“It’s reported that Newt Gingrich didn’t call to congratulate you on the victory in Florida,” Lauer said. “Is that true? Were you expecting a call, and does it say something about the animosity that’s developed between the two of you?”

“Newt didn’t call after Iowa or New Hampshire,” Gov. Romney revealed. “I called him after South Carolina, his win there, but he didn’t call last night. The other candidates all called. I don’t know. I guess Speaker Gingrich doesn’t have our phone number.”

Calling your opponent after a victory is customary, like shaking hands with the other team at the end of a Little League game, but it’s one of those things that nobody notices unless some kids spits in his hand first. One famous example is Al Gore’s 2000 anti-concession call to George W. Bush, in which Gore told Bush ”You don’t have to get snippy about it.”

Lauer described it as a “trivial matter,” but it does illustrate something about this year’s campaign.

In 2008, then-Sen. Hillary Clinton made headlines when she failed to call then-Sen. Barack Obama (or mention the wins in post-primary speeches) after two primary victories, but that was in mid-February, after 29 primary contests had already been held, and a lot more water had gone under the bridge. Gingrich, if Romney is to be believed, began choking on sour grapes out of the gate.

To be fair, Gingrich has been been the Romney campaign’s personal batting-practice ball for months now, culminating in the running of 92% negative ads in the week before the Florida primary. On a human level, it’s easy to understand why Gingrich might not be anxious to reach out and touch Romney after an attack-fueled vivtory.

On the other hand, it’s tough to shed any crocodile tears (or even a tear of newt) for Gingrich, given the nastiness with which he has attacked President Obama. Those attacks notwithstanding, if Gingrich somehow manages to win the privilege of losing to Barack Obama, I’m betting the President calls him anyway, maybe to favor him with a song.

Here’s the clip, from NBC’s Today show:

“I don’t want it to sound like a tautology” isn’t the kind of concern audibly shared at most sports panels, but while explaining how bad defenses play bad defense leading to bad results on Slate‘s live “Hang Up and Listen” podcast, that was exactly what Mike Pesca was worried about. Rather than describe or comment on the action, their first discussion of the evening focused on whether the playoffs were too “irrational.” Logic and reason continued to play a significant role in their analysis. Stefan Fatsis sat at his laptop and quoted DVOA — Tim Tebow hadn’t just played another game, he’d widened his sample size — and Pesca railed against the “logical fallacies” in comparing arbitrary statistics.

All of that meshed perfectly with the addition of Nate Silver to the panel for an interview segment. Silver was choppier when discussing himself and his own progression, but became more animated and passionate when the discussion turned to his work with statistics and prediction models both in sports and politics. Just as Hang Up and Listen’s discussions shied away from stereotypical sports blowhard culture, Silver diverged from the pomposity of political punditry. Silver focused a great deal on explaining the limits of statistics, how important it is to know those limits exist, and accepting them. He cited his 2008 numbers which gave Hillary Clinton a 16% chance to win New Hampshire (as opposed to the 9% other polls were running.) On the one hand, he was 7 points higher than others; on the other hand, he had still only predicted a 16% chance.

The evening closed with a discussion on coaches. Here, too, the back and forth did not hinge on any particular coach, but asked the background question “Do coaches carry too much importance in our society?” Fatsis discussed his own experience coaching his daughter’s youth soccer team, and Josh Levin wondered whether college coaches were basking in the reflected veneer from youth coaches. Pesca called out football announcers for treating college coaches like ethical leaders, making explicit the division between Hang Up and Listen and mainstream sports coverage, a chasm that was implicit throughout the entire podcast taping.

What They Said

“They are, in audio form, what Slate aspires to be in print every day.”
- Slate’s Editor, David Plotz, introducing the live podcast.

“Some precedent is always broken, if you define things narrowly enough… eventually every player is a special snowflake”
- Nate Silver would have a problem with us claiming that this is the best Nate Silver quote to ever run second in the Panel Nerds’ “What They Said” section. In January.

“The enlightenment triumphed” – Josh Levin’s take on the Patriots sound defeat of the Tim Tebow led Denver Broncos
- Stefan Fatsis views Bill Belichick as a modern day Thomas Aquinas.

“You develop fluency… If you’ve learned Spanish, you should be able to learn Portugese.”
- Nate Silver’s analogy for how he used his baseball modeling in politics.

“It’s actually reasonable”
“No, it’s not. It would be reasonable if it were true”
– Stefan Fatsis and Mike Pesca debate the NFL’s explanation of the Greg Jennings non-fumble fumble.

What We Thought

• The podcast did an excellent job of taking advantage of the live format, giving their live audience more than the people listening. For different segments, they had queued up video clips to show the crowd what they were referring to. The extra effort made being there more special.
• Another thing that made being there more special is City Winery itself. We’d been there before, but we were again reminded how beautiful a space it is. If you’re in New York and have never been there, you should go.
• As long time listeners of the podcast, we had imagined a mental picture of each correspondent. Incredibly, each member of the trio, matched our imagination and their roles on the podcast perfectly. Pesca and Fatsis faced each other, flanking Levin, seeming like a pocasting odd couple. Pesca, burlier, leaned back in his chair, freely sharing quips and jokes while Fatsis sat across from him, slighter, more serious, sitting at the front of his chair, with the kind of perfect posture from beginning to end that would make our mother proud.

PANEL RULES!
Some audience behavior seems to repeat itself panel after panel. We’ll be updating a running list of “PANEL RULES!” that will help ensure that you are not the dweeb of the Panel Nerds.
Panel Nerds don’t like…The Look Through
We’ve all been in conversation with someone in a crowd and we see their eyes search the room for other people to talk to rather than engage in the conversation at hand. Don’t ask the panelists if there are other Slate podcasters in the audience. Don’t look through them! Enjoy the podcasters sitting there in front of you.

RELATED: Shocker: Bill Clinton Agrees With Bill O’Reilly That The Media Favored Barack Over Hillary

“(Hillary) was shredded,” said Newsweek editor Tina Brown “And withstood it with great aplomb. Really, I think a lot of it was about the press wanted a new narrative and in the end, Obama’s story of the first black president, you know, trumped the exceptionalism of her being the first woman president. It was bad luck for her that happened, but it was also a much more fun idea to have this new narrative to write about. Everyone was board with the Clintons. They didn’t want to have another Clinton story.”

“She didn’t embrace that narrative, they made her the establishment candidate.” New York magazine’s John Heilemann disputed.

“Go back to 2007 and watch people drooling over themselves on networks,” Scarborough countered.

“I totally agree, the press was in the tank for Obama,” Heilemann conceded, but noted that Clinton’s handlers kept her in a “safe box” during the campaign.

Watch Scarborough needle the press over their bias towards Barack Obama via MSNBC:

(h/t DC)

I know, Republican voters must be thinking that this is too good to be true, and maybe it is. Let’s meet this anti-mandate candidate:

Yes, the one leading presidential candidate who consistently opposed the individual mandate is the guy who signed it into law. Then-Sen. Barack Obama didn’t just oppose the mandate, he ridiculed it, and used it to attack his primary opponent, then-Sen. Hillary Clinton. Once elected, President Obama was ostensibly pulled to that position by his party.

It is supremely ironic that Gingrich and Romney are trying to get elected by running away from a political position about which they were both 100% correct, while trying to beat the guy who was so completely wrong about that same issue. As Jay Carney pointed out earlier this year, Mitt Romney eloquently defended the individual mandate as a conservative idea:

“Not only have lower courts upheld (the law’s) constitutionality,” Carney began, “but the fact of the individual mandate being both constitutional and wise policy is an opinion shared across the ideological spectrum. A former governor of Massachusetts just said, the other day, ‘The idea for a health care plan in Massachusetts was not mine alone. The Heritage Foundation, a great conservative think tank, helped on that. I’m told Newt Gingrich, one of the very first people who came up with the idea of an individual mandate, did that years and years ago. It was seen as a conservative idea to say, you know what? People have a responsibility for caring for themselves if they can. We’ll help people who can’t care for themselves, but if you can care for yourself, you gotta take care of yourself and pay your own bills.’”

“That’s the former governor of Massachusetts describing the individual mandate, and why it’s smart policy, and we certainly agree.”

The individual mandate is only a hated liberal idea compared to the status quo. In the arena of health care reform, it is a desperate Hail Mary bulwark against a truly universal system like single-payer or Medicare for all. What Republicans ignore about that mandate is exactly what Hillary Clinton knew about it in 2008: it was absolutely key to preserving private insurance companies, while allowing for the prohibition of preexisting condition clauses. You can’t forbid insurance companies from denying coverage based on preexisting conditions unless everyone is required to have insurance.

I’m absolutely certain that candidate Obama knew this, too, but also knew that a mandate would be an easy to demagogue, political non-starter. He elected to sell the teaspoon of sugar, and let the medicine take care of itself later. While Hillary Clinton was absolutely right about the need for an individual mandate, Obama’s campaign against it proved that it would have derailed any candidate who proposed it. It’s fair to criticize his pivot to the mandate as President, but that criticism would mostly come from liberals like me, who would have much preferred a public option to an individual mandate.

This Robamaneycare issue may be good for riling up the conservative base, and the GOP nomination may just end up going to the guy who can best convince voters that he’s “come to Jesus” on the mandate, but it will be interesting to see them convince a general electorate that they’ll be better off if health insurance companies can deny them coverage for preexisting conditions. Even more amusing is that they will be campaigning against a President who never wanted that mandate to begin with.

“Gay rights are human rights,” she told those gathered, “and human rights are gay rights.” Clinton also drove home the existence of gay individuals across various communities, countries, and social classes:

RELATED: Chart: Where Do Today’s Presidential Hopefuls Stand On Gay Issues?

Well, in reality, gay people are born into and belong to every society in the world. They are all ages, all races, all faiths; they are doctors and teachers, farmers and bankers, soldiers and athletes, and whether we know it or whether we acknowledge it, they are our family, our friends and our neighbors.

“Some believe homosexuality is a Western phenomenon,” she added, “but gay people belong to every society in the world. Being gay is not a Western invention, it is a human reality.”

Clinton also announced the creation of a $3 million global equality fund focused on worldwide LGBT issues.

GOP presidential hopeful Rick Perry has voiced his opposition for the Obama Administration’s move, calling it part of the ongoing “war on traditional American values.”

“Promoting special rights for gays in foreign countries,” said Perry, “is not in America’s interests and not worth a dime of taxpayers’ money,” adding that “President Obama has again mistaken America’s tolerance for different lifestyles with an endorsement of those lifestyles. I will not make that mistake.”

Watch Hillary Clinton’s full speech below:

h/t ThinkProgress

Their premise is that Sec. Clinton not only has a better chance to win, but “is the only leader capable of uniting the country around a bipartisan economic and foreign policy.”

Now, most liberals will take one look at that byline and say “Who cares what a couple of ‘Fox News Democrats’ have to say?”

That’s an excellent point, not because Schoen and Caddell are Fox News contributors, but because their idea is so laughably unserious, it really doesn’t merit any pushback. Aside from conservatives who already hate President Obama, there’s really only one audience for this: the remnants of disaffected Hillary Clinton supporters who still haven’t gotten over the bitter 2008 Democratic primary. It is out of affection for them that I even bother writing about this.

Let’s set aside the “merits” of Caddell and Schoen’s premise that the President could govern more effectively as a lame duck, or that President Obama has been the “overtly partisan” cause of ”two years of political gridlock at a time when we can ill afford it.”

Concede, even, that Hillary Clinton could win a Democratic primary. She was an excellent candidate in 2008, but she ran a disastrous campaign, overseen by Schoen partner Mark Penn. This time would hopefully be better. Schoen and Caddell labor under a fantasy that has overtaken many a Clintonista, and has been fueled by lots of conservative pro-Hillary talk since 2008:

But this is about more than electoral politics. Not only is Mrs. Clinton better positioned to win in 2012 than Mr. Obama, but she is better positioned to govern if she does. Given her strong public support, she has the ability to step above partisan politics, reach out to Republicans, change the dialogue, and break the gridlock in Washington.

When faced with the choice between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama in 2008, and with Obama’s election to the presidency, conservatives began to talk Hillary up, and have continued to do so since, constructing the myth that President Hillary Clinton could have united the country in a bipartisan Shangri-La with her new Republican admirers. Those who believe this have been taken in by a crocodile’s grin.

As an alternative to Barack Obama, conservatives love Hillary Clinton, but without him to kick around, they would almost certainly revert to their default position on all things Clinton. Have these people forgotten how much the right wing absolutely hated Hillary Clinton?

As bad as the anti-Obama craziness has been, it was ten times worse for the Clintons, especially Hillary. President Obama gets accused of being a secret Muslim, or a covert Kenyan, but back in the day, these people actually accused Hillary Clinton of murder. That’s just what they would say openly. You wouldn’t believe the craziness that bubbled and squeaked in the wingnut-o-sphere for years.

Republicans aren’t obstructing Barack Obama because they want to share power with the right Democrat, they’re obstructing President Obama because they want to take power from the Democrats. Whatever you see them doing now to President Obama, they would multiply exponentially under President Clinton II. That kind of argument, though, appeals to many Democrats, who never met a Republican they couldn’t roll over for.

Hillary Clinton may run for president in 2016, and if she does, I hope she wins, but the idea that Republicans would be tripping over themselves to help her govern is sheer fantasy.

RELATED: NBC News Hires Chelsea Clinton To Boost ‘Making A Difference’ Series

Chelsea will be working on NBC’s Making A Difference and will join fellow political offspring Jenna Bush and Meghan McCain in their journalism wing.

NBC News president Steve Capus said he had met with Chelsea and asked her ‘What are you interested in doing?’” She said she was fascinated in people volunteering their time for the greater good.

Watch Clinton and Todd talk about Chelsea below via NBC:

Clinton had canceled a scheduled trip to Britain and Turkey after her mother became ill. Rodham survived a challenging childhood, forging her own place in life by taking various jobs and eventually becoming a homemaker and mother of three.

Rodham chose to remain mostly out of the public spotlight, making a notable exception during her daughter’s 2008 presidential bid, when she offered her support in the form of public appearances in several primary states.

h/t MSNBC

That’s how Rush Limbaugh summed up his feelings on the blossoming Herman Cain sexual harassment story during his radio show today. The “they” in question are Democrats as Limbaugh conflated the Cain story with the Marco Rubio scandal from last week and said they were both examples of liberal politicians and media figures working together to destroy conservative minority members. Limbaugh argued that both stories were purely about “blacks and hispanics getting too uppity.”

“This story appears to me to be a close relative of the hit-job that the Washington Post is doing on Marco Rubio. And it’s not news. This is not a news story. It is gutter partisan politics and it’s the politics of minority conservative personal destruction. That’s what you’ve got here. ‘Rubio and Cain, unfit to lead, don’t you see? We cannot have a black Republican running for the office of President. We cannot have one elected. We can’t have a Hispanic. The Left owns those two groups. Those two groups are going to always be minorities.’”

Limbaugh claimed that, were the Cain story to be about President Obama, the Left would be doing everything in their power to attack the women in question (which is where the above “war” quote comes in). He also compared the story to the sexual allegations against Bill Clinton saying the former President must be “laughing himself sick.”

“A story like this involving Bill Clinton, why, Clinton would be getting high fives, millions of dollars in campaign contributions from the NAGs. If this story was about Bill Clinton, the Left would be circling the wagons doing everything they can to fend off the charge. This story is a joke that can only truly be appreciated by Bill Clinton and other sexual predators.”

Limbaugh pointed out that no one in the media would dare ask anyone in the Clinton family about their thoughts. He then strangely mocked Hillary for her reaction the last time her husbands infidelities were brought up publicly. According to Limbaugh, Hillary blamed it all on a “vast right-wing conspiracy.”

Ha! Limbaugh is right to make fun of her. Blaming stories like this on vast conspiracies orchestrated by the opposing political party is sooooo silly and paranoid!

Listen to the segment below:

(h/t)

A European diplomat has come forward to share that it was Clinton who held the NATO alliance together as French mirage jets flew over Libya. It seems that the Italians, he added, had been particularly upset over that course of action.

RELATED: ‘We Came, We Saw, He Died’ Hillary Clinton Reacts To Confirmed News Of Gaddafi’s Death

As for what Gaddafi’s death might mean for the future of Libya’s relationship to the United States: It probably couldn’t be as bad than, say, having the U.S. embassy firebombed under Gaddafi’s watch, opined Piper. That said, it is certain that Libya will be a “very different place.”

Have a look, via Fox News:

In a rare (these days) bit of bipartisanship, former Obama spokesman Bill Burton released a statement agreeing with the Perry camp, and zinging a recent Romney gaffe. If Romney does release his tax return, though, will Perry have to run it through Donald Trump to see if it’s real?

According to Politico‘s Ben Smith, Perry’s camp challenged Romney to release his tax return now:

“Governor Perry has always released his tax returns and Mitt Romney and the other candidates should do the same,” Perry spokesman Mark Miner told POLITICO.

But Romney aide Eric Fehrnstrom said his candidate wouldn’t even consider releasing them until next spring.

Former Obama spokesman Bill Burton released a statement through his Priorities USA ActionPAC, demanding Romney do the same, and zinging the former Massachusetts Governor over his recent debate gaffe:

“Given Mitt Romney’s concerns for the political implications of his actions, I’m not surprised he continues to refuse to release his tax returns. When you translate his campaign’s statement into what Romney really means, it comes down to this: ‘I can’t release my tax returns and show how little I paid on the millions I have. I’m running for office for Pete’s sake!’,” said Bill Burton, Senior Strategist for Priorities USA Action.

“Romney should release his tax returns immediately, before he has time to polish them up for politics. He must be honest with the American people about how much he and his wealthy friends benefit from a tax system that puts an overwhelming burden on hard working Americans.”

The Obama campaign made hay over rival Hillary Clinton‘s tax returns in 2008, demanding that she release hers after then-Sen. Barack Obama released his. The Clinton campaign took its sweet time getting around to it, which caused a lot of unwarranted anticipation among the press. When they finally did release it, there wasn’t much of interest there. The Clintons paid 31% of their adjusted gross income, which stands to be much higher than the 14% that some estimate Romney will have paid.

With Occupy Wall Street’s media omnipresence pushing issues of income inequality front and center, it will be interesting to see if Romney can, indeed, get away with holding off until Spring, when the GOP nomination might already be decided. If Perry and Burton have their way, he won’t.

RELATED: Glenn Beck Warns Bill O’Reilly: Occupy Wall Street Will ‘Indoctrinate Our Kids Into Marxism’

First Beck bit into what he saw as hypocrisy in Hillary Clinton’s hawkish response to Gaddafi’s death in comparison to her reaction to the previous President Bush’s toppling of Saddam Hussein. He then explained why he couldn’t feel particularly thrilled with the death footage.

“Let me tell you something. Muammar Gaddafi was an evil guy. I mean, an eternity in hell is not enough. It’s not enough for him. But did anyone see the last few moments of his life and actually kind of feel bad for him? I’m not saying he doesn’t get everything he deserves, but we’re talking an animal killed by animals.”

Beck then made clear a connection between this and his protester prediction and, again, doubled down on them, hitting back at those that would call him crazy. After modifying his old metaphor about being in a car driving the wrong way down a highway, Beck went after his critics.

“I’m really not going to answer the charges anymore that I’m crazy. Because the rest of society seems to be the definition of insanity!”

Watch the clip from GBTV below:

It’s been a tough stint at the top for Herman Cain, who saw his “9-9-9 plan” ripped apart like chum in a piranha tank at Tuesday night’s CNN debate in Las Vegas, and has endured several ghastly, self-inflicted wounds over his lack of foreign policy chops, his incoherent position on abortion, and the precise amount of voltage he’d like to apply to illegal Mexican immigrants. Ordinarily, such an intense media onslaught would benefit a Republican candidate with a media-wary base, but Cain’s gaffes have been so substantial, it’s hard to imagine this won’t hurt him.

Amanpour quickly moved off the subject of Herman Cain, asking Secretary Clinton the media question of the week. “We all saw the video of the bloodied and dazed Muammar Gaddafi,” Amanpour said, referring to photos and clips shown everywhere in the media, even here at Mediaite. “We saw him now lying in a freezer while Libyans take a look at him. What was your reaction to that video?”

Clinton’s response was measured, comically so given her real-time reactions to news of Gaddafi’s death. “Well, Christiane, you know, obviously, no one wants to see any human being in that condition, yet I know what a great relief it was to millions of Libyans that the past was finished,” she told Amanpour, a far cry from her previous declaration that, “We came, we saw, he died!”

Amanpour also asked what the US would seek to do about convicted Pan Am Flight 103 bomber Abdel Baset al-Megrahi, who is alive and free in Libya. “We want to see him returned to prison, preferably in Scotland, where he was serving the sentence,” said Secretary Clinton. “But if not, elsewhere, because we thought it was a miscarriage of justice that he was released from the sentence that had been imposed for the ghastly bombing of Pan Am 103.”

Amanpour also asked about the announcement, this week, that American forces would be withdrawn from Iraq by year’s end. Clinton reminded viewers that the timetable was established under President George W. Bush, and issued the curt warning, “…no one should miscalculate our commitment to Iraq, most particularly Iran.”

Perhaps the funniest part of the clip, if black comedy is your thing, is Amanpour’s delivery of the news flash that medical examiners have determined that Gaddafi died from a gunshot wound to the head. Did they have to call Quincy in for that one, or did they just turn on CNN?

Here’s the interview, from ABC News This Week with Christiane Amanpour:

It’s a candid moment of joy for a senior administration official celebrating some good news. Gaddafi had been considered a despotic dictator by both parties, despite recent diplomatic efforts to normalize relations between the U.S. and Libya, nearly everyone has agreed that the world would be a better place without Gaddafi at the helm of the oil-rich and terrorist supporting nation. Further, the administration’s policy in Libya had been under attack by its detractors, though even its staunchest critics have nobly congratulated President Obama.

Some may look to deconstruct the meaning of “we came, we saw, he died” as some sort of candid admission of U.S. foreign policy and boots in the ground in Libya. But for the handful people that may not get the reference, Clinton appears to be making a play on Julius Ceasar’s famous quote of “veni, vidi, vici” which translates from Latin to “I came, I saw, I conquered.”

Watch the clip from CBS News (via The Blaze):

Clinton was in Kabul, Afghanistan giving preparing for an interview when she got a message on her phone. “Wow,” she says in the clip, remarking to an aide that there were unconfirmed reports of Gaddafi’s capture. Shortly after, news hit the world that Gaddafi had, in fact, been killed.

Watch the video below:

“One of the Republican candidates, I think it was Herman Cain. He’s a former pizza company executive,” Clinton said.

“Is he that?” exclaimed Karzai. “Alright!”

“Oh, yes. He started something called Godfather’s pizza,” Clinton remarked.

“Yes, I see, I see,” Karzai replied.

“The president was saying he saw this news clip about how Mr. Cain had said I don’t even know the names of all these presidents of all these countries, you know, like whatever,” she chuckled.

“All the stans!” interjected Karzai.

“All these ‘stans places!” joked Clinton.

“That wasn’t right,” Karzai noted. “But anyway, that’s how politics are.”

Watch Clinton and Karzai rib Cain below:

(h/t NY Times)

RELATED: Lawrence O’Donnell’s New Obsession: Newt Gingrich’s Tiffany’s Bill

Noting that a quiet birthday at home “wasn’t good enough for the attention-starved former president,” O’Donnell played some clips of Lady Gaga doing her thing, noting queasily that it was “impossible to keep up with her double entendres” and, finally, “it doesn’t get weirder than that”– having Lady Gaga perform a version of “Bad Romance” to the one president “forced to testify under oath about romance gone bad.” For O’Donnell, the sticking point was having Secretary of State Hillary Clinton sitting beside her husband while Lady Gaga made sexual advances (jokingly, of course) at her husband after some “very difficult conversations.”

RELATED: If Lawrence O’Donnell Cares So Little About Donald Trump, Why Is He Still Talking About Him?

His guest, Jonathan Alter, seemed a bit confused as to why O’Donnell was taking so much offense at the performance, given that he considered Clinton and Jimmy Carter two of the presidents with the best reputations out of office. “Jimmy Carter does not party in Hollywood for two nights in a row!” O’Donnell retorted, later asking rhetorically, “how hard is it to steer clear of these echoes?”

For those who consider O’Donnell an unabashed liberal in every possible way, his occasional morality outbursts always seem to come as a surprise, though they more often than not fall under party lines. His indefatigable war on hedonism typically manifests itself in mockery of moneybags conservatives like Donald Trump or Newt Gingrich, against lobbyists and Wall Street and people who live a life publicly that belies their private behavior. That Clinton would have the audacity to put on such a display of wealth and power and flaunt how he evaded ignominy (much, some argue, at the expense of a young intern who can barely spend time in America anymore) in front of the family he almost destroyed would naturally trigger the conservative (in a left-wing way!) instincts of a commentators like O’Donnell, who has made modesty the paramount virtue in his political framework.

The segment via MSNBC below:

Occupy Wall Street may or may not be the liberal version of the Tea Party, either way we’ll probably know within the next year. But that’s far too late for the GOP to ignore them, or worse act as though they’ll only have 15 minutes of fame. Here’s a clue, GOP: If you’re still looking at your watch waiting for it to end, use that time wisely and get a strategy.

It’s been two weeks and the protests have gone viral and are now occurring not just in New York City but also in cities in more than 78 countries. The message is as clear as the implications: income inequality has gotten out of control and is untenable. It’s a progressive rallying cry that has tapped into something the Obama administration hasn’t been able to do since early 2009; namely, leverage the sense that people powered by little more than anger and a desire to change government can actually do it.

GOP Needs to Change Message
After all, what does the GOP have to lose by showing empathy for protesters, acknowledging income inequality (which is categorical, not fanciful), and lending their voice to implementing structural change? Most recently, House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va) did mention income inequality (for once) on Fox News, claiming that “Republicans are about income mobility, and that’s what we should be focused on to take care of the income disparities.”

Sure, Republicans can make a case for that. Will it be convincing? Probably not. Tax cuts can drop down like manna from heaven but that won’t nourish those who lack critical job skills and higher education. For instance, that message probably isn’t endearing to rural white voters who make less than $40,000 a year. How could it be? That voter barely pays federal taxes as is and is far more concerned about whether or not they’ll have their job the rest of the year much less in five, the economy, Social Security, and Medicare. The Occupy Wall Street message can and will resonate with this voter if the GOP isn’t careful. It is primarily this kind of voter who makes up the majority — roughly two-thirds — of the coveted swing voters group.

So far, the Occupy Wall Street crowds have been dismissed as hipsters gone crazy, violent protesters with little else to do, and general scofflaws. With crowds collectively reaching past the hundreds of thousands mark, clearly those generalizations are inaccurate and are made with the intent to squelch the movement. But even the Tea Party is taking notice. A local Tea Party leader in Indiana told CBS News that she “sees some similarities between how the tea party movement and the Wall Street protests began” and that in the end the critical step is “taking the emotion and focusing it toward changing government.”

Obama is Learning from Occupy Wall Street
And this is where the Obama administration went wrong. Instead of expounding on voter distrust of financial institutions and firms requiring bailouts and the system being rigged in favor of the haves over the have-nots, the Obama administration acted as though not doing bailouts would have affected all of us equally and that when things got better we would all be better as a result. But are we? Bank of America is a prime example. Fresh off a $5 billion investment from Warren Buffett who expressed confidence in their operations, they have created a $5 monthly debit card fee. This after receiving billions in government bailouts and purchasing Countrywide, a company rife with mortgage fraud that was on its way to implosion as it left victims in its enormous wake. By doing this the administration became an enabler of the problem instead of a fierce supporter of the American people and their interests. Occupy Wall Street intends to rectify that. They make no excuses for corporations’ suspect behavior, for corporate executives’ inflated salaries, or for “political realities” not conducive to the change they seek. Instead they protest, they sit-in, they get arrested. They don’t do much talking because they don’t believe words propel politicians to action; they believe only action compels politicians to act.

GOP Can’t Afford for Democrats to Get the Message
Fact is, Pres. Obama already rode the populist wave to victory once. Cue the 2008 reel where he campaigned on, among other things, delivering universal healthcare and ending the Iraq war, two uniquely populist positions. With the former he lambasted in the general election John McCain’s position that relied on the private market to fix the healthcare mess. And with the latter, he excoriated Hillary Clinton, his rival in the primaries, for supporting the Iraq war in the first place. Pres. Obama is no stranger to endearing himself to the populist animations of a voting public keen on redeeming the American dream they have worked hard for. Occupy Wall Street presents a golden opportunity to do just that. “[Martin Luther King, Jr] would want us to challenge the excesses of Wall Street without demonizing those who work there,” said Pres. Obama regarding Occupy Wall Street at the MLK dedication ceremony. Republicans would be remiss to believe different.

John Wilson is a health policy analyst in Maryland, and also a staffwriter for The Loop 21. He frequently writes about health policy, education policy, and politics. You may reach him at john@policydiary.com.

Clinton’s first impulse was to laugh at how complimentary Cheney’s words were, especially when Bob Schieffer read Cheney’s statement about the secretary of state being a stronger candidate than President Obama. Clinton agreed that his wife has done a good job and he always welcomes praise for her, but suspected Cheney might be playing a political game with his remarks.

“I… have a high regard for Vice President Cheney’s political skills, and I think one of those great skills is sewing dischord among the opposition. So I think he’s right that she’s done a heck of a good job, but she is a member of this administration and committed to doing it and I think he, by saying something nice about her in the way he did it, knew that it might cause a little trouble.”

Watch the video below, courtesy of CBS:

Chalk up a win for WorldNetDaily‘s Les Kinsolving, though, for getting CNN to take the suggestion that he elicited from White House Press Secretary Jay Carney.

With the wind of WorldNetDaily and former VP Dick Cheney at her back, Kosick asked Clinton, “What’s the likelihood that you’re going to challenge President Obama in the primary? You know, you’ve got Dick Cheney in your court.”

“Oh, yeah,” Clinton replied with a laugh, “it’s below zero.”

Kosik then asked about Cheney’s statement that Hillary would have made a better president than Barack Obama, to which she replied that she was glad to be “out of politics, and not interested in being drawn back into it by anybody.”

With a recommendation like that, though, can you blame her? That’s like getting Pontius Pilate to endorse you for Savior.

Ms. Clinton also said she has no plans to reenter politics in the future.

When Les Kinsolving asked Jay Carney about the possibility of a Clinton challenge a few weeks ago, he drew an amused reaction, and a suggestion that he ask Secretary Clinton herself about it. No one, including Les, I’m sure, seriously thought Clinton would mount a primary challenge. It does, however, serve as a reminder of how great that Clinton/Obama campaign was for the political media. Everyone’s memory tends to stop at the Sarah Palin supernova, but it was Clinton/Obama that really took the sport of political ping-pong to 11. This year’s Republican primary will be hard-pressed to come close to matching it for entertainment value.

Here’s the clip, from CNN:

The former Vice President fancies the current Secretary of State “a pretty formidable individual. And I think she’s probably the most competent person they’ve got in their cabinet,” he said with what ABC called “a Darth Vader Smile.”

He said:

“Maybe if the Obama record is bad enough, and these days it’s not very good, given the shape of the economy, maybe there will be enough ferment in the democratic party so that there will be a primary on their side.  I think it’d be good for the country.”

Cheney was otherwise tough on the current GOP field. He accused Rick Perry of using “inappropriate” and “over-the-top rhetoric” in talking about Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernake; he offered a warning to Michele Bachmann regarding over-promising on the campaign trail; and suggested that Jon Huntsman‘s views on Afghanistan cut too close to Obama’s, and that his plan to draw-down troops would “be a mistake.”

Watch the former Vice President in the video below:

No, you haven’t forgotten to laugh.

Perhaps a bit of background is necessary. Doonesbury is a comic strip that appears in a thing called a “newspaper,” which is, as the name suggests, made of paper and has news printed on it. The strip has been around for 41 years now, and in its heyday, was known for its subversive edge (subversive compared to Marmaduke, I suppose). Doonesbury is a mixture of ensemble narrative and liberal doses of political commentary.

The Palin strip actually does contain a few funny lines(once it gets going. The first 2 panels are of a character whistling and making Jiffy Pop), but misses badly with its sexist dismount. Perhaps this was an attempt to regain some edge ever since Dennis the Menace went emo, but it ends up being offensive and unfunny, especially in a strip that’s supposed to appeal to liberals.

Here’s Newsbusters’ description:

In the strip, long-time character B.D. is watching a televised interview with Palin in Iowa. She’s asked, “What do you think of Michele Bachmann’s early success here?”

In the second to last frame, the faux Palin said, “And did you see me in Newsweek? That article shows that as president, I’d be totally ready if called on to fill a tight sweater.”

In the next frame, B.D. thinks to himself, “Good one. Advantage Palin” as her interviewer asked, “Are you saying Bachmann wouldn’t?”

The faux Palin responded, “We don’t know. The lamestreamers won’t get the facts out.”

Wow, I haven’t read Doonesbury in a really long time. Doesn’t B.D. always wear a helmet?

Many conservatives have no problem with Sarah Palin as affectionate sex object, and while Newsbusters’ Noel Sheppard is rightly offended, he sees this as mainly a partisan issue:

Now imagine for a moment Barack Obama was a Republican, and both Palin and Bachmann were Democrats.

Would Doonesbury creator Garry Trudeau be using cheap boob jokes to mock two prominent liberal women?

Yes, that was rhetorical.

Well, allow me to respond anyway. While Garry Trudeau might be less likely to target Democrats, there are plenty of media types, left, right, and center, who have no problem making sexist remarks about liberal figures like Hillary Clinton, First Lady Michelle Obama, Janet Napolitano, and so on. It seems the only time conservatives care about sexism is when the media they hate fails to call out sexism against a conservative. Sexism, as any woman will tell you, is not a partisan issue.

Cheney did not say outright that Clinton would be a better president, but thought it was a likely possibility and suggested she might have been “easier to work with” than President Obama.

I have the sense that she’s one of the more competent members of the current administration, and it would be interesting to speculate about how she might perform if she’d be president… but I don’t want to be in the position where I’m supporting Hillary Clinton. That might be the kiss of death for her.

The vice president said he wouldn’t discourage Clinton from running, but insisted his support would be firmly behind the Republican nominee. However, Wallace pointed out that when current GOP frontrunner Rick Perry ran for reelection last year in the Texas governor’s race, Cheney threw his support to Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison instead.

Cheney clarified that he has not officially thrown his support by any one candidate yet, before explaining that his endorsement of Hutchison was not meant to be a slight to Perry, but rather as a testament to his close relationship with the senator.

Watch the video here, courtesy of Fox News:

The best part of the clip below, is not the good-natured response by Carney — nor Kinsolving’s peers — who seem to both laugh and appreciaite the ballsiness of the question. No the best part is the look on Kinsolving’s face after he asks the question. As Mediaite’s own White House reporter Tommy Christopher points out, “whenever Les gets a good question in, I’m always reminded of the guy in Oceans 11 who makes it all the way out of the casino with his armful of chips.”

Watch the clip below, courtesy of C-SPAN.

Just a few days after Rick Perry officially announced his candidacy, it seems like everyone’s gunning for him. However, while the President’s shots have gotten the most attention, there’s a slightly unorthodox campaign being waged against the Texas governor. A man named Robert Morrow has been on a one-man crusade to stop Perry and has now run a full-page newspaper ad in the Austin Chronicle looking for any potential mistresses the candidate may have.

Here’s the ad:

Morrow, a Ron Paul supporter and “a three-time delegate to the Texas state GOP convention,” is very much not a fan of Perry. He’s previously been promoting a lengthy screed he wrote against the man entitled “Tea Party Fraud Rick Perry is Political Herpes.” In it, he claims to know about Perry’s extramarital affairs because he is “a patron of Austin strip clubs” who has “excellent contacts in the Austin strip club community.”

Salon points out that Morrow has previously gone on the offensive against Hillary Clinton, paying for and voicing a series of 2008 robocalls that made the similarly unsubstantiated claim that she had “Hillary knew about and helped cover up Bill’s rape of Juanita Broderick.” In fact, his Perry ad even includes a random knock on the “enabling wives enabling Clinton’s boots.” This comment comes right above a call for Texas’ gay community to out Perry as one of their own.

Wow, accused of sleeping with strippers and being secretly gay in the same ad? Running for president sucks.

However, the most fascinating thing about the ad is probably that Morrow appears to have used a font similar to that of the Star Wars movies. This combined with the fact that it’s all text makes the whole thing seem like the opening crawl to the weirdest Star Wars movie ever.

Not a bad Star Wars movie, mind you. Just…weird.

O’Reilly began the discussion noting comments by Rep. Barney Frank about the current state of the economy and the need to keep the debt under control. Krauthammer noted of his comments that there was nothing new in a Democrat wanting to reduce defense spending, as Democrats tend to suggest that “whenever you need money, you take it away from the one essential function of government.” He noted that defense spending was actually far lower than in past decades, however, citing the fact that the Kennedy administration was attributing half of its expenditures to defense– far more than today– but that cutting defense, especially in Asia, would mean “giving up the Pacific rim to China.”

O’Reilly then noted that Fox News was the only cable news channel to get better ratings during the breaking of the downgrade news, and argued this was a sign that “even liberal viewers” no longer trust the liberal media. To that end, he asked Krauthammer for some “speculation– you’re good at this” on what they were thinking as the distrust grew. “What are they saying to themselves?”

“Some of them are saying to themselves,” Krauthammer argued, “‘We just picked the wrong candidate, maybe it should’ve been Hillary [Clinton].’” He noted that this allowed them to continue to think that “it isn’t that liberalism is wrong, but we just have a lousy leader… gave a good speech, but never ran a candy store.” Those that were still loyal, he posited, believed “it is all the fault either of acts of God… or, of course, of those nasty terrible Republicans who held America hostage, held a gun to its head.” With that kind of split, Krauthammer predicted, “if the election were held tomorrow, they would be destroyed.”

The segment via Fox News below:

Maher began by clarifying that he still likes Obama, as do many liberals, but he compared their relationship to one “where there is a giant fight and you said so many nasty things that you know you’re never really going to get it back together,” but will ultimately stay together because “who are you gonna date, Mitt Romney?” But he believed that this week was a tipping point in Obama’s presidency, and he lost more liberal support by not fighting enough during the debt debates.

Panelist Joan Walsh insisted that Obama is still very popular with liberals, citing his high approval ratings among African-Americans and liberal Democrats, but agreed that she and Bill were among the president’s harshest critics on the left.

Then Maher asked Walsh to bring out her Wayback Machine and think about whether Hillary Clinton could have made a better president than Obama. She hesitated, saying “I don’t regret anything in life so I don’t really go there,” but fellow panelist Neil DeGrasse Tyson argued that she would have been better. (Disclaimer: Hillary once called Tyson her “favorite astrophysicist.”)

Tyson admitted that since he’s an astrophysicist, it wouldn’t be prudent of him to predict what goes on in Capitol Hill, but he believes that Clinton would have been a better negotiator than Obama. Maher quipped that Hillary has had experience “with difficult men,” then steered the discussion to his favorite target: the tea party.

He asked Palin documentarian Stephen Bannon why conservative Republicans opposed putting taxes on the table, and even refused to close loopholes in the tax code for oil companies. Brannon took on the arduous task of summing up the tea party platform in a brief soundbite, and came out with something that may have been a surprise to some of its detractors.

“The tea party perspective [feels there is] socialism for the very wealthy, socialism for the very poor, and a brutal form of capitalism for everybody else, and what they want to do is shrink the size of the federal government.

I don’t think I’ve ever heard the “brutal form of capitalism” argument used before, and it’s possible some tea partiers might take issue with that characterization, but nonetheless it’s a fascinating comment coming from someone so engaged with the tea party he sought to make a documentary about one of its supposed leaders.

After a brief discussion on the economic values of the tea party, Maher brought up a controversial Fox Nation blog post from earlier today calling Obama’s birthday a “hip hop BBQ,” and Walsh was quick to suggest that this was the latest example of Fox trying to highlight President Obama’s race in their news stories. Tyson, the scientist on the panel, was quick to point out that genetically, Obama is just as white as he is black.

Watch the video below, courtesy of HBO:

None of that, however, has deterred candidates young and old, experienced and green, sane and otherwise from using young kids in their ads. Let’s take a look at some of the best. And by best we mean worst and by worst we mean “How do these exist?”

1. These two adorable little girls really love Michele Bachmann. A lot. She makes them feel happy and jumpy and excited and they want her to be President so much you guys and do their parents know they’re posting videos on YouTube?

2. Back when Barack Obama was running for president and it seemed like every single one of my college classmates was perpetually drunk on some potent mingling of hope and desperation, this video hit the internet like a pigeon might hit a windshield: With great, misguided force. Blame our horror cannon, but there’s just something about groups of children that is terrifying, especially when they’re singing about things they probably don’t understand. That said, this song is screaming for a reggaeton remix.

3. Rep. Mike Weinstein is a Republican currently representing District 19 in Jacksonville, Florida. You likely haven’t heard of him, which is too bad, because he seems like a nice man who really loves his family. And his family loves him right back. So much so, in fact, that his son Leigh put together this totally rad and cowabungangly tubular campaign video for his dad. Sure, Leigh isn’t really a “kid,” per se, but he is Mike‘s kid and he does know how to a craft a tune that’ll worm its way into your brain forprobablyever. Hit it, dudes.

>>> NEXT PAGE: The call at 3 a.m. is coming from inside the white house.