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Folks that watched Sunday's "Meet the Press" debate between former Rep. Harold Ford Jr. (D-Tennessee) and Daily Kos founder Markos Moulitsas might have witnessed the final transformation of the Kossack leader from Netroots chief to Democrat Party operative.

In fact, you could almost hear Emperor Palpatine cackling in the background.

Ignoring the actual lack of substance in the discussion, one thing was made impeccably clear: Markos is now fully ensconced in today's Democrat Party, while Ford and his centrist DLC are persona non grata.

By no means does that validate Moulitsas' absurd claims that Kossacks and Netroots members represent the center of American politics as reported here and here. However, the inanities and hypocrisies uttered by Moulitsas Sunday could easily have been stated with a straight face by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-California) and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nevada).

For instance, read the following nonsensical assertion made by Markos if you have the stomach for it, and ask yourself how many of the current Democrat leaders and presidential candidates could have said the exact same thing (video available here):

Did anybody else catch this episode? It's distance from reality merits a fictional label.

Black Entertainment Television has been playing what is being called a Public Service Announcement created by a rapper named Bomani "D'mite" Armah. It is in cartoon form and made in the Rapper music video style. However, it contains some very offensive language even as the underlying message is one encouraging children to read by telling them to read a "mother****ing book, N***er." It's a mixed message, indeed. Do we need to encourage kids to read by cursing at them every other word in a song aired to them on a black centric television station? Is this the proper type of work that should be seen on BET?

The thing begins in a school auditorium with bored kids looking on. The cartoon rapper starts by playing Beethoven's Fifth on a piano (the whole song is set to the Fifth Symphony). "D'Mite" starts off by telling the kids, "See, I used to do songs with hooks and concepts and sh*t, right? Well, f*ck that, I'm trying to go platinum!" It then goes into the first verse which is made up entirely of "Read a book, read a book, read a mah fuc*in book," repeated over and over again.

It's over-the-top and offensive to be sure. But is it the "right message" despite that and to be congratulated? BET sure thinks it should.

As the 2008 presidential campaign moves into high gear, a common conservative complaint has been that Democrat candidates have so far been largely asked softball questions by liberal moderators at their debates, while the Republicans have actually been vigorously challenged by media personalities in theirs.

On CNN's "Reliable Sources" Sunday morning, former Capitol Hill correspondent for ABC, and current contributing editor to the National Journal, Linda Douglass, made it quite clear that she agrees with such concerns.

Host Howard Kurtz, after playing a video clip of musician Melissa Etheridge asking Hillary Clinton (D-New York) a question at a recent debate, posed the following:

Linda Douglass, my question is with those kinds of personal, first-person, emotional queries, do we really need journalists at these debates? Aren't these questions sort of better than the kind of questions that reporters ask?

Douglass couldn't disagree more:

For general discussion and debate.

Those about to watch the Ford-Kos debate, please feel free to share your thoughts.

Apparently Hardball host Chris Matthews has a bit of a problem keeping his lust in check on the air. On Friday evening's Hardball, Matthews was interviewing CNBC's Street Signs anchor, Erin Burnett, about the latest Wall Street news when suddenly he switched gears as you can see in this video. The official transcript isn't up yet on the MSNBC website but here is a transcription of the conversation as best I could understand it:

MATTHEWS: Could you get a little closer to the camera?

BURNETT: What is it? Is it (garbled) in strangely?

Today's Los Angeles Times op-ed page item "The art of war" contains drawings on the subject of the Iraq war done by students of visual arts teacher Steve Brodner at the School of Visual Arts in New York City. The drawing displayed here, of Pres. Bush in a bubble floating over a mound of skulls, typifies the attitudes expressed, all of which are opposed to the war and the Bush administration in one form or other.

Perhaps as telling as the drawings is this statement by Brodner that accompanies them:

The pieces reprinted here -- including one I did myself -- are the result of a group project I assigned. I felt that while they were in my class, students should focus on what I believe to be the most urgent issue of our time: the Iraq war.

It appears hell hath frozen over, for a Newsweek contributing editor published an article Saturday extraordinarily critical of his magazine's cover story last week about "global-warming deniers" being funded by oil companies in an organized scam to thwart science.

In fact, Robert J. Samuelson accurately noted how "self-righteous indignation can undermine good journalism," and that this disgraceful article was "an object lesson of how viewing the world as ‘good guys vs. bad guys' can lead to a vast oversimplification of a messy story."

Fortunately, Samuelson was just getting warmed up (emphasis added throughout, h/t Marc Morano):

Once you work for The Washington Times, the left and the media never stop hating you. The New York Times proves that with an attack on former Times Managing Editor Josette Sheeran.

I am more than happy to come to Josette's aid (not that she needs it) because I worked directly with her in my time at the Times. We haven't spoken in years, but Josette was great to work for and both gave me some big responsibilities and treated me with respect.

Josette now has the audacity to be the United Nations World Food Program's executive director and simultaneously come from the "most conservative wing of the Bush administration," according to the Times.