Mitt Romney

Liberal radio host Bill Press counts himself among bedwetting left wingers who are claiming Mitt Romney wants to eliminate the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

All this claim demonstrates is that those making it sense disaster on the horizon -- specifically, Election Day -- and that they can't distinguish between moderate-since-birth Romney and unapologetic libertarian Ron Paul who actually would abolish FEMA. (audio clip after page break)

This one is really hard to believe, even for the most biased so-called "news network" in the nation.

MSNBC on Tuesday totally trashed Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney for collecting food and supplies at a storm relief rally in Ohio to be sent to victims of Hurricane Sandy (video follows with transcript and commentary):

Yesterday, Bloomberg News reported that Fiat "is considering building Chrysler models in Italy, including Jeeps, for export to North America." Today, that news became real when company CEO Sergio Marchnionne announced, in Bloomberg's words (in paragraph 6, subtitled "Italy's Jeep"), that it will "build a small Jeep in Italy for export beginning in 2014 ... a new model for Europe and the U.S. that isn’t currently in production."

Of course, today's Bloomberg report led with Marchionne's clever denial about the company's plans for manufacturing in China: "Jeep production will not be moved from the United States to China." No, he has instead set the stage for newer Jeep models exported to the U.S. to gradually supplant older models made in the U.S. over several years. This should be an embarrassment to those who engineered the Obama administration's bailout of Chrysler in 2009, ripping off secured creditors in the bankruptcy process and thereby giving Fiat a larger initial share of the company than it deserved. But don't worry, Colleen Barry at the Associated Press is there with vague language to ensure that this news doesn't become general knowledge (bold is mine):

Former Newsweek reporter McKay Coppins was caught on a hot mic trashing Mitt Romney at a live event on Tuesday. Moments before Romney's appearance Coppins, who currently works for BuzzFeed, predicted there was "a 40 percent chance that he says something stupid." At first it wasn't known who made the remark, reported by Huffington Post's Jon Ward, but Coppins actually came forward, on his Twitter account, to admit he was the one who made the liberal bias-revealing "snide comment." 

The following are the relevant tweets from Ward and then Coppins. (Audio clip of Coppins' hot mic moment after the jump)

For at least 24 hours, the mainstream media have been trying to figure out a way to make Hurricane Sandy an aid to Barack Obama's re-election.

On Monday, MSNBC's Chris Matthews had a related concern asking guest John Nichols of the Nation magazine, "How long do you think it’ll take for Donald Trump to take a crack at the President for engineering this?" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

Appearing on Monday's NBC Today, MSNBC Morning Joe co-hosts Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski asserted that impending Hurricane Sandy would help Barack Obama in the election, with Scarborough proclaiming: "Mitt Romney had momentum….This was Mitt Romney's best weekend, and it stops. The momentum stops."

Brzezinski eagerly predicted how the President would be perceived during the storm: "…expect command centers up and down the east coast and the President to be very visible at all of them, telling people about the federal dollars that are on the way, and that will be advantage Obama." Meanwhile, she claimed Romney would be “in an awkward situation," and that "anything he does might look so blatantly political and almost needy, because he’s just not in the equation when the country’s under siege from a massive storm."

On Saturday, NewsBusters asked if it would be fascinating if Barack Obama's interview with MSNBC's Morning Joe ended up being an easier one than he recently got with the ladies of ABC's The View.

We got our answer Monday, and in the end, co-hosts Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski asked absolutely nothing of the President that could be perceived as a hardball (video follows with transcribed highlights and commentary).

"The Rachel Maddow Show" really shouldn't air weeknights on MSNBC. It is much better suited for Saturday mornings, you know, along with the other cartoons.

Maddow is so deep in the tank for the Obama administration at this point that she no longer cares how ludicrous she appears in her melodramatic inveighing against the staggering mendacity of one Willard Mitt Romney, a man who clearly haunts her fitful dreams and restless nights. (video after page break)

Meet the Press viewers got to see a classic Left-Right debate Sunday.

In a discussion about which presidential candidate is the most trustworthy, New York Times columnist David Brooks surprisingly teamed up with former Hewlett Packard CEO Carly Fiorina to school the Washington Post's E.J. Dionne and MSNBC's Rachel Maddow (video follows with NBCNews.com transcript and commentary):

Andrew Sullivan made a fool of himself on ABC's This Week Sunday.

For the entertainment pleasure of viewers, George Will and PBS's Gwen Ifill assisted the Obama-loving Daily Beast columnist (video follows with transcript and commentary):

The Des Moines Register shocked many political observers Saturday by endorsing Mitt Romney for president.

Clearly not accepting such a thing, Michael Tomasky, the Obama-loving correspondent for the Daily Beast, came out Sunday claiming the Register's endorsement "is little more than a practical joke":

The latest and possibly last (we can hope) preelection poll from partnership between the Associated Press and GfK Roper International purportedly tells us that most of us "now express prejudice toward blacks" whether we "recognize those feelings or not."

That's the conclusion communicated by AP reporter Sonya Ross and wire service deputy director of polling Jennifer Agiesta. In case we don't get the point, the item's accompanying photograph at the AP national site, Yahoo News and likely elsewhere is of Barack Obama, who despite the recognized and unrecognized racism of most Americans managed to carry 53% of the vote in 2008. Contrary to the report's headline, the AP pair admit that the AP-GfK poll results alone (done online, to add insult to injury) don't prove the point they're trying to make; other bizarre tests are also involved.

The rabid Left has no limits to indecency.

Jeff Goodby and Rich Silverstein, the founders of the advertising agency Goodby, Silverstein & Partners, have just released a pro-Obama commercial eerily reminiscent of Lyndon Johnson's controversial Daisy ad featuring children singing about a variety of horrors including an America - supposedly under President Romney - where "sick people just die" and "oil fills the sea" (video follows with full lyrics and commentary):

The national and battleground state polls are all showing tremendous momentum for Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney since the first debate.

Despite this, with the absence of conservative columnist Charles Krauthammer, the entire panel of PBS’s Inside Washington Friday – comprised of the Washington Post’s Colby King, PBS’s Mark Shields, Politico’s Evan Thomas, and NPR’s Nina Totenberg – unanimously stated that if the election were held today, President Obama would win (video follows with transcribed highlights and commentary):

Liberal historian Douglas Brinkley gushed over President Obama on Thursday's CBS This Morning and Friday's CNN Newsroom, and tried to put the incumbent in the best possible light: "He's [Obama] a very natural person....He's a really warm and genial person. What he has going for him is he exudes family values." Brinkley later asserted to CNN's Suzanne Malveaux that Obama is an "intellectual...he reads all these books about Abraham Lincoln and Theodore Roosevelt, FDR...he's wonkish, in a sense of detail in history."

Both times, the Rice University professor downplayed the President's "BS-er" smear of his opponent, Mitt Romney, that emerged during his recent Rolling Stone interview of the Democrat by using the veneer of history: "It's another part of 'Romnesia', I suppose. The working man's 'Romnesia' is BS-er....I mean...there's no love between even John F. Kennedy and his own vice president, Lyndon Johnson; let alone Harry Truman, who once said about Eisenhower, he knows no more about politics than a pig knows about Sunday."

For a hot New York minute the other night, it looked like there might be hope for David Letterman.

And then Rachel Maddow brought him back to obedience. (video after page break)

On Friday's NBC Today, political director Chuck Todd described how "both sides are dealing with some unexpected political speed bumps on the trail" and began by detailing the supposed obstacles for the Romney campaign:

...it's Indiana's Republican Senate candidate Richard Mourdock, who made controversial comments about abortion and rape on Tuesday...another unforced error for Team Romney and Republicans, national campaign co-chair John Sununu made these eyebrow-raising comments in response to Colin Powell's endorsement of President Obama.

CBS This Morning brought on liberal Colin Powell on Thursday so he could break his endorsement of President Obama and boost the Democratic candidate that he supported in 2008. Norah O'Donnell spotlighted Powell's service with "several Republican presidents" and wondered if he was "still Republican." When the former secretary of state claimed that he's a "Republican of a more moderate mold," Rose pressed him if he "may have to leave the Republican Party, if it continues in the direction that it's going."

Despite noting Powell's past service as secretary of state and national security advisor, and asking for his "concerns...about Governor [Mitt] Romney's foreign policy," neither Rose nor O'Donnell once mentioned the ongoing issue of the terrorist attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya. They decided instead to joke with their guest about his love of the viral musical track, "Call Me Maybe."

World News on Wednesday night continued to try and link Mitt Romney to the comments of a Republican Senate candidate in Indiana.  Anchor Diane Sawyer began the program by hyping, "The Romney campaign wrestles today with a landmine on a big issue for women."

On Tuesday, Richard Mourdock said that life is a "gift from God" and that "even when life begins in that horrible situation of rape that it is something that God intended to happen." Reporter David Muir insisted the words "have caused a firestorm." On Wednesday's Good Morning America, George Stephanopoulos warned that "Romney [is] catching some flak for his ties" to Mourdock.

It's becoming very clear that Obama's media are starting to realize the candidate they helped get elected four years ago is in serious trouble.

Count New York Times Washington Bureau correspondent Jeff Zeleny who tweeted moments ago, "In closing days of the race, Romney frames his candidacy as 'big-choice' vs. status quo of Obama. It's like watching '08 in reverse":

Charlie Rose and Norah O'Donnell badgered former RNC head Haley Barbour on Thursday's CBS This Morning on Indiana Republican Richard Mourdock's strongly pro-life stance, that even children conceived in rape are "God intended." Rose strongly hinted that the media firestorm surrounding Mourdock could affect the presidential race: "Romney may be gaining support among women. And the question arises, could this Mourdock controversy impact that?" [audio available here; video below the jump]

The CBS morning newscast stood out among its Big Three peers in significantly adding to the more than seven and half minutes of coverage from the previous day. The network devoted three minutes, 6 seconds to Mourdock, which is nearly three times the one minutes and 7 seconds that ABC's Good Morning America and NBC's Today set aside to the story combined.

Continuing to hype Indiana Senate candidate Richard Mourdock's opposition to abortion as some kind of scandal for Mitt Romney, on Wednesday's NBC Nightly News, correspondent Peter Alexander proclaimed: "...the Romney campaign is also dealing with a new controversy, trying to distance itself from this comment..."

After playing a sound bite of Mourdock explaining in a Tuesday senatorial debate that he believed an unborn child conceived by rape was still a life "intended by God," Alexander touted an ad of Romney endorsing the Indiana Republican. He then observed how, "Mr. Romney, who's been carefully courting women voters, ignored the controversy" and declared that the Governor's campaign has "been trying to steer away from it's party's right-wing since the contentious primaries..."

Bill Clinton the centrist, Rush Limbaugh among the "far right"? That's the gist of New York Times magazine political writer Matt Bai's thesis Wednesday on how the former president may actually have hurt President Obama's chances for reelection. Bai also made his usual case about "extreme forces" in the Republican Party.

Bai argued that Clinton made a strategic misstep when he advised Obama to hammer Romney as a "severe conservative."

NBC Tonight Show host Jay Leno actually asked guest Barack Obama Wednesday evening, "What is the cure for Romnesia?"

This came as one of the questions posed via Facebook and from members of the studio audience (video follows with transcribed highlights and commentary):