But Bayh did not return to Indiana to teach. He did not, as he said he was thinking of doing, join a foundation. Rather, he went to the massive law firm McGuire Woods. And who does McGuire Woods work for? “Principal clients served from our Washington office include national energy companies, foreign countries, international manufacturing companies, trade associations and local and national businesses,” reads the company’s Web site. He followed that up by signing on as a senior adviser to Apollo Management Group, a giant public-equity firm. And, finally, this week, he joined Fox News as a contributor. It’s as if he’s systematically ticking off every poison he identified in the body politic and rushing to dump more of it into the water supply.

via The sad, hypocritical retirement of Evan Bayh – Ezra Klein – The Washington Post.

Although hypocritical, It’s not sad if you held Evan Bayh in low esteem prior to his retirement from the senate.

yes, talking about the back seat of the car is so offensive to Hannity, Dana Perino and some foreign guy. (lipstick on a pig part 2 or 3 or 26, I can’t keep track)

As the campaign accelerated after the first voting contests, Michelle Obama went from headlining intimate campaign events to enormous ones. Television cameras appeared, and some of her more forceful comments were endlessly replayed. When cable shows, bloggers and opponents fixated on her — on her supposed lack of patriotism, her supposedly angry streak — Barack was irate. As unflattering reports played on television, he would tell aides stories about her parents, about her as a mother, according to Gibbs, as if defending his wife in private could somehow help. Barack even met with the Fox executives Rupert Murdoch and Roger Ailes in part to insist that they treat her more respectfully.

via The Obamas’ Marriage – NYTimes.com.

HALL: No, I didn’t. The reason I left was in part because they’ve had less debates than they used to. It is a fair point to say how much debate is there on MSNBC? How many Republican strategists? We have a bifurcation of the media.

The proof doesn’t support Hall’s beliefs.

MSNBC hosts three hours of Joe Scarborough’s Morning Joe every morning where his regular guests include right wing political analysts Pat Buchanan, Peggy Noonan, Dan Senor, Mike Murphy, Tucker Carlson and Liz Cheney. Chris Matthews regularly hosts a variety of conservative commentators on the Hardball with Chris Matthews political round table. These repeat panelists have included Dick Armey, Tom Delay and Bill Donahue. Ed Schultz has Tom Tancredo and other conservatives on his show regularly and Rachel Maddow has hosted right wing figures such as Tom Ridge, Rick Berman and Tim Phillips to come on her show, one on one and debate issues. This doesn’t even go into MSNBC News live where conservatives are always invited on to discuss their point of view.

When Jane Hall regularly appeared on Bill O’Reilly’s, The O’Reilly Factor, it was usually opposite O’Reilly and conservative author Bernard Goldberg.

He says Dobbs is responsible for anti-immigration sentiment (he’s complicit, not responsible). This is rich after Rivera works for Fox News whose pundits mostly disagree with him regarding immigration law and reform. Riveras colleagues and Dobbs all support the jail first law enforcement tactics employed by Sheriff Joe Arpaio, vigilante Minutemen, useless border walls and unnecessarily restrictive INS policies regarding work visas that discourage law abiding foreign students and skilled professionals from attempting to come to the US. Rivera believes CNN has to answer for Dobb’s views when he works for the network where these dangerous views find a welcome home at any hour of the day.

CNN, predictably, has avoided addressing Dobbs’ role in the US anti-immigration debate in their Soledad O’Brien driven documentary Latinos In America and Howard Kurtz’s Reliable Sources.

Growth through immigration and diversity has been one of the strengths of the United States of America. Lou Dobbs support of heavy handed Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s abuses of federal ICE powers and others on the anti-immigration right are the best friend of any Democrat who needs to win votes in jurisdiction with high Latino American populations. He helps push any platform issues off the table by ascribing United State’s ills to the straw man of a fearsome undocumented immigrant from a Central or South American country. Rivera correctly notes that Dobbs’ over the top anti-Latino talk  is a wedge for media success, not electoral success. As Obama denies Fox News additional access opportunities and includes Univision and other Spanish language media outlets, makes steady modest steps towards normalizing US diplomacy with Cuba and revokes Sheriff Arpaio’s ICE powers, the Obama administration builds good will within a variety of Latino communities.

What Rivera neglects to mention in his screed against Dobbs is that Dobbs consistently ignores the link between illegal immigration and job opportunities given to them by US employers. The less jobs available for undocumented US residents, the less incentive to come to come here illegally. The Obama administration has replaced George W. Bush era swat style workplace raids with forced firings of undocumented workers from US companies. This is much closer to the correct way to deal with this issue, but still doesn’t affect the offending employers enough and doesn’t address undocumented immigrants who are already in the US. Immigration advocates are unhappy, but there does need to be some course of action for those who emigrated here illegally.

Professionally, Rivera would do best to temper his criticism of Dobbs. Criticism of Dobbs can easily be used to critique the anti-immigrant sentiment popular with Rivera’s own employer. As commentator Marc Lamont Hill found out recently, Fox News rewards opposing views on flash point issues like immigration or capital punishment by firing you while you are out of the office.

Whoever thought it was a good idea to begin preemptively castigate Fox News for being a Republican shill news station, which it is, is not thinking straight.

It was enough to not book debates on Fox News, not to have the President book time on the network during his health care reform blitz and to let the News Corp. pundits and hosts sit in an echo chamber while throw their own stupid ideas back and forth between each other. The White House shouldn’t waste time pushing initiatives that won’t change anything. Starting a flame war with Fox News which has a major news driven network, feeds the international news of hundreds of local affiliates and News Corp newspapers, a variety of major publishers and a new business TV network is not the way.

This comes across as complaining that the football team you are playing against keeps committing penalties and they don’t get called. You either fight your way through the penalties (get bills passed, make diplomatic gains and steady the job market) and or you covertly kneecap them in response (leave Fox News out of Presidential media blitzes, elevate other more powerful conduits such as Univision over Fox News).

Shortly after, Phil Griffin, the MSNBC president, said in a daily conference call with producers that he wanted the channel’s other programs to follow Mr. Olbermann’s lead and restrain from criticizing Fox directly, according to two employees. At Fox News, some staff members were told to “be fair” to G.E.

via Fox and G.E. Reach Deal to End O’Reilly-Olbermann Feud – NYTimes.com.