Geoffrey Dickens's blog

On Friday's edition of MSNBC's Andrea Mitchell Reports, Mitchell brought on the Boston Globe's Peter Canellos to pine for the widow of Ted Kennedy, Vicki, to challenge Republican Scott Brown for the Massachusetts Senate seat, as well as imagine how effective the liberal "lion" would be in championing health care and unemployment extension legislation if he were still around today.

A wistful Mitchell remarked of the the late Senator: "It seems as though his legacy only grows in contrast to how low, what low regard the Senate is now held because of the gridlock and the, the sort of petty differences." Mitchell then set up the Globe's editorial page editor as she questioned if Kennedy "were trying to pull things together politically today, if we were blessed by his presence...do you think it would still be the passion for health care, or would he be looking to the larger economic issues?" To which Canellos remembered fondly: "When it comes to unemployment, I mean you can easily hear him...thundering against those who would deny unemployment to people who have been suffering." [audio available here]

The following is the full exchange as it was aired on the August 20 edition of MSNBC's Andrea Mitchell Reports:

NBC's Kelly O'Donnell, in a story aired on Friday's Today show, traveled to Arizona to profile Republican Ben Quayle's run for Congress and in the process gave Dan Quayle's son the same sort of treatment the former Vice President received from the media, as the NBC correspondent treated him like a joke. While O'Donnell briefly mentioned that Ben Quayle is a small business owner, the thrust of her piece was making light of foibles of the son and even father.

In her story O'Donnell aired a joke from her NBC colleague Jay Leno to make fun of a Quayle campaign mailer, pressed Quayle to deny he "wrote under the name Brock Landers, a porn star character from the movie Boogie Nights" for a blog and of course dredged up old footage of his dad misspelling the word potato and being ridiculed by Lloyd Bentsen in a 1988 vice presidential debate. [audio available here]

The following is the full O'Donnell story as it was aired on the August 20 Today show:

NBC's Matt Lauer invited on Rudy Giuliani to discuss the controversy over the Ground Zero mosque with the former New York City mayor diplomatically addressing most of the religious freedom concerns while still recommending that the site be moved, but Lauer furthered the notion that the imam fronting the project was not at fault for the "vitriol" in the debate, as he questioned the former mayor: "Some would say he didn't create the vicious, angry battle. That it's the people who decided to weigh in on it who add, added the vitriol to the battle." To which Giuliani responded that "they're wrong...if you are a healer, you do not go forward with this project."

The following is the full interview with Giuliani as it was aired on the August 19 Today show:

NBC's Matt Lauer, invited on former House Majority Leader Dick Armey and Freedom Works' Matt Kibbe to discuss the Ground Zero mosque controversy and claimed that since the group behind the mosque existed in Manhattan before the World Trade Center attack, questioned: "So because of 9/11, do they have to move further away? Do they have to go elsewhere?" Armey, who was on with Kibbe to promote their new book Give Us Liberty: A Tea Party Manifesto, responded to the Today show co-anchor "that because you have the right to do something doesn't make it the right thing to do" and pointed out to Lauer that those behind the mosque should be more "responsive to the concerns that are being raised."

The following is the full interview with Armey and Kibbe as it was aired on the August 17 Today show:

On Thursday's Today show, NBC's chief White House correspondent Chuck Todd started building the narrative for the liberal media to spout in case the Republicans win majorities in the House and Senate in the upcoming midterms - that the voters are just cranky about everyone and everything. Todd even went on to absurdly state that if the GOP has a big win it will still be seen as a "A bad election night for all of Washington." All of Washington? Even for the party that is victorious?

Todd, on with Today co-anchor Ann Curry, came up with that conclusion after reciting results from a new NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll that showed "Everybody is angry at all things Washington" as Todd noted "Democrats hit an all-new high in their negative rating. Republicans have even a higher negative rating. The Tea Party, which had enjoyed a positive rating for awhile, now they have a negative rating." Todd, then, went on to prematurely throw cold water on any sort of GOP win as he claimed: "If the Republicans get the majorities, it's because people have decided to go into the ballot box and hold their nose, they're not happy with anybody."

The following is the full transcript of the segment as it was aired on the August 12 Today show:

NBC's chief White House correspondent Chuck Todd, substitute hosting for Chris Matthews, on Wednesday's Hardball, managed to question the political viability of two Republican candidates in one sentence as he asked his guest panelist, Jonathan Martin of the Politico, "Is Ken Buck, you know, Sharron Angle in drag?" [audio available here]

Going over the results of yesterday's primary races with Martin and Newsweek's Howard Fineman, Todd claimed "Democrats were doing a touchdown dance" after Buck won the Republican primary contest for the Senate seat in Colorado and also relayed some rather colorful descriptions of Buck, as seen in the following exchange, aired on the August 11 edition of Hardball:

Democratic Senator Michael Bennet got his own live spot on Wednesday's Today show to make his pitch to Colorado voters, but his Republican opponent only got a brief soundbite, that came after a clip of him that put him in a negative, even sexist light. While Today co-anchor Ann Curry chatted live with Bennet in the first half hour, NBC's Kelly O'Donnell only gave Republican candidate Ken Buck a few seconds in her report on yesterday's primary races:

KELLY O'DONNELL: Winning on the Republican side - career prosecutor Ken Buck who had said this on the trail.

KEN BUCK: Why should you vote for me? Because I do not wear high heels.

O'DONNELL: Former Lieutenant Governor Jane Norton was the establishment choice, but the Tea Party picked Buck. Do you think of yourself as a Tea Party candidate?

BUCK: I think of myself as a grassroots candidate and the Tea Parties are certainly part of that grassroots effort.

O'Donnell never gave Buck the chance to explain to the country that his comment/joke came in response to Norton criticism of his candidacy, as he told CBS News' Bob Orr: "My opponent has said a number of times on the campaign trail that people should vote for her because she wears high heels, because she wears a skirt, because she's a woman...She ran a commercial that said Ken Buck should be man enough to do X, Y, and Z...I made a statement, it was a lighthearted statement that I'm man enough, I don't wear high heels and I have cowboy boots on."

NBC's Chuck Todd, substitute hosting for Chris Matthews on Monday's Hardball, invited on Vanity Fair's Todd Purdum and the Politico's Jonathan Martin to navel gaze about what ailed the political structure as Todd questioned "Is Washington broke and beyond repair?" Pivoting off a Purdum article, that in part, blamed lobbyists, Martin offered his own explanation as he brought up the typical mainstream media boogeymen of the Drudge Report, Rush Limbaugh and Fox News. 

After Todd noted that it's not just the "lobbying community" causing distress in D.C., that the "media is playing a role here" and "it's not clear which came first, the polarized Washington or the polarized way that people get information," Martin buttressed Todd's point by offering his personal account of a Florida townhall meeting where he claimed voters there were only "listening to Rush Limbaugh," "reading Drudge" and "watching Fox News."

NBC's Today show invited on the reporter, whose Rolling Stone article essentially got General Stanley McChrystal fired, on Thursday's show to complain that the Pentagon denied him an embed because the war in Afghanistan isn't going well. After Today co-anchor Meredith Vieira questioned Michael Hastings for his explanation as to why the Pentagon denied him an embed, Hastings concluded "This is a symptom of essentially the war, and how the war is going...The war has hit its all-time low." This caused Vieira, herself, to cry censorship, as she asked: "Do you think the military is trying to say to reporters,'We will stifle you, if you don't tell the story the way we want it told?'"

MEREDITH VIEIRA: So why do you think, ultimately, you lost this, this right to an embed? I mean, what do you think is going on? Is it the McChrystal article or is there something much bigger than that?

MICHAEL HASTINGS: I think it's, I think it's much bigger. This is not just about a Rolling Stone reporter being banned from an embed. This is a symptom of essentially the war, and how the war is going. June and July were the deadliest months that we've ever seen in the war in Afghanistan. The war has hit its all-time low in approval ratings, so clearly there's great concern in Washington about how the war is going, and the response to this embed. The response to me on this embed sort of indicates that. I think it's important to, to just let you know, with this helicopter story, these are stories that I'm very passionate about telling. And it is a great privilege to tell the story of the troops.

On the Wednesday edition of her self-titled MSNBC show, Andrea Mitchell actually hit a Democratic Senator from the left on tax cuts. Democratic Indiana Senator Evan Bayh appeared on Andrea Mitchell Reports to offer his support to extending the Bush tax cuts as a way to stimulate the economy but a skeptical Mitchell pressed: "Senator, given the deficit and the wealth of the upper class, and the fact that they sit on their money and put it into savings, why give them this tax break?" Bayh went on to tell the NBC correspondent that raising taxes "will lower consumer demand at a time we want people putting more money into the economy" and pointed out "the people you're referring to, in those upper brackets, are the ones that make decision about hiring and making investments."

The undeterred Mitchell responded with the Obama administration line that "you should extend the tax cuts for the middle class but not for people making more than $250,000 a year." Bayh, delivering a basic economics lesson, reminded Mitchell that while "middle class taxpayers are using the extra money to pay down debt, credit card bills, mortgages, things like that...It's the people in the upper brackets who continue to spend at a higher rate, propping up consumer demand" and insisted "If we want people to hire more individuals, if we want them to make business investments, raising burdens on them probably doesn't improve their optimism, confidence and discourages rather than encourages them to do those kinds of things." However, Bayh did relent when he offered to Mitchell that eventually the tax rates "are probably going to have to go up but it ought to be as part of a comprehensive deficit reduction package."

The following exchange was aired on the August 4 edition of MSNBC's Andrea Mitchell Reports:

NBC's Today show invited on Washington Post columnists Jonathan Capehart and Michael Gerson to debate whether the current Democratic midterm strategy of blaming George W. Bush would work this November. Capehart, citing an NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll, claimed it was an "effective" strategy because "Sixty-two percent of the American people polled said that they would be uncomfortable with a candidate who's identified with President Bush."

However that strategy, according to Democrats' own polling numbers, may not be working. According to the Hotline's Reid Wilson: "Dems have tried repeatedly to tie the GOP to Bush's economic policies, which remain highly unpopular. But so far, that hasn't worked, according to officials at the Dem-leaning Third Way think tank." Wilson went on to quote from the Third Way's results: "Just eighteen months after President Bush left office with the nation's economy in historic freefall, two-thirds of Americans now see congressional Republicans and their economic ideas as new and completely separate from those of the former president."

Capehart, also dismissed any notion that the Democrats or more specifically, Barack Obama would be seen as "whining" about the former president as he noted that Obama: "can point to the TARP program, the stimulus program, the health care bill, as things he's doing to try to move the country forward and get it out of the ditch. It would be whining if he didn't have those things to point to."

Chris Matthews, during his syndicated The Chris Matthews Show over the weekend, warned viewers that a big win for Republicans in the upcoming midterms could lead to a bunch of "oddballs" coming to Washington. Matthews, citing a New York magazine article by Jennifer Senior, alerted his audience that if the Tea Party is successful in November it could be reminiscent of the Republican class of 1994 when a bunch of "nutty standouts" arrived. Matthews then went on to list two groups of Republicans who were elected in 1994 and placed them in two groups: "the black helicopter crowd of paranoids" and "hypocrites who stood on the party's family values platform and then managed to slip off." [audio available here]

The following Matthews monologue was aired on the August 1 edition of The Chris Matthews Show:

Chuck Todd works for the same network that employs the likes of MSNBC's Rachel Maddow, Chris Matthews and Keith Olbermann, liberal propagandists all, yet it's doubtful Todd would ever call them that, however he did attach that "p" word to one Andrew Breitbart. During a segment, on Friday's Today show, headlined: "White House Distractions, Sherrod Story Lingers with Lawsuit Plans" Todd relayed that the former USDA official is "preparing to file a lawsuit against the conservative propagandist who started this whole mess." After Today co-anchor Ann Curry teased his report, Todd began his story by claiming the Sherrod "mess," was getting in the way of the President promoting his agenda:

CHUCK TODD: Well look the White House would love nothing more than the Shirley Sherrod story to fade into the background. But as the President prepares to head to Michigan today, to highlight the relative health of the American auto industry the Sherrod story still doesn't have an ending. She's yet to give the administration an answer about that new job offer that was made to her and more importantly she's preparing to file a lawsuit against the conservative propagandist who started this whole mess.

The following is Todd's full report as it was aired on the July 30 Today show:

NBC's Ann Curry, in an exclusive interview with Vice President Joe Biden aired on Thursday's Today show, pushed Biden from the left on war funding for Afghanistan as she exclaimed "boy there was some reluctance" in the House and pressed: "How long can we keep paying for this war?" The bill actually passed by a vote of 308 to 114 but Curry claimed the "reluctance" was significant as she recited Democratic Congressman Jim McGovern's frustration that "we need to do more nation building here at home," as seen in the following exchange:

ANN CURRY: Meantime the House, on Tuesday night, agreed to fund a surge in Afghanistan - $33 billion for 30,000 additional troops. But boy was there some reluctance. We've got Democratic Congressman Jim McGovern saying, quote, "We're told we can't extend unemployment or pay to keep cops on the beat or teachers in the classroom but we're asked to borrow another $33 billion for nation building in Afghanistan. I think we need to do more nation building here at home." How long can we keep paying for this war?

Republican New Jersey Governor Chris Christie appeared on Wednesday's Today show and deftly handled all of Matt Lauer's pointed questions from whether or not he was worried about "taking on" the "sacred cows" of unions and teachers, if he will support Barack Obama's small business legislation, and even if the governor's criticism of Snooki and The Situation was good for Jersey Shore tourism. On taking on the "sacred cows" Christie told the Today co-anchor "We're treating the people of New Jersey like adults." And when pressed by Lauer if he'll support the President's legislation that, as Lauer put it, "would help small business" Christie clarified: "What I'm in favor of is trying to lower taxes and lower regulation on small businesses so they can spend more of their own money creating jobs." [audio available here]

And finally, Christie and Lauer shared a laugh when the subject of MTV's reality show the Jersey Shore came up as Christie pointed out the cast was originally from New York and exclaimed: "Hey listen they're yours to begin with Matt. I have enough problems here. I mean an $11 billion deficit I gotta take Snooki and The Situation also? C'mon! So much a man can take, Matt!"

The following is the complete interview as it was aired on the July 28 Today show:

Chris Matthews, on Tuesday's Hardball, accused Fox News of "whipping up white hysteria" over allegations of the New Black Panther Party intimidating voters in Philadelphia as he wondered, at the top of his show, if there was "a rightist strategy to stir up racial resentment among whites by portraying whites as victims of black rule?" The Hardball host, during a discussion about the New Black Panther Party case with Philadelphia radio talk show hosts Michael Smerconish and E. Steven Collins, claimed that "Fox News and its friends" were pushing the story to motivate voters in the midterms because "I think there's nothing the Republican Party likes better than a nice, scared white voter. Let's be honest about it."

While Matthews did agree with Smerconish, about some of the merits of the case, the thrust of the segment was that Fox News and the right were pushing the New Black Panther Party story to race-bait as Matthews claimed: "This is just an attempt by the people on the right, I guess, especially Fox, to just keep pushing this, this beach ball in the air until it finally creates some noise."

The following teaser and full segment were aired on the July 27 Hardball:

NBC's Matt Lauer brought on two liberals, former Democratic Congressman Harold Ford Jr. and Katrina Vanden Heuvel, publisher and editor of the leftist The Nation magazine, on Friday's Today show, to dissect the Shirley Sherrod "saga" as viewers were treated to an attack on the "right wing media which peddles fears and slanders." In a segment titled "Race In America, Lessons Learned From The Shirley Sherrod Saga" Vanden Heuvel dominated the conversation as she didn't attack just Andrew Breitbart but conservative media as a whole as she railed "Are we gonna be a media system which is vetting and holding standards or are we gonna be bullied as a country by a right wing media which peddles fears and slanders to really destroy President Obama's presidency?"

However, Vanden Heuvel is probably the last one to be preaching about standards as Lauer failed to mention that several of The Nation staffers, at JournoList, criticized journalists for doing any journalism at all about Rev. Jeremiah Wright.

On Wednesday's Today show, Matt Lauer, Ann Curry and Savannah Guthrie left the impression that Fox News's criticism of Shirley Sherrod was the reason she lost her job at the Agriculture Department, with Lauer, in his interview with Sherrod, charging: "I don't know who to blame here, Miss Sherrod. I mean the, the, the activist who put forward this garbage in the first place has an agenda. We shouldn't be surprised by that. The cable news network that, that played this garbage on and on and talked about it, has an agenda. We shouldn't be surprised by that." But Lauer and NBC News, itself, revealed they have their own agenda, by failing to report, as the MRC's Rich Noyes pointed out, that Fox News didn't mention the Sherrod story until she had already left her job.

However, that didn't stop Curry from claiming, in the 8am half hour news brief, that: "After the video was used to vilify her on Fox television, she lost her job," and Guthrie advancing the NAACP's notion, in her piece, that they had been "snookered" by Fox News.

The following is a complete transcript of Guthrie's set-up piece followed by Lauer's interview with Sherrod as they were aired on the July 21 Today show:

NBC's Peter Alexander, on Tuesday's Today show, mocked Sarah Palin for making up a word, 'refudiate' in her tweets about the Ground Zero mosque controversy. However when Joe Biden, the gaffe machine that he can be, made an arguably much more embarrassing mistake back in March, of falsely asserting that the Irish prime minister's mother was dead, the Today show, as Newsbusters' Scott Whitlock reported then, ignored it.

Alexander, after initially reporting about the former Alaska governor wading into the controversy surrounding the building of a mosque at the Ground Zero site, then poked fun at Palin combining two words:

PETER ALEXANDER: The former vice presidential candidate is, herself, coming under fire for both her substance and style. Palin tweeted "Ground Zero mosque supporters, doesn't it stab you in the heart, as it does ours, throughout the heartland? Peaceful Muslims, please refudiate. But, of course, "refudiate" isn't an actual word, more like a blend of two words with similar meanings: refute and repudiate. Bloggers quickly pounced. "If Republicans can demand that immigrants speak English," one tweeted "can't we demand same for Sarah Palin?" For what it's worth, Palin has refudiated before.

CLIP OF PALIN ON FOX NEWS: They have power in their words. They could refudiate what it is, that this group is saying.

Alexander, then went on to remind viewers of another Republican who got "creative with words.

NBC's Matt Lauer, suddenly turned into a deficit hawk, when he invited on Newt Gingrich on Tuesday's Today show, to discuss the GOP's refusal to extend unemployment benefits without paying for them, as he complained to the House Speaker that those same Republicans didn't offer spending cuts to offset the Bush tax cut and pressed: "Is it funny math?" and "traditionally speaking when you cut taxes, don't deficits go up as well?" Gingrich initially agreed that the deficit in the "short run" goes up but explained to the Today show anchor that "we proved with Reagan, with the three-year tax cuts in the 1980s" and "again with the Contract With America" that "job creating principles of cutting taxes are far better than the job killing principles of big government and regulation."

The following is the full interview as it was aired on the July 20 Today show:

Chris Matthews, on Monday's Hardball, actually reported on two different Tea Party organizations condemning Mark Williams, of Tea Party Express, for penning a racially charged satire, however Matthews wasn't impressed, as he questioned the sincerity of the Tea Party movement's commitment to fighting discrimination, and demanded that they do more to remove "racist signs at the next Tea Party rally." After reciting some of Williams' "fictional letter" the Hardball host then noted that both the National Tea Party Federation and the Tea Party Nation chastised Williams, but Matthews wasn't buying it as he commanded tea partiers at the next rally to "Reach over, grab the [racist] sign and tear it out of the guy's hands, then I'll believe you."

The following was aired during the Sideshow segment of the July 19 edition of Hardball:

NBC's chief White House correspondent Chuck Todd, in an interview with the President that was aired on Friday's Today show, actually questioned Barack Obama about his controversial recess appointment of the pro-health care rationing Dr. Donald Berwick to head Medicare, something, as Newsbusters has documented the networks have vastly ignored. However, Todd never explained to viewers why the President's opponents were upset by the appointment, and instead gave him an excuse to say the move was just his way of getting around a failed political system as he asked the following:

Do you think Washington is broken? And the reason I ask you this, because when you appointed - you did the recess appointment of Donald Berwick. You seemed to send the message of one of two things. Either you didn't want to debate about health care again on Capitol Hill, which got a little raucous a year ago or you know what? "The Senate process is broken and we gotta go around it?" [audio available here]

When the President responded that he couldn't afford to "Play political games with the Senate," something he himself did by using the recess appointment, Todd didn't call him on it, choosing instead to ask, once again, if Washington was "broken?" Todd also could've highlighted the President's personal hypocrisy on this issue -- a point even the liberal Washington Post columnist Ruth Marcus caught -- as in 2005, when George W. Bush recess appointed John Bolton to UN ambassador, a then Senator Obama claimed: "To some degree, he's damaged goods."

The following is the full interview as it was aired on the July 16 Today show:

Chris Matthews, on Wednesday's Hardball, invited on recently defeated Republican Representative Bob Inglis to slam Matthews' favorite targets, namely the Tea Party, Rush Limbaugh and Sarah Palin and after he got the requisite criticisms out of the South Carolina congressman of those entities asked him if he could explain how primary voters from his own party could nominate an Indian-American like Nikki Haley, even though they've "got a problem with a black president?" Matthews, clearly not grasping the concept that perhaps voters in South Carolina could cast their ballot based out of purely ideological and not racial motives, asked Inglis the following question:

How do you figure your state out? It's pretty conservative obviously. It's Strom Thurmond country in many ways and, and it has people like DeMint pretty far over and then people like Lindsey Graham who are sort of regular conservatives. But then you nominated, your party has nominated an Indian-American woman, Nikki Haley. Obviously an attractive candidate, she knows how to present herself obviously, but what's that about? Is that just an interesting little aspect? "It's okay to be Indian-American but we got a problem with this black president?" What's that about? [audio available here]

Before Matthews ended his show on that stumper of a question, he egged on the soon to be former Representative Inglis to attack the Tea Party, Limbaugh and Palin, as seen in the following exchanges that were aired on the July 14 Hardball:

A segment that was billed as a guide to help some of Today's unemployed viewers find work, on Wednesday's show, turned into a platform for the president of the liberal National Urban League to attack those who opposed the President's plans, as he railed against those in Congress who have been filibustering extension of the unemployment benefits. Today co-anchor Matt Lauer, who hosted the segment, even prompted Morial to address how his organization was going to address the obstruction of the Democratic agenda in Congress, in the upcoming midterm elections, as he asked: "How much do you target candidates who have bad job policies...and support candidates who have good ones?" [audio available here]

NBC's Ann Curry, at the top of the 8:30am half hour of Today's July 14 show, teased viewers that "Americans, on average, took about 17 weeks to find a job. Well today the number has actually doubled. It's twice that. So the question is where should you be looking for work? We've got some answers this morning." However when viewers tuned in for those answers they also got a not so veiled anti-Republican diatribe from the National Urban League's Marc Morial as he chastised those who opposed Democratic measures.

Laura Ingraham was invited on Tuesday's Today show, to plug her new book The Obama Diaries, and predict how the midterm elections will go but she couldn't get out of the segment without Today co-anchor Matt Lauer suggesting Republicans are just as unpopular as the Democrats. During the segment Lauer read from a Washington Post poll that stated 6 in 10 Americans don't have faith in President Obama and 7 in 10 don't have faith in Congressional Democrats but then also pointed out that 7 in 10 Americans don't have much confidence in Republicans either as he asked Ingraham: "So what's the message here? A pox on all their houses." Ingraham agreed there's "a lot of cynicism out there," but went on to point out the folly of assuming Democrats are somehow safe as she retorted to Lauer: "I think that's a little facile to say, 'Oh everyone who's in power is just a disaster and no one trusts anyone.' I don't think that's true. I think what people are seeing, that the nation is in debt. We have a lack of focus on things like the Gulf Coast." [audio available here]

In fact Lauer completely glossed over the fact that the Washington Post poll article he read from clearly stated that "Those most likely to vote in the midterms prefer the GOP over continued Democratic rule by a sizable margin of 56 percent to 41 percent."

After the poll question, Ingraham went on to poke fun at the First Lady's appearance in the Gulf Coast:

Chris Matthews, on Monday's Hardball, brought on his own personal congressman, Maryland Democrat Chris Van Hollen, to review how his party was going to distinguish themselves from the GOP in the midterms with Matthews asking the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee head if they were focusing on all the "crazy" Republicans, or in other words "nut collecting." Matthews, after playing a clip of Barack Obama singling out Republicans Joe Barton, John Boehner and Roy Blunt, also reminded Van Hollen the President missed another "crazy" person with "B" name as he proclaimed: "If you're going out looking for nuts, it would seem like you'd put [Michele Bachmann] in your basket." Matthews even tried to pin down Van Hollen by demanding: "What percentage of the Republican Party would you put in the nut bag right now?"

The following exchange was aired on the July 12 edition of Hardball:

NBC's Lee Cowan, on Thursday's NBC Nightly News with Brian Williams, discovered a stunning result of Arizona's new immigration policies - illegal immigrants are now leaving the state. Cowan opened his piece noting a long line now "stretches around the Mexican Consulate in Phoenix every day" but noticed a twist, as the line was full of "immigrants trying to figure out not how to stay in Arizona, but how to flee it."

Cowan peppered his story with anecdotes of local businesses losing customers "A look around this once-bustling barrio is telling. The local hair salon has more empty chairs now than customers" and schools losing students as he claimed "School numbers are dwindling, too. This one is 75 percent Hispanic. Since the immigration law passed, they've lost more than 100 students." Cowan even punctuated this factoid with the sob story of a boy being taken out of school by his father to go back to Mexico:

Barack Obama's decision to make a recess appointment of Dr. Donald Berwick to run Medicare has been vastly ignored by the mainstream news media, despite the fact Berwick has made controversial statements favoring rationing of medical care. As CNSNews.com's Terry Jeffrey reported Dr. Berwick, at a talk celebrating the 60th birthday of Great Britain's National Health Service, told the audience to be wary of returning to a free enterprise based system as he warned: "Please, don't put your faith in market forces," and urged them "I hope you will never, ever give up on what you have begun" and rallied the crowd: "I hope you realize and affirm how badly you need–how badly the world needs–an example at scale of a health care system that is universal, accessible, excellent and free at the point of care–a health system that, at its core is like the world we wish we had: generous, hopeful, confident, joyous and just." Berwick even ominously told his audience at Biotechnology Healthcare, "The decision is not whether or not we will ration care, the decision is whether we will ration with our eyes open."

So given Berwick's rather outspoken faith in socialized medicine the news that Obama is planning to circumvent Congress with a recess appointment, to have him head Medicare, had to be big news, right? Well not according to NBC, CBS and ABC news, as there was no mention of the President's decision to make the recess appointment on Tuesday night's NBC Nightly News, CBS Evening News or ABC's World News. In fact the embargo on the information continued through Wednesday morning as there were zero mentions on ABC's Good Morning America and CBS's The Early Show. Only NBC's Today show mentioned the news as Lester Holt, in an 8am news brief on the July 7 show, told viewers the following:

To mark the one year anniversary of Sarah Palin stepping down from her duties as governor of Alaska, NBC's Norah O'Donnell, on Friday's Today show, recounted for viewers what the former vice presidential candidate is doing, namely "cashing in." Accompanied by a "cha-ching" sound effect O'Donnell ran down Palin's various TV and book deals. And while O'Donnell also noted Palin has been very effective stumping for GOP candidates in the primaries she was careful to note that the "polarizing" Palin had "limits to her appeal," as she cited an NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll saying 52 percent view her political endorsements negatively.

Along with the poll and TV and book deals, O'Donnell also included "her teenage daughter's tumultuous relationship with Levi Johnston," and "her rage" at author Joe McGinnis "who's moved directly next door to her Wasilla home" as negatives. How exactly Palin's "rage" at a writer/stalker moving next door to her family home could be seen as a limit to her appeal wasn't fully explained.

The following is the full segment as it was aired on the July 2 Today show:

Chris Matthews, on Thursday's Hardball, invited on AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka to comment on Barack Obama's immigration policy speech, but the segment ended in typical fashion as the two blamed the Republicans for thwarting true reforms with Matthews accusing them of playing the race card as he boiled down their efforts as merely "pandering to angry white people." Matthews also went on to say the GOP was "locking themselves in" to alienating the Latin-American voter as he asked Trumka: "How can the Republican Party kiss them off?" For his part the AFL-CIO president claimed the GOP was also on a mission to turn off the unemployed and senior citizens as he charged: "They're blowing the elderly off."

The following exchange was aired on the July 1 edition of Hardball: