Justin's Political Corner

The Republican party seems to be churning them out like clockwork these days. First they appointed an anti-science representative to the Science committee - a man who said that evolution and embryology was “straight out of the pits of hell.” Now we have Rep. Michael Burgess (R-TX) who believes abortion should be illegal because male fetuses masturbate. Yes, you read that correctly. Despite every doctor in the nation collectively shaking their heads in disbelief that someone would actually believe something like that (which is akin to “legitimate rape” in terms of how scientifically accurate it is), Burgress made the comments. And to add insult to injury, Burgess is in charge of the Subcommittee on Health. 

Rachel Maddow tackled the egregious theory head on last night in a segment about Republican Congressmen and their junk science beliefs. “It is one thing to be a random Texas congressman, Michael Burgess, saying that we should set laws for everybody in the whole country based on when he thinks fetuses masturbate,” Maddow said. “But this guy also is in charge of something. The House Republicans took the fetal masturbation theorist and put him in charge of their Subcommittee on Health. Because, hey, that’s who they got, I guess.”

She continued, “And honestly, with these last three or four years with the triumph of anti-abortion activism as the main policy thrust of the Republican Party, both in federal government and in the states, I kind of felt like I had lost the capacity to be surprised — before I heard the fetal masturbation theory from Congressman Burgess today.”

From the 06.18.2013 edition of MSNBC’s The Rachel Maddow Show:

h/t: Tim Peacock at Peacock Panache

MSNBC host Rachel Maddow excoriated Rand Paul on Thursday for telling Howard University students that he had “never wavered” in his support of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. 

“It’s one thing to have a sketchy record on racial discrimination and basic civil rights law that you don’t want to defend,” Maddow said of his speech at the historic black college. “It’s another thing to be condescending enough to think you can get away with flat out lying about it.”

As TPM noted in its coverage of his speech, Paul famously attacked provisions of the bill banning discrimination by businesses, such as hotels and restaurants, for undermining private property rights in an interview on Maddow’s show in 2010. He made similar comments to NPR and a local newspaper in Kentucky, but eventually backed down and said he would have supported the bill and federal intervention on race. 

H/T: TPM LiveWire

Chris Hayes will take over the 8 p.m. time slot on MSNBC in the next month, the channel is planning to announce on Thursday morning, hours after the current host of that hour, Ed Schultz, said he was moving from the weekdays to the weekends.

Mr. Hayes, a liberal intellectual who has hosted a well-regarded weekend morning program on MSNBC for the past 18 months, is a protege of Rachel Maddow, the highest-rated host on the channel. He will become the lead-in for her 9 p.m. program, “The Rachel Maddow Show.”

The change is predicated on the belief that MSNBC can win a wider audience with Mr. Hayes than it did with Mr. Schultz, a champion of the working class whose bluster didn’t always pair well with Ms. Maddow and the channel’s other prime time program, “The Last Word with Lawrence O’Donnell.” Mr. Hayes, on the other hand, is just as wonky as Ms. Maddow and Mr. O’Donnell, and is a regular contributor to both of their programs.

Mr. Hayes’s promotion was described by people who spoke on the condition of anonymity because it had not been officially announced by the channel yet. Once it takes effect, Mr. Hayes, 34, will be the youngest host of a prime-time show on any of the country’s major cable news channels, all of which seek out youthful viewers but tend to have middle-aged hosts and a core audiencemade up of senior citizens. Of Mr. Schultz’s one million viewers last year, for example, only 249,000 were between the ages of 25 and 54.

Ms. Maddow had an average of 339,000 viewers in that key demographic. Usually cable news ratings work the other way — the programs earlier in the evening outperform the programs later in the evening. That’s partly why MSNBC sees an opportunity to grow at 8 p.m.

But taking over that hour is a difficult assignment for Mr. Hayes, given Bill O’Reilly’s commanding grip on the time slot. Mr. O’Reilly, the biggest star on the Fox News Channel, routinely doubled Mr. Schultz’s delivery of 25- to 54-year-old viewers last year, much to the chagrin of Mr. Schultz, who parodied his rival on a regular basis. The ratings imbalance at 8 p.m. helped to obscure the fact that MSNBC has, in prime time overall, crept closer to Fox in that age group.

Mr. Hayes is as eager as anyone at MSNBC to beat Fox, even if the two channels don’t actually fight for the same viewers. His metamorphosis from a writer at The Nation magazine to a broadcaster began several years ago when he was signed up to be a part-time paid contributor to MSNBC. He impressed executives at the channel when he filled in for Ms. Maddow in 2011, and in September of that year he was given his weekend morning show, called “Up with Chris Hayes.”

h/t: NY Times’s MediaCoder blog

In the continuing fallout from their failure to retake the White House in November, Republicans have been having a spirited (if not downright cannibalistic) debate about the future of their party. Accusations have been thrown out, lines have been drawn in the sand, and reasons for their failure have been postulated - all in an effort to reconcile the unexpected losses in an election where most conservatives thought they would win by a landslide. Are they finally looking at their own media mechanisms (like Fox News) and how they don’t always report in a “fair and balanced” manner? Heck no. 

Reince Priebus (Chairman of the Republican National Committee) told the media on Thursday they the RNC would be releasing the findings of their post-election “autopsy” on the GOP’s failure in the last election. In highlighting what could be expected when he speaks at the National Press Club, Priebus said the GOP needs to work on “controlling the debate process, getting involved in moderators and networks and all of these other issues so that we don’t have chaos. I mean, we just can’t have MSNBC hosting a debate at the Reagan Library only to have their network make the commentary afterwards for three hours about the debate of the Republican Party. I mean, it’s ridiculous.”

On her show Thursday evening (after Priebus made the now-infamous comments blaming MSNBC for the GOP loss), Rachel Maddow interviewed former presidential senior adviser  David Axelrod and discussed the GOP’s new scapegoat. “We learned that the autopsy that the Republican Party commissioned to figure out why they did so badly and what is wrong with them as a party…that autopsy is done,” she said.

Perhaps you think you’ve read or heard it all. Hell, I even wrote my own book about it, So Wrong for So Long,. But now Rachel Maddow is promising surprising revelations in her MSNBC special Hubris: Selling the Iraq War, next Monday night in her regular time slot.

It will be President’s Day, but it looks like she sure won’t be celebrating George W. Bush. Or the mainstream media.

The special marks the opening of what will surely be a slew of tenth-anniversary programs and other media revisits.  If you want to go back yourself now: Ten years ago today Hans Blix made another fateful presentation to the United Nations on his team’s search for WMD in Iraq. It was said to bolster both opponents and proponents of a US invasion, since he still found no evidence of such weapons but Saddam was still not cooperating fully with inspections.

Why does this all matter? Well, consider this major Washington Post piece last night on Iran allegedly boosting nuclear program by pursuing certain…magnets. It never ends.

The doc is partly based on the book Hubris by David Corn and Michael Isikoff but reportedly goes beyond it. An NBC press release claims the documentary features “new and original interviews with members of the Bush administration, the CIA, members of Congress and other insiders who were part of the internal debate over the ultimately faulty-intelligence that led to the invasion of Iraq.

More excerpts on the Yellowcake lies here and on “Cheney’s Speech” here and on “The Build-up” here and WMD not found.

h/t: Greg Mitchell at The Nation

The last two nights of MSNBC’s The Rachel Maddow Show featured segments on how abortion rights are under attack in 4 states (Arkansas, Mississippi, North Dakota, and South Dakota), both by anti-choice zealots and GOP Governors (Bryant [MS], Dalrymple [ND], Daugaard [SD]) and their legislatures, as part of the War On Women playbook to drastically curtail and/or end abortion rights and to defund Planned Parenthood, to name a few. 

Mississippi’s last women’s health clinic, Jackson Women’s Health Organization, could be closed down due to anti-choice extremist Governor Phil Bryant (R)’s wishes that “Mississippi should be an abortion-free state.” If his plan successfully goes through, it would be the 1st state since the highly controversial 1973 Roe v. Wade ruling by SCOTUS to effectively ban abortion. 

Of the four states with only one women’s health service clinic (or abortion provider) left in their respective states, all except Arkansas currently has a GOP Governor running the state. All four of the states listed have both their state Houses and Senates under GOP control.

Full blogpost at Daily Kos

MSNBC host Rachel Maddow has been nominated for a Grammy Award.

Maddow is a nominee for the audio version of her book Drift in the “Spoken Word Field.” She is up against some steep competition, including President Bill Clinton and comedianEllen Degeneres.

h/t: TVNewser