The Situation Room

On Thursday's edition of The Situation Room, CNN anchor Wolf Blitzer ran with the media herd that he's "probably never seen anthing as dramatic" as the Rick Perry brain freeze. Then he turned to commentator Jack Cafferty, who insisted, "Not since Sarah Palin sat down with Katie Couric as a candidate for one of the nation's highest offices disgraced himself the way Rick Perry did last night."

When Blitzer replied by estimating Palin's made about $20 million since she ran for vice president, Cafferty shot back: "Stupidity sells. I won't argue with you about that."

CNN put Republican candidate Herman Cain in the spotlight on Friday for his apparent lack of knowledge, accusing him of "dodging" tough questions. Cain had multiple times answered tough foreign policy questions by saying he would need to consider "all of the facts" before making an well thought-out decision.

"One of the things that I've always prided myself on is making an informed decision based upon knowing all of the facts," Cain stated during the May 5 Republican presidential debate. [Video clip below the break. Click here for audio.]

As the media did a victory lap over Friday's announcement by President Obama that all American troops would be removed from Iraq by the end of the year, Fareed Zakaria took a surprisingly contrary position.

Speaking from Tehran with a variety of CNN hosts throughout the day, Zakaria said this development was a disappointment for the United States and a victory for Iran (video follows with transcript and commentary):

When pressed to confirm that "some analysts" are blaming ObamaCare for higher health insurance costs, CNN's chief medical correspondent admitted that indeed they are "suggesting" Obama's Affordable Care Act is to blame.

Sanjay Gupta, once considered by President Obama for surgeon general, told CNN's Wolf Blitzer on Tuesday that according to "some analysts," mandates from ObamaCare have been behind the recent spike in health care costs and premiums.

[Video below the break. Click here for audio.]

CNN's Jack Cafferty smeared entire crowds of people who attended recent GOP debates when he asked on Tuesday if they were "bloodthirsty."

"For the third time in as many debates, crowd members have either booed or cheered at what some say are highly inappropriate moments," Cafferty stated. He slammed both the crowd behavior and the Republican candidates for not denouncing such antics.

[Video below the break. Click here for audio.]

“The Republican Party is split right down the middle between Tea Party movement supporters and those who do not support the two-and-a-half-year-old movement, according to a new national survey,” a Thursday CNN.com “Political Ticker” post asserted in recounting the findings of a CNN/ORC poll which were cited on air by both Wolf Blitzer and John King.

Yesterday on CNN's The Situation Room, the story of President Barack Obama's uncle's arrest on charges of driving under the influence was reported.  Make that Barack Obama's half-uncle, as anchor Wolf Blitzer and correspondent Brian Todd identified him that way at least nine times.  Todd even presented a wall chart detailing "a complicated and very fascinating family tree." 

CNN and Blitzer haven't always emphasized Obama's precise relationship with other relatives.  From The Situation Room of April 12, 2011:

CNN's Jack Cafferty slammed the "intellectual lightweights" leading the Republican presidential field on Wednesday, wondering why their supporters "seem to be allergic to brains."

The CNN contributor labeled the candidates "Curly, Moe, and Larry" and sarcastically dubbed Palin a "MENSA candidate," a term reserved for smart people. Recently he also bemoaned a possible Palin run and gave credence to the conspiratorial theory that Bachmann and Perry are serious members of a theocratic fringe sect of Christianity.

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Citing a Daily Beast piece linking GOP candidates Michele Bachmann and Rick Perry to a radical Christian strain called "Dominionism," CNN's Jack Cafferty fretted about a possible Christian theocracy in America on Wednesday's Cafferty File.

"I got to reading this piece, and it scared the hell out of me," Cafferty fearfully remarked of the article's conspiratorial claims. "We contacted both campaigns a few hours ago, haven't heard a word back form either one of them."

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CNN's Jessica Yellin used a recent CNN poll Tuesday to give credence to the White House spin that President Obama is the victim of a bad economy he inherited from Bush. What Yellin failed to report was another CNN poll showing that Americans almost two-to-one disapprove of Obama's handling of the economy.

Yellin, on Tuesday's The Situation Room, touted a July 25 CNN poll showing that 57 percent of Americans believe Bush and the Republicans are more to blame than Obama and the Democrats for the current economic troubles. She added that the Obama White House could credibly use that poll result to deflect blame toward President Bush for the poor economy.

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On Thursday's The Situation Room, Fareed Zakaria said the tactics used by Tea Party congressmen in the debt ceiling debate were akin to holding the country hostage and threatening to "blow up" the economy.

"So nobody has ever held a country hostage and say [sic] if you don't pass our policies, we'll blow up the economy, we'll blow up the credibility of the United States," Zakaria remarked on CNN Thursday. He called the recent debt ceiling fight "unprecedented" and slammed the Tea Party for its refusal to compromise.

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It's no secret that CNN's Jack Cafferty possesses a deep-seated loathing of Sarah Palin, and now that she may run for the Republican presidential ticket the grumpy CNN contributor has one more thing to grumble over.

"Palin recently said she plans to decide about 2012 in late August or September. God help us," Cafferty bemoaned Wednesday on The Situation Room. He fretted that the entry of Palin or Donald Trump into the Republican presidential race "would tend to fit nicely with the political insanity we've been watching the last couple of weeks."

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CNN's Wolf Blitzer put Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) on the defensive Tuesday in a testy interview on the debt ceiling, lecturing the congressman and asking provocative questions about any divides within the party on Capitol Hill.

Blitzer told Jordan that "you've got to deal with reality now" after reporting that the Balanced Budget Amendment, a brainchild of House Republicans, failed in the Senate. "You've got to deal with the hand you're dealt, and you can pass anything you want in the House, but if it doesn't pass in the Senate, it's not going anywhere," he added.

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CNN touted results from its newly-released poll Thursday showing Americans favor a balance of spending cuts and tax increases in the debt ceiling debate, as well as raising the debt ceiling. What the network completely failed to report -- although NewsBusters reported it -- was that Americans also favored two conservative positions – passage of a balanced budget amendment, along with spending cuts and future spending caps.

CNN's deputy political director Paul Steinhauser emphasized that the poll results favored Democrats over Republicans. He insisted that "the headline here is Americans want compromise," and pointed out that 64 percent of respondents favored including both spending cuts and tax increases, "kind of like what the president is suggesting, what the Gang of Six is suggesting."
 

CNN's Piers Morgan tried to clear the air Monday by explaining his time as editor of the scandal-ridden British tabloid paper News of the World, and denied any illegal activity in gathering stories. The story exploded on Tuesday, however, as Parliamentary member Louise Mensch mentioned Morgan on-air during the Murdoch hearings as an example of an editor who had used the illegal practice of phone hacking to gather a story.

When Mensch appeared on CNN's The Situation Room later that day and addressed her previous remarks, Morgan called in and defended his credibility against her "blatant lie," telling her to "show some balls" and repeat her accusation, and then reveal the spot in his book "The Insider" where he supposedly made the claim.

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Like dutiful White House shills, the "NBC Nightly News" Monday reported Republican presidential candidate Michelle Bachmann mistaking the Iowa town where actor John Wayne was born.

Hypocritically, NBC News has still not informed viewers of President Obama's horrible error last Thursday when he said he had awarded a Medal of Honor in person to a living soldier who actually had been killed in Afghanistan in 2006 (video follows with transcript and commentary):

In today's "Truer Words Might Never Have Been Spoken" segment, Michelle Obama told CNN's Robyn Curnow Friday, "Fortunately we have help from the media."

Such came during an interview with the First Lady in Botswana aired on the 6PM installment of "The Situation Room" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

Both President Obama and leading Republican candidate Mitt Romney got into hot water for supposedly making insensitive comments about the economy this week. But CNN's response offers a textbook case of media bias, as the supposedly-objective news network virtually ignored Obama's gaffe while trumpeting Romney's comment.

President Obama poked fun at the ineffectiveness of his own stimulus bill in creating certain "shovel-ready jobs" on Monday and Republicans pounced on the joke, claiming it was not funny when unemployment remains high. However, CNN barely reported the president's joke and the ensuing Republican outrage.

CNN's Wolf Blitzer admitted Monday that he believed Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-N.Y.) when the congressman told him in an interview that he did not send a lewd photo of himself over Twitter. Blitzer related to CNN's Piers Morgan Monday evening his thoughts immediately after the interview.

"I'm saying to myself, you know what, it sounds to me like it may have been his picture, but it was out there, but somebody else hacked it and somebody else sent it out to embarrass him. I sort of believed, you know, that line," he confessed.

[Click here for audio. Video below the break.]

CNN's Jack Cafferty reverted back to his Palin derangement syndrome Wednesday afternoon. He touted two new books that heavily criticize Palin – labeling one as "required reading" for any potential supporters of a Palin presidential run – as an antidote of sorts to what he deemed "Palin propaganda."

Cafferty's question of the hour was "With the GOP field so weak, should Sarah Palin run for president?" He spent the majority of his brief time slot bashing Palin and assembling the case against the former governor. "Just when we thought that maybe she had decided to just go away and leave us alone comes news of Sarah Palin, the movie," he bemoaned.

[Click here for audio. Video below the break.]

According to a USA Today analysis, Americans are paying a lower percentage of income tax rates now than in the 1970s-1990s – and CNN's Jack Cafferty used this fact Monday to ask if raising taxes should be the first priority in Congress's deficit reduction plan. He hinted that the Treasury could use the extra revenue from higher taxes.

Then on Tuesday, CNN Anchor Carol Costello continued the talking points on the 10 a.m. and 12 p.m. EDT news hours, asking if it is time "for the GOP to blink" on the tax hike standoff. "[Obama] toppled Osama bin Laden. But can he slay the budget dragon? Not without striking a deal with this guy, House Speaker John Boehner," Costello ominously declared.

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CNN's Candy Crowley adopted the pro-abortion lobby's talking points on Friday's Situation Room, as she asked Rep. Steve King about the House's vote to defund Planned Parenthood: "There's that term, 'penny wise and pound foolish.' Would you worry that, by cutting off those services, people...would have sicker babies, or certain people...wouldn't have HIV testing...and that would just cost us more?"

The journalist, who was substituting for regular anchor Wolf Blitzer, brought on the Iowa Republican and his Democratic colleague, Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, to comment on the current budget debates at the state and federal levels. Towards the end of her interview, at the 42 minutes into the 6 pm Eastern hour mark, Crowley raised the 240-185 vote earlier that afternoon to eliminate federal funding of Planned Parenthood, and used an argument similar to that of liberal Fox News contributor Jehmu Greene, who emphasized on the February 3, 2011 edition of The O'Reilly Factor how the organization's employees "provide mammograms [and] provide birth control advice." The anchor also hinted that cutting off Planned Parenthood would end up costing more tax dollars in the long run:

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On Wednesday afternoon, CNN aired a misleading graphic about Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour's statements about a proposed license plate honoring a controversial Confederate general from the Civil War. The chyron, which ran during CNN Newsroom and The Situation Room, stated that the "Miss. Gov. won't denounce creation of KKK license plate."

At first glance, one would imagine that the proposed vanity plate has an image of a burning cross or a hooded figure. In reality, the organization behind it, the Sons of Confederate Veterans, aim to honor Nathan Bedford Forrest, who is a controversial figure, even disregarding his early membership in the Klan, because of his involvement in the massacre of black Union troops at Fort Pillow in Tennessee in 1864. Most people probably know the name because of the Oscar-winning movie Forrest Gump, as the title character was named after the Confederate figure (the movie also has a brief clip of actor Tom Hanks, playing Gen. Forrest, donning his Klan robes).

 Over the past couple of weeks, as prominent Muslim Brotherhood members tried to sell themselves as harmless in interviews shown on the evening newscasts on ABC, NBC, and CNN, Eliot Spitzer of CNN’s Parker-Spitzer managed to coax spokesman Mohammed Morsy into defending violence against Israel by Palestinians, contradicting the Brotherhood spokesman’s claims in the same interview of being opposed to violence.

Earlier in the interview, which was first seen on the Thursday, February 3 Parker-Spitzer, Morsy had also sidestepped the question of whether the Muslim Brotherhood would support adherence to Egypt’s 30-year treaty with Israel, as he suggested that such matters would be in the hands of the parliament.

CNN correspondent Mary Snow replayed some of the interview on the next day’s Situation Room on CNN. After a clip of Morsy claiming that his organization would support freedom for all religions in Egypt, the piece continued:

NewsBusters for years has chronicled the staggering idiocy of comedian Bill Maher.

On Tuesday's "Situation Room," we got a hand from Wolf Blitzer when he marvelously countered Maher's complaint that CNN's decision to air Congresswoman Michele Bachmann's (R-Minn.) Tea Party response to the President's State of the Union address was depriving Democrats of equal time (video follows with transcript and commentary):

Former dean of the White House press corps Helen Thomas delivered some candid remarks Monday on CNN's "Situation Room." Thomas, who last year retired from Hearst for telling Israelis to "get the hell out of Palestine" and go back to their former lands, railed against what she viewed as America unequivocally protecting Israel.

On Friday the Society of Professional Journalists announced that, in light of that controversy, it would "retire" the lifetime achievement award that bears her name.

"I could call President Obama anything in the book, and no one would say anything. You touch one thing about Israel and you're finished," Thomas groused.

CNN's "Situation Room" ran a segment on the 90 year-old journalist Monday afternoon, reporting that Thomas, who currently works for the Falls Church News-Press, is pushing to regain her status as a White House correspondent.
 

Jack Cafferty's Palin Derangement Syndrome reached a new level on Thursday's Situation Room on CNN, as he attacked the Republican for her reply to those who tried to tie her to the Arizona shootings: "It was just awful, defiant, [and] inflammatory."  Cafferty also ripped Palin for using the "blood libel" phrase and stated that the reply would "effectively end her chance of ever being elected president."

The commentator devoted his 5 pm Eastern hour Cafferty File segment to his rant against his perennial nemesis: "Sarah Palin may have done herself in this time. The tragedy in Tucson presented an opportunity for Palin to reach beyond her base and to strike a note of unity, to say something that showed she's capable of true leadership." After noting that "there was a good deal of sympathy for her. A lot of people thought it was wrong to drag her into the debate to begin with," Cafferty struck hard at the former Alaska governor for having the audacity to answer the latest charges against her:

CAFFERTY: But then she spoke, and it was just awful. Defiant, inflammatory, Palin invoked the historically painful term, 'blood libel,' in attacking the media. This is a phrase used hundreds of years ago to describe anti-Semitic myths about how Jews killed children and then used their blood in religious ritual. NBC News correspondent Andrea Mitchell suggested the use of the phrase 'blood libel' was 'ignorant.' It was. A CBS analysis suggested Sarah Palin played 'the victim card.' She did. And ABC said Palin- quote, 'once again, has found a way to become part of the story,' unquote- true.

CNN indicated its sympathy for gun control on Tuesday with two segments on The Situation Room where sound bites from gun control supporters outnumbered gun rights supporters by a three-to-one margin. During the first report, correspondent Dana Bash stated that Senator Patrick Leahy "supports gun rights," even though the Democrat actually has the opposite record on the issue.

The previous evening, during the 9 pm Eastern hour of Monday's Anderson Cooper 360, the network's senior political analyst, David Gergen, indicated that he supported stricter gun control, in the wake of the attempted assassination on Representative Gabrielle Giffords, during a segment with Tea Party activist Dana Loesch.

GERGEN: ...How is it possible that someone who is this unhinged, when so many people understood that he was in mental deterioration, that he could still walk into a gun store and buy- you know, 9 mm semiautomatic Glock handgun, and also, then carry it concealed? I mean that's- if there's some cultural insanity here, it is the fact that we haven't put a stop to the capacity of these deranged young people to buy guns and then spray at people. It's just unbelievable.

UPDATE AT END OF POST: Olbermann responds via Twitter.

As NewsBusters previously reported, Fox News's Neil Cavuto on Monday went after MSNBC's Chris Matthews for making fun of New Jersey governor Chris Christie's weight.

Choosing to defend their colleague, Keith Olbermann and his crack research team on Wednesday incompetently responded with a poorly-researched cherry pick from a July 2009 installment of "Your World" (video follows with transcript and commentary):