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ABC’s Good Morning America on Tuesday devoted two stories to whether the "controversial" Rush Limbaugh would be able to buy an NFL team, but skipped any discussion of the false quotes that have been circulating about the radio host. Co-host Robin Roberts buried that lede and instead fretted, "Opponents say Limbaugh has a history of making racially offensive comments, some directed squarely at NFL players."

As reported previously on NewsBusters, several media outlets have repeated fake Limbaugh quotes about how "slavery had it merits." GMA hosts and reporters didn’t appear to be interested in correcting the slanderous charges. Roberts even compared Limbaugh to a baseball owner who made favorable remarks about Hitler. [audio available here]

Bizarrely, correspondent David Muir played a quip of the conservative defending himself, but didn’t explain the context: "They have to go somewhere to find concocted quotes, which are now bordering on slander, libel, whatever it is, that I never said." What were the concocted quotes? Muir didn’t mention the false slavery quote.

It's an odd natural occurrence when you put MSNBC "Hardball" host Chris Matthews and CNBC "Mad Money" host Jim Cramer together, but when it happens they seem to draw some obvious conclusions - albeit nearly 10 months too late. 

Back in January, Cramer appeared on Matthews' show. They both expressed their concern over the $787-billion stimulus, which eventually passed and asked if it really was stimulative. When the duo appeared together again on Oct. 12, they concluded it wasn't. Cramer was on "Hardball" to promote his new book, "Jim Cramer's Getting Back to Even."

Matthews observed that the stimulus bill passed in January simply wasn't getting the job done.

What some guys won't say to get attention . . .

Analogizing Rush Limbaugh to a James Bond villain, Chris Matthews today fantasized: "at some point somebody's going to jam a CO2 pellet into his head and he's going to explode like a giant blimp."

Hosting MSNBC's 10 AM hour today, Matthews made his remark while chatting with Politico's Jonathan Martin and Anne Kornblut of WaPo.

It's obvious the Obama administration has a low regard for Fox News as a media outlet - whether it has been President Barack Obama hinting at what he has thought about Fox News, the administration passing over Fox News in a recent round of Sunday morning interviews or as White House communications director Anita Dunn recently has done - just declare open season on the network.

However Brit Hume, now a senior political analyst for Fox News and regarded as a veteran figure at the news organization, took the White House head on. In his "Brit Hume Commentary" segment on Fox News Channel's Oct. 12 "Special Report with Bret Baier," Hume, pointed out this "feud" the Obama administration has decided to elevate is a bad idea.

"Every president ends up disgusted with the news media in general and with certain individuals or outlets in particular, but there is an old adage often attributed to Mark Twain that advises against picking fights with people who buy ink by the barrel," Hume said. "He is speaking of the big media of his day, which were newspapers."

Just last week Suze Orman appeared on "Good Morning America" to advise couples not to share a bank account so that "nobody could take anybody else's money." Now on Oct. 12 GMA aired a segment about Sidetaker.com, a Web site that allows arguing couples to "just log on and let a group of complete strangers weigh in."  

Last year when Justin Marinos couldn't decide whether to dump his cheating girlfriend, he jumpstarted Sidetakers.com to make the decision for him. Responders voted to ditch the girl, and he did.

So much for the good ol' days of compromising behind closed doors. Sidetakers had 200,000 readers last month with 11,000 registered users anonymously - and often shamelessly, airing their dirty laundry.

Is NFL Players Association Chief DeMaurice Smith being forthright when he contends he wants to protect the sport from "discrimination and hatred" as he has claims, or is he engaging in partisan hackery, with the benefit of having the ear of NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell? If you look at Smith's past, you might come to that conclusion.

As NewsBusters Noel Sheppard pointed out Sunday, ESPN's Chris Mortensen shared Smith's concerns on the network's Web site Oct. 11 based on an e-mail Smith had sent which said the following:

"I've spoken to the Commissioner [Roger Goodell] and I understand that this ownership consideration is in the early stages," Smith wrote. "But sport in America is at its best when it unifies, gives all of us reason to cheer, and when it transcends. Our sport does exactly that when it overcomes division and rejects discrimination and hatred."

Taking a sampling from the Media Research Center’s bi-weekly publication of Notable Quotables, a compilation of the liberal media’s latest and most outrageous sound bites, NewsBusters bloggers have created a new comedy web show for readers to enjoy.

Take a look and let us know what you think.

 

 

 

Here was a chance for Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz. to admit he was wrong, and to conclude publicly that government intervention in the private sector doesn't always result in the best of outcomes.

McCain appeared on CNN's Oct. 11 "State of the Union" in a pre-recorded interview and was asked by host John King if the lackluster recovery of the economy warranted more government intervention.

"The president has said he's considering new initiatives to help job creation," King said. "They passed one stimulus plan and most Republicans, including John McCain, have been pretty critical of this $787-billion stimulus passed early in the year. Should the President do more now through government spending, though tax incentives or should he wait because, as you have said many times, we have so much red ink, we can't afford much more?"

Remember just a week ago when New York Times columnist David Brooks slammed the likes Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck? Naturally, that led to the left-wing noise machine, and the media which uses that message for show prep, to suggest there was a split in the conservative movement and therefore attempt to marginalize the conservative message.

However, will they be so eager to echo the sentiment of David Brooks in the wake of President Barack Obama's Nobel Prize announcement? On PBS's Oct. 9 "NewsHour with Jim Lehrer," the Times columnist had some disparaging words for Obama's award - despite a sentiment from some liberals that those who question it were somehow un-American.

"Well, my first reaction is he should have won all the prizes because he has given speeches about peace, but also he's give economic speeches. He wrote a book - that's literature. He has biological elements within his body. He could win that prize. He could have swept the whole prizes," Brooks said tongue-in-cheek before delivering the knock-out blow. "Now - it's sort of a joke."

Newsweek senior editor Jonathan Alter grouped conservative talk radio with Islamic radicals, specifically singling out Rush Limbaugh for attack, on Friday’s MSNBC Live. While acknowledging that “everybody agrees it was premature” to award the Nobel Peace Prize to President Obama, Alter singled out the two groups that, in his view, were actually voicing criticism: “You’ve got the mullahs in the Taliban, and then you’ve got Mullah Rush” [audio clip from the segment available here].

Anchor Tamron Hall brought on the Newsweek senior editor and MSNBC news analyst minutes into the 4 pm Eastern hour. Midway through the segment, Hall noted the “reaction from the world” and the “incredible pressure” that President Obama is facing concerning the war in Afghanistan. Alter replied that “it’s important to know that the award doesn’t go for pacifists....There have been plenty of examples of recipients who’ve been heads of state and...were war presidents. But...I also think it’s important to know who is actually sounding off against this. Everybody agrees it was premature, maybe undeserved. But who’s actually attacking it? Well, you’ve got the mullahs in the Taliban, and then you’ve got Mullah Rush [Limbaugh] -- you know, you have his, his [Obama’s] critics here at home” [video from the segment available below the jump].

No wonder why Chris Matthews is always positively tingly over Obama. It's just a neverending Gorbasm with a different leftist object of lust.

Today on "Hardball," Matthews favorably compared the president to former Soviet dictator and Nobel Peace Prize recipient Mikhail Gorbachev (MP3 audio available here):

CHRIS MATTHEWS, host: When Gorbachev became chairman of the [Communist] Party and ran, took over Russia [sic], a lot of us in this country said, this guy, by his very fact of coming to office has so changed Soviet history, Communist history. I love the guy. Because he came in there and knocked off that whole history of Andropov and Stalin and all those bums. He comes in there as an open door.

MATTHEWS: Isn't the statement's he's [Obama has] made about torture, his opposition to the Iraq War, his statements of approval of the rest of the world, after Bush's chauvinism and cheap shots about French fries. After eight years of that nonsense, doesn't the world have a right to say, "Thank God, America is back to being America again"?

CNN attacked the practice of earmarking and criticized a few senators for doing it on Oct. 9, but the segment from Dana Bash didn't mention President Obama's campaign promises on the issue or his failure (thus far) to fulfill them.

"Earmarks," John Roberts teased as he introduced congressional correspondent Bash's segment. "We heard that word a lot during the presidential campaign last year. While they're perfectly legal, critics see them as conflicts for members of Congress and a troubling way to get deals done."

After an introduction like that it would have been natural to include what Obama said on the campaign trail about earmarks.

Equipped with the state-of-the-art Media Research Center TV studio and the excellent production work of MRC Video Producer Bob Parks, we at NewsBusters have been hard at work developing a new biweekly program that mocks the liberal media's most outrageous and humorous soundbites.

We debut the new "Notable Quotables" video program on Monday, October 12, but you can catch a preview in a video embedded below the page break. Note: The show will not be replacing NewsBusted but will be in addition to it.

Moments after President Obama’s remarks in the Rose Garden this morning, NBC anchor Brian Williams took a weird shot at the blogosphere as the “comic element of our society,” suggesting perhaps that Obama or the Nobel committee would face three days of mockery over what Williams in the same broadcast himself termed the “bizarre” selection of Obama as this year’s Peace Prize Winner.

In his typically overblown and convoluted fashion, Williams argued to White House reporter Chuck Todd that “the way our society and civilization is set up now,” the “comic element of our society -- the blogosphere, pundits, the opinion-based economy in the United States” would “just get a free shot and have at it for the next three days at least.” [MP3 audio available here]

The Associated Press took to the streets of Washington, D.C. and Chicago this morning for reaction from everyday citizens about President Obama's Nobel Prize win. All but one of the featured interviewees expressed at least some skepticism about the president's worthiness to receive the award. And no, it seems none of these men (and woman) on the street are rabid right-wingers.

The video has received front-page treatment on Google News, headlined, "Video: Public Seems Skeptical of Obama's Nobel Win."

You can see the embedded YouTube video below the page break:

It probably wasn't totally unexpected, since the tally of time the on-air talent at MSNBC spends on Rep. Michele Bachmann, R-Minn., increases with every broadcast hour.

Bachmann, not one to hold back on expressing her opinions, has criticized MSNBC on not one, but two occasions recently. And one of those appearances, on Fox News' Oct. 7 "The O'Reilly Factor," she called her critics on the left-leaning network "personal stalkers, only they have TV shows." And that earned her the top spot on Olbermann's "Worst Person in the World" segment.

"But our winner, Michele Bachmann," Olbermann said, referring to the first place contestant, the "worst" person. "[Fox News host Bill O'Reilly], dimly aware of the world around him, asks her, ‘Now you are a pretty interesting politician, Congresswoman. You are second to Sarah Palin in far-left angst. You know, Sarah Palin leads the league, no doubt. But they're after you now. We hear it all the time, Michele Bachmann, she's this, she's that. How did you get into that wheelhouse?'"

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Update 12:35 | Lachlan Markay - DNC Communications Director likens GOP to terrorists

What a morning at Morning Joe! First, a "senior White House official" sent an email calling Joe Scarborough an "a-----e" for mocking Pres. Obama's Nobel Peace Prize. A bit later, responding to Rush Limbaugh's depiction of Scarborough as a "neutered, chickified moderate," Scarborough repeatedly claimed that Pres. George W. Bush had Rush's "testicles in a blind trust."

Scarborough and Time's Mark Halperin—whom no one would accuse of being a right-wing hack—had some good-natured fun with the Nobel news. A laughing-out-loud Scarborough suggested among other things that Marisa Tomei was more deserving of her Academy Award. But the Messiah will not be mocked, and it wasn't long before NBC's Savannah Guthrie, on the set, announced that she had received an email from "a senior White House official" telling Joe to "stop being an a------e" [spelled out in the original, according to Savannah]. Mika Brzezinski tried to soft-pedal the insult, claiming the White House was "joking." Real side-splitter! Is this the new standard of civility from Dems so offended by "you lie"?

No Peace Prize is likely to be awarded to Scarborough or Rush Limbaugh anytime soon. War has broken out between the two. Scarborough initiated hostilities by criticizing Rush for reveling in PBO's Olympic failure. Rush returned fire yesterday, calling Scarborough a "neutered, chickified moderate." This morning, Scarborough repeatedly claimed that W had Rush's "testicles in a blind trust" for eight years. Joe asserted that he had early and often warned Republicans against profligate spending during the Bush years, while others stood by in support of the president.

In case you missed it, conservative talker Rush Limbaugh will be expanding his resume - long-time political commentator, potential NFL owner and now Miss America pageant judge.

On the Oct. 8 broadcast of Fox News "On the Record," host Greta Van Sustren revealed that Limbaugh would be one of the national judges for the 2010 Miss America Pageant, scheduled to be held in Las Vegas on Jan. 30, 2010.

"Rush Limbaugh, he's the King of talk radio," Van Sustren said. "He's trying to buy the St. Louis Rams. Well chalk up one more thing - Miss America judge. You heard that right - Rush Limbaugh has been named one of the national judges for the 2010 Miss America pageant. Limbaugh will be one of seven judges for the competition. Now that pageant is in Las Vegas now. It's coming this January at the Planet Hollywood Resort & Casino."

 Video below fold

Remember how the left was up in arms about the possibility that conservative talker Rush Limbaugh might purchase the St. Louis Rams, especially from the left-wing noise machine and the pundits that echo its message?

Well, in a curious turn of events on MSNBC's Oct. 8 "Countdown," host Keith Olbermann told his viewers that those who are opposing Limbaugh's bid for the Rams were the third worst people in the world on this particular day.

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Media Research Center Communications Director and NewsBusters.org contributing editor appeared live in studio with Glenn Beck on his Fox News program yesterday where he discussed more damning information he's unearthed about FCC diversity czar Mark Lloyd: his ties to Marxist Hugo Chavez defender Robert McChesney. [MP3 audio available here]

McChesney's leftist group, ironically styled Free Press, co-authored with Lloyd and the liberal Center for American Progress a paper exploring "The Structural Imbalance of Political Talk Radio," which essentially serves as a treastise to justify "balancing" political talk radio via government regulation.

MRC's Brent Bozell appeared on this morning's "Fox & Friends" to discuss reporting by NewsBusters.org's sister site CNSNews.com that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) is planning to hitch a health care reform bill on to an unrelated tax bill which passed out of the House of Representatives earlier this year.

[MP3 audio here, view embedded video at right]

Explained Bozell :

Instead of having a debate in the House and the Senate and giving a bill to the president, you're going to get Harry Reid's bill, passed by the Senate, by the Democrats... immediately rubber-stamping it, no debate, no House-Senate conference, no Republican discussion, and it goes right to the president for his signature, and oh, by the way, no one knows what's in it. 

You can check out the October 7 story by CNSNews.com's Nicholas Ballasy here, an excerpt appears below the page break:

Remember back just a few short months ago - when thousands, if not millions, of Americans were protesting out-of-control government spending and other policies favored by President Barack Obama's administration? 

Surprised by the resounding turnout, the usual lefty talking heads on MSNBC, specifically on "Countdown with Keith Olbermann" and "The Rachel Maddow Show," explained the protests away as being fake grassroots aka AstroTurf.

Fast forward to Oct. 7, when both Olbermann and Maddow started laying down AstroTurf of their own. They encouraged free health care clinics to be held in the states of six Democratic senators that are not in lockstep with the left-wing agenda on health care reform.

Update at bottom (1:53 p.m.): Olbermann responds to TVNewser about Bachmann's remarks

Over the past several days, Rep. Michele Bachmann, R-Minn., has made a series of appearances pushing for action against the disgraced organization ACORN.

However, in an appearance on Fox News Oct. 7 "The O'Reilly Factor," host Bill O'Reilly asked Bachmann about a trend others have noticed - why do so many media figures on the left have such a fixation on criticizing her or former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin?

"You are a pretty interesting politician, congresswoman," O'Reilly said. "You are second to Sarah Palin in far-left angst. You know, Sarah Palin leads the league, no doubt. But they're after you now. We hear it all the time, you know Michele Bachmann, she is this and she is that. How did you get into that wheelhouse?"

After ripping Rush Limbaugh yesterday, Morning Joe sports reporter Fred Roggin today announced he would henceforth be keeping his mouth shut on the subject--after getting an earful from his wife.

As we had noted, during his Morning Joe sports slot yesterday Roggin took a number of shots at Rush and his quest to purchase an interest in the NFL's St. Louis Rams.  Among other barbs, Roggin falsely claimed that Rush had been "canned from ESPN for racist remarks about Eagle's quarterback Donovan McNabb."

A chastened Roggin had this to say this morning . . .

What happens when you have James Carville prodding Larry King to ask a "tough" question of outspoken Minnesota Congresswoman Michele Bachmann? You get a glimpse of what is really driving the movement questioning the legitimacy of President Barack Obama's birthplace.

On CNN's Oct. 7 "Larry King Live," a persistent Carville would not let it go - that Bachmann was a part of the so-called "birther" movement - a tactic to frame her as "nutty."

"Well, first of all, there are seven Republicans in the House that have ‘birther' legislation before in there," Carville said. "And one of the things that people don't like is that politicians get a simple yes or no question and they try to evade it, just like I heard the Congresswoman do. She's known to be very outspoken."

No, that's not a made-up headline. The foreclosed and/or evicted homeowners that have played such a role in the current economic meltdown - are they irresponsible borrowers that lived beyond their means or are victims that got swindled? Michael Moore is clear on where he thinks they fall.

Moore matched up with Fox News and conservative talk radio host Sean Hannity on Hannity's Oct. 6 program and Hannity attempted to have Moore explain why he didn't think there was a personal responsibility angle to the home foreclosure crisis.

Here's how it unfolded (emphasis added):

HANNITY: If you put your name on the dotted line in a legal document, don't you bear responsibility?
MOORE: These people have been deceived and they've been exploited. You know, this is like - this is like ...
HANNITY: No responsibility at all for them?
MOORE: No, this is like asking a woman how short was your skirt after she's been raped.

We've already seen CNN's Paul Begala, affectionately referred to as "The Forehead" by Rush Limbaugh, and one ESPN personality, Fred Roggin, taking shots at Limbaugh on the heels of news of his interest in the National Football League's St. Louis Rams.

But it was just a matter of time before the usual culprits on the left would attempt to make an issue of it, in what seems to be an effort to gin up some reason for the talk show host not to have an ownership stake in an NFL team. And, MSNBC's Ed Schultz isn't waiting for pointers from the left-wing blogosphere to set the "Stop Rush's Bid for the Rams" agenda. He took it to Limbaugh on his Oct. 6 program immediately.

"There's also some comical football news out there," Schultz said. "The drugster's talking about buying the St. Louis Rams. That's right, the leader of the Republican Party is bidding for ownership of a team that's been giving more money to Democrats than any other team has over the last 10 years, at least that's what the survey says. He'll have to do something about that I'm sure."

Democratic strategist Paul Begala can be relied upon to use the “drug card” against Rush Limbaugh whenever the talk radio host is brought up, and he was true to form on Tuesday’s Situation Room. When anchor Wolf Blitzer asked what it would mean if Limbaugh bought the St. Louis Rams, Begala snarked, “Just don’t put him in charge of the team’s drug policy....Don’t give him access to that medicine cabinet” [ audio clip from the segment is available here].

Blitzer brought up Limbaugh just after the bottom of the 6 pm Eastern hour during in a panel discussion with Begala, Republican strategist Ed Rollins, and CNN personalities Gloria Borger, Joe Johns, and Jessica Yellin. The anchor asked Johns, “Rush Limbaugh- he’s thinking about buying, or at least, participating in a group that’s buys the St. Louis Rams in the NFL....What, if anything, would that mean for the St. Louis Rams?” Johns replied, “Probably very little....you know, [if] you’ve got a good football team in a place...like St. Louis, people are going to watch. And so what if Rush Limbaugh is the owner” [see video from the segment below the jump].

As NewsBusters' Ken Shepherd noted in an October 5 post, some conservatives have undertaken an online Conservative Bible Project to rid the Good Book of "translational bias" and correct the "lack of precision" in both original and translational language. As Shepherd also noted, Time Magazine's Amy Sullivan wasted no time heaping derision on the effort.

Unsurprisingly, others on the left have joined the fun. Harpers Magazine titled a blog post on the project, "From the Department of Self-Parody." "Lo and behold, the Bible has gotten too liberal," wrote Rachel Weiner at the Huffington Post. "And it needs a little editing."

And the hooting could be heard in many of the lesser precincts of the left-wing blogosphere - most of it a variation on Weiner's sneer: "Yes, even scripture is not orthodox enough for the modern conservative."

An interesting, yet little known fact about goldfish:  The average goldfish has a memory of approximately one to three months, depending on the stimuli used to train it.

Dylan Ratigan, former CNBC co-host and current MSNBC desk jockey, has a shorter memory than a goldfish.

As the MRC’s Tim Graham noted just yesterday, it is an odd thing when MSNBC hosts wish for more civility in political dialogue.  A mere 24 hours later, Ratigan provided another example of his insincerity during a live segment on health care.  

Former New York Lt. Governor Betsy McCaughey (R) took the conservative viewpoint, and Ratigan tag-teamed with Democratic Rep. Anthony Weiner (N.Y.) in belittling her every statement.