2012 Presidential

On the Monday, January 9, Imus in the Morning, as he was interviewed by phone, New York magazine's Frank Rich - formerly of the New York Times - argued that he believes President Obama should be reelected, and seemed befuddled when host Don Imus, who plans to vote for Mitt Romney, asserted that Obama's foreign policy has been "disastrous." The liberal columnist then tried to give President Obama credit for the death of Osama bin Laden.

After Imus asked, "So you like President Obama, don't you? I mean, you'll vote-"

Rich responded: (Video below)

On Friday, two Deputy Secretaries, one at the Department of Transportation and the other at Defense, in their capacities as co-chairs of the National Space-Based Positioning, Navigation and Timing (PNT) Executive Committee, released a one page letter concluding that the modified broadband deployment plan of LightSquared could not coexist with current GPS devices and their spectrum. That's because: a) LightSquared's deployment "would cause harmful interference to many GPS receivers"; b) It would not be "compatible with several GPS-dependent aircraft safety-of-flight systems," and c) "there appear to be no practical solutions" to the problems.

Stories about the release, to the extent they exist, are largely avoiding the mention of "Falcone" (that's hedge fund operator and heavy Obama campaign contributor Philip Falcone, "SEC" (which is investigating Falcone and his hedge fund, and "Obama" (as in President Barack Obama, the beneficiary along with the "Democratic Party" -- another unmentioned term in any variation -- of said contributions). Coverage by Daniel Fisher at Forbes at least brings up Falcone, the SEC, and the Obama administration:

It seems almost impossible to believe, but the upcoming issue of Newsweek has a cover story entitled "Why Are Obama's Critics So Dumb?"

If you think we're kidding, the following picture was tweeted by @Newsweek three hours ago:

The lack of current events knowledge demonstrated by today's anchors and political commentators is often breathtaking.

On Sunday's Meet the Press, host David Gregory actually told Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.), "Democrats haven't put together a budget in a year." Actually, it's been almost three years (video follows with transcript and commentary):

As he appeared on Friday's The O'Reilly Factor, FNC's Geraldo Rivera complained that GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney never mentions that his father, George Romney, was born in Mexico while campaigning as the "most virulent anti-illegal immigration person ever," and ended up calling the former Massachusetts governor a "hypocrite." (Video below)

ABC's George Stephanopoulos on Sunday proved once and for all what a joke he is.

Not only did the This Week host give twice the airtime to faux political candidate Stephen Colbert as Texas governor Rick Perry, he did so after the Comedy Central star called him "a political operative" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

CNN must have known that when it pitted Glenn Beck TV's Amy Holmes against the perilously liberal David Shuster of Al Gore's Current TV, sparks were going to fly.

On Sunday's Reliable Sources, when the media's coverage of Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney and Bain Capital surfaced, the pair did end up facing off with Holmes not surprisingly looking like the only adult in the room (video follows with transcribed highlights and commentary):

It wasn't only the press that completely misunderstood and therefore misrepresented Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney's claim this week that he likes being able to fire people.

NBC's Saturday Night Live actually began Saturday's show with a sketch depicting the former Massachusetts governor trying to fire everything - including the food! - at a South Carolina diner (video follows with transcribed highlights and commentary):

Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney has up to this point opted not to make his tax returns public.

Not surprisingly, Newsweek's Eleanor Clift smells a rat and expressed her conspiratorial opinion during the predictions segment of PBS's McLaughlin Group Friday (video follows with transcript):

Leftist talk radio host Mike Malloy never stops wishing for the death of conservatives. On January 6, he talked of "Sick Santorum," and said "I think he's Catholic, right? What you ought to do is call Francis Cardinal George out in Chicago and maybe you and he can get together for a cup of -- hemlock." He wants Santorum and Cardinal George to kill themselves.

On both January 6 and January 9, Malloy launched vicious broadsides against the Catholic Church. (On the 9th, he also said libertarians were perpetrators of violence.) He began on the 6th: "I hate to see an organization like the Catholic Church --  that has been one of the bloodiest, most suppressive, most oppressive, most violent organizations in the history of not just religion but of the entire human race try to claim victim status because a bunch of queers want to march a parade down the g*ddamn street! That's what drives me crazy!"

Liberal radio host Bill Press on Friday called Newt Gingrich "the suicide bomber of the Republican Party."

Appearing on MSNBC's Politics Nation, Press said of the former Speaker of the House, "He's in [the race] to take down as many people as he can as he goes down, and he has that same silly grin on his face when he pulls the plug as a suicide bomber" (video follows with transcribed highlights and commentary):

A report by CNN's David Mattingly that aired on Friday's The Situation Room emphasized the "bitter Bain memories" left in South Carolina from Bain Capital, the private equity firm that candidate Mitt Romney founded.

Mattingly featured the president of the local Steelworkers union at the plant Bain Capital bought back in the 1990s. As the United Steelworkers union has been heavily pro-Democratic, it came as no surprise that the president ripped Bain's practices and held Romney "very responsible." [Video below the break. Click here for audio.]

On Thursday's NBC Today, correspondent Peter Alexander promoted a photo of Mitt Romney that supposedly "shows Governor Romney on a tarmac, his feet kicked up, getting polished in front of a corporate jet." In reality, as National Public Radio reported on Friday, the picture in question actually shows Romney being wanded by an airport security official before boarding a charter flight.

In the same Thursday report, Alexander touted a Gordon Gekko impersonator greeting Romney in South Carolina without explaining the stunt was engineered by a left-wing group in the state.

On Friday's NBC Today, after touting an ad from the Democratic National Committee attacking Mitt Romney's record at Bain Capital by using sound bites from his Republican opponents, co-host Matt Lauer asked Meet the Press host David Gregory: "David, is it too early to tell how big a gift these Republican candidates have given to Barack Obama and his campaign?"

In response, Gregory joked: "It may be a stocking stuffer at this point." He explained: "We know that this was going to be a line of attack that the President's going to use. I think that Romney, by the time of the general, will be pretty well prepared....But there's no question that the President will pick up this baton and run with it."

For the past several days, much of the Obama-loving media have been gushing and fawning over an anti-Mitt Romney video created by a pro-Newt Gingrich PAC.

Count the Washington Post out of the list of gooey sycophants on this one as the paper's Glenn Kessler on Friday actually gave "King of Bain" four Pinocchios:

UPDATE: James Pethokoukis at the American Enterprise Institute's blog has more, including the possibility that the original story misidentified "Bain Consulting," as well as a theory as to the story's original source.

It looks like someone ran with something they thought was too good to check.

A retraction described as a "Correction" currently on CNBC's web site tells readers: "A previous story incorrectly reported that Mitt Romney's former firm, Bain & Co., was part of a team of consulting companies that advised President Barack Obama on a decision to shutter car dealerships during the auto bailout. Bain & Co. said it has no connection to the "Bain Consulting" firm referenced in government documents." Several bloggers excerpted the original report, including Ed Morrissey at Hot Air. Some of what he captured follows:

MSNBC's Martin Bashir on Thursday perfectly demonstrated the liberal media's hypocrisy concerning campaign finances.

After beginning his program gushing and fawning over all the money Barack Obama raised in the fourth quarter, Bashir proceeded to carp and whine about the funds GOP PACs are spending, even calling for campaign finance reform to curb it (video follows with transcript and commentary):

Appearing as a guest on Thursday's Chelsea Lately show on the E! network, HBO comedian Bill Maher declared that he recently told former GOP presidential candidate Herman Cain, who will be appearing as a guest on tonight's Real Time show on HBO, that "I don't, like, hate your f------ guts,"  soon adding, "like I hate Newt Gingrich," inspiring agreement on hating the former House Speaker from host Chelsea Handler.

Appearing as a guest on Thursday's Late Show with David Letterman on CBS, Arizona Senator John McCain complained about ABC's George Stephanopoulos because the ABC host asked GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney if states have the constitutional power to ban contraceptives.

Gayle King made it clear that she is in the tank for the Obama campaign on Thursday's CBS This Morning, specifically vouching that Michelle Obama apparently is "passionate," and that the First Lady is "looking forward to returning for another four years. They're going to work very hard to make that happen."

King continued tossing softballs at her admitted friend, at one point gushing, "Do you ever just sort of marvel at your life?" She completely omitted asking her guest about controversial aspects of her time in the White House, such as Mrs. Obama's travel expenses, or how the First Lady wore $540 designer sneakers as she fed the poor in Washington, DC in 2009.

Even fair-minded liberals, of which there must be a few, should acknowledge that the Saturday-Sunday "blitz" of the Republican presidential candidates by ABC and NBC correspondents looked like a play designed by the left wing of the Democratic Party.

Clearly the questions by ABC's George Stephanopoulos and Diane Sawyer about contraception and same-sex marriage were asked to trap the GOP candidates into delivering sound bites that the Obama re-election campaign could use against the eventual nominee and the party at large. These were the types of accusatory questions that would never be asked of a Democratic president. One would not expect to hear, for example, a question like this to President Obama: "Mr. President, millions of babies have been legally aborted in this country since 1973; how can you so callously dismiss unborn children, many of whom would now be productive, taxpaying citizens, by taking a pro-choice stance on abortion?"

In a report for Thursday's NBC Today, correspondent Peter Alexander promoted attacks on Mitt Romney: "There's been no let-up in the barrage of criticism over Romney's record as the former head of Bain Capital." Alexander pointed out: "This Gordon Gekko impersonator greeted Romney's arrival in South Carolina."

A scene from the movie "Wall Street" was played with actor Michael Douglas depicting the corrupt Gekko and uttering the famous line: "Greed, for lack of a better word, is good." The impersonator following Romney, dressed in a suit with a name tag reading "Gordon Gekko" and chomping on a cigar, repeated the line for NBC's camera. Alexander failed to note the Gekko look-alike was a stunt cooked up by the left-wing group, South Carolina Forward Progress.

PBS host and leftist activist Tavis Smiley called out Republican candidates for their hostility to the poor in America, on Thursday morning on MSNBC. Appearing during the 7 a.m. hour of Morning Joe, he singled out four candidates by name and warned that "we're in a world of trouble" due to their campaign trail rhetoric.

As a PBS host, Smiley benefits from public funding. That has not stopped him in the past for making outrageous liberal remarks, and it didn't stop him on Thursday when he railed against a Congressional "bipartisan consensus that the poor just don't matter." [Video below the break. Click here for audio.]

"Good Morning America" reporter John Berman on Thursday hyperbolically warned that Mitt Romney is taking his "ever more scathing, anti-Obama message" to South Carolina. The correspondent then proceeded to play up every new attack on the Republican front-runner.

Speaking of South Carolina, Berman fretted, "It's not just the warm weather, but the warm welcome to his ever more scathing, anti-Obama message." The reporter highlighted a video from Gingrich supporters that lambastes Romney's "big house, big money and the big cuts to some companies."

After Mitt Romney’s comfortable win in the New Hampshire Republican primaries Tuesday, media attention shifts to the next primary, in socially conservative South Carolina, which New York Times campaign reporter Jim Rutenberg claims is “a place famous for surfacing the dark undercurrents of American politics” in his Wednesday front-page story, “In South Carolina, Challenges Await on Ideology and Faith.”

Rutenberg is mainly referring to an alleged incident during the 2000 campaign in which presidential candidate Sen. John McCain was victimized by anonymous phone calls (from either the George W. Bush campaign or Bush supporters) claiming McCain’s dark-skinned adopted daughter from Bangladesh was an illegitimate black love child. But is there hard evidence the smear even occurred? As the Media Research Center's Brent Bozell wrote in a column in January 2008: “No matter that McCain campaign manager Rick Davis couldn’t substantiate how many of these scurrilous phone calls were actually made, or by whom.”

Appearing on Thursday's NBC Today, special correspondent Tom Brokaw touted GOP presidential candidates attacking Mitt Romney's business experience at Bain Capital: "It's the Republican Party equivalent of a jihad....the real danger for the Republicans is that it will deeply divide the party at a time when they want it to be united." [Audio available here]

While promoting the Republican infighting, Brokaw repeatedly confused Mitt Romney with his father and former Michigan Governor George Romney: "[Senator Jim DeMint said] George Romney is going to win this primary in South Carolina....They're going hard after George Romney....George Romney seems to be holding his own and the momentum continues for him..." At one point, co-host Ann Curry corrected him: "Mitt Romney." Brokaw explained: "His father was George Romney, that's my generational slip." [View video after the jump]

Joe Scarborough said it about Rick Perry, but it could perhaps have applied to other Republican presidential contenders who are going after Mitt Romney's record at Bain Capital.

On Morning Joe today, discussing Perry's depiction of venture capitalists like Romney as "vultures," Scarborough said that the Texas governor: "sounds like a stoned NYU grad student in Zuccotti Park."  Video after the jump.

Appearing as a guest on Wednesday's The Colbert Report on Comedy Central, ABC's George Stephanopoulos responded to host Stephen Colbert's question of why he - as debate co-moderator last Saturday - asked GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney about whether states have the constitutional power to ban contraceptives, as he argued that the question revolved around the "right to privacy."

He then suggested that a bet with co-moderator Diane Sawyer motivated him to be so persistent in asking Romney followup questions on the subject. After Colbert asked what it felt like when Romney called it a "silly thing" for Stephanopoulos to ask such a hypothetical question, the ABC anchor responded: