Larry King

WATB: McCain cancels Larry King appearance

  ..all because he doesn't like how CNN's Campbell Brown treated his PR monkey Tucker Bounds Monday night. If you can't stand up to Dan Senor's wife, Senator, how can we trust you to stand up to the terrorists?

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It's amazing that John McCain was so offended by a journalist actually doing her job. All Campbell Brown did was press Tucker to name one important decision Sarah Palin made as "commander-in-chief" of the Alaska National Guard. It's not surprising that he was hard-pressed to come up with one considering the Alaska National Guard General has confirmed that she has nothing to do with national defense activities. Strike 18 for the McCain/Palin ticket.




A Rare Glimpse at the Real McCain

Ever since John McCain apparently ran out of 'get out of gaffe free' cards and was actually held to account for having more homes than he could keep track of, it has this blogger wondering if the traditional media might finally be ready to fairly report the facts and not the myths about our candidates. If so, CNN's dual "Revealed" episodes on both candidates the other night was a fair start in that direction. Besides actually asking McCain about his role in the Keating 5 scandal, they also confronted him about his multiple extramarital affairs. Watch it:

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John Cole ties the affair, McCain's housing crisis, and what has been the media's Orwellian framing of elitism in this campaign all together and sums it up neatly:

Just so we are clear- visiting your grandmother while vacationing in Hawaii, the state where you were you were born- elitist.

Meeting the millionaire heiress daughter (who you will soon begin an affair with and divorce your first wife and then go on and buy a ton of houses) in Hawaii and then going on and honeymooning in Hawaii – not elitist.

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  John Kerry swiftboater Jerome Corsi is at it again. After writing a book back in 2004 which sought to sink John Kerry's Presidential hopes by calling into question his heroic Vietnam service, Corsi has now set hs sights on Barack Obama. With all the secret-Muslim/unpatriotic/radical-black-liberation-theologist smears already circulating, you might think his job would be easier this time around.Well, if every news outlet is as "fair and balanced" as CNN was last night in covering the book, Corsi and his ilk might be in a bit of trouble. Watch while MediaMatters' Paul Waldman, author of the book Free Ride: John McCain and the Media, dismantles every single one of Corsi's lies in rather humiliating fashion. In this clip,Corsi gets slammed for claiming "700 footnotes" while refusing to acknowledge that one of his sources is a widely discredited anti-semitic right-wing blogger.

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WALDMAN: He talks about how many footnotes he has and how many sources he has. Well, if you actually look at them, there are dozens and dozens of citations to right-wing Web sites and blogs. One of the people that he cites as a quote/unquote source is a man named Andy Martin, who is an anti- Semitic right-wing blogger who once called a judge a dirty Jew and filed so many frivolous lawsuits that he's now no longer allowed to file lawsuits.

So my question to Mr. Corsi is, since you cite Andy Martin multiple times as a source, are there any other anti-Semitic right- wing bloggers that you also use as sources or is he the only one?

CORSI: All right. This is what Media Matters does. They frame questions that you...

WALDMAN: This is what we do. We look at what you wrote.

CORSI: [...] If you'd like to talk, I can just sit here. The book has close to 700 footnotes in it. The footnotes are of primary sources. There must be 100 books cited in that. I did interviews. The interviews are cited. There's newspapers included...

KING: Well, respond to the question about Mr. Martin.

CORSI: Well, I quote -- I can remember one quip I quote from him -- and it's just a quip, which is -- where he basically is saying if Obama will lie about his background and his family, he'll lie about anything. And this was in reference to the way Obama presents his father in the autobiography, which I write about extension extensively."

MediaMatters has the entire segment here as well as a thorough debunking of Corsi's book here.

The Dems have an email campaign going called: Get the Truth Out About Jerome Corsi. Please sign up and help us to expose this fraud.

UPDATE: The Obama campaign has released an exhaustive 41 page rebuttal to "fringe bigot" Corsi titled "Unfit for Publication." Read it and learn it here.

Full transcript below the fold. 

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John McCain appeared via satellite with CNN’s Larry King last night, and the two covered a fair amount of ground in a short amount of time. There were a handful of important exchanges, but this was arguably the most striking.

King asked McCain what he’d do, as president, if he learned that bin Laden was in Pakistan, and he had a choice to send in U.S. forces after him. McCain replied, “Larry, I’m not going to go there and here’s why, because Pakistan is a sovereign nation.... But I want to assure you I will get Osama bin Laden as president of the United States and I will bring him to justice no matter what it takes.”

Unless, “what it takes” includes going into Pakistan.

I have to admit, I’ve heard McCain staking out a similar position for months, and I have no idea why he’s sticking to this. Barack Obama has said he’d pursue high-value terrorist targets into areas of Pakistan where the Musharraf government has little or no control, launching limited attacks based on actionable intelligence. McCain believes we shouldn’t pursue these terrorist targets, because he’s concerned about Pakistani “sovereignty.”

But this is crazy. Existing U.S. policy, under the Bush administration, is to go after terrorists in Pakistan. Obama wants to keep this policy in place. In fact, we’ve already executed this policy on more than one occasion, and have killed al Qaeda leaders hiding in Pakistani mountains. McCain thinks this is a mistake? McCain disagrees with existing U.S. policy? He wants to do “what it takes,” but Pakistani “sovereignty” is so important, McCain would scale back counter-terrorism efforts in the region?

If there’s any coherent rationale behind McCain’s approach, it’s hiding well.


  When I heard Michael Wiener Savage was going to appear on "Larry King Live" Monday night (with Glenn Beck guest-hosting) to "defend" his horrific remarks about children with autism -- "In 99 percent of the cases, it's a brat who hasn't been told to cut the act out. That's what autism is." -- I knew to expect at least two things: (a) he would claim that he was "taken out of context", and (b) he would attack MediaMatters for bringing it to the public's attention. What I didn't expect, however, is that he would attempt the PR equivalent of a quadruple axel.

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Beck: It seems pretty clear that you don't really believe autism exists.

Savage: No, no, no, no, no. Again, you took what they gave you. But you didn't take the entire preceding material. [...] This was in the broader context of the overmedicalization, the over-diagnosis of disease, using our children as profit centers. I've spent all day saying what a shame it is that I -- as a man who has spent his entire life defending the defenseless, mainly children -- should have to defend myself from charges leveled at me from men who specialize in hating families and children, namely MediaMatters -- who probably come after you as well -- by ripping things out of context and making me look like the monster that they are.

You see, Michael Savage is a humanitarian who's always looking out for the kids! When he says children diagnosed with autism are "brats" who just need a father to smack some sense into them, he's actually defending them. How dare anyone "take him out of context" when all he's trying to do is speak candidly about the epidemic of over-medicating children?! What do those so-called "experts" know about autism, anyway?

Here are a few other examples of Savage's humanitarianism and "defense of the defenseless":

Savage: "We're getting refugees now who have never used a telephone, a toothbrush, or toilet paper. ... [T]hey never assimilate. And then their children become gang-bangers."

Savage accused former page of "gay-baiting" Foley and added: "Maybe he's a Democrat."

Savage advocated "militarization of our children" to respond to terror threat.

You can use MM's form to find your local Savage station and make your voice heard. AFLAC has already decided to pull their ads.


Larry King Live: Michael Moore On Obama, Clinton, Wright and McCain

Michael Moore appeared on Larry King Live Wednesday to talk about his support for Barack Obama, his views on Hillary Clinton's campaign, the Rev. Wright distraction and as expected, spoke some serious truth about John McCain and how he's wrong for America.

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While Moore hasn't been shy about his dismay with Hillary Clinton's campaign, he talks about party reconciliation after the Democratic primary is over and acknowledges that he hears from a lot of women, many of them older women, who support Hillary and rightfully so. Larry King tries to get Moore to praise McCain, as all elite media pundits do, but Michael hits him hard on vowing to run a third Bush term with disastrous policies that as an "elderly American" would hurt him, were he not a U.S. Senator:

"...And we've seen him angry. And as a senior citizen maybe he's experiencing things now, as an elderly American where it's not the same as if he were a young person in this country. Certainly, if he wanted to go and get a job other than U.S. Senator, at his age, he'd have a pretty hard time, wouldn't he?"


C&L's Late Nite Music Club with Scofield Medeski Martin & Wood

I love MMW and when you add John Scofield to the mix, well---it's a funky good time. I wouldn't mind putting down a few tunes like this. It's invigorating.

This is a great record: A Go Go: "Chank"


Larry King: David Frum Is Told His Kettle Is Black

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Monday night was a true Talking Head fest on Larry King Live, with guests Stephanie Miller, Peter Beinart, Ron Reagan, Kellyanne Conway and David Frum talking about the upcoming elections, naturally.

Why David Frum, architect of some of the most heinous lies ever told to the American public ("Axis of Evil" anyone?), is invited on these shows for anything other than to be publicly ridiculed and/or scorned is beyond me. And that he could have the audacity to question Barack Obama's experience when he was part of Team Anti-Midas is truly beyond ironic.

It’s a very odd and ironic kind of story. Here’s the rap on this guy. I mean, this is a little bit like discovering Dwight Eisenhower didn’t actually run Dday. What is...why should…why should Barack Obama be President? What is there about him? He’s never achieved anything. He’s never done anything. He’s never run anything. He’s a completely insubstantial person. But he has one great attribute, which is that he’s a spellbinding orator. And so that was the case he was making: “never mind that I haven’t done anything, words matter. But the words I’m using aren’t mine.” And suddenly that makes you think if there was a record of accomplishment, you’re right this would all be as insubstantial as everyone on the panel has been saving. Since there is no record of accomplishment, since he’s running only on his words. The fact that they’re not his words, that’s pretty serious to my mind, because it raises the question who is he? What is he? On what does he stake his claim? Maybe we should be running Deval Patrick for the Democratic nominee, after all, he gives the same speech.

Um, yeah. So the speechwriter to the man who gave us "Is our children learning?" is questioning Obama's authenticity because he used a few key phrases from a friend with whom he shares both a friendship and campaign advisers? And the man Frum championed into the White House, what were his accomplishments? Even the touted two terms as governor of Texas is laughable, as the Texas governorship is hardly an executive position with any power.


Daily Show: I Now Pronounce You Dick & Larry

tds-dicklarry.jpg Jon runs through the highlights of Dick Cheney's cryptic interview with Larry King.

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Michael Moore vs Sanjay Gupta

 

Michael Moore meets up with Dr. Gupta on Larry King to air out their differences because of a "fact check" segment Sanjay did about "Sicko" that Moore took exception to with Wolf Blitzer. Gupta did admit to an error regarding in his piece about claiming Moore said the per capita spending on health care in Cuba was $25 instead of $251...icon Download | play icon Download | play

By the end of their segment, despite Gupta trying to pull the whole "no system is perfect, so why even try?" argument, they do end up agreeing with each other on the larger issue---health care reform. I hope CNN will stop running this segment.

Adam Howard: "As Gupta tries to defend his clearly biased report by claiming Moore has "cherry-picked" his numbers (a typical tactic employed by Moore's right-wing detractors), Moore explains that all of his figures are from 2007 and were generated from President Bush's Health and Human Services


President Clinton: Gonzo Should Go

larryking-billclinton.jpg  On "Larry King Live" last night, President Clinton called on AG Gonzales to resign.

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The best thing he could do for this president that he served so loyally is to step aside.


Al Franken to CNN: Fire Glenn Beck

alfranken.jpg On Wednesday night, as the Imus controversy swirled, Al Franken asked Larry King why Glenn Beck was still on CNN after he asked newly elected Rep. Ellison if he was working for the enemy. I've asked the same question myself. One that CNN has never answered....04/11/07

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Transcript via CNN

FRANKEN: You know, it's -- it's their choice. I think -- I think NBC made the right decision. I think cable news is cable news. And he has that position.

I have heard a lot of talk radio -- now, I will give you an example. CNN has Glenn Beck on. Glenn Beck asked my congressman, Keith Ellison, who is the first Muslim to be elected to Congress, you know, I just want to ask you, how do I know that you're not working with the enemy?

And he said that -- I think he said it on CNN. But he certainly is -- he's on CNN. I don't know why that wasn't grounds for CNN thinking, well, maybe Glenn Beck shouldn't be on. I mean, how dare he say that to a congressman who has just been elected?

And I hear this kind of thing a lot of time. I monitored a lot of right-wing radio when I was doing my show and before it. And I've heard Rush Limbaugh say things that are worse than this. (full transcript below the fold)

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What was that Laura? Better ask Cheney

laurabush-lk.jpg On Larry King tonight, Laura Bush said:

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Laura Bush: This is their opportunity to seize the moment---ahhh---to build a really good and stable country. And many parts of Iraq are stable ahh..now. But, of course, what we see on television is the one bombing a day that discourages everybody.

Cheney OK after Afghan blast:

A suicide bomber killed 19 people and wounded 11 outside the main U.S. military base in Afghanistan on Tuesday during a visit by Vice President Dick Cheney, officials said. The Taliban claimed responsibility and said Cheney was the target..

Wow...And there is: "Iraq's Shiite vice president narrowly escaped assassination Monday as a blast ripped through a government meeting hall just hours after it was searched by U.S. teams with bomb-sniffing dogs. At least 10 people were killed."

That sure sounds stable to me....She actually had the nerve to say this:

Laura Bush:... Nobody wants war. No one's pro-war...

Really? Then why did we attack a country that didn't attack us? I'm just asking.


With friends like these...

jamesdobson-haggard.jpg  James Dobson on Larry King:  

If anything should show the public that Dobson is a charlatan, this appearance should. He dumped his good old buddy Ted Haggard in a NY minute as soon as Ted got into trouble. He only spoke to him one time. That's compassion for you. I guess he needs to keep as much free time to bash gays as possible.

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KING: How's he doing?

DOBSON: I don't know. I haven't talked to him since it happened.

KING: Oh you haven't?

DOBSON: I talked to him the day that the news broke and I have not talked to him since then.

Later on in the segment he tries to define what causes homosexuality to Larry King. He says his opinion is a wee bit controversial, but I say it's bat shit crazy.  And this ladies and gentlemen---is a leader of the Christian world. 

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Maher Outs Mehlman On CNN

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Last night on Larry King, Bill Maher "outed" Ken Mehlman as being gay, during the 9:00 pm est. live segment. On their later rebroadcast, CNN edited it out.

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I watched the live segment, but didn't really think about it that much. Maher has alluded to this numerous times on Real Time, so it was something I had heard him say before. Now that CNN has decided to edit that segment out, it has become an even bigger story. Huffington Post has footage of both the live and rebroadcast segments and you can tell that CNN had to remove the statement. Maher also said he will be naming others on Real Time this Friday.