“You want Herman Cain to be the nominee? Come on! ” host Joe Scarborough boomed.

RELATED: Watch Herman Cain Flounder With Libya Question During Editorial Board Interview

“Stop that,” Mika Brzezinski added.

“At the end of the day, he got the issue, which was who was in the opposition in Libya?” Dean observed. “That’s reasonable.”

“What are you doing, Howard Dean?” Scarborough snarked.

“Look, what Rick Perry did was a lot scarier than what Herman Cain just did,” Dean continued.

“I’ll take Perry, actually!” exclaimed Brzezinski. “Any day of the week, I’ll take Perry.”

“Rick Perry’s campaign couldn’t afford a two cent index card to write the three things he wanted to remember?” Dean interjected.

“Eugene, we’re blown away,” Scarborough concluded. “Howard Dean obviously loves Herman Cain.”

“I’m not defending him!” Dean said. “I’m just saying i didn’t think it was that bad…”

“I kind of love Herman Cain too because he is enormously entertaining and what a great nominee he would be for the Republican Party,” columnist Eugene Robinson said. “However, that was appalling!”

“He got the issue right at the end!” Dean argued.

“I’m going to throw something at you,” Brzezinski jokingly said.

“You can nail Herman Cain on a number of issues, I don’t think this is a good one,” Dean explained.

RELATED: Erin Burnett On Libya Gaffe: Herman Cain Is So Tired ‘He’s Not Able To Function Anymore’

It’s not hard to see why Dean would be naturally inclined to stick up for Cain. Both were anti-establishment, outsider candidates, and Dean’s former campaign manager Joe Trippi made the comparison between the former Vermont Governor and the former pizza executive. “This thing is the same as 2004,” Trippi said in an interview with The Daily Caller. “You’ve got the Democratic establishment in 2004 and you’ve got the grassroots of the party wanting something different than what the establishment’s feeding them.” Here, it appears Dean is just trying to be fair amid a barrage of criticism.

Watch Howard Dean’s bold defense of Herman Cain below, via MSNBC:

RELATED: Joe Scarborough Sees Rick Perry Speech And Thinks ‘Valium, Vicodin and Vodka’

“There is not an empirical means by which I can explain why this footage may be the end of Rick Perry’s campaign this year,” Maddow prefaced, but noted that the speech “does not count as a gaffe,” and added a caveat that there may be “some sort of physical explanation” for his behavior, or a medical problem with which he could explain away why he was behaving strangely. Then she played the tape of Perry’s exaggerated gestures, of his whispering “awesome!” at a bottle of maple syrup (Maddow also had a bottle of maple syrup with her, which she held onto a bit before apologizing for being “unprofessional”).

“It’s sort of like the ‘Dean Scream’ moment,” she recalled, playing that now-famous clip that sunk the Howard Dean campaign. But “it’s not one out-of-context segment, this is 25 minutes… and every one of these moments was a Dean scream.”

RELATED: Watch: Rick Perry Goes Off-The-Cuff During Unconventional Cornerstone Speech

For historical context, Maddow looked for another example of a weird quote that sunk a campaign, and found the 1968 effort of George Romney, father of Mitt, who argued that the only reason he ever supported the Vietnam war was “because he had been ‘brainwashed,’” and thus ceded the primary to Richard Nixon. Similarly, Perry had destroyed his image, Maddow argued, that went from “Rick Perry posing for Mt. Rushmore” to “Rick Perry cuddling with syrup.”

The segment via MSNBC below:

As Howard Dean sees it, anyone gunning for a win in the 2012 presidential election will face the same problem: the Tea Party. “They are not playing with a full deck,” he said earlier today on Morning Joe, arguing that they make for an unpredictable voter base. “I’ve never seen this on the Republican side,” he continued. “They are usually much more disciplined.”

Mitt Romney, a likely but not loved candidate for Republican nominee, will most of all have to grapple with the Tea Party’s unreliable “Republican-ness.” Citing his “not so good” poll numbers, he argues that, despite being the best known candidate in the race and most likely to win the nomination, Romney has yet to earn considerable Republican and Democratic confidence. He calls this Romney’s “big base problem:”

If he gets the nomination, and I think the odds now are very heavily that he will, he’s got a big base problem. And usually that’s not a problem. Republicans are very disciplined, they’ll pull behind him. Actually, even the Democrats pull in behind after a fight like this. This year you’ve got the Tea Party. They are not playing with a full deck. I mean, they could go off the rails here. This is going to be really interesting. They might sit home, or vote for somebody else, or find a Libertarian, or Ron Paul might do something. Who knows.

Michael Steele, joining Dean this morning, argues that President Obama‘s economy problem (water to his fire, as he puts it) far outweighs Romney’s base problem, and that “with the base, and in terms of his positions, people are coming to settle.” Steele and Dean, however, seem to be agreeing to some extent: earlier in the show, Steele suggested that, “This is beyond who the nominee should be, this is also a lot about where the party is going to go.” Dean’s characterizations of an “off the rails” Tea Party, aside, both men seem to be acknowledging that the Tea Party will hold sway in the coming election and will need to be accounted for by prospective nominees.

Watch the full conversation below, courtesy Morning Joe:

h/t Newsbusters

The bill, he says, is “a practical bill that will get you where you want to go, and it won’t harm the deficit.” He thinks the act has a winsome name, and that as a political maneuver by the Democrats, the bill is brilliant. Emphasizing that it will be paid for by higher taxes on the rich — people Americans “can’t stand,” he says again and again — he feels Republicans will be forced to pass it to action to appease constituents. A vote against it, he warns, “would mean money in the pockets of people they can’t stand,” and no new jobs for ordinary Americans.

“All they have done is obstruct for four years,” he says, chiding whom he calls “the do-nothing Republicans” planning to stop the bill. “People love a fighter and they do not like what the Republican’s stand for and who they stand for,” he says, hoping that this might be Obama‘s Harry Turman moment.

Watch below:

“The president is looking really good as Commander in Chief,” said Dean, pointing to the drawing down of the war in Afghanistan, the death of Osama Bin Laden and the prospective fall of Muammar Gadhafi. “Nobody’s had a foreign policy record like that” since Harry Truman he said.

“The White House feels very confident in terms of the Presidents reputation,” agreed Katty Kay, adding that “he’s been very tough on the war on terror.”

“That’s the irony,” says Steele, kicking off the debate by noting that it was exactly this sort of toughness that Bush played with. He continued:

“The interesting thing for a lot of us is to see the President take the Bush Doctrine, take a large measure of the Bush foriegn policy, even down to the personnel in many cases, and to continue to push that, given how hard he pushed against it as a candidate…. The of engagement by the candidate, by the candidate versus the president, to me, is very stark and has not been lost on a lot of folks.”

“You see, I think this is the Obama Doctorine,” Dean contended. ”When Obama was running for president, he talked about doing things in real concert with others. Being a member of the family of nations instead of being, if you will, the Texas cowboy out in front of everybody else.” Then, in step with Katty Kay, he pointed to Obama’s willingness to let the British and the French take the lead in Libya. To which Steele contends that, perhaps, you might call that “one little sliver” a doctrine, but “I would call it happenstance,” he says.

“There has been a consistency there that has yielded benefits for him,” concludes Steele, who seems to believe that Obama’s foreign policy successes have, for the most part, piggy-backed on Bush policies. Dean, meanwhile, sees success in Obama’s policy where Bush’s failed, and assumes change.

What they do agree on is that, ultimately, and so long as the campaign continues to hinge of the economy, this is a debate that won’t come up often in the next year of campaigning. “This is on the way out,” says Kay, who gets the last word. “Jobs is not on the way out.” It’s too bad they left it at that, because we can’t imagine concern over foreign policy could ever be “on the way out.”

Dean agreed with a statement made by House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi celebrating Obama’s speech, yet oddly referred to it as ‘a little inflammatory’ before suggesting himself:

“The Republicans are not big on logic. The reason Jon Stewart is so popular is it’s true, there’s only two ways to fix the deficit. You can cut spending or you can increase revenue. And you got to do both. . . . It is a ridiculous proposition that the Republicans are making and the American people don’t believe anything they say.”

So much for Stewart thinking he’s merely a comedian, as Dean here cites the “comedian” as basically a policy expert. And later in the segment, Dean seems surprised to learn that fellow panelist Jim Cramer is a “lifelong Democrat” despite always thinking he was a Republican. Yet since Dean also thinks Republicans are “not big on logic,” Cramer probably should be offended.

Watch the clip from MSNBC below:

In an interview with The Hill, Dean predicts:

“Whoever the Republicans nominate, including people like Sarah Palin, whom the inside-the-Beltway crowd dismisses — my view is if you get the nomination of a major party, you can win the presidency, I don’t care what people write about you inside the Beltway.”

Especially if high levels of unemployment persist, Dean realistically says all bets would be off regarding what conventional wisdom might normally suggest. Despite Palin’s possible ability to be a formidable challenger, Dean still thinks that Jon Huntsman would be the strongest Republican candidate. Dean thinks Huntsman “is a moderate on some social issues and has a strong record as a governor and also has international experience that I think is lacking in every other candidate.” Although with such an endorsement, that could likely be akin to a kiss of death for Huntsman amongst Republican primary voters.

(h/t The Hill)

First, Beck took on Dean’s accusations that Fox News was a “right-wing propaganda organization”…Well, actually, not so much. What he did do was focus on Dean’s claims that the media blew his infamous “scream” way out of proportion and that media outlets like Fox News repackaged it and used it to take him down. Beck responded to this by…airing the scream clip on Fox News to take Dean down. Not exactly the best argument tactic.

Beck did better on the Tea Party claims. After showing Dean’s comments that the Right of today is the same as the Left of yesterday (ie. people like the Weather Underground). Since Beck already had folks like Bill Ayers up on his chalkboard, he had no problem showing the difference between creating bombs and just hanging out in parks and wearing old timey hats.

Beck then segued right into his discussion of how Ayers and friends are planning a pro-Palestine event in May which is the same time as a bunch of other “evil” happenings all around the world and there has to be a connection and that these are all part of a pre-ordained plan to…hey, wait a minute. Shouldn’t Beck know better than to accuse someone of “dementia” on TV?

Check out the clip from Fox News below:

Writing for her Fox News blog, Van Susteren asked, “What’s Up With Howard Dean?” and wondered why he seems to be devoting so much thought to her network:

It is sort of weird….but it seems that Howard Dean can’t get Fox News Channel out of his mind. Every time I see him quoted (or maybe not every time), he is taking a swipe at Fox. First, he needs to understand Fox is not why he lost Iowa in 2004. Even the “Dean scream” is not why ( the scream occurred AFTER he lost… and came in 3rd.) Second, his constant swipes makes him look like he is afraid of Fox – he makes his cracks but has turned down all our (ON THE RECORD AT 10pm) requests that he be a guest. Third, while he is highly critical of Fox he has not explained his recent remark that a government shutdown would be good for the Democrats (seemingly wanting a shutdown for political reasons at the expense of what is good for the country.)

I am actually curious what ideas he has for the country. We need ideas….he might want to focus on ideas instead of old grudges.

It remains to be seen if Dean will have a response to this statement, though that could be risky since doing so might just give critics more reason to say he’s obsessed with Fox News. Maybe, though, it will move him to finally acquiesce to an interview request from On the Record. We’re not holding our breath, but we’d love to be wrong…and man, he will seriously never live down the Dean Scream, will he?*

*No thanks to us linking it in this post…but really, would any Howard Dean news update feel complete without it?

Dean, the media critic, offered this assessment of the different cable news channels:

“There’s a difference between Fox and MSNBC. They’re both bias. . . . Bias is not the problem, it’s something that makes us mad, but it’s not the problem. It’s when you become a propaganda outlet. What Fox News says is often not true, and they know it’s not true and they say it anyway. It is not a news organization, it is a very expensive, incredibly well-funded, right-wing propaganda organization.”

By comparison, Dean says “the facts on MSNBC true” and cites the “death panels” as an example of a lie Fox repeated during the healthcare debate. Although he doesn’t hold Sarah Palin responsible for saying “death panels,” since politicians can say whatever they want, he is unwilling to forgive Fox for repeating it. As for the Tea Party, he alleges they are “going off the deep end” because its members are angry they are all over 55, white and shrinking in size. With such a passionate speech, some might not have been surprised if Dean ended it with his infamous “Dean Scream,” yet he admits the coverage of that incident contributes to some of his anger towards the media.

Watch the clip of Dean’s speech below:

(h/t The Blaze)

Klein argued about the mission in Libya:

“It’s really a stupid thing. If there’s one thing we learned in the last decade about invading Islamic countries is that there are always vast unintended consequences.”

Instead, Klein felt the ongoing developments in Egypt were being forgotten and that the establishment of a new Egyptian government was much more important. Buchanan concurred on Egypt, fearing that the Muslim Brotherhood is now favored to win an election there and agreeing on Libya too, saying “if you don’t know exactly what’s going on, don’t go plunging in.”

Surprisingly, Dean forcefully defended President Obama and the need for military action, arguing that Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi must go and telling Klein “I think we know a lot more than you’re giving us credit for.” Dean even declared, “I don’t think you stay out of these things – you can’t if you’re the most powerful country in the world and we have an interest and we have to take chances.”

Klein pounced on Dean’s suddenly pro-interventionist attitude, stating “that’s not what you were saying in 2003.” Dean attempted to distinguish his position on the war in Iraq, claiming our government lied to us about Iraq. Yet Klein responded it was exactly the same, because in both situations there was “insufficient information.” The ongoing debate on Libya is fascinating primarily because the views of so many on the issue continue to be unpredictable.

Watch the clip from MSNBC below:

He wouldn’t go into detail, possibly because those conversations were off the record, so I reached out to the reporter who conducted the “professional left” interview, The Hill‘s Sam Youngman, to see if he knew what Olbermann was talking about. He was unamused.

Here’s the clip from last night’s Countdown, on MSNBC:

Gibbs took a lot of flak for that interview (undeservedly, in my view), but in several White House briefings on the subject, I didn’t recall there ever being any doubt as to the ground rules for the interview. It seems unlikely that such confusion would occur between Gibbs and Youngman. Every journalist, every press secretary, and every PR flack worth a nickel knows that, absent a mutual agreement on attribution, everything that’s said to a journalist is presumed to be on the record. It’s even more unlikely that Gibbs would have failed to mention such a misunderstanding.

I relayed Olbermann’s comments to Sam Youngman, and asked him if he could clarify, or if there was ever any confusion about the ground rules for the interview. Here’s Youngman’s response: (via email)

There absolutely was not. Robert has never disputed we were on the record. Nobody at the White House has. It would be nice if Olbermann would call me before he starts implying that I broke the rules. Of course, that’s just me thinking like an actual journalist.

To be clear, it is entirely possible that someone told Olbermann that Gibbs had meant to make those comments off the record, or later wished he had. I asked Youngman what he thought of that possibility.  Sam responded:

I can’t speak to that. What I know for certain is that neither Robert nor anyone else in the press office has ever even suggested that there was anything improper. In fact, I thought at the time that Robert and his staff handled the whole thing with a lot of class. I think anyone in Washington would attest to my reputation for adhering to the rules. I wonder if Olbermann can say the same thing.

That’s the problem with this sort of offhand revelation. While the intent seems to have been to let Gibbs off the hook to some degree, the effect is to cast doubt on either Youngman’s adherence to basic journalistic principles, or Gibbs’ understanding of them. Since Olbermann failed to divulge the source of the information, or to check it with Youngman and/or Gibbs, the viewer is left to wonder if there’s fire to go along with the smoke.

The rub here is that Olbermann dropped this tidbit without any attribution at all. If it was “off the record,” he shouldn’t have mentioned it at all, except maybe as his own opinion. If it was “on background,” he should have used whatever attribution he and his source agreed upon, and if it was “on the record,” he obviously should have cited the source by name.

I reached out to Keith Olbermann for clarification this morning, but he has not responded thus far.

People often wonder what the usefulness of “off the record” sources is, if you’re not allowed to use the information obtained. This type of sourcing is sometimes referred to as “for guidance,” meaning that the source providing the information doesn’t want to be identified, but the information can often be used if it can be verified independent of the source. For example, if I ask the “John Doe” campaign about a remark their candidate made, they might send me a relevant YouTube clip “for guidance.” I can then decide if I want to use the clip, but I can’t divulge that the campaign pointed me to it.

Off the record sourcing can also be useful in helping a reporter to judge whether pursuing a particular angle on a story is worthwhile. For example, if I’m tracking down rumors that candidate “Doe” is a secret drug dealer, a trusted source can tell me “off the record” that I’m on the right track, and I should check Doe’s garbage can for crack vials. I can’t divulge that information, or the source, but I can report what I find in the garbage can.

Dean continued:

Every morning when they see the president they are reminded that things are totally different than they were when they were born and I think that has a lot to do with it. . . Economic uncertainty fuels this but this is the last gasp of the generation that has trouble with diversity. The tea party is almost entirely over 55 and white, and the country has changed dramatically as a result of what happened in 2008 and it’s not going back. Every day that goes on, the demographic change continues, and that’s what a lot of this is about.

Given that Tea Party favorites like Senator Rand Paul, Senator Marco Rubio and Sarah Palin are each under 50 years old, and that many would argue the Tea Party has many constituents well under Dean’s age threshold, Dean’s conclusion seems questionable. However, Dean is never one to shy away from giving his opinion, also revealing his prediction that former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney is the strongest Republican challenger to President Obama in 2012.

Watch the clip from the Christian Science Monitor below:

(h/t The Weekly Standard)

Former Vermont governor and presidential candidate Howard Dean‘s convinced the just-arrived Tea Party members of Congress have a fundamental problem, that their beliefs can’t be translated into effective policy now that they have to govern: “The Tea Party leadership is basically fraudulent,” Dean said on MSNBC’s Morning Joe.

Dean told MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough he thinks John Boehner has the capacity to be a “very competent” Speaker.

But Dean’s not impressed with the Tea Party–mandate or not–in terms of their ability to deliver on the promises they made:

“My guess is (Boehner) has a whole lot of freshmen who have no interest in any kind of legislative ability and are frankly somewhat fraudulent.”

Watch it here, from MSNBC:

Ingraham, who was filling in for Bill O’Reilly, questioned Gerson’s assertion in his column this week that certain small-government tendencies within the Tea Party movement were “inconsistent with religious teachings” and that their ideas dangerously noninclusive for the Republican Party. Citing several big-government Bush administration policies, Ingraham challenged Gerson to explain how the alternative would be any better: “big government conservatism was tried and it failed… you guys gave it the old college try and it failed.” Gerson made one point that Ingraham agreed with, that campaign platforms “can’t just be simplistic anti-government agenda” the way many Tea Party rally agendas are.

While he refused to defend the concept of “big government conservatism,” he warned that “Hispanics will not support the Republican Party if they feel they are a target of prejudice,” and that the Tea Party attitude towards immigration was promoting that. This set off Ingraham, who countered that one of the reasons Hispanics may feel they are targets of prejudice is because of “the ridiculous things that people like you say about the Tea Party.” Gerson pointed to culprits on the right in retort: “It’s Tom Tancredo and JD Hayworth that say ridiculous things!” To the continued mentions of Tancredo and Hayworth and, later, shots at Nevada Republican Senate candidate Sharron Angle, Ingraham compared Gerson to the aforementioned Dean and wondered if she was talking to the website MoveOn.org instead of Gerson.

The heated debate via Fox News below:

Well, Howard Dean does, and he circled back to it today on CNN’s State of the Union telling Candy Crowley that the real problem is not the “professional left” which doesn’t really exist, but the “people around the president [who] have really misjudged what goes on elsewhere in the country.” Not the President, mind you, just “his political people.” Presumably Dean is referring not only to Gibbs here, but Rahm Emanuel as well, something that becomes more apparent when he notes that the “average Democrat is a progressive and there are some things are upsetting about the deals that were made by the President’s people on health care.”

Nevertheless, now that Dean’s had his chance to complain he thinks it’s time to “put that stuff behind us” so that the Dems can win in November, because “you can’t get anything done” unless you have a Democratic President, a Democratic Senate, and a Democratic House (notwithstanding 2009?). Because the GOP is the party of No: “Name one single constructive issue the Republicans have put forward.” Watch below.

Dean made a splash in some progressive circles for coming out against the construction of the community center recently, a move that Olbermann respectfully shot down on his Twitter feed. While many (including Bill O’Reilly during the time the Dean/Olbermann discussion aired) were heralding the disagreement as a “civil war” on the left, it appears that Olbermann and Dean both intended to display the disagreement not as a war, but as an ongoing, enriching discussion.

Dean played the more moderate role to Olbermann’s more traditional left role (which culminated towards the end with Olbermann asking “How do you compromise with people who are absolutely irrational?”). Dean argued that, while he did not condone any sort of dialogue with “the Sarah Palins and Newt Gingriches of the world,” there were “legitimate” people, such as the families of 9/11 victims, who may feel uncomfortable and deserve to be listened to. Olbermann countered that, throughout history, Americans have needed an extra push towards tolerance, citing the civil rights struggles and various instances during which Americans were denied rights because of their religion. On that point, Dean was at his sternest, telling Olbermann that he found that “to compare the civil rights issue to the location of a building is inappropriate.”

Granting that there is a discussion, Olbermann wondered who the discussion would include, as he found most of the people involved in the issue– especially on the national scale– to be completely irrational. “You don’t have the discussion with the demagogues,” Dean argued, but with “the people in the city that have a genuine interest in this.”

It’s a long and intricate video, and while it takes a certain level of dedication to get through the whole thing based on the nuances and– as it’s a civil debate– lack of shameless cable news-type entertainment value, it’s precisely the kind of in-depth talk that cable news detractors are constantly pining for, and for good reason. Now if only these types of discussions could happen between people on both sides of the spectrum– haha, who am I kidding? That’s never going to happen.

The whole discussion via MSNBC below:

In the initial live 5PM segment, the conversation between Dean, Matthews, and Walsh turned uncomfortable as Matthews repeatedly defended Breitbart’s tape as “unedited.” After several “that’s not true”s and “you’ve got to trust me on this”s, Matthews still insisted the video was unedited, and, when asked if he had seen the news on the Drudge Report, snapped, “I don’t watch Drudge.” Take 1 of the segment is below:

The above video never made it to the online Hardball channel, as it appears that sometime in between the two airings of the program, the decision was made to do the segment live once again at 7PM, because what aired during what is typically (and, with this segment the exception, was) a rerun was the following video– the same discussion, except with Matthews agreeing that the video was edited and, instead of Gov. Dean, Politico‘s Ken Vogel:

In the second take, Matthews emphasizes the fact that the Breitbart tape was, in fact, incomplete, and even plays the Breitbart version of the tape to make the point that it was so. At the end of the segment, Matthews acknowledges the errors in the first take, telling the audience before he thanks Walsh for returning:

“That’s what we’re doing here. That’s what we’re doing here in our 2nd edition tonight, trying to clarify. It’s a better story tonight. We had a good narrative tonight. I think everybody heard what happened. It’s a tricky one, a few rough edges– we got it tonight.”

Hardball has been around for well over a decade, there is a chance that this isn’t the first time they’ve had to retape a segment to replace what would have been the typical rerun. But outside of special Election Day editions of the program where Matthews is embedded on the campaign trail, this is the first time in recent memory that Hardball has run live at 7PM, and probably the first time when the program has run live for only one segment, only to return to the rerun afterwards, barring a major news break.

It seems that Matthews and his crew were not willing to let history repeat itself thanks to a preplanned rerun, and on the rest of the network, MSNBC rarely, if ever, retapes segments for reasons outside of technical error (Matthews not knowing the facts on the Sherrod story is certainly not the fault of technology). It’s a truly rare occasion to see a cable news personality admit a mistake– the best that can typically be hoped for is a passing apology on the night after– and impressive that it took less than two hours for Matthews to make his segment right and acknowledge that things didn’t go so smoothly the first time around.

Update: Walsh expands on her Hardball appearances in a new Salon column posted tonight.

Matthews understood that the clip was presented out of context by Breitbart, but thought that it was only because Sherrod was depicted as a “current” member of the administration when the events that she described had occurred. Both Dean and Walsh do their level best to disabuse Matthews of his incorrect position, but the Hardball host obstinately – and wrongly – sticks to his guns. The only thing missing from this following clip is “Yakkity Sax” playing underneath this commentary.

Bret Baier responded with video evidence to Howard Dean‘s latest charges, while FNC admitted there had been an online “breakdown” in the publication of a story about Sherrod before it was announced she resigned.

In a “fact check” segment on Special Report last night, Baier responded to what Dean said on MSNBC’s The Ed Show by visually displaying what we’ve been saying for a week – the out-of-context clip didn’t air on Fox News until Bill O’Reilly‘s 8pmET show. “Not a single frame of that video hit the air all day,” he said, while the entire day’s programming played in fast forward.

Unfortunately for Baier, he’s already behind – Dean has moved on from this initial charge and expanded his criticism to how O’Reilly and Sean Hannity covered the story Monday night and the rest of the week. This cannot be disputed with some video evidence.

Meanwhile the one Fox News entity that did touch the Breitbart video before Sherrod’s resignation was FoxNews.com – a point some have continued to focus on. Politico talked to Fox News SVP Michael Clemente, and he did admit a “breakdown” that led to the story’s publication:

But FoxNews.com did run a story about the existence of the video, titled “Video Shows USDA Official Saying She Didn’t Give ‘Full Force’ of Help to White Farmer” at 5:58 p.m. on Monday, an hour before the Agriculture Department announced Sherrod’s resignation. And Wednesday, Clemente told POLITICO that was a mistake.

“There was a breakdown in the system, and it is being addressed,” he said. “But it must say something about the power of Fox, that a week after she resigned, we’re still talking about this.”

According to Sherrod’s timeline, 5:58pmET is still after she was forced to resign (she had to do it “before Glenn Beck” at 5pmET). But this was an admission of a mistake nonetheless.

Here’s the Baier segment (via Johnny Dollar):

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Speaking to Dylan Ratigan fill-in and Young Turks host Cenk Uygur, Dean stood by his comments, and dismissed Clemente’s criticism, while Cenk noted the long roster of “failed candidates” who populate Fox’s air. (h/t Aaron Wysocki)

I also thought it was interesting that a network with Sarah Palin as a contributor would describe an opponent as a “failed candidate,” especially when you consider that Dean was the architect of the 50 state strategy that helped to defeat Palin’s vice-presidential bid. Also, Dean did finish his full term as governor. Actually, he finished five full terms.

I don’t think the fact that Shirley Sherrod resigned before Fox News ever aired the story factors into Dean’s criticism, which was of the way Fox personalities like Bill O’Reilly and Sean Hannity covered the story. As Steve Krakauer pointed out, CNN reported on the edited tape Monday night, too, but none with the gusto of Fox’s opinion shows.

Dean’s argument doesn’t rest on the Shirley Sherrod story alone, either. Whether or not you agree with Dean that there’s a pattern of racism, it is upon this foundation that Dean’s argument rests, and not simply whether Fox had a hand in Sherrod’s resignation.

Newt’s excuse was that he was merely taking the Sec. of Agriculture’s word for it. Such admirable spin. Not that he’s wrong about the administration’s incompetence here, merely that one would hope he would demonstrate the enough backbone to offer his own apology for not knowing better himself.

Chris Wallace, meanwhile, was not having it: “In all fairness this is not the first time you’ve done it” pointing to a questionable tweet from Newt last year calling Sonia Sotomayor a “latina woman racist” for her “wise latina” remarks. “Why so quick to call people racist,” asked Wallace. Gingrich meanwhile merely proceeded to dig himself deeper. This exchange however was merely a set up for what was to come.

It was at this point Howard Dean interjected to say that while he did not think either Chris Wallace or Newt Gingrich were racist, “Fox News did something that was absolutely racist.” You can probably see where this is headed. From Dean:

“They had an obligation to find out what was really in the clip. They had been pushing a theme of black racism with this phony Black Panther crap and this business and this Sotomayor and all this other stuff. The Tea Party called out their racist fringe and I think the Republican Party’s got to stop appealing to its racist fringe. And Fox News is what did that. You put that on. Continuing to cater to this theme of minority racism and stressing comments like this — some of which are taken out of context — does not help the country knit itself together.”

Responded Wallace calmly: “I know facts are inconvenient things but let’s try to deal with the facts.” Which are that the Obama administration preemptively and unfairly fired Shirley Sherrod and that Sherrod’s name was never mentioned on Fox before the USDA fired her. “Did you know that, sir?” asked Wallace. After a great deal of hemming and hawing it would seem Dean did not. Which is too bad because it happens to be true. Oh those inconvenient facts. Also? The whole segment sort of begs the question, if Dean thinks Fox is a racist network why is he appearing on it? Watch the exchange below.

Update: Michael Clemente, SVP of News, FOX News responds: “As we said this past week, some people such as the failed candidate Dean reflexively blame Fox for almost anything.”

Salon’s J.L. Bell has compiled forwarded emails from the internet rumor debunking site Snopes.com discussing both Barack Obama and George W. Bush. While the Snopes team has, in the past, compiled the hottest internet rumors and found that a large chunk of post-2008 rumormongering centered around the current president, the comparison between Obama and Bush rumors adds a new layer of complexity to the discussion. Bell found that, not only were there more email rumors floating in cyberspace about Obama than Bush, those about the latter tended to be more accurate than those of the former:

After eight years in the White House (with Snopes.com around all that time), George W. Bush has been the subject of 47 internet rumors. After less than two years in office, Barack Obama has been the subject of 87, or nearly twice as many.

Even more telling is the relative accuracy of those stories. For Bush, 20 rumors, or 43%, are true. Only 17, or 36%, are false. The remainder are of mixed veracity (4), undetermined (4), or unclassifiable (2).

In contrast, for Obama only 8 of the 87 rumors, or 9%, are true, and a whopping 59, or 68%, are whoppers. There are 17 of mixed veracity and 3 undetermined.

There are many possible reasons for Obama being at the center of a significantly larger amount of false rumors than Bush, not the least of which is a palpable cultural difference between the way the left and the right employ the internet to propagate their ideas. Compare, for example, the first two major political campaigns waged online by either side: those of Howard Dean and Ron Paul. While the former focused mostly on fundraising and rallying the grassroots with bullet-pointed policy initiatives, the Paul campaign’s centerpiece was a blimp and a series of wacky YouTube videos. Granted, this is in part due to the fact that YouTube was not around during the 2004 campaign, which leads to another imporant point: YouTube was launched in 2005, five years into the Bush administration.

Unfortunately, while Bell does bring into the national conversation an important issue and makes a number of great observations, he lets his bias get the better of him and jumps the gun at his conclusion:

This evidence accumulated over ten years shows a shameful but undeniable fact of American politics: Our right wing now contains a lot more liars, and a lot more folks who spread lies out of gullibility or wishfulness, than our left wing.

Suggesting that a comparison of the number of chain emails from both sides that ignores the fact that people who are more likely to forward political emails happen to be on the right could lead to the “undeniable fact” that everyone right of center is a liar is, at the very least, unfair and premature, and could discredit his entire analysis to many readers, even some on the left. That doesn’t mean the anthropological angle of this story– why do conservatives send more political email forwards than their liberal counterparts?– isn’t worth revisiting by both the media and political analysts looking to maximize the usefulness of the internet in gaining votes for the midterm elections.

He commented that he didn’t believe it was possible for someone who used a weather anomaly to disprove a climate theory could have a legitimate grasp on the way science works:

“One of the most disturbing things about the Republican Party over the last couple of decades is that they just don’t believe in science any more. And that is not an approach that is likely to generate any kind of creative thinking…People who use snowstorms as an example of why global warming doesn’t exist don’t understand the science and they don’t care.”

As extreme as claiming than an entire political party refuses to believe in the veracity of a field as wide as science may seem, the competing theory as to why Republicans don’t believe in climate change actually ascribes malicious intent. The other talking point floating out in the liberal political sphere, as professed by the increasingly polarizing Bill Nye the Science Guy, is that Republicans “know that what they’re saying is wrong, but they’re pressing on anyway,” for ratings or attention or a number of non-scientific reasons.  Whatever route they may take, it’s clear that the environmental lobby has given up on trying to understand the other side.

Watch Dean’s statements on the global warming debate below:

Speaking on Meet the Press, Dean said there had been “too much” compromise on the bill, and that he “would certainly not vote for this bill if this were the final product:”

Dean had a handful of problems with the health reform bill, among them the fact that it covered 94 percent of the population and wasn’t truly “universal” as such, but he was most rankled by the lack of a public option: “The public option in this bill is allowing the federal government to negotiate with private insurance companies.” Dean said that he was “very disappointed” in the White House over its failure to push for a public option. Still, he said that he would support a final product similar to the health reform bill under consideration in the House: (transcript via RealClearPolitics)

MR. GREGORY: But, Governor, do you really expect the White House to fight for any form of a public option at this stage of the game?

DR. DEAN: Well, obviously we’ve been very disappointed by, by that. We, we don’t think that there has been much fight in the White House for that. Another big piece that needs to be fixed is we–I don’t think we ought to be able to charge older people three times as much as you charge younger people. The House has twice as much, that’s still too much. So there’s a lot of things that need to be fixed. But if they are fixed, you aim–may actually get the foundation of a bill coming out of the House. If most of the House provisions survive, then we could have a bill that we could work with. But this elimination of the public option is a real sticking point, because that, in fact, is how you really save money and bend the curve in expenses.

Last night’s vote was historic, but there are still two more votes to go before the bill becomes law. It remains to be seen whether Senate Democrats keep health reform strictly private, and risk alienating liberals like Dean — or whether they’ll add a public option in conference and risk spooking the centrists.

That was how DailyKos founder Markos Moulitsas described the nearly 2000 activists gathered in Pittsburgh for the 2009 Netroots Nation convention. Billed on its website as “the most concentrated gathering of progressive bloggers to date,”  this year’s Netroots Nation is the fourth conference of its kind. It began in 2006 as the YearlyKos convention, and adopted a new name in 2008 to reflect its expanding membership and influence beyond the pages of DailyKos. The 2009 conference is the first without a cadre of primary contenders to invite and the first to deal with reality of being a movement billed as the political establishment.

The event regularly attracts progressive power players and up-and-comers alike, with former Vice President Al Gore making a surprise visit last year, while 2007 drew eight major Democratic Presidential candidates for a blogger-moderated debate. This year brought former President Bill Clinton, Governor Howard Dean and Senior Advisor to the President Valerie Jarrett as featured speakers – but while the tradition of high-profile politicos in attendance continues, the focus of the conference has definitely taken a turn from its election-driven roots.

Adam Bonin, chairman of the Netroots Nation board of directors, pinpoints the conference’s mission as the biggest change. “I think the key difference between this year’s conference and those in the past is that prior conferences centered around amassing our power to help win elections,” said Bonin, who also regularly contributes to DailyKos’ front page. “This year, there was a conscious shift in focus across our agenda — and certainly among our attendees — towards the steps we need to take to make policy change happen.”

The slate of panels available certainly reflects the change – pundits from the strategy and blogger wings of the movement appeared to instruct attendees on how best to get out the message for a progressive agenda, including a two-hour “Pundit Project” media training session hosted by ThinkProgress.

As aspiring politicos took turns taping practice interviews, Firedoglake founder Jane Hamsher warned about becoming trapped in media narratives unflattering to liberal activists. Nico Pitney – particularly well-known for his work on liveblogging the Iranian elections, and perhaps for a verbal scuffle with Dana Milbank on CNN’s Reliable Sources – instructed attendees on the importance of building a niche of expertise. ThinkProgress managing editor Amanda Terkel warned attendees about the rise of ambush journalism.  (Amanda’s hints: there’s no right strategy, but if you can’t squeak out an Olbermann-inspired ANDREA MAKRIS! then be quick with a camera, or just keep your wits about you and let cooler heads prevail.)

Later in the weekend, New York media trainer Joel Silberman offered some helpful advice as well – when talking into a camera, pretend it’s someone you want to sleep with. Media experts helped activists learn how to make the most of their fifteen minutes and notable bloggers helped hammer out the message, giving their take on the biggest policy battles of the day – Firedoglake blogger and occasional MSNBC guest Marcy Wheeler (emptywheel) gave her take on Wall Street domination, Pam’s House Blend founder Pam Spaulding talked LGBTQI rights, and on the technical side DailyKos’ Greg Dworkin (DemfromCT) moderated a panel featuring Nate Silver and Charlie Cook, among others, on getting the most out of polling data.

But while attendees learned how best to take advantage of their political punch from the best and the brightest of the blogosphere, some notable speakers faced pressing criticism from the left. Former President Bill Clinton faced tough questions from blogger Lane Hudson on Don’t Ask Don’t Tell and the Defense of Marriage Act, raising the spectre of an Administration moving too slowly on gay rights for some activists’ tastes. Governor Howard Dean took questions on advancing progressive goals in the health care debate just days before President Obama and HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius stumbled over whether or not the public option was necessary. And in her conversation with pundit comedian Baratunde Thurston, Valerie Jarrett faced occasionally boisterous criticism of President Obama’s continuation of some policies of President Bush.

One attendee shouted a question about photographs of detainee abuse President Obama has declined to make public, another yelled to ask why Blackwater (now Xe) was still being paid by the State Department for overseas work, and a table near the stage hissed in frustration at her response. The incident took only a few moments of an hour long talk, but became the focus of a piece by Huffington Post article assigned the headline “Valarie [sic] Jarrett Heckled And Hissed At Netroots Nation.”

The headline raises an interesting issue: when, and how, does a scrappy, rabble-rousing political underdog turn into a gathering of heckling critics?  Moderator Baratunde Thurston of Jack and Jill Politics took issue with the headline assigned to the piece, though he called Sam Stein’s writing a “fair representation of what happened.” Beyond the misspelling of Jarrett’s first name, Thurston said “the headline implies that the only thing that happened was that Jarrett faced tremendous negative responses to being there.”

The headline was later changed to the more accurate “Valarie [sic] Jarrett Heckled By Some At Netroots Nation,” but the question remains – how critical is too critical of a Democratic President, especially for a conference full of Democratic activists?

>>>Next: “From day one, our movement has been built on the notion that we’re outside the gates, and that we have to force our way in.”

But despite the image of level-headed punditry that he seeks to project, Gingrich enters the debate with the most basic kind of bias: major financial ties to health insurance companies with an interest in insurance remaining private. Why does Gingrich so often neglect to mention that he has a big financial stake in the outcome of the healthcare debate, and that it happens to line up with the side he’s arguing? And why do so many outlets give him a free pass? In light of Obama’s recent hints that he may be backing away from the public option, it’s a question worth asking whether Gingrich and his ilk have been treated more leniently by the media.

Gingrich will mention that he is the founder of The Center for Health Transformation (CHT), though he rarely says what that is. You’ll be forgiven if that sounds like a nonprofit think tank to you, a la The Center for American Progress, The Center for Reproductive Rights, The Center for Public Integrity… in fact, you’d be hard-pressed to find a “Center for [X]” that isn’t a nonprofit or a government agency (i.e. the CDC). But the Center for Health Transformation is a maverick. It is a for-profit network of health care professionals and companies “striving towards system-wide transformation.” CHT has four levels of membership; though its members includes non-insurance companies like Microsoft, Gallup, and UPS, its membership prominently features major health insurance providers like Wellpoint, UnitedHealthcare, Aflac, and BlueCrossBlueShield. In an email to Mediaite, Alissa Momberg, the CHT’s Communications Coordinator, said that “despite their individual interests, our members consistently come together to work toward a common mission of creating a 21st Century Intelligent Health System.”

According to Washington Post and NYT articles dredged up by Media Matters, which looked into Politico’s nondisclosure of Gingrich’s financial ties to insurance companies in April, CHT members pay up to $200,000 yearly. Though he isn’t a registered lobbyist, access to Gingrich is a major selling point of membership, featured prominently on the Center’s website. One of his former advisers told the Post that “He has the amount of influence he chooses to have. I suspect there is virtually no one in this town of either party who will not take a call from Newt Gingrich, if only to hear what he has to say.”

It’s no great secret that the big health insurance companies are against a national public health care plan, which would cut into their profits. And they have a powerful tool in Gingrich. Why doesn’t anyone ever mention that money is changing hands?

On August 9th, Gingrich debated health care with Howard Dean on This Week with George Stephanopoulos. He mentioned The Center for Health Transformation’s estimate that “government fraud between Medicare and Medicaid is between $70 billion and $120 billion a year,” but he neglected to explain that the nonprofity-sounding Center is, in fact, for-profit — and neither did Stephanopoulos, though he called Dean out for his own consulting work with Democracy for America. Gingrich was identified simply as the “former House speaker.”

In a telephone interview with Mediaite, David Cameron, the EP of This Week, defended the show’s identification of Gingrich, arguing that his affiliation with the Center for Health Transformation probably didn’t change his position. Among other points, he mentioned that most Americans know Gingrich as the former Speaker of the House, which is why he was only identified as such,  and the fact that the CHT’s membership includes many companies not directly tied to healthcare or health insurance, such as Microsoft. He also said that given Gingrich’s ideological track record, his business ties probably wouldn’t change the positions he’d argue. “He’s not going to be necessarily influenced by an organization that he sets up himself,” Cameron said; “he doesn’t come as a lobbyist for the organization, he comes as Newt Gingrich.”

But this is letting Gingrich off too easy. As a media fixture taking loud, sometimes sketchy stances in a major public debate, he should be subject to at least the same degree of scrutiny as a columnist or other opinions journalist; witness Ben Stein getting the axe for his FreeScore ads, which didn’t even affect his beat directly. Newt’s financial ties with health insurance companies are relevant to the positions he takes. Any outlet that lets them slide is letting its audience down.

But tomorrow he’ll add a new, interesting bullet point to his resume: he’s guest hosting Countdown with Keith Olbermann. How did he get to this point?

In March, Dean became a CNBC contributor, and has appeared frequently on the business news network. But it is his increasingly regular appearances on MSNBC that served as the precursor to his hosting shot on the prime time cabler. Dean will fill-in tomorrow and Wednesday night (other fill-in hosts this week include regular Countdown guests Richard Wolffe and Lawrence O’Donnell).

The spotlight couldn’t be bigger for Dean. Countdown is regularly the most watched prime time show on MSNBC, and the liberal audience is one sure to embrace the former DNC chairman.

But for someone who was once the front-runner to be the 2004 Democratic presidential nominee, the past few years have been interesting for Dean. He ran the DNC, and helped the Democrats to large victories in 2006 and again in 2008. For his efforts, he was rewarded by being essentially snubbed by the Obama administration. Then it was the move out of politics, and into the NBCU fold.

Now he’ll prep for his prime time audition. Some might say the “Dean Scream” was like his very first “Special Comment“:

• Another CNBCer, Donny Deutsch, is filling in today for David Shuster on MSNBC from 3-5pmET.

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I was there to do an interview with Meredith Viera about how I am turning my prosthetic eye into a wireless video camera. This is a fairly big deal for a little Canadian cyborg because the Today show is the number one morning show in America, and Meredith is # 26 on the Mediaite Power Grid, just ahead of Larry King, last time I checked.

It was June 18th, and a poll had just come out in the New York Times with the headline “Obama Poll Sees Doubt on Budget and Health Care.” Dean had a new book out about health care, Howard Dean’s Prescription for Real Healthcare Reform, so he was on to promote his book but also to defend Obama’s new dip in the polls.

Howard was plunked into the green room with myself and Kosta Grammatis, the 23 year old whiz kid who has been helping me build the camera eye. Kosta had no clue who Dean was, and to my horror, casually shook Dean’s hand like he was a lowly self-help guy.

Watch Dean’s interview here.

There Howard was, just feet away from me and looking very natty in his cream suit. I actually thought he was much more handsome in real life and I was suitably intimidated. I mean this guy could have been president! We were munching stale bagels together and his eyes were so blue.

“Its an honor to meet you sir,” I said before he dug himself back into the New York Times. No doubt boning up on the article about Obama.

A month before I went to New York, Kevin Tibbles, an NBC correspondent, was assigned to interview me in Toronto for a short piece that would be shown before my live interview on the Today show. An ex-Toronto boy, he showed up with a friendly two-guy crew and a smoke machine. Clearly they understood my Eyeborg style: Immature and high-tech super-hero fantasy come to life.

Kevin clearly enjoyed playing the “Six Million Dollar Man” board game with me and took me and the crew out for beers after the interview. Regaling me with journalism stories from his long career, he quoted me his new favorite expression from his son’s hockey coach: “Harden the fuck up.”

Kosta and I would soon need to follow this wise maxim.

I had arrived in New York a day early, checked into the hotel near NBC for pre-production, and finally figured out what 30 Rock means. Ohhhh, 30 Rockerfeller Plaza is the address of the NBC in downtown New York. The producer assigned to me smiled politely when I pointed out this oh-so-obvious revelation. Yes, I was ready for big time media exposure.

It soon became clear that the Today show producers had assumed that I would be doing a live shot of my Eyeborg point-of-view. In other words, that I would debut my camera eye working during my live interview. I sheepishly informed them that I couldn’t do that even if I wanted to because I didn’t have the eye quite done. The camera-eye works, but I might crush it if I stuff it into my two-part prosthetic without some custom work. I did, however, point out that I could rig up my red LED light eye that makes me look just like the Terminator.

This was met with a very quiet non-plussed kind of patient look. Four hours later, while ordering Sushi on the Today show’s dime, we got a call.

“Sorry, you are off the show. Enjoy your stay in New York. Sorry for the confusion.”

Damnit, why did I tell everyone to watch the show on Facebook? My mom had told all her friends and everything. Gawd.

“Ah well,” I said to Kosta, hardening the fuck up, “Let’s just have a good time in New York.”

Kosta and I finished eating somewhat dejectedly and paid the bill. Wait a minute! It was the Today show calling back!

“Ok, you’re back on but its not at 7:30 its just after 8:00 now [in other words, not the highest rated time slot anymore] and your live interview is down to three minutes instead of six. And there isn’t enough time for Kosta to be interviewed as well anymore. It’ll be just you.”

You do not want to tell a 23 year old engineer that has volunteered hours and hours of his time to your weird eyeball project that he isn’t going to be on the Today show anymore. Kosta was not happy and I got the auld glare for the next 48 hours. I almost told him to harden the fuck up but I figured that wouldn’t be such a hot idea.

The next day, shortly after we had met Howard Dean, we had to start prepping the red LED light eye. It requires soldering a freshly powered battery to a an LED light and placing it in the eye. So we have a soldering iron and cleaning materials for the prosthetic eye and a power supply. It’s a bit of a production and the key is not to make it too soon or the battery will run out prematurely. We were informed that it would be better to do it outside of the green room where we wouldn’t freak people out jamming weird components into my eye socket. The solution became using Ryan Reynold’s private dressing room before he arrived. (I can’t help it, I just gotta say – he is a Canadian!).

See Ryan’s interview here.

“Ah,” I noted. Howard Dean gets schlepped in with the Eyeborg crew in the main green room but Ryan Reynolds gets his own dressing room.

Never mind, we set about the task of building the Terminator eye with not much time left. We were almost done when Ryan’s people informed everyone that he was about to arrive.

Out of the dressing room we went. New location for building the Terminator eye: The make-up and hair area. Meanwhile, young female staff on the Today show were heard to say: “Omigod,….he….is…so……gorgeous.”

The interview went well and Tibbles and company totally got my pseudo-serious claims that I am super-hero. Meredith was charming and interested and overall I couldn’t be more pleased with the way my Today show experience went.

Eyeborg on the Today Show.

Since then I have been thinking of moving to New York but Howard Dean got me thinking about health care in the States. I read this study after his interview – Harvard researchers say 62% of all personal bankruptcies in the U.S. in 2007 were caused by health problems—and 78% of those filers had insurance.

I dunno, it just seems crazy and scary to me, as a guy who has had to have five eye operations, that even if I get health insurance, I am pretty much screwed if I ever need to get health care. I would most likely be personally bankrupt right now if I had been an American. What the hell are Americans thinking I wonder? Is it millionaire journalists that are telling America that private health care is a great option? Like WTF is going on? I don’t get it. But I’m just a dumb little Canadian cyborg I guess.

Obama’s honeymoon is over. Getting health care through won’t be easy. Maybe the public health care forces should harden the fuck up and ram it through.

Rob Spence is a director and producer in Toronto, Canada whose work has appeared on Discovery, Vision, Space TV and the CBC (Canadian Broadcast Corporation), for which he made the controversial documentary, Let’s All Hate Toronto. Currently, he is in development on a documentary about how video and humanity intersect escpecially with regards to surveillance. That’s where the whole cyborg thing comes into it. Learn more about the Eyeborg here.