NB Staff's blog

With Rick Perry dropping out of the race today and ABC's attack on Newt Gingrich airing tonight, the GOP presidential candidate debate sponsored by CNN at 8pm ET ahead of Saturday's South Carolina primary is shaping up to actually be a newsworthy event. Are you watching tonight? If so, please join us at NB for a live chat for some fact-checking and bias busting.

As with all NB live events, you are expected to abide by the NewsBusters terms of service. Vulgarity and general obnoxiousness will get you kicked from the chat room. You will need a Flash-enabled browser to participate.

Today's starter topic: Liberals fancy themselves to be the best proponents of free speech and tolerance. But when actual political speech is at issue rather than theoretical speech, their boasts are often revealed to be mere posturing. That's why we thought it'd be nice to start off today's OT by giving some well-deserved praise to Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen for mounting a solid defense for political speech against the self-interested censors of the liberal press:

While the news media has a professional "obligation to get it right," liberal network news anchor last week set out to "purposefully" take Mitt Romney's "fire people" comment out of context, Fox News host Sean Hannity complained on his January 13 program.

But it's not only "purposeful distortion" but "purposeful character assassination" by the liberal media added NewsBusters publisher Brent Bozell, who appeared via satellite for the popular recurring "Media Mash" feature. [MP3 audio available here; video embedded below page break]

First the Washington Post, now CBS's evening newscast.

During a segment of the CBS Evening News for January 10, East Coast viewers could see a man in the background holding up an MRC "Don't Believe the Liberal Media!" poster as anchor Scott Pelley introduced CBS News political director John Dickerson, who was live at Ron Paul's post-election rally site. [video embedded below the page break]

Two big showdowns this week: One with an upset and one that went mostly as planned. Comment on this post on the New Hampshire primary or the BCS football championship. Yesterday was it for college football but the next big game in the Republican presidential race is January 21, 11 days away. What are your predictions for that state?

"Using common sense," a skeptical news consumer can see right through the liberal media ripping Mitt Romney's "fire people" comment out of context, NewsBusters publisher Brent Bozell told Fox News's Neil Cavuto on the January 10 "Your World."

"What you conclude is, here we go again, what did he really say?" Bozell added, noting that Romney was talking about the need to open up "competition in the [health insurance] market." [video posted below page break; MP3 audio here]

There it is in living color on the front page of today's Washington Post. In a photo accompanying stories on pre-primary campaigning in the Granite State are two "Don't Believe the Liberal Media!" posters outside Mary Ann's Diner in Derry, New Hampshire.

The Media Research Center (MRC)* posters advertise StoptheBias.org, a website for the MRC's 2012 Tell the Truth! campaign. See the photo below the page break.

Today we have two topics for you on OT. The first is that today is the New Hampshire primary in the Republican presidential race. All reports indicate that Mitt Romney will be a big winner in the state. Fellow candidate Jon Huntsman has bet the farm on the small Northeastern state. Will he drop out if he doesn't do well? Will we see any other dropouts or does New Hampshire just not matter very much in this presidential cycle?

The second topic for today is yet another example of how liberals don't practice what they preach. Big-time Obama supporters Beyonce Knowles and Shawn "Jay-Z" Carter" apparently rented an entire hospital floor in New York City and then had the gall to deny other parents in the hospital the ability to see their own children:

Today's starter topic: Republican New Jersey governor Chris Christie made an interesting allegation against President Obama yesterday at a campaign rally in New Hampshire: that Obama is faking anger in order to get elected:

"He doesn’t do angry well. He understands that the American people are angry and they’re scared and they’re worried about the future. So he’s decided, in the most cynical reelection strategy that you could ever think of, that he doesn’t care if you’re angry, he just wants you to be angry at somebody else."

Is this perhaps the best distillation of Obama's divide and conquer strategy yet?

When Democrats have primary presidential contests, we never hear about "extreme-left, in-your-face liberals," playing to the left-wing base of their party, yet when it comes to this year Republican primary contest, the media are quick to slather the extreme-right label on candidates like Rick Santorum, NewsBusters publisher Brent Bozell noted on the January 6 edition of Fox News Channel's Hannity.

"ABC believes that if you support the traditional family as Rick Santorum does, that makes you in-your-face. CNN believes that it makes you extreme," Bozell complained, arguing that President Obama has the "most radical pro-abortion record in the history of the presidency of the United States" but was never called on it as a liability when facing the American electorate [video embedded below the page break]

Besides abysmal sales, the Obama Administration's favorite car, the Chevrolet Volt, is now facing some seriously bad news: GM announced today that it is recalling 8,000 of the vehicles sold in the past two years (though it's refusing to call it a recall) due to safety concerns about the Volt's battery casing:

The results are in from last night's Iowa presidential caucuses and it appears Mitt Romney has pulled off a 7-vote victory, apparently the closest ever in the history of Iowa. Second place went to Rick Santorum, whose low-budget campaign came from nowhere to nearly first. Ron Paul took third.

Exit questions: We know his showing in Iowa will be a boon to Rick Santorum but how much will the Hawkeye Cauci matter to the other candidates? Do you think there will be some changes in the media's coverage of the campaign?

Today's starter topic: The Iowa caucuses are tomorrow and the final poll of the state, released by the liberal Des Moines Register newspaper, indicates Mitt Romney in the lead, just barely ahead of Ron Paul and Rick Santorum in third place.

Do the Iowa caucuses matter anymore? Will you be keeping an eye on the events of tomorrow or are you going to check in once they're all over?

The folks at NewsBusters and the Media Research Center would like to take a moment to wish everyone a happy, healthy, and prosperous New Year.

For your entertainment pleasure, here are some fun facts about this annual event provided by the History Channel:

You would think given the utter failure that Democratic presidential campaigns have had with class warfare rhetoric--John Edwards, John Kerry, Al Gore, and Walter Mondale come to mind--that their strategists would have realized long ago that the politics of envy just don't work.

Unfortunately, however, that hasn't been the case, as President Obama has embraced with abandon attacks on his fellow Americans (while at the same time keeping an open door for the very richest to give and receive favors). This time around, class warfare is not working too well, either, as political analyst Michael Barone writes:

Despite the left's newfound embrace of class-warfare and the politics of envy, in the U.S. House of Representatives, Democrats are being led by one of the richest people in America, Nancy Pelosi of San Francisco. That may not be a long-term trend, though, if you consider what her daughter, a journalist and documentary film-maker, said recently--that her mother wants to leave Congress:

She would retire right now, if the donors she has didn’t want her to stay so badly. They know she wants to leave, though. They think she’s destined for the wilderness. She has very few days left. She’s 71, she wants to have a life, she’s done. It’s obligation, that’s all I’m saying.

That's quite a stunning thing for a member of Congress's daughter to say about her, particularly to conservative journalist, Jeffrey Scott Shapiro, writing at Big Government. It's starting to look as though Pelosi may retire should Democrats do poorly in the 2012 races. What are your thoughts?

Have Democrats created a monster by egging on the left-wing "Occupy Wall Street" movement by encouraging people to copy the original New York-based group in other cities? That seems to be the case in Charlotte, North Carolina where the outdoor hippie group is still hanging on to its encampment with an eye toward a showdown at the Democratic National Convention which will be staged in Charlotte in September of next year: