Cavuto did agree that it wouldn’t be a good idea to raise the eligibility age for people who work in heavy physical labor jobs. This was before he made the joke about his own job being difficult, but he clearly understood that his comment wasn’t going to fly.

The fact is that they will wind up lifting the cap as Clyburn suggested, which will stop the discussions for another 20 years or so. They can also slightly adjust the payroll tax rate as just happened, and as was done back in the 1980s under Reagan.

The numbers of retirees will hit a peak fairly soon, as we get to the end of the baby boom retirees, and at that point the ratio numbers will start to open up again. That whole notion of 30:1 versus 1:1 is just another opening SS opponents regularly use to try to discredit the whole idea. Keep in mind that these are the people who never wanted it around in the first place.

I do think that the eligibility age could be slowly raised, but the issue of heavy physical labor and hazardous professions must be kept in mind or you get exactly the problem Clyburn was pointing out. The other notion that the right wing loves to spout is that of means-testing. They’re saying that they want to make sure that well-off people aren’t soaking the taxpayers. Except that I haven’t heard of too many multi-millionaires trying to collect a $2500 SS check. It’s more likely that a retiree on a decent pension will use SS to supplement, which is completely fair and appropriate, given that they’ve paid into the system by that point for at least 30-40 years, if not nearly 50 years. I had an accountant tell me that it may not be legal to run a means test where you tell someone who has paid into the system that they are ineligible to receive anything. My belief is that most wealthy people don’t collect SS for a variety of reasons, including the fact that they don’t need it. It’s also a pile of paperwork for very little return for them. But for someone living on a pension, that return is critical.

My prediction is that the cap will be lifted, an additional payroll tax adjustment will be made, and a long-term gradual age increase will be phased in, with proper exceptions for people who can show that the physical requirements (and tolls) of the work make them eligible earlier. The right wing will continue to rail against the program but since many of their constituents also collect it, they don’t have a real leg to stand on.

Both Hannity and Sekulow tried to ignore the only cogent point made during the “discussion”. Juan Williams mentioned that Hagel will definitely be confirmed next week – multiple key GOP senators have made clear they will stop the obstruction. So there is no doubt that he will be the next SecDef.

Which then leads to the question of why they were obstructing the nomination in the first place. Was it really so they could see a piece of paper on which the Obama Admin said that Hillary Clinton spoke to the Libyan President during the attack and that Obama called him the next day? Was it really because they had genuine issues with the nominee? Or was it so they could throw another tantrum and stomp their feet rather than doing their jobs?

Hannity’s careful editing of Hagel’s appearance last month wasn’t enough to remove the clear signs that the GOP senators were on personal vendettas against either Hagel or Obama, or both. Nothing substantive has been raised in their objections – it’s all been petty snipping, particularly the shameful display made by McCain. (Of course, the last time we saw McCain’s temper flare up, he barked at Hannity on air…)

MM is right. Last night EVERYBODY was covering this story, including Hannity devoting something like 20 minutes of his show to discussions about it and phone calls with fans of his who were either on the ship or were waiting for relatives to dock. And not much was happening then either – Hannity was talking at the time the ship was being tugged in. By the time Greta got on the air the ship was at the dock and nothing was happening other than the usual procedures. (And I understand they got the passengers off a heck of a lot faster than they had said it would take.)

The video of Bill O’Reilly’s freakout in the studio can be seen on YouTube. If you just enter “Bill O’Reilly freakout” it comes right up. And yes, “WE’LL DO IT LIVE!!!!!”

I believe Powers simply got caught unaware here. She has done much better in other situations, but I think she simply missed what Hannity was up to in this case. The problem is that she is constantly dealing with him and O’Reilly and after a long period of these shenanigans. she simply missed one. True, she could have shut down Hannity’s argument, and she should have headed him off before he could make a ridiculous political argument about Dorner. But nobody is on their game 24/7. It’s too bad she missed this one, but I strongly doubt Hannity will be able to make much of it.

Perhaps in another year, he’ll try to trot it out, but I have no idea where it will ever be relevant again.

In fairness, Nate Silver noted that the race got closer after President Obama blew the first debate. But after that one moment, the lead opened up again for Obama, and in the end, Silver’s call was actually a bit conservative.

Morris is blowing smoke about Sandy, of course. The fact was that the polls consistently showed that Obama maintained a lead throughout the entire campaign. Sandy just gave him an additional photo op and a boost from Chris Christie at the last second. Romney by that point had tried at least five times to reintroduce himself to the American public, most of whom had already decided not to vote for him.

The number of actual undecided and independent voters was quite small, which the polls consistently showed. Most people had made up their minds before September. What the debates did was clarify who the remaining undecideds thought they would choose, and even that turned out to be ephemeral. Of course, at that time, those numbers appeared to be bigger than they were.

In the end, the GOP candidates were undone by the extreme positions taken by some of the candidates and by the stiffness and unlikeability of their main candidate. Dick Morris has no business talking about moderation now, given that he regularly went on the air to promote the most extreme candidates he could.

Malkin embarassed herself on Hannity last night, where she was unable to debate Juan Williams with anything other than rolling her eyes and trying to interrupt him with non-factual hyperbole. Her blatant anger was probably fueled by the fact that she had to be on air with Williams, given that he corrected her wild statements in a debate last year. The fact that she brought up his statement of her not being a “real reporter” (and she isn’t) shows that she hasn’t gotten over that humiliation yet.

Joe Muto’s book will be coming out on June 4th. Looks to be very, very interesting. As does the upcoming Dick Morris interview tonight on CNN. One wonders at what point Morris will turn on the hand that fed him over the last ten years…

I’m not sure that Morris actually has a non-disclosure agreement – at least not when it comes to being catty. He doesn’t have to discuss the inner workings of Fox News to make a bunch of hay about the personalities there – and that’s exactly the kind of thing he’s known for doing when he’s been crossed. What he does tomorrow night should be fascinating, to say the least.

Amazing that we couldn’t even get out of January before O’Reilly and Brit Hume would already be predicting doom for President Obama and discussing how the GOP would rise again. This is the same playbook they were using for the last three years. As a newsflash, I think they may have forgotten that Obama really was re-elected, the GOP really did lose and lose big, and it turned out the polls really weren’t wrong all along.

And yet, here’s Brit Hume, fresh from bashing Hillary Clinton on her way out of the State Department, fresh from bashing anything Obama does, and what’s his conclusion: that Obama will alienate voters, who are sure to sweep GOP candidates to office. Except that Brit predicted this for the election we just had. How’d that work out?

And yet, sure as the sun will rise again, here’s Karl Rove with his white board, scrambling to get everyone to believe they can still somehow defeat Obama, even though he can’t run for office again.

And all of this ignores the near complete civil war going on inside the GOP today. Projection and distraction, thy name may well be Fox…

Of course, this also ignores that Rush Limbaugh has continued his temper tantrum into this year, going with the interesting new thought that “low information voters” are the people who showed up to vote Obama in for a second term rather than doing what Limbaugh had convinced himself would happen. It’s a novel concept – blame the voter. Wonder how that’ll work out…

I believe you’ll see changes in a couple of months. They’ll wait to see if the downward trend continues, particularly after they continue to bang the drum of whatever they can about President Obama. The one whose ratings have dropped the most is Greta, and I’ve heard somewhere else about the notion of them dropping her program and putting in a new show with Megyn Kelly instead.

Part of this is also a matter of the very expensive contracts already drawn up with various people. I thought that both O’Reilly and Hannity were re-upped last year for multi-year deals at a high price tag. I doubt anything happens with those two guys at all. Not sure about The Five. Seems to me that’s the easiest show they could drop if they really get in a pinch.

It’s pretty clear that David Limbaugh is desperate to make his own name for himself with the right wingers. What he did in this segment was almost completely nonsensical. He reiterated attack points on President Obama from 2010 Tea Party Rallies and then he jumped forward to blame Mitt Romney’s humiliation on “the media” rather than on Romney’s own failings. Juan Williams correctly responded by laughing at the ridiculousness of the statements and by asking Limbaugh if he’d been able to get over the election from last November. Limbaugh sputtered frantically over that and wound up with a version of “I know you are but what am I?”

The saddest part of this display by Jesse Watters was that he cut off the guy who was presenting legitimate arguments against Watters’ behavior and preconceptions. We have no way of knowing if the guy had an answer to Watters’ desperate gotcha of “But you said you didn’t watch!” because Watters froze the camera as the guy was about to respond. One has to wonder what the guy said to him that made Watters too afraid to air it. Or perhaps was it the earlier quote, taken out of order where he said what is quoted above here? Hard to know given how Watters chops up these segments to fit his case…

So Bret will be following this scoop with a severe analysis of Greta van Susteren’s interview with Palin as well, right?

Bill O’Reilly also brought this up during the prior hour, shoehorning in a mention while ostensibly trying to discuss congressional matters and gun control. This sounds like something that Roger Ailes wanted covered.

I find it interesting that Bill O’Reilly didn’t ask the really tough questions of Colin Powell that he himself espoused only the night before.

Where was Bill’s no-spin question about the right wing meme that Powell coordinated his comments with the Obama White House? Where was Bill’s no-spin question about why Powell was appearing on MSNBC to make such statements?

While we’re on the subject, it’s good that Bill O’Reilly knew that Powell was specifically referring to the racist comments made by Sarah Palin and John Sununu, as opposed to Hannity trying to lie and say “Show me a Republican who said anything like that!” when Powell didn’t name drop.

But how could O’Reilly seriously defend Palin or Sununu? They made nasty comments, regardless of whether they were “in the heat of the campaign”. There was no mistaking the intent of the comments, and there was no excuse for making them, other than that Palin and Sununu were trying to rile up Romney voters. If O’Reilly thinks comments like this are okay “in the heat of the campaign”, does this mean that Joe Walsh’s comments during his losing campaign were okay too? Does this mean that you can just say racial epithets during a campaign and then hide behind your candidacy? This can’t be anyone’s idea of healthy public discourse.

And it’s clear that both Fox News and the GOP are aware of this, since they’ve dropped Palin from the roster, and since John Sununu hasn’t been seen since Romney’s loss.

One has to wonder if Bill O’Reilly will attack this interview with the fervor he did the 60 Minutes discussion.

There’s also the interesting sideswipe that Brit Hume took at Clinton on Monday, wherein he renewed his longtime animus and said she was essentially an unremarkable diplomat getting more praise than she deserved. You have to wonder whether his public humiliation by Bill Clinton in the 1990s is still in his mind today.

Given that the Fox News evening hosts haven’t had much of substance to discuss since they lost the election, it’s not surprising that Fox’s ratings are plummeting in the key demographics on which they depend. At a certain point, the Fox execs will be forced to take action to stop the fall. Given that Greta’s show has fallen the farthest (losing 38 percent of her viewership in a year), there is already speculation that Roger Ailes may change up the evening and put on newer and younger faces. Megyn Kelly has been discussed as a possible permanent replacement for this slot. We’ll have to see how soon Fox starts to make these changes. I’d give it another couple of months before you see anything real.

And of course my post is totally redundant. I didn’t look two posts down the page to see that Ellen had already posted the same thing, in much better detail.

This isn’t a matter of Kucinich being “allowed an opinion”. Dennis Kucinich is free to say or think whatever he pleases, whether he is paid big money by Fox News or not. Nobody is imposing any fascist rules on him that I’ve ever heard of.

The issue is that he went on Hannity’s show unprepared for what was going on. Most of the time, Juan Williams and Alan Colmes at least have done their homework and can answer the more outrageous claims or at least not allow Hannity or O’Reilly to throw out completely bogus statements without challenge. When they go on the air unprepared and just agree with a host who is spouting partisan rhetoric, it accomplishes nothing.

The votes in the Illinois state legislature were designed as “gotcha” votes where the GOP was trying to get the Dems to either vote yes to an outrageous measure or no to give the GOP a talking point. Instead, the Dems voted “present” to avoid the pitfall while making sure the measure did not pass. The GOP has tried to make hay out of this for years, under the assumption that most Fox News viewers wouldn’t be able to discern the fine points of the reality.