PBS

A pig just flew by my window.

On PBS's Inside Washington, the perilously liberal syndicated columnist Mark Shields noted the "inconsistency" and "hypocrisy" of the Left being "muted in their criticism" of President Obama's drone attacks (video follows with transcript and commentary):

Despite his awful track record and penchant for making stuff up when it fits his agenda, New York Times columnist Paul Krugman is one of the liberal media's most beloved economic darlings.

That's why it was quite a shock to see former Newsweek editor Evan Thomas slam him on PBS's Inside Washington Friday (video follows with transcript and commentary):

Last night, PBS NewsHour anchor Ray Suarez noted the manhunt for alleged cop killer Christopher Dorner, a former Los Angeles police officer and former naval officer who left behind a rambling manifesto in which he called for an assault weapons ban and praised liberal politicians and journalists.  Unfortunately for viewers, the taxpayer-subsidized network left out those details about the manifesto, even though the manifesto gave some pretty revealing insights into the political ideas that may have inspired Dorner to violence.

Here’s what Ray Suarez reported.

With the Boy Scouts now in the national spotlight, Scouts for Equality founder and gay rights activist Zack Wahls was featured on the PBS NewsHour on Wednesday night opposite Richard Land of the Southern Baptist Convention's Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission.  While intended as a civil, constructive conversation, Wahls insinuated that Land was a bigot since, for people like him, “this is about the problems you have with parents like mine.”   Wahls has two moms, born to one biologically through artificial insemination.

PBS NewsHour host Jeffrey Brown did not push back on Wahls's unwarranted attack on Land’s conservative views, and seemed to have temporarily lost control of the interview.  Furthermore, Wahls proceeded to attack conservative principles, in general, which he derided as “from the last century.” That's the sort of discussion we're paying for with our tax dollars.

PBS continued the liberal media tradition Thursday of ignoring Sen. Robert Menendez’s prostitution scandal. Granted, the  taxpayer-subsidized network found time to mention Menendez during its NewsHour, but only for a 24-second blurb as part of its “other news of the day” segment. But that news brief was not even about the New Jersey Democrat’s sexual transgressions; it was instead about his involvement in a billing dispute between Medicare and Dr. Salomon Melgen, a leading Menendez campaign donor.

Here is a transcript of the brief:

"And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother's eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye?"  Time for Joe Scarborough to brush up on the Sermon on the Mount?

On today's Morning Joe, Scarborough gloated at length over survey results indicating that the public's trust in Fox News has declined and that PBS is the only network that more people trust than distrust. But he conveniently failed to mention that Fox News remains the network that more people trust than any other . . . and that his own MSNBC trails way—way!—behind Fox News in public trust.  View the video after the jump.

In the wake of the leaked Department of Justice memo detailing the legality of targeted killings by drones on American citizens, the PBS NewsHour found it fitting to have the ACLU defend its position in why these strikes are troubling, and why American-born al-Qaeda leader Anwar al-Awlaki should’ve been kept alive to plan acts of terror against the United States.

Of course, this is maddening to the progressive wing of the Democratic Party.  Liberal publications, like The Nation, detail the dark future of drone warfare, and some anti-drone journalists, like Conor Fierdorsdorff of The Atlantic, have compared Obama to Bush.  However, even with the media either criticizing, or ignoring, this development, last night’s broadcast of the PBS NewsHour didn’t take into account the hypocrisy of liberals who were on the warpath a few years prior after release of Bush memos related to enhanced interrogation techniques.

Remember all that talk about civility in political discourse after the shooting of Arizona Congresswoman Gabby Giffords?

NPR's Nina Totenberg apparently doesn't, for on PBS's Inside Washington Friday, she said of Hillary Clinton, "Any time conservatives can they want to take a knife to her throat" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

Another day, another iteration of the left-wing criticism of Al Gore’s sale of Current TV to Al Jazeera. On Thursday’s PBS NewsHour, co-anchor Jeffrey Brown interviewed the former vice president and, predictably, the sale of Gore’s television channel came up. Like Matt Lauer and Andrea Mitchell before him, Brown failed to question Gore’s decision to sell to a network with a history of espousing anti-American views.

Instead, Brown rehashed the hypocrisy question, even though he knew it had been asked before: [View video after the jump. MP3 audio here]

Remember the media’s love affair with George W. Bush during his first term? Me neither. But PBS’s Tavis Smiley and Rolling Stone journalist and author Michael Hastings recall such a scenario. According to Hastings, the media loved President Bush from 2001 to 2005, just as they love President Obama now: “...if you look back at the first four years of the Bush administration, the media – same sort of dynamic. There was a lot of love for George W. Bush. Remember they hated Al Gore, and Bush was their favorite. And things didn’t really go south for Bush with the media until Katrina happened, and, you know, an unpopular war.”

Hastings concluded that media bias always favors the sitting president: “So the bias - the media bias is always towards power; it’s always towards whoever’s in the White House.” Smiley seconded that notion, saying, “I’m glad you said it, and I would have said it if you didn’t, which is that there is a bias toward power.” [See video after the jump. MP3 audio here]

Newsweek's Eleanor Clift got a much-needed education about the Founding Fathers and gay rights this weekend.

After she predictably gushed and fawned over President Obama's inaugural address on PBS's McLaughlin Group, syndicated columnist Pat Buchanan scolded, "If you think the Stonewall riot in a gay bar in Greenwich Village can be traced all the way back to Bunker Hill and the Founding Fathers, you don't read what the Founding Fathers believed or say" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

While the rest of the media were gushing and fawning over the idea that Barack Obama was going to be sworn in on Martin Luther King Jr's bible during his second inauguration Monday, a surprising voice spoke about the hypocrisy involved.

On Tuesday, PBS's Tavis Smiley aired a discussion on poverty originally broadcast on C-SPAN Thursday wherein black philosopher and activist Cornel West spoke at length about why he "got upset" when he heard Obama was going to do this (video follows with transcript and commentary, photo courtesy UPI):

Barack Obama’s second inaugural address had a distinct liberal flavor, particularly on social issues, and many media outlets have admitted as much. However, according to quasi-conservative New York Times columnist David Brooks, the ideological slant of the speech actually made it one of the best inaugural addresses of the past fifty years.

Appearing on the Monday January 21 edition of the taxpayer-subsidized PBS NewsHour, Brooks acknowledged that Obama did not pose as a post-partisan figure, as he did four years ago. "Now he’s in the fray. He’s picked a team. His team is his party, his belief system." [See video below. MP3 audio here.]

During PBS’ coverage of the 2013 Inauguration, syndicated columnist Mark Shields, Gwen Ifill, and Yale University’s Beverly Gage seemed to have forgotten what the definition of liberal is within the context of Obama’s second inaugural address.  In fact, Gage said that this wasn’t an “endorsement of collective liberalism,” and Shields called it more “humanitarian.” 

The non-taxpayer subsidized liberal media has been more honest. Today’s New York Times said Obama offered a “liberal vision.”  Slate’s John Dickerson, who infamously called for Obama to destroy the GOP, called the 44th president’s address “a liberal love letter.”  ABC finally figured out that Obama is a progressive liberal.

One of the requirements to be a liberal media member in the 21st century is to have selective amnesia when your agenda demands it.

Consider presidential historian Doris Kearns Goodwin who during an appearance on PBS's Charlie Rose Monday said, "The political culture in which [Barack Obama's] had to work in these last four years may have been the most difficult political culture that any president’s had in a long period of time" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

As NewsBusters reported Saturday, CBS News political director John Dickerson advised the current White House resident to destroy the Republican Party.

On PBS's Charlie Rose Monday, the Washington Post's Bob Woodward made a much different recommendation to President Obama saying, "Sticking your finger in these people’s eye all the time I don't think will work" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

Appearing in his role as regular panel member on Friday's Inside Washington on PBS, Politico's Evan Thomas -- formerly of Newsweek -- made known his view that the Second Amendment was meant to be "limited to muskets," but went on to undermine the talk of more gun laws as a "side show" as he asserted that "it's a diversion from what we really need to do, which is deal with bigger issues like debt and climate and things that politicians don't want to deal with."

At one point during the discussion of gun control, liberal columnist Mark Shields suggested taxing bullets to make them more expensive like the governnent did with cigarettes:

Syndicated columnist Charles Krauthammer on Friday marvelously exposed NPR's Nina Totenberg as one of President Obama's shills in the media.

When Totenberg - appearing on PBS's Inside Washington - tried to make excuses for why Obama is totally in favor of raising the debt ceiling today despite having voted against doing so when he was a senator, Krauthammer scolded, "Don't cover for him" (video follows with transcript and commentary, file photo):

Former Newsweek editor Evan Thomas made a bizarre statement on PBS's Inside Washington Friday.

"Unexplored story of the year: white men dropping out - dropping out of the workforce, dropping out of elections, just plain dropping out, getting social security, not doing anything, going hunting, fishing, just not in the game" (video follows with transcript and commentary, file photo):

"I think quite bluntly leaving and losing their virginity on the issue of tax cuts is an important thing to these Republicans who have not voted – make it understood - no Republican in the House or Senate for 22 years has voted to increase taxes."

So said PBS's Mark Shields on Inside Washington Friday (video follows with transcript and commentary, file photo):

Liberals politicians and journalists are on a full-blown assault on the Second Amendment ever since Friday's horrific shooting in Newtown, Conn. Gun ban-pushers like Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) are making the rounds in the media, including taxpayer-funded PBS. On December 17, NewsHour anchor Gwen Ifill gave Feinstein the floor to push her agenda. Naturally, Ifill failed to bring on an opposing point of view nor did she ask Feinstein tough questions.

As Colonel Kurtz said at the end of Apocalypse Now: “the horror, the horror.”  That sentiment encapsulated New York Times Republican David Brooks and syndicated columnist Mark Shields’ reactions to the rejection of the UN treaty on the rights of the disabled in the Senate last week.  Brooks called it “embarrassment for the country” – while Shields called it “a profile in cowardice.”  Regardless, it seems that both men forget that we have a similar bill called The Americans with Disabilities Act, which was passed under George H.W. Bush.

During the segment, which aired on December 7, NewsHour anchor Judy Woodruff decided to end her interview with Brooks and Shields on this point:

The PBS NewsHour has yet to invite a strong conservative on the program to talk about the fiscal cliff.  Tuesday night they had New York Times columnist, left-wing economist, and Obama cheerleader Paul Krugman to detail his view.  Wednesday night they had moderately-conservative Sen. Bob Corker ( R-Tenn), but last night was the most interesting. PBS invited the Norquist of the left, Max Richtman, of the National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare, who insisted we shouldn’t be in a rush to reform our entitlement spending. 

After all, when the unfunded liability of both programs is around $100 trillion dollars, what’s the big hurry? Where’s the fire? Suffice it to say, none of Richtman's claims were met with skepticism by anchor Judy Woodruff.  She continued with her interview, as if what Richtman said was fact.

During the December 4 edition of the PBS NewsHour, anchor Gwen Ifill decided to give a lofty eight minute and forty second interview to Obama cheerleader and Nobel laureate Paul Krugman so he can try to convince us that the fiscal cliff isn’t that big of a deal.  Of course, in his estimation, Democratic proposals for higher taxes and higher spending were serious, while Republican alternatives to tackle the deficit were trivial.  In fact, according to Krugman, “Obama is actually very serious in the real sense. It's just the notion he hasn't done anything on entitlement reform is totally unfair. He's done more than anyone has ever done before.” 

And that’s why he needs $1.6 trillion dollars in tax hikes and $50 billion in additional stimulus spending to be "serious" about reining in deficit spending?!

To paraphrase the estimable Yogi Berra - it’s like deja vu all over, and over, and over, and over again.

The Jurassic Press media is enraptured with a certain story.

Liberal commentator Mark Shields is hardly the poster boy for health and fitness in this country.

Despite that, the portly PBSer took a cheap shot at Governor Chris Christie's (R-N.J.) weight on Friday's Inside Washington (video follows with transcript and commentary, file photo):

Sesame Workshop announced on Tuesday that Kevin Clash, the long-time puppeteer of Elmo, has resigned. In its statement Tuesday, Sesame Workshop said "the controversy surrounding Kevin's personal life has become a distraction that none of us want," leading Clash to conclude "that he can no longer be effective in his job."

As the announcement was made, AP's Frazier Moore reported “a lawsuit was being filed in federal court in New York charging Clash with sexual abuse of a second youth. The lawsuit alleges that Cecil Singleton, then 15 and now an adult, was persuaded by Clash to meet for sexual encounters. The lawsuit seeks damages in excess of $5 million.”

During Friday’s broadcasts of the PBS's NewsHour and NPR’s All Things Considered, liberals continued with their narrative about the fiscal cliff, and how it’s not all that bad.  Previously, Mark Shields and E.J. Dionne agreed with New York Times-style Republican David Brooks that they would go off the cliff.   The Washington Post's E.J. Dionne equated it with the “will of the people.”

But now, the Post’s Ruth Marcus and E.J. Dionne insist that the cliff isn’t a cliff.  It’s actually a well-defined “slope." But in the words of Joe Biden, “this is a big f***ing deal.”

The liberal media cheerleading for United Nations ambassador Susan Rice to become Secretary of State despite her repeated claims that September's attack on our consulate in Libya were a reaction to an anti-Muslim video are becoming nauseating.

On PBS's Inside Washington Friday, Politico's Roger Simon actually said, "John McCain named Sarah Palin to be a heartbeat away from the presidency but he won’t vote for Susan Rice ’cause he can’t trust her. That’s absurd" (video follows with transcript and commentary):