Mike Bloomberg

"This is the ugly, intolerant face of the radical left that's taken over liberalism today," declared NewsBusters publisher Brent Bozell on Thursday's Hannity program, reacting to charges by MSNBC's Al Sharpton and Mike Barnicle that conservatives up in arms over Mike Bloomberg's proposed soda ban are animated by anti-Semitism. Bozell appeared on the March 28 program with guest host Eric Bolling for the popular weekly "Media Mash" segment.

"You can't have an [honest] conversation with these radicals" at MSNBC, the Media Research Center founder complained. "I pine for the days of George McGovern... I pine for the days of Joe Lieberman, where are you when I need you? Because you could have a serious conversation, serious disagreements, but you weren't attacked personally for them," Bozell noted. "This is the radical left that goes for character assassination anytime it's faced with a debate" against conservatives. [watch the full Mash segment below the page break; special thanks to my colleague Scott Whitlock for the video]

On Morning Joe today, the Reverend Al Sharpton agreed with Mike Barnicle  that anti-Semitism explains the opposition to Mike Bloomberg in his gun control campaign. H/t NB reader cobokat.

If ever there were an expert on anti-Semitism in America, it could be Al Sharpton, he of Freddie's Fashion Mart and Crown Heights riot infamy. The spectacle of Sharpton lamenting the supposed anti-Semitism of others was ironic, if not repulsive.  Note that Dan Senor, who might also know something about anti-Semitism, being Jewish and having attended university in Israel, rejected the notion.  View the video after the jump.

Editors for CNN's breaking news emails delivered subscribers a 50-word alert on how "[a] state judge invalidated a New York City law banning certain venues from selling sugary drinks in containers larger than 16 ounces." [Update: By contrast, Fox News's email breaking news alert simply reads, "State judge halts New York City's ban on large sugary drinks, calling the ban 'arbitrary and capricious'" | see screen grabs below page break]

But rather than couch the stay on the new regulation as a victory of individual liberty, the editors described the ruling as "a setback for Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who has backed several laws aimed at improving the health of New Yorkers."

Appearing on Friday's NBC Today, special correspondent Tom Brokaw strained to explain why New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg endorsing President Obama would be helpful: "[It] may not move the needle, for example, in Colorado, but in Ohio and in places where they're trying to get white men, they can say, 'Look, this guy has got the endorsement of the Mayor of New York.'" Why would someone in Ohio care?

Co-host Matt Lauer noted that the endorsement "wasn't a very warm hug," prompting Brokaw to argue: "It wasn't a warm hug, but it was tough on Romney about not being the guy that he was when he was Governor of Massachusetts."

Media silence greeted video of an Occupy Wall Street protester vowing to burn New York City to the ground and toss Molotov cocktails into a Macy's department store, yet there was "non-stop media coverage" of the alleged, but never proven, use of the N-word at one Tea Party rally, NewsBusters publisher Brent Bozell noted last night on Fox News Channel's Hannity.

"Look at the violence you're starting to see, the rapes, the assaults... I'm starting to hold the national news media responsible for this as well" as well as New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg, the Media Research Center founder added [video follows page break]:

Turn a few pages of the "Time 100" -- ostensibly the "most influential people in the world"  -- and you can easily see it as a gimmick, and not a serious attempt to measure influence. Look no further than the media. In the new 2011 list, one media name stands out  -- Joe Scarborough, the liberal-pleasing "Republican" MSNBC host Mark Levin calls "The Morning Schmo." There are no Fox News hosts and no liberal-media TV stars and no talk-radio titans. Time editor Richard Stengel is a guest on the Scarborough show, and they often hype the new Time magazine cover, so declaring him influential looks very much like a bit of commercial/political pork-barreling. The tribute to Joe came from New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg (the two Manhattan centrists have been talked up as a presidential dream team):

As a group, cable-television talk-show hosts are not exactly known for independent political analysis that is free of partisan favoritism, but that is exactly what makes Joe Scarborough, 48, so refreshing — and so important. Joe's approach to politics is the same as mine: call 'em like you see 'em, and even if people don't agree with you on every issue — and they won't — they will respect you for being honest. They will know you are not shilling for a party or an ideology. And they will do exactly what you would hope any voter — and any viewer — would do: listen with an open mind and come to their own conclusions.

 Chris Matthews on Monday participated in a little bit of revisionist history for the benefit of his former employer Jimmy Carter.

As the "Hardball" host brought up the possibility of New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg running as a third party candidate in 2012, the former President actually said that this was why he lost to Ronald Reagan in 1980 (video follows with transcript and commentary):

Not sayin' Rahm wrote it, but . . .

In a strange departure from Morning Joe's typical spontaneity, Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski issued what was clearly a scripted, teleprompted, manifesto this morning.  The statement purported to be non-partisan condemnation of "angry voices" and a call, citing a WWII poster, to "keep calm and carry on."  But even a cursory analysis reveals that the manifesto's message suits Dem themes to a 'T', and carries clear echoes of a recent partisan speech by Pres. Obama at a political event.

The manifesto amounted to a condemnation of the "angry voices" and the "political extremists" who, claimed Scarborough, "are dominating the airwaves and dominating the national debate." But at this juncture in American political history, the anger is understandably more present on the right. The Dems, after all, control both houses of Congress and the White House, and have used their power to promote a big-government agenda on everything from health care to trillion dollar spending schemes to higher taxes.  You're darn right we're angry!  In instructing us to calm down, Joe and Mika are really seeking to sap the vitality from the political movement that threatens to sweep Dems from office.

The front page of Wednesday's New York edition of the New York Times featured the news that a controversial plan to build a mosque two bocks from Ground Zero was approved by the city's landmarks commission: "Mosque Plan Clears Hurdle In New York -- Bloomberg Pleads for Religious Tolerance."

But reporters Michael Barbaro and Javier Hernandez actually led with NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg's weepy speech about religious tolerance, falsely asserting that that denying permission to build a 13-story Islamic center topped by a mosque would somehow be "denying the very constitutional rights" that New York City police and firefighters died protecting.

And the Times again insinuated that opposition to the mosque is coming mostly from outsiders, while New Yorkers have gotten on with their lives and don't oppose it -- a half-truth at best, as shown by results of a poll of New Yorkers.

Times reporters were very impressed with the speech. Both Jodi Kantor and Brian Stelter linked to speech coverage on their Twitter feeds, Kantor calling it a "must-read" and Stelter calling it "worth reading."

Here's the Times's lead:

As New York City removed the final hurdle for a controversial mosque near ground zero, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg forcefully defended the project on Tuesday as a symbol of America's religious tolerance and sought to reframe a fiery national debate over the project.

Combining bleeding heart bluster with soak-the-rich envy, Newsweek's Ben Adler savaged liberal billionaire New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg in an April 14 The Gaggle blog post for his green-lighting city homeless shelters to levy a monthly rent on residents who hold down jobs:

Don't complain about your taxes today, they are surely less than the 44 percent of one's income that homeless New Yorkers are about to start paying.

New York City, whose mayor, Michael Bloomberg, is worth an estimated $17.5 billion, has announced that it is going to charge homeless people for staying in city housing shelters.

Adler went on to briefly cite the New York Daily News before snarking that "[a]nyone who has spent a minute in a homeless shelter knows better than to buy the preposterous idea that people who could afford an apartment would rather stay there."

Of course that's an unfair assessment of the argument for charging rent of homeless shelter residents who have jobs. From the Daily News article Adler himself cited (emphasis mine):

If George W. Bush's White House military office had staged an Air Force One photo op flyover of Manhattan without warning New Yorkers beforehand resulting in buildings being evacuated and widespread panic, would media have castigated him for his wreckless stupidity and obvious disengagement from tensions those in the area still have due to 9/11?

This seems an important question given what happened Monday, and how the press are covering the incident with someone in the White House they can't hide their love for.

As the Associated Press reported Tuesday (video of incident embedded right to give you an idea of the panic this caused h/t NBer klchadwick, vulgarity warning):

What does it say about the secular state of the MSM that a liberal media member has to defensively clarify for the record that she doesn't object to a candidate having "a moral grounding"?

During the opening half-hour of today's Morning Joe, a clip was played of Mike Huckabee describing to a South Carolina gathering how he found his faith as a 10-year old attending a vacation Bible school. He expressed the hope that others had experienced that joy and would share it with others.

JOE SCARBOROUGH: The thing that I found is, if people don't get too down in the weeds about their faith, and don't seem like they're lecturing, then I think it gives people a sense of assurance: "OK, the guy's got a faith system; I'm comfortable with that, and now move on and tell me how you're going to run the country."

That seemed to put Mika Brzezinski on the defensive.

View video here.