Dana Perino

Former Barack Obama senior advisor David Axelrod on Tuesday demonstrated why it's absurd for him to have been hired by NBC News at the beginning of his previous boss's second term.

Appearing on Morning Joe, Axelrod struck back at CBS's Bob Schieffer for his criticism of the White House on Sunday's Face the Nation (video follows with transcript and commentary):

Fox News senior White House correspondent Ed Henry said Friday that when he used to grill George W. Bush press secretaries Dana Perino and the late Tony Snow when he was working for CNN, his colleagues cheered him on in private.

"Then when I was at Fox covering the Obama administration," he told conservative radio host Laura Ingraham, "it can get a little bit lonely sometimes" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

As part of the Fox News Channel's coverage of the dedication of the George W. Bush Presidential Library and Museum in Texas on Thursday, Dana Perino, co-host of the channel's “The Five” weekday program and a White House press secretary for the 43rd president, interviewed her former boss “not to break any news here” but for viewers to meet and get to know him “as I do.”

That seven-minute discussion immediately drew fire from Howard Kurtz of CNN and the liberal Daily Beast website. He asked on the Tweeter social site whether the softball interview might have made a “mockery” of Fox's coverage of the event.

On Wednesday's The Last Word with Lawrence O'Donnell, MSNBC analyst Richard Wolffe -- formerly of Newsweek -- claimed that President Bush "ignored all the warnings about al-Qaeda wanting to attack the homeland" before 9/11 as he mocked Republicans for praising Bush's record of preventing terrorist attacks on U.S. soil after the 9/11 attacks. As he alluded to Republicans criticizing President Clinton for not handling al-Qaeda more aggressively during his presidency, Wolffe asserted:

As NewsBusters reported Monday, actor Jim Carrey released a satirical video at the comedy website Funny or Die which attacked gun owners and the late Charlton Heston with penis size jokes.

Later that day, Fox News's Greg Gutfeld and his co-hosts at The Five thoroughly trashed Carrey (video follows with LexisNexis transcript and absolutely no need for additional commentary):

In what has become a recurring theme on MSNBC, liberal panelists will find some way of attacking Republicans for a completely unrelated issue.  The latest example is the tragic murder-suicide involving NFL player Javon Belcher last week, which MSNBC’s Karen Finney used to smear Republicans in Congress, not over gun control -- that would be too predictable -- but, you guessed it, the "war on women."

Appearing on Friday’s Martin Bashir, Finney -- a NARAL Pro-Choice America board member who's fine with violence against unborn girls --  and the entire liberal panel slammed Republicans in the House for failure to pass the Violence Against Women Act, arguing that passage of that bill could have prevented Jovan Belcher from murdering his girlfriend.   [See video below page break.]

The outrage concerning New York Times columnist Paul Krugman's disgusting comments on the tenth anniversary of 9/11 came from all quarters of the political arena Monday.

Never one to mince words, Fox News's Greg Gutfeld on "The Five" said what many Americans were feeling about this liberal sociopath, "Go to hell, Paul Krugman, you bearded, bitter buffoon" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

On Tuesday’s Rachel Maddow Show on MSNBC, as host Maddow complained that a video clip of former USDA official Shirley Sherrod had been edited to make it appear that she currently has a tendency to discriminate against white farmers at USDA – a clip that led to her firing by the Obama administration – the MSNBC host not only incorrectly claimed that FNC coverage of the clip had helped incite her firing, but she also suggested that FNC would never show her side of the story even though, by that time Tuesday night, several FNC shows had already informed viewers of some of the details in Sherrod’s favor. And, in fact, Sherrod had already been forced to resign before the O’Reilly Factor became the first FNC show to report the story of her comments on Monday night, although host Bill O’Reilly at the time did not realize she had already been fired.

Maddow’s show even chose to only present to her viewers clips from FNC that ran Monday and Tuesday morning which portrayed Sherrod’s comments as racist, without airing any of the clips from shows later Tuesday which showed FNC personalities conveying more of her side of the story. As Maddow filled in her viewers on some of the details in Sherrod’s favor, the MSNBC host used such phrases as "you would never know this if you got all your information from Fox News," and, after explaining that Sherrod, in fact, helped the white farmers in question, she added: "That`s what happened – unless, of course, you watch Fox News." FNC had already reported most of those same details hours earlier, and O’Reilly even informed his viewers Tuesday that Sherrod had declined an invitation to appear as a guest on his show, so liberal FNC analyst Alan Colmes appeared in her place.

NBC's Matt Lauer dismissed the idea that Barack Obama was weak on terrorism, as the Today co-anchor, on Wednesday's show, wanted to "get rid" of the notion that "the President doesn't take the threat of terrorism seriously enough because he's not out there talking about it every day." Lauer, in a political roundup segment in the 7am half hour, also spun the retirements of Democratic Senators Chris Dodd and Byron Dorgan as something "that might work out better in the long haul," for the Dems.

First up Lauer, in a question to former White House press secretary and current Fox News contributor Dana Perino, dismissed the idea Obama isn't taking the threat of terrorism seriously enough.

On Monday’s Countdown show, MSNBC host Keith Olbermann named former White House Press Secretary Dana Perino "Worst Person in the World" – ahead of Mike Huckabee and Glenn Beck – in response to Perino’s November 24 appearance on FNC’s Hannity show in which she insisted that the Fort Hood massacre should be called a "terrorist attack," and, while referring to the often cited fact that the Bush administration prevented any additional terrorist attacks on American soil for the rest of President Bush’s time in office after the 9/11 attacks, she flubbed the line and claimed "we did not have a terrorist attack on our country during President Bush’s term."

Olbermann, who was quick to label the murder of abortionist Doctor George Tiller as terrorism, but has a history of attacking FNC personalities who insist that the Fort Hood massacre should be called terrorism, seemed to pick up on a posting from the far left ThingProgress.org as he attacked Perino’s intelligence:

But our winner, former White House Press Secretary Dana Perino. That this is not a smart person, not a sensitive person, maybe not a person person, has long been pretty clear. But this, this takes it to a new level.

After playing a clip of Perino contending that she feels "very strongly" that the Fort Hood massacre was a "terrorist attack on our country," followed by the clip of her mistakenly saying no terrorist attacks occurred in America while Bush was President, Olbermann concluded:

Former White House Press Secretary Dana Perino on Sunday compared last week's attempt by the White House to exclude Fox News from of a pool interview to Hugo Chavez shutting down television stations in Venezuela.

As NewsBuster Jeff Poor reported Thursday, the Obama administration earlier in the day tried to shut Fox News out of an interview with pay czar Kenneth Feinberg that was to be part of a pool that the cable network would always be involved in.

On "Fox News Sunday," when the panel discussion turned to this subject, Perino really went after the White House for what she called conduct "unbecoming" and an impediment to our efforts to "help emerging democracies get journalists and government officials to talk to one another" (video embedded below the fold with partial transcript):

White House press secretary Dana Perino's last briefing was delicious beyond words...especially her tribute to Tony Snow. Do yourself a favor and click on the embedded video below:

After the firestorm that erupted Saturday over the Associated Press's classless story on the death of former White House Press Secretary Tony Snow, I was hoping that the possibly-chastened wire service could get through its coverage of his funeral without getting in any gratuitous digs.

In that horrid Saturday story (blogged at NewsBusters and BizzyBlog), the AP's Douglass K. Daniel, with the assistance of longtime Bush basher Jennifer Loven, felt it necessary, within hours of Snow's passing, to characterize him as "not always (having) a command of the facts," questioning reporters' motives "as if he were starring in a TV show broadcast live from the West Wing," and turning his briefings into "personality-driven media event(s) short on facts and long on confrontation." In a further descent into tastelessness, they felt it necessary to tell us what Snow's salary at the White House was -- something I don't believe I have ever seen written in a story on anyone else's death. (11:00 a.m. update: See this comment below for an exception.)

Covering Snow's funeral Thursday, AP reporter Ben Feller stayed classy almost to the end. But then he apparently couldn't help himself, and followed the execrable example of his Saturday predecessors in his story's third-last paragraph.

It's Memorial Day, and the good folks at the New York Times thought it appropriate to not only attack the President's position on a new G.I. Bill, but also to despicably lambaste him for "[h]aving saddled the military with a botched, unwinnable war," and "having squandered soldiers’ lives and failed them in so many ways."

On Memorial Day!

Thankfully, White House press secretary Dana Perino has already issued a written statement concerning this deplorable act by the Times on a sacred day when our nation commemorates its fallen heroes.

But before we get there, here are some of the atrocities the Times editorial staff felt were appropriate to offer their readers on this solemn holiday (emphasis added throughout, h/t FishbowlDC):

Q. Is there any level to which Helen Thomas won't stoop?

A. Apparently not.

That's my conclusion, based on Thomas's exchange during today's press gaggle with White House Press Secretary Dana Perino. Here is the front page of today's Washington Post to which Thomas refers [warning: graphic image]. A slide-show from WaPo's web edition contains another photo of what appears to be the same child, with this legend:

Two-year-old Ali Hussein is pulled from the rubble of his family's home in the Shiite stronghold of Sadr City in Baghdad, Iraq on Tuesday, April 29, 2008. The child, who later died in hospital, was in one of four homes allegedly destroyed by U.S. missiles. More than two dozen people were killed when Shiite militants ambushed a U.S. patrol in Baghdad's embattled Sadr City district, bringing the death toll in area on Tuesday to more than 30, a U.S. military spokesman and Iraqi officials said. (AP Photo/Karim Kadim)

Here's the exchange between Thomas and Perino.

HELEN THOMAS: Do you think it's worth a million Iraqi deaths, to continue to bomb the Iraqis who did nothing to us?

White House press secretary Dana Perino appeared on The Daily Show Thursday night, and host Jon Stewart disparaged former spokesman Ari Fleischer as looking like a caveman. When Perino protested that Fleischer had a female following, Stewart cracked "Is that like the women who visit murderers in prison? Like the serial killer kind of a thing?" Perino said most questions don’t fluster her, except when Helen Thomas will "ask a question that is not based on fact." Stewart asked:

"Now do you find, now that the mood has shifted, I mean, you went through a period where, I mean, they were going through press secretaries, Ari Fleischer, McClellan, Tony Snow, and then we always used to make a little attractiveness chart because it seemed like the evolution of man in terms of --

Perino: They wouldn’t wear pink.

Stewart: Because Fleischer was, let's face facts, tough to look at. (Laughter)

As conditions in Iraq improve to the point where even adamant Iraq War opponents concede the surge has worked, the press seems less interested in questioning the Bush administration on the war. On the March 6 edition of "Fox and Friends," co-host Brian Kilmeade asked White House press secretary Dana Perino when she last received a question about Iraq. Perino responded that she does not remember "having sustained questions about Iraq...since probably early December," and added "I think that’s as a result of General Petraeus and Ambassador Crocker in conjunction with the Iraqis really making some progress on the ground."

Does the media only want to report the bad news in Iraq? A recent MRC study suggests just that, noting "their zeal for reporting on Iraq declined as the violence and casualties did." The MRC documented that the number of stories declined in 2007 from 178 in September, 108 in October, to 68 in November.

Over the course of at least nine months, CNN’s John Roberts has regularly labeled the troop surge in Iraq, the amassing of 28,000 additional troops in the country, the "so-called surge." Liberals, such as George Lakoff, have objected to the term "surge" in the past, since using the term would "subscribe to Bush’s misleading frame." Roberts' latest use of the phrase took place on Monday’s "American Morning." He posed the following question to White House Press Secretary Dana Perino. "The President is also going to be talking about Iraq tonight, Dana. He'll be talking, I guess, about the so-called surge, progress that's been made in terms of security and safety there. But there still has been little political progress. What's the President's message to Nouri Al-Maliki and the people who are in charge there in Iraq going to be tonight?"

This isn’t the first time Roberts has used the "so-called surge" phrase in an interview with Perino. In an April 20, 2007 interview with then-Deputy White House Press Secretary, Roberts asked, "You say that this so-called surge is working, that things are getting better. There are 182 people killed the other day in Baghdad, is that really getting better?"

It's a first. The New York Times is admitting that one of their headlines slamming the Bush White House was an outright lie. Such a lie that they had to change it when the White House complained. Of course, the original subhead had trumpeted how White House spokesman Dana Perino lied to the American people, but when Perino pointed out that she never even said what the Times claimed, they had to face the truth and change the original. This is the sort of junk "reporting" you get when you have an agenda to push... truth be damned.

On the 19th, the Times had published a front-page story on the CIA's destruction of interrogation tapes made of Islamofascist detainees, but the subhead made it seem as if the White House was straight out lying about their knowledge of the situation. The original subhead screamed "White House Role Was Wider Than It Said," but what was it the White House "said" about the issue, anyway?

Turns out, not a thing. Literally... not a single thing!

As NewsBusters reported over the weekend, liberal antagonist Helen Thomas was deliciously smacked down during last Friday's press briefing by White House press secretary Dana Perino.

Fox News's Bill O'Reilly must have heard about this wonderful event, for on Monday's "O'Reilly Factor," the conservative host played some of the encounter for his viewers, and then offered his own opinion.

What follows is a partial transcript of this segment (video available here):

White House Press Secretary Dana Perino gave conservatives and right-thinking Americans across the fruited plain an early Christmas present Friday by smacking down liberal antagonist and so-called "journalist" Helen Thomas.

During Friday's press briefing, when Thomas pressured Perino about American troops killing people in Iraq, the Secretary scolded Thomas for her despicable behavior:

Helen, I find it really unfortunate that you use your front row position, bestowed upon you by your colleagues, to make such statements. This is a -- it is an honor and a privilege to be in the briefing room, and to suggest that we, at the United States, are killing innocent people is just absurd and very offensive.

Indeed. Those interested in early gifts should watch the entire delicious exchange while reading the partial transcript that follows (video available here, h/t NB reader Damian G. and Bryan at Hot Air):

White House Press Secretary Tony Snow is leaving his post on September 14, to be replaced full-time by deputy Dana Perino, who filled in earlier this year for Snow when he underwent chemotherapy treatment.

As NewsBusters has recorded, Snow has tangled with biased journalists in his role as the White House's chief spokesman. Perhaps one of the most memorable was an episode in June 2007 reported by NewsBusters contributor Justin McCarthy: