Jeff Poor's blog

New Washington insider wisdom: If you have the courage of your convictions and support those who do likewise, then you’re not to be taken seriously.

At an event at the Ronald Reagan Building hosted by Roll Call/CQ in Washington, D.C. on Nov. 4, Roll Call Executive Editor Mort Kondracke, also a Fox News contributor took a few shots at the political leadership of Sen. Jim DeMint, R-S.C., and former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin. (h/t Keach Hagey, Politico.com)

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There seems to be a schism between two of the media giants that lefties hold in high regard – the entire MSNBC network and Comedy Central’s “The Daily Show” host Jon Stewart.

After Stewart took a few jabs at MSNBC during his Oct. 30 Washington, D.C. rally, MSNBC host Keith Olbermann took umbrage at the equivalency Stewart drew between his network and the Fox News Channel. In Olbermann’s view, Fox News Channel is a source of evil in the world, while MSNBC is a source of good. However, Stewart, who admittedly sees things from a liberal worldview, questioned MSNBC’s role in damaging political discourse.

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Maybe it was late and a rough night for the Democratic Party that caused this strange line of questioning and it was just the best way MSNBC “Hardball” host Chris Matthews could deal with it.

On MSNBC’s Election Night coverage in the midst of a Republican takeover of the U.S. House of Representatives and with several U.S. Senate races still pending, Matthews deviated from the subject matter and asked Sen. Mark Begich, D-Alaska, about the merits of former GOP vice-presidential nominee and Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin’s 2012 presidential candidacy.

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So what should be made of the historic midterm election of 2010?

While all the pundits try to analyze polling data and read between the lines, syndicated columnist and Fox News contributor Charles Krauthammer has a clearer view. In his view, President Barack Obama’s so-called hope and change agenda is dead and it’s up to Obama to determine his direction.

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When MSNBC’s Chris Matthews starts to rationalize the American electorate’s temperate, get out of the way.

On MSNBC’s Nov. 2 election coverage, “Hardball” host Chris Matthews offered his assessment of how the Democrats and President Barack Obama found themselves in such dire straits. He said it started with the left’s favorite boogeyman of the past, President George W. Bush.

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Assuming you’re a free-market oriented individual and you’re tuning into CNBC’s “Your Money, Your Vote” election coverage, this is probably not what you expected to hear.

Anchor Carl Quintanilla asked CNBC “Mad Money” host Jim Cramer about the Tea Party movement, which by many measures is what has propelled a hugged Republican wave on election night.

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One day before what many say will be an historic election; CNBC appears to finally be embracing one of the most famous moments in the network’s history: A Feb. 19, 2009 “rant heard around the world” by CME Group floor reporter Rick Santelli, which is credited by many for igniting the Tea Party movement.

Throughout the day on Nov. 1, CNBC aired a 30-second spot encouraging viewers to tune into its network for election night coverage. The promo said to tune to CNBC “when the economy is topic A” and concluded with part of Santelli’s famous rant, “President Obama, are you listening?”

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With the recent accounts of anti-gay bullying in the news, there has been a backlash against people and organizations that promote traditional values.

Call it a relentless pursuit to find someone to blame. As politicians like Sen. Jim DeMint, R-S.C., and organizations like Focus on the Family express their concerns over the promotion of homosexuality in the public square, they are regularly blamed for aggressive ignorant anti-gay bullying that results in horrible things, like the suicide of Tyler Clementi, a Rutgers University student. 

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If you’re a left-of-center media personality and you use your national TV platform to call a candidate for the United States Senate a “bitch,” how might you be rewarded? Apparently in this day and age, you’re granted an interview with a former sitting president of your political party.

Even though he wasn’t one of the most distinguished presidents of the United States, former President Jimmy Carter appeared on Joy Behar’s HLN program to promote his book, “White House Diary.” During his interview, Behar asked Carter to offer his assessment of Barack Obama’s performance as president.

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It’s hard to tell what the end goal of HBO “Real Time” host Bill Maher’s is with his constant barrage of elitist shots at the American public. Does he think demeaning the average citizens is the best way to win people over on whatever issue he is carping about on that given day?

On the Oct. 26 broadcast of TBS’s “Lopez Tonight,” Maher took a couple of cynical and contemptible jabs at the America people. After expressing his disappointment in the Obama administration for not agreeing to abide by the will of California voters should Proposition 19 pass and decriminalize marijuana, he explained it was the role of President Barack Obama’s party to steer the country in a particular direction, albeit in some very unflattering terms.

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The potentially historic midterm elections are a week away and left-wing voices  are getting more shrill and paranoid than ever before.

On CNBC’s Oct. 26 “The Call,” left-wing talker and frequent MSNBC guest Mike Papantonio went on a nearly six-minute conspiratorial, anti-corporation, anti-conservative candidate rant suggesting GOP U.S. Senate hopeful Sharron Angle was raising secret money from the Chinese government in order to help them ship American jobs overseas.

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Someone should tell CNN anchor Ali Velshi that attacking the U.S. Chamber of Commerce for its political activities is so last week.

During the “XYZ” segment of the hour he anchors of “CNN Newsroom” on Oct. 25, Velshi did his best impersonation of an MSNBC anchor and railed against the U.S. Chamber of Commerce for its political activities. Velshi lamented the barrage of negative advertising in this campaign cycle and all but tied the U.S. Chamber of Commerce to it.

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It appears Juan Williams’ firing is just what the public needed to realize their tax dollars are being poorly handled through subsidies from the federal government given to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting to prop up National Public Radio.

However, “Red Eye” host Greg Gutfeld makes the most reasonable case not to deprive NPR of its taxpayer subsidies. On the Oct. 23 broadcast of his program, Gutfeld explains to his viewers his case for not defunding the radio organization, but not without taking some jabs their decision to fire his Fox News colleague.

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Has anyone noticed a leftward tilt by Politico lately? More and more, the respected inside-the-beltway publication seems to be more aggressive in its tack with conservatives.

Here’s one such example: In the Oct. 21 issue of Politico, an article written by Jonathan Martin attacks former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin for her political activities and her dealings with other conservative leaders. One of Martin’s examples of Palin “wreaking havoc on the campaign trail” involved a disagreement with Fox News host Glenn Beck:

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It’s quite remarkable to think about and unfortunately it is true.

Throughout the 2009 stimulus debate early in his term, President Barack Obama and other Democrats argue it was time to put America to work with the aid of the government and so-called “shovel-ready jobs.” But in a startling admission in an interview with The New York Times’ White House correspondent Peter Baker, Obama said “there’s no such thing as shovel-ready projects.”

So after the American taxpayers were sold a stimulus bill that was supposed to repair the country’s ailing infrastructure and stem the rise in unemployment, the president’s economic policies haven’t lived up as advertised. On the Oct. 13 broadcast of Fox News Channel’s “Special Report with Bret Baier,” syndicated columnist Charles Krauthammer offered a spot-on explanation.

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So you raise five children and provide foster care for 23 children, but according to HLN’s high-priestess of intellectualism, you hate children.

Only from Joy Behar, host of a HLN show and co-host of “The View,” could offer such an assertion as fact to audience. On Behar’s Oct. 12 program, she made the claim the Rep. Michele Bachmann, R-Minn., and other so-called “Mama Grizzlies” were guilty of various misdeeds against humanity. She claimed the Republican Minnesota congresswoman was anti-children, but not before condemning her for not publicly rebuking Carl Paladino for his remarks about gay and lesbian issues.

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So we’re back to this again? We’re 21 days out of the midterm elections and the media are back looking to capitalize on anti-Wall Street sentiments.

On the Oct. 13 broadcast of NBC’s “Today,” host Matt Lauer referenced an Oct. 12 Wall Street Journal report to his guest, CNBC’s Jim Cramer, about Wall Street pay hitting a record $144 billion. Lauer, of course, just looked at the headline without examining exactly why pay on Wall Street reached that level. (The Journal cites “firms, benefiting from low interest rates and strong international markets” as a reason.) Instead Lauer argued that executives were somehow solely responsible for the financial collapse – not the irresponsible borrowers and asleep-at-the-wheel regulators – and therefore not entitled to such pay.

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When the likes of CBS “Face the Nation” moderator Bob Schieffer and The New York Times are calling out the Obama White House on its efforts to villainize the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, you have to know something is up. However, President Barack Obama hasn’t completely distanced himself from the Chamber, a fact which has gone largely overlooked by an increasingly skeptical media.

According to an Oct. 8 story posted on the IndUS Business Journal on its website, the same Barack Obama that publicly attacked the Chamber of Commerce for alleged foreign contributions is scheduled to speak to the U.S.-India Business Council just days after the upcoming midterm elections.

The White House’s current effort to disparage the U.S. Chamber of Commerce is an act of desperation in light of the low poll numbers of the Democratic Party going into the November midterm, as some have pointed out. But perhaps President Barack Obama should address some questions about his own fundraising before attacking other organizations.

On the Oct. 11 broadcast of Fox News Channel’s “Special Report with Bret Baier,” former host and network contributor Brit Hume took on the issue of administration officials using the bully pulpit to push these charges. According to Hume, the charges are baseless and even the White House’s allies in the mainstream media are questioning this strategy.

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Albert Einstein said the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. And so goes the White House with these attacks on the U.S. Chamber of Commerce drummed up by the “professional left’s” blogosphere that it is using foreign donations to finance political advertising.

Syndicated columnist Charles Krauthammer however, had another take on what these attacks are. He said they’re not insane, but desperation of one of the highest degrees. During the Oct. 11 broadcast of Fox News Channel’s “Special Report with Bret Baier,” Krauthammer attacked the Obama administration, calling this campaign against the Chamber “reptilian desperation.”

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It seems like a phony issue for the a struggling Obama administration to be promoting – the allegations that the U.S. Chamber of  Commerce may or may not be using foreign contributions to fuel political ads against Democrats. However, President Barack Obama would be best advised to make sure his party wasn’t doing something similar before using the bully pulpit to push this meme.

On CNBC’s Oct. 11 broadcast of “Power Lunch,” CNBC Washington correspondent Eamon Javers laid out the latest ramped up attacks on the U.S. Chamber of Commerce from the president.

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If global warming is the modern secular religion, HBO’s “Real Time” host Bill Maher has bought into it hook, line and sinker.

On the Oct. 8 broadcast of his program, immediately following a segment criticizing a congressional candidate that was a Nazis reenactor for exercising bad judgment, Maher ironically had some words of praise for the founder of al-Qaeda Osama bin Laden, who is believed to have ordered the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks which caused the deaths of over 2,700 people on American soil (video below the jump).

With insightful backwards logic like this, the new CNN show “Parker Spitzer” is certain to be a runaway hit – if just for the comedic value alone.

On CNN’s Oct. 8 broadcast of “Parker Spitzer,” disgraced former New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer, the co-host of this program, trotted out a theory that seems so peculiar one might think he was pre-excusing what many feel is the eventual Republican takeover of the U.S. House of Representatives. (h/t Greg Pollowitz)

“Let's switch gears for a second,” Spitzer said. “Earlier today or a couple days ago, Newt Gingrich said 60 seats would be the Republican pick-up. I've got a crazy theory for you. I think the White House wants to lose the House. It needs a foil. It needs an enemy. Agree or disagree?”

What is it with Hollywood personalities going to Venezuela and being swept off their feet by the thuggish dictator Hugo Chávez. They come back with these stories claiming he is just misconstrued by the media and that he’s really a great guy.

On Oct. 7, at an appearance at the Cato Institute in Washington, D.C. promoting her book “You Know I'm Right: More Prosperity, Less Government,” the proudly libertarian co-host of CNBC's “Power Lunch” Michelle Caruso-Cabrera explained how this could happen. She told an audience that Chávez has a very charismatic, yet seductive personality.

“I was telling – my two most interesting interviews I think I’ve ever done are Milton Friedman, very influential on me, and also Hugo Chávez, because when I interviewed him I was struck by how much I like him,” she explained. “He’s very funny. He is so charming. He is smooth. He could be a stand-up comedian. He is a seductor, as I suspect most dictators are – that’s how they get to where they are.”

Take MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow live on location from Newark, Del., the site of a hotly contested U.S. Senate race. Mix that with the local beat reporter of the state’s largest newspaper that openly admitted her role model is Helen Thomas. The result: Unfavorable coverage for the conservative Republican in said race.

On the Oct. 5 broadcast of MSNBC’s “The Rachel Maddow Show,’ host Rachel Maddow wanted to give her viewers a taste of the local Delaware media, since U.S. Senate Republican nominee Christine O’Donnell had announced she would go with a more local media strategy in her upcoming contest with the state’s Democratic nominee, Chris Coons. Appearing on her show were Ron Williams, a political columnist and reporter Ginger Gibson, both of the Wilmington News-Journal.

Williams has made his view clear on O’Donnell over the past few months with his columns. Even in his most recent column he cast aspersions on O’Donnell, but that’s what columnists do. But his colleague at the News-Journal, Gibson lamented her inability to have access to the O’Donnell campaign.

One of the most embattled commodities over the last few years as the economy has struggled has been one of the most precious of all metals – gold.

Over the last 12 months, the price of gold has appreciated considerably. But CNBC host Jim Cramer contends it is going higher – much higher. In an Oct. 5 interview for with Alix Steel, a reporter from Cramer’s website TheStreet.com, Cramer explained that the current high price of gold is not the result of a bubble, which he debunked by explaining the definition of a bubble.

“Well you see, bubble’s a complicated term because a bubble to me implies that you’re never going to get your money back,” Cramer said. “People say that there's bubble in bonds – you will get money back just you may not do that well. Bubble in Chinese real estate – entirely possible. The Chinese economy is a growth economy and can sustain a bubble in one area and not others. The gold bubble is what people talk about. They talk about it when gold’s down for a given day but -- I think as our resident gold expert, I mean you could tell us – finding costs have gone up. There’s just not a lot around.”

So more government isn’t the answer to all of our problems? For a brief moment, that seemed to be the message Huffington Post editor-in-chief and co-founder Arianna Huffington was conveying. 

On CNBC’s Oct. 5 broadcast of “Squawk Box,” Huffington, author of “Third World America” explained what she thought the role of government should be in an American economic system. Now whether she was playing to the CNBC pro-capitalist audience or not remains to be seen, but she did depart with the so-called progressive/liberal view of government’s role in the economy, and criticized the Obama administration.

“[S]o when it comes to the Obama administration’s policies, the problem has been rewarding people for taking excessive risks, which is not at the heart of capitalism,” Huffington said. “You and I have talked about that before. At the heart of capitalism is the assumption that if you take excessive risks and you fail, you’re on your own. The taxpayer is not on the hook. And we still have left the systemic risk in the system despite the financial reform bill that was passed. ‘Too big to fail’ has not ended and that really is the potential problem in the future.”

Chalk this one up to things that make you go, “What?!?”

In an interview with the BBC on Oct. 4, Virginia Ironside, a columnist for the U.K. Independent made a jaw-dropping statement – that abortion and euthanasia could somehow be considered to be acts of kindness. (h/t Scott Baker, theblaze.com)

“[I] think that if I were a mother of a suffering child, I would be the first to want I mean a deeply suffering child I would be the first one to put a pillow over its face, as I would with any suffering thing and I think the difference is that my feeling of horror, suffering is many greater than my feeling of getting rid of a couple of cells because suffering can go on for years,” Ironside said.

You have to wonder what on earth ABC’s “This Week” host Christiane Amanpour is thinking by holding a so-called town hall meeting this close to a pivotal midterm election.

On the Oct. 3 broadcast of “This Week,” the brainiacs at ABC determined it would be appropriate to pitch Christian leaders against moderate and extremist Muslims. This choice of programming comes at a time when many conservatives have been chastised for being outspoken over the placement of an Islamic worship center near the Sept. 11 Ground Zero site.

However, perhaps the most alarming statement on Amanpour’s program came from Anjem Choudary, a former British solicitor, Muslim cleric, and spokesman for the group Islam4UK. Choudary contends eventually you'll see global Islamic rule, including here in the United States.

What – was Janeane Garofalo busy this week? If not, she has some real competition in the "lefty comic making outrageous statements" category.

On HBO’s Oct. 1 “Real Time with Bill Maher,” during the “Overtime” segment available on HBO.com, left-wing comedian David Cross of “Arrested Development” fame appeared to offer his view on issues of the day. This segment of the program is produced generally to answer viewer emailed questions. One of those questions was if people in the media “should be held more legally accountable for presenting false or misleading information.”

The host, Bill Maher likened that scenario to the system in place in the United Kingdom. However in the United States, Americans are protected by the First Amendment and he explained the legal implications of speech in the U.K. compared to the U.S. But in Cross’ estimation, that protected right is somehow wrong. He named two Fox News Channel hosts, Bill O’Reilly and Sean Hannity, and declared he would like to see them taken off of the airwaves although he wasn’t clear about what “false or misleading information” they may have presented that would warrant this action.

“I think so, absolutely, and I say that as somebody who would like to see Bill O’Reilly and Sean Hannity off the air, you know,” Cross declared with an approving response from the audience. “So, I think to -- it’s just part of the job. It should be part of the job, you know, if you knowingly do that, then absolutely you should lose your job. We don’t get to, you know, lie and make up things in our jobs, you know. And nobody really does.”