That Miller segment had one really sneaky moment by O’Reilly if you watch for it. O’Reilly and Miller were complaining about how President Obama continues to have support in spite of various typical second term issues. O’Reilly mused that he thinks that voters are somehow resisting the notion that they chose the wrong candidate last year. He actually tried to play the card that the voters elected the wrong person and that polling somehow reflects their denial about this matter. It was the strangest pretzel twist I’ve seen from him in a while and one of the most revealing ones.

This was a bizarre segment. Cunningham was viciously unrepentant for his behavior the last time. He’d clearly been talked to about the things he’d said and done and was trying to get in as many shots as he could before being cut off by anyone.

I’m not even sure what Holder was thinking in agreeing to appear in a segment with Cunningham again as it’s pretty obvious that she really dislikes him. Her move with the candy was quite strange.

When he started jabbing his finger at her, she took on a more dangerous tone with him. At which point I couldn’t figure out why anyone wanted to put them on together again. This is the sort of thing where the visceral problem between the commentators was so palpable that I don’t know why any network would think it was a good idea to do this – much less do it again after what happened the last time.

By the way, there’s some really sneaky game-playing going on with the GOP and Fox News on this issue. If you pay attention, they are now using the talking point that the ACA is a “bill” that they don’t think should be passed. Except that it isn’t a bill. It’s LAW. It was passed by Congress in 2009. It was upheld by the Supreme Court last year, in spite of all the GOP and Fox News hopes that it would not be. Powers last night correctly noted that the law doesn’t need to be passed, which effectively guts this entire point of attack. And she noted that the GOP doesn’t oppose it for the reasons they’re trying to say in public. They oppose it because they hate Obama and they wish to undermine anything they can about his presidency. Not too hard to figure that one out,

Both Hannity and Van Susteren are being demoted. Van Susteren is being pulled up to the early hour as a recognition that her own ratings have been doing less than spectacular numbers. Hannity is being pushed to the later hour to allow Fox to burn off their commitment without in their mind hurting the rest of their lineup.

I agree that Hannity will almost completely tape his shows from this point forth. The only time you’ll see him do anything live will be for elections coverage or major events. The rest will be canned material, like his “focus group” specials.

The real problem Fox will have is with the new show by Megyn Kelly. She’s already shown herself to be unpredictable and volatile. Can she anchor a primetime show far from her usual morning duties? We’ll have to see if she has anything beyond what she threw at Kirsten Powers over the Black Panthers. If she doesn’t, Fox News could find itself in some very serious trouble with its primetime lineup. O’Reilly will of course continue to get the older demo to tune in, but there’s a real question of how many more years he has in him to anchor a primetime show. How much longer before he turns into the next Brit Hume and just offers color commentary once a week?

This is a typical Fox News and GOP exercise in mean-spiritedness. They essentially create a straw man argument from the given hypothesis that the poor don’t need all those benefits and that the numbers should be slashed. Starting from that thinking, it’s a small matter to come up with justification to say that the benefits are simply not needed or are being funneled to fraudsters. All of this supports the long-running GOP meme about how non-rich people think they’re “entitled” to benefits that the wealthy would rather not support.

On what planet was George W. Bush a “respected” leader? He was and is despised by most of the world as a consequence of his terrible conduct while in office. The rest of the world didn’t “respect” his attempt to support pre-emptive actions and invasions. They were alarmed by his behavior and distrustful of the motives of people like Dick Cheney, Karl Rove and Donald Rumsfeld.

There was a moment after 9/11 when the USA had the sympathy of the world, but Bush immediately squandered that good will and turned it completely around by attacking and invading without even probable cause to do so.

Obama’s actions as President have been understandably more cautious and inclusive. That’s not a sign of being “weak” or “an amateur”. That’s a sign of trying to work WITH people around the world to find common solutions and a step away from the arrogance and ignorance of the people who surrounded and advised George W. Bush. We should also note that several members of Bush’s cabinet need to be careful when travelling abroad or they face subpoenas and potential prosecution for their conduct. Are we to believe that people around the world wish to prosecute Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld because they “respect” them?

The silliest part of the whole clip was Karl Rove trying to muster up his best “I’m OUTRAGED!!!” voice to try to throw mud at the Obama Administration – accusing them of lies, malfeasance and anything else he could think of. Not even a smidge of irony there, considering the significant lies told by the Bush Administration under his watch, and the significant loss of life caused by those lies. Of course, when Rove turned away from Williams, he was openly smirking…

Ellen, do you ever wonder if the right wing thinks this site is intended to host Kukla, Fran and Ollie?

I find it interesting that Hannity took time to interview a congressman insisting that his constituents were 95 to 1 opposed to military action in this case. It’s not that I believe we should be throwing bombs at anyone – it’s that I find it interesting that Fox News suddenly cares what congresspeople’s constituents think about the issues.

Because in 2003, there were giant protests about our imminent attack on Iraq, and I was hearing that the sentiment was running anywhere from 10-1 to 100-1 AGAINST that invasion in correspondence and calls to Congress. Fox News called the protests treasonous and happily laughed when Bush referred to the protestors as a “focus group”.

So once again we have the scenario of Fox News opposing an action because it is what President Obama is doing, regardless of whether it is consistent with any actual principle or practice.

Ellen, thank you for preserving this. My own summation of this was nearly word-for-word what you have written. I heard the van Susteren interview on satellite radio and my jaw actually did drop.

How in the world Rumsfeld thinks he can get away with making these comments, and how in the world Fox News thinks it can rewrite history this brazenly is completely beyond me. A man who was forced to resign in disgrace, who worked for an administration that wound up being loathed throughout the world and at home, and who promoted the most disastrous foreign policy I’ve seen in my lifetime has absolutely no place lecturing anyone on these matters. This is frankly akin to putting Bernie Madoff on a business show to advise against people he thinks are frauds.

Valerie’s comment is well taken.

The comments from “Aaron” are clearly intended to troll this thread with insults. I have a feeling he’s been posting here under other names…

No surprise here. Napolitano is following standard procedure. Of course, if this was a GOP President, Napolitano and the rest would be calling all dissent treasonous. Just like they did when the left challenged Bush.

And I’m sure it’s a coincidence that Rush Limbaugh is now spending his program calling President Obama a “clown” who is “bumbling”. I wonder what Limbaugh would call someone who referred to George W. Bush as a clown?

We should also keep in mind that there is strong resistance to military action against Syria from the left wing and the right wing. But for very different reasons. The left wing opposes bombing Syria for the reason that this would be violence being inflicted in the name of preventing violence. As the left wing repeatedly said in the 2000s, “Not in Our Name”, and as Alexander Cockburn said very well around 2002 “You’ve had an act of barbarism and now you’re going to respond to it with more barbarism. We stand apart from that.”

The right wing opposes action in Syria for the reason that they hate President Obama and wish to obstruct every policy he voices. So if he said he was going to do nothing, they would castigate him for inaction. If he said he was going to attack without approval, they would castigate him for acting like an imperial presidency. If he says he will seek Congressional approval, they castigate him for appearing somehow weak and they demand their congressmen vote against the approval. One wonders if there is ANYTHING President Obama could do that would merit anything but disgust from the right…

This is another example of Eric Bolling making a strange reductivist argument – although it’s notable that he’s being open about his hatred for unions in general here.

The reason the right wing hates unions isn’t because they think they aren’t good for the employees. It isn’t because the right wing is concerned at all about whether the average employee gets a voice in how they are treated or paid at work. And it isn’t because the right wing is trying to “create jobs”. Frankly, the right wing has never shown much of an interest in any of those areas.

The right wing hates unions because they wish the companies could find a way to pay their employees less and give them less in the way of benefits. The right wing hates unions because the companies don’t like having to accede to workers’ needs for a safe and liveable workplace, or to workers’ needs for a pension and a health plan. The right wing would be very happy to go back to a time when companies could pay employees a bare minimum and not need to worry about silly things like pension plans or healthcare options. Because those things cost the people who run the companies a little more money, and they’d rather have that money for themselves. It’s really that simple.

The right wing hates the public sector unions because at this point, they’re probably the most visible and effective unions we have left in the US. Gutting the public sector unions’ pensions and destroying their wage structures would send a powerful message to employees and union members everywhere – if we can do it to these guys, we can do it to you too. And while there is an argument to be made that a bad economy makes it a lot harder for states to fulfill their obligations, that doesn’t mean that the states should simply abandon their contracts with the people who police their cities, put out their fires and teach their children. There are always adjustments that can be made to contracts with each negotiation – but the right wing goal clearly is to simply get rid of them. Witness the union busting tactics in Michigan and Wisconsin over the last couple of years – this will only get worse as time goes on if nobody challenges it. Witness also that the right wingers in Congress have made it their business to do nothing to try to help the economy recover – since such an act would only help both the public sector employees and President Obama. Allowing the recession to effectively continue through obstruction and inaction both gives them an opening to attack the unions more and more openly and gives them yet another stick to poke the President with.

It’s truly sad that the only person on this panel who didn’t want to refer to the unions as toxic couldn’t cite the basic reasons why unions exist. Unions exist because without them workers would be forced to live in conditions that history has shown to be vicious for them and for society in general. Without unions, workers would be paid as close to minimum wage as the companies could get away with, overtime pay would be fairly nonexistent even when workers did that work, workplace safety conditions would be spotty at best, and workers would be on their own, individually, to come up with a way to take care of their own retirement and healthcare from a minimum wage. The presence of unions has meant that employee members have been able to receive a decent wage for their work, have a safer and more livable workplace where they can’t just be fired at the boss’ whim, and have the employer join them in supporting a health and pension plan.

The final red herring in the right wing discussion is always about the workers who don’t want to join unions as their own decision but who must join based on their profession. We always hear the canard about the union dues going to support politicians the right wingers don’t like. And there’s an answer to this. Anyone who doesn’t want to politically support a union can be a financial core member – where they don’t have to have anything to do with what the union does politically or internally, and they can simply participate in the wage and benefit levels. This is considered an anti-social move, to be sure. But people who hate union members have never been worried about that problem in the first place.

I note that Eric Bolling is a member of SAG-AFTRA and enjoys the benefits of that in his own health and pension plans, beyond the overscale salary he is paid by Fox News. I wonder how he’d react if someone told him they were going to take away the pension plan he’d already been paying into for the past ten years. Because that’s what he’s advocating for other people.

I think Ellen’s description is unfortunately accurate here. I heard the exchange on satellite radio and was shocked at the condescension coming from both Hannity and Pavlich.

Add to this that Hannity was openly lying about GOP speakers not being invited to the event and then trying to yell over Fowler when he tried to set the record straight. Add to this that Pavlich has no credibility given her clear bias and her repeated attempts to make a mountain out of the “Fast & Furious” molehill for her own aggrandizement. Her nastiness toward Fowler was chilling at times.

I think it was a decent thing for him to do after making the wrong statement the day before. Could he have proclaimed it louder and more prominently? Sure, and I wouldn’t be surprised if it actually comes up again on his show. But the point is that he did own up to it. That’s a lot more than can be said about Hannity or the others at this point. If I’m going to hold him accountable for bad behavior, it’s only fair to acknowledge when the man does something commendable. This was a direct mea culpa – he didn’t try to blame anyone else or duck. I admire that approach.

To be fair, MSNBC has been losing younger viewers too, and they don’t have anywhere near the overall number of Fox News viewers. But CNN is sitting in the middle and gaining with the younger viewers. Which explains why Fox News is trying to maneuver to win some of those viewers back.

A few things to keep in mind:

1. Connie Mack isn’t a reputable source for comment in any case – he’s a hard-right former GOP congressman who lost his last attempt to stay in Washington. Maybe he’ll do better in his next local election – say for another congressional term rather than the Senate seat he now knows he can’t win.

2. Ted Cruz will not be running for President any time soon, if ever. The far right may like him and throw some money to his campaigns, but it’s more likely that he’ll be fighting to retain his seat in 2018 after what has already been a fairly disastrous track record.

3. This is yet another exhibit of Sean Hannity’s on-air meltdown following what’s been a fairly public humiliation for him. What he does upon Kelly’s return should be quite interesting. Will he completely go rogue on the air and denounce Fox News for demoting him? Should be interesting viewing.

4. The fact that these guys want to suddenly bring up the birther nonsense only illustrates further how ridiculous that allegation was in the first place. And there’s the obvious point about the double standard. But don’t expect the right wing to understand either part of the argument. The reality is that there were plenty of right wingers who simply hated Obama on sight and were happy to have that kind of issue with which to challenge him. Many of them still don’t accept him as a legitimate President. It’s extremely interesting that they would embrace Ted Cruz and defend him with the same breath they used to attack Obama’s legitimacy.

Hannity does sound as if he’s growing fairly desperate lately. He’s grabbing onto any bit of conspiracy theory or vitriol to throw at President Obama or even GOP congressmen, as if his comments would sway them in the slightest. It will be curious to see how he handles his demotion once it goes into practice upon Kelly’s return to the airwaves.

One has to wonder if Robert B isn’t actually trying to discuss the presidency of George W. Bush, the man whose recess appointment inflicted John Bolton on the United Nations.

Takes a heck of a person to manage to unite left and right in this country these days. Let’s see, Paris Hilton, the Westboro Baptists and now the Kardashians. Pretty elite company to manage to tick off everybody.