Tucker Carlson continues in his quest to embarass himself in every way possible. I suppose he wants us to think it was a coincidence that he came up with this “gotcha!” video the night before the most crucial debate Romney has faced in the campaign. And I suppose that Hannity thinks nobody will ask questions about what is actually a pretty innocuous video.

When you watch the video, there’s not much to talk about that Obama hasn’t been consistently saying throughout his political career. He’s more up front about the inequity of the response to Katrina, but that’s clearly due to him talking to an audience for whom this is a major issue, and for whom he would have been pilloried for ignoring it. This is a matter of showing sensitivity to your audience – much in the way that Romney failed to do when he deliberately said the wrong things to the NAACP gathering. Here Obama is shown actually paying attention to the audience for whom he is speaking.

It’s clear that this is yet another attempt by Fox to throw up a smear on Obama, and like all the other ones, this one is failing. Only Fox and right wing sites are even carrying this nonsense. One has to wonder what they’re going to say after the debate tomorrow night. I expect they’ll immediately declare Romney the winner by a landslide but we’ll have to see if he even justifies a fraction of the acclaim they’ll be waiting to provide.

Gingrich is as clueless as Hannity about the realities of diplomacy in the Middle East. In the middle of the interview, there was Newt advocating for a cutoff of aid to Egypt. Great, except that it’s a violation of the Camp David Accords and it would essentially cut us out of the area. Gingrich would think this was a great idea because it would look “tough”. Any sane person would look at that idea and see if anything else was in the hamper.

Trump has been a joke in this race almost from the day he said he was “thinking about running”. In reality, he wasn’t. Such a race would be potentially devastating for him and for his television show. Better to do what Sarah Palin does and just continue promoting himself – Fox seems to be happy to help both of them do this, at least for now.

Hannity, on the other hand, seems to be taking every moment he can to just spew nasty invective at Obama. If I didn’t know better, I’d say he was being a sore loser in advance. Election night, and the night after should be very interesting on his show. Will he actually show up to do it, or will he call in sick and have Monica Crowley take the heat?

Actually, Karl Rove’s most bone shattering attack of this campaign was when he said that if Todd Akin was found murdered, not to ask where Rove was when it happened.

Ads like this aren’t going to convince anyone outside of their base, who are already planning not to vote for Obama anyway. The real trick is whether they will all show up for Romney.

Fox is only trying to defend this person because their meme is to discount the impact of his hate speech. It’s pretty clear that this guy is a real piece of work, and that there is some concern that after stirring up this trouble and violating his probation, he’s going to try to flee the consequences of his actions.

The reality of the situation is that he won’t be prosecuted for his speech. He’ll be prosecuted for everything else he did, which won’t even touch the amount of misery he caused around the world.

I actually find O’Reilly’s show toxic when Laura Ingraham hosts – she regularly talks over and interrupts her guests, or takes such a snide tone with them that it’s difficult to get past her bias. This is nothing new for her – she’s been doing the same thing on her radio show for years, usually spouting the current talking points at whatever political or educational figure comes on, and cutting them off when they don’t immediately agree with everything she says. (And usually she’s way off…)

I agree that Fox has been really playing this game of “Stack the Deck Against the Liberal Guest” lately – mostly due to what looks like growing panic about the state of the election. These guys thought they were potentially going to walk into the White House and have a majority in both houses of Congress again. Instead, they’re looking at 4 more years of Obama and at least 2 more of a Dem Senate, along with losing some ground in the House. (In reality, this will actually be good for their business – they do better when they can carp about the people in office rather than agreeing with them all the time.)

The most egregious examples of this have come with poor Joe Trippi, who’s been saddled with a couple of ridiculous situations with Hannity. During one of them this week, he finally stood up for himself, noting that he was being brought on to be the “Washington Generals” and calling Hannity out on not letting him finish his answers after Hannity petulantly yelled at him to hear the whole question first, among other nonsense.

We should note that Steve Murphy once again did a fine job of calling Hannity on his nonsense here. When both Hannity and the right wing guest tried to gang up on Murphy with this stuff, Murphy shouted right back at them, telling Hannity he was saying “scurrilous things” about the President and making the point that the other guest had no idea what he was talking about. Murphy deflected all of their rhetoric to the point that Hannity ended the segment in clear frustration. It’s nice to see a guest on Fox tell the simple truth to Hannity.

Morris has offered plenty of mean comments about the Clintons, usually showing his lingering bitterness and anger at them, now more than 15 years after the fact.

Morris’ comments once again went down badly with O’Reilly, who repeatedly cut off Morris and tried to get him to explain himself. Morris never justified his outrageous claim that the media are cooking the books for Obama for financial gain. Instead, he repeated his debunkable theories on how the polls are somehow being stacked against Romney and how the percentages are all wrong.

Scott Rasmussen also came across as doing what he’s known for doing – pressing a Republican thumb down on the scale of a political poll. His accounting of where the race is right now is clearly intended to inspire Romney voters to be more active (“It’s still winnable, guys! We’re only a point down and it’s within the margin of error!”) Larry Sabatow at least was able to poke some holes into these ideas in acknowledging what the right wing is already starting to digest – that their candidate is losing the key swing states he would need to be elected president. The poll averages clearly show Obama leading in the swing states and leading in the race. Rasmussen’s findings will match the reality somewhere very close to the November 6 election, at which time he’ll have to put out genuine material to retain his record of being accurate.

Until the beginning of November, there will be plenty of right wing pollsters like Morris and Rasmussen who will try to spin a story about Romney being a shoo-in, etc. Because they hope to make that happen by making that the story that appears in the papers. And up to the end of October, it’s always still possible to have an impact. But when you get into the final week before the ballots are filled out, the election is all but over. Morris and Rasmussen hope to shift the balance whie they still have time.

I’m beginning to wonder if Morris isn’t genuinely unhinged. The new Black Helicopters book seems to indicate that this is the case…

In the case of his bizarre conclusions about the presidential race, I really have to ask what the man is smoking. On the same evening, in the prior hour, both Bill O’Reilly and Brit Hume grudgingly admitted that Obama is handily winning the swing states. Hume actually went far enough to establish his post-election excuse – that Obama is a better politician than Romney, who he called “inept”. Of course, Hume couldn’t resist showing a little anger when he groused that Obama was somehow resisting “gravity” by maintaining his lead over Romney.

But in the next hour, you have Dick Morris stubbornly singing on through the air raid…

Brent Bozell and the MRC are not a credible outfit in any case. Even Bill O’Reilly has admitted as such on his show, noting that they spin everything to the right. (Of course, he was doing that at the same time he was slamming David Brock’s Media Matters outfit…) The MRC is known for the lawsuit against its group the PTC (Parents Television Council) by the WWE for defamatory comments. Bozell famously lost the case and was forced to not only pay millions in damages but also had to issue a humiliating public apology. Why Fox continues to trot him out is a complete mystery to me.

As for the current situation, I agree with the prior posters. President Obama’s stance on progressive taxation has been public record throughout his public service career. His comments from 1998 are consistent with his request for the very rich to pay their fair share. The right wing tried to run this “socialist” idea repeatedly in the 2008 campaign and have continued to ring that bell for the past 3 1/2 years to no effect. It’s not news and it’s not even new in 2012 to play a clip like this.

The Romney comment, however, is news – because it catches Romney saying something that effectively dismisses nearly half the population due to a talking point. And it isn’t that he said that they wouldn’t vote for him – it’s that he was saying they weren’t worthy of voting for him anyway. Comments like that are devastating, because they just don’t go away.

The result of those comments, plus all the other problems Romney has had in dealing with a fractured GOP, in selling himself to the public, and in getting any traction in the race, is that Romney is no longer being wholeheartedly backed by even the pundits at Fox. It’s gotten to the point that even they are acknowledging that his only chance now is to have a massive upset in the debates, which nobody thinks is that likely.

It’s very strange to see Fox giving Newt this platform. They were genuinely angry with him for not terminating his campaign sooner. One can only think they need each other now. Newt needs the paycheck (he doesn’t appear there for free) and the publicity for his books, while Fox needs to have someone on who presents a harder edge than the candidate they know is going to lose the election.

The Middle East story is likely to burn out as anything of interest by the time we get to the first debate, at which point it will be just another talking point for Hannity to repeat, in the same way that he regularly tries to bring up Jeremiah Wright and the way he tried to fan the flames of the non-issue of Joe Sestak.

If anything has been really surprising, it’s been the blatant pro-Romney, anti-Obama inset ads appearing on Greta’s show. She’s normally a bit more intelligent than that – those clipfests are borderline straight propaganda. One has to wonder why she is tolerating that on her show.

This was an interesting exchange – in that Koppel was not backing down. He did allow that both Fox News and MSNBC pull in partisan directions, so he didn’t completely single Fox out, but he made his point quite effectively that O’Reilly’s behavior and the channel’s behavior has been counterproductive.

I would be very interested to see the Koppel interview of O’Reilly, in case anything else fell out there.

At the same time, there was one very interesting O’Reilly moment this week that I don’t think has gotten any coverage anywhere. On Wednesday night, he had Dick Morris on and seemed to be genuinely angry with him. Morris kept trying to bloviate his points about the GOP somehow being on the verge of convincingly winning the presidency and the Senate and O’Reilly kept cutting him off. The first time, he snapped “Wait a second, or I’ll kick your coverage.” The second time he flat out yelled at Morris, something like “Can it, Morris!” And at the end, he mentioned that Morris had disagreed with his Talking Points and gave him 30 seconds to say why. Now, all of this was done while O’Reilly was continuing to let Morris plug his book, but there was something else going on. I strongly doubt the animus was just from Morris disagreeing with him – but you never know with O’Reilly’s ego.

It’s becoming clearer and clearer that even the wags like Morris are unable to talk away the serious trouble in which the Romney campaign finds itself now. Both Morris and Priebus are now starting to admit that it doesn’t look rosy for their guy. Rove is now trying to use the card about the 1980 Carter/Reagan race – without noting that the current situation is quite different. In 1980, most people only knew of Reagan as an actor (not counting the Californians who knew him as a governor) and hadn’t really seen him up close until the debates. And Carter was a pretty stiff speaker while Reagan was more at ease. In the current situation, Obama is the better speaker, and the country has seen plenty of Romney in the umpteen debates and appearances over the past year. I have to wonder where they think this sudden massive surge for him is going to erupt from.

The thing is – the 1998 recording isn’t really a bombshell. It’s Obama discussing the idea that government can work, and discussing the notion of a progressive tax system. The whole idea of taxing people who make large sums of money more than people who don’t is in itself mildly redistributive. There’s nothing controversial about that unless you don’t believe in the rich paying more taxes than the poor. And Obama’s statement doesn’t attack anyone – it’s an expression of hope that the system can work to help people.

On the other hand, Romney’s statement is a pretty direct dismissal of those who will not support him as being unworthy.

The half life of the respective quotes is going to be quite different. The Obama comment will be waved around by Fox to little effect for the next few days, while the Romney quote will haunt him up to the moment the Election returns are announced.

I think you’re seeing the Fox pundits preparing themselves for the inevitable. With these positions, they can comfortably discuss the Election on the day of and the day after without that moment of having to come clean with the viewers.

This is why the behavior of Hannity and Dick Morris will likely only become more entertaining all the way up into November. I expect that Greta will continue to flack for Romney until the situation becomes obvious after the debates, and then she’ll join that chorus. O’Reilly is more of a wild card. My instincts say that he’ll start castigating Romney after the first debate, for not following whatever course O’Reilly would have preferred. I expect him to get more and more skeptical with the pro-Romney guests until November.

Murdoch’s conclusions are mostly correct.

But if and when Romney takes his advice and tries to move to the center, likely during the debates, that’s when the “Etch a Sketch” comment will come back to haunt him. And the hard line right wingers who already have trust issues with Romney, will likely bolt if he does move away from them. Murdoch’s correct that they have nowhere else to go logically, but in their minds they’ll be doing the right thing by either voting for Gary Johnson, writing in Ron Paul, or just opting out of the presidential area of the election. Romney does not have their votes as a guarantee, and the moment they think he’s not in lockstep with them, a bunch will flee.

The most likely scenario, barring some kind of unbelievable meltdown by Obama, will be for Romney to gradually lose ground over the next six weeks, particularly after the first debate. Romney will still get somewhere around 45-48 percent of the vote, and he’ll still pick up a bunch of Electoral College votes. But nothing he’s done indicates that he can get over the hump to become President.

Murdoch and the people at Fox News know this, and have known it for some time. The real interesting part of this will come after Hannity and Morris predictably lose their composure completely as Election Day draws near.

Morris has staked what’s left of any credibility on a Romney landslide, so it will be interesting to see what happens after the election. I have a feeling he’ll get angrier and angrier on air throughout October, culminating on Election Day. And then he’ll be back on the air the following week, pretending to have some credibility as an expert on these matters. And pretending that none of his statements over the past year exist.

Hannity, on the other hand, has been drumrolling this election since January 2011, when he was starting his program with the line “And we’re on the road to 2012!” I’m not sure what Hannity was thinking then, whether he thought there would be a great GOP candidate or whether he just wanted to rev up his audience. But one has to seriously wonder how he’s going to handle watching Obama win a second term…

I’m glad this got noticed. I thought it was a pretty spectacular moment, and it spoke more to what is clearly an animosity between the two men than to the issue at hand. It also shows Hannity’s desperation to find something, anything he can use to attack Obama with in the midst of a presidential campaign Obama appears to be handily winning.

This was almost as fun as Hannity and Morris losing their composure near the end of the 2008 campaign.

McCain’s points, in fairness, were actually well done. The part that most of the Fox News crew don’t get is that the Embassy release about the video was not an apology – it was an attempt to minimize the damage from that video. That isn’t weakness, it’s being a good neighbor and guest. I’ll give O’Reilly credit for at least paying lip service to this idea. But Hannity is clearly flailing at this point. One has to wonder what he’ll do after the debates…

This entire matter is only pointing up the increasing panic on the part of the Romney campaign and their supporters at Fox. They know their guy is not getting over the hump, and they’re trying to seize on the problems in Egypt and Libya to see if they can make some hay there. Unfortunately, they crossed a line – it’s all well and good for Romney to decry the destruction and deaths, but he jumped the gun on it, and he tried to turn the matter into a reason to openly criticize Obama. The smart move would have been to leave the second part unspoken, but his advisors clearly pushed him to make the direct statement.

One really has to wonder what these guys are going to say the morning after the election. Will this be a replay of 2006, when Limbaugh famously ranted that he was happy he wouldn’t have to support candidates he didn’t believe in?

There was a much more revealing moment for me in the segment before this one. Unless I’m missing something big (and I could be), O’Reilly has never gone out publicly saying that the invasion of Iraq was a mistake. In the past, he has screamed at people on the air for saying that. But tonight, he was suddenly (for me anyway) saying that it was a hindsight mistake to have invaded Iraq. This was said as part of his debate with Alan Colmes about the cost of the Bush wars, but it was an admission that was quite startling. If anything, that shows more clearly that the GOP is starting to go from desperation to outright panic.

Jesse Watters attempts to ambush Democrat politicians and supporters at the DNC got a pretty hilarious airing here, since he utterly failed in his efforts. He was clearly aiming to try to get “something juicy” to put on the air for Hannity, but all he got was a series of on-camera rejections and avoidances. My personal favorite was the NPR person who took one look at him, made a face and said “You’re a creep.”

The Tamara Holder/Monica Crowley segment was particularly bad, as it just turned into the usual ganging up scenario. But the problem here was that Holder actually could have turned the tables if she had some grasp of the facts.

Hannity tried to bully her by demanding that she provide examples of GOP personal attacks like he was braying about from the Dems. Holder couldn’t name a single one and made a shocking concession that she couldn’t. Which makes no sense. The answer to Hannity and Crowley about personal attacks would be to immediately turn to Crowley and say “How about when you tweeted about Sandra Fluke’s engagement – you know, when you asked ‘to a man?’” The answer would be to turn to Hannity and ask him about how he refers to Obama as “the annointed one” and “President Crybaby”. The answer would be to ask why people like Donald Trump and Ed Klein get a free pass to make really sinister comments on Fox’s air. The answer would be to ask about the RNC delegates who threw peanuts at a black camerawoman and yelled “This is how we feed the animals.” The answer would be to ask Hannity “How much time do you have?”