Newsweek

The billionaire-turned-populist beloved by the media is in Washington telling Congress to keep taxes high.

Warren Buffett, ranked as the 21st most influential liberal in the United States by the Telegraph (U.K.), appeared before the Senate Finance Committee November 14 to make his case against the repeal of the estate tax. And he used a very abnormal circumstance as his evidence.

Leona Helmsley, a billionaire hotel and real estate mogul known as the "Queen of Mean," died in August. It was discovered after her death that she named her dog, Trouble, in her will.

What liberal bias?

Remember that big announcement I promised earlier? Well, it’s now official.

Newsweek press release

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:
Tuesday, November 13, 2007

MARKOS MOULITSAS, FOUNDER AND PUBLISHER OF DAILYKOS.COM,
TO BECOME NEWSWEEK CONTRIBUTOR FOR 2008 PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN

New York — Markos Moulitsas, the founder and publisher of dailykos.com, will become a Newsweek contributor for the 2008 presidential campaign, offering occasional opinion pieces to the pages of the magazine and to Newsweek.com.

"We have always sought to represent a diversity of views in Newsweek, and we think Markos will be a great part of that tradition," said Newsweek Editor Jon Meacham. "He will give our readers in print and online a unique perspective. As always, our job is to create the most energetic and illuminating magazine possible, and Markos will help us do that as the campaign unfolds."

Let’s face it: the Clintons will say anything in their quests for the presidency. Just as Bill Clinton railed against Republican corruption in 1992, promising his would be “the most ethical administration in history,” Hillary Clinton now is presenting herself as the antidote of the Republican “culture of corruption,” and the antithesis of the Bush administration’s penchant for secrecy. What makes this argument all the more laughable is that secrecy has always been their modus operandi, and their key method of their scandal damage control. 

It’s on display again. In the October 30 Democratic debate on MSNBC, Tim Russert asked if Senator Clinton would lift the 12-year ban on “confidential communications” between the president and his advisers that Bill Clinton requested from the National Archives. Russert was referencing a letter Clinton wrote to the Archives in 2002 loosening the restrictions on these documents – while suspiciously leaving in place his request to keep White House documents between Bill and Hillary Clinton secret.

Besides the illegal immigrant driver’s license controversy, Hillary Clinton’s biggest stumbling point during last week’s debate involved communications between her husband regarding health care. Senator Clinton’s defense is "that’s not my decision to make."

Documents uncovered by "Newsweek," however, revealed that in 1994, President Clinton named his wife along with his adviser Bruce Lindsey in charge of the former president’s papers. Senator Clinton’s spokesman said "we don’t control their process. We’re not holding anything up."

Senator Clinton also claimed that "all of the records, as far as I know, about what we did with health care, those are already available." However, "Newsweek" also reports that most records relating to the health care task force have not been released.

All of the networks, and CNN have thus far ignored the story. However, "Fox and Friends" discussed the story on the November 5 edition. The transcript of the discussion is below.

To commemorate the Media Research Center’s 20th anniversary this month, we’ve just published a special expanded edition of our ‘Notable Quotables’ newsletter with more than 100 of the most outrageous, sometimes humorous, quotes we’ve uncovered over the past 20 years. Earlier this week, I presented quotes showing the media’s sympathy towards totalitarian communism and hostility towards Ronald Reagan and other conservatives.

Today’s installment: The media’s love affair with Bill and Hillary Clinton. For 15 years, liberal reporters have made themselves looked like the sycophants they are, as they made excuse after excuse for the Clintons’ moral failings even as they applauded the couple’s supposed greatness. But perhaps no one looked sillier than Dan Rather on May 15, 2001, when the then-CBS News anchor was asked on Fox’s The O’Reilly Factor if he thought Bill Clinton was honest.

Video (0:41): Windows (1.26 MB), plus MP3 audio (163 kB).

Want more evidence of victory in Iraq? Look no further than Newsweek's amazing attempt at spin:

The Bush administration is starving for good news out of Iraq, and it may finally have some: new U.S. government statistics showing that violent attacks of all kinds are down to levels not seen since 2005. But until recently, the administration appears to have resisted acknowledging a key element of the new data, because it flies in the face of President George W. Bush's ongoing rhetorical confrontation with Iran's clerical regime. According to three senior U.S. officials, who asked for anonymity when discussing sensitive information, the decline in Iraq violence also includes a decrease in the number of attacks attributable to insurgents backed or armed by Iran. Pentagon Press Secretary Geoff Morrell confirmed to Newsweek that "there has indeed been a drop" in such attacks, but he added that "it's not entirely clear what the reason for that is."

Yes, ladies and gentlemen, the Bush administration has now been accused of trying to cover up good news from Iraq. The second paragraph just piles on the ignorance - with a shocking secret revealed:

National political reporters and pundits have often forwarded preposterous-sounding reports about one of the biggest political problems that Bill and Hillary Clinton have: their spectacle of a marriage. That's why it's so interesting that Newsweek (one of those shameless outlets that wrote of how the devoted Clintons "don't kiss, they devour each other") would feature a page on biographer Sally Bedell Smith's new book on the Clinton marriage, For Love and Politics. (And that Smith had a rough time getting Hillary nuggets out of the Clinton Presidential Library.) NBC's Ann Curry also interviewed her on Friday's Today. MRC's Justin McCarthy jotted down the good parts:

CURRY: You found something pretty interesting. Not only evidence of Hillary's early ambitions from very young to run for president. But also you say on one page here that Hillary had to sign off on all the big decisions that her husband made as president. Now, how do you know that?

As my colleague Tim Graham has noted before, Newsweek's "Conventional Wisdom Watch" is a reliable weekly rehash of liberal conventional wisdom. Indeed, as Tim noted in a March 25 blog entry:

It really would be more honest for Newsweek to call it "Newsweek Consensus Watch." Or "What We Say To Each Other Over Lunch."

It looks like not much has changed in the past six month, as the crew at CW tapped into left-wing blogger outrage over conservative bloggers who smelled something fishy with the Democratic poster family for SCHIP, the Frosts of Baltimore, Md.:

"...for Newsweek staff, all conservatives look alike."

Thus is the complaint of Rudy Giuliani adviser Daniel Pipes, reacting to Newsweek erroneously confusing him with fellow Giuliani backer Martin Kramer, and pretty much mixing and matching all but one of the Giuliani foreign policy adviser photos.

Powerline has more here:

Earlier this week we noted the correction posted online by Newsweek for the sidebar above that runs in the current issue:

Newsweek has posted a Hillary Clinton question-and-answer session on their website, selecting eight questions out of "more than 1,000 queries from readers," but the "best questions" Newsweek plucked out of the pile often suggested a hostility to America’s current state under Team Bush, with "huge deficits," a "collapsing" middle class, and a teacher "appalled" at the underfunded No Child Left Behind education plan. One asked how she could convince the "Clinton haters" to leave divisiveness behind. Another wondered whether she would plow on with investigations of the actions of "Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Gonzales, etc.?" But there were no questions about her Iraq vote, Clinton scandals, or Democrat corruption of any kind.

Newsweek began its Q&A with the explanation: "Last month NEWSWEEK invited readers to submit questions to Democratic front runner Hillary Clinton. We received more than 1,000 queries from readers—the bulk of them about Iraq, the economy, health care and education. We forwarded a selection of the best questions to Sen. Clinton. Here are her answers." Left unsaid: Was Hillary handed just these eight inquiries? Or was she allowed to narrow it down further?

The media are finding new and innovative ways to disparage those who question global warming hysteria.

You’ve probably heard that Scott Pelley from CBS likened global warming skeptics to Holocaust deniers back in March, but in an article dated October 1, Newsweek Senior Editor Sharon Begley (pictured at right) found a fresh analogy that vilifies skeptics.

In an article posted on the new The Yale Forum on Climate Change & The Media Web site, she dismissed them as the equivalent of moon landing deniers.

When asked if journalists should be more interpretive or analytical in their climate change reporting Begley said, “It depends …When you cover the history of the space program, you don't quote the percentage of Americans who think the moon landings took place on a stage in Arizona.”

On September 30, a Sunday – the Lord’s Day in the Christian church – San Francisco will host the Folsom Street Fair, perhaps the most hedonistic event held in public in America. The fair is the San Francisco homosexual community’s annual celebration of promiscuity, sadomasochism and debauchery. The ad for this year’s fair mocks Da Vinci’s The Last Supper, with a half-naked beefcake Christ and disciples bedecked in all manner of leather and chains. The bread and wine of The Last Supper are replaced with sex toys. Many Christian groups have expressed outrage. (House Speaker Nancy Pelosi tells CNSNews.com "I do not believe Christianity has been harmed." Hear the audio there.)

Will the national media cover the story?

The Smart car, a tiny two-seater produced by Mercedes-Benz, is being released in the United States, and Newsweek decided to celebrate by shilling for the supposedly socially-conscious vehicle. Newsweek allowed Smart's U.S. president David Schembri essentially free space to advertise in what is being represented as a news column. Reporter Tara Weingarten served up softballs such as "With just two seats, it’s the perfect car for the friendless. And you don’t have to be nice and offer people rides." Weingarten also allowed Schembri to get away with such marketing-speak as,

You can help out other drivers by taking up a smaller parallel parking space, consume less fuel, thereby helping the environment, and feel great about it. Why is that bad?

In keeping with the MSMs constant denigration of organized religion, Newseek has published a story proclaiming a female as an "approved" Catholic priest accepting the claims of rogue Catholic offshoot organizations over that of the official cannon of the real Catholic Church. Everything is relative to the MSM and their fellow nihilists, so the fact that the actual Catholic Church still doesn't allow the ordination of women as priests doesn't seem to matter a whole lot to them as they give this woman the benefit of being called a "Catholic priest." It would be as ridiculous as the MSM calling Bill Clinton a black president... oh, wait. It certainly seems as if "truth" is a meaningless concept to the MSM.

Looking like an aging cheerleader instead of a "priest," Newsweek featured the story of 25-year-old Jessica Rowley in Higher Calling, published on the 13th. In it they absurdly accept as fact her supposed ordination as a "Catholic priest."

Anna Quindlen has advice for the Republican Party: Throw religious conservatives overboard.  In her Sept. 3 Newsweek column. "Disinvited to the Party," she lauds the heartland's apparent embrace of Rudy Giuliani despite his serial marriages and "quasi-liberal positions on abortion, gay rights and gun control."  To Quindlen, "quasi" means not adopting the actual platform language of the Democratic Party. 

Quindlen's rant is a typical leftist smear, lamenting the rise of the Religious Right and blaming it on ... sheer malice. She fails to acknowledge the political and cultural forces that have assailed every traditional institution from church to the Boy Scouts.  She fails to recognize that social conservatives could possibly be human beings with real interests who don't want to turn all personal responsibility for their lives over to government bureaucrats.

Here's her nostalgic look at the Republican Party she used to love:

Add Newsweek's Eleanor Clift to the list of journalists who ludicrously believe opposition to tax hikes has left the nation unable to repair infrastructure. On the McLaughlin Group over the weekend, she blamed crumbling infrastructure on how “now we have this tax-averse society, rallied by the Republicans, tax-averse where everything becomes sort of a right-wing, libertarian refusal to let government spend any money or raise any money.” Conservatives would wish.

In fact, as the Heritage Foundation's Brian Riedl outlined in a March report (PDF of it), “in 2006, inflation-adjusted federal spending topped $23,000 per household for the first time since World War II” as “federal spending has increased by 42% (23% after inflation) since 2001" and “defense and homeland security are responsible for just above one-third of all new spending since 2001.” So it's hardly as if the federal government, with an annual budget of $2.6 trillion, is starved for money. It's just being spent on adding a prescription entitlement to Medicare ($822 billion over ten years) instead of highways ($286 billion over six years).

In their September 3 editions, both Time and Newsweek magazines offered a Fall Preview to the new season in books, TV, music, and movies, but only Newsweek turned its art criticism into a crudely partisan exercise. In a "First to Worst" preview, the Newsweek gave its "Last & Least" stink-bomb to the new memoir by Lynne Cheney, "conservative icon (and VP spouse)," for being "Laura Ingalls Wilder meets Dr. Laura," while the magazine lauded Bill Clinton’s new book: "This book-length sermon is all heart." To add insult to injury, Newsweek even gave one of its best-of-autumn honors to a new CD organized by Clinton’s Attorney General Janet Reno. This is not a 'Saturday Night Live' joke.

On the books page, graced by a photo of Bill Clinton reflecting deeply on a sunny African vista with his hands in his pockets, Mrs. Cheney took a beating:

In a “Web-exclusive” commentary posted Thursday, Newsweek Senior Editor Michael Hirsh ridiculed President George W. Bush's warning that a precipitous pull-out from Iraq could lead to the humanitarian horrors that followed the American pull-out from Vietnam. Recalling a trip he made to Vietnam in 1991, Hirsh reported that he found a nation looking to the West and capitalism, adding that “today Vietnam remains” only “nominally communist.” He then snidely asserted: “This was the 'harsh' aftermath that George W. Bush attempted to describe this week when he warned against pulling out of Iraq as we did in Vietnam.” James Taranto, in his Friday “Best of the Web Today” posting for OpinionJournal.com, asked: “Could that last sentence be any more disingenuous? To Hirsh, the 'aftermath' of America's withdrawal from Vietnam didn't begin until 1991, more than 16 years after Saigon fell. About events between 1975 and 1991, he has only this to say: 'Yes, a lot of Vietnamese boat people died on the high seas; but many others have returned to visit in the ensuing years.'”

To that, Taranto astutely observed: “Never mind Vietnam's and Laos's 're-education' camps; never mind Cambodia's killing fields. It is as if one visited West Germany in 1960, found a prosperous democracy, and reached positive conclusions about the 'aftermath' of Nazi rule. It misses the point by a light-year.”

Looking to sample the political opinions of regular Americans? What better cross-section than the denizens of MSM newsrooms! That seems to be Mike Barnicle's attitude, at least. The former Boston Globe columnist-turned-MSNBC contributor is guest-hosting for Chris Matthews on this afternoon's "Hardball."

Chatting with guests Chris Cillizza of the Washington Post and Holly Bailey of Newsweek, talk turned to the topic of Americans' desire for political change. At one point Barnicle made this observation:

MIKE BARNICLE: The force for change that's out there, if you talk to regular people, people like me, people like you, the idea that they want a change is a very powerful force.

View video here.

As usual, Mark Steyn's Sunday column in the Orange County Register is a read-the-whole-thinger.

Steyn takes on the lunacy of sanctuary cities, media-report tiptoeing, and the apparently hopelessly-in-denial political elites:

..... there's been a succession of prominent stories with one common feature that the very same pundits, politicians and lobby groups have a curious reluctance to go anywhere near. In a New York Times report headlined "Sorrow And Anger As Newark Buries Slain Youth," the limpidly tasteful Times prose prioritized "sorrow" over "anger," and offered only the following reference to the perpetrators: "The authorities have said robbery appeared to be the motive. Three suspects – two 15-year-olds and a 28-year-old construction worker from Peru – have been arrested."

Only days after Newsweek was embarrassed when its own columnist, Robert Samuelson, excoriated the magazine for a “fundamentally misleading” and “highly contrived” cover story meant to defame the global warming “denial machine,” Wednesday's NBC Nightly News aired an equally distorted story which smeared “deniers,” a term no doubt meant to conjure a similarity to dishonorable Holocaust deniers. Reporter Anne Thompson began her crusading piece with “In Denial” on screen over video of the Cato Institute's Patrick Michaels. She fretted about “interest groups fueled by powerful companies, including oil giant ExxonMobil.” Citing the far-left Union of Concerned Scientists, she highlighted their claim that “ExxonMobil gave almost $16 million over seven years to denier groups, including the Competitive Enterprise Institute.” But as Marc Morano, of the minority staff of the Senate's Committee on Environment and Public Works, disclosed in a posting, “proponents of man-made global warming have been funded to the tune of $50 BILLION in the last decade or so,” not even counting the impact of one-sided media reporting, “while skeptics have received a paltry $19 MILLION.”

Nonetheless, touting Michael Oppenheimer as an expert, whom NBC identified only as an “atmospheric scientist” with Princeton University, Thompson asserted that “climate experts say whether hired guns or honest dissenters, deniers are confusing the issue and delaying solutions.” Oppenheimer, who NBC failed to note is “science adviser” to the left-wing Environmental Defense organization, ominously warned: “This is a problem that needs to be attended to very soon, immediately, or else it threatens to get out of control.” Thompson's conclusion echoed: “The scientific debate is no longer over society's role in global warming. It is now a matter of degrees.”

It appears hell hath frozen over, for a Newsweek contributing editor published an article Saturday extraordinarily critical of his magazine's cover story last week about "global-warming deniers" being funded by oil companies in an organized scam to thwart science.

In fact, Robert J. Samuelson accurately noted how "self-righteous indignation can undermine good journalism," and that this disgraceful article was "an object lesson of how viewing the world as ‘good guys vs. bad guys' can lead to a vast oversimplification of a messy story."

Fortunately, Samuelson was just getting warmed up (emphasis added throughout, h/t Marc Morano):

I received an e-mail message from a global warming skeptic yesterday suggesting that Newsweek's disgraceful article about climate change "deniers" could backfire given the facetious headline "Global Warming Is A Hoax*" on the cover.

The thinking was that since far more people would see the magazine at the newsstands than would actually buy it and read the article, a much larger number of people would think Newsweek was indeed claiming global warming was a hoax, and would never understand the sarcasm.

It seems that one of the editors of Scientific American agrees, and posted his concerns at that magazine's editors' blog Wednesday with a headline "Newsweek Denies the Existence of Global Warming" (emphasis added throughout):

As NewsBusters reported Sunday, Newsweek's current issue featured a cover story blasting anthropogenic global warming skeptics as "deniers," and pointing fingers at companies like ExxonMobil as participating in a coordinated misinformation campaign akin to the tobacco industry misleading citizens about the dangers of cigarette smoking.

Shortly after this new issue hit the stands, Al Gore told a forum in Singapore, "the deniers offered a bounty of $10,000 for each article disputing the consensus that people could crank out and get published somewhere."

This raises an interesting question: Is this a coordinated attack designed to incite anger in citizens that polls show are not as upset about this issue as the left and their media minions?

As reported by the Associated Press Tuesday (emphasis added):

Don't get me wrong. I like that mainstream media do take some efforts to report more religion and faith news items these days, including blogs like "The Seeker" at Chicago Tribune's home on the Web and the ongoing "On Faith" feature hosted by the Washington Post and Newsweek.

But just as I ripped "On Faith" for asking if good works were preferable to being saved, I have to admit this August 6 discussion starter by the Trib's Manya Brachear is a little clumsy as well:

Is church the right venue to talk about pornography? Is a small dose really that wrong?

This from the same blogger who asked, "Does sex bring you closer to God?"

As NewsBusters reported, Newsweek published an absolutely disgraceful cover-story Saturday calling manmade global warming skeptics "deniers" funded by oil companies and other special interests making them as bad as folks who misled people about the dangers of cigarette smoking.

In fact, the article was so thoroughly offensive that it has received an angry response from Sen. James Inhofe's (R-Okla.) communications director.

Writing at the Senate Environment & Public Works minority blog, Marc Morano made his objections to this article early and often (emphasis added throughout):

Kudos to Marc Morano of the Senate's Environment and Public Works Minority Staff (and former staffer for Rush Limbaugh) for surrendering several hours of his life in the cause of debunking an incredibly, almost jaw-droppingly bad article, "Global-Warming Deniers: A Well-Funded Machine" (by Sharon Begley with Eve Conant, Sam Stein, Eleanor Clift and Matthew Philips) in the August 13 Newsweek.

I read the Newsweek article after having been alerted to it by Marc, and my thoughts mirrored some of his:

Newsweek political reporter Jonathan Darman provided a preview of sorts to the August 9 Democratic debate on the gay Logo cable channel with an article on Democrats seeking votes on the gay left playfully titled "Show ‘Em Whatcha Got: Conscious of their community's financial clout, gay activists want action on equality issues, not just talk." Nowhere in Darman’s story is there a single ideological label that would place gay supporters of the Democrats on the left. But a June story on the state of the Republican presidential race after Jerry Falwell’s funeral was studded with 12 uses of "conservative" or shifting "rightward" or "religious right."

Darman’s story in the August 13 edition began by touting how progressive Hillary’s been on the gay issues and has been "eager to bask in the gay love," but how gay activists are demanding more of a revolution:

Manmade global warming alarmism took a disgraceful turn for the worse this weekend when Newsweek published a lengthy cover-story repeatedly calling skeptics "deniers" that are funded by oil companies and other industries with a vested interest in obfuscating the truth.

In fact, the piece several times suggested that publishing articles skeptical of man's role in climate change is akin to misleading Americans about the dangers of smoking.

Despicably titled "Global-Warming Deniers: A Well-Funded Machine," the article painted a picture of an evil cabal whose goal is to thwart science at the detriment of the environment and the benefit of their wallets.

Worse still, the piece's many authors painted every skeptical scientific report they referred to as being part of this cabal while including absolutely no historical temperature data to prove that today's global temperatures are in any way abnormal.

Maybe most disingenuous, there wasn't one word given to how much money corporations and entities with a vested interest in advancing the alarmism are spending, or who they are. Yet, in the very first paragraph, one of the main participants in this evil cabal was identified (emphasis added throughout):

We all had the opportunity for some real political fun this week when Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama contradicted each other in the CNN/YouTube debate. If you did not already see it, one of the YouTube questioners asked the candidates whether they would be willing to meet with the leaders of rogue nations, without preconditions, during their first year in office. Obama answered that he would. Clinton answered that she would not.

Those are differing positions, right? Diametrically opposed, actually? Well, maybe not, or at least not according to Jonathan Alter of Newsweek. In his July 27 article "Talking to Dictators," Alter wrote: "[o]n the substance, their views are almost indistinguishable." Indistinguishable?

Alter's surprising conclusion comes after his own summary of the post-debate fracas between Clinton and Obama: