Rep. Joe Walsh: He'll say anything, which is why he's interviewed everywhere.

MSNBC's Lawrence O'Donnell: A cable star with substance
Don't miss the Friday Washington Post profile of MSNBC's Primetime host Lawrence O'Donnell, whom I would call the Prime Time star with substance. I told someone at MSNBC recently that I was going to write a piece similar the Post's. I'll give kudos to the Post (a rarity for me) for beating me to the punch. What makes O'Donnell so good? Above all, when he lambastes the right, and Fox News, he does so from a position of substance based on his long high-level

In Demo, CNNs Anderson Cooper Wins At 10 P.M., Dropping Foxs On The Record To Third
Cable news Ratings, May 25, 2011: •A tight race at 10 p.m. on Tuesday saw an upset on Wednesday, with Greta Van Susteren’s visit to the border with Texas Governor Rick Perry on Fox falling to third place among viewers 25-54. CNN’s Anderson Cooper won the hour with 392,000 viewers, followed by MSNBC’s Ed Schultz (who made a high profile Apology to Laura Ingraham on the show) in second place with 308,000. In terms of total viewers, On the Record was first, followed by AC 360. ...

Memo To Lawrence ODonnell: NBC News Brian Williams Added To Hysterics Over Obama Israel Remarks
On Wednesday night’s The Last Word, MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell delivered a spot-on critique of the way President Obama’s remarks about Israel have been handled by the News Media, and others. The false charge that the President has “called for Israel to return to the 1967 borders” has come tripping off of many a tongue, including O’Donnell’s NBC News colleague Brian Williams, barely a day earlier. Williams introduced an NBC Nightly News segment Tue...

Ira Chernus: Israel and the Palestinians Through the Looking Glass
The Myths That Underpin the Failure of American Policy in the Middle East Tuches aufn tish: Buttocks on the table. That’s the colorful way my Yiddish-speaking ancestors said, “Let’s cut the BS and talk about honest truth.” It seems like a particularly apt expression after a week watching the shadow-boxing between President Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that brought no tangible progress toward an Israeli-Palestinian peace. The truth, like the...

Obamas mild defiance at AIPAC cost him $10 million in Jewish donations
Adam Kredo in the Washington Jewish Week honestly addresses a central political issue that a far more prominent Journalist, Robert Siegel on NPR, sought to mystify earlier this week. First Kredo: One prominent Jewish leader who attended Obama's AIPAC speech told me that "the Jewish community has a form of IBS [Irritable Bowel Syndrome] with the president. They're unsettled." "It's safe to say," the source added, "that about $10 million [in Jewish donations to the Obama campaign] evaporated in ...

Beltway Blog Tipton leads letter admonishing Obama on Israel
WASHINGTON — Rep. Scott Tipton penned a letter to President Obama this week with 30 Democrat and Republican signatures, urging him to retract statements he made last week about the Israeli and Palestinian border. “We are extremely disappointed that you took it upon yourself to redefine the borders between Israel and Palestine,” the letter said. “The U.S. role should be one of a mediator that seeks to help resolve this conflict but not declare a winner or a loser and doe...

Raghida Dergham: The Required Arab Response to Netanyahu
The preconditions put forward by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in his speech before the joint session of Congress are his and Israel's onus alone. The most appropriate Arab response to the strategic framework proposed by Netanyahu for the peace process is to ignore it and act on the basis that this affair does not concern the Arabs. Each of the Arab and Israeli sides has its own visions and strategic frameworks, and within each camp, there are disagreements on both essence and imp...

Casey Anthony Trial Gives Big Boost To Ratings For Nancy Grace, HLN
Cable news Ratings, May 24, 2011: •The Murder trial of Casey Anthony, the Florida woman accused of killing her daughter, gave a huge boost to ratings for HLN, and in particular the network’s Nancy Grace, who jumped into second place in the 8 p.m. hour among both viewers 25-54 and total viewers. Grace had 376,000 viewers in the demo, easily beating MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell (291,000) and CNN’s In the Arena (160,000). Fox’s Bill O’Reilly finished first, with ...

Medicare's woes terminal
America is drowning in red ink. Washington is racking up record Deficits, with no end in sight. Unless Congress changes its ways — and fast — they will spend this nation into the poorhouse. Driving this fiscal meltdown are the three big entitlements: Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security. And the worst is Medicare. Medicare is nearing insolvency faster than anticipated. The Medicare trustees’ report featured a stunning change from last year’s assessment: The hospitaliza...

Rep. Walsh: Obama Was Only Elected Because Hes An Articulate Black Man
In an interview this week with Slate’s Dave Weigel, Rep. Joe Walsh (R-IL) confirmed his reputation as a lightening rod for controversy and for being, as Weigel puts it, “the biggest media hound in the freshman class.” In the past week Walsh has made a number of outrageous statements, most infamously for his admonishment that American Jews “aren’t as pro-Israel as they should be.” But even that seems to pale in comparison to what Walsh tells Weigel: that Bara...

Clinton Worries Dems Wont Fix Medicare
From ABC News: Bill Clinton to Paul Ryan on Medicare Election: ‘Give me a Call’ Jonathan Karl May 25, 2011 The day after the stunning upset [sic] in the special congressional election in upstate New York, Rep. Paul Ryan is a man under fire. But ABC News was behind the scenes with the Wisconsin Congressman and GOP Budget Committee Chairman when he got some words of encouragement none other than former President Bill Clinton. "So anyway, I told them before you got here, I said I’m

GOP Leaders Introduce New Job Growth Plan
House Republicans unveiled a plan to increase job growth Thursday, renewing their commitment to help America get back on track economically. The proposal is part two of the "Pledge to America" Republicans made after winning back the House of Representatives. GOP lawmakers say the latest plan will reduce burdensome regulations, reform the tax code, expand energy production, and make the country more competitive "It's not just about cutting spending, you also need to grow The Economy," House Maj...

On the Budget: Ryan 40, Obama Zip, Senate DemsNo Show
In just about any contest, a score of 40-0 is a pretty impressive trouncing. In football, that’s five touchdowns, a field goal, and a safety—think Ohio State versus Northern Virginia Community College. In Baseball it’s almost beyond belief. Ditto Basketball. Yet that was the score yesterday in the United States Senate battle between Budget offered by House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-WI) and that presented by President Obama. The Washington spin on this could be th

ABC News Airing Unheard Jackie Kennedy Recordings
NEW YORK — ABC News is presenting never-before-heard recollections from Jacqueline Kennedy. The network announced Wednesday that for the first time viewers will hear the former First Lady in conversations with historian Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr. The recordings were made in the spring of 1964 and sealed until now. A series of special reports will draw on these seven interviews totaling more than eight hours of audio recordings, in which Jackie Kennedy shared her impressions of life with...

Egypt to Open Border-Crossing into Hamas-Controlled Gaza
See Boston Herald, "Open Border to Trouble": While the president and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu were debating the shape of a future two-state solution, the Egyptian government was exercising its own options in the region. Tomorrow Egypt will open its only crossing into Hamas-controlled Gaza — a crossing that under the “cold peace” it has observed with Israel had remained closed since the Hamas take-over four years ago. Of course, Gazans had improvised over those...

Dilemma for the White House: What to do about Elizabeth Warren?
ABC News’ Matthew Jaffe (@JaffeMatt) reports: President Obama faces a dilemma: what to do about Elizabeth Warren? He could appoint her to run the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau - after all, she was the one who first proposed it in the summer of 2007, calling for the creation of “a new regulatory body to protect consumers who use Credit Cards, home Mortgages, car loans, and a host of other products.” Her appointment to run the bureau would be welcome news to a slew of prominen

Bloomberg: Comcast is cheating
Bloomberg LP is accusing Comcast of violating a key condition imposed by Regulators to win approval of the cable giant’s NBC Universal purchase, according to a letter obtained by POLITICO on Thursday. Specifically, Comcast is refusing to place Bloomberg TV in the same “neighborhood” of station numbers as other news networks, making it harder for TV surfers to find it and potentially depressing viewership, Bloomberg alleges. Continue Reading Text Size - + reset ...

Have cable news bosses had enough bile?
Are Cable News bosses on both sides having second thoughts about the ideological bile geysers they’ve created? Several bits of this week’s media news suggest they may be. First, of course, was Gabriel Sherman’s profile of Roger Ailes, which painted the Fox News chairman as somewhat regretful of the Republican field he’s helped to shape, and actively involved in pulling back the worst of Fox’s excesses, from urging talent to “shut up, tone it down, make your ...

Greta Van Susteren On Ed Schultzs Apology: Let It Go, I Think He Got The Message
Greta Van Susteren took to her blog to admit that she too found Ed Schultz’s recent comments unacceptable, but that she was so impressed with his sincere Apology that she urges everyone to now “let it go.” And she hopes that Laura Ingraham accepts the Apology and advises she “just chalk it up to the competition going stupid.” Greta continues by suggesting that his temporary suspension from MSNBC is a “just sanction” and after that, she hopes everyone &#...

Will Marshall: Rebuilding America Is Job One
Amid the high drama of fiscal in Washington, it's easy to forget that reducing Budget Deficits isn't the biggest economic challenge we face. Even more important is kick-starting the great American job machine and reversing our country's slide in global competition. Critical to both goals is shoring up the decaying physical foundations of national prosperity. Without world-class infrastructure, the United States won't be able to attract private investment, sustain rapid technological innovatio...

IN MEMORY OF HERB ZWEIBON Z"L - AFSI SPRING CHIZUK MISSION TO ISRAEL
BY: FERN SIDMAN   Helen Freedman, Executive Director of Americans For A Safe Israel (AFSI), has announced that their upcoming semi-annual "Chizuk" mission to Israel will be dedicated to the memory of their beloved chairman Herbert Zweibon, Z'L who passed away in January of 2011. The tour will run from May 29th through June 7th.    Having founded AFSI in 1970 out of a deep concern for the future of Israel, Mr. Zweibon is best remembered fo...

Even NY Magazine admits two-state deal is all but impossible
John Heilemann, a smart guy. Though he then says the Palestinian state initiative at the U.N. would be a "train wreck." All these people have to understand what Peter Beinart understands, the shoe is on the other foot now. 70 years of Jewish agency to shape the land of mandatory Palestine according to Jewish visions are over. The Arab spring, the decline of American power, the E.U.-- Palestinians are begin granted power at last. And here is the clearest sign of this shift: the Latin American c...

Post-Jewish Zionism
A few days ago Matt Yglesias said a true thing - Protecting Israel is a special project taken on by the United States. The reasons may be good and bad, but it’s a burden we undertake. Israel does us no favors and is no use to us. Recognizing that fact hardly solves the decades-long Arab-Israeli conflict, but it ought to be the starting point for what Americans should debate-not Israel’s policy toward its Palestinian subjects but America’s policy toward Israel. This is somet

Republican: US Jews should be more pro-Israel
A freshman House Republican on Wednesday singled out "most" liberal American Jews for not being sufficiently pro-Israel.  Rep. Joe Walsh (Ill.) questioned why U.S. Jews have not expressed more outrage over President Obama's demand that the Israeli-Palestinian peace process be based around the 1967 borders, with mutually agreeable land swaps. "The short answer is that most American Jews are liberal, and most American liberals side with the Palestinians and vague notions of 'peace' i...

Rabbi Geoffrey A. Mitelman: Overcoming the Fear That Drives the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict
Once again, President Barack Obama and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu are in a divisive argument over the seemingly eternal Israeli-Palestinian conflict. As I read the analysis of Obama's speech, I was most reminded of a recent story on The Onion: "Incomprehensible Shouting Declared U.S. Official Language." In fact, Israel may even be ahead of the U.S. in this realm. Gregory Levey, a former Speechwriter for Ariel Sharon and Ehud Olmert wrote a book a few years ago entitled "Shut Up, I'm Ta...