ABCNews.com

"House Speaker Nancy Pelosi says she has much in common with the Tea Party."

So began an article published by ABCNews.com Sunday about Pelosi's interview with Elizabeth Vargas on "This Week."

"The speaker now says she shares views with movement she dismissed last summer as being 'Astroturf,'" the piece amazingly continued.

And that wasn't CLOSE to being the most preposterous part of the story.

More absurd was how Vargas during this interview actually allowed Pelosi to get away with such a ridiculous comment (video embedded below the fold with transcript and commentary):

ABC's The Note today is headlined "Strange Brews: Conservatives Unite Over Anger, Not Candidates." Author and network senior political reporter Rick Klein writes:

The mood at the Conservative Political Action Conference gathering -- which continues into the weekend in Washington -- is decidedly more upbeat than a year ago. And the Bush name, not to mention the (maybe more popular) Cheney one, is back.

Yet the energy fueling the gathering remains of a shapeless, sometimes dangerous variety.

Readers may reasonably have expected examples of this dangerous energy to follow.  Klein goes on:

From the rousing ovations for primary challengers, to a speaker referencing President Obama’s past drug use and deriding homosexuality, to the endless teleprompter jokes (only some of them read off teleprompters), to the general motivating anger that has brought the crowd together -- the big tent isn’t exactly pitching itself.

Vice President Joseph Biden's very public wearing of ashes, a Lenten practice for Catholics, on Wednesday led to several befuddled reactions from the mainstream media. Sky News's Kay Burley had to apologize after confusing the ashen mark for an injury. More egregiously, ABC News's Karen Travers omitted the past controversy over his support for legalized abortion, and portrayed him as a devout Catholic.

The Vice President bore the ashes on his forehead as he introduced President Obama at a White House event celebrating the one-year anniversary of the so-called Recovery Act. Burley asked Greg Milam, Sky News's US correspondent, about the mark as they monitored Biden's remarks: "What's happened to his head? I'm sure that's what everybody's asking at home." After a short pause, Milam replied, "Yes, I don't know. It's a simple answer. Maybe we'll get a chance to find out a little later." Burley then remarked, "It looks like he walked into a door, doesn't it? I'm sure that's one of the questions that the networks will be asking him." (video clip above is from Thursday's Morning Joe on MSNBC; audio available here).

ABC News has released some new never before seen pictures of the World Trade Center after the 9/11 attacks.

As ABCNews.com reported moments ago:

Twelve images newly released by the government of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorists' attacks on the World Trade Center provide a fresh look at the tragedy and its impact on New York City...The latest release follows Monday's publication of other newly released photos first obtained by ABC News from the federal agency investigating the buildings' collapse.

The website has made available a slide show of these pictures, as well as a video montage (embedded below the fold):

As global warming alarmists get more desperate, they’re turning to allies in the mainstream media to help promote increasingly strident protests that the world really is warming.

Nobody is happier to oblige than ABC News. On Jan. 8, “World News” anchor Diane Sawyer and weatherman Sam Champion worried that the cold weather engulfing much of the world just may be the result of climate change.

Then there’s ABC’s Bill Blakemore. The title of his Jan. 8 ABC News.com article – which could only be a mislabeled op-ed – pretty much summed up his take: “No, the Cold Doesn’t Mean No Global Warming.”

“This is, of course, an old story,” wrote Blakemore, “ ... and more and more 5th graders are bringing it home from their science classes to get their parents up to date on the latest climate science.”

Ever since President Obama took office with his merry band of Democrats controlling both chambers of Congress, the media began reporting high unemployment in the most positive light they could find.

NewsBusters exposed one such trick by Newsweek on December 10 that found a silver lining for unemployed dads to reconnect with their children. ABC News posted a column on their website Thursday that advanced the cause even further: now people who still have jobs are hoping to get laid off.

Such was the case made by one Michelle Goodman in a piece cutely titled "All I Want For Christmas is a Layoff." The premise for this bizarre headline was that many Americans began to realize they were working for "slave wages" in jobs that were far too stressful, so perhaps the recession offered a chance to start over.

According to Goodman, the mental effects of remaining on a difficult job could make the unemployment line look a bit more attractive:

The war on Christmas rages on, and nowhere more intensely than on the "kill-joy front." You know it: the predictable but still brutal attacks from those who say your eggnog and candy canes, the tree near your fireplace and even your favorite myths, stories and carols hide secret dangers to emotional and physical wellbeing.

But at least one public health expert is striking a blow for traditionalists by roundly mocking kill-joy tactics by aiming right at the personification of the season.

On Dec 16, an Associated Press article reported a "light-hearted" study conducted by Australian Nathan Grills of Monash University, which was published in the online Christmas edition of the British Medical Journal. Grills' conclusion: Santa Claus is a public health menace.

Grills' characterized the jolly old elf as a "reckless role model" for children, citing his "frequent cookie snacks, occasional cigars and refusal to don a helmet during ‘extreme sports such as roof surfing and chimney jumping,'" according to the AP.

"Unemployed, Underemployed Look to Jobs Summit for Help" is posted on ABC News's Web site today.  Authored by senior Washington correspondent John Cochran, the piece is notable in that nothing in it supports the headline.  Cochran writes:

Boosting confidence is at the top of President Obama's list at the Jobs Summit he is scheduled to host on Thursday. The invitation list includes business leaders, mayors, academics, and experts from the green jobs sector.

They will consider many proposals to boost the economy including:

More stimulus money for construction projects;

rewards for firms that hire more workers;

more steps to ease credit;

extending unemployment benefits through 2010.

What's $100 million of taxpayer money between a few U.S. Senators?

After reports surfaced of $100 million for Louisiana was added to the Senate's health care reform legislation, originally from ABC News, and subsequently commented upon by prominent lefties, like U.S. News and World Report's Bonnie Erbe as my colleague Noel Sheppard pointed out, Sen. Mary Landrieu, D-La., took the Senate floor on Nov. 21 to announce she would vote in favor to proceed forward with the Senate Democratic leadership's bill.

She also responded to allegations that $100 million earmarked for the Louisiana was added to that legislation to sway her vote. She referred to the likes of ABC News correspondent Jonathan Karl and Erbe as "very partisan Republican bloggers."

"I know that might time is up, but I would like to ask personal privilege for just one more minute to address an issue that has come up unfortunately in the last 24 hours by some very partisan Republican bloggers so I need to respond I think and will do so now," Landrieu said. "One of the provisions in the framework of this bill that I've just decided to move on to debate has to do with fixing a very difficult situation that Louisiana is facing and any other state that might have a catastrophic disaster - let's hope they don't - like we did in 2005."

Richard Esposito, Mary-Rose Abraham and Rhonda Schwartz of ABC's "The Blotter" have a fresh post up on ABCNews.com about Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan's ties to jihadi groups. It's a fascinating read.

Esposito and his colleagues report that:

A rather stunning Gallup poll was released Wednesday showing Republicans moving ahead of Democrats in which Party registered voters support in next year's Congressional elections.

As Gallup reported in its summary, this is a rare occurrence in the almost sixty years since the polling organization has been tracking generic voter preferences for the House of Representatives.

Given media's downplaying of the significance of last week's election results, it's going to be fascinating to watch how they spin these numbers (h/t Byron York):

That's right. In a four page report from ABC News titled, "Tens of Thousands Celebrate 20th Anniversary of Berlin Wall's Collapse," Ronald Reagan is not even mentioned. Not once. And from what I have read, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton didn't mention President Reagan, and neither did President Obama in his taped message. I hope I end up being wrong about that, but I kind of doubt that I am.

Good grief. 

Here's news you can virtually guarantee won't get noticed by what remains of the establishment media.

Whole Foods (WFMI) announced its financial results for the quarter ended September 30 yesterday. The quarter closed about 50 days after outraged leftists called for a boycott of the grocery chain to retaliate for a Wall Street Journal op-ed written by CEO John Mackey. In that column, Mackey identified "Eight things we can do to improve health care without adding to the deficit," asserting that:

The last thing our country needs is a massive new health care entitlement that will create hundreds of billions of dollars of new unfunded deficits and move us much closer to a government takeover of our health care system. Instead, we should be trying to achieve reforms by moving in the opposite direction — toward less government control and more individual empowerment.

Well, if there's so much support out there for statist health care, you would think that the Whole Foods boycott dedicated to punishing an opponent would have had a significant impact on the company's most recent quarterly results.

You would be wrong:

Dede Scozzafava's exit from a major campaign gave readers a perfect glimpse into the double standard applied by the media when it comes to women in politics.

The World Newser, official blog of ABC's World News Tonight, ran an article November 2 lamenting Scozzafava suspending her campaign curtly titled "Message to the GOP - 'Moderates Need Not Apply.'"

The piece quoted three people sympathetic to moderates and a long quote from Scozzafava herself, but only one voice to speak for conservatives. Among the complaints was that conservatives targeted Scozzafava for being a woman instead of focusing on political issues.

Perhaps a report on Scozzafava's lipstick preferences would have been more substantive since that was counted as newsworthy on the World Newser blog just one year ago.

In covering Scozzafava, ABC got right to the point in the second sentence:

ABC News's Web site includes the article "Is Obama 'Too Nice' to Make Tough Decisions?" by correspondent David Kerley.  The piece begins:

With problems for the president in Afghanistan, health care and unemployment, some critics on both the left and right are asking: Is the president essentially "too nice" to make the important decisions?

The National Journal magazine asks in a just-out edition, "Is He Tough Enough?"

"Be decisive," says Tom Tradewell, the commander of the Veterans of Foreign Wars.

Even liberal New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd says the president will have to "break some eggs" to cook up a more perfect union.

None of the people quoted assert the problem is Obama's affability.  Rather, the difficulty is the extreme caution he exercises, many times so as to not offend interest groups.  

Thanks to Drudge, the Internet will likely be abuzz with the news and video about Irish filmmaker Phelim McAleer's challenge to former Vice President Al Gore over correcting the nine errors found by a British judge in Gore's Oscar-winning "An Inconvenient Truth" documentary.

McAleer is co-producer of Not Evil, Just Wrong, a film challenging the content of Gore's film, that according to Wiki will be premiering on October 18.

When organizers of the Society of Environmental Journalists annual conference tired of McAleer's refusal to back down and acquiesce to Gore's conveniently incomplete answers, they cut off his microphone. The video also shows a meeting official scolding McAleer afterwards for attempting to "monopolize" the floor, telling him that "you got as much as you're going to get."

Gore's answers to McAleer's challenges are so disingenuous that they deserve their own Oscar for dissembling.

Here is a transcript of the exchange, which begins at about the 0:40 mark of the video:

It's standard journalistic practice to put the most important information at the very beginning of an article. For ABC News, it appeared the most pertinent facts about Irene Vilar, a woman who had 15 abortions in 16 years, were her fears about how pro-life activists would receive her new book, "Impossible Motherhood." 

ABC reporter Susan Donaldson James perpetuated the myth of raging pro-life activists in her September 21 article about Vilar. Her lede read, "Irene Vilar worries that her self-described ‘abortion addiction' will be misunderstood, twisted by the pro-life movement to deny women the right to choose." Vilar, now a mother of two, told ABC, "no book like this has ever been written. I just imagine the ‘baby killer' and I could be a poster child for that kind of fundamentalism. And there are my little kids in all of that."

Vilar told Donaldson James, "she has already sensed ‘an inkling of hatred," a point noted in the third paragraph. By the fourth, Donaldson James had described the precautions taken by Vilar and her husband.

"[O]ne more misunderstanding I want to clear up – under our plan, no federal dollars will be used to fund abortions, and federal conscience laws will remain in place."

So said Barack Obama during his healthcare address to the nation Wednesday.

Yet, according to an article at ABCNews.com, this could be another example of the President playing fast and loose with the facts (h/t Jake Tapper):

ABCNews.com republished a bigoted attack against a famously large Christian family on Tuesday. Amelia McDonell-Parry of gossip website TheFrisky.com snarked about Michelle Duggar's latest pregnancy in the post, stating that it "can't be good news...if you're at all concerned about overpopulation." She also hinted that Mrs. Duggar's daughter-in-law was forced to have a baby of her own.

McDonell-Parry, who is also an employee of Turner Broadcasting (no surprises there, as Ted Turner himself put down Catholics who bore the sign of their faith on their heads on Ash Wednesday) never explicitly mentioned the Duggars' deep Christian faith in her screed, titled "Surprise! Duggar Family Expecting Their 19th Child," but made it clear that she frowned upon the fertility of Mr. and Mrs. Duggar. Unsurprisingly, she incorporated her left-wing, sex-crazy views into her brief attack (warning: explicit language below the fold):

Whole Foods CEO John Mackey's recent Wall Street Journal op-ed may well have been "in bad taste", ABCNews.com would have its readers believe (see screen cap at right).

Emily Friedman devoted an August 14 story mainly to liberal Whole Foods patrons huffing and puffing in disgust about Mackey's op-ed:

Joshua has been taking the bus to his local Whole Foods in New York City every five days for the past two years. This week, he said he'll go elsewhere to fulfill his fresh vegetable and organic produce needs. 

"I will never shop there again," vowed Joshua, a 45-year-old blogger, who asked that his last name not be published.

As the Democrat leadership and their media minions dishonestly depict town hall meeting protesters as an angry mob ginned up by conservative organizations, the group that helped get Barack Obama elected president is urging its members to show up at such events to counter dissenting views.

Will this get much press attention in the next 48 hours?

We can only hope the Obama-loving media will take a long look at what ABC's Jake Tapper just reported at his Political Punch blog:

Darlene Haynes was only 23 years old when another woman brutally slashed her open and removed her eight-month-old baby girl from her womb. Her decomposing body was found on July 27, wrapped in a blanket and dumped in a closet inside her apartment in Worcester, Massachusetts. The body was so mutilated that when they found it, the police said they couldn't immediately determine its gender.

The suspected murderer, 35-year-old Julie Corey, lived in the same apartment building and was found soon after the crime in Plymouth, New Hampshire, claiming the baby was her own.

This heart-rending story is also notorious for how the "pro-choice" media sputter and struggle to deny the humanity of a baby, even as the child is slashed away and stolen by a psychopath. I would highly doubt Corey said to bewildered onlookers, "Look at my new fetus."

And yet journalists insult this motherless baby as merely a "fetus," this their dismissive blob-of-tissue word suggesting an unborn baby is subhuman until birth, no matter how many months along in the pregnancy, and no matter how physically able it is to survive outside the womb.

On ABCnews.com’s blog Political Punch, Yunji de Nies reported on the first celebration of gay pride month held in the White House by President Obama.

“President Obama told the group he is committed to equality for their community,” she reported, continuing on to quote Obama himself: “‘This struggle continues today, for even as we face extraordinary challenges as a nation, we cannot and will not put aside issues of basic equality,’ he said, ‘We seek an America in which no one feels the pain of discrimination based on who you are or who you love.’”

De Nies noted the gay community’s disappointment in a president they had hoped would actively promote their agenda: “Many gay and lesbians believe the President has been slow to act on major issues like the military's Don't Ask, Don't Tell policy, and the Defense of Marriage Act,” she wrote, neglecting to report on Obama’s personal belief that marriage should be between a man and a woman, or his administration’s recent defense of the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA).

An article on advocate.com also neglected to admit Obama’s personal belief, but did quote Richard Socarides, a former LGBT advisor to President Bill Clinton, as saying, “No one ever questioned whether President Obama's heart was in the right place, but now we have the beginning of some action …”

ABC's online "The Note" describes itself as "Washington's Original and Most Influential Tipsheet." ABC News's Senior Political Reporter Richard Klein is its current content creator.

We'll see how influential "The Note" really is if what Klein writes about the machinations behind the attempt to make us forget that the Obama stimulus plan was supposedly going to be making some kind of difference at this point gets out anywhere else. Color me skeptical.

No doubt, Klein gets in some pretty strong, accurate, and long-overdue rips (links are in original):

Clearly, the most important takeaway from ABC's low-rated White House forum on health care was President Barack Obama's admission that he would go outside the constraints of a nationalized system to get the "very best care" if necessary for his own family.

Hot Air's Ed Morrissey noted that Obama's response should properly be seen as "a Michael Dukakis moment that exposed him as a hypocrite."

A video of the exchange is at YouTube. To the extent possible, see if you think Diane Sawyer, standing next to the inquiring doctor, looks a bit peeved as the nature of his question becomes clear.

ABC's Jake Tapper and Karen Travers understood the newsworthiness of what Obama said, and led with it in their post-forum coverage:

With the very first question of its prime time special, Questions for the President: Prescription for America, ABC set the tone that essentially confirmed for viewers that the president was right in his desire to radically remake America's healthcare system. As the infomercial began, "moderator" Charles Gibson asked a seminal question of the doctors and other participants that were about to hear the president speak: "How many of you agree with the president that we need to change our healthcare system?" Naturally they all raised their hands.

Imagine that? This handpicked crowd all agreed with ABC and Obama that "change" was paramount. Surprised? Hardly.

So, as the viewer is introduced to the infomercial, they start off with the unanimous affirmation that the president is right, radical changes have to be made. The premise is set and even the sharp questions to the president later in the show are blunted by the assumption that some major change is needed. And since the president is the only person allowed to offer any plan during this ABC special, the further assumption promulgated is that he is the one that must affect that change.

For viewers of this healthcare infomercial, Obama wins thanks to an assist by ABC. The viewer is deftly led to the desired conclusion.

On May 20, ABC's Jake Tapper asked a few salient questions about coverage of an April 27 incident at the White House basketball court, a sort of event after the event that the White House press corps was barred from covering. Tapper wondered then why the president barred the press but it later became clear that Team Obama was creating its own little media report "complete with cuts, interviews, and chyrons identifying who's speaking."

Tapper subtly warned that the president's penchant for controlling the message smacks of an Obama Ministry of Propaganda styled effort that excludes "actual reporters" from covering the White House and leaves the country with faux news that is free of any "uncomfortable questions" asked by probing journalists.

Nortin Hadler, M.D. is a "professor of medicine and microbiology/immunology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and an attending rheumatologist at University of North Carolina Hospitals."

He also thinks that a number of procedures commonly thought of as beneficial have no or very minimal benefit.

The fact that ABC is carrying Hadler's exhortations may be a clue that the network is in the tank for anything that would appear to promote government intervention in the medical system. That appears to be where Hader is ultimately going.

Judge for yourself when you see the list of procedures Hadler believes are either not beneficial, or are very minimally so:

After promoting the controversial, religion-baiting film "Angels & Demons" for a combined 19 minutes last week on "Good Morning America," ABC finally featured a Catholic priest to object to the movie. Unfortunately, the interview was relegated only to the network's website, not the ABC morning show. (Considering the four days of fawning coverage to the film's stars last week, this hardly seems fair.) Father Edward Beck appeared on the internet-based "Focus on Faith" to talk to Chris Cuomo and point out the inaccuracies.

Beck critiqued the filmmakers behind "Angels & Demons," which falsely features the Catholic Church participating in a brutal massacre of a secret society, asserting that they should be more responsible for "doing their homework, even with a work of fiction." Cuomo bizarrely responded by claiming Beck needed to consider "the atheistic [position], which is, 'It's all fiction.' So, the church doesn't have any right to hold its own truth when it is a fiction in and of itself." He reiterated the disbelievers take, stating, "Anything you say you believe in is based on a fiction, because God is a fiction. So, what's wrong with having a fiction about fiction?"

Beck quickly retorted, "No. Whether or not the church kills people is not fiction. Either they do or they don't." Beck went on to note other offensive elements of the movie, such as the fact that the deceased Pope in the movie turns out to have fathered a child through artificial insemination. The New York-based priest complained, "Now, I mean, how unrealistic do we really want to make this?" Appearing to miss the point, Cuomo replied, "You taking yourself too seriously in the organized church?" (It should be pointed out that some of the tone was light-hearted as Cuomo and Beck are apparently friends.)

The gushing and fawning over our new president will reach new heights -- or new lows depending on your point of view!!! -- when the May issue of Washingtonian magazine is released with a picture of a shirtless Obama on the cover.

Even more disgraceful, the headline will read:

26 Reasons To Love Living Here

Reason #2: Our New Neighbor Is Hot

Now that's respect for the office, dontcha think?

ABC's Jake Tapper has more (h/t NBer motherbelt):