“I loved the job program and it’s not a big deal…I’ll never forget one guy I worked for, Mr. Hoover! He taught me how to count change, he taught me how to make sausage and f–king wake up in the morning and do what I was supposed to do!” Payne exclaimed.

Payne — realizing he had just dropped THE word, the big one, the Queen-Mother Of Dirty Words, the “F-dash-dash-dash” — covered his mouth in surprise.

Varney, amused, said, “Yeah, good!”

“Varney & Company apologizing for Charles getting carried away,” Varney added, before cutting to a commercial.

“I apologize for that, that was a slip!” Payne lamented.

Watch Payne drop the F-bomb on Fox Business Network below:

Watch the clip below, courtesy of Comedy Central:

West mentioned that there has been bad blood between the two Florida Representatives since Wasserman Schultz ordered a protest on his campaign headquarters, and he insisted “I do have the right to stand up and defend my honor.” With no retreat in mind, West explained why his remarks might be getting so much attention:

“There are certain ways that we speak in the military and I guess I have not learned the DC-insider talk that maybe some of these people are used to. Don’t poke me in the chest, that’s the bottom line to that exchange.”

As talk turned back to the deficit negotiations, West wasn’t as uncompromising, and acknowledged that now he might also be open to a short-term solution to get us over the hump of the August 2nd debt ceiling deadline. Yet now it seems everyone in the debt talks is put on warning: don’t poke West!

Watch the clip from Fox Business below:

Stossel disputes findings that claim people who graduate from college earn more money in a lifetime than their peers who don’t attend college, since those people tend to be more ambitious and would make more money in a lifetime regardless if they attended college. Additionally, he says:

“Today more people are going to college, and we’re shoving them in college with government funds. And a lot of them hate it, and almost half drop out. And that’s lousy for them, lousy for the taxpayer, lousy for everybody but the colleges who gets the money.”

With skyrocketing college costs every year, and with more and more graduates leaving with huge amounts of debt and grim employment prospects, maybe Stossel is on to something? Yet Stossel’s usual anti-government complaint that “there’s no market to have competition” seemed out of place in this conversation, since it’s the private schools that have the highest price tags and it’s more frequently their graduates who ultimately feel ripped off.

Watch the clip from Fox Business below:

Simmons explained that he was hopeful Obama would surround himself with business leaders and not professors:

“I want my vote back. This is a good man . . . but I don’t think the man is qualified to understand the structure and what business needs, which is to be well-informed. . . . Our President had two years of local experience, was born in Hawaii and never ran a business in his life.”

Simmons first lost faith in Obama a few weeks ago when he made the controversial comments regarding Israel’s borders. Simmons has strong ties to Israel and called Obama’s recommendation to Israel the “height of lunacy.” Given that Simmons so passionately opposes Obama now, Varney was a bit perplexed as to why Simmons voted for Obama at all. The KISS icon admitted, “I fell victim to the charm and I wanted to be a part of that moment in history and I’m ashamed to say I didn’t look at the resume long enough.”

With Simmons jumping ship, Obama might want to take efforts to shore up the aging musician wing of his celebrity base of support before anyone else bolts!

Watch the clip from Fox Business below:

Was Fox Business anchor Stuart Varney sending a subtle signal in his choice of ties when he went on Hannity? In a strange exchange that led Varney–who was on the show to talk about the possibility of a government shutdown–to ask, “is this a new show called ambush?”

The “ambush” was over Varney’s yellow silk tie, which seemed–to Fox contributor Dana Perino–to be vaguely reminiscent of the logo of the Al-Jazeera network. In a moment that seemed unintended for discussion on air–Perino at first insisting the tie was “lovely” until Hannity forced it–ultimately led to a full-on question and answer session, and clearly producers wanted to bring it up, since they had time to grab a shot of the tie and produce a side-by-side tie/AJ logo graphic.

HANNITY: And joining me now with reaction from the Fox Business Network, the host of “Varney & Company,” Stuart Varney and former White House Press Secretary, Fox News contributor Dana Perino.
What were you saying about Mr. Varney’s tie?

DANA PERINO, FOX NEWS CONTRIBUTOR: Nothing. It’s lovely.

HANNITY: That’s not what you were saying.

PERINO: It has an interesting emblem on it.

HANNITY: All right. It looks like — did you ever work for the al-Jazeera Network?

STUART VARNEY, HOST, VARNEY & COMPANY: What? Is this a new show called ambush?

PERINO: Ambush, exactly. I had to take you down somehow tonight.

HANNITY: You called her establishment once, so I think this is fed that she finally got you back.

VARNEY: Let’s see now, establishment, al-Jazeera, which would I choose?

Not, as it turns out, an al-Jazeera issued tie.

Watch it here, from Fox News:

(h/t: Ari Melber)

Healey, who struggled to be heard over the crowd’s chant of “tell the truth,” confirmed that he witnessed actual doctors handing out “fake” sick notes. The awkward liveshot comes days after Fox Business correspondent Jeff Flock was shouted down with chants of “Fox lies” while reporting from Wisconsin.

Returning from a commercial break to interview Healey by phone–and away from the shouting crowd–Varney asked if the two shouting incidents were “a coordinated effort to shut us down.” Healey said “clearly it is an organized attempt” involving people from Wisconsin and “professional organizers from outside this state.”

Watch it here, from Fox News:

Writing for the Associated Press, Alan Zibel reports:

WASHINGTON — Sales of previously occupied homes plunged last month to the lowest level in 15 years, despite the lowest mortgage rates in decades and bargain prices in many areas.

July’s sales fell by more than 27 percent to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 3.83 million, the National Association of Realtors said Tuesday. It was the largest monthly drop on records dating back to 1968, and sharp declines were recorded in all regions of the country.

The housing report worried Wall Street, briefly pushing the Dow Jones industrial average below 10,000 .

The plunge in home sales also magnified fears about the broader economy.

“The housing market is undermining the already faltering wider economic recovery,” said Paul Dales, U.S. economist with Capital Economics. “With the increasingly inevitable double-dip in prices yet to come, things could yet get a lot worse.”

Fox News host Megyn Kelly opened her show with this news, and FBN’s Stuart Varney made clear that this was in fact evidence of the double dip recession.

Wong was a guest on Fox News earlier today, where Stuart Varney couldn’t continue the interview without first asking whether his proposal was tongue-in-cheek. If Varney was hoping to get Wong to break character, he was sorely mistaken.

“I think that could be a reality,” Wong explained, “I think we have to give proper thought, review, and analysis, but that is a serious consideration.” Varney pointed out “the fact that it would be unconstitutional, illegal, and wildly impractical,” but Wong insisted that as he had “been traveling around the state,” he saw support for the idea. After all, the commission on which he wishes to serve is the commission that sets power rates, so he would have the power to cut energy from homes in order to keep the rates low. He also insisted that the idea was not race-based, but Varney hadn’t even gotten to the possible racial implications of the law at that point.

Video below:

Joseph Rago and Bret Stephens took the direct line of attack, with Rago answering a question about Palin being the brightest, most exciting Republican politician of her time: “Sure, but what does that say about the Republican Party?” Stephens’ response to the same question? “The freshest, maybe. The brightest, I’m not so sure.” He continued by claiming that he got from Palin “the distinct sense that if you ask her a follow-up question she would have no idea how to answer it,” which Varney called “mockery.” Answering to her likability, he posited that “It’s easy to like Palin because the people who hate her are themselves so dislikable.”

Collin Levy sprung to her defense, and in doing so possibly did the most damage of all: “They like her because she seems like a minor-leaguer,” she noted, referring to the hand-note incident at CPAC the Tea Party convention last week. And, concluding the discussion with a comment on Palin’s potential leadership: “She doesn’t need to be a leader. She just has to be something of a party mascot.”

There is something surreal about a Fox News segment dedicated to disparaging a Fox News employee. How different is it to call a pundit-in-arms a “party mascot” (even as a compliment) than to call them “sad and pathetic,” for which Joe Scarborough got a slap on the wrist at MSNBC? Palin is no longer a potential presidential candidate acting independently of the company that employs them, but a coworker. She would not be such a ratings draw if the threat of her returning to public service were minimal, nor would she be on the network if it did not provide her such a powerful platform to not-campaign– it’s a win-win situation. Another question is whether Fox News would be rooting for Palin the politician or against her. Keeping her on the airwaves and out of the White House would certainly be more lucrative, but in the long term having a former employee be the most powerful person in the world would be fantastic for scooping fellow news outlets. The former being more attractive to them would at least explain this article that ran alongside the video, legitimizing the Scott Brown for president movement by noting that a run in 2012 “wouldn’t look much different from Obama’s in 2008.”

Watch the Journal Editorial Report clip below:

From the segment:

Hannity: Why won’t they say what you so simply said? [that Hasan was a terrorist.]

Perino: You know, they want to do all of their investigations, I don’t know all of their thinking that goes into it. But we did not have a terrorist attack on our country during President Bush’s term. I hope they’re not looking at this politically. I do think that we owe it to the American people to call it what it is.

Hannity:  If you say “allahu akbar” before the shooting and you reached out to al-Qaeda 20 times, it’s a pretty good indication that you’re a terrorist sympathizer.

Varney: What is it, you’re not a terrorist unless you’ve got an al-Qaeda button right on there?

Perino’s statement was definitely jarring, given that the Bush presidency was defined by the terrorist attacks of September 11th and the response to them. But the micromeme that’s popped up on Daily Kos, Democratic Underground, and other like-minded sites of puffing up indignantly and accusing Perino of coverup or treason seems overblown. From Daily Kos: “This is an insult to the entire country but especially to the thousands of families who lost their loved ones on 9-11, to the Anthrax attacks that followed, and on the battlefields of Afghanistan and Iraq.” Uh: maybe she just misspoke?

But: Perino’s attempt to score terrorism-related political points by accusing Obama of trying to score terrorism-related political points was pretty transparent. And it shows how ossified political talking points have become that no one corrected her for saying such a howler: in the midst of a discussion of terrorism, the worst terrorist attack in US history — which occurred less than a year into Bush’s presidency — didn’t warrant a mention.

(h/t Media Matters via Daily Kos)

And it didn’t take long before each were shouting their points of views.

First, some background: the New York Times, which broke the story earlier this week, writes about the “thousands of e-mails and documents” that came from the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia that have come to light, causing more arguments about the truth behind global warming:

Some of the e-mails and files are impolite, revealing deep grudges between scientists and skeptics. Others are mundane announcements of upcoming conferences or research trips.

But by the end of last week, climate skeptics were busy posting and analyzing CRU e-mails and files they say justify their objections to mainstream climate science, including the idea that humans are driving global warming.

“Do you ever think that maybe you’re wrong about global warming?” asked Varney, which Begley very strongly did not. “You can be skeptical but not deniable,” he said.

When Varney started talking about the government ‘coming into our homes’ when it comes to environmental regulations, Begley started to get worked up. “Stop this scare tactic!” he said. Also, this exchange:

Begley: You’re spewing your nonsense here yet again. The air in LA is twice as clean as it was in 1970, why? Because of good technology.
Varney: That’s got nothing to do with global warming.
Begley: It has everything to do with good science.

Earlier in the interview, Begley invoked the name of another Fox News host. “Go to somebody you trust, National Geographic,” he said. “Don’t get it from you or me, Don’t get it from Rush Limbaugh or Glenn Beck.”

Beck, for his part, spent a portion of his show Monday discussing Climategate, saying, “If your gut said wait a minute this glob warming thing it sounds like a scam, well I think you’re seeing it now.” Today, Pres. Obama announced he will travel to Copenhagen for next month’s climate summit – a decision sure to keep the climate debate strong.

For another completely different look at Climategate, check out this YouTube JibJab-like video on the leaked emails and what they may mean.

Here’s the fiery interview:

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