Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Thanks to your bullshit, we are now under siege.

It’s time for the GOP to dust off that post-2012 autopsy, completely ignore it, and light the party on fire again.

You can’t attract Republican voters. You can only out organize them.

A lot of Dems talk about what the media tells them to talk about. Not helpful.

Let’s delete this post and never speak of this again.

Teach a man to fish, and he’ll sit in a boat all day drinking beer.

When your entire life is steeped in white supremacy, equality feels like discrimination.

When someone says they “love freedom”, rest assured they don’t mean yours.

Conservatism: there are some people the law protects but does not bind and others who the law binds but does not protect.

Shallow, uninformed, and lacking identity

Let me eat cake. The rest of you could stand to lose some weight, frankly.

“Jesus paying for the sins of everyone is an insult to those who paid for their own sins.”

Putting aside our relentless self-interest because the moral imperative is crystal clear.

The party of Reagan has become the party of Putin.

I’d try pessimism, but it probably wouldn’t work.

Never entrust democracy to any process that requires republicans to act in good faith.

Black Jesus loves a paper trail.

… riddled with inexplicable and elementary errors of law and fact

Red lights blinking on democracy’s dashboard

Fuck the extremist election deniers. What’s money for if not for keeping them out of office?

Whoever he was, that guy was nuts.

Only Democrats have agency, apparently.

Perhaps you mistook them for somebody who gives a damn.

We are builders in a constant struggle with destroyers. let’s win this.

You are here: Home / All-Star Lineup

All-Star Lineup

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How long do I have to wait for the meteor to hit?

Mark Halperin called the guest list on Sunday’s “Meet the Press” an “all-star lineup.” That’s not quite the description I’d use.

We’ll first see an interview with Senior White House Adviser David Axelrod. That makes sense.

Then viewers will see an “exclusive!” interview with Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.). This makes a lot less sense — it’ll be his third appearance on “Meet the Press” this year, his sixth in the last 21 months, and his 26th Sunday show appearance since President Obama’s inauguration. That’s obviously an average of more than an appearance per month, every month, for nearly two years.

And then there’s the roundtable, which will apparently cover the debt commission’s report, featuring Alan Greenspan (conservative), disgraced former House Speaker Newt Gingrich (conservative), former Rep. Harold Ford Jr. (conservative Democrat), and journalist Bethany McLean.

Washington is wired for conservative control. There’s nothing else to say, is there?

Reader Interactions

51Comments

  1. 1.

    danimal

    If MTP and the others were cancelled, would anyone under 65 miss them? The audience for those shows is minuscule, old, rich and conservative. Of course they invite old, rich conservatives disproportionately.

  3. 3.

    PurpleGirl

    WRT the John McCain exclusive appearance: Is he scheduled for any other show that SAME day? Therefore, if not… its an exclusive.

  7. 7.

    PurpleGirl

    @danimal: I haven’t watched the Sunday morning shows since my friend N moved to Florida. It was a Sunday morning thing: breakfast and talk shows and we’d argue with the TV. He wife found it funny to watch/hear our reactions. It just wasn’t the same watching the shows without N.

  9. 9.

    Steve LaBonne

    Nobody outside the beltway cares about these shows.

    Of course, there are many OTHER reasons to be impatient for the meteor to hit…

  10. 10.

    beltane

    A lot of Ayn Rand worship for your Sunday morning observances. And John McCain has only been on MTP three times this year? Really? It seems like he’s on every other week.

    What is the average age of MTP’s viewership? 75? 80?

  11. 11.

    fourlegsgood

    Good grief. What total horse-shit.

    Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to go petition the flying spaghetti monster for a well placed meteor.

  12. 12.

    Belafon (formerly anonevent)

    The terms are Money Party and People Party. MTP is going to have Axelrod(P), McCain(M), Greenspan(M), Ford(M), McLean(P).

  14. 14.

    DonkeyKong

    Forget the politicians, they’re an irrelevancy. The politicians are put there to give you the idea that you have freedom of choice. You don’t. You have no choice. You have owners. They own you. They own everything. They own all the important land. They own and control the corporations. They’ve long since bought and paid for the Senate, the Congress, the statehouses, the city halls. They’ve got the judges in their back pockets. And they own all the big media companies, so that they control just about all of the news and information you hear. They’ve got you by the balls.–

    -George Carlin

  15. 15.

    Bnut

    I have yet to meet anyone, anywhere, at anytime who had nice things to say about Harold Ford. Who exactly in this country gives two blown donkey cocks about what he has to say?

  17. 17.

    annamissed

    Washington DC is wired for conservative control for very good reason. It’s their government within the government, and to maintain the illusion that it’s really “our” government takes an Atlas (not shrugging) like effort at propagandizing the airwaves with the internal narrative. This will likely intensify because we’re falling further and further behind the technological edge necessary to stay ahead of the marketing curve. Hence we must dig further into the last remaining reserves of ready cash in order to grow (or at least maintain) profits for the wealthy elite – more free trade agreements(Korea/Asia), social security, taxes, mortgage deductions and the like. The money has to come from somewhere. Or the beast will starve.

  20. 20.

    joe from Lowell

    Conservative: The liberal media is biased towards the Democrats! They’re always trying to discredit conservatives and Republicans.

    Liberal: What are you talking about? Conservatives are given vastly more air time to expound on their beliefs and policies, to let the public know what they stand for and why.

    Conservative: Exactly.

  21. 21.

    Dennis SGMM

    @Calouste:
    Brazil only elected one clown to congress while we’ve elected close to 100 clowns to the Senate.

    Were Number One! We’re Number One!

  22. 22.

    jl

    If they wanted an all star line up, they should have gone with, Lincecum, Renteria, Posey and Wilson. And maybe Mays, Cepeda, Marichal and Perry for the panel.

    Probably couldn’t get them, so went with this string of mostly losers.

    McLean will be good.

    Will have to check out BobbleSpeak Translations this week. It will be a hoot.

  23. 23.

    Morbo

    Fuck it, time to go full Althouse and go through a box of Franzia Sunday morning. Anyone up for devising a drinking game?

  26. 26.

    burnspbesq

    @Elizabelle:

    But, but, but …

    She used to work for GOLDMAN!!!! And then she wrote for that bankstah propaganda rag FORTUNE!!! She must be the evilest liar EVAH!!!

  28. 28.

    New Yorker

    Can the mainstream media please go completely extinct now? I’m tired of waiting.

    Also, I want my “all-star” lineup to include Ted Kaczynski, Jimmy McMillan, John Malkovich, and Alex Jones. It would probably be no less insightful than the above group, and probably far more entertaining.

  29. 29.

    Shalimar

    @change: And have held all the cards for 30 years now. Alas, unless you’re worth $10 million or more holding all the cards hasn’t gotten you anything except poorer in all that time. If you were smarter, you might wonder whether the “we” holding all the cards actually includes you at all.

  30. 30.

    JGabriel

    OT but, George Bush plagiarized his own memoir:

    Crown … got a mash-up of worn-out anecdotes from previously published memoirs written by his subordinates, from which Bush lifts quotes word for word, passing them off as his own recollections.

    Not only was he too lazy to write his own book, apparently he was too cheap to buy the books he copied from — most of the quotes and anecdotes can be found through Google:

    Bush’s lifting of the anecdote, while disappointing on a literary level, does raise the intriguing possibility that Bush actually read Rashid’s book. Doubtful. It was excerpted in the Googleable New York Review of Books. (Still, thinking of Bush browsing the NYRB’s Website almost makes it worthwhile.)
    __
    In a separate case of scene fabrication, though, Bush writes of a comment made by his rival John McCain as if it was said to him directly. “The surge gave [McCain] a chance to create distance between us, but he didn’t take it. He had been a longtime advocate of more troops in Iraq, and he supported the new strategy wholeheartedly. “I cannot guarantee success,” he said, “But I can guarantee failure if we don’t adopt this new strategy.” A dramatic and untold coming-together of longtime rivals? Well, not so much. It comes straight from a Washington Post story. McCain was talking to reporters, not to Bush.

    Emphasis added.

    .

  32. 32.

    gene108

    @Steve LaBonne: Yeah, but what gets said on these shows gets repeated for a week on all the other news channels, so it gets disseminated to the low info voter.

    Stacking these shows with right-wingers means only right-wing talking points get filtered to the public.

    Of course, if you are a right-winger, who believes NBC is a liberal version of Fox News, you’d probably be inclined to think the balance of conservative versus liberal is skewed much more liberal than reality makes it.

    Gregory would be a raging liberal.

    Harold Ford, Jr. is a raging liberal, because all Democrats are raging liberals and he went to a party at the Playboy mansion or something like that and he’s not white or something like that.

    Greenspan is another RINO, because he doesn’t viciously denounce abortion, immigration, etc.

    Gingrich was a good guy, but he’s past his prime, and probably the only one, who can be close to qualified as a true conservative.

    McLean is a raging liberal.

    So in the conservative reality you have 3 raging liberals against 1 bit of a has been conservative and a 1 RINO.

    For whatever reason it’s this conservative world view the MSM seems intent on trying to balance, versus trying to balance things in the real world, with regards to their guests.

  33. 33.

    Steve LaBonne

    (Still, thinking of Bush browsing the NYRB’s Website almost makes it worthwhile.)

    “Shit, Laura, them New York pointyheads sure use too dang many big words. Come splain ’em to me.”

  34. 34.

    Jonathan

    Harold Ford, Jr. really pisses me off more than anyone. I mean, they might as well throw another hardcore conservative in there, just to make it obvious. They throw Ford in there to play the liberal, but we all know he’s a moderate republican that likes the attention he gets for calling himself a democrat.

  36. 36.

    cmorenc

    What did you expect from a comment by GOP tool Mark Halperin about a show hosted by GOP tool David Gregory about a guest lineup chosen to suit their tastes?

    Actually, even if say, Rachael Maddow someday got the gig as MTP host, while the guest list would be better-balanced as a whole, nevertheless some days the guest list would be similar to this Sunday’s show, perhaps with one more center-ish or left-ish figure mixed in. THE DIFFERENCE? Rachael would have the conservative figures backed into untenable holes within five minutes, squirming to attempt to minimize digging themselves in much deeper before their allotted twenty-minute segment was over and they could escape her buzz-saw inquisition. It would be FUN to watch while it lasted, until most conservatives refused to go on anywhere but the safe, friendly, softball-pitching confines of FauxNN.

  38. 38.

    Dennis SGMM

    @gene108:

    For whatever reason it’s this conservative world view the MSM seems intent on trying to balance, versus trying to balance things in the real world, with regards to their guests.

    Before I gave up most of television, I became convinced that the bobblehead shows’ notion of balance was that if you properly distributed their lard ass guests on opposite ends of a see-saw it would be in balance.

  39. 39.

    Tax Analyst

    And then there’s the roundtable, which will apparently cover the debt commission’s report, featuring Alan Greenspan (conservative), disgraced former House Speaker Newt Gingrich (conservative), former Rep. Harold Ford Jr. (conservative Democrat), and journalist Bethany McLean.

    Jeezus, what a line up! Randian Fool, Hypocritical Liar, and a clueless Flip-Flopping Carpet-Bagger. Bethany McLean seems to have good credentials, though. If she’s as bright as her reputation seems to imply there’s a possibility her head might spin off from spending 1/2 hour in this type of company.

  40. 40.

    Dennis SGMM

    The networks are missing a real opportunity here. All they have to do to make these shows a sensation is to wire up their guests and when one of them makes an assertion that they can’t back up they get a 50 volt shock in their genitals.

    “Obama is spending $200 million on a trip to India!”
    Bzzzt!

    “Cutting taxes will create more jobs.”
    Bzzzt!

    Host: “It looks like Mr. Gingrich has temporarily lost consciousness. We’ll turn now to John McCain. Senator McCain? Senator McCain ? Apparently the Senator was called away…”

  41. 41.

    DonkeyKong

    I would love if a panelist turned to Little Lord Harold Ford while he was hippie punching and said “Look fucko, do you think you would be able to marry your wife if it were up to the people you shill for, FUCK!”

    I can dream…….

  42. 42.

    kommrade reproductive vigor

    Washington is wired for conservative control. There’s nothing else to say, is there?

    Sure, which Washington are you talking about? Certainly not the actual city and its residents, which are bluer than a teenaged boy’s balls. You mean the douchebags who are only here because they can’t hold down a real job?

    I’ll accept that.

  43. 43.

    Roger Moore

    @Linkmeister:

    Democrats don’t bathe often suck up enough to big corporations to be invited to MTP

    FTFY. If you want to understand contemporary politics, you only have to understand that big media is run for the benefit of its corporate masters. The wall between corporate interests and editorial policy was never strong enough to prevent meddling, and now it’s been all but demolished.

  44. 44.

    henqiguai

    …which will apparently cover the debt commission’s report…

    Um, no. Unless that puppy (the actual debt commission’s report) was released in between my getting out of the car and looking in here, the only thing out of that commission is the POS from Boyles (sp ?) and Simpson; a pre-emptive chairmans’ opinion piece (a.k.a. a hit piece) ahead of the end of December scheduled release of the commission’s report. Because B&S realized the commission would not go for that crap as they presented.

    Oh, and kommrade reproductive vigor, thanks. People need to be reminded.

  45. 45.

    Mnemosyne

    @Jonathan:

    They throw Ford in there to play the liberal, but we all know he’s a moderate republican that likes the attention he gets for calling himself a democrat.

    Plus he got tired of going to parties where Republicans kept asking him to get them another drink.

  46. 46.

    wengler

    You must learn that actual “debate” is defined on a narrow set of topics determined by the plutocrats.

    The underlying assumption apparent in each “debate” is that the rich gotta get paid off. That was the whole problem with the healthcare reform, for awhile there with an optional buy-in to public insurance it looked like daddy warbucks wasn’t gonna get paid.

    So if you actually want to figure out what legislation is going to get passed, you gotta understand whether or not there is a kickback in it.

    The only legislation that evokes interest are when two megacorporations square off against each other. That is when you learn who really owns a bigger share of Congress.

    It appears at the moment that the US Congress is a wholly owned subsidiary of Goldman Sachs.

  49. 49.

    Admiral_Komack

    Here Comes Shuler: NC Dem Set To Make His Leadership Bid Official This Weekend

    Rep. Heath Shuler (D-NC) is setting the stage for an official challenge to Nancy Peolsi’s bid to lead the Democratic minority in the next Congress. Shuler, a moderate from the North Carolina mountains, will make his intentions official on the national stage this weekend, The Hill reports.

    Shuler pitched himself as a moderate alternative to Pelosi as leader of the House caucus before she officially announced her run for Minority Leader in the next Congress.

    Now, with most observers thinking Pelosi has the position locked up, Shuler appears ready to make good on his promise to take her on.

    He “is scheduled to address his leadership plans during appearances on CNN’s ‘State of the Union’ Sunday and MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” program on Monday,” The Hill’s Mike O’Brien reports.

    http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2010/11/here-comes-shuler-nc-dem-set-to-make-his-leadership-bid-official-this-weekend.php?ref=fpb

  50. 50.

    Mnemosyne

    @Admiral_Komack:

    I will be very interested to see where this goes. The Blue Dogs are desperate to remain relevant, but their caucus got cut in half and now Pelosi’s Progressive Caucus outnumbers them something like 2 to 1.

    I should send a nice fax to my Blue Dog rep and remind him that we love Nancy here in California’s 29th district (which he just won by 65%) so he should vote for her and not Schuler.

  51. 51.

    maya

    These Sunday panel talk shows would be way more practical if the panel got to guess at some mystery guest’s occupation. Then guys like McCain, Gingrich and Greenspan could conceivably pile up a correct guess score and claim some semblance of relevance.

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