Sick & Wrong.

CNBC's Maria Bartiromo--guesting on MSNBC's Morning Joe--chimes in at 2:39. As I posted here last week, this is the same idiot who asked a 44-year-old congressman why he wasn't on Medicare. Seriously.

Maria Bartiromo is a corporate shill, and to take seriously anything she says regarding health care is similar to trusting Jim Cramer with your appendectomy.

Rolling Stone's Matt Taibbi's excellent piece "Sick and Wrong" is here.

CNBC's Maria Bartiromo Thinks 44 Is The New 65.

Is this yapping simpleton really that clueless?

Gawker Covers The News So The MSM Doesn't Have To!

Why is it that a site like Gawker can come up with a piece that explains more about the inner workings and methodology of teabaggers via snark and an errant e-mail than actual news organizations can?

Like this:

"Tea Party Patriots" National Coordinator Jenny Beth Martin got a friendly little "media request" from CNBC: could you crazies maybe go crazy up a town hall somewhere? Sure, a 'Bagger says: how bout the guy who got the swastika?

Martin emailed the Tea Party listserve explaining that CNBC needed "lots of energy and lots of anger." She asked: "where are the big events this week and where can TPP best be represented on the news?"

Patriot and Teabagger Pat Wayman responded with a great suggestion: let's throw a riot at a health fair sponsored by Rep. David Scott (D-GA), the Congressman who got a swastika painted on his office sign last night!

Martin explained to TPM Muckraker that the Teabaggers would not be protesting that particular health fair, but the bit about CNBC specifically asking Tea Baggers to display "lot of anger" for their cameras was not disputed.

Gawker's securing and posting of the 'bagger e-mail shows us the symbiosis between that fake "grass-roots movement" and certain cable outlets, as well as exposes the manufactured "reality TV" aspect behind their schtick. It's also a nifty little piece of journalism--smart-ass or not.

Let's hope Gawker can get their hands on those promotional planning missives that surely exist between the teabagger hierarchy and FOX News--Your Complete Source of Tea Party Outrage; We Teabag So You Don't Have To!©

Pssst! Pass It On...

That's Media Matters response to this from GOP Confederate Kevin Brady of Texas, whose nonsensical handiwork I posted last week.

Is This Larry Kudlow's FOX News Audition Tape?

     A "Boyz N The Hood" handshake? Interesting wording from Larry Kudlow, who is a former Reagan administration official and fervent trickle-down supply-sider.

     We all know how those policies worked out.

     Kudlow--like many of his right-wing brethren--is in a lather about a handshake. Of course, those handshakes between Kennedy-Krushchev, Nixon-Brezhnev, Ford-Breshnev and Reagan-Gorbachev don't count. 

     And according to Kudlow, Colombia is to be embraced as being "for democracy" and "pro American."

     And pro-paramilitary, too, Larry?

He's Baaack.

     In the last 30 seconds or so of this clip, unfettered free market boob Rick Santelli of CNBC  bitches about government intervention in the mismanaged, private sector disaster that is AIG. "Vinegar and oil," he calls it.

     Um, I think you meant "oil and water," Rick.

     AIG f***** things up all by themselves--privately--and ersatz prognosticators such as Santelli were caught with their money clips straight up their butts. Now they scream on cable TV, calling ordinary citizens "losers" for their mortgage woes while essentially defending tone-deaf, incompetent executives and their bonuses because of their white-collar contracts.

     Tell that to the United Auto Workers, Rick.