Rep. McDermott: GOP Cuts To Anti-Poverty Programs Are ‘Morally Wrong’ And ‘Fiscally Stupid’

By Pat Garofalo

The current continuing resolution under which the federal government is operating expires on April 8, and at the moment, it seems that budget talks between House Republican leadership and Senate Democrats have broken down. Republicans want their spending bill — H.R. 1 — to “serve as a starting point for all negotiations” (even though Democrats have now upped the amount of spending cuts they’re willing to pass, alongside zero concessions from Republicans).

As we’ve noted, H.R. 1 includes debilitating cuts to programs that benefit women,children, students, and veterans. And by limiting their cuts to the non-defense discretionary portion of the budget, the GOP’s cuts disproportionately fall upon those who depend most on government programs that provide important services like education and health care.

Republicans claim the cuts are necessary to reduce the deficit, but in an interview with The Wonk Room today, Rep. Jim McDermott (D-WA) noted that cuts to anti-poverty programs like the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) are “fiscally stupid” due to their potential for providing savings over the long-term:

On two levels [the cuts are] wrong. One is they’re wrong morally. We need to take care of women and children and WIC program is very important for childrens’ health and healthy babies and for healthy mothers. But on a second level it’s fiscally stupid, because if you don’t feed kids, if you don’t feed mothers and get them up to speed, they deliver a low birth-weight baby that then you spend hundreds of thousands of dollars dealing with in the premie units of hospitals.

If you get a mother healthy through the period of her pregnancy she delivers a normal baby, normal birth-weight, and the child has a decent start and it’s a lot less expensive. So if you don’t care about morals and you just want to talk about money, it’s better on the money side. That’s why what they’re doing makes no sense at all.

Watch it:

According to the Government Accountability Office, every dollar invested in WIC “generated $2.89 in health care savings during the first year after birth and $3.50 in savings over 18 years.” But this isn’t the only way in which Republican cuts could conceivably make the deficit worse: they’re also cutting programs like IRS tax enforcement (which lowers tax receipts) Title X family planning (which leads to higher Medicaid expenditures) and food safety regulations (which leads to more foodborne illness and higher health care costs).

After Congressional Progressives Ask ‘Where Are The Jobs?,’ GOP Rep. Biggert Says ‘Stop Talking About Jobs’

By Zaid Jilani

One of the mantras of congressional Republicans over the past two years has been to ask, “Where are the jobs?” House GOP leader John Boehner (OH) made this into atheme of the campaign last fall. As then-GOP chairman Michael Steele summarized the argument: “Americans are still asking, ‘Where are the jobs?’ … Washington Democrats still have no answers.”

This afternoon, Congressional Progressive Caucus co-chair Rep. Keith Ellison (D-MN) and other progressives took to the floor of the House of Representatives to turn this question back on their Republican colleagues. Ellison and the others asked where all the jobs-creation legislation was, excoriating their conservative colleagues for focusing on legislation like terminating the HAMP program, which would do nothing to create jobs:

– Rep. Keith Ellison (D-MN): “The Republicans’ no-jobs agenda has been exposed, Mr. Chair. The majority has done nothing to create jobs or protect homes. All they do is criticize programs that could use some improvement. Rather, they would get rid of them altogether.”

– Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-NY): “[The Republicans] have no plans of their own to address the foreclosure crisis that is hurting neighborhoods and disrupting lives throughout their country. Like the jobs bills they said they would have. We have yet to see them.”

– Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-TX): “Your cities have been impacted positively by the HAMP program. Job growth is picking up. Investing and growing jobs should be the mindset of the American Congress for that’s what we were sent back to Washington to do.”

At one point, Rep. Judy Biggert (R-IL) took to the floor to respond to the progressives. She attacked the HAMP program, urging her colleagues to end it, and signaled that she would oppose progressive amendments to the GOP’s bill for ending the mortgage modification program. Then, she incredulously told her colleagues to stop talking about jobs and focus rather on the substance of the amendments:

BIGGERT: I would urge my colleagues to support — oppose this amendment. And stop talking about jobs, let’s focus on the substance of these amendments.

Watch it:

One would have to wonder what a certain congresswoman who asked at a hearing — on February 25, 2010 — “Where are the jobs?” would think about Biggert’s statement. That congresswoman was Biggert herself. Watch it:

Michigan Becomes First State To Curtail Jobless Aid

By Arthur Delaney

WASHINGTON -- Gov. Rick Snyder signed controversial legislation on Monday, making Michigan the first state in the country to reduce unemployment insurance for those who lose their jobs through no fault of their own. Starting in January, laid-off Michiganders will be eligible for 20 weeks of jobless aid, instead of the standard 26 weeks.

Snyder, a Republican, said the change was necessary to win political support in the Michigan legislature for maintaining the state's eligibility for the federal Extended Benefits program, which provides 20 weeks of benefits for the long-term unemployed. Without the bill, an estimated 35,000 Michiganders would not have received their EB checks in April.

"These benefits are a lifeline for many Michigan families who are struggling in this challenging economy," Snyder said in a statement. "Cutting them off so abruptly would have jeopardized the well-being of those who are trying hard to find work."

EB kicks in for people who exhaust 53 weeks of federal Emergency Unemployment Compensation and 26 weeks of state benefits. Opponents of the bill say the EB measure was not worth reducing the state benefits. Advocates of unemployment insurance fear other states will follow Michigan's lead.

Michigan Democrats in the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives asked Snyder in a letter on Monday to veto the bill, saying the change would "turn back the clock on 50 years of needed protections for the unemployed in Michigan."

Daniel Ytterock of Redford, Mich. told HuffPost that he lost his job in publishing sales in July 2009 and is currently on the final tier of EUC. He said he doesn't love the deal, but that knowing he'll still be able to receive EB in the coming months gives him peace of mind.

"After so many months and years looking for a job, I don’t see any signs that looking for a job is going to get easier or more successful," he said. "I just feel bad for the others that follow after January."

Both federal programs are set to expire in January, and the Michigan Democrats wrote that there is "absolutely no guarantee they will be extended," meaning laid-off Michiganders could be left with just 20 weeks of benefits. "In 2010, over 171,000 individuals drew more than 20 weeks of regular UI benefits, with 130,000 of these drawing 26 weeks," the delegation wrote.

"There is no valid reason why keeping federally-financed Extended Benefits in place in Michigan should require a permanent reduction in the 26 weeks of unemployment benefits paid in our state’s UI program," Rick McHugh, a staff attorney with the National Employment Law Project, said in a statement. "The Governor’s actions today mean that Michigan will be the only state paying less than 26 weeks for their maximum duration of benefits in the U.S. Michigan has paid 26 weeks of benefits since 1954."

Many states are considering new laws to maintain eligibility for EB, which triggers based on unemployment patterns in the state over the previous two years. The legislation adjusts the trigger to look back three years instead of two.

The Michigan Chamber of Commerce lobbied against a standalone EB fix, arguing that further depleting the federal government's unemployment insurance trust fund would eventually result in higher unemployment surtaxes on businesses.

Motor City Liberal comment: Got a question for those who are unemployed and voted for Snyder and the Repugs. How does it feel now? For those who suffer from there's a Negro in the White House I'm mad syndrome how does it feel getting cut off at the knees by the very people you gave power to?

Radio Chain Dropping Beck Because His Rants Hurt Ratings

by Joe Strupp

A radio chain that dropped Glenn Beck from five of its stations since January did so, in part, because the show's content was hurting ratings, the company's president said Monday.

"He bounces around pretty radically, I think he confuses people, they're not sure where he is coming from," said Rick Buckley, president of Buckley Radio of Greenwich, Conn., who spoke with Media Matters. "It can change day to day, hour to hour. Consistency is, I think, the path to success in broadcasting, in radio for sure, whether it be music or talk. Glenn is sort of all over the park from time to time."

Buckley spoke just days after his company announced it would pull Beck's show from four stations in Connecticut. -- WDRC-AM, WWCO-AM, WSNG-AM, and WMMW-AM. Those stations simulcast programming and will no longer air Beck's morning show, replacing it with two local personalities.

"Some of his direction has changed over the last year and a half," Buckley said. "He is preaching a lot more than entertaining."

The move comes just months after WOR Radio, the chain's flagship station in New York, replaced Beck with a local host in January.

"In the last six months or so, he has tended to be more and more taking a religious point of view ... It didn't do well here in the east," Buckley said. "It has not gotten real traction. If you want a religious point of view, we've got plenty of religious stations. You can get it 24/7."

Buckley, whose father started the company in the 1950s, said Beck's show had changed and taken on more of a religious tone since his August 2010 rally in Washington, D.C.

"There is no question I think he had a big change after his Washington conclave. Something hit him down there. His show changed after that," Buckley said. "In its basic elements that he had been doing for a long, long time. He got much more into the doomsday and a lot more talking of the religious aspects of people's lives and stuff like that. For us in New York and in Hartford, we just felt that a local program would be better."

In recent months, Beck's show has frequently veered into apocalyptic religiosity.

Asked about the WOR change, Buckley said he had expected Beck's ratings to improve in that market, but they did not after two years on the air.

"WOR ... we gave it a two-year shot, it just didn't seem to get traction, it didn't get the traction we thought it would, especially with all the publicity and P.R. he's had, you'd have thought it would be a runaway. It was going the other way," Buckley said. "I don't know whether he is a little off the reservation in trying to prove his point for the masses ... the listening audience."

Citing the WOR ratings in New York, Buckley said: "They weren't down, but they weren't up. We'd thought they'd go up. The other talk station in New York, WABC, had gone through a lot of changes and you would have thought consistency would have helped [Beck]. We'd have thought we'd see some movement, but we didn't see anything."

Beck's show will remain on one Buckley station, KNZR-AM in Bakersfield, Calif. The company owns 17 stations in three states.

GOP welfare bill mostly harms poor children: hunger-relief group

By Sahil Kapur

WASHINGTON – A hunger-relief group expressed deep concerns with a House GOP bill that would cap spending on food stamps, fearing it would target the least well-off and disproportionately harm children.

"We're very concerned that the food stamps provisions take us in exactly the wrong direction given the economic climate and the increased food security needs of Americans," Lisa Davis, vice president of policy at Feeding America, told Raw Story.

The bill, H.R. 1135, was introduced by Republican Reps. Jim Jordan (OH), Tim Scott (SC), Scott Garrett (NJ), Dan Burton (IN), and Louie Gohmert (TX). Its aim, in part, is "to provide an overall spending limit on means-tested welfare programs."

Davis said 44 million people participate in food stamps each month – the figure increased 62 percent between 2007 and 2009.

"Any kinds of changes that start to weaken the food safety net are going to increase the burden on communities across America," she said, noting that half of all beneficiaries of food stamps are children.

A Moody's study found in 2008 found food stamps to be the most economically stimulative federal programduring high unemployment.

The legislation also reaffirms a a controversial law that dates back to 1981, which limits access to food stamps for entire families if a single member is on strike.

Titled "Striking Workers Ineligible," subsection (3) of the legislation's clause (II), section (d) states: "Notwithstanding any other provision of law, no member of a family unit shall participate in the food stamp program at any time that any able-bodied work eligible adult member of such household is on strike."

A qualifier to the provision is that a family cannot lose its eligibility "if the household was eligible immediately prior to such strike," but families will be denied higher allotments that may otherwise result from the drop in income while a member is on strike.

"On Strike? Republicans Don't Want Your Family to Eat," responded the AFL-CIO on its website, calling it another in a series of GOP "attacks on working families and their unions."

Clarification: This article has been revised to reflect that the striking workers provision dates back to 1981, while the impact of H.R. 1135 is to place caps on food stamp spending.

M.C.L Comment: I hope teaching Obama a lesson was worth it.

DeMint Tells ThinkProgress He Wants To Strip All Federal Employees Of Collective Bargaining Rights

By Scott Keyes

The defining political story three months into 2011 is the spread of anti-union legislation in the states. Now, a leading senator on the right wants to eliminate collective bargaining rights at a federal level.

During an interview with ThinkProgress in Des Moines this weekend, Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC), a leader of the Tea Party movement and veritable kingmaker for conservative candidates, made no bones about his desire to diminish the power of public employees. DeMint told ThinkProgress that he “doesn’t believe collective bargaining has any place in government…including at the federal level.” The South Carolina senator then went on to call public employees’ unions an “unelected third party” that enjoyed “monopoly power” in negotiations. “It just doesn’t make any sense,” DeMint quipped:

KEYES: Senator, would you like to see some of these bills that we see at a state level curbing the collective bargaining rights of public employees’ unions, would you like to see those on a federal level?

DeMINT: I don’t believe collective bargaining has any place in government.

KEYES: Including at a federal level?

DeMINT: Including at the federal level. That’s what elections are, collective bargaining, for people who are [inaudible]. I think it just doesn’t make sense. When we’re elected as representatives, to determine the fiscal condition of the government, then to have an unelected third party bargaining at the table with monopoly power, it just doesn’t make any sense.

Watch it:

Currently, most federal public employees – with the exception of the postal service and some others – are only permitted to collectively bargain to improve their working conditions (their pay and benefits are set by Congress). However, DeMint is apparently seeking to take away even the meager rights that federal employees currently have.

The South Carolina Republican’s push to strip public employees’ unions of all their collective bargaining rights is part of a larger battle by the GOP against labor unions. Currently, the right is targeting labor unions in states across the country, from Maine to Missouri and elsewhere, with nearly-identical legislation crafted by the Koch-fundedAmerican Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC). Earlier this month, Wisconsin State Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald (R) even admitted to Fox News on air that the goal is to defund labor unions and hurt President Obama’s reelection chances.

Now, as the fight over public unions expands to more states, Sen. Jim DeMint is picking up the torch for at a federal level.

M.C.L Comment: For those liberals who are planning to replay their brilliant plan of teaching President Obama and the remaining Democrats a lesson look need to look at this.

After Paying Zero Income Taxes, GE Plans To Ask Its Union Workers To Make Wage And Benefits Concessions

By Mike Elk

Last week, the New York Times reported that, despite making $14.2 billion in profits, General Electric, the largest corporation in the United States, paid zero U.S. taxes in 2010 and actually received tax credits of $3.2 billion dollars. The article noted that GE’s tax avoidance team is comprised of “former officials not just from the Treasury, but also from the I.R.S. and virtually all the tax-writing committees in Congress.”

After not paying any taxes and making huge profits, ThinkProgress has learned that General Electric is expected to ask its nearly 15,000 unionized employees in the United States to make major concessions.

This year, 14 unions representing more than 15,000 workers will negotiate a new master contract with General Electric. Among the major concessions GE has signaled that it will ask of union workers is the elimination of a defined contribution benefit pension for new employees, a move the company has already implemented for its non-union salaried employees. Likewise, GE is signaling to the union that it will ask for the elimination of current health insurance plans in favor of lower quality health saving accounts, a move the company has already implemented for non-union salaried employees as well.

In addition, General Electric may ask some workers for a wage freeze. Since the recession began in 2007, GE threatened to close plants in Schenectady, NY and Louisville, KY unless workers took wage concessions and adopted two-tier wage structure. In an interview with ThinkProgress, Mark Haller, a machinist at General Electric locomotive factory in Erie, PA, said:

The company I work for paid no federal taxes last year, but we all get these mass emails from GE asking us to call our Congressman to fund the useless, alternative GE engine for the F-35. As taxpayers, we are subsidizing the profits of this company to a huge extent and now after making the company even more profitable, they are asking us to make concessions on pensions, benefits, and perhaps even wages. You wonder why there is a jobs crisis in this country with a guy like G.E. CEO Jeff Immelt heading the President’s Jobs Commission.

In 2003, union workers at 16 different General Electric factories engaged in a strikewhen G.E. proposed to cut their health care. Workers are mobilizing again this year. They have planned a rally that is expected to attract 10,000 workers from all over the country at the General Electric Locomotive Factory in Erie, PA on June 4th.

Birther Donald Trump: I’m ‘Really Concerned’ That ‘Obama Was Not Born In This Country’

By Alex Seitz-Wald

Apparently deciding that his path to success in next year’s Republican primaries takes him through Birtherville, billionaire reality TV star Donald Trump has said he will make questioning “Barack Obama’s birth certificate a pivotal part of his bid.” Indeed, he used an appearance on Fox & Friends this morning to launch into a lengthy and passionate rant about how he is “really concerned” that “Obama was not born in this country.”

At the conclusion of the interview, Trump stated, “I’m starting to wonder myself whether he was born in this country.” Watch it:

The myth that President Obama was born anywhere else than where he says he was has been roundly and repeatedly debunked, so one must ignore entire swathes of reality to continue to believe it. For example, Trump wants Obama to present a Certificate of Live Birth, but here it is, widely available on the internet, as it has been for nearly three years.

Moreover, Trump’s argument isn’t even internally coherent. First he questions why no doctors or nurses in Hawaii remember Obama’s birth, noting “this is the president of the United States!” (It’s unclear if Trump believes Obama was born the president):

TRUMP: Hey look, you have no doctors that remember. You have no nurses — this is the president of the United States! — that remember. That ad that was placed in the Houston paper — that was placed in the paper days after he was born. So he could have come into the country.

But just moments later, Trump doubts the governor of Hawaii Neil Abercrombie’s recollection of Obama’s birth, noting it was over 50 years ago. Abercrombie has said, “I knew his mom and dad. I was here when he was born.” Trump called for the governor to be “be investigated” for lying about the memory:

TRUMP: You know what I get a kick out of? The governor of Hawaii says, oh I remember when Obama was born. I doubt it! I think this guy should be investigated. He remembers when Obama was born? Give me a break! He’s just trying to do something for his party.

Trump seems to be leading yet another resurgence of the myth that “refuses to die” on the right — talk radio host Rush Limbaugh has been increasingly focusing on the issue, and praised Trump for providing a “valuable service” by questioning it; on Friday, Fox News host Sean Hannity refused to believe that Obama had released his birth certificate; and potential 2012 candidates like Michele Bachmann and Mike Huckabee have been hitting the issue as well lately.

Random Friday:Baddest Fight Scenes EVER! - Master of the Flying Guillotine

Behind Michigan's "Financial Martial Law": Corporations and Right-Wing Billionaires

By Andy Kroll

Last week, Michigan's Republican Governor Rick Snyder signed into law a fiercely contested bill giving unelected "emergency financial managers" unprecedented power to shred union contracts, privatize city services, and consolidate or dissolve local governments, all in the name of saving struggling cities and school districts. Dubbed "financial martial law" by one approving state GOP lawmaker and "disaster capitalism" by critics, Snyder and his bill have become a target for Wisconsin-like protests. Several thousand demonstrators marched on the Michigan Capitol in the days before Snyder signed the bill. But gone unmentioned is a little-known Michigan think tank that for years has been pushing for the most controversial provisions in Snyder's bill—and that's bankrolled by some of the same right-wing millionaires and billionaires that backed Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker and his anti-union legislation.

Since 2005, the Mackinac Center for Public Policy has urged reforms to Michigan law giving more power and protection to emergency financial managers, state-appointed officials who parachute into ailing cities or school districts and employ drastic measures to fix budgets on the brink of collapse. In January, the free-market-loving center published four recommendations, including granting emergency managers the power to override elected officials (such as a mayor or school board member) and toss out union contracts. All fourended up in Snyder's legislation.

"The Mackinac Center has been tied at the hip with the Republican Party establishment for years," says Doug Pratt, public affairs director at the Michigan Education Association. "It goes to their funding sources; it goes to their ideology."

Mackinac is part of a network of state-based groups associated with the Heritage Foundation, the influential right-wing think tank in Washington. Its past and present board members include Robert Teeter, a GOP strategist and '92 campaign manager for George H.W. Bush; Margaret Rieker, a former vice chairwoman of the Republican National Committee; and Joseph Lehman, a former vice president at the libertarian Cato Institute in Washington.

The Mackinac Center does not disclose its donors. But a review of tax records shows that the group's funders include the charitable foundations of the nation's largest corporations and a host of wealthy conservative and libertarian benefactors. Between 2002 and 2009, the Mackinac Center's donors included the Charles G. Koch Foundation ($69,151), founded by the chairman and CEO of Koch Industries, who, with his brother, David, is a major backer of conservative causes; the Dick and Betsy DeVos Foundation ($80,000), the charity tied to the son of the co-founder of Amway, the multibillion-dollar direct marketing company; the Edgar and Elsa Prince Foundation, established by the parents of Blackwater founder Erik Prince, who serves as the foundation's vice president ($195,000); and the Walton Family Foundation ($100,000), established by Wal-Mart founder Sam Walton and his wife, Helen.

Michael LaFaive, director of the Mackinac Center's fiscal policy initiative, says the Center is never influenced by its donors: "We are happy to take checks from people who don't agree with us, but they're not the ones sending us money."

Political action committees and non-profit groups linked to some of these same donors also helped fund Scott Walker's gubernatorial campaign and his push to eliminate collective bargaining rights for most public-sector unions. Koch Industries' PAC gave $43,000 to Walker's 2010 campaign, while Wal-Mart's PAC chipped in $15,000. Dick DeVos and his daughter, Elisabeth, also individually donated to Walker's campaign.

The Mackinac Center’s is a fervent advocate of privatization—its scholars support outsourcing everything from public school districts to Amtrak to state prisons—and backs anti-union legislation for Michigan. In 2007, the center published "A Collective Bargaining Primer," advocating against mandatory unionization and automatic dues deductions for public school teachers and other public employees. Collective bargaining for teachers, the Center claims, "has become a significant deterrent to educational quality." In other words, if you outsource as much as you can and kneecap the unions, the quality of education—and presumably city services—increases.

That position is in line with the beliefs of its donors. In 2009, Amway and Wal-Mart were among the 3,100 businesses that signed a letter opposing the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA), which would've made it easier for employees to unionize; that same year, Wal-Mart spent $7.4 million on lobbying, much of it to defeat EFCA. (The law failed.) The Koch brothers, meanwhile, fund an array of organizations opposed to unions, including the advocacy group Americans for Prosperity, the Cato Institute, and the Reason Foundation. With the Mackinaw Center, it seems, their investment is paying off.

Fox News Astoundingly Claims The Press Was Tough On Bush In Lead-Up To Iraq

by Julie Millican & Adam Shah

In a segment that shows that Fox News may actually inhabit Bizarro World, Fox & Friends' Brian Kilmeade hosted Media Research Center executive director L. Brent Bozell to claim that President Obama "seems to be getting a free pass from most media outlets" for some of his decisions on Libya, while President Bush got "anything but a free pass" in the lead-up to the Iraq war.

If Kilmeade and Bozell are to be believed, in the lead up to the Iraq war the media reported critically about the Bush administration's claims, providing us with a variety of viewpoints on the issue and legitimately debating the administration's case for going to war. If only we were so lucky. In reality, the media acted as Bush's lapdogs, eagerly parroting every dubious claim the Bush administration made about Iraq and shouting down the few who dared to disagree. So bad was the media's coverage of Iraq, many major media outlets have since issued apologies for their complete and total failure to investigate any of the claims made by the Bush administration.

For instance, as Dan Froomkin has documented:

In May 2004, the editors of the New York Times acknowledged:

[W]e have found a number of instances of coverage that was not as rigorous as it should have been. In some cases, information that was controversial then, and seems questionable now, was insufficiently qualified or allowed to stand unchallenged. Looking back, we wish we had been more aggressive in re-examining the claims as new evidence emerged -- or failed to emerge.

In August 2004, Washington Post media critic Howard Kurtz examined his own paper's coverage, and concluded:

An examination of the paper's coverage, and interviews with more than a dozen of the editors and reporters involved, shows that The Post published a number of pieces challenging the White House, but rarely on the front page. Some reporters who were lobbying for greater prominence for stories that questioned the administration's evidence complained to senior editors who, in the view of those reporters, were unenthusiastic about such pieces. The result was coverage that, despite flashes of groundbreaking reporting, in hindsight looks strikingly one-sided at times.

Michael Massing ruthlessly dissected the press's failures in February 2004 in the New York Review of Books:

Beginning in the summer of 2002, the "intelligence community" was rent by bitter disputes over how Bush officials were using the data on Iraq. Many journalists knew about this, yet few chose to write about it....

The nearer the war drew, and the more determined the administration seemed to wage it, the less editors were willing to ask tough questions. The occasional critical stories that did appear were... tucked well out of sight.

In his book, "Now They Tell Us," Massing writes that journalists were far too reliant on sources sympathetic to the administration and that those with dissenting views were shut out. As a result, coverage was highly deferential to the White House. At his publisher explains, Massing's "detailed analysis demonstrates, pre-war journalism was also deeply flawed, as too many reporters failed to independently evaluate administration claims about Saddam's weapons programs or the inspection process."

Even Scott McClellan -- Bush's former press secretary -- has said that "the media ... serve[d] as complicit enablers" in the Bush administration's "carefully-orchestrated campaign to shape and manipulate sources of public approval." From his book, What Happened: Inside the Bush White House and Washington's Culture of Deception:

In the fall of 2002, Bush and his White house were engaging in a carefully-orchestrated campaign to shape and manipulate sources of public approval to our advantage. We'd done much the same on other issues--tax cuts and education--to great success. But war with Iraq was different. Beyond the irreversible human costs and substantial financial price, the decision to go to war and the way we went about selling it would ultimately lead to increased polarization and intensified partisan warfare. Our lack of candor and honesty in making the case for war would later provoke a partisan response from our opponents that, in its own way, further distorted and obscured a more nuanced reality. Another cycle of deception would cloud the public's ability to see larger, underlying important truths that are critical to understand in order to avoid the same problems in the future.

And through it all, the media would serve as complicit enablers. Their primary focus would be on covering the campaign to sell the war, rather than aggressively questioning the rationale for war or pursuing the truth behind it... the media would neglect their watchdog role, focusing less on truth and accuracy and more on whether the campaign was succeeding. Was the president winning or losing the argument? How were Democrats responding? What were the electoral implications? What did the polls say? And the truth--about the actual nature of the threat posed by Saddam, the right way to confront it, and the possible risks of military conflict--would get largely left behind.

Oh -- and regarding The New York Times' 2004 mea culpa mentioned above, as Slate's Eric Umanskypointed out, "Of the 12 flawed stories the Times cites, Judith Miller wrote or co-wrote ...10 of them." Miller was subsequently fired from the Times. Where is she currently employed? Fox News.

If this weren't bad enough, Bozell then furthered his claims of a media double standard by repeatedly trying to suggest that the media were opposed to Iraq, despite the fact that Bush had "twice the coalition" than Obama has in Libya. Except, Bush didn't have the support of the United Nations. Or the Arab League. Or the African Union. Obama does. As Juan Cole points out in his "Top Ten Ways that Libya 2011 is Not Iraq 2003" list: "By the UN Charter, military action after 1945 should either come as self-defense or with UNSC authorization. Most countries in the world are signatories to the charter and bound by its provisions." This was most certainly not the case in Iraq and one of many big reasons why the current situation in Libya and the situation in Iraq are not comparable.

Furthermore, during the segment, Fox News also took Bush's "bare-knuckled political power-play" to force Congress to vote on using force in Iraq less than a month before the 2002 elections and somehow turned it into evidence of media bias. A Fox caption claimed: "Media pushed Bush admin; pressured for congressional approval for Iraq."

In fact, according to former Bush White House chief of staff Andy Card, it was the White House that was pushing for a vote on the Iraq resolution in October 2002, shortly before the 2002 election, even as then-Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle (D-SD) was asking the White House to delay the vote "so we could depoliticize it." From the November 30, 2007, edition of MSNBC's Morning Joe (via ThinkProgress):

SCARBOROUGH: We have to start with something that we all are talking about a couple of days ago where Karl Rove went on Charlie Rose and he blamed the Democrats for pushing him and the president into war. Is that how it worked?

CARD: No, that's not the way it worked.

SCARBOROUGH: What the heck? Seriously, what the hell was that about?

CARD: Democrats pushed us a lot of stupid things, but they didn't push us into war.

SCARBOROUGH: Yeah, yeah. You worked with Karl. Is that just Karl spinning beyond the White House?

MIKA BRZEZINSKI:Spinning out of control?

CARD: Well, Karl is very smart. He's -- sometimes his brain gets ahead of his mouth. And sometimes his mouth gets ahead of his brain.

Politico's John Bresnahan has reported that the White House move to force a vote in October "was a bare-knuckled political power play by President Bush and GOP leaders in Congress":

As someone who covered the 2002 vote on Iraq for Roll Call, Rove's assertion that Congress was pushing for a quick vote on the use-of-force resolution is just not credible at all.

The White House pushed to hold that vote in October, just a month before the mid-term elections, and Democrats were forced to support it or risk losing their re-election campaigns.

It was a bare-knuckled political power play by President Bush and GOP leaders in Congress, and it worked very, very well. Republicans ended up winning back the Senate that fall, and the GOP picked up more House seats.

It's hard to imagine that anyone could be so partisan as to try to spin a tale about an anti-Iraq media narrative during the lead-up to that war. Yet, that's exactly what Bozell and Kilmeade tried to do. Is there any way they actually believe the story they're selling? We doubt it.

Watch: