Mitt Romney

On Wednesday's CBS Evening News, correspondent Jan Crawford devoted a full story to President Obama's deceptive claim that he called the Benghazi attack an "act of terror" early on, as she recounted the administration's initial reluctance to call it a terrorist attack. The CBS correspondent also implicated debate moderator and CNN anchor Candy Crowley in bolstering Obama's distortion.

After showing a clip of Obama and Romney clashing over whether Obama had used the words "act of terror" early on, Crawford showed a clip of what the President said the day after the Benghazi attack, but then exposed Obama's revisionism:

With just a fortnight until Halloween, Chris Matthews thinks he has just the story to scare the bejesus out of his viewers: Corporate executives sharing with their employees via email why they think a vote for Mitt Romney is better for the company's business.

I kid you not. Matthews attempted to blow a few such incidents into a grand scandal of "voter suppression" proportions on his October 17 program. Here's how Matthews introduced the segment:

Liberal MSNBC anchor Chris Matthews on Wednesday hinted that Mitt Romney's confrontational attitude during the debates might have a sinister undertone. After playing a clip of the Republican telling the President to back off and that "you'll get your chance" to speak, Matthews derided, "...Through it all he looked down at the President. He looked down at him as a person."

As for the reason, Matthews began to speculate and then backed off: "I don't even want to get into-- but we can guess and none of it good." (The left-wing journalist sees racism everywhere.) After guest James Lipton considered a motive, Matthews cut him off and suggested that "many" of the possibilities are "bad." He also somehow derided Romney as a constitutional illiterate for questioning Obama.

Julie Rovner, NPR's resident ObamaCare flack, failed to include any conservatives experts for her report on Medicare on Tuesday's All Things Considered . Rovner played two sound bites each from Drew Altman of the Kaiser Family Foundation and from MIT's Jonathan Gruber, whom the Washington Post named the Democratic Party's "most influential health-care expert." She didn't mention either individual's liberal affiliations.

The closest that the correspondent got to mentioning their left-of-center politics is when she pointed out how Gruber "likes the way the Affordable Care Act takes on Medicare with a variety of approaches."

Mitt Romney has dropped out of his scheduled appearance on ABC’s The View, although his wife Ann will appear as scheduled on Thursday. The Huffington Post suggests that Romney said yes to the appearance after disparaging this show in the secret Mother Jones video in which he made “devastating comments” about the “47 percent.”

Why not? Liberals would say, as David Shuster put it on Current TV, “Because he’s a chicken, that’s why!” He added: "If you've got any integrity and you say yes, I'll go on your show, then you follow through.”

Wednesday's banner New York Times headline on the second presidential debate was studiously neutral: "Obama and Romney Mount Biting Attacks in Debate Rematch." Jim Rutenberg and Jeff Zeleny's underlying report played it straight, as did Peter Baker in his front-page "news analysis," under the punchy headline "Punch, Punch, Punch."

But while the Obama cheerleading was muted in print, Times journalists let their slant show during live fact-check of the debate, and especially on the TimesCast. Baker wrote for Wednesday's edition:

"She committed an act of journalistic terror or malpractice last night. If there were any journalistic standards, what she did last night would have been the equivalent of blowing up her career like a suicide bomber."

So said conservative talk radio host Rush Limbaugh Wednesday regarding Candy Crowley's shameful behavior during the previous night's presidential debate (video follows courtesy Daily Rushbo with transcript and absolutely no need for additional commentary):

The second 2012 presidential debate hosted by Candy Crowley got the full court press from the New York Times, with live fact-checking online and a 40-minute TimesCast wrap-up, that found Times reporters wrongly defending Obama and bashing Mitt Romney on a fiery exchange on Libya. Times journalists were highly supportive of Barack Obama's performance and critical of the "peevish" Mitt Romney, who "was arguably showing disrespect for the president," as Jackie Calmes insisted.

Times journalists also falsely insisted that President Obama had called the Benghazi attacks "an act of terror" in a Rose Garden speech the day after, and that Mitt Romney had made a "serious gaffe" when he suggested Obama had not. Yet in fact, as two other Times journalists softly pointed out later in the videocast, Obama was only speaking generally when he said in his Rose Garden speech that "no acts of terror will ever shake the resolve of this nation." Of the Benghazi assault, Managing Editor Richard Berke admitted that Obama "didn't say 'it was a terrorist attack.' It was more of a vague quote."

It looks like Candy Crowley, her establishment press excuse-makers (for her and President Obama), and supporters of the President are going to have to resort to finding penumbras emanating from Obama's September 12 Rose Garden appearance -- y'know, the one during which the press and Democrats insist that the President really, really did call the attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya a terrorist attack.

The reason they're going to have to do this is because the person who asked Obama the Libya question is saying that the President himself told him that he delayed calling Benghazi a terrorist attack. Erik Wemple at the Washington Post apparently doesn't grasp the damning significance of what the questioner, Kerry Ladka, relayed to him.

Just before 1 p.m. ET, Rush Limbaugh said the following about CNN's Candy Crowley and her performance as "moderator" last night in the second presidential debate: "In the real world, she would have committed career suicide last night."

Well, Rush, don't discount her ability to self-immolate just yet. The Washington Post reports that Crowley is backtracking on her backtrack (HT PJ Tatler):

The liberal tilt of questions selected by CNN’s Candy Crowley was so obvious, even the gang on NBC’s Today — hardly a conservative bastion — thought it remarkable. Correspondent Chuck Todd observed Wednesday morning: “The President also benefitted from many questions posed by the so-called undecided voters, covering issues near and dear to his liberal base....”

Going into Tuesday night’s debate, the MRC calculated that since 1992, moderators have called upon voters with a liberal agenda twice as often as those with a conservative agenda. The citizens selected by Crowley matched that tilt exactly, with six pro-Obama/liberal-themed questions, vs. three pro-Romney questions, and two others scored as neutral.

Even worse, Crowley interjected herself into the debate to validate President Obama’s erroneous claim that “the day after the attack [in Libya], I stood in the Rose Garden and told the American people and the world that we are going to find out exactly what happened, that this was an act of terror....”

White House Press Secretary Jay Carney first acknowledged on September 20 that the attack on our consulate in Benghazi, Libya, was a terrorist attack.

Coming eight days after the President's Rose Garden remarks on the subject, this appears to be in stark contrast to what he and CNN's Candy Crowley claimed in Tuesday's presidential debate.

The following is from Carney's September 20 press gaggle:

In my Monday post (at NewsBusters; at BizzyBlog) about the "Million Muppet March," the astroturfing Obama-supportive operation being managed by Michael Bellavia -- a gentleman whose animation firm "just so happens" to have Sesame Workshop as a major client -- I questioned how he and the rest of the group can be so sure that they "can just use the Muppet characters ... at a brazenly political event without worrying about consequences."

My take on this morning's "march"-related news is that "march" organizers have quietly been prevented from doing so. That's because they're not calling it the "Million Muppet March" any more. It's now the "Million Puppet March." The remarkably incurious Associated Press, in a brief report this morning (presented in full for fair use and discussion purposes), unskeptically relayed the group's pathetic name-change excuse:

Candy Crowley is rightfully coming under fire for acting like a biased referee in Tuesday night's presidential debate.

On CNN's Starting Point Wednesday, Congressman Jason Chaffetz (R-Ut.) scolded Crowley saying, "It wasn't necessarily your place to try to be fact-checker" (video follows with transcript and absolutely no need for additional commentary):

If you needed any more evidence of just how corrupt America's media are, consider the following.

According to the Washington Times, during Tuesday's presidential debate, reporters actually applauded when President Obama made a snarky comment about Mitt Romney's wealth.

At the end of Tuesday's presidential debate, a plethora of MSNBC commentators enthusiastically called Barack Obama the winner.

Quite deliciously, MSNBC later aired a post-debate focus group in which participants were more impressed with Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney's performance (video follows with commentary):

Mitt Romney senior adviser John Sununu had another contentious encounter with CNN's Soledad O'Brien Wednesday.

At the conclusion of their lengthy Starting Point segment about Tuesday's presidential debate, O'Brien thanked her guest for coming with Sununu responding, "It's always good to come on the groupie channel" (video follows with transcribed highlights and commentary):

During Tuesday's post-debate coverage on CNN, as the panel discussed moderator Candy Crowley giving cover to President Obama's attempt to defend his initial flawed response to the Benghazi terrorist attack, CNN correspondent John King blamed former Governor Mitt Romney for giving Crowley the opening to undermine the GOP candidate's criticism of Obama for taking so long to recognize that the attack was a premeditated act of terrorism.

Shortly before 11:30 p.m., CNN anchor Anderson Cooper had raised the subject as he defended Romney's reasoning and suggested that Obama was taking himself out of context to cover his own tracks. Cooper:

Moments after the second presidential debate ended David Gregory rushed to offer assurance to Barack Obama supporters as he declared: "I think liberals can breathe a sigh of relief. It's not curtains for the President. He showed up and showed up big tonight."

While Mitt Romney's performance was called "strong" by Gregory and his colleague Chuck Todd, the both of them agreed, during NBC's Tuesday night post debate coverage, that the GOP nominee "stumbled" on the issue of Libya. (video after the jump)

Minutes after the second presidential debate ended on Tuesday, ABC pundits Matthew Dowd and Donna Brazile brushed off the three-plus minute advantage of speaking time President Obama had over Mitt Romney under CNN's Candy Crowley's moderation. Dowd asserted that this imbalance would lead to "conservatives and Republicans attacking Candy Crowley, and when that happens, that is a sure sign that President Obama won this."

Brazile seconded this taunt: "When Republicans lose debates, they always find something wrong with the moderator or the referee." The two ABC panelists didn't give such an assessment after the first debate on October 3, even though liberals, such as Howard Fineman, attacked moderator Jim Lehrer.

Pollster Frank Luntz got more than he bargained for on Tuesday.

In a focus group on Fox's Hannity program after the debate, one of the participants who voted for Obama in 2008 said of the President, "He’s been bullsh--ting the public with the media behind him" (video follows with transcript and absolutely no need for additional commentary):

Conceivably the biggest moment in Tuesday's presidential debate was when moderator Candy Crowley injected herself into the discussion siding with Barack Obama on remarks he claimed he made in the Rose Garden following the attack on our consulate in Benghazi, Libya.

Long-time Democrat campaign strategist Joe Trippi said on Fox News shortly after the debate's conclusion that this looked like "the ref just threw the flag" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

Former debate moderator (and liberal journalist) Carole Simpson has been making the media rounds before Tuesday's presidential debate, giving President Obama the edge and implying that the standards for debate moderators are sexist. She continued that on Tuesday's Starting Point.

She gave Obama the town hall-style debate advantage as a  "people person" and "touchy-feely." In contrast, she cited criticism of Romney "that he doesn't relate to ordinary people." [Video below the break. Audio here.]

MSNBC's Chris Matthews on Tuesday made a rather startling prediction about viewers of the upcoming presidential debate.

"If it looks like [Obama's] getting beaten again, they’re going back to the fourth inning" of the Yankees-Tigers American League Championship game (video follows with transcript and commentary):

CNN's Anderson Cooper cited the liberal Tax Policy Center debunking Mitt Romney's tax plan on Monday, without noting that one of the authors admitted the plan could still work with different assumptions. He waited until the end of his report to admit that the studies in question were "making assumptions."

"[A] bipartisan panel of three authors for the Tax Policy Center examined the plan and concluded that there's really no way of making the numbers work, that is, unless the middle class pays more," Cooper reported on the night before Tuesday's presidential debate. That is misleading, since the study admitted reliance on "certain assumptions" and one of its authors said the plan could work. The TPC report was released in August.

On Tuesday's NBC Today, during a panel discussion previewing the second presidential debate, co-host Matt Lauer mandated that Mitt Romney answer charges that he's moderated his positions: "How does Mitt Romney answer that question tonight of, 'Why have you moved to the middle, have become more moderate in these closing weeks?'"

Former McCain campaign advisor Steve Schmidt rejected Lauer's assertion: "I don't think he has to answer that question." Lauer immediately interrupted: "What if he's asked that question?" Former Democratic governor of Michigan Jennifer Granholm joined Lauer in ganging up on Schmidt: "Oh, I think he does. He absolutely does."

There must be some kind of alternative universe reporters at the Politico inhabit as they toil for the online publication. That's the only conceivable explanation I can conjure up when I read some of what is presented there.

Take a report which first appeared early Monday morning from Anna Palmer (please). If she weren't reporting from that alternative universe, she wouldn't possibly be able to believe what she wrote in her story about how big, bad, eeeevil l-l-l-lobbyists will have so much influence in a possible Mitt Romney administration, and how that is such a stark contrast to how pristine and pure things have been during the Obama years (bolds are mine):