ABC and CBS on Friday night delivered glowing assessments of President Barack Obama's first three days in office, with ABC's George Stephanopoulos declaring “this first week was disciplined and strategic” enabling “sweeping change.” Fill-in anchor Diane Sawyer pronounced: “Change the tone and change it at warp speed.” CBS's Bob Schieffer relayed how “I think he's off to a very good start” and marveled at how -- given “the severity of the problems” -- any “human” could “live up to the expectations,” yet Obama “has laid out an ambitious program” and by closing Guantanamo and deciding to “outlaw torture” he “has told the world that we will practice what we preach.”

Admiring how Obama's discipline is meant to demonstrate he's “moving on all fronts to bring change,” Stephanopoulos trumpeted how on day one and day two he's used executive orders to bring “sweeping change to open government,” “sweeping change in foreign policy” and “then day three, today, two promises kept.”

**Video Below Fold**

Good old Chris "Tingle" Matthews. We can always look to him to lower his own credibility just one more notch with each and every broadcast, can't we? This time Ol' Chris Tingle has debased himself by telling the four or five viewers he has that he thinks Governor Sarah Palin can't read or write. Apparently Matthews doesn't think that Palin has the capacity to write the book she is reportedly shopping around.

Even Politico can't explain away Tingle's ignorance here saying that "Matthews suggested Friday that Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin (R) may not have the reading or writing ability needed to complete the book she is reportedly shopping."

You've heard it here, there and everywhere in the news media - the time is now for a big-government economic stimulus package, not only to revive the economy, but to salvage America's crumbling infrastructure.

That's one of the selling points used over and over again by pundits, as they are paraded out repeatedly on broadcast and cable network news programs - that so-called "shovel-ready" projects will challenge economic woes by revitalizing something we need to do anyway. But only 3 percent of the Obama stimulus plan is slated for such projects.

"The total size of the plan is about $750 to $800 billion - roughly $300 billion is for tax cuts for businesses and individuals," CBS correspondent Chip Reid said on CBS's Jan. 12 "The Early Show." "The rest will be spent on everything from roads and bridges to renewable energy to create three to 4 million jobs. Republicans are raising red flags about the amount of spending."

MRC Director of Media Analysis Tim Graham is scheduled to appear on the "Hannity" show on Fox News Channel on Friday night. In a "media mash" segment, Tim will discuss some of the latest media-bias issues and video. (We're told it's near the end of the hour.)

The show airs at 9 pm and midnight Eastern time.

During a segment on Friday’s Newsroom program, CNN senior medical correspondent Elizabeth Cohen heralded the FDA’s approval of the first human clinical trial involving embryo-destroying stem cell research. Cohen then gave a soft interview of the president and CEO of the company involved in the trial, who made the bizarre claim that new medical breakthroughs, including corneal transplants and anesthesia for women in childbirth, were supposedly “always met with concerns from the Religious Right” in the past. Cohen did not follow-up to this statement by the CEO.

The segment, which began 17 minutes into the 11 am Eastern hour of the CNN program, began with anchor Tony Harris trumpeting how the FDA’s approval of the embryonic stem cell clinical trial represented “major milestone in this field of research.” He then asked Cohen to “explain to us how significant a day this is.” The correspondent gushed in reply, “This is a big day, and I will tell you, I interviewed Christopher Reeve many times about stem cells, and I think he would probably be smiling if he were here to see this day.” She did not bring up the moral objections to embryo destruction in her explanation of the breaking news item which followed, just that “some say that some of this research has been overblown, and a it’s not quite as promising as many people say.”

"Why would a show trial or witchhunt be bad?"

So asked Chris Matthews of Frank Gaffney of the Center for Security Policy on today's edition of "Hardball." Gaffney was joined by liberal pundit David Corn of Mother Jones magazine in a segment around 5:20 p.m. ET and they were discussing the call by liberal Rep. John Conyers (D-Mich.) for a war crimes investigation of senior Bush administration officials and terrorist detainee interrogators.

For video of the exchange, click the play button on the embedded video.

In a rare instance of critical coverage of the Obama administration on Friday’s CBS Early Show, co-host Maggie Rodriguez asked Democratic Congresswoman Jane Harman about Obama’s decision to close Guantanamo Bay: "I'm not sure if you've seen the New York Times this morning. On the front page there is an article that reveals that a terror suspect released from Guantanamo a few months ago...is now heading up Al Qaeda in Yemen. I'm wondering if this makes you less inclined Representative Harman, to support closing down the prison?"

Harman actually doubted the credibility of the usually left-wing newspaper: "Not at all. Obviously, if that allegation is true and if this fellow has now become a key Al Qaeda operative, that's shocking and disappointing." Harman went on to argue: "But there is really no justification, and there was no justification, for disappearing people in a place that was located offshore America so it was outside the reach of U.S. law. As President Obama said two days ago, there's a false choice between our safety and our values." Rodriguez then turned to Republican Congressman Peter Hoekstra: "It all sounds great, but Representative Hoekstra you said yesterday that's placing 'hope ahead of reality,' right?"

In a follow-up to an January 19 report from the Navy Times, the Army Times reported yesterday that:

The promoter who failed to hold a promised Veterans Inaugural Ball on Tuesday has left behind a trail of angry corporate sponsors and charities who contributed to the event, disappointed performers who were booked for entertainment, and 17 to 25 beauty queens who were told they would be ambassadors for their states at the ball and help raise up to $10 million for veterans’ causes.

Reporter Rick Maze gave a detailed account of promoter Dante Hayes's lies and fabrications:

He disappeared last week, about the time that the performers and beauty queens were expecting to receive final details on their travel and lodging arrangements, and around the same time that the hotel where the ball was supposed to be held pulled the plug when it had not received payment.

[...]

President Obama glares at Joe Biden after the VP makes a joke at the expense of Chief Justice John Roberts at a swearing-in ceremony for senior White House staffers on January 21, 2009.

Obama press secretary Robert Gibbs is conducting his second-ever press conference right now. Below you'll find my live-blogging of the questions. I can't promise verbatim rendering of the questions, but should the Obama administration post a full transcript later on, I'll link to that as well. [see related post]

I'm watching the video via MSNBC.

13:20 ET:  Unid'd female reporter: This morning this event with the bipartisan leaders that the president had... but will there come a point when the president, and democratic leaders in the congress decide to have a vote whether Republicans like it or not?

13:21 ET, same reporter asks follow-up question on bipartisan cooperation

13:22 ET, male reporter asks about economic stimulus plans

13:25:  What kind of reassurances can you give on the economic package. And on Pakistan, did the president consult with the Pakistan government on the strike.

Gibbs replies that he won't address the airstrikes or other military operations.

13:25, Major Garrett, Fox News Channel: You will never speak of any military operation taken by the United States?

Gibbs replies he won't discuss those airstrikes at today's briefing

On Friday's "Good Morning America," reporter John Berman spun Representative Kristen Gillibrand, the soon-to-be announced senator from New York, as a "conservative Democrat." Although she is only beginning her second term in the House, Gillibrand has been endorsed by the aggressively pro-abortion group NARAL. According to the New York Observer, she supports gay marriage.

Additionally, the American Conservative Union ranked her voting record as a meager eight. During the segment, Berman explained that the issue of gun rights prompted the label: "Now, the Gillibrand pick is not without controversy itself. She is a conservative Democrat, favoring gun rights. And the pick has upset some more liberal Democrats." Gillibrand also opposed the TARP bailout legislation.

The New York Times reports that the music played just before Barack Obama took the presidential oath of office was not live (the photo at right is at the Times story via the Associated Press). 

At least one reporter who might be expected to know better wrote a review of the performance that would lead readers to believe that she thought it was live.

Here are the first few paragraphs from Daniel Wakin's quite forgiving report at the Times (HT to Althouse via Instapundit; bolds are mine):

The Frigid Fingers Were Live, but the Music Wasn’t

It was not precisely lip-synching, but pretty close.

The somber, elegiac tones before President Obama’s oath of office at the inauguration on Tuesday came from the instruments of Yo-Yo Ma, Itzhak Perlman and two colleagues. But what the millions on the Mall and watching on television heard was in fact a recording, made two days earlier by the quartet and matched tone for tone by the musicians playing along.

While the media talking heads are still gabbing about the greatness of President Obama’s inauguration, few, if any, are mentioning the purple inauguration ticket holders, who were stuffed thru Washington D.C.’s 3rd street tunnel hoping to see the Obama inauguration. 

A Facebook group titled “Survivors of the Purple Tunnel of Doom” is for individuals who attempted to attend the inauguration with purple tickets and their January 20th horror stories (h/t American Thinker Larrey Anderson).  Here are a few from this morning.  (my emphasis throughout:)

A poster at 1:32am wrote:

Perhaps what infuriates me most is the ongoing denial of the scale of the problem. My personal estimate is that as many as 40,000 ticket holders were trapped in the tunnel (I was one of them). My brother-in-law and I are both Californians, and Feinstein will be hearing from us.

"So this is how liberty dies...with thunderous applause."

Such was ominously stated by the fictional character Padmé Amidala (Natalie Portman) in "Star Wars III: The Revenge of the Sith" as she watched Emperor Palpatine tell a cheering Senate that he had taken all power away from them to form a Galactic Empire (h/t NBer bradbenj5952).

As the film was released in May 2005 shortly after George W. Bush's second inauguration, there were many in the media who saw a parallel between the events depicted and what was going on in our nation.

A former Wall Street Journal editor asked "Is Bush a Sith Lord?" Years later, Hillary Clinton called Dick Cheney Darth Vader.

Yet, if you watch this scene now, given what transpired during the presidential campaign last year and the cheering masses at Tuesday's inauguration, mightn't this have been a rather prescient foreshadowing of events in the future (video embedded below the fold):

As a search of whitehouse.gov caches through the site archive.org shows, the Clinton and George W. Bush administrations often featured transcripts of their daily press briefings easily accessible on the Web site. In the case of the Bush administration, this writer can attest that transcripts of daily briefings often appeared within a few hours after having concluded.

But, as the Obama White House page declares, "Change Has Come to America," with the new administration failing to have a place on the White House Web page for daily press briefings.

The redesigned Web home for the Obama administration went live at noon on Tuesday, and contains a "Briefing Room" page that contains seven sections, including a blog, a weekly video address archive, and an archive for press pool reports, but  no section for the daily press briefings.

What's more, the press pool reports section as of Friday at 10:45 a.m. ET remains empty and may ultimately end up being scrapped. As Washington Post's Anne Kornblut reported yesterday on the paper's Web site, the White House press corps is rather possessive of its pool reports and won't make them available to the White House for publication:

For general discussion and debate. Possible talking point: are media already getting frustrated with President Obama?

A growing media frustration with Barack Obama’s team spilled into the open at Thursday’s briefing, with reporters accusing the White House of stifling access to his oath re-do and giving Obama’s first interview as president to a multi-million dollar inauguration sponsor.

Is this genuine, or isolated? Is it possible for an Obama-loving media member to turn on his or her object of affection, or is this wishful thinking by those sickened by the lovefest?

Conservative author Ann Coulter and Sean Hannity's former liberal co-host Alan Colmes were Dr. Phil's guests Thursday, and an astounding thing happened: the crowd seemed to like Coulter more than Colmes.

I kid you not.

The topics up for discussion were Barack Obama, the presidential campaign, and the media, and whenever Coulter said anything, the crowd applauded loudly.

Maybe even more delicious when Dr. Phil introduced former White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan the audience booed (video embedded below the fold courtesy our dear friend MsUnderestimated, file photo):

Apparently, the AP is cracking down on forums and blogs that link
to, or copy quotes from their content. This is pretty disturbing
considering thats
how most bloggers and forums work. Its how most news gets around the
internet. Not only that, but most news stories are linked to the AP in
some way
or another.

One forum I'm on has already removed all most posts that reference AP
articles! Whats going on here? Can they do that? I would assume it
affects ATS
as well.

Building on the relative popularity of their 8pm and 9pm slots--Olbermann & Maddow, respectively--MSNBC has begun the search for a personality to fill the currently unfilled 10pm slot. 10pm is currently devoted to a replay of Olbermann's "Countdown."

Phil Griffin, the president of MSNBC, is making 10 p.m. a priority now. In an interview on Tuesday in a studio on the Mall, hours after the inauguration of President Obama, Mr. Griffin said that the channel needed a third original show in its lineup.

“We can’t let this momentum stop,” he said.

Momentum, indeed.

The decision by New York Governor David Paterson to name a somewhat conservative replacement (by that state's democrat standards), Kirsten Gillibrand, to Hillary Clinton's U.S. Senate seat has already sent some liberals into a tizzy. They are upset over Gillibrand's support for the National Rifle Association as well as for extending the Bush tax cuts among the issues that disturb them. So when will the mainstream media begin labeling Gillibrand as a "Maverick Democrat?" Or is the "maverick" label applied by the MSM only to Republicans who are liberals or "moderates" (really meaning liberal)?

Caroline Kennedy’s nebulous withdrawal from her bid to be appointed to the U.S. Senate by the virtue of her genes drew an odd front-page story in Friday’s Washington Post: "Does a Glass Ceiling Persist in Politics? Kennedy’s Withdrawal Illustrates a Double Standard, Some Say." Reporter Anne Kornblut’s "some" were Democratic women like Dee Dee Myers and Donna Brazile, and she complained that other Senate appointments (Bennet, Burris, Kaufman) have all been male. She began:

With her abrupt exit this week from consideration for the Senate, Caroline Kennedy added her name to a growing list: women who have sought the nation's highest offices only to face insurmountable hurdles.

Like Hillary Rodham Clinton and Sarah Palin before her, Kennedy illustrated what some say is an enduring double standard in the handling of ambitious female office-seekers. Even as more women step forward as contenders for premier political jobs, observers say, few seem able to get there.

On January 22 the Associated Press posted an interesting little tidbit of news about how Team Obama is treating the press. Apparently, the Obama White House is trying to force news agencies to use Obama's own, special, ostensibly "official" photographer's photos taken at Obama press conferences instead of allowing news agencies to have their own photogs present to record the event. As a result of this attempt by Obama to control his image, the AP and Reuters are a bit miffed that Obama is trying to control the press with such an iron fisted move like this.

All I have to ask is: NOW they get worried that Obama is not too dedicated to freedom of the press? After Obama is fairly elected, NOW the Old Media is beginning to question The One on his treatment of them?

So, where exactly did the communist graphics inspired artist Shepard Fairey get the image of Obama for his ubiquitous "Hope" poster featuring a confident, young Obama intently staring off into the distance for glorious leader's future, anyway? Turns out the celebrated artist stole it from an Associated Press freelance photographer and never bothered to acknowledge where he got it in the first place. I guess the word "ethics" didn't fit as easily on that iconic Fairey poster, eh?

At least one Old Media photographer was curious about the source photo that the poster was based on. Philadelphia Inquirer photog Tom Gralish wondered aloud on his phillynews.com blog about just where the heck that original photo came from? Apparently among the shooter set in the Old Media the question had become a nagging one and Gralish decided to put on his sleuthing cap to track down the original source. After a short time at the task he discovered the original, uncredited photo used by Fairey to make the wildly successful poster that made him bundles of cash.

Our old friend Anne E. Kornblut, Washington Post Staff writer, is at it again with her latest outbreak of Bush Derangement Syndrome. This time she and the Washington Post have teamed up to try to paint the Bush White House as technological Neanderthals in theirs headlined "Staff Finds White House in the Technological Dark Ages." The headline alone tells readers that those poor, poor Obama staffers have come in expecting to get right to work only to find it a mess thanks to Bush's failure to update the tech capacity of the White House. Only, that impression would be simply incorrect. Bush was restricted by certain laws and rules that prevented him from bringing White House operations into the iPhone age.