This Week

The three networks have, thus far, ignored the revelation that American taxpayers will only recover a mere $24 million of the $527 million lost on Solyndra, a new report by the Dow Jones newswire revealed last week. The evening newscasts and morning shows have skipped the announcement.

The Washington Examiner explained on Thursday, "In a little-noticed move, Solyndra LLC officially released it bankruptcy plan this week. The official word from it is that taxpayers will recover only $24 million of the about $527 million." The only utterance of Solyndra last week came when Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus brought it up on Sunday's This Week. 

Make that two mainstream media members singing former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin's praises this weekend.

After ABC's Jonathan Karl commended the former vice presidential nominee for her perfect record of endorsing winners in senate primaries this year, Newsweek's Eleanor Clift echoed those sentiments on PBS's McLaughlin Group adding, "She will be a force at the Republican Convention whether she does it from the floor or from the parking lot" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

It's not often that hear a mainstream media member have anything nice to say about former Alaska governor Sarah Palin.

This is why it's worth noting ABC's Jonathan Karl uttering without an audible stammer on Sunday's This Week, "Sarah Palin is 4 for 4 on her Senate endorsements" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

"Another example of journalistic malpractice in this country - the constant writing off of the Tea Party, which just goes about its business of electing senators."

So said George Will on ABC's This Week Sunday about Ted Cruz's victory in the Texas primary Tuesday (video follows with transcript and commentary):

For the past two weeks Barack Obama's media minions have been working overtime trying to convince the American people the President was taken out of context during his now infamous "You Didn't Build That" speech in Roanoke, Virginia.

CNN's Donna Brazile and the Washington Post's Ruth Marcus tried making that pathetic claim on ABC's This Week Sunday only to receive a much-needed education from George Will and Breitbart.com's Dana Loesch (video follows with transcript and commentary):

Donnie Box, a steelworker in Missouri who lost his job and is the focus of an anti-Mitt Romney advertisement being run by a Super PAC that supports President Barack Obama, now says he will not vote to re-elect the president in November.

"I could really care less about Obama," the lifelong Democrat says in an article written by Mike Elk on the In These Times website before criticizing the president as "a jerk, a pantywaist, a lightweight, a blowhard. He hasn’t done a goddamn thing that he said he would do," he complained, adding:

ABC’s Terry Moran was caught on-screen Sunday laughing as Barack Obama surrogate Martin O’Malley (D-Md.) bashed presumptive Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney.

When the Nightline host filling in for This Week’s vacationing George Stephanopoulos realized he was on camera, he tempered his glee and put on a more serious face (video follows with transcript and commentary):

After ignoring its own 2009 clip of Obama denying his health-care law was a tax increase, ABC finally played the snippet of the President on Sunday's This Week -- but bizarrely, they failed to mention that it was theirs. Host George Stephanopoulos highlighted an ad from Americans for Prosperity that included the clip, but omitted that he conducted the interview where the President made this denial.

Later in the program, Rep. Paul Ryan exposed what the ABC News host omitted, that "the President, on your show, said this is not a tax." [audio available here; video below the jump]

In the aftermath of the Supreme Court decision that upheld the Affordable Care Act as constitutional under the taxing powers of Congress, the Obama administration can’t seem to call it a tax.  Instead, they’re trying to peddle the “tax” as a penalty. White House Chief of Staff Jack Lew did his run through the Sunday morning talk shows with this entertaining spin. Even former Clinton operative George Stephanopoulos was unconvinced: “As you know, President Obama denied all along that this was a tax. Is he now prepared to defend it?”

Mr. Lew stuck to the "not a tax" spin:  “I think we have to take a step back. What is in the law is a penalty. It starts by saying all Americans have a right to health insurance. For Americans who buy health insurance or who can't afford it and get it through a government program, there is no penalty.”

How cozy. Former Democratic operative turned television news host George Stephanopoulos used his ABC News platform on Sunday to celebrate, with Vicki Reggie Kennedy, ObamaCare’s Supreme Court victory. Stephanopoulos excitedly plugged his “special exclusive guest” on This Week, announcing: “We begin with something special. The first reaction on the ruling from Vicki Kennedy, the widow of Senator Ted Kennedy who fought for universal health care...”

A giddy Stephanopoulos conveyed how he’s vicariously living in the glory of the liberal triumph: “I can only imagine what it must have been like for you, at the moment you heard that the Supreme Court had decided.”

CNN political contributor Hilary Rosen got a much-needed education about voter ID laws from George Will on ABC's This Week Sunday.

When Rosen echoed the dishonest Democrat talking point that voter ID laws are considered "under the civil rights statutes" to be voter suppression, Will smartly replied, "Let the record show that the Supreme Court, with Justice John Paul Stevens, liberal Justice writing it, said that there is no Constitutional flaw in photo ID voter laws" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

Former President Bill Clinton made headlines last week when he told CNBC's Maria Bartiromo the Bush tax cuts should be extended into next year.

On ABC's This Week Sunday, Clinton's former adviser turned talk show host George Stephanopoulos asked one of his guests, "Might not he be right on the issue of extending the tax cuts at least for two or three or four months into next year to get over that uncertainty that’s going to come right after the election?" (video follows with commentary, photo via Life magazine):

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):

Readers are strongly advised to remove food, fluids, and flammables from proximity to their computers prior to reading any further. You've been warned!

New York Times columnist Paul Krugman said on ABC's This Week Sunday, "It's terribly unfair that [President Obama is] being judged on the failure of the economy to respond to policies that had been largely dictated by a hostile Congress" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

Former Democratic Michigan governor turned Current TV commentator Jennifer Granholm got a much-needed education Sunday about the difference between Mitt Romney's involvement with Bain Capital and President Obama's forays into green energy investment.

"When Bain invested," said George Will on ABC's This Week, "it invests money that it gets voluntarily to be invested. When the president throws a half-billion dollars away on Solyndra, it's money taken away by the police power of the federal government from unwilling taxpayers" (video follows with transcript and commentary)

The Sunday interview show hosts all reacted with disbelief toward House Speaker John Boehner’s pledge to demand spending cuts equal to the debt ceiling increase, with CBS’s Bob Schieffer the most derisive as he declared “it was a week when you couldn’t believe your ears” because, when Boehner said the same thing last year, “Congress tied itself in such a knot that America’s credit rating was downgraded, not to mention Congress’ approval rating which hit a new low. And now he wants to fight the same battle? Was he kidding?”

Schieffer rued: “Does this mean we’re headed towards another of those nasty ‘stop everything’ political standoffs in an election year?”

Conservative talk radio host Laura Ingraham gave a much-needed education to ABC's George Stephanopoulos Sunday about the tremendous double standard involving campaign contributions.

After Ingraham pointed out that Barack Obama is never held responsible for things MoveOn.org does, ABC's This Week host foolishly said, "The president's been held accountable for Bill Maher" leading the conservative talker to smartly respond, "Did he give that money back to Bill Maher?" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

Is Eliot Spitzer - a man who had to resign as New York's governor due to a sex scandal involving hookers - someone that should be invited on a serious political talk show to discuss the sanctity of marriage?

As the answer is certainly "No," consider the delicious irony of Spitzer appearing on ABC's This Week Sunday avowing as it pertains to same-sex marriage, "The president is saying, as I said as governor, others have said around the nation, two people should be able to enter a civil relationship of love that goes on forever" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

It's becoming crystal clear that President Obama stepped on his foot while taking a victory lap for the assassination of Osama bin Laden one year ago.

Joining the growing list of even liberal media members offended by this shameless act of self-promotion was PBS's Tavis Smiley who on ABC's This Week Sunday actually said, "I just hate seeing the president play into the hands of the right by running around bragging about having to off Osama bin Laden...I don't think it's presidential" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

Google Chairman Eric Schmidt gave a much-needed economics lesson to New York Times columnist and Nobel laureate Paul Krugman on ABC's This Week Sunday.

During a lengthy discussion about liberal and conservative views on how to stimulate the currently soft recovery, Schmidt - a known Barack Obama supporter - marvelously said to his left-leaning co-panelist, "Surely you're not arguing that the government should hire all the unemployed people" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

Disgraced former MSNBC and Current TV anchor Keith Olbermann suggested Sunday there's a conspiracy to drive up gas prices in order to harm President Obama.

Such was said on ABC's This Week in response to host George Stephanopoulos's question regarding the impact speculation has on what consumers pay at the pump (video follows with transcript and commentary):

The Wall Street Journal's Peggy Noonan appearing on ABC's This Week Sunday gave Keith Olbermann a much-needed education on what living in a capitalist country is all about.

When the disgraced former Countdown host said, "It’s a very large view right now that business has never been viewed less favorably in this country," Noonan scolded, "There is a lot of people who think businessmen create businesses which create jobs" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

On Sunday’s This Week, George Stephanopoulos stumbled into the truth when he told Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner that Mitt Romney’s statistic, about how 92.3 percent of all job losses since President Obama took office have occurred to women, “is accurate.”

That, however, contradicted the liberal party line espoused by ABC reporter David Muir on Wednesday’s World News when he stated:”The non-partisan group PolitiFact saying that number right there is ‘mostly false,’ arguing the President can’t be held responsible for the job picture the day he took office.”

There was a truly delicious moment on ABC's This Week Sunday that should be mandatory viewing for all liberal media members.

After the perilously liberal editor of The Nation magazine, along with Obama's former domestic policy adviser, blamed all the nation's problems on Republican obstruction in Congress, the Wall Street Journal's Paul Gigot struck back saying, "The first two years [Obama] had open field, Democratic, vast Democratic majorities. You got what you wanted. You got a huge expansion of federal government. How is that working out?" (video follows with transcript and commentary):