In a moment of excess hyperbole, even for Chris Matthews, at about 7:33 PM EST Tuesday night, Matthews claimed “nothing's done since '65, when we did the civil rights bill,” to fix the nation's problems. Fretting about how the country cannot afford a prolonged Clinton-Obama battle in Pennsylvania because “this country's in a rut” with “everything” from the war to the economy, Matthews ridiculously asserted:

We can't fix anything, whether it's Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, we can't fix our health care system. Nothing's done since '65, when we did the civil rights bill.

We did “fix” the Soviet empire since 1965 and Ronald Reagan managed to fix an economy in a rut under the direction of Matthews' former employer, Jimmy Carter. And, of course, most of the welfare state was created and expanded greatly since 1965, including Medicare and Medicaid. But, naturally, Matthews failed to recognize that maybe the creation and expansion of these massive government entitlement programs is part of the problem.

Hat tip: MRC's Rich Noyes

Touchy, touchy, Chris!

Palpably stung by Ken Blackwell's observation that Republicans had lost their way by running like Reagan but governing like Carter, Chris Matthews -- former speechwriter to the president from Plains -- cracked back by playing the Abramoff card and claiming Republicans are more corrupt than Dems.

Blackwell, the impressive former Secretary of State of Ohio and past candidate for Buckeye state governor, was Matthews' guest during this evening's MSNBC election coverage. Blackwell was discussing what it would take for Republicans to win in 2008.

KEN BLACKWELL: My view is this, Chris, that we got off track. We started to campaign like Ronald Reagan and at times govern like Jimmy Carter. And as a consequence, people, people really questioned whether or not we were true to our message . . .

Ken's comment clearly cut Chris to the quick. He tried to parry.

CHRIS MATTHEWS: I just don't think Jack Abramoff worked for the Carter administration, Ken, did he?

View video here.

Two quick notes about remarks made by Katie Couric on Tuesday's CBS Evening News in a taped piece in which she spoke with Columbus-area “blue-collar” voters:

♦ Talking to the husband and wife owners of a restaurant, Couric learned “an African-American candidate may be more acceptable than a woman.” The husband observed that “Hillary's made emotional outbursts” and worried what would happen “if she's put in a tragic situation where, God forbid, we have another terrorist attack or something like that.” To which, Couric retorted:

But some of the male candidates, like Mitt Romney, have gotten misty eyed as well.

♦ As she walked inside a Honda plant, Couric described Ohio's “working class” voters as “often culturally conservative -- against abortion rights, gun control, and hawkish on defense.” Of course, she could just as easily have phrased that as “against abortion rights and for gun rights” or “pro-life and pro-gun.”

Now that Barack Obama is closing in on the Democratic nomination, some are wondering whether the media will be tougher in their coverage. There’s a better question: is it possible to be any softer? The media writ large have been sounding like they’re covering a messiah more than a man. So was Hillary Clinton right to complain that Barack Obama has been more celebrated rather than vetted?

Let’s be clear. Hillary Clinton has been the beneficiary of so many cotton-candy profiles and “I Am Woman” honorifics that it’s almost impossible that her bad press will ever come anywhere close to balancing out her mountains of puff over the last 15 years. The “rough” press she’s been getting since Super Tuesday is merely the political prognosticators noticing she’s getting her clock cleaned by 18 to 20 points in a lot of states. Even so, she’s still being awarded softball interviews – like the latest in a long series of twinkly Katie Couric gal-pal segments on “60 Minutes.”

Tonight may be the make-it-or-break-it moment for Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton as she faces off against Barack Obama.

Will Obama be able to pull it off? Stay tuned. Post your comments and observations here on this thread or, if you are registered, join the live NB chat.

As often happens when he’s interviewing a Democrat, Daily Show host Jon Stewart dropped most of his smart-aleck routine when he interviewed Hillary Clinton on Monday night. Instead, Stewart took the opportunity to hail the “historic race,” comparing Clinton and Barack Obama to baseball stars Ted Williams and Joe DiMaggio, and that the country might not appreciate “watching two historical figures battle it out.” He also hailed Clinton, Obama, and McCain as people who might serve in each other’s Cabinets, causing Clinton to claim mysteriously that she’d like to appoint a bipartisan Cabinet and thinks there are “good ideas across the political spectrum.”

As the interview wound to a close, Stewart declared that the American people ought to be gearing up to remember Hillary vs. Barack as this century's Lincoln-Douglas debates on the scale or sheer momentousness:

Monday’s NBC psychic crime drama "Medium" featured a plot line in which an Arizona senator and former POW is discovered to be a two-time murderer and a cannibal. While it is safe to assume that the story was written before the Hollywood writers’ strike, and before the rise of John McCain to front-runner status for the GOP presidential nomination, the blatant use of McCain’s personal history, as a politician and Vietnam POW, as grist to feed the murderous plot is obvious.

Video (1:43): Windows Media (6.23 MB), or MP3 audio (498 kB).

In Monday’s episode, titled “Aftertaste”, the medium (“Allison DuBois,” played by Patricia Arquette) suspects an ex-POW Arizona state senator is involved in a murder she sees in her dreams. Through a series of psychic flashbacks, she discovers that the senator (“Jed Garrity,” played by Gregory Itzin), as a young Army captain held by the North Vietnamese, proposed to his cellmates that they kill and eat a dying American soldier rather than starve to death. “Garrity” drew the short straw and committed the actual murder himself by strangling the dying soldier.

If Rush Limbaugh, in promoting his radio show, said we must "ignore partisanship," would anyone take those words seriously? Limbaugh did not air that ad, but left wing MSNBC host Keith Olbermann did. In an MSNBC "Decision 2008" ad, Olbermann spoke of the need to "ignore partisanship" under inspirational music and prominent American flag displays.

"We as citizens must at some point ignore partisanship, not that we may prosper as a nation, but that merely we may function as a nation."

Video (22 seconds): Windows Media (1.32 MB), plus MP3 audio (158 kB).

The ad then displayed a large photo of Olbermann followed by a brief slideshow of all of the MSNBC/NBC political correspondents. The Daily Kos blogger should explain when his highly partisan show will "ignore partisanship."Olbermann has called President Bush a "fascist" "engaging in terrorism," a "liar" and "idiot in chief." He even asked if there is an element in the Republican party that wants to re-segregate America.

Also of irony, was MSNBC’s prominent American flag displays. Back in 2002, then NBC Nightly News anchor Tom Brokaw explained that he does not wear an American flag on his lapel pin because he feels it’s an implied endorsement of the Bush administration.

Update below.

Neither the Seattle Times nor the Seattle Post-Intelligencer are high on your average conservative's daily to-read list, but at least the latter is not gun-shy about calling recent suspected Earth Liberation Front (ELF) arsons acts of eco-terrorism.

The Times opted for "radical environmentalists" to tag ELF even though it's pretty clear that investigators clearly think the Street of Dreams fires in Snohomish County, Wash., are terroristic in nature. As reporter Steve Miletich noted in paragraph seven of his March 4 article, "Hunt is on: Who torched the Street of Dreams?":

Working with few clues, federal investigators face a daunting task as they try to determine whether a shadowy group of radical environmentalists torched three multimillion-dollar homes along a Street of Dreams in Snohomish County on Monday.

[...]

In a story on Sunday’s CBS "60 Minutes," on a new non-lethal ray gun developed by the Pentagon, anchor David Martin explained why such a weapon is not yet on the battlefield: "Pentagon officials call it a major breakthrough which could change the rules of war and save huge numbers of lives in Iraq. But it's still not there. That's because, in the middle of a war, the military just can't bring itself to trust a weapon that doesn't kill."

However, Martin later explains that part of the reason for the weapon not being deployed in Iraq is due to political concerns over the potential abuse of such a weapon, especially given the extreme play past abuses have gotten in the media. He talked to Assistant Secretary of the Air Force, Sue Payton:

In rural parts of the country, it happens from time to time; a person appears uninvited on someone's property, and the landowner tells them that "elsewhere" is a better place to be. Typically these confrontations are benign in nature, even when on occasion either the property owner or the trespasser turns out to be armed.

Such was the case in Texas this past weekend when a Danish reporter wandered into the yard of an elderly Texas woman, and she shooed him off, a gun apparently in hand.

CNN's Ed Henry made quite a big deal out of the incident, promoting it as a near "international incident" writing in the lede that the Dane came "this close to getting shot."

He characterized the confrontation this way:

On Sunday’s "60 Minutes," anchor Scott Pelley profiled a charity called Remote Area Medical and its efforts to provide free health care in the United States:

Recently, we heard about an American relief organization that air drops doctors and medicine into the jungles of the Amazon. Its called Remote Area Medical, or "RAM" for short. Remote Area Medical sets up emergency clinics where the needs are greatest. But these days, that's not the Amazon -- this charity founded to help people who can't reach medical care now finds itself throwing America a lifeline.

Later, Pelley asked the charity’s founder, Stan Brock, about this: "You've created this medical organization that was designed to go into third world countries, to go into remote places, and you're now doing 60% of your work in urban and rural America. What are we supposed to make of that?"

As NewsBusters reported, there's an international conference on climate change happening in New York City wherein well-renowned scientists from all over the world are meeting to discuss anthropogenic global warming.

On Monday, climate alarmist Miles O'Brien of CNN actually had the gall to imply that speakers and attendees of this conference are Flat Earthers.

I kid you not.

During Monday evening's "Anderson Cooper 360 Degrees," O'Brien concluded his videotaped report concerning this conference (video available here at end of blog post):

By now most people are aware that the founder of The Weather Channel, John Coleman, said global warming is "the greatest scam in history" last November.

On Monday, while speaking at the 2008 International Conference on Climate Change being held in New York City, Coleman took his criticisms further by advocating that all those involved in the sale and marketing of carbon credits, including Al Gore, should be sued "to finally put some light on the fraud of global warming.”

As reported over at the Business & Media Institute by my colleague Jeff Poor (emphasis added throughout, h/t to many):

For general discussion and debate. Possible talking point: D-Day for Clinton and Obama.

• Who will take Ohio and Texas today, and by how much?
• What will the delegate count be at the end of the evening?
• According to WaPo, "A new Washington Post-ABC News poll finds that should she win one of these two states, 67 percent of Democrats said she should continue her candidacy. And even if she were to lose both, a sizable 45 percent said she should soldier on."
• Regardless of what happens, will she fight on through Pennsylvania thereby extending this battle for at least another six weeks? Or, will she do what is in the best interest of her party, and drop out if she doesn't win big today?

So, how is a Rush Limbaugh caller's comments news?

Unfortunately, this is the kind of silliness that the net is sometimes prone to as sites try to fill pages with "news." On March 3 during the Rush Limbaugh radio show, one of the callers.... remember, I said a caller here... said that Barack Obama reminded her (the caller's) daughter of the cartoon character Curious George. And, um, this is somehow news? Well, it is according to ABC News at least. Excitedly, ABC's Political Radar blog delivered us a headline that virtually screams "look at the racist" -- Limbaugh Caller Says Obama Reminds Daughter of Cartoon Monkey.

On March 3rd, the Political Radar blog breathlessly reports this momentous "news," this stupendous, stultifying, divisive, pointless, news. Even more shocking, Limbaugh "laughed at the caller's comment." The NERVE!

Has the Clinton campaign been caught engaging in ethnic stereotyping of Latinos? Jake Tapper suggests it has. ABC News' Senior National Correspondent reported from Texas this morning. After airing footage of Hillary on the stump reminiscing about her days in Texas back in 1972 working on the McGovern campaign, Tapper continued.

JAKE TAPPER: That experience may the reason why Clinton's campaign asks supporters in Spanish-language TV ads to show up at tonight's caucuses 15 minutes earlier than it asks supporters in English ads, suggesting to some Hispanic political observers that the Clinton campaign thinks Latinos might be a little tardy.

¡Ay caramba!

View video here.

One obvious advantage Barack Obama will wield over John McCain in the general election is the Celebrity Media, from Oprah and Ellen and Tyra on television to the supermarket weeklies like People and UsWeekly, a celebrity magazine published by Wenner Media (as in ultraliberal Jann Wenner of Rolling Stone fame.) The March 10 issue has an exclusive (softball) interview with Obama, and a photo spread with the headline "HE REALLY IS JUST LIKE US!" The picture captions profess amazement that Obama is a human:

I Pick Up Groceries!

I Play With Babies!

I Love Hot Sauce!

I Pose by the [Christmas] Tree!

I Ride With My Kids! [on amusement park rides]

As the national media profess outrage at the injustice of "Internet whispers" against Obama, consider the balancing force of the celebrity media treating Obama as amazing because he buys fruit at the supermarket.

Jury selection began Monday in Chicago in the trial of Syrian-born businessman Antoin "Tony" Rezko, a major supporter of Barack Obama. Two days before the 2006 elections in which Democrats won by running against a "culture of corruption," Chicago newspapers revealed that Obama purchased a home in the summer of 2005 for $1.6 million, but to complete the deal, he would need to buy an adjoining parcel for $625,000. Instead, Mrs. Rezko bought the parcel, and they closed on the properties on the same day. Rezko was already under federal investigation for kickback schemes.

To a political opponent, this might resemble a lobbyist’s sweetheart deal like the one that started Rep. Duke Cunningham’s political decline, where a lobbyist paid $700,000 more for Cunningham’s home than his own sale price months later. But the national media are anything but opponents of Obama’s. An MRC analysis shows that despite Obama’s high national profile as a Democratic symbol of hope, network TV news and the national news magazines have done a dreadful job of telling the Rezko story, and have struggled not to repeat it.