class, baby:)

A few weeks ago

Outgoing President George W. Bush quietly boarded his helicopter and left for Texas, commenting only: "Today is not about me. Today is an historical day for our nation and people."  

Eight years ago
Outgoing President Bill Clinton scheduled two separate radio addresses to the nation, and organized a public farewell speech/rally in downtown Washington DC, scheduled to directly conflict with incoming President Bush's inauguration ceremony.

A few weeks ago
President Bush left office without issuing a single Presidential pardon, only granting a commutation of sentence to two former border patrol agents convicted of shooting a convicted drug smuggler.  He did not grant any type of clemency to Scooter Libby or any other former political aide, ally, or business partner.

Radio newsman Paul Harvey, whose career spanned seven decades of broadcast excellence, passed away earlier today Fox News is reporting. He was 90 years of age.

Harvey was a consummate professional and truly a legend in his craft.

ABC Radio network-affiliated radio stations are currently playing a retrospective, including classic clips of Harvey's news and comment broadcasts.

Just how little is the sanctity of marriage and fidelity revered by the mainstream media?

Consider the following astounding statement made today by "CNN Saturday Morning News" host T. J. Holmes:

Unfortunately, you know, people have to stop cheating in this recession. But given the recession, people are being forced to improvise a little bit more as they're looking for a little variety out there in their lives.

Unfortunately? Mightn't a decline in adultery be a hidden benefit during this economic downtown?

Apparently not (video embedded below the fold with full transcript):

Conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh spoke at the Conservative Political Action Conference Saturday in what he called his "first ever address to the nation":

Parts two through ten embedded below the fold (previous problem for Internet Explorer users has been remedied):

Conservative author Ann Coulter spoke at the Conservative Political Action Conference Saturday (h/t Hot Air):

Part two is embedded below the fold:

A George Soros-funded political action group has created a new advertisement bashing Republicans for having the nerve to pay attention to conservative talk show host Rush Limbaugh.

For those unfamiliar, Americans United for Change is the far-left organization that brought a bus featuring videos of United States' soldiers being killed in Iraq to last August's Democratic National Convention.

They're also responsible for ads created in 2005 which aided in blocking Social Security reform.

Now they're urging citizens to "Tell Republicans that Americans Won't Take NO for an Answer" (embedded video and transcript below the fold):

A carnival float depicting President Obama with Europe being dragged along is seen during the traditional carnival parade in Duesseldorf, Germany, on Monday, Feb. 23, 2009. (AP Photo/Frank Augstein) [H/t Gary H.]

Everyone who enjoys NFL football games knows they’re going to be sitting through an avalanche of those awkward ads for erectile-dysfunction drugs, and ads soaked in sex and violence selling new movies or prime-time TV shows. Despite this barrage, the NFL has managed to show some standards, believe it or not.

They refused a Super Bowl commercial from the website AshleyMadison.com because of its unusual product, a dating service for married people who want to commit adultery – or as they strangely describe it, they enable "married dating." Their slogan is "Life’s short. Have an affair."

But this Home Wreckers Incorporated found a way around the NFL, such as airing local ads during the Super Bowl on NBC-affiliated KPRC in Houston. CEO Noel Biderman boasted in a press release that he ran his new female-targeted commercial because "In Texas, men love their football and women love to cheat!" He also claimed Texas is his company’s fastest growing market with over 200,000 members signed up in the last two years.

Associated Press reporter Ben Feller needs a better copy editor to keep him from inventing history for Barack Obama. Near the end of a dispatch filed early Saturday morning on the president’s speech at Camp Lejeune on Iraq, Feller claimed:

The president who voted against the war as senator and ran against in his upstart White House bid said the Iraq conflict is one huge, painful lesson.

The vote authorizing President Bush to wage combat operations in Iraq was on October 11, 2002, and Obama wasn’t elected until 2004. Then Feller failed to note Obama’s "no" vote in the Senate on Bush’s successful surge of troops, although this may have been the most critical-sounding passage in his story:

He applauded the armed forces for its successes in Iraq, where U.S. deaths and violence in many parts of the country are significantly down. He never credited Bush's buildup of troops in 2007 as contributing to those improvements.

Feller opened with a flourish: "President Barack Obama consigned the Iraq war to history Friday, declaring he will end combat operations within 18 months and open a new era of diplomacy in the Middle East."

ABC News is excited about porn. At least excited by the "fact" that conservative and religious states have the highest levels of porn usage in the country. This, ABC says, is according to a study by Benjamin Edelman at Harvard Business School. Yes, it's another one of those dime-a-dozen studies.

ABC trumpets the bare "facts" in its February 28 piece titled, "Porn in the USA: Conservatives Are Biggest Consumers." In its first few paragraphs the report claims that, "Those states that do consume the most porn tend to be more conservative and religious" than states in the more liberal areas of the country. But there is a problem with ABC's heavy-handed claim. Even the Harvard researcher doesn't put too much emphasis on the "conservative states" aspect because his data doesn't show a very wide gulf between states, conservative or not.

For general discussion and debate. Possible talking point: Has Obama declared war on investors, entrepreneurs, and businesses?

Raising the marginal tax rate on successful earners, capital, dividends, and all the private funds is a function of Obama’s left-wing social vision, and a repudiation of his economic-recovery statements. Ditto for his sweeping government-planning-and-spending program, which will wind up raising federal outlays as a share of GDP to at least 30 percent, if not more, over the next 10 years.

Is Larry Kudlow right?

"I am a firm believer in the people. If given the truth, they can be depended upon to meet any national crisis. The great point is to bring them the real facts, and beer."
-Abraham Lincoln

 

Given the current state of politics and the media......at least we have beer. 

NPR's Nina Totenberg revealed Friday, not surprisingly, that she was enchanted by President Barack Obama's address earlier in the week to a joint session of Congress. “It made me feel pretty good. I thought it was a great speech,” she enthused before relaying a contrast with former President George W. Bush: “A friend of mine said, 'oh my God, we have a President again!'” Totenberg added that “in some ways, that's not fair to Bush,” but she insisted: “That's the way you felt. You felt this was a guy who was totally in charge.”

Totenberg quoted her friend immediately after Newsweek's Evan Thomas trumpeted on Inside Washington: “He looked like he belonged there unlike President Bush who sometimes seemed like 'what is this guy doing there?' even if you like him, 'he really doesn't belong.' He showed natural leadership and that alone made a big difference.”

In Friday night stories on President Barack Obama's plan to reduce troops in Iraq by 90,000, neither the CBS Evening News nor NBC Nightly News mentioned a key factor raised by ABC reporters Jake Tapper and Martha Raddatz.

On ABC's World News, over video of Tapper standing at Camp Lejeune with the Secretary of Defense and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Tapper noted: “Defense Secretary [Robert] Gates and Joint Chiefs Chairman Mike Mullen today credited President Bush's surge, opposed by then-Senator Obama, with helping to pave the way for today's announcement.” Viewers then heard a short soundbite from Gates: “It clearly has put us in a very different place in terms of where Iraq is.”

Up next on the February 27 newscast, Raddatz addressed the military's reaction, and shared her assessment:

I think if there hadn't been a surge, if there hadn't been such success, you wouldn't have seen those Marines clapping today. It would be a very different kind of speech.

Law may allow preemptive, premature rescission of broadcast licenses

By Any Other Name Still Stings

Yesterday by a whopping 87-11 vote, the Senate added as a rider to the passed DC voting rights bill the Broadcaster Freedom Act (BFA).  The BFA, if also passed by the House and signed by the President, would kill once and for all the Censorship Doctrine -- also mis-known as the "Fairness" Doctrine. 

Much Conservative celebration ensued.  However, the revelry is misplaced and premature.  It means only that the Left means to destroy Conservative and Christian talk radio by other means.

Because another rider was added via a party-line 57-41 vote.  Written by Illinois Democratic Senator Dick Durbin, S.160's Purpose is "To encourage and promote diversity in communication media ownership, and to ensure that the public airwaves are used in the public interest."

Within hours of CNN Newsroom anchor Rick Sanchez bemoaning a purported increase in the number of hate groups, CNN correspondent Kitty Pilgrim provided some much needed network balance by reporting - get ready here - facts.  On Thursday's CNN Newsroom, Rick Sanchez asked a question and then, as usual, provided his own answer:

SANCHEZ: Since the administration of Barack Obama began in this country, has there been a heightened sense of any kind of hate? We first started discovering this last night in one of the interviews we did.

But before we do that, I want to show you something now. I want you to just write down some numbers. These are hate groups in the United States, all right? Let's start with the first year. I think we're going to start with the year 2000 -- 602 hate groups at the time in the United States, as counted by the best resource on this, by the way, the Southern Poverty Law Center.

Now let's go to 2007. Uh-oh. It's going up, 888. Now let's go to 2008. Uh-oh. Going up again, 926.

Minutes later, Sanchez interviewed Mark Potok of the Southern Poverty Law Center:

POTOK: Well, as you suggested in your intro, there have been quite a growth over the last eight years.

Until about a year ago, that growth was driven almost entirely by these groups pushing the immigration issue and especially the idea that people with brown skin are kind of coming to destroy our country. In the last year, though, we have seen several other factors come into play, you know, the assent, obviously, of Barack Obama, the announcement by the Census Bureau that whites will lose their majority in this country along about the year 2042, and the crashing economy and worsening unemployment.

After his recent trip to the region, George Clooney discusses the situation in Darfur with Vice-President Biden. February 24, 2009.

Our friends over at Radio Equalizer caught liberal radio talker Mike Malloy in a bit of hypocrisy. Malloy obviously thought his wife was a scream as she pretended to be Governor Bobby Jindal portraying him as an outsourced computer tech from India replete with cutsey faux Indian accent. Malloy's wife acted as if Jindal was the Simpson's character Apu, or something.

Now, one cannot help but realize that if a conservative had indulged in such an outrageous parody of an ethnic politician, Mike Malloy would have eviscerated that action presenting it as a high crime. Yet, when he and his wife indulge in it... why it's hilarious don't you know?

Now in its 26th year, today the 5,000 edition of the syndicated Wheel of Fortune game show will air around the nation – which reminded me (always looking for a hook to plug our upcoming “DisHonors Awards”) -- that just under two years ago Wheel host Pat Sajak took part in our 2007 event. At the MRC’s “2007 DisHonors Awards: Roasting the Most Outrageously Biased Liberal Reporters of 2006,” the showcase of the MRC's 20th Anniversary Gala on March 29, 2007, Sajak accepted, on behalf of Rosie O'Donnell, the “I’m Not a Political Genius But I Play One on TV Award.” O'Donnell won for spouting:

As a result of the [9/11] attack and the killing of nearly 3,000 innocent people, we invaded two countries and killed innocent people in their countries....Radical Christianity is just as threatening as radical Islam in a country like America.

Video is of Herman Cain introducing Sajak and then Sajak's humorous remarks as he accepted the award in jest for O'Donnell.

Which all goes to remind everyone that this year's “DisHonors Awards for the Worst Reporting of the Year” with the annual “William F. Buckley Award for Media Excellence” to be presented to Brit Hume, are just 20 days away. Every year, we sell out. So don't procrastinate on getting a ticket.

MSNBC cable-show host Rachel Maddow shares much in common with Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal.

Both are wonkish former Rhodes scholars in their mid-30s, bright and personable. Each could be perceived as a political outsider, Maddow for being openly gay, Jindal by dint of skin hue and ethnicity.

Their politics are poles apart, however, with Maddow an unabashed liberal and Jindal a staunch conservative. And that Maddow views Jindal as a threat became clear this week.

After Jindal delivered the Republican response to President Obama's address before Congress on Tuesday, he became the recipient of withering criticism from both sides of the aisle. Maddow's critique of Jindal, however, was so over the top that it bore little resemblance to what Jindal actually said --