Chris Wallace (Chris Wallace!) calls out the hosts of Fox and Friends about their two hours of Obama bashing. I’m actually speechless about this. Couldn’t believe it. I do wonder if Wallace is trying to get Obama to lift his Fox News ban, but this does seem sincere. I’m surprised, and impressed.

It was a crazy day at Fox, though. Prior to Wallace coming on air, this happened:

I don’t know what to make of this, but I was surprised at all of this. I do want to point out that the blonde woman in the middle has to be one of the most idiotic people on TV right now. I don’t think she knows what “allegedly” means, just that if she uses it, she can make wild a** accusations of people’s motives.

Granted, this is Fox News. So, was this all staged? Or sincere? Let me know what you think.

(via too many blogs to count, but first seen at Kevin Drum’s place)

Update: Just watched Olbermann do today’s “World’s Worst” segment. Even he’s shocked:

Fox News: the useless network.

Wow, this is just unbelievable:

Fox dispatched a reporter to an ESPN Zone in Washington, DC, where they were lucky to find “online shopper” Peter Perweiler, who did indeed have big online shopping plans. “I’m looking at some big-ticket items this year,” he said, “so I really want to know what other people - problems they’re having with items, things of that nature.”

Good to know. What would also have been good to know: Peter is also the marketing manager at the National Retail Federation.

Um, you think??? I guess I shouldn’t be surprised since this is, after all, a Fox News station.

(via Atrios)

I can’t believe this clip from Fox News where Neil Cavuto links universal healthcare to terrorism.

That’s the best they can come up with. Of course, what they’re afraid of is large organizations where people can disappear into them. So, by that brilliant logic, we should disband companies like Disney, News Corp, GE, and every other large company because they are places where terrorists can hide.

What the hell is wrong with these people and why are they on TV???? My God, are they stupid.

Fox News is apparently launching a “conservative” satire show a la The Daily Show. I’m sure it’ll be hilarious.

What’s amazing to me is that Fox News and their Republican blinders still can’t see that the Daily Show made (more) fun of “the right” or Republicans because they ran all branches of government. I realize Fox News doesn’t feel any obligation to reality, but it might be hard to write a political satire show focusing on people who run nothing…

Ok, like we didn’t know that to begin with.  But this is really too much for me.  Look at these two pictures and see if you can find “the mistakes.”

More attempts to “rewrite” history?

You can watch the Clinton interview I mentioned earlier on Think Progress. They have a video capture of nearly the entire thing.

I think it’s telling that Wallace can’t even look President Clinton in the eye when asking his smear question. Clinton is upset, but under control. It is about time someone did this to Fox, on Fox.

You know when Fox News starts hammering on something, it’s part of the national Republican strategy (must be nice to have a party propaganda network). Unsurprisingly, the new strategy is “Blame Clinton” (they’re not too original, these national Republicans). Chris Wallace gets into the act by securing an interview with Clinton under the guise of talking about The Clinton Global Initiative, then asking nearly immediately “Why didn’t you do more to put bin Laden and al-Qaeda out of business…”

Clinton apparently smacked him down, as he ought to. Reading any of the sources, such as Richard Clarke’s excellent book or the more administration friendly Plan of Attack and you’ll learn the same thing: the Clinton administration made mistakes, but they took the threat of terrorism very seriously. Not one person denies Clarke’s assertion that the message from Sandy Berger and Clarke to the incoming Bush administration was that terrorism would consume more administration resources than anything else.

If that isn’t enough, the foreign policy goals as outlined by President Bush in 2001 speak volumes. The single most important piece of the Bush foreign policy plan in 2001 was the missile defense program. We bucked the ABM treaty, the first of several international agreements we’ve decided to renege on during the Bush administration.

The point here isn’t that Clinton was some sort of terrorist fighting super-President, but simply that this new attempt to shift all blame to Clinton is simply a political move designed to help the Republican’s flagging chances this fall. As Clinton himself says in this interview (airing tomorrow):

But at least I tried. That’s the difference in me and some, including all of the right-wingers who are attacking me now. They ridiculed me for trying. They had eight months to try, they did not try. I tried. So I tried and failed. When I failed, I left a comprehensive anti-terror strategy and the best guy in the country, Dick Clark [sic], who got demoted.

Update: As expected, the blogosphere is doing their research. Think Progress has more of the transcript than the USA Today piece I linked to earlier, including a section where Clinton reads like he’s pissed off. I’m not really sure I blame him.

I used to have some respect for Bill Kristol. He’s clearly a partisan, but at least he seemed to follow some principles. Most importantly, he was able to admit some mistakes when asked tough questions. His Daily Show appearances were pretty good.

So, when I see him saying that the people of Iran would overthrow the government with the “right use of targeted military force.”

History is unkind to this view, and our experiences in Iraq should be a reminder about the unpredictability of these benevolent invasions. Totalitarian regimes so terribly corrupt and corrode civil institutions and the rule of law so much that without the regime, there’s only rot. In Iraq, the regime only maintained order with unbridled force and fear. Once that was removed, the country fell apart.

Even more frightening is that Kristol, like so many before the Iraq war, simply justifies his position with nothing specific to Iran or the Iranian people. We’re given the same “all people want to be free” nonsense that could apply to any country anywhere. He says nothing about Iran while advocating (once again) stepping in with force to make Iranians see how bad their regime is.

How ridiculous is that? Why does this type of punditry get media coverage?

I made the point in 2003 that neither the President or supporters like Kristol made an affirmative case for war. Playing on fears and uncertainty isn’t making an affirmative case. Kristol and his ilk should be talking about what war will do. For example, is there an active resistance movement? What populations will be disenfranchised by the toppling of the regime (and are divisions ethnic)? What about Iranian culture or society would lead them to focus on the regime rather than outside aggressors, as the U.S. would undoubtedly be painted? What’s the postwar plan?

Or maybe I should ask, do you have a postwar plan?

If you’re going to advocate using military force, putting our soldiers in harms way and putting some number of innocent civilians in harms way, you should be required to answer these sorts of questions. War isn’t the same as advocating tax cuts or abortion policy. Lazy punditry shouldn’t be acceptable here.

(found the Think Progress piece via Atrios)