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Chris Matthews and his panel name Beck, Limbaugh, Palin, the birthers and their ilk and white tribalism as the plague of 2009. The right wingers will of course take this as proof that Matthews is part of that 'librul' media and complain about the tingle up his leg while forgetting about Mitten's chin and Grandpa Fred's Aqua Velva.

MATTHEWS: Welcome back. And more of our look back at this year. Next category, we're calling it a "Plague on All Our Houses." First, swine flu – now, that was a big, big deal this year. The birthers, another kind of plague, the people who pushed the idea that Barack Obama was not born in America. Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, and their ilk -– the nutty talk went off the rails this past summer. Here is Beck:

GLENN BECK: This President, I think, has exposed himself as a guy over and over and over again who has a deep-seated hatred for white people or the white culture. I don't know what it is.

BECK: This guy is, I believe, a racist.

MATTHEWS: And our last plague, those reality TV wannabes. The balloon family and those White House gate crashers. Howard, another rich list. By the way, Glenn Beck, white people. What's that supposed to mean?

HOWARD FINEMAN: Well, it's hard not to name him the "Plague of the Year." And not for ideological reasons. Because I think the name calling, the shameless name calling, and stirring up of the worst in our society is something that should be condemned. It was a year ago, almost a year ago, that we were all out there on the mall, when Barack Obama was sworn in as President, one of the great moments in American history, no matter what your politics are, no matter who you are, where you come from, and to sort of drag all that through the mud I think is a plague.

MATTHEWS: Yes, bring back tribalism.

FINEMAN: Yeah, exactly.

KATTY KAY: I would say the birthers, and I think because it's insidious...

MATTHEWS: Same deal, by the way.

KAY: I think it’s a similar deal, and with the birthers, it's getting at this idea that Americans somehow don't like anything that's foreign, that anything that's foreign is suspicious. And there's no evidence of this. And the way that people like Sarah Palin have said this is an issue without actually coming out straight and saying I think he wasn't born in America. There’s a very mean-spiritedness about the birthers, I find, worrying about...

MATTHEWS: I think it’s tribalism, white tribalism.

NORAH O’DONNELL: It is, and it's an effort to delegitimize the President in some way, to offer an ad hominem attack in many ways...

KAY: Without even straight-up attacking.

O’DONNELL: ...suggesting he’s not credible, he’s not American. And it’s sort of a way to – it’s racist in many ways to do it.

MATTHEWS: John, you've got a book coming out, a big one, coming out very early this year, right at the new year time. And you’re going to be on here to talk about it. Was this something that was simmering, this sort of tribalistic resentment of Barack Obama being what he is?

JOHN HEILEMANN: Yeah, it’s funny, you know, people forget that this happened at the end of general election in 2008 where John McCain and Sarah Palin were out at their rallies and you started to see, when she started to talk about how he was palling around with terrorists, you started to see the early incipient kind of signs of what became the birther movement, where you’d have people standing up calling him a socialist, calling him a communist...

MATTHEWS: Yeah.

HEILEMANN: ...calling him an Arab. You know, that stuff was out there, and you only saw it at the very, very end. And by that point, Obama was so far ahead that people kind of ignored it. But it was there and they activated it.

MATTHEWS: And did you hear that Palin was saying that later on, more recently, she wished they’d done more of that Reverend Wright stuff, more of that ethnic stuff, that racial stuff? She wanted to push that.

HEILEMANN: She was very unhappy about going after Reverend Wright.

MATTHEWS: To John McCain’s lasting credit he refused to play the racial card, which is always easy to play in this country, as we’ve seen.

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December 20, 2009 CNN

Of all the falsehoods and distortions in the political discourse this year, one stood out from the rest.

"Death panels."

The claim set political debate afire when it was made in August, raising issues from the role of government in health care to the bounds of acceptable political discussion. In a nod to the way technology has transformed politics, the statement wasn't made in an interview or a television ad. Sarah Palin posted it on her Facebook page.

Her assertion — that the government would set up boards to determine whether seniors and the disabled were worthy of care — spread through newscasts, talk shows, blogs and town hall meetings. Opponents of health care legislation said it revealed the real goals of the Democratic proposals. Advocates for health reform said it showed the depths to which their opponents would sink. Still others scratched their heads and said, "Death panels? Really?"

The editors of PolitiFact.com, the fact-checking Web site of the St. Petersburg Times, have chosen it as our inaugural "Lie of the Year."

PolitiFact readers overwhelmingly supported the decision. Nearly 5,000 voted in a national poll to name the biggest lie, and 61 percent chose "death panels" from a field of eight finalists. Read more at Politifact

I scratched my head the other day when I heard that Sarah Palin had been invited to be a celebrity guest at a fundraiser for Canadian hospitals. Palin has railed against the Canadian health care system and continues to spread fear and lies about health care reform and lead the right wing rallying cry to keep Americans enslaved to giant insurance companies.

I don't know what genius came up with the idea, but apparently, the backlash was so great that organizers had to rescind their invitation:

HAMILTON, Ont. - Sarah Palin has been given the boot as a celebrity fundraiser for hospitals in Hamilton, Ont., but she will come to town raise money for a local children’s charity instead.

Palin has brought the American health care debate to Canada and it is causing a storm of controversy as concerned hospital supporters have protested her appearance to raise money for two local institutions in April.

The former vice-presidential candidate was supposed to speak at a fund-raising event for the Juravinski Cancer Centre and St. Peter’s Hospital in Hamilton. But a backlash of negative publicity cancelled those plans. Read on...

You may recall Palin being punked last month by Canadian comedian Mary Walsh, who posed as a conservative reporter. Palin told Walsh, “Canada needs to dismantle its public health-care system and allow private enterprise to get involved and turn a profit.”

Which made her a perfect candidate to come to Canada to raise money for their hospitals? I'm still scratching my head on this one...

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Glenn Beck invited on professional liar and smear artist Michael Goldfarb -- whose skill at distorting and misleading and obfuscating we have some personal experience with -- to promote Beck's latest ginned-up-out-of-nothing "scandal", namely, the claim that the White House threatened Sen. Ben Nelson of Nebraska with yanking Offut Air Force Base if he didn't play ball on the health-care reform bill.

Well, as Media Matters observes, this story has in fact been denied by all the parties involved, including Sen. Nelson's office:

His spokesman quickly dismissed a report by conservative columnist Michelle Malkin that Nelson was even being threatened with “closure of an air force base,” presumably Offutt Air Force Base, which is south of Omaha and home of U.S. Strategic Command. Malkin also said Nelson has been promised a “bribe bigger than Sen. Landrieu's.”

That's a reference to Louisiana Sen. Mary Landrieu, a Democrat and one of the last holdouts on the vote to begin the health care debate. The legislation includes a provision to increase Louisiana's Medicaid funds that Landrieu says is worth $300 million.

Nelson spokesman Jake Thompson said both of Malkin's claims about Nelson are false.

“The rumor is not true,” Thompson said. “This misinformation is coming from inside-the-Beltway partisans who only want to derail health care reform.”

White House Communications Director Dan Pfeiffer likewise chimed in:

Proving that they will leave no stone unturned in their efforts to undermine health reform, some blogs opposing reform are now trafficking an absurd rumor that Nebraska's Offutt Air Force Base is being threatened over Senator Ben Nelson's vote on the Senate reform bill.

To be perfectly clear: these rumors are completely baseless and false.

These denials, of course, were a matter of public record well before Beck went on the air. Not that dishonest hacks like Beck and Goldfarb would have informed the public of their existence.

Indeed, you'll see that Goldfarb has to start out retracting one of the key elements of his original reportage -- that it was Rahm Emanuel who had made the call. As you can see, he has to explain that this was false, though he does not use that word.

Ultimately, his only source for this story is an anonymous, unidentified "Senate staffer".

But wingnuts are never content to just call an unconfirmed rumor an unconfirmed rumor (unless it's one that makes wingnuts look bad). So of course the shrinking contingent of wingnuts in the Senate, led by moral paragon Sen. John Ensign, R-C Street, is demanding an investigation.

Now Goldfarb is using that fact to continue defending his disappearing "scandal", illustrating just how deeply these guys are breathing their own exhaust:

They protest a little too much. I do not know this story is "absolutely false." To the contrary, I'm confident it's true. Twenty senators are now calling for an investigation, and each is presumably pretty well sourced in the Senate. If the charges are "absolutely false," maybe the White House will encourage Senate Democrats to call this Republican bluff. I won't hold my breath.

And we won't hold our breath waiting for a correction when Goldfarb is eventually proven wrong once again.

Meanwhile, Sen. Nelson is calling it "yellow journalism at its worst." Sounds about right.

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I don't always agree with Christopher Hitchens on a number of issues, but he's right about Palin and didn't pull any punches on Morning Joe. From The HuffPo--Christopher Hitchens Slams Palin: 'A Disgraceful Opportunist And Real Moral Coward':

Christopher Hitchens followed up his long Slate column detailing the dangers of Sarah Palin's brand of populism with more harsh criticism on MSNBC's Morning Joe today.

[...]

Hitchens: Don't be too hard on her. She didn't write that piece and she probably hasn't read it. I doubt she could either read or write it. Everything she does is for effect, she's, and is always deniable. She could switch back in a minute. At the moment she thinks her tea party crowd wants to hear this kind of thing so she'll say that. She's been out to say, 'well, I don't know but I think the President ought to produce his birth certificate. I'm not saying it isn't a good question. Then later, cause she's got to go to the Gridiron dinner in Washington, and learn how to use a knife and fork and be taught by Fred Malek. She takes it back. She's a disgraceful opportunist and a real moral coward.

Ouch.

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December 11, 2009 NBC Conan O'Brien

Sarah Palin getting William Shatner back by reading excerpts from his autobiography on The Tonight Show!

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Sarah Palin, discussing President Obama's Nobel Prize speech, sounded like she wanted credit for it:

I liked what he said. In fact, I thumbed through my book quickly this morning, saying, 'Wow, that really sounded familiar. I talked in my book, too, about the fallen nature of man and why war is necessary at times, and history's lessons when it comes to knowing when it is when we engage in warfare. A lot of Americans right now are getting to read my take on when war is necessary.

No, Sarah, he didn't steal your idea.

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What hath Republicans wrought?

Sure, they believed, as John noted the other day, that when they were unleashing what Bill Kristol likes to call "guided populism", they were in fact opening the gates for right-wing populism. And now they're looking not only at a a phenomenon much more popular than the standard Republican brand, but a movement that is about to swallow them whole.

And the Tea Party organizers -- notably the Astroturf outfits that originated the Parties, such as FreedomWorks and Americans For Prosperity -- are making that perfectly clear. Two spokesmen for those groups -- Matt Kibbe of FreedomWorks and the AFP's Tim Phillips, went on Hardball yesterday and made this explicit:

MATTHEWS: Matt, how about third party? What about the Tea Party? Sarah Palin is kind of hard to read. She is fascinating. Let‘s face it, we‘re all fascinated with her, because she‘s exciting as a political figure right now. But she‘s talking third party. I mean, she answered the question of Lars Larson. Maybe it just came to mind, but she said, yeah, I might go third party, something like that. Would you guys knock off an incumbent Republican by going third party? You know how the vote splits. Split the right, the Dem wins.

KIBBE: The better way to do it is to take over the Republican party. Frankly, that‘s what our goal is. We need to replace the Republican establishment with fiscal conservatives that are actually willing to cut spending.

All this talk about a "third party" is just so much smokescreen. What's actually happening is that the GOP is fast becoming a full-fledged right-wing-populist entity. Which means that the latent extremism lurking out on the right's fringes for so many years is becoming its new lifeblood, such as it is.

Funny thing is, as Matthews managed to point out early in the segment, not even the Tea Partiers' supposed hero -- Ronald Reagan -- can live up to their standards:

MATTHEWS: Has there ever been a strong conservative president, for example, in your lifetime or anybody—your grandfather‘s lifetime? Who do you look to as a good role model for the tea party people?

KIBBE: Well, obviously, Ronald Reagan is the closest thing we have.

MATTHEWS: What did he do in terms of fiscal policy?

KIBBE: Oh, he—he said that we shouldn't spend money we don‘t have, and he said that the government shouldn't get involved in things that it‘s not very good at doing.

(CROSSTALK)

MATTHEWS: Yes. Have you ever checked the numbers with Reagan?

KIBBE: Well, I understand. I understand...

(CROSSTALK)

MATTHEWS: The national debt went from under $1 trillion to $3 trillion. He did more to increase exponentially the size of the debt of any president in history.

And he's your role model.

KIBBE: Well, President Obama is...

(CROSSTALK)

MATTHEWS: No, I'm asking you. I have asked you one president that you can look up to who was good at tea party politics and ideology.

KIBBE: Right. Right.

MATTHEWS: If it's not Reagan, because he clearly didn't do it, who do you look to? Coolidge? How far do you have to look back?

KIBBE: I think we need to find somebody that can meet that standard.

MATTHEWS: So, nobody has recently?

KIBBE: No, certainly not.

Ah well. Blowing off cognitive dissonance is a special teabagger trait. It just adds to their "insane" mystique.

Republicans may have thought these guys had their backs. But now they're looking with increasing worry back over their shoulders. Sow the wind, reap the whirlwind, dudes.

Suburban Guerrilla: SCREWED

Climate Progress: The Washington Post goes tabloid and publishes Palin's second falsehood-filled op-ed in five months - on climate science

TalkLeft: Leaving the cult?

Robert Reich's Blog: The president's jobs initiative doesn't measure up

MAL Contends: Ike the liberal

MN Progressive Project: Michelle Bachman: "Fiscal conservative" You must be kiddin' me!

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Rick Santorum is very concerned that President Obama is not handling the "Muslim threat" well enough and is considering a run in 2012. He was asked if Palin was qualified to be president some day and he told the press that Sarah Palin has some 'splainin' to do.

Asked if he thinks former Gov. Sarah Palin, R-Alaska, is qualified to be president, Santorum demurred:

"No, I'll let the people decide that," he said. "I think, you know, she's done a lot to draw attention to herself that's positive. She's done some things that, you know, certainly are going to cause her to have to do some explaining if she runs for president. But right now I think she's on a roll, she's having a good time, she's having an impact, which look -- if you're sitting here out of office, the thing you want to do is have an impact on the direction of the country right now, if you're not governing things. And she's having an impact."

Palin is so entertaining for Man-Dog Rick. What a joker that Sarah is. He says that he'll be of great help in the 2010 midterms and he wants to weigh in on the important matters. You see, conservatives like Santorum destroyed the country for eight years and want another crack at finishing us off.

Man-Dog speaks:

Though Santorum has publicly sidestepped questions about his intentions, his friend and political adviser, Deal Hudson, told me that Santorum has informed his closest associates that he is very likely to declare his candidacy.

“[Santorum] said he was not considering running a few months ago,” Hudson said, “but he has grown so concerned about the direction [President Barack] Obama is taking the country that he told me he wants to get involved.” Santorum “believes that Obama is weak on the Muslim threat and he is convinced that it’s going to turn around and bite him badly,” said Hudson.

Hudson, who has advised President George W. Bush and Republican presidential nominee Senator John McCain on Catholic issues, and who maintains close ties to leaders of the evangelical right, told me Santorum has become preoccupied with issues of national security. “He believes that Obama is weak on the Muslim threat and he is convinced that it’s going to turn around and bite him badly,” Hudson said.

No doubt Santorum will bring to a 2012 national race the same kind of success he had as a Senator from Pennsylvania in 2006.

Republicans are already deluded enough as it is. Santorum's on another level, where someone who was recently turned out by voters and currently holds no office can convince themselves they'll be attractive to voters on a national scale.

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Bill O'Reilly opened The Factor talking about the new Rasmussen poll that says that people would vote for teabaggers over republicans. Tea Party Tops GOP on Three-Way Generic Ballot

Running under the Tea Party brand may be better in congressional races than being a Republican. In a three-way Generic Ballot test, the latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds Democrats attracting 36% of the vote. The Tea Party candidate picks up 23%, and Republicans finish third at 18%. Another 22% are undecided.

This is really bad news for Republicans/conservatives. Bill Kristol loves right-wing populism just as long as they can be controlled, but now the problem is that the conservative elites can't control them.

The teabaggers must be driving Kristol's Straussian beliefs crazy. A good mob is a controlled mob that is led by conservative elites who are the only people truly qualified to lead society. Gingrich knows not to take his findings too far because teabaggers are already mad at him, so he immediately praises the teabagger Queen, Sarah Palin. BillO tries to say that Palin is as inexperienced as Obama. Sure, Bill, whatever you say. But back to Newt.

Gingrich:.. I think Going Rouge could in fact take Palin to a third party, the challenge is historically third parties are protests. They're not a path to power. And as you pointed out the first effect of a third party in 2012 would be the re-election of Obama and would be the survival of Pelosi as Speaker of the House, you now, maybe in perpetuity.

O'Reilly: I don't think so, I think Pelosi maybe booted out of there next November, that's how bad things are.

Gingrich: but she might, she wouldn't be if you had enough third party candidates (garbled) splitting the opposition.

O'Reilly: The earliest a third party could be viable is in 2012.

Newt is going to have a really tough time trying to convince the teabaggers to join up with the GOP establishment because they want to control it. When conservatives reached out to the black helicopter/militia crowd, they put their possible comeback in the hands of insane people. Take that, Bill Kristol!

Here's how Bill Kristol views the teabaggers, via pg 46 from the "Gang of Five."

Only elitist, brilliant men like Bill Kristol are allowed to lead people. Real Americans are but sheep to be herded and controlled to do what their elitist elders tell them to do. What a horrible and disgusting philosophy to live by, but that's Kristol and his crew for you.

You can pick up Nina Easton's book here: Gang of Five: Leaders at the Center of the Conservative Ascendacy

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December 07, 2009 CNN: Levi Johnston really spills the beans on the Palin family in his interview with Joy Behar. "There was a lot of talk about divorce in the Palin home," Johnston said. "I've never even seen them sleep in the same room."

Dave N.: But I thought gay couples were the biggest threat to the institution of marriage!

Palin, in October 2008:

Palin: I am, in my own, state, I have voted along with the vast majority of Alaskans who had the opportunity to vote to amend our Constitution defining marriage as between one man and one woman. I wish on a federal level that that’s where we would go because I don’t support gay marriage. I’m not going to be out there judging individuals, sitting in a seat of judgment telling what they can and can’t do, should and should not do, but I certainly can express my own opinion here and take actions that I believe would be best for traditional marriage and that’s casting my votes and speaking up for traditional marriage that, that instrument that it’s the foundation of our society is that strong family and that’s based on that traditional definition of marriage, so I do support that.