RELATED: Colin Powell On Occupy Wall Street: ‘Demonstrating Like This Is As American As Apple Pie’

“The tone is not good right now and the political system here in Washington… has become very, very tense,” Powell told Amanpour, arguing that this was not exclusive a Congressional problem, but a media problem. “The media loves this game where everyone is on the extreme– it makes for great TV.” The extremes, however, would not produce results, he argued. The media, he concluded, needed to “take some head out of political life in terms of the coverage, so that these folks can get to work.”

As for the rejection of compromise, he completely disagreed. “The Founding Fathers compromised on slavery,” he noted, “compromise is how this country was founded. The Tea Party point of view of no compromise whatsoever is not a point of view that will eventually produce a presidential candidate who will win.”

RELATED: Colin Powell: Dick Cheney Taking ‘Cheap Shots’ In New Book

Powell is likely in the minority of Republicans who feel that the Tea Party is a liability and are vocal about it, and given his comments recently in support of Occupy Wall Street (in theory), this is likely not to go so well with the far right.

The segment via ABC below:

Colin Powell was a guest on Piers Morgan Tonight Thursday and, among other things, was asked what he thought of the Occupy Wall Street movement. He seemed to brilliantly walk a line between the pro-and-anti-OWS stance, saying that he doesn’t, “begrudge anyone who has earned a good salary as part of our capitalist system,” but also expressing an understanding of the frustration many of the protesters are feeling.

Morgan pressed him on his own upbringing — Powell grew up poor in Harlem and recounted that both of his parents had always worked for as long as he could remember, making no more than 50 or 60 dollars a week.

“They always worked; they always had work. People are concerned now that there isn’t that work source of income.”

Powell did have some advice for the Occupiers, who he warned to not dip into nihilism. He said that while the protesting was as, “American as apple pie,” and that we’ve been demonstrating throughout our American history, it has to be more than just an angry mob. “It isn’t enough just to scream at the Occupy Wall Street demonstrations. We need our political system to start reflect this anger back into, ‘How do we fix it? How do we get the economy going again?’”

Watch a clip of Powell’s appearance below, courtesy of Piers Morgan Tonight:

Bob Schieffer asked Powell if there was anything in the former VP’s book that would cause people’s heads to explode in Washington. Powell did not think so, and immediately proceeded to criticize Cheney for using the book as a platform to go after him and other members of the Bush administration.

Mr. Cheney has had a long and distinguished career, and I hope that’s what he’ll focus on, not these cheap shots that he’s taking at me and other members of the administration who served to the best of our ability for President Bush.

Powell disputed Cheney’s assertion that he was in some way responsible for Powell’s departure from the administration in 2004, claiming that he and President Bush had always planned for Powell to depart towards the end of the presidential term.

Among other things, Cheney alleged that Powell did not share his opinions on many issues with the president, he did not support the president’s decisions, and that Powell was somehow involved in the Valerie Plame affair. Powell disputed all of these charges and continued to insist there is nothing particularly shocking in what Cheney had to say.

Mr. Cheney is free to say what he wishes, but so far I haven’t seen anything in it that is ‘explosive,’ as he claims it is, and I don’t see any heads lying on the street.

Watch the video below, courtesy of CBS:

Saturday night, I was a guest of Time Magazine at the star-studded Time-CNN-People-Fortune pre-reception in the Washington Hilton’s Lincoln Room. According to Time (although I can vouch for most of it), the guest list included:

Here is a list of some of the politicians, media, and celebs that stopped by: Chris Colfer; Mila Kunis; Matthew Morrison; Mira Sorvino; Jon Hamm; Colin Powell; Steve Buscemi; Wolf Blitzer; Twitter co-founder Evan Williams; Eric Stonestreet, Jesse Tyler Ferguson and Ariel Winter from “Modern Family;” Sen, Scott Brown; Alyssa Milano; Jason Biggs; Bristol Palin; Chace Crawford; Candy Crowley; Tony Romo; Russell Simmons; Michelle Trachtenberg; Tom Hooper; Tara Subkoff; Tory Burch; Timothy Geithner;  David Plouffe; Eliot Spitzer; Anita Dunn; Meghan McCain and TIME Managing Editor Stengel; People Managing Editor Larry Hackett; FORTUNE Managing Editor Andy Serwer.

TIME WHCD guests Jay Roach, director and executive producer of “Game Change” for HBO and Danny Strong, producer of “Game Change” mingled with TIME’s Mark Halperin, co-author of the best selling book that they are adapting.

I didn’t shoot a whole lot of video (although I did get a decent number of still shots), as this was mainly a social occasion, but just enough to get a sense of the atmosphere.

On my way to the hotel, I ran into David Shuster and another old friend of mine, and as we walked into the hotel, I was stunned to see a dense crowd of media covering the entry. In the first section of video, that’s Shuster and a colleague working the velvet rope, while the rest of us continued in to the hotel.

Later, I spotted The Office star Mindy Kaling (who plays Kelly Kapoor on the show), and asked her what made her want to attend our little dinner.

The laugh of the night, for me, came from Fox News anchor Chris Wallace who, when I introduced myself, narrowed his eyes into a suspicious glare, held up his hand, and said, “Wait, who are you with? Media Matters?”

I laughed and said, “No, those guys hate me.”

I also ran into former White House Communications Director (and Fox-fighting heroine to many on the left) Anita Dunn, who immediately volunteered that she “loves Mediaite.com,” which I then made her repeat on-camera (after quizzing her to make sure she was really talking about us, and not Media Matters).

As I was speaking with Dunn, who should wander over but Mediaite Editor-at-Large Rachel Sklar, who contributed her own set of party photos to this post.

After the dinner, (which I spent filming protesters outside the hotel, and watching the President and Seth Meyers in a suite full of Rachel Sklar‘s pals) I went to the buzzed-about Capitol File after-party in the Reagan building. The balance of the video is a brief shot of the Cap File party, and a minute or so of a killjoy Code Pink protester, who, I found out, annoyed even the liberals in the crowd.

People I ran into but didn’t photograph include: Jake Tapper and wife Jennifer (who were leaving the pre-parties as I came in), Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner (who streaked through the party like a fiscal Frank the Tank), Glee star Matthew Morrison (who unwittingly threw a pick-move on me as I tried to track Geithner down), Meghan McCain (who I saw but didn’t really recognize until I saw her name on the post-party email), Joe Klein, CNN‘s Will Cain, Dan Lothian and Suzanne Malveaux, Morning Joe EP Chris Licht, HuffPo‘s Sam Stein and Jon Ward, Will.i.am, AP‘s Ben Feller, The Washington Times‘ Liz Glover, and ABC News Radio‘s Ann Compton (I did photograph Ann, who looked like a million bucks, but the pictures were too dark).

Here’s a gallery of stills that I took Saturday night, along with some further observations, followed by a slew of stills from Rachel Sklar.

[Show as slideshow]

Gallery

Uygur had been discussing comments made by “Curveball_ – the nickname given to Iraqi defector Rafid Ahmed Alwan Al-Janabi – saying he been given the chance to “fabricate something, to topple the regime.” He’s referring, of course, to Saddam Hussein‘s regime. He adds that German intelligence “knew” he was lying, but later asked him for more details, which they turned over to the CIA. Powell went on to quote (false) information provided by “Curveball” in a speech.

Wilkerson maintains that Powell did not have any indication that Curveball was lying or that anyone in the Pentagon or CIA knew the information provided Curveball was fabricated. “I think were was some manipulation of this material,” said Wilkerson. “And there was some outright lying.”

Watch the clip, via MSNBC:

Powell was eager to throw cold water on politically popular talking points that don’t really have much financial significance:

“You can’t fix the deficit or the national debt by killing NPR or the national endowment for the humanities or the arts – nice political chatter, but that doesn’t do it.”

And Powell also dismissed the Republican idea of freezing spending at 2008 levels:

“Don’t tell me you’re going to freeze to a level. That usually is a very inefficient way of doing it. Tell me what you’re going to cut, and nobody up there yet is being very, very candid about what they are going to cut to fix this problem.”

To many observers, Powell has become predictably non-partisan so many of these comments shouldn’t be too much of a surprise, yet with Republicans still not specifically revealing where they want to cut spending, such pointed criticism is likely to continue.

Watch the clip from CNN below:

GaGa has an afternoon rally in Maine to promote repeal of DADT and encourage the two, moderate Republican senators from Maine–Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins–to bring the repeal to a vote slated for tomorrow.  Good for Lady GaGa and a brilliant move by Servicemembers Legal Defense Network for orchestrating the event which is expected to be covered live by MSNBC and CNN when she starts speaking around 5 p.m.

What a difference a day makes, however, given the lack of coverage the key vote received on the Sunday morning news shows.  NBC Meet the Press‘ David Gregory interviewed former president Clinton and General Powell but never got around to asking the man who signed the law or the former head of the joint chiefs of staff who recently announced support of repeal about the upcoming vote.

Clinton, promoting the Clinton Global Initiative, also avoided any questions from Bob Scheiffer on Face the Nation. The topic was not raised on the foreign policy-heavy ABC This Week with Christiane Amanpour, Tea Party-dominated Fox New Sunday or CNN’s State of the Union with Candy Crowley.

While DADT may not be as important as the elections in Afghanistan, it is likely a more important political issue than Christine O’Donnell and her beliefs about masturbation and witchcraft. So why not ask former president Clinton why he approved the policy and what he thinks about the future of the rule?  Why not ask Powell–who has come full circle on DADT–about his views on the controversy?

Alas, it is up to Lady Gaga to have that conversation about the law.

Before Lady GaGa even took the stage, however, her efforts appear to be in vain.  Snowe announced that she would likely not vote to end a fillibuster on the defense funding bill and said that while she questions DADT, the vote planned for tomorrow is the wrong vehicle for overturning the rule. A reporter for National Journal’s Congress Daily is saying the Collins will also not be swayed by Lady Gaga and that both Collins and Sen. Scott Brown (R-Mass.) would not join Democrats in getting DADT to a vote tomorrow.

Here’s CNN’s preview of the rally and Lady GaGa’s role as an advocate.

Powell appeared on Meet the Press this morning and this time around had a less than enthusiastic review of President Obama’s performance since taking office. Short version: “It’s the economy, stupid.” Transcript via Playbook:

“[T]he President … has to, I think, shift the way in which he has been doing things. I think the American people feel that too many programs have come down. There are so many rocks in our knapsack now that we’re having trouble carrying it. I think the president has to, like a razor blade, just go right after the single issue that is uppermost in the minds of the American people, and that’s employment. And he’s done a lot with health care, with cap-and-trade, with education. And I understand the importance of all of that. But as far as the American People are concerned, the main attack is employment. … I think he has lost some of the ability to connect that he had during the campaign. And it is not just me picking on the President. It’s reflected in the polling.”

Perhaps this is Powell’s version of “Obama needs some witchiness!” Still it can’t be pleasant for Obama to hear one of the more respected voice, on both the right and the left, coming to the popular conclusion that he is disconnected from voters. Though I do love that Powell feels it necessary to point out that he is not alone in “picking on the President.” Indeed. Video below.

First a transcript of the portion of the appearance on Meet the Press excerpted below:

I’m also troubled by, not what Senator McCain says, but what members of the party say. And it is permitted to be said such things as, “Well, you know that Mr. Obama is a Muslim.” Well, the correct answer is, he is not a Muslim, he’s a Christian. He’s always been a Christian. But the really right answer is, what if he is? Is there something wrong with being a Muslim in this country? The answer’s no, that’s not America. Is there something wrong with some seven-year-old Muslim-American kid believing that he or she could be president? Yet, I have heard senior members of my own party drop the suggestion, “He’s a Muslim and he might be associated terrorists.” This is not the way we should be doing it in America.

I feel strongly about this particular point because of a picture I saw in a magazine. It was a photo essay about troops who are serving in Iraq and Afghanistan. And one picture at the tail end of this photo essay was of a mother in Arlington Cemetery, and she had her head on the headstone of her son’s grave. And as the picture focused in, you could see the writing on the headstone. And it gave his awards–Purple Heart, Bronze Star–showed that he died in Iraq, gave his date of birth, date of death. He was 20 years old. And then, at the very top of the headstone, it didn’t have a Christian cross, it didn’t have the Star of David, it had crescent and a star of the Islamic faith. And his name was Kareem Rashad Sultan Khan, and he was an American. He was born in New Jersey. He was 14 years old at the time of 9/11, and he waited until he can go serve his country, and he gave his life. Now, we have got to stop polarizing ourself in this way. And John McCain is as nondiscriminatory as anyone I know. But I’m troubled about the fact that, within the party, we have these kinds of expressions.

Powell wisely points out a portrait featured in an essay featured in the New Yorker, that is described in the NewYorker.com:

This summer, the photographer Platon took pictures of hundreds of men and women who volunteered to serve in the military and were sent to Iraq or Afghanistan. He followed them on their journey through training and deployment, after demobilization and in hospitals, to compile a portrait of the dedication of the armed services today

(H/T Shanedoth )

Powell didn’t go so far as to criticize President Obama directly but he did say that Obama had failed to convey the impression that that he has been monitoring the spill from the start “and the comprehensive speech he gave the other day, I think he would have been better served and the nation would have been better served if he’d given it a few weeks earlier.”

Nor did he say that the military should take over the effort — a decision which would likely start an entirely new debate about the allocation of forces in Afghanistan — though his language certainly sounded very military-esque. Video below.

That’s right, it’s a brand new W. scandal and, if it turns out to be true, it could be quite a damaging one. Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson, a former top aide to Colin Powell, has claimed that George W. Bush, Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld were all aware that many prisoners in Guantanamo Bay were entirely innocent but left them there anyway. The accusations were made in a document that The Times has obtained.

From The Times:

“Colonel Wilkerson, who was General Powell’s chief of staff when he ran the State Department, was most critical of Mr Cheney and Mr Rumsfeld. He claimed that the former Vice-President and Defence Secretary knew that the majority of the initial 742 detainees sent to Guantánamo in 2002 were innocent but believed that it was ‘politically impossible to release them’.”

The document goes on to state that it was Powell himself who told Wilkerson that President Bush was probably also involved. Rumors have it that Powell backs all the allegations Wilkerson makes in the document. This isn’t the first time that Wilkerson has been critical of the Bush administration as he, like Powell, has come out in critique of the handling of the Iraq War build-up and anti-terrorism efforts. For example, last year, Wilkerson made headlines by claiming that the former Vice President’s actions were really “assisting” al-Qa’ida.

It’ll be interesting to see how much of an uproar this document makes here in America. If it does, chances are it’s because the release of the WikiLeaks video earlier this week brought the Iraq War screaming back into the public consciousness. Besides, Liberals will probably have missed their time being the outraged party for eight years. To be honest, it’s not nearly as fun being the guys on top.

Bill O’Reilly, on last night’s Factor, issued legendary White House reporter Helen Thomas something that he called a “reality check.” The subject was this recent interview for Mediaite, in which Helen responds to criticism of her questioning of counterterrorism adviser John Brennan.

The result was somewhat predictable, with O’Reilly bending reality while claiming to deliver it in check form, and curiously referring to Brennan as the “terrorism guy.”

Helen’s question to Brennan had to do with determining the motivations of those who attack us, and whether you agree with Helen or not, you tell me if O’Reilly delivers an answer to that question:

Can someone remind me when it was that the Bush administration said we were going to war with Iraq because they ignored sanctions? Is that an alternate definition for “mushroom cloud?” Was Colin Powell holding a little vial full of ignored sanctions?

This isn’t new ground for O’Reilly. He’s had a thing for Helen Thomas for quite awhile, calling her a “wicked witch” and making her a frequent target of his diatribes.

Since Bill didn’t play the full clip, here it is again, followed by my last interview with Helen, from Feb. 2008, in which she explains her use of the term “so-called terrorists.”

He seems to take Sergeant Crowley’s side in the Gates situation.

Says Powell:

I would say, the first teaching point is when you’re faced with an officer trying to do his job and get to the bottom of something. This is not the time to get in an argument with him. I was taught that as a child. You don’t argue with a police officer. In fact, in our schools today, in order to make sure that we don’t have things escalate out of control and lead to very unfortunate situations, we tell our kids, when you’re being asked something by a police officer, being detained by a police officer, cooperate. If you don’t like what happened, or if you think that you have been exposed to something that’s racist or prejudicial or something that’s wrong, then you make a complaint afterwards and you sue him.

Later in the interview, Powell continues:

I think he should have reflected on whether or not this was the time to make that big a deal. But, he’s just home from China, just home from New York. All he wanted to do was get to bed… But I still think that it might well have been resolved in a different manner if we didn’t have this verbal altercation between the two of them…So, my first teaching point for young people, especially, not for Dr. Gates, that the young people, especially, is, when the police are looking into something, and if you’re involved in it in one way or another, cooperate. Don’t make the situation more difficult. And I think in this case, the situation was made more difficult.

The interview, which airs in full tonight, is sure to get a lot of attention and replay on the cable and broadcast networks. Powell’s comments about being racially profiled himself, Palin (who he calls a “fascinating figure”) and Rush Limbaugh (check out some of those here) will resonate.

Here’s a clip of his comments:

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