It certainly has been a fun day for folks that believe beyond a shadow of a doubt the media have a decidedly leftward slant.

Not only did we learn that Hillary Clinton confidant Lanny Davis thinks MSNBC and Chris Matthews are "shamelessly biased," but he is also not pleased with CNN, and, much like Gov. Ed Rendell (D-PA), believes that "in this campaign, [Fox News] have [sic] been religiously middle-of-the-road."

Talk about your delicious trifectas!

As reported by Politico Friday (emphasis added throughout, h/t our good friend Johnny $, picture courtesy View Images):

Charles Krauthammer's column in Friday's Washington Post strongly smacks the media for being "in the tank" for Barack Obama. In reference to Hillary Clinton's tall Tuzla tales and Barack's adoring media, the headline in the print edition is "The Fabulist vs. The Saint." But the headline writers at washingtonpost.com used an inflammatory headline on the home page on the 40th anniversary of Martin Luther King's shooting death: "Stories to Slay Saint Obama." Isn't there a tiny difference between more objective news coverage and an assassination? [UPDATE: Rechecking at 8:45, the post.com home page header was already changed to "Barack Obama is No Saint."]

Krauthammer was appalled at how CNN's Anderson Cooper and Time's Joe Klein insisted no one could discuss Obama's relationship with his minister, Jeremiah Wright. His conclusion recalled New York Times writer Michael Kelly's "Saint Hillary" article exploring her "politics of meaning" in 1993. He wrote: "Saint Obama awaits his Michael Kelly." Not his James Earl Ray.

Barack Obama came to Philadelphia on March 18 not so much to address his poisonous pastor, Jeremiah Wright, but to talk vaguely of race relations. The news media swooned. No one was giddier than MSNBC’s Chris Matthews, who rhapsodized that Obama’s speech was one of the greatest speeches in American history, worthy of Abraham Lincoln, and should be read by school children like "The Great Gatsby" and "Huckleberry Finn." This, after all, is the Chris Matthews who said he "felt this thrill going up my leg" over Obama.

Obama said he could no more disown Wright than his own white grandmother, whom he disparaged as mired in racial stereotypes. ABC’s George Stephanopoulos deemed that part of the speech an "act of honor" -- even if it publicly humiliated Grandma, and even if Wright’s record of paranoid ranting and raving about racism is anything but honorable.

Barack Obama’s interview with Anderson Cooper on Wednesday night's "Anderson Cooper 360" on CNN was quite gentle. While Cooper did press Obama to address some of the criticisms that have erupted over his pastor Jeremiah Wright, he did not press him about Wright’s criticism of white people, or his claims of the government giving blacks AIDS, only one (truncated) 9/11 passage. Cooper used ten-foot-pole language about those people who would be alarmed by Wright’s America-bashing remarks: "Patriotism is going to be used by whoever it is you are facing." Used? Have you ever noticed how the media never asks if America is being "used" by leaders who spit on America?

Obama was spinning furiously.

I never heard anything nasty about America.

COOPER: In the past, you said you didn't think that your church was particularly controversial. Yesterday, in the speech, you said that -- you admitted that you did hear in the church remarks that could be considered controversial. Do you know specifically? Do you remember what you heard?

Who cares if our next president has chosen as his "spiritual guide" someone who calls on God to damn America, and believes the US brought 9-11 on itself? Completely off track! Let's get back to the important stuff. You know, like the fine print of the candidate's plan to nationalize health care.

That in a nutshell is Anderson Cooper's kvetch about the controversy over the outrageous statements made by Rev. Dr. Jeremiah Wright, Jr., the pastor of Barack Obama's church and the man Obama has described as his spiritual guide and advisor.

Cooper made his comments on his 360 show this evening.

ANDERSON COOPER: Is this just the kind of thing that happens in campaigns? It seems we're almost at a point now where it's this or other issues for the Clinton campaign where people are just latching onto anything to strike a blow against their opponent. All this seems to have nothing to do with actual issues that the country is facing which these candidates should be talking about and we probably should be talking about.

And a bit later . . .

As NewsBusters reported, there's an international conference on climate change happening in New York City wherein well-renowned scientists from all over the world are meeting to discuss anthropogenic global warming.

On Monday, climate alarmist Miles O'Brien of CNN actually had the gall to imply that speakers and attendees of this conference are Flat Earthers.

I kid you not.

During Monday evening's "Anderson Cooper 360 Degrees," O'Brien concluded his videotaped report concerning this conference (video available here at end of blog post):

CNN’s Anderson Cooper and "The Nation" editor and publisher Katrina vanden Heuvel joined the attack on Bill Cunningham’s anti-Barack Obama comments at a rally for John McCain in Cincinnati, Ohio, comments that McCain himself repudiated. Cooper began his "Anderson Cooper 360" program on Tuesday by referring to Cunningham as a "talk show pit bull" and criticizing his use of Obama’s middle name. "Tonight: ugly words from a talk show pit bull about Barack Obama at a John McCain event, calling him a hack, using his middle name as a slander." Later, Cooper described Cunningham as a "a two-bit radio host." On Wednesday’s "Election Center" program on CNN, vanden Heuvel went even further than Cooper. "This talk radio guy is very unstable. He went from supporting McCain to Hillary and then Ralph Nader in one minute."

Well, that didn’t take long. On CNN Monday night, John McCain was treated like any other conservative Republican, as correspondents and a tilted panel of ex-Clinton officials painted him as irresponsible for opposing a supposedly necessary increase in taxes. In a “Keeping Them Honest” segment on Anderson Cooper 360, reporter Tom Foreman wondered if McCain “can keep that promise” of “no new taxes,” before asserting: “Some economists say not.”

But Foreman’s sole economist was Robert Greenstein of the liberal Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a longstanding proponent of higher taxes. Foreman provided no “liberal” tag nor gave any hint of Greenstein’s agenda, as the latter argued that “the problems in the future are so large that it’s pretty unthinkable we could close those deficits either by just cutting programs or just raising taxes.”

The St. Petersburg Times, the "hometown newspaper" for the CNN-YouTube Republican debate, published an interesting story on CNN’s reactions to conservative criticism. Their list of excuses was extensive, and ridiculous. As far as conservatives are concerned, CNN has two choices: either they were extremely cynical in knowingly placing Democratic supporters into a Republican debate, or they were extremely unprofessional in failing to do five minutes of work to prevent the publicity fiasco of allowing Hillary supporters to try and embarrass her opponents on national TV.

CNN is responding by attacking their critics (Michelle Malkin by name) for being stalking horses for Fox News. In their report, Wes Alison and Eric Deggans asked if there wasn’t enough time for vetting (when they’ve been receiving questions for three months?):

Thursday’s “American Morning” program, while reporting retired Brigadier General Keith Kerr’s connections to the Hillary Clinton campaign, failed to mention one key revelation made by debate moderator Anderson Cooper during the post-debate coverage - that Cooper knew that Kerr was “an activist of some sort.”

Co-host John Roberts not only reported on Kerr’s membership of Clinton’s “LGBT Americans For Hillary Steering Committee” during all 3 hours of “American Morning,” but conducted a live interview of Kerr during the 7 am Eastern hour. Six minutes into the 6 am Eastern, Roberts gave the following brief on the Kerr story.

Update | 8:05 AM: Hillary's Howard tries to weasel out. See update at foot.

Like Rudy and Romney going after each other over immigration last night at the GOP debate, MSNBC was taking some jabs at rival CNN this morning on the issue of the gay questioner who turned out to be a member of Hillary Clinton's campaign.

"Morning Joe" host Joe Scarborough scoffed at the notion that no one at CNN was aware of retired Brigadier General Keith Kerr's involvement with the Clinton campaign.

View video here.

Wednesday night's CNN/YouTube presidential debate for the Republican candidates largely lived up to its promise to be a debate fitting for Republican voters as the vast majority of the questions used were asked from a conservative point of view. But the GOP debate's slant toward conservative questions was less than the July 23 CNN/YouTube Democratic debate's slant toward liberal questions. On Wednesday, out of a total of 34 video questions presented, conservative questions outnumbered liberal questions by 14 to 8, with the remaining questions ideologically ambiguous or neutral. During the Democratic debate, out of a total of 38 video questions, the slant toward liberal questions came in at 17 liberal to 6 conservative, with the remainder ambiguous or neutral.

[Update: Keith Kerr was known to CNN as a gay activist as far back as December 2003, when he was featured in this CNN article.]

CNN, as part of its Republican debate with YouTube, failed to mention that retired general Keith Kerr, who announced he was gay after his retirement from the Army, is a member of Hillary Clinton’s "LGBT Americans For Hillary Steering Committee." Not only did General Kerr ask the question via a YouTube video, but he was also present in the audience, and got to ask the candidates for a "straight answer" (pardon the pun).

General Kerr’s, whose question came 47 minutes into the 9 pm Eastern hour the debate, is also part of the Servicemembers’ Legal Defense Network's advisory council, an organization "dedicated to ending discrimination against and harassment of military personnel affected by 'Don't Ask, Don't Tell' and related forms of intolerance"

[See updates below: Bill Bennett mentioned Kerr's possible Hillary connection on CNN 30 minutes after the debate, and Anderson Cooper confirms this at the close of the 10 pm Eastern hour.]

Mary Katharine Ham briefly chatted with CNN's Anderson Cooper and David Bohrman about tomorrow's CNN/YouTube debate and concerns about the agenda of questions that will be picked. For the whole thing, go here, but I just had to share this priceless gem (my emphasis in bold). First Ham's question, then Cooper's answer:

Q: There’s been a bit of scandal about the screening that CNN did on its “undecided voters” for the last Democratic debate. The diamonds-and-pearls question was attacked by the questioner herself. There were some allegations that several of the voters were in fact liberal activists on quite a few issues (and one Democratic Party operative). What’s the process for checking these YouTube questioners and their affiliations?

AC: “Well, campaign operatives are people, too. We don’t investigate the background of people asking questions…that’s not our job...

CNN’s special “worldwide investigation” “Planet in Peril,” in two segments looking at the debate amongst politicians and scientists on whether climate change is a man-made phenomenon, failed to mention that NASA scientist Dr. James Hansen [pictured at right], one the scientists featured in the second segment, has received funding from George Soros, while mentioning that “second biggest contributors to [global warming skeptic Senator James] Inhofe's Senate office are energy and natural resource companies.”

The first segment, which began 8 minutes into the 10 pm Eastern hour of Wednesday night’s program, examined the political debate over climate change, focusing on “the loudest voice” of Oklahoma Senator James Inhofe. CNN correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta introduced the segment by referring back to the previous segments of “Planet in Peril,” which looked at the impact of climate change in different parts of the world. “From what we’ve seen in Greenland, Alaska, and Africa, the Earth's climate is clearly changing. It's not a theory. It's a fact. But what's causing those changes? The majority of the scientific community says it's mankind. But there are powerful voices who say otherwise.”

The hills of Los Angeles are burning and the media keep finding reasons to blame global warming.

CNN found a way to work global warming into its reporting on a national tragedy on October 23.

During “Anderson Cooper 360: In the Line of Fire,” CNN’s Tom Foreman even looked into his crystal ball to predict the future by warning of a possible “century of fires, just like what we're seeing now” as a result of global warming.

Foreman cautioned viewers that, “greater periods of rain” that fuel “increased vegetation growth” over the next century may provide a “potential link between these fires and global warming.”

Video: Windows (2.57 MB), or MP3 audio (335 kB).

Earlier in the broadcast Cooper also plugged CNN’s documentary:

From that headline alone you can see part one of CNN's ballyhooed "Planet in Peril" program was a mixed bag. More than an hour of the first night focused on the extinction of rare species as a preface to global disaster. Forty-five minutes into the program, I began to envy some of the creatures and wondered what poacher would put me out of my misery and save me from a "planet under assault."

The photography was good, not Discovery Channel quality, but above average and the locales were exotic. But the first hour moved with almost glacial tedium. Only when hour two got going did it get more interesting - exploring Chinese pollution and Anderson Cooper's bloodstream.

The special, called by the network "the story the world can't afford to ignore," was led by Cooper, and also featured Dr. Sanjay Gupta and Animal Planet's Jeff Corwin. As the program went on, it got more interesting. Gupta whipped out typical Malthusian claims of global overpopulation saying there simply aren't enough natural resources to support everyone.

A couple highlights:

It seems these days you can't swing a dead cat without hitting a major media special presaging imminent planetary doom at the hands of that awful species homo sapiens.

Next on the docket leading you to commit seppuku is CNN's four-hour special appropriately named "Planet in Peril."

Makes you want to hide in your cellar with a few Friedrich Nietzsche books and a pint of hemlock, doesn't it?

CNN.com proudly described the special's contents (preview videos available here and here for those looking to ruin their weekends):