On Friday's Countdown show, MSNBC analyst Jonathan Alter, also of Newsweek, suggested that voters who support Hillary Clinton's call for a temporary suspension of the federal gasoline tax are "stupid" as he contended that the Clinton campaign team are "assuming that people are too stupid to realize that this is a bad idea that won't save them any money at the pump." Alter later argued that the tax cut strategy may end up succeeding politically for Clinton because "there are a lot of what are called 'low information' voters" who are "not reading the unanimous, unanimous newspaper editorials against this. They're not talking to the environmentalists, the economists, everybody who unanimously believes this is a bad idea. They're, you know, understandably struggling, and at the pump, they're paying a lot for gas, and they want some relief." (Transcript follows)

Newsweek's Conventional Wisdom is something of a throwaway feature that senior editor Jonathan Alter could easily churn out in between his morning constitutional and brushing his teeth.

His choices are almost always reliably liberal, as his recent takes on Pope Benedict XVI and Vice President Dick Cheney reflect.

Alter gave the pontiff a sideways arrow on April 16 for his U.S. trip. It's dripping with the usual talking points in the liberal media:

Newsweek magazine is undergoing massive restructuring, buying out the contracts of over 100 employees and offering to buy out many more including its two liberal opinion-mongers Jonathan Alter and Howard Fineman:

The staff of Newsweek will shrink dramatically, after 111 staffers on its news and business sides accepted a buyout last week. [...] More staffers than expected accepted the offer, so at least some their jobs are likely to be filled by new hires. But dozens of positions will be eliminated permanently. [...]

Other longtime senior editors who accepted the buyout include Nancy Cooper, George Hackett and Alexis Gelber. Senior Editor Jerry Adler is reportedly still considering the offer.

Newsweek's snarky "Conventional Wisdom Watch" column has once again displayed the inaccuracy of its title. "Pathetic Liberal Spin In 20 Words Or Less" is more accurate, but not very catchy. In the new (March 31) edition, Barack Obama gets a sideways arrow -- like he had an okay week instead of a down-arrow week??? -- while "Hannity" is singled out for a down arrow with these twelve words of supposed wisdom:

Along with Rush, uses race-baiting to score ratings. Now that's hating America.

"Barack" gets a sideways arrow with this message:

Will the greatest speech in recent history get him sidelined as a "black candidate"?

Hillary Clinton's campaign hasn't failed to disappoint some in the media.

Just a week and a half after MSNBC's David Shuster made the remark, "it seem like Chelsea's [Clinton] sort of being pimped out in some weird sort of way," MSNBC contributor and Newsweek Senior Editor Jonathan Alter had some harsh criticism of her campaign. On the heels of Clinton's losses in Wisconsin, Washington State and Hawaii on February 19 to Barack Obama, Alter said her campaign had been terribly managed when asked.

Video courtesy of "The Q&A Cafe with Carol Joynt"

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It has become infinitely clear that America's media are deeply concerned former President Bill Clinton's recent antics on the campaign trail threaten Hillary's chances of winning the White House.

Not only was this subject addressed at length on the Sunday political talk shows, but also Newsweek's senior editor Jonathan Alter wrote an article Saturday amazingly titled "Leading Democrats To Bill Clinton: Pipe Down."

While you check that link to verify my veracity - believe me, I won't be offended! - Alter began (emphasis added throughout):

Newsweek columnist and pundit Jonathan Alter managed to double-embarrass himself on the eve of the New Hampshire primary. He should win the award for Most Embarrassed Pundit. Appearing on Monday night's Charlie Rose show on PBS (video at CharlieRose.com), Alter repeatedly threw dirt on Hillary's political grave, suggesting she would never become president and would have to settle for becoming "one of the great all-time senators." But he also suggested she had no "subtextual sexual energy" that brings "electricity on the rope line." He said all the presidential sex appeal was on the male side:

I think, and this is a controversial thing to say, but I think one of problems we`re learning with being a woman candidate in this country is that it`s hard to create that electricity on the rope line. It`s really only in France, maybe, where you can use sex appeal if you are a woman. In the United States, it`s men. It`s Bill Clinton, Barack Obama, John Edwards, Bobby Kennedy who went -- you see them on the rope line. There`s something sexual going on there with the voters.

Writing on Newsweek's Web site, Jonathan Alter offers up three "pop psych theories" as to why Hillary Clinton won in New Hampshire when the media establishment (Alter included) unanimously predicted an Obama victory. To Alter, the mystery is why women voters flocked to Hillary in such large numbers, and his theories range from the patronizing (discounting her First Lady "experience" as irrelevent supposedly "reminded many women of how their own contributions at home have been under-appreciated") to the absurd ("as in any high-school election, the studious girls who show up to vote might harbor a few resentments about the boys").

And Alter makes no effort to square his theories about superficial women voters being moved by esoteric personality issues with the never-ending media mantra about New Hampshire voters being the most sophisticated and probing in the nation (which is why we must take their judgements so seriously). Yet their choice for President supposedly came down to thousands of beleaguered Democratic women who projected their problems in life onto a crying Hillary?

Grilling Cheney, Gushing For Gore

Larry King, best known recently for his scintillating interviews with thinkers such as Paris Hilton, proved that he can still ask tough questions, to conservatives that is. In an interview with Vice President Cheney about Guantanamo, he wondered, "You have to torture them when they’re there?" Former VP Al Gore, on the other hand, received puff questions about Madonna and penguins.

The French Fries of Enduring Love

Speaking of media coddling, "Good Morning America" anchors Diane Sawyer and Robin Roberts appeared to be infatuated with the story that 2008 Democratic candidate John Edwards and his wife Elizabeth spend their wedding anniversaries at Wendy’s. Roberts even promoted the former senator by referring to him as "Presidential nominee" John Edwards.

Video (0:55): Real (1.51 MB) or Windows (1.74 MB), plus MP3 audio (305 kB)

As part of a new segment on the "Today" show called "Candidate Cribs," NBC's Jonathan Alter went on a cab ride, with Democratic candidate Mike Gravel behind the wheel. However, Alter received more than a calm cruise through the city from the former Alaskan senator. In a gimmicky stunt, meant to showcase the candidate's past life as a New York City cabbie, Alter slid into the back seat for a ride but just after Gravel started griping about Iraq he crashed the taxi.

Alter: "Gravel is best remembered for helping end the Vietnam era draft with a filibuster and for reading the Pentagon Papers in the Senate. Now, after a quarter-century out of politics, he's an angry Rip Van Winkle."

Gravel: "I know how to get out of Iraq. I know how to affect the solution, it's a diplomatic solution."

Alter: "Careful! Ohh!"

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:

Understanding fellow, that Jonathan Alter . . .

On this afternoon's "Tucker Carlson" on MSNBC, the eponymous host mentioned that Barack Obama had travelled to NYC to seek the support of Charles Barron of Brooklyn. Carlson knows Barron well, the NYC Councilman being a frequent guest on Tucker's show. Carlson described Barron as a "pretty straightforward racist, pretty straightforward black nationalist, anti-white character, exactly the kind of person you would not expect Obama to be courting." He then asked guest Jonathan Alter: "What is Obama doing?

SENIOR NEWSWEEK EDITOR JONATHAN ALTER: "Well, I think Obama wants the support of everybody, and I think the question is whether he can have a tent that's actually as big as the United States . . . The whole point of his campaign Tucker is to say "don't judge me by any one of my supporters, I'm trying to get a super-big tent here" . . . I think it would be unfair to hold any of his supporter's politics, you know, hold him accountable for what Charles Barron thinks.

MSNBC HOST TUCKER CARLSON: If Rudy Giuliani went down and asked David Duke for his support, would you say, "you know, it's unfair to hold Rudy Giuliani accountable for what David Duke said?" No, of course not! You'd write a cover story attacking him. That's a ludicrous point.

With congressional Democrats' approval ratings in the basement (lower than President Bush's), some in the media are attributing this to the fact that the Dems have not succeeded in cutting off the war in Iraq. Trouble is, while that strategy may be beneficial in the short run, it makes Democrats play to their stereotype of being soft when it comes to foreign policy.

To help his fellow liberals out, Newsweek editor Jonathan Alter offers Democrats a way to surrender, "without looking like surrender monkeys:"

Iraq is President Bush's war, [something Alter would never have said about Kosovo] but the Democrats are quickly getting tagged with some blame for it. One of the reasons Congress is in such bad odor—less popular even than Bush in recent polls—is that Democrats look feckless on how to proceed in Iraq, and not just because they lack the votes to cut off funding. Are they neo-isolationists, determined to exit the region as soon as possible? Democrats like Pennsylvania freshman Rep. Patrick Murphy, who saw ground action as an Army captain, insist not. They want to get out of Iraq and get tough on Al Qaeda at the same time. But the idea isn't getting through. [...]

On Friday's Countdown on MSNBC, Newsweek senior editor/MSNBC political analyst Jonathan Alter charged that, in signing the compromise bill on Iraq War funding, President Bush is "signing the death warrants of young men and women." After host Keith Olbermann covered the news that Bush had signed the bill, he brought aboard Alter for further discussion. Olbermann started by asking why the President did the signing "out of the public eye." Alter began his response with an inflammatory choice of words: "Well, on some level, I think he knows that he's signing the death warrants of young men and women."

Below is a complete transcript of the exchange from the Friday May 25 Countdown show:

In 1992, Republican chairman Rich Bond oafishly suggested in public that he was arguing the media had a liberal bias because he was "working the refs," cynically complaining about harsh coverage to get better coverage. But many candidates try to work reporters this way, and on the slightly dated April 4 edition of the PBS talk show Charlie Rose, Newsweek's Jonathan Alter said Bill Clinton's trying that tactic against Barack Obama, who he feels hasn't been challenged or critiqued by reporters:

JONATHAN ALTER: He`s working the refs, as we say.

CHARLIE ROSE: He`s doing what?

ALTER: He`s working the refs....Basketball players understand that.

Some journalists are starting to project parallels between the media-fueled controversy over the Bush administration replacing eight of 93 U.S. attorneys and Watergate, what many reporters see as their glory days of the early 1970s. A brief video snippet in David Gregory's story on Tuesday's NBC Nightly News showed Fred Fielding, Chief Counsel in the Bush White House who worked in the counsel's office during the Nixon administration, walking down a Capitol Hill hallway as a male voice off-camera, presumably a reporter, asked: “Does this bring back memories of Watergate?” NBC didn't play Fielding's reply. And that most likely took place before President Bush's address at 5:50pm EDT in which he promised to turn over more documents, have Justice officials testify before Congress and to allow Senators to interview Harriet Miers and Karl Rove.

Bush's offer only antagonized a couple of media figures. On MSNBC's Countdown, Keith Olbermann proposed that “the President sounded awfully like President Nixon during Watergate.” Newsweek Senior Editor Jonathan Alter readily agreed: “That is a great point. You know if you go into executive privilege land, you do take us on a kind of a return trip to Watergate.”

MSM types and their soulmates in the Dem party like to profess their deep and abiding respect for average Americans. But in an unguarded moment this afternoon, MSMer-in-good-standing Jonathan Alter pulled back the curtain on his disdain for them.

Discussing the wildly enthusiastic reception that Barack Obama received in New Hampshire yesterday, Alter -a Newsweek writer and NBC consultant - told host Joe Scarborough:

"If you had been there you wouldn't have been under any illusions about the extent of interest in him. this was a huge crowd. It would have been a huge crowd by any standards even right before an election. 1,500 people. Very, very enthusiastic. Very interested. So he's not going to have to do this 'Joe Schmo's living room' thing in New Hampshire. He's way past that."

What a difference a few weeks make. Three weeks after Newsweek writers, Howard Fineman and Eleanor Clift, gloatingly declared the End of GOP Dominance and just a week after that same magazine announced that the Republicans were losing its evangelical base, a sharp note of electoral caution has popped up in that periodical. Jonathan Alter is now cautioning Newsweek readers that the Democrats might not do so well in the upcoming congressional elections after all as indicated in the very title of his October 30 article, There Might Not Be a Tidal Wave:

...for all the talk of increased intensity this year, voters are still preoccupied with their own busy lives, not politics. They don't watch much cable news or follow issues closely. If they bother to vote, they'll often do so based on small, serendipitous shards of information.

"General Pelosi, I'm Matt Lauer, and I'm reporting for duty!"

OK, Matt didn't quite say that as 'Today' kicked off its 'The War at Home' three-part series this morning on the lives of American veterans once they return home from war. But judging from the opening episode and the tease for what's to come tomorrow, he might just as well. NBC is clearly doing its part to tend the Dems' Victory Garden.

Of all the reporters in the NBC News stable, 'Today' tapped for this segment Jonathan Alter, a regular guest on Al Franken's Air America show and a consistently liberal columnist at Newsweek. And of all the hundreds of thousands of veterans, Today just happened to choose Tammy Duckworth, who lost both legs while co-piloting a Black Hawk helicopter in Iraq, and who now just happens to be . . . running for Congress as a - give me a sec here, OK, got it - Democrat.

Monday's morning shows displayed the Democratic diplomacy that may take over the House and Senate next year. Newsweek's Jonathan Alter was openly dismayed that President Bush refers to North Korea's murderous communist tyrant, Kim Jong Il, as "'The Pygmy'...Not every helpful, actually." On NBC's Today, New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman lamented that it's too late for Bush to salvage peace: "North Korea has concluded that this administration wants their, their head on a wall, basically, and therefore there's probably nothing the United States can do now, to really reassure the North to give up their nukes, which is really their life insurance policy." This came just a minute or so after Friedman described Kim as the "Tony Soprano of Pyongyang."