Debates

For having made a shocking revelation that deeply undermined one the most repeated stories of Obama's 2008 campaign and 2009 health care debate, Janny Scott is staying extremely quiet. Scott's new book, 'A Singular Woman: The Untold Story of Barack Obama's Mother,' proved false Obama's claim that his mother was fighting with insurance companies from her death bed, one of Obama's favorite lines to use when campaigning and appealing for the passage of Obamacare.

Yesterday, the Washington Examiner's Byron York wrote of being turned down twice after trying to reach Scott for an interview, even though the New York Times landed an interview with her in between York's two requests. It seems likely that Scott, whose liberal bias has been exposed here at NewsBusters and at our sister site TimesWatch, is not thrilled that conservatives have used her book as a way of exposing the liberal president.

ABC and CBS have both recently wielded PolitiFact as a club to bash Congresswoman Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.), yet in the 29 months since President Barack Obama took office – despite 49 "false" ratings in Obama's PolitiFact file – the three broadcast networks have cited the fact-checking website only once to challenge the Democratic commander-in-chief.

ABC host George Stephanopoulos on Tuesday's "Good Morning America" used PolitiFact as an excuse to badger Bachmann about her past statements, while CBS host Bob Schieffer on Sunday's "Face the Nation" pressed the Republican presidential candidate to answer to a spate of PolitiFact judgments against her.

Former Obama green jobs czar Van Jones likened Fox News to "stalkers" on Wednesday's MSNBC Live with left-wing pugilist Cenk Uygur.

Despite challenging Glenn Beck to a debate while speaking at the liberal Netroots Nation convention and in a MoveOn.org spot, and reportedly threatening legal action against Fox News, it was Jones who claimed the popular cable network has an unhealthy obsession.

Video follows break

On the June 14 edition of NBC's "Today," President Barack Obama ascribed part of the blame for the high unemployment rate to ATMs, yet most media outlets continue to ignore the gaffe.

"There are some structural issues with our economy where a lot of businesses have learned to become much more efficient with a lot fewer workers," lectured Obama in an interview with NBC's Ann Curry. "You see it when you go to a bank and you use an ATM, you don’t go to a bank teller, or you go to the airport and you’re using a kiosk instead of checking in at the gate."

Last night was the second GOP debate, this time hosted by CNN and including candidates Mitt Romney, Michele Bachmann, Tim Pawlenty, Rick Santorum, Newt Gingrich, Herman Cain, and Ron Paul.

From Bachmann officially announcing her intentions to run for president, to Romney asking why Obama never called him to discuss the pitfalls of a healthcare mandate, the debate covered a broad range of issues yesterday.

Check out a video and analysis of the debate after the break, and let us know your thoughts in the comments.

Congrats to NB's Tim Graham for writing up a post ("Are Time and Mark Halperin Racist? Herman Cain Omitted Twice in GOP Oddsmaking") linked by Matt Drudge (headlined "Time Magazine Ignores Black Candidate in Race") pointing to an egregious and arguably deliberate omission of Herman Cain's name in Mark Halperin's coverage of the race for the GOP presidential nomination at Time Magazine. Tim noted that Halperin has handicapped the race twice (May 23 and June 6), but has left Cain out each time.

Tim pointed out that Cain's omission is hard to forgive, given that Cain, whose background includes extensive business turnaround experience, a stint as Chairman of the Board of the Federal Reserve in Kansas City, and a number of years as President of the National Restaurant Association, as well as more current involvements with talk radio and Tea Party activism, "participated in the first presidential debate on May 5 to high praise and formally announced on May 21."

There are two additional items which especially make Halperin's second exclusion of Cain appear virtually smoking-gun deliberate:

During Thursday night's Republican presidential debate in South Carolina, Fox News contributor Juan Williams moved away from the pressing issues of national security and the economy to ask former Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty: "Do you equate the teaching of creationism with the teaching of evolution, as the basis for what should be taught in our nation's schools?"

Perhaps Williams had caught the end of Thursday's Hardball on MSNBC only hours earlier, when, as NewsBusters Scott Whitlock reported, host Chris Matthews listed some of the questions he would like to ask the Republican presidential hopefuls, including: "Question to Mr. Candidate, do you believe in evolution? Are you a fundamentalist who believes in the Bible as written? Has man been around millions of years or, say, just about 6000?"

On Monday's CBS Early Show, after reporting claims from Ron Reagan Jr. that President Ronald Reagan may have had Alzheimer's Disease while in office, co-host Erica Hill asked other son Michael Reagan about those accusations: "And your brother has said this is just his own feeling....Could it be possible there may have been something else? Could he [President Reagan] have had dementia?"

Michael rejected the notion: "No, he didn't have dementia. Look what he accomplished in the last four years of his presidency. Reykjavik, START agreements, all the things he accomplished. The speech at the Berlin Wall in 1987 on June 12th. Look what he accomplished in those last four years. Someone with dementia does not accomplish all of those things." He went on to say of his brother: "...we don't even know in the family if Ron voted for his father back in 1981 or in 1984 when he ran for President."

In an attempt to re-litigate the past, MSNBC contributor Cenk Uygur indicted former President George W. Bush for war crimes.

Bellowing today from his regular perch on late afternoon Dylan Ratigan Show, Uygur mischaracterized the 43rd President's position on the waterboarding of 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed as "go ahead and torture him basically" before demanding that Bush be prosecuted for allegedly violating Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions.

"Now it seems to me we have a confession here of a war crime and a clear violation of international and United States law," proclaimed Uygur. "President George W. Bush should go to jail for at least 10 years."

The alleged "confession" Uygur referred to is an excerpt from Bush's new memoir, Decision Points, in which the former commander-in-chief reaffirms his decision to condone the use of waterboarding as an enhanced-interrogation technique for suspected terrorists.

[Video embedded after page break.]

 

While slamming Rand Paul supporters who assaulted a MoveOn.org worker in Kentucky, Ed Schultz claimed Wednesday there was simply no other side to the story – that he had not seen "any violence, anywhere, from anybody on the Left." Furthermore, Schultz blamed GOP Senate candidate Rand Paul for inciting the violence.

[Click here for audio.]

There's just one problem – evidence exists of a possible assault on a Rand Paul supporter at the very same event.

Clearly, Becky Bohrer at the Associated Press is very picky about what she'll report.

In her story datelined early this morning ("Senate race in Alaska is bitter and unpredictable"), she played the "any Tea Partier whose family or extended family has ever taken a government benefit is automatically a hypocrite" card. She made sure readers knew about Republican candidate Joe Miller's incredibly awful (that's sarcasm, in case anyone doesn't get it) violation of a government entity's office policy, wherein he was "disciplined for participating in a private poll during his lunch hour" (oh, the humanity!), and how Miller's presence in the campaign has "frightened" many Democrats into seriously considering their candidate, Scott McAdams.

Chris Jansing's cognitive dissonance must be excruciating.

On today's "Jansing and Co.," the MSNBC anchor initially rejected the practice of gotcha journalism in political campaign coverage, but proceeded to play gotcha with a comment made yesterday by Delaware Republican Senate nominee Christine O'Donnell.

"I'm not a big fan of trying to do a gotcha," prefaced Jansing, directing the remark at retired Army General Wesley Clark. "I've said that before on this program. But does it bother you at all when someone can't name a current member of the Senate on the Democratic side?"

Clark, who ran for president in 2004 as a Democrat, refuted Jansing's gotcha question: "Well, first of all I think that's a little bit of a stretch in this case. She wasn't asked to name a current member, she was asked to name someone she'd like to work with. So I think that's a little bit of a stretch."

At the top of Thursday's CBS Early Show, co-host Maggie Rodriguez teased an upcoming report on Wednesday's Delaware Senate debate by proclaiming: "U.S. Senate candidate and tea party favorite Christine O'Donnell is grilled in her first highly-anticipated debate, where she addresses everything from witches, to China, to late-night TV jokes."

Rodriguez's declaration was later followed by a completely one-sided report from congressional correspondent Nancy Cordes, who focused exclusively on O'Donnell being interrogated over past statements: "Well, this debate involved two candidates, but the spotlight was really on one of them, Christine O'Donnell, and her history of controversial comments."

After playing clips of moderators, CNN anchor Wolf Blizter and Delaware First Media's Nancy Karibjanian, grilling O'Donnell, Cordes mockingly remarked: "Outside the auditorium, several witches milled about, some for O'Donnell, some against." She then noted how O'Donnell's "now infamous ad came up more than once."

Update - 9:25 AM | Lachlan Markay: David Gergen commented on Brown's response. His comments below. 

The death of Ted Kennedy hit the liberal media particularly hard. NBC's Andrea Mitchell caught the mood of the nation's pundits when she said the "heavens were weeping" during Kennedy's funeral. Now that Kennedy is dead, some pundits feel as if Democrats are entitled to the seat he left vacant.

CNN senior political analyst David Gergen had to be reminded of this fact Monday as he moderated a debate between the two candidates for Massachusetts's open Senate seat. He asked Republican candidate Scott Brown whether he'd be willing to "sit in Teddy Kennedy's seat and [say] I'm going to be the person who's going to block it [liberal health care policy] for another 15 years."

But Brown, refusing to take for granted Gergen's blatantly left-wing premises, responded instead: "Well, with all due respect it's not the Kennedys' seat, and it's not the Democrats' seat, it's the people's seat." (video and transcript below the fold - h/t Kerry Picket)

While discussing Sunday’s 60 Minutes interview with former McCain campaign adviser Steve Schmidt on Monday’s CBS Early Show, co-host Maggie Rodriguez asked Face the Nation host Bob Schieffer about the claim that Palin knew little of modern history: “Schmidt, last week tells 60 Minutes that she didn’t know anything....that included World War I, World War II, the Korean War, the Cold War.”

Rodriguez wondered if such allegations about Palin’s “supposed lack of knowledge” would be a future political liability, to which Schieffer replied: “You know, my take on Sarah Palin has always been she will never again seek public office....[she] resigned the governorship of Alaska and I think it would be very, very difficult for her in any primary that comes up, the first thing a candidate against her is going to say, ‘well, how long do you intend to stay if you get elected? If elected, do you promise to quit if the going gets tough?’”

In a report that preceded Rodriguez’s discussion with Schieffer, correspondent Nancy Cordes detailed charges outlined in the new book ‘Game Change,’ about the 2008 campaign, including how “...there was friction on the Democratic ticket, too. ‘How many times is Biden going to say something stupid?’ an angry Mr. Obama reportedly asked campaign staff over one of his running mate’s legendary gaffes.” For some reason, Rodriguez did not ask Schieffer about this challenge to the Vice President’s intelligence.

On Monday’s Inside Edition, distributed by CBS, host Deborah Norville cited Sunday’s 60 Minutes interview with McCain campaign adviser Steve Schmidt and proclaimed: “‘A debacle of historic and epic proportions.’ That’s how a former McCain campaign strategist is describing Sarah Palin’s performance as the Governor prepared for the vice presidential debate.”

Norville conveniently left out Schmidt’s later remark in the interview that Palin “did a good job in the debate against Senator Biden” and that he thought the Governor “more than held her own.” Instead, Norville only highlighted the adviser’s pre-debate concerns: “Schmidt reveals Palin was ‘overwhelmed’ and ‘ill prepared’ for the debate.”

Norville later mentioned: “Schmidt also claims Palin was so flustered during the prep for debate, she kept referring to Joe Biden as ‘O’Biden.’” She noted how Palin “did slip up once during the nationally televised debate.”

Also left out of the Inside Edition story was Schmidt’s concluding comment in the interview that: “I believe, had she [Palin] not been on the ticket, our margin of defeat would’ve been greater than it would’ve been otherwise.”

With much fanfare, President Barack Obama rolled out his intentions to cut $17 billion from the federal budget on May 7. But despite the spinmeisters, not everyone was buying it.

"The White House today played up its proposed cuts to the federal budget," ABC "World News" anchor Charles Gibson said on his May 7 broadcast. "That budget plays up to $3.6 trillion. The White House wants to trim a tiny fraction - $17 billion. The president, arguing that seemingly small amount is a step in the right direction."

And that's exactly what ABC White House correspondent Jake Tapper emphasized during his report on the budget cuts.

Here’s a quick informal poll:  Who has heard news of Russia’s recent troop buildup in the South Ossetia region of Georgia?

 

Most of our readers would immediately think of the Russian invasion of that region last summer, during the presidential contest, but the Russians are arguably saber rattling again with a fresh buildup of boots on-the-ground ahead of planned NATO exercises.

 

Last August, the media coverage immediately took the angle of breathless anticipation on how each presidential candidate would react to such a situation.  John McCain’s position was easily established from his record over many years in the Senate.  Then-Senator Obama’s position was much more difficult to ascertain – but the media gave him ample time to figure it out, helping the candidate defer those questions to the September 26 debate.  In fact, a good example of such activism was shown in the Washington Post’s Jim Hoagland, who in his August 31 op-ed insisted:

If you were dying to know what Gwen Ifill was thinking when the controversy arose about her so-called Obama book and how that might have effected her ability to moderate the 2008 vice-presidential debate - now's your chance.

Ifill, the host of PBS's "Washington Week" appeared at the Politics & Prose bookstore in Washington, D.C. on Jan. 24 to promote her new book, "The Breakthrough: Politics and Race in the Age of Obama."  The book was a focal point of controversy last fall and questions were raised as to whether Ifill could be an impartial moderator of the vice-presidential debate, even though she had a book that featured Barack Obama set to come out after the election.

In that appearance, Ifill claimed she didn't believe the book inhibited her ability to moderate that debate and pointed out her ability to overcome racism as how she dealt with the controversy - by strapping on her "blinders." She also took a couple of passive jabs at former GOP vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin - commenting on her "thin" biography and remarking on Palin's debate performance.

Surely no one would view Rev. Jeremiah Wright as closer to the centerpoint of American politics than Pastor Rick Warren, right? Wrong.  Here's Chris Matthews on this evening's Hardball.

CHRIS MATTHEWS: It seems like Barack Obama, as much as seems to inspire people, including me, has a problem with pastors.  I don't know what it is. You get him hooked up with a pastor, whether it's Jeremiah Wright, or it's this guy Rick Warren.  One's on the left, one's on the far right.  Both are causing him trouble.

So Wright's merely "left," while Warren's "far-right."  Do we really need to prove the obvious: that Warren is vastly more mainstream than Wright? It hardly seems worth the effort, but let's consider a few factoids:

Yeah, and the Chicago Cubs "seem" not to have won a World Series for 100 years.

A Thursday afternoon Chicago Tribune story (HTs to Ace and Say Anything) by Rex W. Huppke covers the appearance of a new afterword in a book by former Weather Underground leader William Ayers.

Let's just roll the excerpt:

In a new afterword to his memoir, 1960s radical William Ayers describes himself as a "family friend" of President-elect Barack Obama and writes that the campaign controversy over their relationship was an effort by Obama's political enemies to "deepen a dishonest narrative" about the candidate.

See Update at foot: university says Mika will not "represent" Obama.

H/t reader Thomas S.  Despite her obvious liberal leanings, Mika Brzezinski prefers to play coy about her presidential preference on Morning Joe.  Mika often deflects co-host Joe Scarborough's accusations that she's in the tank for Obama by invoking the fact that her brother works for McCain.  And I have two beloved liberal Dem sisters: nu?

But Mika is apparently set to emerge from the political closet and let her Obama flag fly. Check out this report from the Fairfield [CT] Weekly about Brzezinski's upcoming participation in a debate at Fairfield University in which Mika will be "representing" Obama in a debate with formidable conservative pundit Monica Crowley [emphasis added]:

In an October 16 Web exclusive today, Newsweek's Sarah Kliff looked at the "chorus of disapproval" that met Sen. John McCain's use of air quotes when dismissing the "health of the mother" exception that swallows the rule in some late-term abortion bans. Of course Kliff hit her readers with complaints from such unbiased, neutral observers as Chris Matthews and NARAL Pro-Choice America, which endorsed Sen. Obama in May. She concluded by citing a pro-choice Biden backer insisting that pro-lifers would be turned off too.

Kliff then went on to dive into what the health exception is in federal case law and conceded that:

McCain is correct when he suggests that the law does not specify which conditions or complications should be included in the legal definition of what constitutes a threat to the mother's health. That decision is left up to the doctor.

CNN's Presidential Debate Report Card echoes most polls offered by the main stream media.  It involves 60% Democrats as a sample group, and if your response doesn't agree with their agenda, then some ‘alterations' are made.  In other words, the results are weighted to provide liberals with an edge. 

The Web site's latest report card allows the viewer to rate the performance of both Presidential candidates in Wednesday's debate.  Seems pretty straight-forward, right?  But things weren't working properly for some readers.

In fact, when visiting the Barack Obama side of the report card first, all is seemingly well. Votes are counted and recorded correctly.  Everything seems just dandy.  However, when one visits the John McCain side first, things can get a little peculiar. 

This peculiarity occurred several times early Thursday afternoon, and will be outlined after the break.

When clicking on a choice of grade for McCain's debate performance, I went with an A, as can be seen here with the highlight:

With 15 minutes of fame comes 15 hours of “gotcha” scrutiny -- especially if you’re a voter who has dared to criticize Barack Obama, the liberal media’s Chosen One for president.

Ohio plumber Joe Wurzelbacher has had his 15 minutes of fame, capping it off with an unplanned appearance as the poster boy of populist tax policy in last night’s presidential debate. So now it’s time for the press to turn its sights on him not as a human-interest story but as an investigative subject.

Jonathan Martin of The Politico was among the first out of the gate, with blog posts noting that Wurzelbacher, affectionately known by most of America as “Joe The Plumber,” has a tax lien against him and doesn’t have a plumber’s license. Martin conveniently forgot to mention that the law doesn’t require one.) Bloomberg also has a story on the tax lien, and AP and The Washington Post did their part to make a story out of the “unlicensed” non-story.

Within an hour of the conclusion of Wednesday night’s presidential debate, CNN’s political panel began sketching out John McCain’s political obituary, with senior analyst David Gergen drawing a round of laughter when he replied “beats the hell out of me” when asked by anchor Anderson Cooper what McCain could do next. Gergen bleakly suggested McCain had no chance and should end the race with his “honor intact” (which means no more attacks on Barack Obama):

I think you have to do everything you can to help save as much of the Senate and the House as you can for your party. I think you have to need -- you need to see if you can leave this with your honor intact. I think you need to go positive about what you do on the economy and get rid of this stuff about Bill Ayers and all this garbage that we've been going through now.

Joe the Plumber, aka Joe Wurzelbacher the Ohio man that has suddenly become the face of the presidential campaign, told ABC's Diane Sawyer Thursday that Barack Obama's tax plan to spread the wealth is "a very socialist view, and it's incredibly wrong."

Predictably, Sawyer defended Obama's position by saying it's only a three percent tax increase that people making over $250,000 would be required to pay.

Deliciously, the "Good Morning America" guest wasn't backing down (partial video embedded right):

Tonight is the final presidential debate between Republican John McCain and Democrat Barack Obama.

Discuss the main event here on this thread or take part in our live NB chat. Everything starts at 9:00 Eastern.

This year’s final debate moderator, CBS’s Bob Schieffer, clearly did not take pains to appear objective before the debate. He opened fire on the October 5 Face the Nation by denouncing "the Palin factor... a campaign that's turned down and dirty. Down in the polls, the McCain campaign has found a new attack dog." After the opening music, he returned to the hatchet-woman line: "She took after Barack Obama in a style reminiscent of Spiro Agnew when he was Richard Nixon's running mate." He asked if the Republicans were going to get "nastier and nastier."

Schieffer also failed the fair-and-balanced test in a review of the debate he moderated in 2004. Six questions came from the left. Another three dared Bush to disagree with the liberal media’s definitions of acceptable views. Only three questions to Kerry came from a more conservative direction. Here are some examples of questions to Bush: