On Friday’s Situation Room, CNN forwarded an idea proposed by The New Republic’s Peter Beinart- that Democratic losses in the gubernatorial races in Virginia and New Jersey this year would result in the reelection of President Obama in 2012. An on-screen graphic during a discussion of Beinart’s hypothesis read, “If The Dems Lose Next Week: How it might help them in the long run.”

Anchor Wolf Blitzer read the New Republic contributor’s idea during a “Strategy Session” panel discussion with Republican Mary Matalin and Democrat Paul Begala 53 minutes into the 4 pm Eastern hour: “Peter Beinart, writing in The Daily Beast, says...it might be good for the Democrats if the Republicans win both Virginia and New Jersey, the governors’ races next Tuesday. ‘Let’s imagine,’ he writes, ‘that Democrats lose next week because the GOP’s conservative base flocks to the polls while liberals stay home. For Obama, that wouldn’t be so terrible. The more confident right-wing Republicans become, the more likely they will nominate a Palin-like zealot in 2012.’”

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].

According to the mainstream media, carrying a gun to a protest is just plain crazy, even if perfectly legal. What’s more, it’s indicative of the toxic, hate-filled atmosphere filling conservative protests of President Obama and his plans for health care reform.

“Hardball” host Chris Matthews and his daytime colleagues at MSNBC, for example, have their used air time to marvel at what would possess an average American citizen to go to a rally near where President Obama is speaking with a gun.

But the media reaction was markedly different nine years ago when a group of Black Panthers marched on the Texas Republican Party’s state convention on June 2000 brandishing AK-47s. Indeed, that incident itself was chalked up as then-Gov. Bush’s fault by none other than then-MSNBC "Equal Time" co-host Paul Begala.

Three of CNN’s political analysts- Jeffrey Toobin, David Gergen, and Gloria Borger- all gave President Obama B’s or B-pluses on the economy and overall job performance during the network’s special “The National Report Card: The Second 100 Days” on Thursday. These grades from these “non-partisan” analysts lined-up with the A’s and B’s that Democrats Paul Begala and Donna Brazile gave the president.

CNN conducted a non-scientific poll by phone and on the Internet of how the American people graded the President mainly on several issues, and others such as Hillary Clinton, Vice President Biden, and the news media in general at the 200-day mark of Obama’s presidency. As Wolf Blitzer and his so-called Best Political Team on Television presented the polling results, anchor Campbell Brown polled the “front panel” of Toobin, Gergen, and Borger, as well as the “back panel” of Begala and Brazile, and Republicans Alex Castellanos and Bill Bennett, for their personal grades of the subject in question. All of the participants held up placards with their grade, and explained how they came to that conclusion.

Just after the beginning of the 8 pm Eastern hour, Brown turned to the CNN analysts’ panel for their grade on President Obama’s handling of the economy. Senior legal analyst Toobin unsurprisingly replied, “I’m giving him a B. You know- he’s off to a decent start. He got a stimulus package planned. It passed. It seems like it’s having some impact, but the economy stinks and he’s the president and the buck stops there.”

MSNBC anchor and Keith Olbermann wannabe David Shuster is so beside himself with glee over Gov. Sarah Palin's resignation that he's eager to let the whole world -- or at least some 18,000+ followers on Twitter -- know about it 140 characters at a time. In the process Shuster spewed ad hominem attacks on Palin backers on Twitter and endorsed as a knee-slapper a July 3 slam of Palin penned by veteran Democratic hack Paul Begala.

Earlier Sunday evening the regular substitute host for "Countdown with Keith Olbermann" snickered over Palin's choice of legal counsel and his "intellectual vapidity." Those comments came on the heels of Shuster lambasting Palin's defenders, including columnist Bill Kristol, as intellectually immature juveniles (tweets are in reverse chronological order):

Still laughing over palin lawyer thomas von flein. Now I'm beginning to feel sorry for palin.

Speaking of intellectual vapidity, check out the 4 page letter from palin lawyer. Sheesh

[...]

@laurapocketdem. Good point. I I owe an apology to all middle schoolers. I'm sorry for comparing you to some palin defenders. :)

If Sarah Palin thought resigning as Alaska's governor would end the media attacks upon her and her family, she badly underestimated the power of Palin Derangement Syndrome.

Take for example Paul Begala's demented Huffington Post offering Friday in which he referred to the former Vice Presidential candidate as "the bull goose loony of the GOP."

Sadly, that was one of his kinder descriptions:

CNN’s Anderson Cooper pushed down hard on the totalitarian analogies in a Monday night segment on Bush "torture" policy, comparing our handling of terrorist interrogations to the Nazis (stress positions) and the Khmer Rouge (waterboarding). In a debate with former Bush spokesman Ari Fleischer, Paul Begala brought his furrowed eyebrows and moral outrage to the set:

Our country executed Japanese soldiers who waterboarded American POWs. We executed them for the same crime that we are now committing ourselves. How do you defend that?

Over at The Corner on National Review, Mark Hemingway suggested Begala was mangling the historical facts:

What Begala said isn't true. Begala appears to be referencing Yukio Asano, a Japanese soldier convicted of war crimes. His case was popularized — in the context of waterboarding — by Ted Kennedy. See this Washington Post article from 2006:

On Friday’s Hannity show on FNC, host Sean Hannity played an audio clip of liberal CNN contributor Paul Begala as he was interviewed on the April 15 Imus in the Morning, in which Begala engaged in name-calling against Tax Day Tea Party participants: "Why are they out there whining with this Tea Party thing? Just a bunch of wimpy, whiny, weasels who don't love their country and don't want to support – there are guys at Walter Reed who gave their legs for my country, and they're whining because they have to write a check?" He went on to single out FNC’s Hannity and Neil Cavuto before Imus stepped in to defend them. Begala: "Mr. Cavuto, Mr. Hannity, all the rest of those guys, they have representation, they just lost an election – that's not tyranny, that's democracy." After Imus defended Cavuto and Hannity, and called Hannity a patriot, Begala shot back: "Then tell him to pay his taxes and support our country and stop whining about it."

After playing the clip, Hannity held a discussion with FNC’s Kimberly Guilfoyle and conservative columnist S.E. Cupp. Below is a transcript of the relevant portion of the Friday, April 17, Hannity show on FNC:

Spreading the Word

Media Research Center Founder and President and NewsBusters.org Publisher Brent Bozell issued the following statement on the meteoric rise in the ratings Rush Limbaugh has enjoyed since the inception of the Obama White House and the Democrats' all-out coordinated attack against him.

As announced yesterday, audience numbers surged for Rush-carrying stations across the country, including in several of the nation's largest markets like New York, Chicago, Los Angeles and Houston.  Since the orchestrated campaign continued into March, ratings could reach even greater heights for this month.

Bozell:

In January, Politico's John F. Harris exposed a liberal cabal involving telephone calls between White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, ABC's George Stephanopoulos, and CNN's Paul Begala and James Carville.

Since then, Americans on both sides of the aisle have wondered just how far-reaching the political influence of these four is on the mainstream media.

More importantly, just how much is the Obama administration, via its press contacts that worked in the White House before, involved in controlling the message being disseminated?

Consider the following sequence of events involving Stephanopoulos that began with a March 13 press release by the Democratic National Committee: 

I met up with ABC’s George Stephanopoulos at the National Capital chapter of the Society of Financial Service Professionals’ Annual Professional Night this evening and asked if he had strategy session conference calls with aides in the White House as reported by Politico’s John F. Harris. 

 Politico's Michael Calderone recently reported that Kerry Smith, ABC News Sr.VP for editorial quality, wrote  that Stephanopoulos "speaks to Mr. Emanuel, a friend he has known for nearly two decades, as a source, just as he speaks to countless sources across the political spectrum each and every day. That is his job as an anchor and reporter and one that he does according to the highest standards."

Have you wondered why there have been so many hit pieces lately about Rush Limbaugh?

Well, new revelations suggest that Democrats began a smear campaign against the conservative talk radio host last October, and now it's really caught steam.

Apparently, the Left feared its message would be muted without having George W. Bush to blame for all the world's problems, and Limbaugh made a nice substitute as the object of their disaffection to distract the public from real issues.

Given White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel's connections to key media figures such as ABC's George Stephanopoulos as well as CNN's Paul Begala and James Carville, disseminating the hate was a piece of cake.

As Jonathan Martin reported Wednesday at Politico (photo compilation courtesy Edward Cropper):

CNN's Paul Begala, in response to Friday's announcement that former Maryland governor Michael Steele had been named Republican National Committee chairman, said, "The real leader of the Republican Party in America today is a corpulent drug addict with an AM radio talk show, Rush Limbaugh."

He also said Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin is "very bitter, and divisive," "Obama is stylistically much more like Reagan," and that George W. Bush was a "spectacularly lazy president."

Readers are cautioned to have their blood pressure medications nearby before proceeding any further (video embedded below the fold with partial transcript, h/t Hot Air, file photo):

Politico reports that White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel holds daily chit chat sessions with several Old Media pals every morning to start his day. Apparently Emanuel has for years been involved with daily bull sessions to plan media coverage and ideological strategy with CNN's James Carville and Paul Begala, as well as ABC's George Stephanopoulos, with the occasional participation of pollster Stan Greenberg. But there is one little problem with this daily palling around with mediots these days: Emanuel now works for the White House. [Image credit: politico.com]

As Politico's John Harris notes, "in any given news cycle, it is quite likely that Washington’s prevailing political and media interpretation -- at least on the Democratic side -- is being hatched on these calls." In light of this early morning scheming, one has to wonder where the supposed autonomy of the media is if they are being programed by the Obama White House in off the record, secret and daily conversations? Where is their objectivity if these media mavens are all assisting Emanuel mold and shape the news to further a specific ideological goal?

CNN's Presidential Debate Report Card echoes most polls offered by the main stream media.  It involves 60% Democrats as a sample group, and if your response doesn't agree with their agenda, then some ‘alterations' are made.  In other words, the results are weighted to provide liberals with an edge. 

The Web site's latest report card allows the viewer to rate the performance of both Presidential candidates in Wednesday's debate.  Seems pretty straight-forward, right?  But things weren't working properly for some readers.

In fact, when visiting the Barack Obama side of the report card first, all is seemingly well. Votes are counted and recorded correctly.  Everything seems just dandy.  However, when one visits the John McCain side first, things can get a little peculiar. 

This peculiarity occurred several times early Thursday afternoon, and will be outlined after the break.

When clicking on a choice of grade for McCain's debate performance, I went with an A, as can be seen here with the highlight:

Matching the Obama campaign spin, the network reporters and analysts were upset by John McCain, at one moment in the second presidential debate on Tuesday night, referring to Barack Obama as “that one.” CBS's Jeff Greenfield asserted “there is going to be clearly a major headline soundbite” and insisted “those two words are going to be what the water cooler conversation is tomorrow. Was it demeaning? Was it an insult?” Katie Couric turned to a group of “undecided voters” for their reaction to the phrase. One man “thought it was a little bit childish” and another “undecided” man declared: “I'm really tired of the last eight years of for us or against us and to me that showed that side of McCain coming out and the picky and childish and we've had eight years of that.”

On CNN a little past 11 PM EDT, reporter Suzanne Malveaux compared it to Bill Clinton's characterization of Monica Lewinsky: “It's like 'that woman,' you know, that we've heard 'that woman,' I mean a lot of people are saying that was the kind of language that was very condescending.” A few minutes later, Democratic hack Paul Begala slimed Sarah Palin as a racist, citing the Associated Press and how “they said her attack on this whole Bill Ayers thing was 'racially-tinged.' That's not what a Democrat said, that's what the Associated Press said.” There's a difference? MSNBC viewers heard Chris Matthews pleased by Obama's “wonderful smile” before he charged McCain's smile “has a somewhat menacing quality.”

Audio: MP3 audio (1:25, 450 Kb) which matches the video above of CBS's "undecided" voters.

Is there some kind of competition on the left to see who can make the most denigrating remark about the mental acuity of Republicans?  As we've noted, last night Paul Begala called President Bush "a high-functioning moron," perhaps his bid to one-up Rep. Charles Rangel, who had called Sara Palin "disabled."

Today, it's Jonathan Capehart's turn.  Speaking with David Shuster on MSNBC this afternoon, the Washington Post editorial writer said that Sarah Palin reminds him of Lauren Caitlin Upton, the 2007 Miss Teen South Carolina whose tangles ["U.S. Americans," etc.] with the English language made her an overnight YouTube star.

Capehart's comment came in response to a Shuster inquiry about Palin's reply to Katie Couric's question about the relevance to Palin's foreign-policy credentials of Russia's proximity to Alaska.

What is it with Democrats and their grotesque slurs upon the intelligence of their political rivals?  Last week it was Charles Rangel calling Sarah Palin "disabled."  Tonight on CNN, Paul Begala called President Bush "a high-functioning moron."

Begala was on an Anderson Cooper-led panel with Republican Ed Rollins and CNN's Gloria Borger to discuss the state of the possible federal financial bailout.  Cooper took the first shot at the president, analogizing his performance in this crisis to that during Hurricane Katrina.

ANDERSON COOPER: Watching the president last night give that speech, it was like watching him in Jackson Square in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. I mean, he did not seem to be there.

He's baaaaack!

After a brief hiatus from CNN due to his ties to Hillary Clinton, former Clinton administration advisor Paul Begala is back on the cable network echoing Democrat talking points.

This comes months after CNN announced back in January that Begala, along with Hillary shill James Carville, had been removed as contributors "to make sure that all the analysts that are on are non-aligned."

If that's the case, how does CNN justify bringing Begala back just in time to echo Barack Obama's view that John McCain represents four more years of George W. Bush?

Sadly, that's exactly what occurred during the 4PM installment of Wednesday's "Situation Room" (video available here, file photo):

On Thursday's "Today" show, co-host Meredith Vieira actually challenged former Clinton administration advisor Paul Begala about the significance of Barack Obama's recent "lipstick on a pig" comment.

As was typical for this shameless pol, Begala viewed the McCain campaign's complaints concerning this remark as a distraction "from the fact that, you know, in the eyes of most people, the economy's going in the wrong direction, health care's going in the wrong direction, the whole country's going in the wrong direction."

However, Vieira surprisingly disagreed, and wasn't letting her guest get away with simply echoing Democrat talking points (partial transcript and embedded video follow, file photo right):