Conservative talk radio host Rush Limbaugh absolutely trashed Wolf Blitzer Tuesday for ignoring Barack Obama's declining poll numbers.

As he opened the program, Limbaugh informed listeners about new data showing the President's approval rating at the lowest point since he moved into the White House.

"He's down to 44% in a couple of polls, 46% in another, and where is the State-Controlled Media reporting this?"

To drive home the point, Limbaugh shared a montage of how Blitzer one day in March 2006 reported George W. Bush's sagging poll numbers almost every hour on the hour (video embedded below the fold with transcript, h/t Right Scoop):

"It is not irresponsible to demand that bureaucrats do the job we pay them to do. It is not irresponsible to expect people in authority to be held responsible for dumb, and perhaps fatal, mistakes. And, finally, it is not irresponsible, even in time of war, to raise questions about the presidency of…"

Can you guess whose name was dropped at the end of that quote? We'll have to go all the way back to…2002 and, of course, the George W. Bush presidency.

What's that? You thought this quote from Bill Press was referring to President Barack Obama? Quite reasonable, actually, given that one of his chief national security officials today took to the opinion pages of USA Today to call critics of the Obama Administration's handling of the war on terror unpatriotic.

Well, he didn't actually use the word "unpatriotic", but neither did then-Vice President Dick Cheney when he told Congress that criticism of the administration's war effort "is thoroughly irresponsible and totally unworthy of national leaders in a time of war." That was the quote Press took issue with in 2002, so where is his disdain for the Obama Administration?

Chris Matthews Monday went on a twelve minute attack on former Alaska governor Sarah Palin that should make his fellow MSNBCers and the liberal blogosphere quite happy.

Here's how Monday's "Hardball" began:

Can a palm reader be president? What do we think of kids in school who write stuff on their hands to get through a test? What do we think of a would-be political leader who does it to look like she`s speaking without notes? What do we think of Sarah Palin this weekend answering pre-screened questions from a like-minded audience in Nashville, a tea party convention, and still having to put a cheat sheet on her palm to answer what she calls the basics of her beliefs? How can someone presume to be auditioning for president when they can`t even answer questions they know are coming?

And that was just the teaser! Readers are strongly cautioned to prepare themselves for a level of vitriol and invective normally only spewed on television by Matthews' colleague Keith Olbermann (video embedded below the fold with full transcript, h/t The Right Scoop):

On Monday’s Morning Joe show on MSNBC, during a discussion of President Obama’s recent suggestions that he would be willing to talk with Republicans about health care reform, co-host Mika Brzezinski recounted Obama’s initial refusal to include the GOP, and claimed that Republicans "ARE the ones, you could argue, who wrecked the economy," which set off co-host Joe Scarborough. After Brzezinski claimed that "The last administration put us in the position that we are in," Scarborough denounced Democrats for pushing Republicans to support lending more money to people who could not pay back their mortgages.

He also brought up campaign contributions President Obama received from mortgage companies. Scarborough: "And, by the way, while I was being critical of the Republican party for allowing people to get mortgages they couldn't afford to repay, Democrats were calling Republicans racists. Barney Frank calling them racists for not giving even more mortgages they couldn't afford to pay. ... Barack Obama, the guy that got more money from Fannie and Freddie executives than anybody else on Capitol Hill doesn't exactly have clean hands here."

Below is a transcript of the relevant portion of the Monday, February 8, Morning Joe, on MSNBC, from about 8:09 a.m., with critical portions in bold:

A rather shocking thing happened on Sunday's "Meet the Press": host David Gregory asked Alan Greenspan and Henry Paulson if it would be a mistake to let the Bush tax cuts expire.

Chatting with the former Federal Reserve Chairman and former Treasury Secretary, Gregory referenced Tuesday's Wall Street Journal article about what the impact of allowing these tax cuts to expire would be on the budget and the economy.

Gregory first asked Paulson and then Greenspan, "Is that a bad idea?" (video embedded below the fold with transcript, relevant section at 6:48):

Greg Gutfeld Friday said comedian Jon Stewart's opinion of Fox News is "nuttier than squirrel poop."

"Stewart's got to stop whining about Fox tilting to the right," declared the "Red Eye" host during his Greg-alogue.

This was in response to what the "Daily Show" host said about FNC during his often heated discussion with Bill O'Reilly Wednesday. 

Much of his criticism did not sit well with the outspoken Gutfeld who marvelously concluded, "Fox News only looks right because everything else is left" (video embedded below the fold with partial transcript):

The Washington Post's Howard Kurtz believes comedian Jon Stewart is an icon to many journalists.

"[E]specially those in television who sometimes copy his quick-cut editing techniques," wrote Kurtz in his column Monday.

But that's not all.

Kurtz sees the "Daily Show" host as "a pop-culture bellweather," and feels his recent attacks on Barack Obama are a significant sea change. Last week Stewart went after the President's use of a teleprompter at a Virginia elementary school.

As a result, the clearly left-leaning Comedy Central star's "barbs are generating partisan buzz" (h/t Jennifer Rubin):

Less than two months after receiving a Nobel Peace Prize, the President is proposing a huge increase in war spending.

Despite his campaign pledges to the contrary, Obama's new budget calls for expenditures associated with the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq to increase to levels only ten percent below the average of former President George W. Bush's last two years in office.

Given the media's anti-war predilections, it's going to be fascinating to see how the following numbers revealed by Politico a few hours ago will be reported in the coming days:

(This post has been updated below.)

'Ya just gotta love BDSers (those with Bush Derangement Syndrome). Their hatred is so intense that it causes them to get even the most elementary of facts wrong. In this case, it's sports guy Filip Bondy of the NY Daily News, writing about this past Sunday's NFC Championship game in New Orleans:

If you needed further proof of this [New Orleans racial] divide, then it came during a pregame introduction of former President Bush. Once pilloried for his approach to the Katrina catastrophe in 2005, Bush was heartily cheered at the Superdome - which tells you all you need to know about the crowd's demographics.

Two Democrats on Sunday blamed the soaring budget deficit on George W. Bush, and ABC's Terry Moran didn't challenge either one of them.

First up on "This Week" was senior White House adviser David Axelrod who told substitute host Moran, "President Clinton left a $237 billion surplus, President Obama received a $1.3 trillion deficit."

Moran didn't challenge this, nor did he press Sen. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.) when he uttered virtually the exact same Democrat talking point moments later, "When George Bush came to office, he had a $236 billion surplus; Barack Obama was handed a $1.3 trillion deficit."

Here's how a REAL journalist might have responded the second time somebody made the same stupid comment in the course of about 15 minutes:

Marc Thiessen, a former speechwriter for George W. Bush and author of "Courting Disaster," blasted Christiane Amanpour for comparing American interrogation techniques to what the Khmer Rouge did in Cambodia after the Vietnam War.

Appearing on CNN International Wednesday, Thiessen took issue with Amanpour's April 2008 piece "Scream Bloody Murder" in which she made the case that waterboarding was similar to what the Khmer Rouge did in the '70s.

"[T]here have been so many misstatements told about the enhanced interrogation techniques, comparing them to the Spanish Inquisition, to the Khmer Rouge," said Thiessen. "And I have to tell you, Christiane, you're one of the people who have spread these mistruths."

This led to quite an exchange between the two (video of the entire 24-minute segment embedded below the fold with full transcript, fireworks start at 6:00):

New York Times columnist Paul Krugman has a brilliant solution for Barack Obama to improve his sagging poll numbers: spend more time blaming George W. Bush for the recession.

"The Obama administration’s troubles are the result not of excessive ambition, but of policy and political misjudgments," Krugman wrote Monday.

"The stimulus was too small; policy toward the banks wasn’t tough enough; and Mr. Obama didn’t do what Ronald Reagan, who also faced a poor economy early in his administration, did — namely, shelter himself from criticism with a narrative that placed the blame on previous administrations."

Don't be surprised if such thinking gets this guy another Nobel Prize (h/t NB reader Jeff):

It is a strange paradigm among much of the mainstream  media that plummeting poll numbers are of far greater import for Republicans than  they are for Democrats. That, at least, is the logical conclusion of the relative silence of major media outlets on the steep decline in President Obama's poll numbers compared with the decline in President Bush's.

According to an Allstate/National Journal poll released Wednesday, 50 percent of Americans would vote against President Obama if the presidential elections were held today. Only 39 percent say they would vote to re-elect the president.

But so far, this stunning development--given the President's sky-high approval ratings upon entering office--has gone seemingly unnoticed by the major television networks and most prominent print publications. Aside from some prominent blogs (whose coverage is by no means substandard), the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, and the Washington Examiner are so far the only major outlets to report on the poll, according to a google news search (as of 2:00 PM).

Comedian Jon Stewart on Thursday mocked MSNBC's Rachel Maddow for using the tragedy in earthquake-rattled Haiti to bash former President George W. Bush.

Not appreciating the ribbing, Maddow foolishly responded on her own program Friday proving once and for all that liberal media members love Jon Stewart -- as long as his target is conservatives, that is.

Precipitating the spat was the MSNBCer on Wednesday politicizing the growing Haitian crisis by saying, "All of that central to what the Obama administration says it wants to do differently than what Bush and Cheney did."

The "Daily Show" host marvelously noted, "Not the right time." Stewart concluded by mocking Maddow's audience, "Congratulations MSNBC viewers -- you're on the right side of this terrible, terrible tragedy" (videos of Stewart's segment and Maddow's response embedded below the fold): 

On Saturday’s Fox News Watch, as FNC correspondent Douglas Kennedy appeared as a member of the show’s panel, after host Jon Scott’s introduction to the show’s first segment – which involved President Obama’s response to the underwear bomber – Kennedy characterized Scott’s introduction as sounding "like it's written by Dick Cheney in his bunker." Complaining that he was ideologically outnumbered on the panel after left-leaning panel member Judith Miller – formerly of the New York Times – was critical of Obama, Miller declared, "Now, wait a minute. I am very, very liberal on a lot of issues," prompting Kennedy to exclaim, "You went to jail to protect Dick Cheney! Come on!":

Appearing as a guest on Thursday’s Countdown show on MSNBC to discuss Obama's latest speech on terrorism,  Newsweek’s Howard Fineman charged that, referring to Republicans, "they’re about division and they’re about fear."

At one point, Fineman even made it sound as if President Bush had been obsessed with leaving office before the next terrorist attack just so he could "claim he kept us safe," as if he were more worried about his legacy than keeping America safe in the long term. Fineman said: "And George Bush, even George Bush said that, you know, we could be attacked tomorrow. He didn`t like to talk about it. I knew him well and knew that he was counting the minutes and the days until he got out of there and could claim he kept us safe."

Crediting Obama with "cool, calm, and collectedness," and a "broad gauge and deep sense of the country," Fineman also voiced agreement with Keith Olbermann’s contention that, unlike President Bush, Obama treats Americans like "grownups" by talking to them realistically about the likelihood that some future terror plots will inevitably be successful:

As the one year anniversary of Barack Obama's inauguration nears, it is a metaphysical certitude his fawning media will look back upon the past 365 days with the starry-eyed impartiality of a teenybopper in the presence of a rock star.

Before the President's fans in the press embarrass themselves, maybe they should take a cue from comedian Jon Stewart who on Thursday exposed numerous campaign promises the former junior senator from Illinois has broken that have not surprisingly missed the scrutiny of those supposedly in the business of disseminating "real" news to the public.

With the help of his "senior political analyst" Samantha Bee, "The Daily Show" host ably demonstrated how going back on his pledge to broadcast healthcare deliberations on C-SPAN is really just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to promises Obama cast aside like so much garbage shortly after he took the oath of office (video embedded below the fold with partial transcript, h/t Story Balloon, vulgarity alert):

Appearing as a guest on Thursday’s Your World with Neil Cavuto on FNC, former New York City Mayor Ed Koch – known for being a relatively centrist Democrat – chided President Obama for being reluctant to use terms like "war on terrorism" or "Islamic extremists," and, when host Cavuto pointed out that Obama had managed to improve attitudes toward America in the Muslim world, Koch sarcastically shot back: "Isn`t that nice? Did they stop trying to kill us?"

Even while declaring himself to be a supporter of the Obama administration, the former New York mayor still voiced his frustrations about the "attitude" of the White House – citing an article by right-leaning columnist Charles Krauthammer – and came out in support of profiling Muslims at airports:

A few weeks after admitting being a liberal, MSNBC's Chris Matthews is now claiming the Republican Party has done absolutely nothing for the American people the last ten to twenty years.

On Wednesday's "Hardball," Matthews brought political strategists Todd Harris and Steve McMahon on to discuss what the imminent retirements of Sen Chris Dodd (D-Conn.) and Sen. Byron Dorgan (D-N.D.) mean to the future of the Democrat Party and the upcoming midterm elections.

In an obvious effort to downplay the seriousness of these announcements, as well as President Obama's plummeting poll numbers, Matthews continually asked the Republican guest what the GOP has done for the American people in the past ten to twenty years (video embedded below the fold with transcript):

On Monday’s The O’Reilly Factor, FNC host Bill O’Reilly seemed to pick up on a NewsBusters posting by the MRC’s Brent Baker which highlighted New Yorker magazine writer Rebecca Mead’s commentary from the January 3 CBS Sunday Morning in which Mead touted President Obama as a "certified intellectual," while accusing President Bush of giving terrorists a "partial victory" by creating "infringements of civil liberties." The FNC host took on Mead during his show’s regular "Reality Check" segment, as he introduced clips of her as evidence that network news organizations "skew left big time," and concluded that her analysis should have been "accompanied by a more conservative point of view."

Below is a transcript of the relevant portion of the Monday, January 4, The O’Reilly Factor on FNC:

While Republican Senators work to slow down the full-blast freight train called ObamaCare from being passed before year's end, the media have predictably reported their efforts as partisan stalling.

How helpful for President Obama to have the media on his side. During the Bush administration when the proverbial shoe was on the other foot, Democrats were cast as brave dissenters who united in the fight against Republican agendas.

Back in 2005 when President Bush proposed a plan to reform the near-bankrupt Social Security program, Democrat Senators organized rallies to hold the line against any hint of privatization. The media promoted polling data that showed weak support for the plan and spun the results that favored Bush as a product of Republican propaganda.

On March 15, 2005, the Washington Post published a front-page attack on privatization that worked hard to claim any support was a result of fear-mongering (emphasis mine):

In September 2006 when Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez called George W. Bush the Devil at the United Nations, the Bush-hating press couldn't get enough of the comment.

On Friday, Chavez spoke to the U.N. climate change conference in Copenhagen after President Obama made his keynote address, and much as he did three years ago, the Venezuelan despot said, "It still smells of sulfur here," referring to the lectern.

Given the attention Chavez's claim got three years ago when he made it about Bush, how will Obama-loving media report such a statement being made about their hero? (video embedded below the fold with transcript, h/t Fausta):

On This Week with George Stephanopoulos on Sunday, December 13, during the show’s Roundtable segment, liberal blogger Arianna Huffington argued that the war in Afghanistan is "the gold standard of a dumb war, immoral and unnecessary," during a discussion of President Obama’s recent speech at West Point announcing that he would send more troops to Afghanistan, and his speech in Oslo accepting the Nobel Peace Prize.

Huffington also criticized fellow liberal panel member John Podesta -- a former Clinton administration member who is now president of the Center for American Progress -- charging that, "You now sound like George Bush," after Podesta explained President Obama’s rationale for sending more troops into Afghanistan.

Below is a transcript of the relevant portion of the December 13 This Week on ABC:

A sign reading "Welcome to Obamaville Colorado's Fastest Growing Community" appeared at a homeless tent city in Colorado Springs this week.

You probably didn't hear about it because outside of two Colorado television stations nobody found this newsworthy.

By contrast, when word got out in March of a tent city in Sacramento, California, news media couldn't get enough of the story.

Is it because that happened so soon after Inauguration Day that it could easily be blamed on George W. Bush, and that given the name given to this area that's no longer possible?

Before you answer, here's the report logged Thursday by ABC affiliate KRDO-TV (video embedded below the fold, h/t Breitbart TV):

Appearing as a guest on Comedy Central’s Colbert Report on Thursday, CBS News correspondent Lara Logan defended America’s continued war effort in Afghanistan, and argued that it is "crap" that some have made comparisons between Afghanistan and the Vietnam War. Logan: "You know, the ridiculous thing about all these comparisons – it’s the graveyard of empires, it’s Obama's Vietnam – it’s all that crap, right?"

Logan, who has spent years in the field covering the wars in both Afghanistan and Iraq, went on to make a strong case in favor of staying in Afghanistan and continuing the fight against Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaeda terror group because of the threat the group still poses, as she cited bin Laden's stated desire to attack America's homeland with weapons of mass destruction:

The truth is that when the Vietnam War ended, the Viet Cong didn't follow the U.S. back home. And that's the big difference. You don't have to listen to one President or another President. It's not political. Listen to bin Laden. Go and read what he has said: We will follow the United States, we will attack the homeland again, we will use nuclear weapons, we will use biological warfare. I mean, it's very simple. Everything al-Qaeda has ever said they were going to do before, they've done. There is no reason to doubt his intentions.