(h/t Media Matters)

Just further proof that Sarah Palin's political career is entirely due to all these Republican men thinking with their GOPenises.

In an appearance on Imus in the Morning (now airing on the Fox Business Channel, which is why you probably didn't know it was back on the air), Fox News Sunday host Chris Wallace** exposed a little more of his psyche than he probably should have:

WALLACE: We are going to have the first Sunday show interview ever with Governor Sarah Palin. We’ll be down in Nashville with her at the National Tea Party Convention and…I’m excited. First of all, I’m excited to finally meet and interview Sarah Palin. We’ve been chasing her like Captain Ahab and the great white whale for the last year and a half, so it’s going to be interesting to sit down with her and talk. And in addition, I’m interested in going down to the Tea Party convention and get a sense of other than seeing them on TV what they’re…what their platform is, what they’re interested in.

IMUS: When she…when you interview her, will she be sitting on your lap? [laughter]

WALLACE: One can only hope. [laughter]

Ewwww. The dirty old man chuckling made me more than a little nauseated. This is not the first such occasion where Wallace has made really inappropriate statements, as documented by our friends at Media Matters:

Wallace on Brown's looks: A female Fox anchor said, "you guys have all had Sarah Palin, now we've got Scott Brown"

Fox's Wallace asks conservative host Gallagher to "do me a favor ... put in a good word for me" with Palin

Fox's Wallace on ACORN booking: I wish we "were going to have the prostitute [Giles] because she's pretty cute"

Fox's Wallace: NTSB chair Hersman "a babe ... you would not expect a government bureaucrat to be an attractive woman"

However, this time, Wallace got the condemnation of none other than GOP also-ran Fred Thompson and wife, Jeri. Dude, when Fred Thompson wakes up enough to say you're out of line, you have really messed up.

**Corrected. No one should confuse the quasi-journalism/propagandizing of Chris Wallace with any other family member

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[H/t Heather]

One of the key points President Obama made in his back-and-forth with House Republicans seems to be really sticking in the craw of the right-wing pundit class:

Obama: I mean, the fact of the matter is that many of you, if you voted with the administration on something, are politically vulnerable in your home base, in your own party. You've given yourselves very little room to work in a bipartisan fashion, because what you've been telling your constituents is. 'This guy's doin' all kinds of crazy stuff that's going to destroy America!'

Bill Kristol, yesterday on Fox News Sunday:

Kristol: First of all, I agree with the president. I think he's been doing all kinds of crazy stuff that risks destroying America. But the good news is, a lot of it's been stopped.

Of course, he's not actually agreeing with the President -- but he certainly is proving his point, isn't he?

Indeed, it points up that it isn't just Republican congressmen telling their constituents that Obama is a radical black Marxist/fascist/nihilist out to destroy America. It's the entire right-wing pundit class -- most of all, nearly the entirety of Fox News and its talkers.

If anything, the congresscritters are just taking their cues from Fox and aping the talking points that flow out of the fetid imaginations of people like Glenn Beck and Sean Hannity and Bill Kristol.

And as long as that's the case, well, we wish the president lotsa luck in getting Republican Congressmen to behave any differently.

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ConservaDem Evan Bayh just can't help himself can he? On Fox News Sunday when asked about the President's proposed non-security discretionary spending freeze, Bayh sides with the likes of Paul Ryan and calls critics of the spending freeze 'far-left'.

Wallace: First of all Sen. Bayh, Congressman Ryan this question as to whether or not the spending freeze and the President's ideas for fiscal discipline are real or a sham, go at it.

BAYH: Well, if you look, I suspect Paul does not, but if you look at the far left-wing blogs and that kind of thing they're severely criticizing the president for being too fiscally austere. My own take on this, Paul is right. Domestic discretionary spending increased last year. I voted against the omnibus, I voted against the "minibus", I voted against the bus... and so, that's last year. The question is where do we go here from now?

This freeze is important. He's identified $20 billion which if you aggregate over the next ten years is $250 billion less spending. Does that solve all our problems? No. But it's a step in the right direction and his use of the veto pen -- you asked if it's a wake-up call Chris. It is, but it's important Congress not hit the snooze button. So we need to implement these cuts and look for long-term solutions to get spending and the deficit down.

I wonder if Bayh was referring to Paul Krugman and his criticism of the freeze which he called 'appalling on every level'. Or Rachel Maddow who took Jared Bernstein apart when he tried to explain the rationale behind the decision. I'd like to see Bayh go on Maddow's show and try to explain himself to her. I don't think he'd fare very well. She might actually ask him to follow up and explain who he was talking about and why he thinks they're wrong.

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On Friday, President Barack Obama told House Republicans that he wasn't an impractical idealist and Sen. Lamar Alexander agrees.

"If you were to listen to the debate, and frankly how some of you went after this bill," Obama said while speaking to the House Republican retreat. "You'd think that this thing was some Bolshevik plot."

"I'm not an ideologue. I'm not," the president argued.

Chris Wallace asked Sen. Lamar Alexander Sunday if he agreed that the president isn't an ideologue. "In many ways, no," he said.

Alexander continued, "But I think he doesn't think he's an ideologue but I think he approaches things in a way a professor would in terms of big comprehensive schemes. When, in fact, the way the big complicated country we have works best when we solve problems step-by-step."

Following Alexander on "Fox News Sunday," conservative columnist Charles Krauthammer took exception to the senator's description of the president. "I disagree with my colleagues on interpreting how the president is acting. I think he has not learned. I think he has not changed. I think he remains an ideologue and I don't see a pivot," he said.

John Amato:

I think the fact that President Obama said he's not an ideologue is a big problem for the Democratic Party and his base. He's the leader of the party and if he's not making a case for an ideology then he's actually attacking his own Congress.
Obama clearly is not a progressive ideologue and a reason his approval ratings are down as much is because the base feels they are not being represented. Krauthammer is not being honest on this issue because he's pushing the Roger Aile's agenda of defining the president. If Obama did push HCR like an ideologue, the base would be pumped up and a bill would have been passed by now.

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Sen. John Cornyn wants everyone to calm down about a Supreme Court decision that would allow corporation to pour an unlimited amount of cash into campaign advertisements. Cornyn believes the effect of the decision has been "overstated."

"I think [the impact has] been overstated," Cornyn told Fox News' Chris Wallace.

Apparently Cornyn thinks that contribution to campaigns by individual donors is more of a threat than unchecked money from large corporations. "Frankly, there has been an explosion of money in to federal races for public office since, well, in the last ten years since campaign finance reform. It hasn't done anything to stop the flow of money in," he said.

"President Obama spent more money in his campaign in 2008 than Senator Kerry and President Bush did in 2004 combined," Cornyn continued.

"What we need is transparency. We need contemporaneous reporting on the internet. That's the kind of accountability we need," concluded Cornyn.

(HUGE h/t to the always hilarious Blue Gal for the video)

I don't know how you feel, but to me, last week was truly a horrible, terrible, very bad, no good week for progressives and America in general. Looking at the schedule, I'm not seeing it get much better. Obviously, there will be much crystal ball gazing at the Massachusetts election and what that means on a larger level for the 2010 midterms. And with President Obama's first official State of the Union speech scheduled for this week, I'm sure that our perennial Sunday guest, John McCain, will have lots of doom and gloom to anticipate. White House Senior Adviser David Axelrod scored two appearances on This Week and State of the Union to spin the last week's disappointments into positives. Sadly, he's going to be followed by Jim DeMint and Orrin Hatch, respectively. WH Senior Adviser Valerie Jarrett will be on Meet the Press, only to be followed by Mitch McConnell. And WH Press Secretary Robert Gibbs will be on Fox News Sunday, only to be followed by John Cornyn. Noticing a trend?

ABC's "This Week" - White House senior adviser David Axelrod; Sens. Robert Menendez, D-N.J., and Jim DeMint, R-S.C.

CBS' "Face the Nation" - Sens. John McCain, R-Ariz., and Dick Durbin, D-Ill.

NBC's "Meet the Press" - White House senior adviser Valerie Jarrett; Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky.

NBC's "The Chris Matthews Show" - Panel: David Brooks, Savannah Guthrie, Clarence Page and Kathleen Parker. Topics: Will Obama Recalibrate His Agenda In Response To Voter Outrage? White Flight: Why Have Working Class Whites Abandoned Obama? Meter Questions: Can Dems Neutralize the Throw-the-Bums-Out Attitude by November? YES: 4 NO: 8; Have the Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan Helped the Fight Against al-Qaeda? YES: 7 No: 5

CNN's "State of the Union" - Axelrod; Menendez; Sens. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, and Richard Shelby, R-Ala.

CNN's "Fareed Zakaria GPS" - former National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski on how to move forward in Haiti. Then, the people of Massachusetts sent a strong message to President Obama earlier this week - should he go left, right, or straight down the middle? Fareed and his panel of historians give their perspectives on what he should do next.

CNN's "Amanpour" - The rebuilding effort in Haiti.

"Fox News Sunday" - White House press secretary Robert Gibbs; Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas.

So what's catching your eye this morning?

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RNC Chairman Michael Steele offered a non-apology apology Sunday for using the term "honest injun."

Wednesday, Steele was speaking to Sean Hannity about his new book, "Right Now: A 12-step Program for Defeating the Obama Agenda." The RNC Chairman told Hannity, "Our platform is one of the best political documents that's been written in the last 25 years. Honest injun on that."

Members of his own party immediately spoke out against him. Rep. Tom Cole called Steele's remarks "unacceptable" and said, "It's an offensive phrase in the Native American community."

His mea culpa came less than a day after the revelation that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid used the term "negro" when discussing then-Senator Barack Obama with reporters.

The revelation comes as the new book has disclosed deeply damaging comments Reid made to the reporters, where he said the country was ready for a black president - particularly one that was "light-skinned" with no "Negro dialect, unless he wanted to have one." Reid immediately apologized for his remarks, and Obama and other Democrats have come to his defense.

Steele said the remarks shouldn't be held to the same standard and called for Reid to resign, a stance the rest of the GOP party is only too happy to echo.

National Republican Senatorial Committee Chairman John Cornyn (R-Texas) said it would be "entirely appropriate" for the Nevada Democrat to relinquish his leadership post over comments about Barack Obama's skin color and lack of a "Negro dialect."

And like Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele and Senate GOP Whip Jon Kyl — both of whom also called for Reid's resignation Sunday — Cornyn suggested that any Republican who said what Reid said would be under attack from Democrats, leading African-Americans and the media.

Steele called for the Majority Leader to step down Sunday. "I think he should," he told Fox News' Chris Wallace. Steele complained that former Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott was forced to step down when he praised Strom Thurmond who ran as a segregationist for president in 1948. Lott said the country would not have had "all the problems" it had if more people had voted for Thurmond.

"The reality is there is this standard where the Democrats feel they can say these things and they can apologize when it comes from the mouths of their own," said Steele. "But if it comes from anyone else, it's racism. It's either racist or it's not."

But apparently that standard doesn't hold up when it comes to Steele's "honest injun" remark. "The reality of it is that's not the same," Steele told Wallace.

(Nicole:) While Steele may have a point in saying that his flippant use of an old colloquialism doesn't rise to the same level as Harry Reid's tin-eared comments, he's wrong that Reid's statements are the same as Trent Lott's wistful nostalgia for the days before the civil rights movement. There's no question that Reid's statements--in front of reporters, no less--are clunky and stupid. However, without excusing them, what Reid said is actually not dissimilar to discussions had in every campaign war room when discussing the pros and cons of candidates. There's a world of difference between that--however inartfully expressed--and praising a politician for his work to sustain the days of Jim Crow.

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Bloody Bill Kristol on Fox News Sunday claims that "the stimulus isn't stimulus" and says it's just resulted in more debt and says if the President "stops doing foolish things at least we can get some kind of recovery". Of course Bill has never found anything "foolish" about more military spending or worried about the debt we've incurred from it for that matter. We can always bankrupt the country to drop more bombs on poor people's heads, but heaven forbid not to get people back to work.

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Leave it to Pat Buchanan to be the one MSNBC pundit who would come out in defense of Brit Hume's hackery. As David Shuster and Tamryn Hall attempt to point out to Buchanan, neither he or Hume knows anything about Buddhism and really should not be judging something they know absolutely nothing about, but apparently that's not enough for Buchanan to think he or Hume shouldn't have an opinion on the religion anyway. Can't fix stuck and stubborn here guys. Pat's got his preconceived notions and he's sticking to them dammit!

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Bloody Bill Kristol thinks that the embassy closing in Yemen "has been a victory for Al Qaida". No Bill, the neocons like yourself taking over the U.S. government giving them excuses to fuel extremism has been a "victory for Al Qaida". Bill was also not done crying about the Underwear Bomber being "lawyered up" and not being tortured in case there's more information we could have gotten from him. So nice to see Kristol has absolutely no faith in our criminal justice system.

WALLACE: Bill, is that -- as Brit frames it, is that the issue, that it’s a choice between getting tough or doing things, whether it’s on decisions about Guantanamo, decisions about criminal defendants, that may appeal to the rest of the world and that -- and the Obama administration is coming down on one side of that?

KRISTOL: I’m not even sure it appeals to the rest of the world, of course. I don’t think the rest of the world would be shocked if we treated him as an enemy combatant in -- consistently -- consistent with President Obama’s rules of interrogation -- no enhanced interrogation techniques -- but still try to interrogate him.

Mr. Brennan said to you that we are very worried that there are other Abdulmutallabs out there. This Abdulmutallab was there for four months. He might know who the others are. He might know their names.

We let him lawyer up, and right now he’s probably thinking, “Gee, maybe I could use that information to bargain with to get a reduced sentence.” That’s what Brennan seemed to indicate when he kept talking about how, “Well, we’re going to work with his lawyers, and we have some incentives to offer him.”

But this is operational intelligence in real time, and we are not treating it as a war. I mean, if this -- incidentally, when he said there’s no smoking gun, this is the smoking -- he is the smoking gun. Right?

His father comes, gives the CIA station chief in Africa his name. He -- a month later, he goes to Yemen, says he’s in Yemen. He’s in Yemen. He’s with this cleric whom we’re monitoring in Yemen, trying to kill in Yemen, Awlaki, who’s the same guy who’s been in touch with Major Hasan.

He goes to an airport using his own name, no disguise, no alias, buys with cash a one-way ticket to the U.S.

HUME: No luggage.

KRISTOL: No luggage. That -- he is the smoking gun. And frankly, for Mr. Brennan to say, “Well, no smoking gun,” that itself shows a kind of not-serious-about-the-war mentality.

And I would add one last thing. Closing the embassy in Yemen last night -- I mean, I don’t -- you know, no one wants State Department officials to be put at risk and all that, but that is a sign of weakness.

Closing the embassy? We can’t protect our own embassy in Yemen, a place we have Special Operations forces, a place we say we’re working with the government on the front lines of the war on terror, and there’s a terror threat and we close the embassy? That’s a victory for Al Qaida.

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Buddhism is inferior to Christianity when it comes to forgiveness of sins, according to Fox News pundit Brit Hume. Tiger Woods should turn his back on Buddhism and become a Christian to be forgiven for cheating on his wife, Hume told Fox News' Chris Wallace Sunday.

"The extent to which he can recover seems to me depends on his faith," said Hume. "He is said to be a Buddhist. I don't think that faith offers the kind of redemption and forgiveness offered by the Christian faith. My message to Tiger is, 'Tiger turn to the Christian faith and you can make a total recovery and be a great example to the world.'"

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An intelligence review into the failed Christmas day bombing of a Northwest Airline flight bound for Detroit found "no smoking gun," according to a top counterterrorism advisor to President Barack Obama.

"There was no smoking gun," Deputy National Security Advisor told Fox News' Chris Wallace Sunday. "There was no piece of intelligence that said this guy is a terrorist and is going to get on a plane. No, none whatsoever," he said.

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From Fox News Sunday, Arlen Specter criticized the Republicans for planning to ‘break the President’ as soon as he was sworn in to defeat him in 2012 and Jim DeMint claims that wasn’t their intent. I’d like to know how they knew he was going to ‘take over’ the economy and add more debt the day he got elected. DeMint responded to TPM and his defense was basically to call Arlen Specter names and say he can’t be trusted since he switched parties.

Trancript via Lexis Nexis.

WALLACE: Senator DeMint, you have raised questions about whether or not either of these bills are constitutional. Do you plan to file a lawsuit if something is passed to block the enactment of health care reform? DEMINT: Chris, this fight is not over right now, and the only thing worse than the policy itself has been the process that the Democrats have followed to get this passed.

We all heard last week about vote buying and different things going on in secret. So there are a lot of problems with this bill. Whether -- who files a suit or what happens if they pass it is one thing.

But my hope now is as we reveal to the American people what's actually in this bill, what it will cost them, what it will do to our Medicare and health care system, that we'll get a few Democrats to stand up in the House that maybe didn't before and help us stop this thing.

It is really bad, and it -- and it is not the answer. It doesn't meet the goals of the president. We need every American to have a health insurance plan they can afford and own and keep. This bill doesn't accomplish that.

WALLACE: Senator Specter, as our legal expert here -- not to diminish in any case any of the other senators that are appearing -- are there constitutional issues here? And let me ask you specifically about one. How can the government mandate that every individual has to buy health insurance?

SPECTER: I do not think there are serious constitutional issues. The mandate provision is very similar to what was done in Massachusetts when they had mandatory reform.

I'd like to pick up on what Senator DeMint says about the process. I think the process was very bad, but the process is really caused in large measure by the refusal of the Republicans to deal in any way.

Senator DeMint is the author of the famous statement that this is going to be President Obama's Waterloo, that this ought to be used to break the president, so that before the ink was dry on the oath of office -- and I know this because I was in the caucus -- the Republicans were already plotting ways to beat President Obama in 2012.

Now, effective government in a democracy relies upon some bipartisanship, but there simply isn't any. And the process which was used was not good. The lead story today in the Washington Post is that after you reform health care, you ought to reform the Senate. And I would start with the process.

And if some of the Republicans would come forward with suggestions, offer a vote or two, or three or four, to take away the need to have every last one of the 60 Democrats, you'd have a much better bill in accordance with the tradition of the Congress, especially the Senate, on bipartisanship.

WALLACE: Well, let me bring in Senator DeMint as a matter of personal privilege. You get 30 seconds to respond, sir.

DEMINT: Well, thank -- thank you, Chris. I never wanted to break the president. We just wanted to break his momentum as he took over more and more of our economy and created more and more of our debt.

The reason the Republicans didn't have any ideas in the bill is that the Democrats didn't allow it, Chris. There was nothing that they would consider other than a government takeover of health care. Whatever words were used, that was their intent.

The Republicans have a number of bills, Chris, that would allow insurance to be more available and affordable to every American, but that was not the goal of the Democrats here. They want the government to run it. They want 80 or 90 percent of Americans on government health care. That's not a good thing for our country.

WALLACE: Let me -- let me -- let me...

SPECTER: Twenty -- twenty -- twenty -- 20 seconds...

WALLACE: Gentlemen...

SPECTER: ... 20 seconds in reply?

WALLACE: No, no.

SPECTER: Twenty seconds in reply?

WALLACE: Senator Specter, no, because, in fairness, I've got to bring in your two other colleagues, and I know you wouldn't want to take time from them.

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In typical fashion, Bill Kristol is upset that the attempted air plane bomber is 'lawyered up'. I guess he thinks law enforcement would have a better case against him if they just hurried up and tortured the guy. That'll help get him convicted Bill! Idiot.

WALLACE: Well, obviously, we were just plain lucky that this guy's device, explosive device, didn't work.

But, Bill Kristol, what does the Christmas Day terror attack tell you about the continued efforts of our enemies to try to strike the U.S. homeland?

KRISTOL: Well, they are our enemies, and we have to understand that it's a war. And what most worries me -- what most worries me about the reaction to the attack is we're still treating it as a law enforcement matter. The FBI is investigating. He's been arrested. He's been read his rights. In the Washington Post late yesterday afternoon, after the news was already coming out about the Yemen connections and stuff, a law enforcement authority was quoted as saying authorities are operating on the theory that he acted alone.

We so desperately want not to believe that we have to deal with this as a global threat from Al Qaida and that we need to act against the key nexuses of Al Qaida, such as in Yemen, that we hope these guys are just acting alone. But he wasn't acting alone.

[...]

WALLACE: You know, it's interesting, Juan, because it does come out today -- we find out that he had a visa because he was a student in London. I guess the visa had lapsed.

He applied for a new visa in May because he said he was going to take a course. Somebody there checked out and said, "You know what? That course that you're talking about doesn't exist. It's a bogus course." They didn't give him a new visa. And somehow one wonders if that should have been in his file.

WILLIAMS: Well, I think it was in his file. It's how we know it. But I think that the big issue...

WALLACE: Well, I think they know it from the British authorities now.

WILLIAMS: Right, but I think that one of the -- the big issue here is that he went on this list in November, the same time that his father went to the U.S. embassy in Nigeria.

So the question is then at some point should he have been advanced to at least the no-screening list, which is about 14,000 people. And you know what? We don't know. It looks like they're going to ramp up a lot of this now. Sort of the horse is out of the barn, or however you say that phrase, to try to go after people at this level.

But to me, it doesn't seem fair to start, you know, all these political recriminations. Jennifer says the White House is very aware that that kind of criticism is coming. But it seems to me at this point it's a bunch of finger-pointing and a bunch of politics in Washington.

The real thing is we have hardened America as a target. And despite that, what we're seeing is an increase in these so-called -- and here I disagree with Bill Kristol -- lone wolves, people who are...

INGRAHAM: We don't know yet.

WILLIAMS: ... as a result of...

WALLACE: We don't know -- we don't know that.

WILLIAMS: No, I think we do know that.

WALLACE: How do we know that?

INGRAHAM: No, we don't.

WILLIAMS: I think what we know is...

WALLACE: We don't know if he was in Yemen or not. Where did he get...

WILLIAMS: No.

WALLACE: ... the PETN?

WILLIAMS: Clearly -- look.

WALLACE: We don't know any of that.

WILLIAMS: I think what we know at this point -- all that we know is that this guy had not spent any large amount of time with Al Qaida. He may have visited Yemen at...

INGRAHAM: We don't know that.

WILLIAMS: ... one point. That's about it. And he may have been given the PETN and a small amount...

INGRAHAM: Well...

KRISTOL: That's enough time to possibly...

WILLIAMS: OK.

KRISTOL: ... kill -- this is the problem. This is precisely the problem. This guy has been lawyered up. We don't know anything. One reason we don't know anything -- he's not being treated like an enemy combatant. He's not being interrogated. We're not finding out everything we could know about Awlaki.

This is an ongoing attack -- enemy attempt to attack the United States, and we're treating it as a one-off law enforcement case.

Transcript via Lexis Nexis.

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Has this man ever found a war he didn't love or a country he didn't mind saber rattling against? From Fox News Sunday, Holy Joe thinks we need to be acting 'preemptively' in Yemen, whatever that means. And of course he agrees with wingnut Pete Hoekstra that we shouldn't close Gitmo.

WALLACE: We’ve got about a minute left and I want to ask you both a quick question about Yemen.

This is not the first time that we have seen possible ties between Yemen and terrorism. We’ve got the U.S. with Obama attacking -- air strikes in Yemen. On the other hand, the Obama administration sent six Guantanamo detainees back to Yemen.

Your thoughts about Yemen and what the U.S. role should be, attitude should be, towards that country?

HOEKSTRA: Yemen is a hot spot. We need to do everything we can to work with that government. We have about 90 Yemenis left in Gitmo. They should stay there. They should not go back to Yemen. If they go back to Yemen, we will very soon find them back on the battlefield going after Americans and other western interests.

WALLACE: And, Senator Lieberman, final 30 seconds?

LIEBERMAN: Well, I agree with Pete on this. I know the president made a promise that he’d close Guantanamo because of what it represented in world opinion.

But today it’s a first-class facility. It’s way above what’s required by the Geneva Convention or our Constitution. It would be a mistake to send these 90 people back to Yemen, because based on the past of what’s happened when we’ve released people from Guantanamo, a certain number of them have gone back into the fight against us.

Yemen now becomes one of the centers of that fight. I was in Yemen in August. And we have a growing presence there, and we have to, of Special Operations, Green Berets, intelligence. We’re working well with the government of President Saleh there.

I leave you with this thought that somebody in our government said to me in the Sana’a, the capital of Yemen. Iraq was yesterday’s war. Afghanistan is today’s war. If we don’t act preemptively, Yemen will be tomorrow’s war. That’s the danger we face.