2012 Presidential

As NewsBusters reported, singer Harry Belafonte and Princeton professor Cornel West took some cheap shots at Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain on Monday.

On Tuesday, former NPR political analyst Juan Williams told Fox News's Martha MacCallum, "They really can’t stand black conservatives. They think anybody who’s a black conservative is totally inauthentic" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

Monday’s column by former New York Times Executive Editor Bill Keller, “Is the Tea Party Over?”, indulged in the usual doomsaying for the G.O.P.’s 2012 presidential prospects (too negative, too far to the right, etc.). Keller also found the “doofus” Gov. Perry guilty of giving “a wink to the evangelicals, a nod to the executioner, and an ardent defense of personal liberties for those who are heterosexual and don’t need an abortion.”

Keller, who as editor of the paper virtually ignored the Tea Party during its first year of existence, has now turned around and said the movement is about to blow its big political opportunity:

Following in the shameful steps of the Washington Post, the New York Times on Monday again tried to use the long-standing racially offensive name of a hunting camp leased by Texas Gov. Perry's family to imply that Perry, a Republican presidential candidate, was guilty of racial insensitivity: “For Perry, Texas Roots Include Racial Backdrop – Hunting Camp Name Has Put Focus On the Other Side of His Origin Story.”

The text box was not exactly a smoking gun: “An early life in which exposure to diversity was not a common feature.”

Good Morning America's George Stephanopoulos on Tuesday continued his streak of having a top Obama operative discuss a Republican presidential debate. Rather than talk to any of the contenders, Stephanopoulos turned to top White House strategist David Plouffe.

Speaking of the Occupy Wall Street protest, Stephanopoulos indicated that the rallies seem to "be growing every day." He blandly speculated, "Is this the liberal version of the Tea Party? And is that a good thing for the White House?" This is in stark contrast to the hard-hitting, derisive questions the former Democratic operative turned journalist had for the Tea Party.

Tonight's GOP presidential debate (hosted by The Washington Post and Bloomberg TV) is moderated by longtime PBS late-night host Charlie Rose. His show has been touted as a "national salon," but it's a very cozy place for liberal media elites. Conservatives are not regulars. The most frequent guests include his journalist buddy Al Hunt (with 79 appearances), who now works at Bloomberg, and New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman (74 appearances). Most of the GOP contenders have never been on Rose's PBS show. (Gingrich and Romney have. It's not shocking that the only one to appear in the last four years was Jon Huntsman, last December.)

Rose has been notoriously fawning with some major Democratic figures, including the Clintons, and perhaps most energetically with Al Gore. In a cozy 2007 interview taped inside a supportive liberal bubble at the 92nd Street Y in New York, Rose offered testimony of how correct Gore was on the issues and how graciously he accepted defeat in 2000 (apparently after the six-week marathon of legal battles). The experts Rose quoted on this matter were two liberal columnists from The Washington Post and a liberal venture capitalist:

While morning and evening newscasts from all three broadcast networks in the last few days have focused on anti-Mormon sentiment within the Republican Party that may hinder Mitt Romney's bid for the presidency, FNC's Special Report with Bret Baier on Monday noted that self-identified Republican voters are substantially more willing to accept a Mormon President compared to Democrats.

FNC correspondent Carl Cameron observed that Democrats are "least tolerant" compared to Republicans and independents as he recounted the findings of a Quinnipiac poll:

As NewsBusters reported, Harry Belafonte and Princeton Professor Cornel West said some disgraceful things about Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain Monday.

Appearing on Fox News's "Hannity" show, Cain replied, "The only tactic that they have to try and intimidate me and shut me up is to call me names" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

In a "Joy Behar Show" segment scheduled to be aired on HLN Friday, singer Harry Belafonte attacked Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain in potentially the most disgraceful manner of any media member to date.

While his host and others on the set laughed, Belafonte called Cain "a bad apple" that was "so denied intelligence...I don’t think prayers were created for him" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

Yesterday, in a different post about long-term unemployment, I wrote: "Of all the reality-denying aspects of Obama administration press coverage, the usually implicit but occasionally explicit assertion that he and his people are just helpless bystanders in an economic calamiity is easily among the most annoying."

Bloomberg's Mike Dorning triggered the annoyance meter today with an "analysis" contending that President Obama's move from being a "conciliator" (quoting an alleged "expert") to supporting "populist causes" and sympathizing with the anti-capitalist Occupy Wall Street assemblage "may provide some inoculation" against the continuing bad economy -- as if Obama, Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, and the their party bear no conceivable responsibility for current economic conditions. Here are the first seven paragraphs of Dorning's dreck (bolds and numbered tags are mine):

CBS sided with supporters of the "Occupy Wall Street" protests on Monday's Early Show, bringing on former Democratic Senator Russ Feingold to boost the left-leaning demonstrations, with no Republican and/or conservative critics appearing as guests during the program. Feingold slammed Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain as "un-American" for his critique of the protests.

Near the end of her interview of the Wisconsin politician, anchor Erica Hill raised Cain's attack on the continuing anti-corporate rallies: "Republican candidate Herman Cain, weighing in over the weekend. He said that, basically, it's un-American to protest capitalism. Businesses have to make money, and if they can do a better job making money oversea- it's an unfortunate reality for many Americans- but they're concerned about their bottom line. Can there be some sort of common ground here?"

The field of candidates for the 2012 GOP presidential nomination are "offering a series of one-size-fits-all economic pitches that fall short of addressing important nuances and competing demands posed by the nation's diverse fiscal landscape" according to unnamed "analysts," Washington Post staffer Michael Fletcher noted in the lead paragraph of his October 10 front-page story, "GOP field vague on economic remedies."

Fletcher proceeded to insist that "divergent circumstances call for the kinds of tailored economic strategies that the GOP candidates have mostly avoided" thus far while the GOP field has "focused on items central to Republican orthodoxy" such as "reducing taxes, cutting government spending, jettisoning regulations and promoting free trade."

To answer Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain's claim that racism is not a big factor in African-American unemployment, CNN brought on radical left-wing activists Professor Cornel West of Princeton and Tavis Smiley of PBS, both of who co-host a public radio talk show.

Not-surprisingly, West and Smiley, both African-Americans, ripped Cain's comments. West griped that Cain needs to "get off the symbolic crack pipe" and added that he has "mediocrity, mendacity, mean-spiritedness toward the poor, and now mean-spiritedness toward black people fighting for their lives in this very ugly economy." [Video below the break. Click here for audio.]

Good Morning America and the Today show on Monday fretted about the "ugly turn" the 2012 presidential race has taken in the wake of a pastor at a conservative conference decrying Mitt Romney's Mormonism as a "cult." Yet, these same programs promoted the "edgy" Book of Mormon play back in the spring.

On Monday, GMA's correspondent Jon Karl asserted, "The race for the Republican nomination has take an ugly turn with some now openly questioning whether Mitt Romney's Mormon faith should disqualify him from being president." Karl added that when Romney spoke at the Value Voters Summit, he "tried to take the high ground."

What a change The Washington Post wrought by bringing in Patrick Pexton as the ombudsman. The last ombudsman, Andrew Alexander, was a stickler about the Post’s overuse of anonymous sources. But in a Sunday column on Rick Perry and the Post's “N-head” painted-rock “investigative” hullaballoo, Pexton just circled his wagon and made excuses for the newspaper.

“If the seven sources The Post relied on for this article are truthful, then Perry is lying or is badly misinformed about when the rock was painted,” insisted Pexton. But what if the seven anonymous sources are lying or badly misinformed? What if some are Obama voters or financial backers? The Post is throwing the biggest rock they can at a Republican – racism, as in casual acquiescence to the N-word – without telling the public who’s behind it. "Trust us," says the newspaper of the 2006 Excessive 'Macaca' Pile-on.

Many right-thinking Americans have been wondering when Obama-loving news outlets would notice that even Democrats don't support the president's new jobs bill.

On Monday, the truth came from a surprising source - the Associated Press:

Politico's "Daily Digest" is an email the blog blasts out in the morning, touting the day's top stories.  As a subscriber, this NewsBuster was struck by the left-friendly lean of five out this morning's six featured stories.

To be sure, "Post-recession income falls" is not good for President Obama, reporting as it does that Americans' incomes have fallen faster during his presidency than they did even in the depths of the recession.  But every other story would surely be welcome at the White House.  Here are the stories, in the order they appear in the email:
 

On today's Fox News Sunday, host Chris Wallace devoted the last five minutes of a 13-minute interview to sparring with Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum, as the Fox host challenged the former Pennsylvania Senator for his opposition to gays serving openly in the military.

After playing a clip of Santorum from a recent debate arguing against the repeal of Don't Ask, Don't Tell, Wallace began the exchange:

Despite most media outlets gushing and fawning over the Occupy Wall Street protests, MSNBC's Chris Matthews and the Huffington Post's Howard Fineman see risks to President Obama and the Democrats supporting the movement.

The host of The Chris Matthews Show is even concerned this could be a return to 1968 when riots outside the Democratic National Convention in Chicago played a huge role in Richard Nixon's victory that November (video follows with transcript and commentary):

David Gregory on Sunday's Meet the Press asked former Obama Chief of Staff turned Chicago mayor Rahm Emanuel a rather surprising question about his previous boss's support for the Occupy Wall Street protests.

"Is demonizing Wall Street the way to create an environment to get the banks to hire? Is this not a reverse Tea Party tactic?" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

The headline this afternoon at the Associated Press to a report by Sam Hananel attempted to create the impression that complaints by many who have been unemployed for an extended time period that many employers are reluctant to consider and sometimes even refuse to consider their employment inquiries and applications equals support for provisions in President Obama's American Jobs Act which would for all practical purposes make them another protected class.

No doubt there is some support for the (in my opinion) misguided notion, but Hananel's underlying report never quoted an actual long-term unemployed person supporting the idea. Additionally, as I will cover in Part 2, the AP reporter also failed to tell readers why the problem has reached an unprecedented post-Depression level, namely that the economy, largely due to failed public policy choices, has thus far taken three times as long to recover from its recession than it did during any other post-recession period after World War II. Here are key paragraphs from Hananel's dispatch concerning the problem:

On Thursday, Zogby released a shocking poll finding Herman Cain twenty points ahead of Mitt Romney in the GOP presidential nominee race.

Despite this, Chris Matthews on the syndicated television show bearing his name this weekend did a ten minute segment about this race without mentioning Cain's name once (video follows with transcript and commentary):

Appearing as a guest on Friday's Imus in the Morning on the Fox Business Network, actor and comedian Jay Mohr took some sexual jabs at Sarah Palin, suggesting that she used to be his "booty call," and then later referring to her as "screwing black people since the mid-90s."

He also imitated GOP presidential candidate Herman Cain as he cracked that Cain is "getting blacker" as the campaign progresses.

Melinda Henneberger, who in 2009 proclaimed “Ted Kennedy has been a huge inspiration to me” and boasted of a “longtime political crush on the man who either in spite of his flaws and losses or because of them accomplished more than anyone else in my lifetime for causes that liberals (and other Americans) care about,” has joined the Washington Post where, per a Thursday announcement posted by Poynter’s Romenesko site, Henneberger “will write portraits of key political players and crucial campaign moments. She also will anchor a new blog on politics and culture.”

As Al Sharpton ridiculed Herman Cain on MSNBC's "The Last Word" Friday for saying blacks have been brainwashed into voting for Democrats, the reverend ended up proving the Republican presidential candidate's point.

Seconds after claiming, "What [Cain] does not have the right is to rewrite history by saying that blacks were brainwashed by becoming Democrats," Sharpton showed his ignorance of the subject by stating, "We went with a Party that stood up for the Civil Rights Act of '64 and Voting Rights Act of '65" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

During the "New Rule" segment ending Friday's Real Time with Bill Maher on HBO, host Maher asserted that the painted over "N****head Ranch" rock on Texas Governor Rick Perry's hunting territory is a "metaphor" for the Republican Party, because it is "overtly racist bulls*** thinly painted over." Maher also displayed the words "The Bigotest Loser" while an image of Perry was shown on screen.

Maher began the "New Rule" segment:

For the second day in a row, MSNBC's Martin Bashir used the death of one man to attack a completely unrelated conservative.

Having disgustingly besmirched Sarah Palin in the middle of his eulogy for Apple's Steve Jobs Thursday, Bashir on Friday went after Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain as he paid his respects to Reverend Fred Shuttlesworth (video follows with transcript and commentary):

Herman Cain is now leading the polls for the Republican presidential nomination, and the folks at MSNBC are clearly scared to death.

Following in Lawrence O'Donnell's footsteps who spent 23 minutes antagonistically grilling Cain Thursday, Martin Bashir said of the black Republican's "calm, measured" style Friday, "The people that he needs to win over in order to win a primary, those people do not want to hear from a black man who’s aggressive, assertive, angry" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

Appearing on Friday's NBC Today, Meet the Press host David Gregory discussed the political impact of the Wall Street protests and wondered: "How does the President try to harness this anger, this sense of unfairness about the economy, about income inequality in this country, about the middle class stagnating for the past 30 years? That's what the President wants to try to tap into here."

Gregory then declared that the left-wing movement, "allows the President to drive a populist message again." He went on to write talking points for Obama: "Here the President wants to say, 'Look, I'm on the side of the middle class here. I want more fairness in our country. The Republicans want to take you backward.'" The headline on screen read: "Can 'Occupy Wall Street' Protests Help Obama?"