We are in the middle of an intense election cycle, we all know. Both parties are, for the first time in many years, completely undecided as to which of their candidates is "the" candidate. It's pretty exciting for a political junkie. So, what does the Associated Press give us? What political news is of the utmost importance to help us all in this supremely important decision, so urgent that the AP felt we needed to know about it? Why, it's that Chris Matthews has made a few lefties mad at him for helping Hillary win in New Hampshire, of course! The AP is trying to drum up sympathy for Matthews who is supposedly on the receiving end of a "backlash" for his supposed attacks on Hillary Clinton.

Chris Matthews a target for people who believe media backlash helped Hillary Clinton

He’s become the target for critics who think a backlash against the media played a part in Hillary Clinton’s surprise win in New Hampshire. Chris Matthews laughs off that idea, and insists he has a lot of respect for her.

Geeze, give me a break.

Remember that highly controversial study published in the journal Lancet in 2006 claiming that 650,000 Iraqi citizens have died since the start of the war in March 2003?

Well, according to an article published in England's Sunday Times, antiwar activist and MoveOn.org founder George Soros was partially responsible for the funding.

I'm sure this will be front-page, headline news for all of America's press outlets in the coming days, aren't you?

While you ponder, here are the facts according to the Times (emphasis added):

In Brent Bozell’s culture column this week, Brent tackles the new Lifetime reality show oh-so-tastefully called "How to Look Good Naked." Brent reveals how the cable-TV elite has again displayed their knee-jerk tendency to tweak and tempt the public to watch by promising more skin and more emphasis on public discussion of skin-deep sexiness – even when it’s pitched as advice and cheerleading for confidence-impaired women are too heavy, too tall, too masculine, too outside the beauty cookie-cutter.

The naughty parts of the show are designed to distinguish it from the fully-clothed makeover shows it copied (think TLC’s "What Not to Wear"). The premise is inspirational – everyone’s supposed to root for the compassionate star/gay genie Carson Kressley and his magical mission to help women love themselves more in their own skin:

A truly extraordinary event happened on HBO's "Real Time with Bill Maher" Friday evening: the host, in the first show of the new season delayed as a result of the Hollywood writers' strike, began the program bashing Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-NY) for faking a teary moment in a New Hampshire diner Monday.

Maybe even more astounding, Hillary's charade was a central focus of Maher's monologue, as well as the entire program during which he questioned the sanity of voters who bought into her crying game hook, line and sinker.

Readers are cautioned to hold on tightly to their seats, for this was how Friday's show began (video available here courtesy our friend Ms Underestimated):

In the midst of all the recent global warming alarmism, have you considered the role that the "Hollywoodation" of weather reporting has played?

After all, much as news reporting has become more and more geared towards titillation in the past couple of decades, so has the media's presentation of climate events, especially extreme ones like Hurricane Katrina.

With this in mind, it only seems logical that the over-hyped coverage of all things weather-related has added to the nation's fear of global warming irrespective of whether or not such fears are warranted.

Such was certainly suggested in an article published in Saturday's Toronto Star which accused American media of being prone to "storm porn" (emphasis added throughout, h/t to NB reader Linda):

TV Newser has some juicy details from a February Men's Journal interview with “Countdown” host Keith Olbermann.

In it, an MSNBC executive admitted “Keith runs MSNBC.” Good to know that the basement-dwelling cable net is banking on a conspiracy-addled, orange-tinted Edward R Murrow wannabe for corporate guidance.

Olbermann went from almost fired to pulling the corporate strings in two years, which is impressive for a man with a habit of "trashing people publicly, even his employers" (bold mine):

But he seems to be doing well for himself in the office now. [Interviewer Paul] Tullis cites a senior executive at MSNBC, who says, "Keith runs MSNBC. It's been an amazing turnaround, because two years ago they were going to cancel him. Because of his success, he's in charge. Chris Matthews is infuriated by it."

The Democrats may still refuse to debate on Fox News Channel, but they’re getting increasingly competitive enough with each other to appear on the morning show Fox & Friends all of a sudden. Hillary Clinton made her second appearance of the year on Wednesday after her New Hampshire squeaker, and Barack Obama followed. But this may be the one media outlet where Obama gets tougher treatment than Mrs. Clinton. While co-host Brian Kilmeade turned at the end to some tougher questions on al-Qaeda, it was smooth sailing for Hillary.

Here were the toughies Hillary had to face on the supposedly harsh and right-wing Fox News Channel [transcripts by MRC's Justin McCarthy]:

1. Gretchen Carlson asked: "You know, I thought of course the line of your speech last night that everyone will be talking about this morning is the one where you said ‘I listened to you,’ meaning the people in New Hampshire, ‘and in the process I found my own voice.’ What did you mean by that?"

Rush Limbaugh called out Old Media for playing favorites in the GOP presidential race. He was, as usual, dead-on correct.

Audio is at Hot Air.

The transcript, which will remain available at Limbaugh's site until next Friday, is here.

Here is the first portion of what he had to say (bold is mine):

Imagine if a longtime adviser for Rudy Giuliani, John McCain, Mitt Romney, Mike Huckabee, or Fred Thompson had been arrested for drunk driving two nights before the New Hampshire primary. Do you think this would have gotten reported?

Probably as much as Hillary's crying game, or even more, correct?

Well, Newsweek's Stumper blog reported Friday evening that longtime Clinton adviser and confidante Sidney Blumenthal was so arrested in Nashua, New Hampshire, on Monday, astoundingly with no press coverage of the event (emphasis added, h/t NBer EvilCon555):

If you're a sports fan, this is quite a weekend.

First, the NFL playoffs:

Does Seattle have a prayer in Green Bay today? Forecast calls for light snow, not too cold, and very calm winds.

Does Jacksonville have a prayer in Foxboro? Pretty mild temperatures forecast: mid to high 30's with virtually no wind.

Second, some good college basketball today:

NC State at #1 North Carolina is always fun!

#4 Washington State at #5 UCLA could be wonderful!

#3 Kansas at Nebraska. Can my son's Huskers pull another stunning upset this year?

Connecticut at #8 Georgetown. When these two perennial Big East powerhouses meet, it's ALWAYS fun!

For general discussion and debate. Possible talking point: the Clintons are in trouble over some potentially racist remarks...

A series of comments from Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, her husband and her supporters are spurring a racial backlash and adding a divisive edge to the presidential primary as the candidates head south to heavily African-American South Carolina.

The comments, which ranged from the New York senator appearing to diminish the role of Martin Luther King Jr. in the civil rights movement — an aide later said she misspoke — to Bill Clinton dismissing Sen. Barack Obama’s image in the media as a “fairy tale” — generated outrage on black radio, black blogs and cable television. And now they've drawn the attention of prominent African-American politicians.

Will this be serious for Hillary's campaign, or will the media, as usual, give a Democrat a pass for racially insensitive remarks -- especially America's first "black" president?

On the other hand, is this whole "controversy" being advanced by Obama supporters -- paint the Clintons as racist in order to assist a black candidate?

Pacifica Radio’s "Democracy Now" program hit Barack Obama from the left on Wednesday after he lost in New Hampshire, so far from the left that Professor Michael Eric Dyson, a leftist favored by NBC anchor Brian Williams, was almost the conservative in a debate with Glen Ford of Black Agenda Report. Ford thought Obama was "relentlessly sending out signals to white people that a vote for Barack Obama, an Obama presidency, would signal the beginning of the end of black-specific agitation, that it would take race discourse off of the table."

An end to racial agitation like Jesse Jackson’s and Al Sharpton’s? Has Obama specifically promised that anywhere? But "Democracy Now" host Amy Goodman added her two pennies to that, airing an interview segment where Jesse Jackson confirmed that Obama wants "distance" for "strategic purposes," and will not campaign with Jackson:

How left-wing is taxpayer-supported radio? WBAI-FM, the New York City home of the radical Pacifica Radio network that gets roughly $1 million each year in federal funds, is asking for contributions and offering a premium for $100 donors: a President Bush trash can that says "White Trash" on it.

For a short time only, WBAI offers a signed and numbered limited edition replica of New York artist, Robert Cenedella's "Basket Sculpture." This round metal construction is functional as a waste basket. Each measures 12" x 10".

For $100, which includes both shipping and a donation to WBAI, you can have the pleasure of trashing the President every day just as he has trashed the United States Constitution.

Katie Couric in her "Katie's Couric's Notebook" makes a digusting homage to her apparent gal pal Hillary Clinton by directly comparing her campaign to become America's first female president of the United States to Sir Edmund Hillary's historic scaling of Mount Everest in 1953. The "priming" of the viewer to make a direct association between (as Couric suggests) "the two Hillarys" is simply one of the most unabashed and disgraceful infringements of journalistic (and human) ethics I have ever witnessed from our beloved MSM (not to mention stupid - Sir Edmund Hillary's expedition was not "like that other Hillary...(in that) he set out to make history" - he made history while Hillary Clinton was still three years old!). To diminish the death of Sir Edmund Hillary, scaler of Himalayan peaks, forger of tracks across Antarctic ice, navigator of the Ganges river valley, and penultimate explorer, by dubbing him "the Other Hillary" to the self-righteous, self-serving and unethical Hillary Clinton is as good as spitting on his gravesite.

Insisting he's “not a conspiracy theorist,” Bill Maher, on the Friday night season debut of his HBO show, suggested that because Republicans prefer to run against Hillary Clinton than Barack Obama they engineered her victory in New Hampshire's Democratic primary. Later on Real Time with Bill Maher, former ABC News reporter/anchor Catherine Crier claimed “you have to work really hard to find a truly liberal” politician and “Hillary Clinton and John Edwards and Barack Obama are not raging liberals.”

Maher opened the panel discussion, with Tony Snow, Crier and Mark Cuban, by observing how he found it “odd” that polls showed Obama ahead in New Hampshire, yet Clinton won, and “it does bother me that a private company runs the polling machines and that only they certainly seem to know what went on.” A couple of minutes later, Maher noted that “in crime they always ask...'who profits?'” Looking at Snow, he then pondered:

Who profits from the Hillary victory? They don't want to run against Obama. Your party does not want to run against him. They want to run against Hillary Clinton and now they have a race with her in it.

A bemused Snow called Maher's reasoning “totally wacko!” and “completely wacked” as Maher contended Republicans have thrown races before: “They did it to Ed Muskie.”

Video (28 secs): Windows Media (1 MB), plus MP3 audio (170 KB). Click and play Flash video in the MRC.org posting.

If you hear any small booms it will probably be the implosion of Koskids heads...

Three young women have returned home to Michigan after being rescued from an orphanage in a remote village of strife-torn Kenya by Blackwater Worldwide.

Blackwater is under fire from Congress over a September shooting in Baghdad that left 17 Iraqi civilians dead, but the private security firm is receiving nothing but praise from the father of two of the rescued women.

"It wasn't the image that most people have of Blackwater," he said. "But I can assure you these are dedicated men, professionals who know how to help people in times like this.' "

Blackwater spokeswoman Anne E. Tyrrell said the "best thing" about being a company owned, managed and staffed almost entirely by U.S. military veterans and former law-enforcement agents "is that it puts us in a position to help people who need it most.

"These are three incredible girls who went to Kenya to help and ended up needing help," she said. "We are delighted they are safe and at home with their families."