CNN wasted no time in firing Rick Sanchez after he ran his mouth on Pete Dominick's Sirius radio show, calling Jon Stewart a "bigot" and suggesting CNN is run by Jews.

Dominick pointed out that as a Jew, Stewart was also a minority - to which Sanchez responded, snickering, "Please, what are you kidding?.. Yeah, a very powerless people."

"I'm telling you that everybody who runs CNN is a lot like Stewart, and a lot of people who run all the other networks are a lot like Stewart," Sanchez said. "To imply that somehow they, the people in this country who are Jewish, are an oppressed minority? Yeah."

[More...]

Melissa McEwan:

1. When I wrote passionate criticisms of a Republican administration and Republican Congressional majority who failed to champion LGBTQI equality, assailed women's bodily autonomy, treated Roe as a suggestion, refused to disclose lobbyist visits to the White House, invoked the separation of powers to protect themselves, called for spending freezes on social programs, legitimized rightwing extremists, advocated for offshore drilling, pushed HSAs, escalated a war, thumbed their nose at due process, engaged in black ops, treated scientists with contempt, expanded the executive's extrajudicial powers, demeaned liberal activists, and invoked state's-secrets privilege for bullshit reasons, I was a principled progressive.

[MORE . .]

Regular readers know that I pick many a nit (usually more than a nit) with the New Establishment bloggers (see. e.g., Ezra Klein, Jon Cohn, Kevin Drum, etc.) In a funny post, Matt Yglesias takes a hit:

The more I read Matthew Yglesias* the more he resembles a David Brooks with training wheels. Yglesias is usually inoffensive and has a fine grasp of the obvious. Wherever society needs a Harvard graduate to step up to the lectern and pass on conventional wisdom, he is there.

That's funny. But I don't think it's true. Matt is a pretty varied thinker on most issues. I also think he is wrong about a lot of things, especially his evaluation of politics. But Matt is very smart and most of the time, pretty interesting. More . . .

Was Sarah Palin being booed on Dancing With the Stars last night, or was the crowd booing the Judges for Jennifer Grey's "low score" of three 8's? In context, and watching in sequence, it had to be they were booing Palin. No way would the crowd have been booing Jennifer Grey's scores because they were too low... she got three 8's. For the second dance of the season, that's high, and it was the top score of the evening. [More...]

Saturday Night Live is back. Amy Poehler guest hosts tonight, with Katy Perry as the musical guest.

There's a Christine O'Donnell parody about mastur** (you can watch here) and New York Gov. David Paterson, a frequent target of the show, will be on. What does he have to say?

"Working in Albany is like watching SNL: a lot of characters, it's funny for 10 minutes & then you just want it over." -Gov Patterson

Amy Poehler and Seth Myers do the weekend update.

In a glancing justification for the lack of reaction to The American Prospect's publication of Robert Kuttner's February 2010 article American Taliban, Adam Serwer writes:

As for Kuttner's piece, I didn't remember it until it was pointed out to me, but plenty of people write things in this magazine I disagree with. Moulitsas' book is considerably more high-profile.

(Emphasis supplied.) Robert Kuttner is a fairly big cheese in Dem circles in the Beltway. Beyond that, in the initial salvo from TAPPED on the subject, Jamelle Bouie wrote:

Now, to be sure, American Taliban is clearly meant for activist consumption. Unlike myself, Moulitsas isn't a journalist, and his job isn't to be an honest broker for ideas; no, it's to rally progressives and score points against conservatives.

(Emphasis supplied.) Now Bouie and Serwer can't have it both ways - either Markos is not their (or Robert Kuttner's) journalistic equal, or he is their "higher profile" superior, with a higher responsibility to be "careful" about his comparisons. Frankly, this continued flailing to justify their strange war against Markos is hard to explain. Having started the fight, they seem unable to extricate themselves from it. Here's a suggestion for them - let it go.

Speaking for me only

Ta-Nehisi Coates writes:

[H]ad a writer for The New Republic, in the midst of asserting that blacks should not enjoy constitutional protection, argued that "Black life is cheap, particularly to blacks," and then doubled down on the assertion, I don't think we'd be having this debate--emphasis on "think."

How about a former TNR writer and current Atlantic writer? Stephen Metcalfe on Bell Curve Sully:

I now point readers to an Aug. 26 post by Andrew Sullivan on his blog, which is worth quoting at length -- "One of my proudest moments in journalism was publishing an expanded extract of a chapter from "The Bell Curve" in the New Republic before anyone else dared touch it. [. . . T]he book held up, and still holds up as one of the most insightful and careful of the last decade. The fact of human inequality and the subtle and complex differences between various manifestations of being human - gay, straight, male, female, black, Asian - is a subject worth exploring, period. [. . .] I'm proud of those with the courage to speak truth to power, as Murray and Herrnstein so painstakingly did.

American Prospect writer:

Is believing in the American Taliban the new progressive orthodoxy?

Heh. Yeah, that's the issue, as opposed to The American Prospect writers deciding it is "obscene" to speak of an "American Taliban." Meanwhile, I'm old enough to remember when The American Prospect published an article titled "American Taliban". It was all of 7 months ago.

And yet, American Prospect writers, who like to preen about their supposed "intellectual honesty", have yet to acknowledge the existence of this American Prospect article. Let's be intellectually honest - the American Prospect writers are being less than honest, intellectually or otherwise, in their discussions of this subject.

Speaking for me only

Paul Krugman writes:

[B]ack in 2001, the Bush administration bundled huge tax cuts for wealthy Americans with much smaller tax cuts for the middle class, then pretended that it was mainly offering tax breaks to ordinary families. Meanwhile, it circumvented Senate rules intended to prevent irresponsible fiscal actions — rules that would have forced it to find spending cuts to offset its $1.3 trillion tax cut — by putting an expiration date of Dec. 31, 2010, on the whole bill. And the witching hour is now upon us. [. . .]

In response, President Obama is proposing legislation that would keep tax rates essentially unchanged for 98 percent of Americans but allow rates on the richest 2 percent to rise. But Republicans are threatening to block that legislation, effectively raising taxes on the middle class, unless they get tax breaks for their wealthy friends.

I think that is an accurate description of the state of play. But what is the policy rationale for tax cuts for the middle class? Krugman argues:

Matt Yglesias:

[Marty Peretz is] scheduled to be honored by Harvard University since a lot of his famous and important friends got together a bunch of money to give to Harvard in exchange for Harvard honoring their friend. Since Harvard is in the business of raising money, they have every intention of keeping the money and going ahead with the honoring[. . . .] It’s really too bad that Harvard has chosen to take this tack. [. . .] My alma mater is doing a disservice to their brand and to public understanding of the issues by deliberately obscuring things in this manner.

It would be more honest to say that Harvard is a business run for the benefit of its faculty and administrators. The business model of this business is the exchange of prestige in exchange for money. Peretz has friends who have money that they are willing to exchange for some prestige, and Harvard intends to take the money. It is what it is.

Good post from Matt. He's been out in front on calling Peretz out for a lot of years now.

Speaking for me only

Digby writes about Ben Smith's piece about Andrew Sullivan and George Packer lamenting the demise of reason in our discourse. Digby asks where these people have been for the past decade. Let me answer -- Sullivan and Packer were two of the most irrational voices in the country is where they were. They fullthroatedly advocated for the most insane policy in the recent history of the United States - the Iraq Debacle.

Excuse me, but reading about Packer and Sullivan lamenting the triumph of "unreason" is just too rich. Who are they kidding? They were part of the problem. Sullivan especially - his irrational hatred of Bill Clinton and Al Gore (and Paul Krugman) should disqualify him from ever writing about anyone being unhinged. As for Packer, let me refer to a piece I wrote about his Iraq Debacle advocacy in 2005. Read this passage from Packer:

The MTV Video Music Awards open with Eminem. The sets are pretty awesome.

Here comes Chelsea Handler and Lindsay Lohan. Jokes about drunks, not too funny. Now Chelsea drops onto the stage from a cage wearing a house on her head. A white dove flies out from her shorts. The glitter costume comes off and she looks much better in a short black dress. She didn't drink but is as high as a kite from a prayer circle with Snoop Dog. It's the first time the awards have been hosted by a woman. She encourages everyone to be on their worst behavior. She has sawed off shotguns in her purse, security didn't check her because she's not black.