Michael Hastings, reporter for Rolling Stone and Buzzfeed, helps Cenk break down why President Obama’s team has been so successful at knocking Romney down a peg in the 2012 election campaign. “President Obama — one of his greatest talents is going out on the campaign trail,” Hastings says. “What Romney’s getting a taste of is a Chicagoland sort of politics.”

Cenk brings in Michael “The Notebook” Hastings, BuzzFeed correspondent and “Rolling Stone” contributor, to help break down a documentary-slash-attack ad by Dinesh D’Souza. Hastings says, “He’s a hack, but he’s a best-selling hack. This is a guy who blames Hollywood for September 11.” D’Souza tracked down President Obama’s half-brother, George, in Kenya — but didn’t quite manage to get a scathing indictment of the president’s character he was looking for. Older footage of D’Souza at CPAC exposes his bizarre theory that the president is dangerously “anti-colonialist.” Hastings says, “There’s essentially this alternative narrative that the right has built up around President Obama that will not change no matter how many facts you put in front of it.”

Have furries gotten a bad rap? A Buzzfeed report on the largest annual furry convention (Anthrocon in Pittsburgh) is discussed by Ana Kasparian and Cenk Uygur on The Young Turks.

Buzzfeed’s Zeke Miller helps make sense of the showdown between Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Ca.) and Attorney General Eric Holder over the investigation of “Operation Fast and Furious.” Why won’t Holder simply turn over the documents Congress demands? Miller says, “It’s similar to what we’d see as the Executive Privilege argument within the White House. These deliberative documents are sort of central to the decision-making process. If people fear that they’re going to be turned over to Congress, going to be turned over to the oversight committee’s in either party… that it sets a dangerous precedent that will prevent people from being honest to their superiors.”

Cenk asks his Power Panel — BuzzFeed.com’s McKay Coppins and syndicated columnist Cliff Schecter — whether President Obama has done enough to help support efforts to recall Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker. “If he went in, he could bring a ton of momentum to the race,” Coppins says, “but if he goes in there and they lose the election, he’s got egg on his face…in what could be a very important swing state.” Schecter says, “Maybe Obama needs a little more John McCain in him. This is a risk but it’s a calculated risk. I don’t think they look at the longer picture. High risk, high reward — worth the risk in this case.”

Cenk interviews BuzzFeed and “Rolling Stone” reporter Michael Hastings about the “kill list” of counter-terrorism targets being considered by President Obama for assassination. “It’s somewhat unprecedented the fact that these decisions are being made from the Situation Room, from the White House itself,” Hastings says.

Cenk talks to BuzzFeed.com’s McKay Coppins about his analysis of conservative media creating “race wars” — especially when it comes to coverage of “anti-white bias crimes,” a topic that many right-wing media commentators are obsessed with. Coppins says, “They think the liberal media is so biased that they have to over-report the opposite trend, almost regardless of whether it’s totally true, just to balance things out.” Cenk says, “They’re trying to get you to hate each other. Don’t buy into it.” 

Michael Hastings of BuzzFeed.com joins Cenk from Chicago to give an update on Occupy protests at the NATO summit, where a handful of activists have been charged with conspiring to commit domestic terrorism. “There was a massive, massive police presence in Chicago,” Hastings says. “I’ve never seen anything like it in an American city. I’ve barely seen it in the middle of war zones. Now, 85 or 90 percent of the crowd was peaceful. But there was an element to the crowd that wanted to push and push and push until some kind of violent reaction happened,” Hastings says. Cenk says, “Those anarchists drive me crazy.”