Bill Maher got his right-wing guests -- the National Review's Reihan Salam and Fox News' Margaret Hoover -- on this week's edition of Real Time worked up when he asked why all the recent political violence is coming from the right. Salam reminded me a bit of Howard Fineman on Hardball the other day when he couldn't name anyone on the left who equaled the violence we're seeing from the right either, and reached back to the Weather Underground as an example of a violent group on the left, which Maher pointed out existed before he was born. Fox's Margaret Hoover tried painting Joy Behar with the same brush as the Kentucky head-stomper for her comments on The View, which (as Lawrence O'Donnell pointed out) is completely ridiculous.

While I don't agree completely with Bill that if you looked hard enough you couldn't find some example of someone on the left behaving badly because there are a few out there, he's spot on that both sides are not equal and the craziness we've been seeing for the last several years is coming from the right, not the left. I'm surprised neither of them pulled out the faker Kenneth Gladney's story where pretended to get beaten up by members of the SEIU that Dave wrote about here -- Faking victimhood: Just how hurt was that supposed victim of SEIU 'thuggery'?.

The big difference between what's going on now, as I said in the post on Fineman's hackery (and it's a point Maher failed to make), is that this hatred that is being drummed up right now is coming from these astroturf groups funded by big business and from the Republican leadership itself and from right-wing hate-talk radio. These are not just isolated incidents, but ones that are being incited intentionally and drummed up by people who understand full well what they're doing and just don't care about the repercussions. Bill did point out some of the things that Tom Tancredo has said recently and Hoover tried writing him off by saying he's not a Republican any more. Uh-huh.

For a reminder of just how crazy things are getting on the right there are plenty of examples here and here and here and here. And of course there is also John and Dave's book -- Our 'Over the Cliff' website: A resource for progressives coping with insane right-wingers.

Partial transcript below the fold. Bill had me with him during the show until a bit later when he said he's alarmed by the number of babies being named Mohammed in Great Britian. Really Bill?

And one last note, this clip really illustrates a point that Driftglass and Bluegal made in their podcast this week which is that when you confront anyone on the right about how badly their side behaves, their heads explode.

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I've had a number of requests to put this up again, only complete this time. Last year, when Newstalgia was in its first few weeks, I had put up this performance of the Moussorgsky Pictures At An Exhibition as performed by The New York Philharmonic, guest Conducted by the legendary Fritz Reiner from the broadcast of March 20, 1960. At the time, I only had YouTube as a means of offering this post. And YouTube has a ten minute maximum on their players which meant I could either not offer this at all, or offer a ten minute excerpt with the promise that I would offer the complete performance some day when we got the new C&L players.

Well, that some day has arrived and I am happy to offer this complete performance of the Moussorgsky Pictures At An Exhibition with The New York Philharmonic led by Fritz Reiner.

Sorry it took so long.

"Why I'm a tea partier"

Open thread below...

Happy Halloween!

I guess George Will forgot about the good old days when all the media pundits were telling Americans that it was unpatriotic if the Democrats didn't concede to George Bush's will because he had a "mandate." Now the obstruction we've seen for the last two years that will worsen after the mid-term elections means that the government is working. Okay George. George Will thinks whatever gets Republicans elected is just fantastic no matter how much harm it does to the country or our economy.

And like the rest of the talking heads in our media cooperation and bipartisanship means Democrats going along with everything Republicans want and ignoring their base.

WILL: Doesn't matter, though, because if Mitch McConnell has 48 senators, he will always have 41 senators for whatever he wants to have 41 for.

Let me just say this. The Republican Party is being told to be the party of no. No more stimulus spending. No cap-and-trade. No card check. None of this other stuff. Gridlock is not an American problem. It's an American achievement. The framers of our Constitution didn't want an efficient government; they wanted a safe government. To which end they filled it with slowing and blocking mechanisms. Three branches of government, two branches of the legislative branch, veto, veto override, supermajority, judicial review.

(CROSSTALK)

ROBERTS: And we added to that the partisan rate so that we not only have institutional gridlock, we have partisan gridlock, which the voters overwhelmingly voted for.

WILL: What I'm saying, Cokie, is that when we have gridlock, the system is working.

I am realizing Elvis Presley is becoming a distant memory for many people these days, and a name only vaguely recognized by many more. But there was a time Elvis Presley was the preeminent pop idol of the mid-20th century. When he was drafted into the Army it was a full-scale tragedy for the millions of fans who hung on every single he released and every syllable he spoke.

By all accounts, his life as a draftee in the Army was far from typical, but he did manage to stay out of the public eye for the requisite number of months in order to fulfill his military service. So when Elvis was discharged from the Army in March of 1960, he gave an interview for the Armed Forces Radio and Television Service just prior to his leaving Germany (where he was stationed) and coming back to the U.S. I'm sure most fans have heard it, but there are probably a lot who haven't.

So here it is.

Apparently Bob Schieffer's irony alert button is broken given these rigged voting machines we're dealing with all over the country or stories the media completely ignored like this one. Democracy Now: Mark Crispin Miller on the Death of Mike Connell and Election Theft in 2008.

Schieffer: Nix Deciding Bowl Games by Computer:

And aren't you glad that even though our system isn't perfect, we still finish our elections the right way - we vote!

Too bad we can't figure out the right way to pick a national champion in college football!

Instead of a playoff to determine the national championship, which is how the other sports do it, college football has something called the BCS - the Bowl Championship Series - a mysterious organization that feeds statistics and other mumbo jumbo into computers to determine who plays for the national championship. [...]

If we did our politics like that, computers would decide who wins our elections - maybe based on the strength of their opponents, or positions, and maybe there would be style points for the best yard signs.

But we don't do it that way (thank goodness), so I pass on the advice from my mother that I always pass on before elections: Go vote, it makes you feel big and strong.

. . . And if you can figure out a way, vote against the BCS!

I don't want to discourage anyone from voting. Get out there and do it this Tuesday. But avoid those electronic machines if you've got a choice. We need to get rid of them entirely.

I tells ya, you gotta give it up for the brilliant strategist that thought this was the winning campaign to put the GOP over the edge in the mid-terms. Perhaps miffed over Franken's call for an FEC investigation into campaign cash from the US Chamber of Commerce, the GOP has launched NoMoreFrankens.com. And I quote:

“With Democrat lawyers, liberal shadow groups, and labor unions organizing to challenge the Election Day results, it is more important than ever that the American people deliver a decisive victory for Republicans up and down the ballot in all 50 states. In order to protect our hard-fought victories, we must fund and operate a winning 72 hour ground game which puts the margin of victory out of reach. The election of Democrat Al Franken to the United States Senate serves as a glaring and painful reminder to voters as to why it is so important to support our Republican Victory program and show up on Election Day.” ~ RNC Chairman Michael Steele.

I don't know how to break it to the GOP, but FRANKEN IS NOT UP FOR RE-ELECTION THIS YEAR. Seriously, this is the best you can do is to get out the vote? Invoke a senator still four years from his own re-election campaign? And the insinuation of voter fraud is based on...?

Earlier today I wrote about a new Republican National Committee fundraising website called “No More Frankens,” which says, “We now know that Republicans should have won the 2008 Senate Race in Minnesota – Act immediately to prevent another Franken!” and also makes reference to the “illegal votes of convicted felons.” To me it seemed to be implying that Sen. Al Franken (D-Minn.) stole the election, but not so, says RNC spokesman Doug Heye.

“I don’t think it says that,” he told me when reached for comment. “There are a lot of people on both sides who would say that Franken won in the courthouse after the election and in the weeks and days after. We want to have every resource on the ground so that we’ll be able to get people there quickly to ensure that we hit the ground running this time.” The appeal on the website indicates that the funds will go to the RNC’s Get Out the Vote program, but this doesn’t appear entirely accurate either...

What a surprise, the money isn't going where it's implied. Instead, money is allegedly getting banked for potential vote challenges.

And oh! the irony of the GOP getting up in arms over a close election being decided by a legal challenge.

(h/t David)

Despite Sarah Palin's accusations on Fox News Sunday that Alaska CBS affiliate KTVA "conspired to make up stories about Joe Miller", Dan Springer who is in Alaska reporting for Fox News told Megyn Kelly that he and his staff looked at some of KTVA's recent reporting and they could not find any obvious signs of bias or hit pieces against Joe Miller. Any time Andrew Breitbart is involved in another hit piece on the media, I'm going to be skeptical given his track record.

From Greg Sargent at The Plum Line -- Alaska station says Breitbart Web site audio attack is bogus:

Breitbart's Big Journalism site is making an incendiary accusation: That reporters at the Anchorage CBS affiliate KTVA were caught conspiring to damage Tea Party Senate candidate Joe Miller. Big Journalism posted a snippet of audio allegedly showing this: It features KTVA reporters talking among themselves while -- unbeknownst to them -- they were accidentally being recorded on the voicemail of Miller's campaign manager.

But it's unclear from the recording precisely what, if anything, was being plotted. And now the station is adamantly denying the charges, claiming the audio was clipped and taken out of the fuller context. KTVA general manager Jerry Bever sends over a statement claiming the "complete recording was about what others might be able to do to cause disruption within the Miller campaign."

If this is true, it wouldn't be the first time this has happened, as you may recall.

Big Journalism's audio was picked up on by Sarah Palin on Fox News this morning, and by the NRSC, which issued a statement claiming: "It should trouble all Americans that any member of the media would attempt to purposefully smear a nominee for the U.S. Senate."

KTVA released a statement to Politico today -- CBS affiliate: Palin, Miller charge 'absurd':

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This Week with Christiane Amanpour marks the passings of actor James MacArthur, former Argentina President Néstor Kirchner, and playwright Joseph Stein. In addition, the Pentagon has released the names of ten service members killed in Iraq and Afghanistan.

US Army SPC Ronnie J Pallares, 19, Rancho Cucamonga, CA
US Army SPC Steven L Dupont, 20, Lafayette, LA
US Army SFC Charles M Sadell, 34, Columbia, MO
US Army SSG Aracely Gonzalez O’Malley, 31, Brawley, CA
US Army SPC Thomas A Moffitt, 21, Wichita, KS
US Army PFC David R Jones Jr, 21, Saint Johnsville, NY
US Army SFC Phillip C Tanner, 43, Sheridan, WY
US Army SGT Michael D Kirspel Jr, 23, Hopatcong, NJ
US Marines LCpl Terry E Honeycutt Jr, 19, Waldorf, MD
US Army SSG Adam L Dickmyer, 26, Winston Salem, NC

According to iCasualties, the total number of allied service members killed in Iraq is 4,745; in Afghanistan, 2,180, of which, 152 are Canadian. During this same period, Iraq Body Count lists 43 Iraqi civilians killed.