the purchase of which is necessary to promote financial market stability, but only upon transmittal of such determination, in writing, to the appropriate committees of Congress.

But Hank Paulson didn't do anything even resembling what the TARP law envisioned. Instead, less than two weeks later, as reported virtually uniquely on Tuesday, October 14 by CNBC's Dylan Ratigan and Charles Gasparino (video here), he (figuratively, we assume) "put a gun to their (big bankers') heads" and forced them to accept partial government ownership of their institutions:

Host Dylan Ratigan: Well we all know that obscene amounts of risk (were) taken inside of the banking system, leaving some banks crippled, some banks frozen, and other banks with huge opportunities.

Uh, many of the banks didn’t want to be tainted with the government bailout funds because they didn’t want to be mistaken for a fool when they actually felt that they were the smart one that didn’t do it.

Well Hank Paulson said “The heck with that.” He stuck all of them with some of the bailout money. And he said “Listen, we’re going to reset the clock here and move forward.” Charlie, how are the banks that felt they basically didn’t commit the crime, as it were, of excess or reckless risk, uh, respond to the fact that even they will be stuck with this capital?

Charlie Gasparino: Well y’know they were all kind of stupid to some extent …..

….. the Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson put all these egos in the room, and basically put guns to their heads, forcing them to take the money to bolster the banking system.

Some of the firms say they didn’t want the cash, but it’s pretty clear that all of them did need to take the cash, given the continued upheaval in the banking system that crushed shares last week of Morgan as well as Goldman Sachs and just about everybody else.

So this is essentially, uh, Dylan, a case where, y’know, you can deny you have any problems. Even the best-capitalized banks have problems. They own this stuff. And Paulson at one point said, “Listen, if you don’t want it, it doesn’t matter, gun to your head, you gotta take it.”

Ratigan: Yeah, whether you think you’re sick or not, you’re taking the medicine.

Gasparino: Because you’re sick anyway.

Ratigan: Exactly.

Though there is no good reason to doubt what Ratigan and Gasparino reported — no one to my knowledge has ever challenged them — there was virtually no media coverage of this monumental and possibly illegal shift by Paulson, as well as almost no mention of its coercive nature. In terms of coercion, I was only able to find a single Associated Press item, which noted it quite cryptically:

Executives of the country’s biggest banks were summoned to a remarkable meeting at the Treasury Department on Monday to be briefed on the plan. Paulson basically told the bank CEOs that they had to accept the government stock purchases for the good of the U.S. economy.

Apparently, "or else." It's not difficult to imagine the tremendous pressure Paulson, his lieutenant at the Federal Reserve in New York Tim Geithner, and any number of other regulators could have brought onto any bank refusing government "investment."

This is all relevant to Biden's bailout-related comments because:

• He contends that "anybody in that (banking) business, is in the business" only because they were bailed out. As Ratigan and Gasparino made crystal clear, some of the banks involved didn't believe they needed the money. Assuming they're correct, they weren't "bailed out." They were "forced in." Bank of America was likely one of the institutions which needed the bailout money, but that's beside the point in the context of Biden's comment, which smears the entire banking industry.
• He accuses B of A of "not paying their fair share of the bargain here." Well Joe, you seem to have forgotten that the bank paid all of their bailout money back, with interest (actually preferred dividends) almost two years ago, and that whatever "bargain" was formally struck is long since over — or should be. But of course, it's never over when government authoritarians and their supportive mobs are involved.

The LAT's Oliphant is by no means the only person who is ignoring these pertinent facts, of course. But it's long past time that someone besides the talking heads in an obscure CNBC video and yours truly note what really happened in October 2008. Like so many others before him, Oliphant whiffed.

Cross-posted at BizzyBlog.com.