McLaughlin Group starting on my PBS - 10PM eastern

[eleny]

Lawrence O'Donnell, Tony Blankley, Pat Buchanan and Eleanor Clift. Should be another barn burner like last week!

[MichiganVote]

1. Its all about Foley...Woodwards book barely came up...too bad

[eleny]

2. I'm keeping the faith

His book will be tops on the best seller list for a long time. I don't think the issue of Iraq is going anywhere.

[joemurphy]

3. Buchanan and Blankley are very pessimistic about the

Republicans' chances in the elections. Good!

[eleny]

5. Mclaughlin told Blankley that he jumped ship

And Buchanan followed up by saying Blankley was the first to do so. That was funny.

Nice that Eleanor Clift did manage to make a long comment about Iraq and Woodward's book.

[joemurphy]

8. Clift's indefatigable. She's always slugging away in there

against regulars Blankley and Buchanan. McLaughlin, himself, has become much more anti-Bush than he was originally.

I still don't like the format. It's usually Blankley (ultra-conservative); Buchanan (blue-collar, nativist, isolationist, conservative) and Clift (liberal) with, ordinarily, a guest thrown in of varied political colors -- it might be O'Donnell (liberal); Clarence Page (moderate) or someone from the Financial Times (a conservative) or even a foreigner (usually a Brit). The only sure "liberal" voice is Clift and she sometimes has to be strident to get in a word. I've found the McLaughlin group to be a good bellweather of things to come. (I also lament the passing of "The Capital Gang" for the same reasons).

NPR's got good stuff on its programming.

[MichiganVote]

10. You know I probably think about gay's maybe 1x a week

The repub's must indulge themselves at least once an hour.

[w8liftinglady]

4. trust me...SOME people are paying attention...see link

http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2006/10/20061004-16.html

[MichiganVote]

9. Yeah, the silver spoon from the media has slipped some...so sad

[laststeamtrain]

6. Thanks for heads up. O'Donnell's piece @ HuffPo was interesting...

insider stuff.

It's a couple hours away here. For some reason I really like Mc & Co. It's a broader spectrum than most shows in that it includes paleo-cons AND neo-cons in the mix.

Here's the O'Donnell piece from HuffPo:

"Closted Gay Republicans and a Party in Free-fall
By Lawrence O'Donnell

The LA Times has outed Kirk Fordham today. He will not be the last closeted gay Republican outed by this scandal.

Today's NY Times has a chart that outlines the "key communications" in the House of Representatives about Mark Foley's inappropriate contact with pages. More than one of the names in the chart, which includes Kirk Fordham, are rumored to be closeted gay Republicans who have been working at the highest levels of the Republican leadership.

They have been looking at their names in print for the last couple of days and no doubt fearing for their futures in a Party that is in political free-fall.

Are ambitious closeted gay Republican officials, the most reliable people Speaker Hastert could have delegated the Foley problem to last year? Obviously not. Heat on a closeted gay Republican in the House is heat on all closeted gay Republicans in the House. The most innocent Foley emails were enough to worry the parents of the recipient. They were enough to worry the closeted gay Republicans too. But the closeted gay Republicans were perfectly positioned in the House to make the problem disappear.

Now two Republican staffers are locked in a credibility contest: it's Kirk Fordham v. Scott Palmer, Hastert's chief of staff. Palmer flatly denies that Fordham warned him about Foley. Hastert's political life depends entirely on Scott Palmer's credibility. I can't find anyone in Washington who knows Palmer who thinks his credibility can survive this test.

It's no accident that the first call for Hastert's resignation came from Tony Blankley, Newt Gingrich's former press secretary. Tony knows that the scandal cannot die as long as Hastert and his staff are still in the building.

The Republican base--the Evangelical get-out-the-vote troops--are going to be devastated when they discover how many closeted gay Republicans were involved in policing Mark Foley in the House of Representatives. Republican House members know this. That's why momentum is building for a very quick House cleaning and a new Speaker by next week."

[fuzzyball]

7. I love watching that show....wish it was 1 hour instead of the 1/2 hour.

[MichiganVote]

11. Me too. So much more human than the other hype type's