Rachel Maddow and Meghan McCain

Rachel Maddow's interview this evening with Meghan McCain wasn't particularly exciting, but was definitely a change of pace from what you normally see from these discussion shows.  Both Maddow and McCaing were exceptionally sensible!  

I especially love that Meghan McCain admitted that she doesn't know anything about the economy, and that Maddow accepted that response without being at all condescending!  Nice change of pace.

I do, however, take issue with the fact that while McCain admitted on Maddow's show that she doesn't know anything about the economy, it doesn't stop her from saying "a second stimulus doesn't make sense." 

If she's just saying she doesn't know anything about the economy as an excuse to not justify her views, my respect for Meghan will dwindle.

Part 1:

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

Part 2:

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

Jon Stewart Blasts Santelli and CNBC Coverage

Here's the video clip of the segment I Twittered about last night...Great stuff!

The Daily Show With Jon StewartM - Th 11p / 10c

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Ideas vs. Tantrums

Great article by David Frum over at The New Majority sizing up the battle between the leader of the country, President Obama, and the leader of the floundering Republican Party, Boss Limbaugh:

Here’s the duel that Obama and Limbaugh are jointly arranging:

On the one side, the president of the United States: soft-spoken and conciliatory, never angry, always invoking the recession and its victims. This president invokes the language of “responsibility,” and in his own life seems to epitomize that ideal: He is physically honed and disciplined, his worst vice an occasional cigarette. He is at the same time an apparently devoted husband and father. Unsurprisingly, women voters trust and admire him.

And for the leader of the Republicans? A man who is aggressive and bombastic, cutting and sarcastic, who dismisses the concerned citizens in network news focus groups as “losers.” With his private plane and his cigars, his history of drug dependency and his personal bulk, not to mention his tangled marital history, Rush is a walking stereotype of self-indulgence – exactly the image that Barack Obama most wants to affix to our philosophy and our party. And we’re cooperating! Those images of crowds of CPACers cheering Rush’s every rancorous word – we’ll be seeing them
rebroadcast for a long time.

Rush knows what he is doing. The worse conservatives do, the more important Rush becomes as leader of the ardent remnant. The better conservatives succeed, the more we become a broad national governing coalition, the more Rush will be sidelined.

Republican War on Science Continues!

Discover Magazine has a great article on George Will's and the Washington Post's failure to perform basic fact checking in his article about global climate change not being a legitimate concern...In his article, Will claimed that:

As global levels of sea ice declined last year, many experts said this was evidence of man-made global warming. Since September, however, the increase in sea ice has been the fastest change, either up or down, since 1979, when satellite record-keeping began. According to the University of Illinois' Arctic Climate Research Center, global sea ice levels now equal those of 1979.

Unfortunately, the University of Illinois' Arctic Climate Research Center said no such thing, issuing a rebuttal on their website:

In an opinion piece by George Will published on February 15, 2009 in the Washington Post, George Will states “According to the University of Illinois’ Arctic Climate Research Center, global sea ice levels now equal those of 1979.”

We do not know where George Will is getting his information, but our data shows that on February 15, 1979, global sea ice area was 16.79 million sq. km and on February 15, 2009, global sea ice area was 15.45 million sq. km. Therefore, global sea ice levels are 1.34 million sq. km less in February 2009 than in February 1979. This decrease in sea ice area is roughly equal to the area of Texas, California, and Oklahoma combined.

It is disturbing that the Washington Post would publish such information without first checking the facts.

Rumor has it that Will is coming out with another article in tomorrow's Post where he continues to defend his lack of fact checking... Stay classy, conservatives!  

Republicans Love Being the Victim

The Republican quest to perpetually be the victim is alive and well under the Obama administration, this time evidenced by a conversation between the lovable criminal G. Gordon Liddy and Rick Santelli, a new hero to the right. It's fun when Republicans are so desperate for heroes that they start coming from the much maligned NBC network.
First, let's be clear what Gibbs, Obama's Press Secretary actually said:

I’ve watched Mr. Santelli on cable the past 24 hours or so. I’m not entirely
sure where Mr. Santelli lives or in what house he lives but the American people are struggling every day to meet their mortgages, stay in their jobs, pay their bills, send their kids to school. I think we left a few months ago the adage that if it was good for a derivatives trader that it was good for Main Street. I think the verdict is in on that.

While Gibbs is clearly pointing out the disparity between the neighborhood Santelli lives in and what most Americans are experiencing, being a Republican, Santelli is forced to abandon all reasoning and take that as a personal threat from the White House. Good old Liddy is more than happy to jump in and join him in his pity party:

SANTELLI: He started that press conference saying, “I don’t know where he lives,
I don’t know where his house is.” This is the Press Secretary of the White
House. Is that the kind of thing we want? Is that —
LIDDY: It’s a veiled threat.
SANTELLI: It really is. […] I don’t really want to be a spokesman,
but I really am very proud of a) the response I’m getting, which is
overwhelmingly positive, and b) discourse, that is debate. That if the pressure
and the heat I’m taking from the White House – the fact my kids are nervous to
go to school – I can take that, okay.