Jon Kyl

When CNN's Carol Costello admitted to Sen. Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.) her inability to convince him that Republicans on the super committee didn't raise enough tax revenue, he simply responded that "your job is not to convince me."

In an interview during the bottom of the 8 a.m. hour, the senator had finished explaining how Republicans had proposed to get rid of tax loopholes.  The proposal had come to the dismay of some conservatives, but Costello lectured him that such measures were still not enough to raise the necessary amount of tax revenue. [Video below the break. Click here for audio.]

While grilling Arizona Senator Jon Kyl on NBC's Meet the Press on Sunday, host David Gregory tried to bolster the argument for tax increases: "The Bush tax cuts...real deficit hawks, many of them happening to be Republicans....said let them all expire for everybody. For the rich, for the middle class. If you really want to get serious about the deficit, let the Bush tax cuts expire for everybody."

Here were Gregory's examples of GOP "deficit hawks": "...Alan Greenspan, former Fed chief; Michael Bloomberg, now the independent mayor of New York..." He also touted the expertise of "Democrats like Peter Orszag, who ran the Budget Office for this president..."

On Tuesday, Times reporter Robert Pear couldn’t describe Nancy Pelosi and Henry Waxman as “liberal Democrats,” only as “influential Democrats.” In Thursday’s Times, Pear displayed no aversion to labeling conservatives named to the new “super committee” created in the debt-limit deal.

Pear even found Democrats John Kerry (lifetime American Conservative Union rating 5) and Max Baucus (ACU lifetime score, 14) would be found in the middle: “If a deal is to be struck in the middle, it is likely to involve Mr. [Rob] Portman, Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts and perhaps Senator Max Baucus of Montana, Congressional aides said.” But the Republican list included the “most conservative” Members:

On last Friday and on this past Tuesday night, CNN's Anderson Cooper ran fact-checks against the claims of two anti-abortion members of Congress against Planned Parenthood – but did not bother to conduct similar fact checks on the claims of Planned Parenthood and its Democratic supporters.

During his Tuesday segment of "Keeping Them Honest," Cooper countered the claims of conservative Rep. Michelle Bachmann (R-Minn.) that Planned Parenthood is the largest provider of abortions in the U.S. "They are a big abortion provider, although that's only a small fraction of what they do," he stated.

Update: Joe denies judging Kyl and DeMint.  See video after the jump.

Call it an episode of Short Self-Attention Span Theater . . .

Mere moments after citing Matthew 7's instruction to "judge not, that ye be not judged," Joe Scarborough judged Jon Kyl and Jim DeMint to be "un-Christlike."

Scarborough's strange self-contradiction came in the course of his diatribe against the two Republican senators for having criticized Harry Reid for threatening to keep the Senate in session through Christmas.

View video after the jump.

On Sunday’s Face the Nation, Republican Senate whip Jon Kyl kept correcting host Bob Schieffer about how extending tax “rates,” not “cuts,” is what is being debated, leading Schieffer to conceded “I gotcha” and even prompted Schieffer to let Kyl fill in for him the correct term. Schieffer: “Are the votes there now in the Senate, in your opinion, to extend these tax ah-“ Kyl: “Rates.”

Schieffer had asked: “Is the Senate going to get down to business and resolve this whole business of the tax cuts?” Kyl chastised: “Nobody is talking about tax cuts. We're talking about extending the rates that have been in existence for the last decade.” Nonetheless, Schieffer stuck with his terminology: “Why is it so important to Republicans to extend the tax cuts for the upper-income people?”

Democratic Senate whip Dick Durbin matched Schieffer’s framing: “I'm not voting for any permanent tax cut for the people of the highest income categories” and Kyl felt compelled to again correct Schieffer and Durbin: “First of all we're not talking about tax cuts.” Schieffer interjected “I gotcha” as Kyl continued: “We're talking about extending, for another period of time, the rates that have been in existence for the last decade.”

Politico's Mike Allen on Monday told Laura Ingraham the only way to do a piece about what Washington insiders are really thinking is to get anonymous opinions from unnamed sources unwilling to go on the record.

Less than 24 hours later, New York Times columnist David Brooks showed Allen how wrong he is in an article about what Republicans are feeling heading into Tuesday's midterm elections complete with the names of those offering opinions:

Harry Smith on Sunday actually asked an anti-Arizona SB-1070 advocate whether or not the United States government should stem the flow of illegal immigrants into America.

Subbing for Bob Schieffer on CBS's "Face the Nation," Smith invited on Thomas Saenz, the head of the Mexican American Legal Defense & Education Fund, a pro-illegal immigrant group.

Early in the segment, Smith asked his guest, "Do you feel like the federal government is doing enough to stem the flow of illegal immigrants and -- or should it?"

Moments later, Smith asked Saenz if he felt Arizona's new immigration law was "anti-Hispanic" (video follows with partial transcript and commentary):

New York Times columnist Paul Krugman is angry the Senate hasn't once again extended unemployment benefits, and he's blaming "heartless, clueless and confused" Republicans.

"There was a time when everyone took it for granted that unemployment insurance, which normally terminates after 26 weeks, would be extended in times of persistent joblessness. It was, most people agreed, the decent thing to do," the Nobel laureate wrote Monday.

"Yet the Senate went home for the holiday weekend without extending benefits. How was that possible?" asked Krugman.

Unfortunately, his answer will be quite disturbing to most on the right:

Back in April, as ABC's Jake Tapper took over as interim host of This Week (pending the arrival of ex-CNNer Christiane Amanpour in August), the show asked the fact-checkers at PolitiFact to evaluate the truthfulness of statements made on the show.

After nearly three months, the results show far more Democrats and liberals earning a "False" rating, with most of the "True" ratings going to Republicans and conservatives. The discrepency remains even if you take into account that about two-thirds of the evaluated statements came from Democrats in the first place.

From April 11 through June 20, PolitiFact has handed out seven "False" statements -- six to Democrats/liberals, one to a Republican. During that same time, seven "True" labels were handed out -- four for Republicans/conservatives, just two for Democrats (one, ironically, going to former President Bill Clinton).

Retired General Colin Powell also picked up a "True" for a statement about the number of troops President Obama has deployed to Afghanistan, but it's hard to say which side Powell represents these days.

Did you know that calling attention to an area where a Supreme Court justice nominee is from, which happens to be a well-known bastion of liberalism, is bigoted? 

If you didn't, you want to take a look at the wisdom of Salon.com's Joan Walsh. In her June 28 post "It's not even coded bigotry anymore," Walsh argued that references to SCOTUS nominee Elena Kagan's Upper West Side of Manhattan roots are bigoted -since the neighborhood has Jewish features, references to it are anti-Semitic and as she puts it, "not even coded."

"That said, Republicans on the Senate Judicial Committee are trying to make the case she's outside the mainstream of American jurisprudence, by attacking her clerking for (and admiring) legal giant Thurgood Marshall, the first African American Supreme Court justice, while singling her out as a denizen of ‘Manhattan's Upper West Side' - you know, the neighborhood known for Zabar's and bagels and, well, Jews," Walsh wrote.

Walsh wasn't clear about what she thinks these Senate Republicans are trying to accomplish. Conventional wisdom suggests Kagan will be easily confirmed, but pointing out the neighborhood she is from, with documented evidence of having an ideological liberal leaning, is going to accomplish what?

MSNBC host Ed Schultz is still in prairie-populist mode on illegal immigration. Unlike many on the left, he says it's a serious problem.

But on Tuesday's edition of The Ed Show, he somehow blamed it on Arizona's Senators, John McCain and Jon Kyl: “McCain and Kyl have left the border wide open. Once again, it's up to the president of the United States, Barack Obama, to clean up another Republican mess.”

He repeatedly complained about the last presidential race: “During the 2008 campaign, McCain the warmonger said that he could take care of Iran. Hell, he can't even take care [of] and protect his own home state!”

PBS's Jim Lehrer on Tuesday wrongly accused Republicans of always being against major social legislation in this country including the Civil Rights Act, Social Security, and Medicare.

"[T]hrough history, recent history in particular, Republicans have opposed things like Social Security, Medicare, even civil rights legislation, but then, once they lost, they took some deep breaths and moved on, and then finally ended up embracing many of these major changes in -- in laws and in the way we do business here," the News Hour host amazingly said to his guest Sen. Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.).

Of course, nothing could be further from the truth, and Kyl quickly corrected Lehrer (video embedded below the fold with partial transcript and commentary, relevant section at 4:40, h/t Cubachi):

What is it about Republicans, lefty talker Ed Schultz complained to his radio listeners on Friday, that they can't "reach across the aisle" and give President Obama everything he wants?

Schultz proceeded to demonstrate how his own reach falls short.

First, Schultz lambasted Sen. Jon Kyl, R-Ariz., for criticizing Obama's appearance on "The Tonight Show With Jay Leno" last week. Not because of Obama's revealing gaffe about the Special Olympics, but for schmoozing with Leno at a time of widespread economic anxiety.

Here's what Schultz said about Kyl after playing a clip of Obama's remarks, followed by Kyl's criticism (click here for audio) --

Here's news the traditional media will work very hard to ignore.

According to data released by Uncle Sam's Bureaus of Labor Statistics today, the unemployment rate in Illinois is the fifth-highest in the country.

The Land of Lincoln had a seasonally adjusted unemployment rate of 7.3% in July, up 2.2% from the previous year's 5.1%. That puts Illinois, along with California, in a tie for fourth place in the worst state unemployment rate derby, behind only Michigan (8.5%), Mississippi (7.9%), and Rhode Island (7.7%).

Illinois' 2.2% year-over-year unemployment rate increase is the third largest in any state, behind only tiny Rhode Island's 2.7% and smaller state Tennessee's 2.3%. Over 80% of Illinois' deterioration has occurred in the last three months, as its March unemployment rate was only 5.5%.

Meanwhile, in Arizona .....

With Eliot Spitzer gone, Chuck Schumer moves to the head of the list of smugly self-righteous New York pols. So it was particularly satisfying to see Sen. Jon Kyl [R-AZ] put Schumer is his place on This Week with George Stephanopoulos today.

A guest with Kyl for purposes of discussing the economy, Schumer clearly came in with a game plan: to analogize President Bush to the man who presided over the beginning of the Great Depression: Herbert Hoover. After Schumer tried it twice, Kyl had had enough and unleashed a riposte as devastating as it was reasoned.