Greg Tinti's blog

Bill O'Reilly was on The View today to discuss his new book Culture Warrior and, although there weren't fireworks, he and co-host Rosie O'Donnell got into a heated exchange about the war in Iraq. O'Reilly pressed O'Donnell with the question of whether she wanted the US to win in Iraq. Rosie refused to answer. She said she doesn't think it's possible. She wants America to be what "the founding fathers wanted it to be." But she wouldn't say that she wanted the US to win in Iraq. According to Rosie, wanting the US to win in Iraq is "antiquated thinking."

Video available here.

On Late Edition with Wolf Blitzer today, Howard Dean said that he had been watching UN ambassador "Josh Bolton" on all the morning shows talking tough about the UN resolution on North Korea that the Chinese have already said they're not going to fully enforce and he said it shows that the Bush administration is "toothless" when it comes to national security. When it came time for Blitzer to follow-up, he corrected Dean on what Bolton's first name really is but Blitzer failed to ask Dean the obvious question: how would he or other Democrats have gotten anything better out of the UN?

Video available here.

Putting aside the fact the Arianna Huffington dubiously implied on tonight's Factor that Bill Buckley and Chris Shays agree with John Murtha about a strategy for Iraq, what was frankly unbelievable was her ignorance and abject indifference towards the plight of the Kurds under Saddam Hussein. Huffington argued that the Kurds were free before we invaded Iraq, that their situation has not changed "one iota" since the invasion, and even replied "so what" to O'Reilly's assertion that Saddam persecuted the Kurds.

Video available here.

I just watched Katie Couric's debut as the anchor of the CBS Evening News and it was, much to my surprise, not very different than it was when Bob Shieffer was helming. I expected at least a couple radical stylistic changes that would set the CBS Evening News apart from it's competitors on NBC and ABC and shake things up a little. But there was nothing new. All in all, Couric's debut was, well, ordinary.

I've put together a 4:21 video summary of Couric's debut, available here, in case you missed it.

In terms of substance, Couric began the broadcast by wondering if it was "back to the drawing board" on the war on terror because things seem to be going poorly in Afghanistan. She spoke at length with Thomas Friedman about the words versus the actions of the Bush administration.

Norah O'Donnell, Roger Simon, and Evan Thomas all seemed to agree on tonight's "Hardball" that there's no way that President Bush actually read The Stranger by Albert Camus and three Shakespeare plays as he claimed in an interview with Brian Williams yesterday. In other words, all together now, "Bush is an idiot." The originality of the criticism of President Bush continues to baffle my mind as I'm sure it does yours as well.

Video available here.

Of the three, Evan Thomas is by far the worst, joking that he "doesn't believe President Bush does read"--which draws a sizable laugh from O'Donnell--and then continues by saying, "but before we get too snooty about this, he does read some and, you know, that's not a bad thing. If there's some intellectual curiosity by the President, it's to be encouraged."

Introducing Jon Stewart and Steven Colbert at tonight's Emmy's, Conan O'Brien joked that "these two presenters have done for fake news what the FOX News channel has done for fake news."

Video available here.

I usually wouldn't make a big deal out of something like this, but today's just the wrong day for the gratuitous slam of FOX News as "fake news." You know, because two of it's journalists were just freed from the very real experience of being kidnapped while on the job and then held hostage for 13 days.

I don't really expect David Letterman to challenge his political guests and, apparently, neither does Nancy Pelosi. Appearing on the Late Show on Tuesday, Pelosi got away with rhetorical murder implying that George Bush wants to "phase out" Social Security altogether, Democrats really want to secure our borders, the military barely has any combat ready units, and terrorists don't really care about killing people, they just want to instill fear and thus, George Bush is playing right into their hands.

Video available here.

Oh, and in case you weren't aware, Nancy Pelosi is the ultimate security mom.

On tonight's Hardball, Chris Matthews pretty much allowed Howard Dean to slam Sen. George Allen without challenging him on his assertions. Asked about Allen, Dean said that he served with Allen while they were both Governors and that Allen "doesn't belong in public service." Dean also said that Allen "always shooting from the hip, he never thinks through what he means, and he caters to the wrong instincts in people" of which the "macaca" incident is supposedly proof.

Video available here.

Matthews did ask Dean if he knew what "macaca" meant but did not ask Dean if he knew what it meant before this incident, which seems like the more obvious question to me. My bet is that he didn't have a clue much like the vast majority of people in this country including, perhaps, Allen himself.

At a White House press conference this morning, veteran reporter Helen Thomas once again--as Tony Snow famously said--presented "the Hezbollah view" and asked the President why he gives Israel "a pass" and only focuses on Hezbollah's rocket attacks against Israel.

Video available here.

But as President Bush went on to remind Thomas, "this never would have happened had a terrorist organization...not launched attacks on a sovereign nation."

In the wake of his gig at The White House Correspondents Dinner, Steven Colbert scored a profile on tonight's 60 Minutes.

You can view the video here.

Here's how the segment began:

And now for some fake news, The Colbert Report. If you flip through the cable news channels any week night, you're bound to see a collection of talking heads, or rather, shouting heads, who draw large audiences with a diet of often wildly inaccurate but patriotic and combative noise. The shows are not exactly news or entertainment but are exactly outrageous. Bill O'Reilly perfected the formula on FOX and others have successfully followed his recipe. With all of their excesses, it was only a matter of time before someone came along to skewer them. Well, the eagle has landed.

Last night, Rev. Jesse Jackson appeared on The Situation with Tucker Carlson to discuss the Duke lacrosse team rape allegations. Specifically, Jackson's RainbowPUSH Coalition has decided to offer the accuser in the case free college tuition--regardless of whether her accusations prove to be true. As usual, Jackson is shamelessly injecting himself into the "hot" race-related case of the day for sake of his own publicity. But, at this point, it hardly comes as a surprise.

Anyway, it was a great shootout and Carlson does a fine job of disputing Jackson's recycled talking points.

Video available here.

On last night's Hardball, Newsweek's Evan Thomas stated that he believed the primary reason for the war in Iraq was to "teach Arabs a lesson" after 9/11. Again, what liberal media? Thomas was on with Christopher Hitchens but because it was the end of the segment, Hitchens didn't have time to respond to this ridiculous comment--although, at the end of the clip, you can hear Hitchens mentioning the 1998 Iraq Liberation Act (you know, the one that made regime change official U.S. policy).

Video at The Political Pit Bull

Transcript: