The hosts of Fox News’ Fox & Friends have offered up a theory as to why the White House got personally involved in the New York governor’s race and asked Gov. David Paterson not to run again: They believe he would be vulnerable to a challenge by former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, and a gubernatorial win by Giuliani would set the Republican up for a White House challenge in 2012.

“When you put the name Rudy Giuliani in the mix, you wonder if that’s exactly what they’re worried about,” co-host Gretchen Carlson said. “Because if Giuliani were to run he probably would win a this point, and then that would launch potentially another presidential bid by Rudy Giuliani.”

The New York Times reported Sunday that the White House had asked Paterson, through an intermediary, not to run for re-election. Paterson, who became governor of New York last year after then-Governor Eliot Spitzer resigned in a sex scandal, recently garnered a 21-percent approval rating from New Yorkers.

The same poll showed that, in a theoretical match-up, Giuliani would take 60 percent of the vote to Paterson’s 34 percent. However, the poll also shows that New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo, a Democrat, would beat Giuliani 53 percent to 43 percent. Sixty-seven percent of respondents wanted Cuomo to run, compared to 58 percent for Giuliani.

Carlson also echoed a talking point from GOP Chairman Michael Steele, who on Sunday questioned why the White House would get involved in the New York race when Democratic New Jersey Governor John Corzine’s “numbers are about the same” as Paterson’s.

However, Corzine doesn’t seem to be polling quite as badly as Paterson — recent polls show him at around 30 percent, trailing Republican challenger Chris Christie by nine points.

Near the conclusion of the segment, co-host Steve Doocy exclaimed: “They picked a governor. They have essentially picked the next governor of New York, this White House has.”

This video is from Fox News’ Fox & Friends, broadcast Sept. 21, 2009.

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‘The easiest way to get 15 minutes of fame is to be rude to somebody,” president says

The 24-hour news networks and news blogs focus so much on the most extreme elements of political debate that they are effectively fueling anger, President Barack Obama said Sunday.

In one of his many interviews Sunday morning, Obama told CBS News’ Bob Schieffer that “part of what’s different today is that the twenty-four-hour news cycle and cable television and blogs and all this, they focus on the most extreme elements on both sides.

“They can’t get enough of conflict, it’s catnip to the media right now,” Obama continued. “And so the easiest way to get 15 minutes of fame is to be rude to somebody. In that environment I think it makes it more difficult for us to solve the problems that the American people sent us here to solve.”

President Obama’s comment comes little more than a week after US House Rep. Joe Wilson (R-SC) shouted out “You lie!” during the president’s address to a joint session of Congress, a moment some observers have described as a new low in American politics.

It also comes after a summer of sometimes vitriolic debate on health care at town hall meetings across the country.

“Even though we’re having a passionate disagreement here, we can be civil to each other,” the president told Schieffer. “And we can try to express ourselves acknowledging that we’re all patriots, we’re all Americans and not assume the absolute worst in people’s motives.”

This video is from CBS’ Face the Nation, broadcast Sept. 20, 2009.

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Saying that “no one is above the law,” President Barack Obama is defending Attorney General Eric Holder’s decision to launch an investigation into CIA torture practices under the Bush administration.

“I have said consistently that I want to look forward and not backward when it comes to some of the problems that occurred under the previous administration, or when it came to interrogations,” Obama told CBS’s Bob Schieffer. “I don’t want witch hunts taking place. I’ve also said though that the Attorney General has a job to uphold the law.”

The president said he has “the utmost respect for the CIA,” but that the attorney general has “got to make [a] judgment in terms of what has occurred. My understanding is it’s not a criminal investigation at this point.”

The president was responding to a letter sent to him by seven former directors of the CIA, urging Obama to end the investigation because they say it would upend the CIA’s ability to do its job.

Two former CIA directors were notably missing from the letter’s signatures: Robert Gates, currently the secretary of defense, and former President George. H. W. Bush, who served as head of the CIA in the Ford administration.

Speaking to CNN’s John King on State of the Union, the president said he trusts prosecutors to be “judicious” when investigating the CIA.

“But the law is the law, we don’t go around picking” who and when to prosecute, the president said.

This video is from CBS’ Face the Nation, broadcast Sept. 20, 2009.

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After giving Mark Williams, one of the leaders of the Tea Party movement, weeks of free publicity, CNN finally took the conservative activist to task on Monday, calling him out for describing President Barack Obama as a “racist-in-chief” and “an Indonesian Muslim turned welfare thug.”

Williams, who is vice-chairman of Our Country Deserves Better, the group organizing the Tea Parties, and whom CNN has described as “the showman” of the Tea Party organizers, defended the statements, which he made on his blog.

The blog posting in question appears to have been removed.

During a panel discussion on AC 360 Monday, host Anderson Cooper asked Williams: “Do you believe [the president is] Indonesian? Do you believe he’s a Muslim? Do you really believe he’s a welfare thug?”

“He’s certainly acting like it,” answered Williams. “Until he embraces the whole country, what else can I conclude?”

The notion that the president is “acting like an Indonesian” made Democratic strategist James Carville, another panel member, laugh for the rest of the segment.

Media watchdogs have recently criticized CNN for giving Williams what they see as disproportionate airtime. Last week, MediaMatters pointed out that AC 360 had Williams on the show despite a directive from CNN President John Klein not to book radio talk-show personalities for discussions on policy issues, because “complex issues require world class reporting.”

CNN has described Williams as “a former talk radio host who now writes books and makes the rounds on cable TV chat shows.”

Late last month, on his Crooks and Liars blog, David Neiwert criticized CNN for running “a fluff piece about what a cool bus the people on the [Tea Party] tour get to ride in.” Neiwert criticzed CNN anchor Tony Harris, who he says “pretended throughout [an interview with Williams] that [the Tea Partiers] were purely a nonpartisan outfit only angry about overtaxation. Which is a large wagonload of hooey.”

This video is from CNN’s AC 360, broadcast Sept. 14, 2009.

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The US economy has not really recovered from last year’s financial crisis, and the policies of the Federal Reserve, the US’s central bank, are ensuring that the suffering will continue much longer than necessary, US House Rep. Ron Paul told CNN on Monday.

“They claim there’s a recovery but the recovery ought to be measured by the people working. True unemployment is now 16 percent, and the people who lost money have not regained the money. The people who lost houses have not gotten their houses back. There is no recovery,” said Paul.

The official unemployment rate in August was 9.7 percent, but Paul was referring to the broader unemployment measure, known as “U-6,” which measures not only the number of people looking for work but also those people who have given up looking for work. The official unemployment measure does not include people who have stopped looking for work.

In August, the broader U-6 unemployment rate was a stunning 16.8 percent, two-and-a-half percentage points higher than it was in the 1982 recession, which had been the worst recession since the Great Depression.

“There is no recovery, all there is is a lot of fudging,” Paul told CNN’s Kieran Chetly.

Paul was on CNN promoting his new book, End the Fed, in which he argues that the federal government’s bailout of Wall Street has indebted it to the point that the government itself is now “one giant toxic asset.”

Chetly asked Paul about the assertion by many prominent economists — including Nobel-winning New York Times columnist Paul Krugman — that say the Federal Reserve rescued the global economy from another Great Depression last year.

“I think the Fed has done a wonderful job for Wall Street, but … the average guy lost a lot of money. They [the Fed] come in with more credit, and pump it up and bail out all the big guys getting all these bonuses for all these individuals who should have failed — and they claim there’s a recovery.”

Added Paul: “We need enforcement of contract law … [so] that when you do something dumb, you ought to go bankrupt. We shouldn’t protect these people.

“I don’t think we seem to be recovering,” he continued. “There are more people unemployed all the time. … We’re doing everything wrong, we’re doing what we did in the Depression, we’re doing what the Japanese did in the 1990s, which is propping up bad investment.

“When you prop up bad debt and prop up these prices … it prolongs the agony. I see no good outcome from the policies that we have.”

This video is from CNN’s American Morning, broadcast Sept. 14, 2009.

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White House press secretary Robert Gibbs told CNN’s John King that President Barack Obama doesn’t believe race is behind the high level of vitriol in protests against his administration.

Instead, the chief White House spokesman suggested that some of the concerns among opponents of the Obama administration’s policies — chiefly, concerns having to do with government spending — are worthy of debate.

“I don’t think the president believes that people are upset because of the color of his skin,” said Gibbs. “I think people are upset because on Monday we celebrate the anniversary of the Lehman [Brothers] collapse that caused a financial catastrophe unlike anything we have ever seen.”

Addressing that catastrophe “certainly cost a lot of money, but it’s something that we had to do,” Gibbs said.

The notion that racism is at the heart of the angry rhetoric against the president health care reform proposal has been making its way around the left-wing blogosphere for some time, but the argument was thrust into the spotlight Sunday when New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd argued that GOP Rep. Joe Wilson’s outburst during the president’s speech Wednesday was born of racism.

Dowd wrote: “Wilson’s shocking disrespect for the office of the president — no Democrat ever shouted ‘liar’ at W. when he was hawking a fake case for war in Iraq — convinced me: Some people just can’t believe a black man is president and will never accept it.”

“I do think, again, this rhetoric often just gets way too hot,” Gibbs said on CNN’s State of the Union. “I think what we all have to do is take a step back, take a deep breath and remember who were here to represent — millions of Americans who have health insurance but are watching their premiums double. … Americans who don’t have health care and are one doctor’s visit away from losing their house.”

This video is from CNN’s State of the Union, broadcast Sept. 13, 2009.

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The Republican congressman who shouted “You lie!” during President Barack Obama’s address to a joint session of Congress told Fox News’ Chris Wallace on Sunday that he won’t apologize again.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has expressed support for a “resolution of disapproval” if Rep. Joe Wilson (R-SC) refuses to apologize to his colleagues in the House.

“I’ve apologized one time. The apology was accepted by the president, by the vice president whom I know. I am not apologizing again,” said Wilson.

Wilson, who repeated on several occasions during his Fox News Sunday appearance that he is a “civil” person who believes in “civility,” denied the assertion made by New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd that “Wilson clearly did not like being lectured and even rebuked by the brainy black president presiding over the majestic chamber.”

“No no, I respect the president,” Wilson said, pointing out that “there is a relationship, in a way,” between the Obamas and himself, as Michelle Obama’s family comes from a South Carolina town near where Wilson himself originates.

Host Chris Wallace pointed out that Wilson has now raised upwards of $1 million since his outburst, and asked: “If you’re fundraising off the incident, are you really sorry?”

“I would never do this on purpose, but I have been named by national Democrats, by Moveon.org [as] the number one target [in the mid-term election] next year,” Wilson responded.

Of the proposal to rebuke Wilson on the floor of the House, the House representative said: “The Democrats are playing politics. This is just a way to divert attention from a bill that would cost 1.6 million jobs, according to the National Federation of Independent Business.”

The NFIB is a Washington lobby group that lobbies on behalf of small businesses.

This video is from Fox’s Fox News Sunday, broadcast Sept. 13, 2009.

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If resisting the White House’s agenda makes you Gandalf, does that mean that President Barack Obama — or, more broadly, the US government — is Sauron, dark lord of Mordor?

That seems to be the implication of Glenn Beck’s comments this morning on Fox News’ Fox & Friends, when the controversial news show host made the comparison between the American political situation and The Lord of the Rings.

Referring to what he sees as an attempted power grab by the Obama administration, Beck said: “You cannot give these people any more power. You know, it’s like Gandalf. Somebody needs to stand at that bridge and say ‘you shall not pass.’”

Fresh from his successful campaign to oust Van Jones as the White House green jobs adviser, Beck promised Tuesday morning that “I’m going to introduce you to another one tonight,” evidently referring to another member of the Obama administration that Beck plans to pursue.

Later on in the segment, he added: “By the end of the week you will see that something everybody feels in their gut is wrong — but nobody has really exposed it — is going to be exposed this week, and you will see by the end of the week that people will go to jail.”

A Tweet last week from Beck indicated who Beck will go after next. Beck told his followers, “FIND EVERYTHING YOU CAN ON CASS SUNSTEIN, MARK LLOYD AND CAROL BROWNER.”

The Washington Independent noted:

They are, respectively, the nominee to head the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, the Associate General Counsel and Chief Diversity Officer of the FCC, and the Assistant to the President for Energy and Climate Change. Browner was also administrator of the EPA for all eight years of Bill Clinton’s presidency.

“I have five and I’m going to introduce you to another one tonight,” Beck told Fox News’ Alisyn Camerota.

This video is from Fox News’ Fox & Friends, broadcast Sept. 8, 2009.

Download video via RawReplay.com

Two pundits on opposite sides of the political isle found themselves agreeing about Afghanistan Sunday on ABC’s This Week.

Both conservative columnist George Will and Katrina vanden Heuvel, publisher of the Nation, said they favor a withdrawal from Afghanistan.

“People worry — including [Defense] Secretary [Robert] Gates — rightly that if we radically increase, if we sufficiently increase the troop level it will look like an occupation, because, lo and behold, it will be an occupation,” Will told the panel hosted by George Stephanopoulos.

Will quoted a letter he received from a former commandant of the Marine Corps, Gen. Charles Krulak, which stated: “I am in total agreement with your assessment. Instead of a surge of 21,000 troops, [we] would need a surge of hundreds of thousands. Not only would our nation not support such a surge, but, most distressing, the military could not support such a surge.”

Will added that Gen. Krulak sent Will’s Washington Post column calling for an Afghan withdrawal to military colleagues of his, and “to a man, they concurred.”

“We’re going to have a debate and there are going to be plenty of [military] brass on my side,” Will concluded.

Nation publisher Katrina vanden Heuvel pointed out the agreement between Will and progressives on the issue of Afghanistan.

“I think there’s a coalition, George,” she said. “We can go on the road. A coalition for realistic foreign policy. But for these neo-cons to attack you — these people should not be in our political life. They have no credibility. They should be held accountable for the Iraq debacle.

“Counterterrorism measures, policing, intelligence, smart, tough regional and global diplomacy — these are the things we need,” vanden Heuvel said.

In his Post column last week, Will said it was time to get out of Afghanistan. In another column, he indicated that the US’s work in Iraq is done.

Will disagreed that a troop surge in Afghanistan would have the positive effects that it is believed to have had in Iraq.

The surge was effective in Iraq, Will said, but “Iraq was much more susceptible to this. Afghanistan is huge, illiterate, impoverished, tribal, fractured — what have I left out?”

This video is from ABC’s This Week, broadcast Sept. 6, 2009.

Download video via RawReplay.com

White House press secretary Robert Gibbs told ABC’s George Stephanopolous that President Barack Obama will make the case for some form of a public health insurance option when he gives a speech to a joint session of Congress Wednesday.

But Gibbs indicated on ABC’s This Week that Obama wouldn’t issue a veto threat for a bill that doesn’t include a public option.

“I doubt that we’ll get into heavy veto threats on Wednesday. We’re going to talk about what we can do, because we’re so close to getting it done. He’ll talk about the public option. He’ll talk about why it’s a valuable component in providing choice in competition,” said Gibbs.

Asked if the president would also outline what is not acceptable to him in a health care reform bill, Gibbs said: “We prefer to outline the positive rather than the negative, but I’m sure he will draw some lines in the sand too.”

Stephanopoulos pressed Gibbs for a more specific answer as to what is and isn’t acceptable in health care reform but Gibbs responded that the president “won’t pre-judge” the legislative process, and that “the president strongly believes that we have to have [a public] option like this.”

Asked if the president saw a public health option as “essential,” Gibbs responded: “The president believes it’s a valuable tool.”

This video is from ABC’s This Week, broadcast Sept. 6, 2009.

Download video via RawReplay.com