With the unemployment rate soaring in 10.2 percent in Friday's report on October, two old hands in the Washington press corps appeared on Sunday morning shows where they asserted that means we need another stimulus bill and/or the problem is the current “stimulus” bill wasn't big enough. On This Week, ABC News vet Sam Donaldson maintained “we're going to have to have more stimulus, more spending.”

Over on NBC's Meet the Press, Washington Post columnist E.J. Dionne, a former Washington correspondent for the New York Times before covering politics for the Post, complained: “The problem is the stimulus was too small, and they compromised it down and so you had less effect. I mean, the fact is these numbers would be a lot worse without the stimulus.”

Donaldson contended:

"If the Republican Party follows the course of Palin and Beck and Company it's doomed."

So said Sam Donaldson on ABC's "This Week" Sunday.

His evidence?

Democrat Bill Owens victory Tuesday in the 23rd Congressional district of New York.

Readers are strongly advised to stow all fluids, combustibles, and sharp objects for the ignorance on display here might produce uncontrollable fits of anger (video embedded below the fold with partial transcript):

On June 12, 1987, as the liberal media elite were toasting the leader of the Soviet Union as a great champion of progress, President Ronald Reagan stood at the Berlin Wall and challenged Mikhail Gorbachev to put his money where his mouth was: “General Secretary Gorbachev, if you seek peace, if you seek prosperity for the Soviet Union and eastern Europe, if you seek liberalization, come here to this gate. Mr. Gorbachev, open this gate. Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!” (Video.)

Gorbachev did not open the gate or tear down the Berlin Wall, but two years later the people of East Germany did. News broke in the U.S. late in the afternoon (Eastern Time) on November 9, 1989 that the communist government would no longer restrict travel to West Berlin. Just a few hours later, ABC’s PrimeTime Live hosted former President Ronald Reagan to celebrate what would turn out to be the death blow against communism in Eastern Europe. We found the tape in our archives, and posted a video excerpt at right. (Audio excerpt here.)

Liz Cheney fans got to see quite a faceoff between her and Sam Donaldson on Sunday's "This Week."

As the panel discussion turned to Attorney General Eric Holder's decision to investigate the terrorist interrogation procedures of the CIA, Cheney and Donaldson predictably shared opposing views.

Despite both parties being guilty of interrupting and stepping on one another, television critic Tom Shales, in a column published by the Washington Post Tuesday, felt Cheney was "intentionally rude" while employing "guerrilla rhetoric."  

Not surprisingly, Shales had nothing negative to say about Donaldson's behavior (highlights below the fold with video of the exchange, h/t Jennifer Rubin):

ABC's Sam Donaldson appeared on Thursday's Good Morning America to talk about the developing Mark Sanford scandal and loudly assert that it's hard to forgive Bible-thumping Republicans for their sexual transgressions. He began by deriding, "The problem Republicans have, so many of them are sanctimonious." [audio available here]

The longtime contributor continued his attack on members of the GOP who get caught up in sex scandals: "They thump the Bible. They condemn everyone else, and when they- human- they don’t have much credit in the bank for forgiveness."

ABC's This Week roundtable took up the media's favoritism toward President Obama. George Stephanopoulos marveled at “how obsessed the President and White House are with Fox News,” prompting George Will to observe that's because “it's the discordant note in an otherwise harmonious chorus.” New York Times Executive Editor Bill Keller, however, cautioned “don't confuse attention with love” as he maintained of Obama's coverage: “I don't think...it's been unskeptical or uncritical.” Indeed, Keller insisted, “he's getting examined pretty microscopically.”

Sam Donaldson cracked up the panel with a back-handed slap at the White House press corps. Asked how they are doing, Donaldson proposed before being drowned out by guffaws led by Stephanopoulos: “I think it's doing okay. I mean, they're going to come to life as the public gets more skeptical-”
 
(Fox News Sunday also had a segment on the media's love affair with Obama. Stephen Hayes of The Weekly Standard saw “a clear ideological affinity for Barack Obama and his programs” as well as “a huge do-something bias” for government action to solve perceived problems. NPR's Mara Liasson predicted: “I think the honeymoon is probably going to wind down sometime this fall.”)

"I’ve always been struck by how -- and it’s not too strong a word -- how obsessed the President and the White House are with Fox News."

So said ABC's George Stephanopoulos during the Roundtable segment of Sunday's "This Week."

I kid you not.

With an on-screen chyron shockingly asking, "Free Media Ride For Obama?" the former member of the administration exceedingly paranoid of what it declared was a vast right-wing conspiracy actually discussed with his guests the fawning coverage the current White House resident is getting from the press.

Marvelously, George Will, for the second week in a row, did not disappoint (video available here, partial transcript follows): 

Cokie Roberts appeared on Friday's "Good Morning America" and agreed with Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor's 1994 comment that a wise woman would come to a better conclusion than a man. Roberts, cheered, "Of course, I would agree with her that they're better." Fellow ABC journalist Sam Donaldson empathized that if the judge made a mistake, "it was a Joe Biden problem. She blurted out the truth." [Audio available here]

Throughout two segments on the program, various reporters and guests justified Sotomayor's comments. Roberts attempted to explain away the comments, which are in addition to the now famous 2001 "wise Latina" quote. She sympathized to co-host Diane Sawyer, "You go before these big women's groups. And, Diane, I'm sure you've done it. I've certainly done it many times." With no hint of controversy, Roberts added, "And you do say things that kind of rev up the crowd and get women excited. And one of those things that you do say is that women are better than men."

Those who “devised” what ABC called “torture memos” and the “methods” they defined, retired ABC News correspondent Sam Donaldson contended on Sunday's This Week, “should be held responsible” and so “should be held accountable in the court of law.” Donaldson allowed that “people who thought they were following the law as outlined” should not be punished, but:

The people who devised these methods and devised these memos, if, in fact, they knew that they were just trying to find cover, just trying to find a way to get around American values and American law and the American Constitution, I think they should be held responsible. I think they should be brought in and if President Obama wants to pardon them as one President pardoned a former President, then let him do so, but they should be held accountable in the court of law.

ABC's Sam Donaldson let a little of his inner-conspiracy theorist out this morning on This Week with George Stephanopoulos. 

In a discussion of President Barack Obama's lessening the sanctions on Fidel Castro's Cuba, Donaldson began his analysis with one of a number a Kennedy-Truther notions that have been knocking around ever since President John F. Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas, Texas on November 22, 1963.

Ever since Lee Harvey Oswald first squeezed the trigger, there have been numerous others for whom he was the alleged fall guy.  The Grassy Knoll, the Zapruder films, etc. 

Then-Vice President Lyndon Baines Johnson has been mentioned, as has the Mafia, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Central Intelligence Agency, Howard Hunt and the Eastern Bloc of Soviet States, or some cabal of some or all of the above.

Another wild card in this crazy deck was Cuba's El Presidente, Castro.  The theory being that Castro was upset with JFK's woefully planned and executed Bay of Pigs attempt at ending his nascent dictatorship, and therefore exacted his revenge by executing the 35th President.

Donaldson's buy-in for this house-of-cards game is apparently the Castro connection.

To wit:

Reacting with indignation to David Frum's assessment that President Barack Obama was a “failure” at the G-20 summit because European leaders “rebuffed” his quest to get them to follow his lead in enacting massive deficit spending, an aghast ABC News veteran Sam Donaldson sputtered that the change in “tone” from former President Bush was more important than substance:

The last President we had that went to Europe, I mean no one wanted to see him. There was great hostility. This President's changed the tone. Just changing the tone was a great plus for the United States.

On Friday night's Real Time with Bill Maher on HBO, Donaldson conceded Obama “was rebuffed when it came to the great stimulus, yes Germany and France said you can't print Euros like we're printing dollars” but, nonetheless, he declared: “This was the best outcome you could hope for.”

After 41 years with ABC News, next week Sam Donaldson will retire from the network, though he will continue to appear monthly on This Week, the Washington Post's Howard Kurtz reported Monday. Often seen by conservatives as the embodiment of liberal media bias -- especially during the Reagan years -- Donaldson was an open-minded guy who respected conservatives and was willing to make fun of himself, so for many years he debated Bob Novak on liberal bias at CPAC and, in 2004, he appeared at the MRC's “DisHonors Awards.”

At our March 18, 2004 gala held at the Omni Shoreham Hotel in Washington, D.C., as MRC President L. Brent Bozell III made closing remarks he was interrupted by Donaldson, who bound on stage in mock anger, railing at Bozell and the MRC for attacking the news media. Donaldson pledged, “I promise you that during this campaign we will treat both sides equally: the compassionate, intelligent liberals and you crazy, right wing kooks will get the same kind of treatment!”

ABC's Cokie Roberts denounced as “irresponsible” conservative opposition to the “stimulus” bill and suggested those who voted against it should be punished, declaring on Sunday's This Week: “I just think that when you're in a situation like this, to do nothing is so irresponsible that you can't, you can't get away with it.”

Earlier on the show, host George Stephanopoulos pressed Congresswoman Maxine Waters to agree banks must be nationalized: “A lot of economists now saying that what is really -- could be needed is bite the bullet nationalization.” Citing a professor's op-ed, “Nationalize the Banks! We're all Swedes Now,” Stephanopoulos recited the argument “we should just do what they did when they faced their crisis. They nationalized the banks and they came out of it okay.” When the far-left House member resisted -- “I don't think that we're ready to move to the point of a formalized, nationalized banking program yet” -- Stephanopoulos pleaded: “Even if it's the only thing that would work?”

Some quick items from the Sunday interview shows and newspapers:

♦ On Meet the Press, NBC reporter Andrea Mitchell, who last month hailed Obama's “all-star cabinet,” on Sunday trumpeted the cabinet's “meritocracy,” and how it's supposedly made up of “superstars,” as she gushed over “people with so much brain power and so much education.”

♦ Over on ABC's This Week, during the roundtable's look at Caroline Kennedy as a potential Senator from New York, Sam Donaldson opined that “my preference would be Andrew Cuomo,” the liberal Attorney General for the Empire State, because, in part, “I thought his father would make a very good President.” That would be the far-left Mario Cuomo.

♦ In her final column for the Washington Post, outgoing ombudsman Deborah Howell urged the paper to address its lack of political diversity. Since “too many Post staff members think alike,” she advised: “Make a serious effort to cover political and social conservatives and their issues; the paper tends to shy away from those stories, leaving conservatives feeling excluded and alienated from the paper.”

ABC's Sam Donaldson has validated Joe the Plumber's worst fears: socialism has indeed washed over capitalism.

Maybe worse, Donaldson is clearly less unhappy about this than our new campaign spokesman from Ohio.

Such appeared to be the case when the former White House correspondent published a rather ominous commentary at ABCNews.com Tuesday both in written and video form (emphasis added, h/t Extreme Mortman via Glenn Reynolds):

On Sunday's edition of "This Week," journalist Cokie Roberts indicated that, in regards to John McCain's reaction to the ongoing financial problems on Wall Street, "...He's a Republican and whenever Republicans get into this kind of mess, everybody, even people who were not born or close to being born, the specter of Herbert Hoover comes out to, to haunt them." Roberts didn't clarify just who the "everybody" is that would connect McCain and the Depression era president.

Roberts, who appeared on the ABC program's panel to discuss last week's Fannie Mae meltdown and the government's planned bailout, also asserted a "stark contrast" between the economic advisors of Senators McCain and Barack Obama. She then added that the Democrat's liberal experts reassure her: "I mean, the Obama advisers, with- looking at Bob Rubin and Warren Buffett and Paul Volcker in there, you know, you do feel a sense of security there."

Longtime journalist Sam Donaldson placed blame for the Fannie Mae crisis at the feet of deregulation and singled out former McCain advisor Phil Gramm: "We deregulated in the beginning of '99 and 2000 the banking industry, Phil Gramm and others, I think that Obama ad is correct. He was one of the prime movers. Now we're going to have to clean that up at great expense."

When ABC's George Stephanopoulos, along with three-fourths of his panel, pile on a Democrat with the cameras rolling, you know said liberal elected official made a blunder of epic proportions.

Such was the case on Sunday's "This Week" when with the exception of Democrat pol Donna Brazile, it was virtually unanimous that Democrat presidential nominee Barack Obama's decision to go back on his campaign promise to accept public funds was "a big, big deal and a big, big flip-flop."

Readers should brace themselves for an alternate reality, as in a strange moment in television news history, George Stephanopoulos, Cokie Roberts, Sam Donaldson, and Matt Dowd actually agreed that the Obamessiah made a serious boo boo (video available here, Brazile's sycophancy removed for what should be obvious reasons, picture courtesy ABC News):

During the roundtable discussion on Sunday's This Week with George Stephanopoulos, Cokie Roberts not only made a relatively rare identification of both Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton as "liberal," but she also argued that Obama needs to choose a running mate who is a "Bible-thumping, gun-owning, white guy from a swing state. I mean, maybe that's who the party should have nominated." (Transcript follows)

As the group discussed the running mate possibilities, Roberts contended that it would be a bad idea for Obama to choose Clinton: "I don't think that it's good for the Democratic Party to have two liberal Senators from states that are going to go Democratic anyway. I mean, he needs a Bible-thumping, gun-owning, white guy from a swing state. I mean, maybe that's who the party should have nominated."

Sam Donaldson jumped in: "You mean, in other words, somebody who disagrees with him on all the issues."

Below is a transcript of the relevant exchange from the Sunday May 11 This Week with George Stephanopoulos:

Thursday's "Good Morning America" featured a group of liberals talking about whether the press favored one liberal over another liberal and several leftist journalists were cited as proof. Specifically, co-host Diane Sawyer continued the program's self flagellation over whether the media is biased in favor of Barack Obama and against Hillary Clinton.

The ABC anchor discussed the issue with Arianna Huffington, editor of the extremely liberal Huffington Post web page. But, in a perfect example of actual bias, the GMA host never mentioned either Ms. Huffington or her site's leftist affiliation. Instead, Sawyer breathlessly worried about the Clinton campaign's charges that the media have been unfair. In an intro, she fretted, "And we turn the tables on ourselves. Have all of us in the media used boxing gloves on Clinton and kid gloves on Obama? Have we been unfair?" Co-host Robin Roberts also teased the segment as a brave example of self examination: "The media. Too tough on Clinton? Not tough enough on Obama? We'll take up that debate."

ABC reporters Sam Donaldson and Cokie Roberts acted as debate coaches for Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama on Thursday's "Good Morning America." Previewing the January 31 debate between the two, Donaldson suggested that Clinton be aggressive and "put [Obama] on the defensive."

The veteran journalist then casually asserted that it doesn't matter whether the New York senator's charges would be true or not. He spun, "Now, you say, what-- does she come up with something that really isn't accurate? In a sense, unfortunately, doesn't matter. If she can put him on the defensive, so that he has to try to answer something, I think that's what she should probably do." Cokie Roberts contributed more simple advice: Clinton should just let her genius shine through. She enthused, "I think Hillary Clinton should just wow everybody with all of her knowledge, you know, the New York Times editorial calling her brilliant. She should show us that brilliance and not get irritated by him and not go after him."