Scott Walker

To be fair, Yahoo News's main home page has a headlined item called "What Scott Walker can teach Barack Obama," a later reference to the slapping of Tom Barrett by a "supporter" for supposedly conceding too early, and the Politics mini-section of the home page lists three Wisconsin-related stories.

But Yahoo News's U.S. home page (screen grabs here and here) as of 11 a.m. ET was a Wisconsin-free, Walker-free zone. And it's not like the page is devoid of political items, such as the following, plus a "most popular" item I'll reveal at the end which seems like a plant:

I noticed at lunch on Tuesday while reading the handy Washington Post commuter tabloid called "Express" that Scott Bauer at Associated Press actually wrote this sentence: "A Marquette University Law School poll released last week showed Walker with a narrow 7-percentage point lead over Barrett, 52 percent to 45 percent." That looks like a pretty accurate poll.

Is this what the 2008 race was for Obama, a "narrow 7-percentage point lead" over McCain? Is that what AP will write if Obama is leading in October by seven points? This wasn't even the only time Scott Bauer used that ludicrous passage. Let's go back to last Thursday, from the same song sheet:

Time magazine's Joe Klein on Wednesday compared Tuesday's recall election in Wisconsin to former President Bill Clinton's impeachment proceeding in the late '90s.

Not surprisingly, appearing on CNN's Starting Point, Klein got most of the facts wrong (video follows with transcript and commentary):

It was another embarrassing election night for the mainstream media that once again badly misinterpreted exit polls.

Standing above the chaos was the Drudge Report which at 5:44 PM correctly announced to the world, "EXIT POLLS SHOW WALKER HOLDING SEAT":

During the special 11:00 p.m. edition of The Ed Show on Tuesday, MSNBC host Ed Schultz fretted about what he viewed as "pretty damn scary stuff" that he believed Republicans would do in following Governor Scott Walkers example in pushing a conservative agenda in Wisconsin.

A bit later, during an interview with the Reverend Jesse Jackson, he asserted that conservatives are trying to "destroy and defund public education," which he claimed was "hurting the minority communities."

On Tuesday's The Last Word with Lawrence O'Donnell, MSNBC host O'Donnell teased his show by asserting that President Obama is "the really big winner" in Wisconsin because of exit polls showing that, in spite of Republican Governor Scott Walker's win, a majority of those who voted preferred President Obama over GOP candidate Mitt Romney in the presidential race. O'Donnell:

Tuesday night's edition of The O'Reilly Factor on Fox News featured one of the latest videos from Dan Joseph of MRCTV from the streets of Madison. Joseph tried to interview an angry aging hippie as he held up leftist signs, including one with Gov. Scott Walker's face in a pile of elephant dung.

Joseph turned to a group of middle-school-aged children who said the protester was scary. O'Reilly said "Those kids are getting quite a political education." O'Reilly also featured what a generous person might call the "soul stylings" of liberal Congresswoman Gwen Moore of Milwaukee as she tried to sing "Hit the Road, Scott."

As of 11:15 p.m., with about 74% of the votes counted, Wisconsin Governor Scott was ahead of Scott Barrett by roughly a 56-44 margin. Late-arriving votes from Democrat-heavy areas of Milwaukee and Dane Counties seemed likely to narrow the margin to perhaps 10 points. (UPDATE: Because heavier margins of support for Barrett in those two counties, the final margin was 6.9%, roughly the same as Barack Obama's 7.4% margin in 2008, which was never labeled a "survival" or "narrow" or anything similar.)

The headlines currently at CNN (HT to a NewsBusters tipster) and the Associated Press both act as if Walker squeaked by. Pics follow the jump.

In response to the news that Republican Governor Scott Walker won his recall battle in Wisconsin Tuesday, MSNBC's Ed Schultz spoke a truth that should be a total embarrassment for the entire journalism industry.

"This is not going to be an easy night for many broadcasters who are liberal" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

Despite bogus talk early in the evening that exit polls showed the Wisconsin recall election in a 50-50 dead heat, Republican Governor Scott Walker has won.

Please feel free to discuss what this means for the upcoming elections in November as well as the future of the labor movement in this country.

As he has for nearly 16 months, the AP's Scott Bauer once again included a false statement about what the budget repair legislation also known as "Act 10" passed by Wisconsin's legislature and signed by Governor Scott Walker last year did to public-sector unions and their ability to collectively bargain.

He wrote: "Enraged Democrats and labor activists gathered more than 900,000 signatures in support of the recall after they failed to stop Walker and his GOP allies in the state Legislature from stripping most public employees of their union right to collectively bargain." Y'know, Scott, you've been writing this garbage for 16 months. You can keep it up for the next 16 months or 16 years, but what won't change is that fact that your statement today and the equivalent statements you've written in the past simply aren't true, and never will be.

David Shuster is predicting the imminent indictment of Karl Rove.

Oops!

That was Shuster as an MSNBC host back in 2006. In his current incarnation on the no-rated Current TV he is predicting the possible indictment of Wisconsin governor Scott Walker. Despite making himself a laughingstock six years ago by projecting visions of Karl Rove being frogwalked across the White House lawn, Shuster now seems intent on delivering an encore performance.

Seated atop a high horse on Monday's NBC Nightly News, correspondent Peter Alexander lamented the tone of the Wisconsin recall election of Republican Governor Scott Walker: "It is a fiery local campaign that analysts say highlights the country's nasty political landscape, where demonization often drowns out discourse."

What Alexander failed to notice from his lofty perch was that left-wing MSNBC host Ed Schultz has driven much of the nastiness in the campaign. Launching his vicious assault against Walker in February of 2011 on The Ed Show, Schultz spewed: "Governor Scott Walker is trying to balance the budget on the backs of school teachers, prison guards, and snowplow drivers...on a mission to destroy basic human rights, union rights that is, for public employees." From then through May of 2012, Schultz brought on 237 guests to denounce Walker.

You'd think MSNBC's resident brainiac would know better than to engage in the very thing she condemns in others.

Apparently this ethical tenet understood by most children is beyond Rachel Maddow's grasp as she demonstrated once again on her cable show last night. (video, audio clips after page break)

On the eve of the Wisconsin recall election Ed Schultz invited on the Reverend Jesse Jackson to compare Republican Governor Scott Walker to the segregationist George Wallace and call him “a threat to democracy.” Schultz, on Monday’s edition of The Ed Show, prompted Jackson to explain the comparison, to which the founder of the Rainbow PUSH Coalition responded that the former Alabama governor “tried to block the vote and lost and Walker is trying to stop the vote and will lose.”

Jackson joined Schultz as part of a typically slanted line-up of liberal guests. Out of a total of seven panelists only one, Wisconsin State Senator Glenn Grothman, was a Republican. Last night’s disparity was a microcosm of 15 months of Ed Show guest bias. A recent MRC study showed that from February 14, 2011 through May 18, 2012 anti-Scott Walker guests outnumbered pro-Walker guests on The Ed Show by 237 to 1. (video after the jump)

Today is the big day for Wisconsinites as the long-awaited recall election of governor Scott Walker finally ends.

After playing up the contest as important and of national portent, many liberals in and out of the press are now trying to say it doesn't matter. Still, President Obama has made it a point to make himself scarce in the race, refusing to come to the aid of Tom Barrett, the Democratic mayor of Milwaukee trying to unseat Walker.

Stay with us tonight as we'll have an NB Live chat to keep tabs on the results and monitor the media reaction.

What a difference 48 hours makes in the barren wasteland known as Ed Schultz's mind.

Back on May 29, Schultz warned of giant flaming acorns falling from the sky if Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker prevailed in a June 5 recall election against Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett, who was defeated by Walker in the 2010 gubernatorial race. (audio clips after page break)

On Sunday's CBS Evening News, John Dickerson candidly admitted that a failed recall attempt of Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker "would be a big blow" to the unions, and that it "would be a sign to any Republican contemplating similar action to limit unions that you could survive, and Walker will become the poster child and hero of that effort." Poster child?

Dickerson predicted that there "would be a lot of infighting in Democratic circles, with unions saying the national Democratic parties and their president didn't do enough" if Walker won. But he immediately added a more sunny spin, that "it might galvanize union supporters for the presidential election, on the theory that they're under threat and they need a president who's on their side. "

New York Times columnist Paul Krugman got another much-needed education from syndicated columnist George Will on ABC's This Week Sunday.

After Krugman impugned Gov. Scott Walker (R-Wisc.) for his so-called "fiscal irresponsibility," Will simply and quite accurately responded, "A more than $3 billion budget that he inherited, a deficit, has now become a surplus" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

When the Reagan administration barred critical news media from White House press conferences, liberals quite rightly protested. So where is liberal outrage now that gubernatorial candidate Tom  Barrett has blocked a reporter from his public events?

Four male Barrett campaign staffers escorted Wisconsin Reporter’s Dustin Hurst from a Chippewa Falls rally for Barrett, the Democrat hoping to oust Republican Gov. Scott Walker in Tuesday’s Wisconsin recall vote.

As one who has made the occasional dumb mistake (which readers tend to be quite adept at catching), I figured I'd give the Associated Press's Todd Richmond and his editors a while to correct a pretty obvious miscue relating to a Wisconsin gubernatorial recall campaign visit by challenger Tom Barrett. In a report whose first version appeared yesterday morning and currently has a 2:42 p.m. Saturday time stamp, Richmond wrote that Barrett's campaign Saturday started "with the Barron County Dairy Breakfast in Hillsdale, a burg of 1,250 people about 90 miles west of Minneapolis." Well Todd, if Barrett actually was 90 miles west of the Twin Cities, he would not have been in Wisconsin; he would have been about halfway between Minneapolis and the North Dakota border. (Hillsdale, Wisconsin is really about 90 miles east of Minneapolis.)

On more substantive matters, Richmond, with the help of an agenda-driven headline ("Wis. governor works to meet voters before recall"), portrayed Walker as an awkward in-person campaigner, someone not instantly recognized by many people who have lives outside of poltics (imagine that) and, of course (while not mentioning union and leftist spending at all) as a beneficiary of "a jaw-dropping $31 million in campaign cash." He also wrote that polls show the race as close while failing to note that Walker leads in either every one or nearly every one. The relevant paragraphs from Richmond's report are after the jump (bolds are mine):

Friday evening, Madison, Wisconsin blogger Ann Althouse reported receiving (HT Instapundit) an "Incredibly creepy mail today from the Greater Wisconsin Political Fund." She has a put up an image of what she received with names and addresses redacted (except for her name). It's a list which includes Althouse and many of her neighbors indicating who has and hasn't voted in the last two elections.

Unsurprisingly, the Greater Wisconsin Political Fund is the political fundraising arm of the Greater Wisconsin Committee, both of which lean very left. Both support the effort to recall Badger State Governor Scott Walker. Both appear likely to get a virtually free pass from the establishment press. Althouse's reaction follows the jump:

Asking the questions the liberal media won't ask, our good friend Joe Schoffstall of MRCTV caught up with Bill Clinton in Milwaukee today and asked him to defend his unqualified support of the recall effort to oust Gov. Scott Walker (R-Wis.) from office given Clinton's previous opposition to recall elections in September 2003.

Back then, Clinton worried that tossing out Gov. Gray Davis (D) -- who had just been reelected the year prior -- would make California a "laughingstock" and would herald the "beginning of a circus in America where we just throw people out as soon as they make a tough decision." [video of Joe's interaction with Clinton juxtaposed with 2003 Clinton remarks follows page break]

On Thursday, NB's Mark Finkelstein reported that MSNBC was airing an ad for The Ed Show and its obsession with recalling Gov. Scott Walker that said “Get Out The Vote!” Washington Post media blogger Erik Wemple picked up the story and lamented that MSNBC would be so baldly partisan, except – MSNBC told him it was being scrubbed.

"No need to lecture too much here, because MSNBC told me yesterday evening that it has taken a critical look at the spot.” he reported. MSNBC spokeswoman Lauren Skowronski said “The spot is being revised. The original version is no longer airing.”        

Tuesday’s recall election in Wisconsin marks the end point of MSNBC’s Ed Schultz’s 15 month-long mission to destroy Scott Walker. The conservative Republican governor’s attempt to fix that state’s budget crisis, by reigning in the public unions’ influence, sent Schultz on a rampage. The liberal talk show host turned his self-titled program, The Ed Show, into a hyper-partisan platform from which union activists, liberal journalists and Wisconsin state Democrats could join Schultz in his drive to oust the “radical” Walker out office.

From February 14, 2011 through May 18, 2012 anti-Walker guests dominated by a count of 237 (99.6%) to 1 (less than .5%). In that same span Schultz devoted a portion or a majority of 128 episodes to attacks on Walker. (chart and video montage after the jump)

Fox News has come under "withering criticism" after Fox & Friends yesterday aired what's been described as a campaign-style video, created by an associate producer, contrasting President Obama's words with his job performance. A top Fox exec said the video "was not authorized at the network's senior level" that "senior executives would not have approved it and the matter was addressed with the show's producers."  The video was removed from the Fox & Friends website.

So if it's wrong for FNC to campaign against Obama, how about MSNBC launching a Get Out The Vote effort against Scott Walker in the Wisconsin recall election?  Have a look at the video clip here of an MSNBC "Lean Forward" promo for Ed Schultz's show.  After Schultz declares that the Wisconsin recall hinges on "who gets their people out," the screen flashes "Get Out The Vote!"  Schultz seeks to recruit his viewers in the effort, the graphic asking them to "share your photos" at Schultz's Facebook page.   There's no doubt who Schultz is seeking to get out the vote for--and against.  The same video is filled with images of people holding signs saying "Recall Walker" and "Walker: Your Pink Slip Is Showing."  View the video after the jump.