Harry Reid

Former Secretary of State Colin Powell on Friday blamed the media and "especially" cable television for the nasty tone in politics today.

Such occurred during a discussion with Jay Leno on NBC's Tonight Show (video follows with transcript and commentary):

In which the NY Times reveals itself, yet again, to be a simple, partisan rag...

In 2005, the Republicans in the United States Senate were frustrated by the Democrats' use of the filibuster to thwart Presidential nominations to the Federal judiciary, and were particularly concerned with the threat of a filibuster on Supreme Court nominees, which had never previously happened. Because of this, they contemplated a rule change to eliminate, or significantly limit, the filibuster, a change that was termed the "nuclear option." The mainstream press, as represented here by the New York Times, was appalled. This despite the fact that, with Democrats in the White House and control of the Senate, they had favored filibuster reform. No, they were just wrong earlier, and their new, more fully matured position, was the right one. Clearly, the filibuster was wrong. A problem.

CNN's Erin Burnett on Monday did a segment correctly castigating Congress for not passing a budget in over 1000 days.

The only problem was that while she did this, pictures of House Republicans were shown on the screen despite the blame resting solely with Senate Democrats (video follows with transcript and commentary):

Since Senator Olympia Snowe's (R-Maine) surprising announcement that she won't be seeking reelection in November, the media have been doing a victory lap blaming her decision on the lack of moderate Republicans in Congress.

Yet an op-ed she published in Friday's Washington Post suggests her dissatisfaction with government stemmed from the behavior of Democrats that have controlled the Senate since 2007 (emphasis added throughout):

The lack of current events knowledge demonstrated by today's anchors and political commentators is often breathtaking.

On Sunday's Meet the Press, host David Gregory actually told Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.), "Democrats haven't put together a budget in a year." Actually, it's been almost three years (video follows with transcript and commentary):

On Friday's CBS Evening News, as correspondent Sharyl Attkisson filed a report to inform viewers that the House of Representatives had approved the Senate plan for a two-month payroll tax cut extension, Attkisson included a clip of Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid directing a "lecture" at and blaming House Republican freshmen for the delay, as she recounted his hope that they had "learned a lesson."

While the report included two soundbites from Democrats that allowed them to put forth some of their message - in the form of one clip each from Reid and President Obama - the CBS correspondent only included a couple of brief non-political clips of House Speaker John Boehner as the only Republican afforded a soundbite. (Video below)

CBS's Erica Hill invoked an infamous Christmas season villain on Wednesday's Early Show, stating that "[House] Republicans...risk looking like the Grinch here four days before Christmas" for their refusal to sign onto the Senate's proposed two-month extension of the payroll tax holiday. Hill made that claim during an interview of Rep. Michele Bachmann, and pressed her about the payroll tax issue.

The anchor brought on Rep. Bachmann to discuss her presidential campaign's swing through Iowa during the lead-up to that state's caucuses at the beginning of January. However, Hill devoted the first half of the segment to the dispute over extending the tax holiday, and led with a question that included her "Grinch" label:

Tuesday's Early Show on CBS brought on PolitiFact's Bill Adair to reveal what he labeled as the "biggest lie of the year" inside politics, which was "the claim by many Democrats that the Republicans voted to end Medicare." But CBS let Democratic operatives spout that falsehood several times without scrutiny earlier in 2011.

The network did stand out in bringing on the PolitiFact editor, something ABC and NBC didn't do on Tuesday. Adair stated that Democrats "say that the House voted to end Medicare. That's not what they did. What the House did was vote to protect Medicare on people who are 55 and older, but to privatize it and restructure it...for people who are younger...it's wrong to say 'end Medicare,' and it's a...classic scare tactic that we've seen targeting the elderly for many years."

"Congress took a collective step backward in wrapping up a bitter year of legislating, as President Barack Obama’s top priority over the payroll tax holiday became mired in a battle over unrelated, partisan issues," groused Politico's Jake Sherman and Manu Raju in a December 14 story.

"House Republicans jammed through a version of the payroll tax bill Tuesday evening" Sherman and Raju complained, noting that the bill "calls for construction of the controversial Keystone KL [sic] oil pipeline, scales back an air-pollution rule, cuts Obama’s health reform law and reduces the length of unemployment benefits."

When CBS's Steve Kroft recently asked House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) some penetrating questions about stock purchases she and her husband made, the internet was abuzz with rumors about an upcoming 60 Minutes installment about the wealthy couple that have been known to use her political interest for their mutual benefit.

Unfortunately, this Sunday's 60 Minutes piece about Congressional insider trading cherry picked from author Peter Schweizer's soon to be released book "Throw Them All Out" to make it look like this is largely a Republican scandal (video follows with commentary):

MSNBC's Lawrence O'Donnell hopefully learned a valuable lesson Wednesday: when you invite someone on your show to discuss his new book, you might want to read it first.

As the Last Word host questioned convicted lobbyist Jack Abramoff about his recently released memoir "Capitol Punishment," it quickly became obvious O'Donnell had no idea what was actually in the book he was holding up (video follows with transcript and commentary):

MSNBC's Chris Matthews on Thursday blamed the Tea Party for Congress's record-low job approval.

Much as Bill Press did on MSNBC Wednesday evening, the Hardball host totally ignored the fact that Democrats control the Senate (video follows with transcript and commentary):

Readers participating in the real world will be quite surprised to learn that, according to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, "It's very clear that private-sector jobs have been doing just fine."

At The Hill's Floor Action blog, reporter Pete Kasperowicz, writing as if the world began in early 2010, supported Reid's contention: "Private-sector jobs have increased over the last 19 months, while government jobs have lagged." I hope both gentlemen don't mind if, after excerpting a few paragraphs from Pete K's report, we look at some real numbers after the jump.

The network newscasts on Wednesday downplayed Democratic obstruction of Barack Obama's jobs bill, offering only minor coverage. Good Morning America and Early Show allowed brief mentions. In an otherwise unrelated segment, GMA's Jon Karl admitted that the President "has a problem with [congressional] Democrats."

Karl added, "Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said yesterday, he does not plan to have a vote on the jobs bill in its entirety, rather he's gonna try to pass bits and pieces of it." CBS's Early Show highlighted the President's complaints about Republicans. Reporter Bill Plante explained,  "...[Obama] attacked Republican Majority Leader Eric Cantor by name for not passing his jobs bill and bringing it to the floor."

On Friday's Early Show, CBS's Bob Schieffer wildly spun Congress's 12% job approval as good news for President Obama, despite his own low poll numbers: "My heavens! He's 20 points ahead of the members of Congress....I mean, I think that probably some car thieves have a higher approval rating." But in 2010, when Democrats led Congress, The Early Show ignored a poll which showed low numbers for Nancy Pelosi.

The morning program led its 7 am Eastern hour with the ultra-low poll numbers for the Republican-led Congress. Anchor Erica Hill noted that "President Obama's job approval rating is reaching all-time low, but he is still miles ahead of Congress, when you look at the numbers. A CBS News/New York Times poll out just this morning shows only 12% of Americans say Congress is doing a good job. That is the worst showing in the history of our polling."

As NewsBusters has been reporting, the Obama-loving media have largely been gushing and fawning over the current White House resident taking a vacation on Martha's Vineyard as the economy appears to be heading into a double-dip recession.

Giving an interesting insight into the President's decision to not call Congress back from its summer break to tackle the problems facing the nation was New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd who wrote Sunday:

Sometimes I wonder how liberal media members could possibly live in the same country as I do and hold such startlingly absurd ideas about it.

Take for example Fareed Zakaria who on the CNN program bearing his name this Sunday is going to tell viewers that America would likely still have a AAA credit rating if we had a parliamentary system of government with a prime minister rather than a president (video follows with transcript and commentary):

Obama advisers, Democrat senators, and terminally stupid ideologues that for days have blamed Standard and Poor's downgrade of America's debt on the Tea Party are sadly mistaken.

Next to the President of the United States and his Party, those really responsible are members of the media.

Obama advisers, Democrat senators, and terminally stupid ideologues that have been for almost two days blaming Standard and Poor's downgrade of America's debt on the Tea Party have all been ignoring a very inconvenient truth.

According to MSNBC's Lawrence O'Donnell, "Last week's vote for a debt ceiling increase was the most bipartisan vote to increase the debt ceiling we have seen in a very, very long time" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

On August 2 on the Senate floor, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid claimed that the economy under George W. Bush lost eight million jobs.

PolitiFact, which occasionally seems to engage in verbal gymnastics to give Democrats and leftists the benefit of the doubt, was more than a little annoyed with Reid's claim, giving it a rating of "Pants on Fire." As will be demonstrated later, virtually no one else in the press has deemed Harry's howler newsworthy.

Here are excerpts from PolitiFact's pommeling (HT Doug Powers at Michelle Malkin's place, where the preferred evaluation is "Liar, liar, pomegranates on fire"):

It seems that every time I see something possibly redeeming put forth by the Associated Press, they figure out a way to ruin it.

Take Larry Margasak's report this afternoon on John Boehner's attempts at persuading House Republican members to support his various attempts at debt-ceiling legislation during the few two weeks. (I've made my general unhappiness with the ultimate result pretty plain here, and that is not the topic of this post.)

Maragasak notes Boehner's refusal to engage in "carrot-and-stick" persuasion, observes that it's "a major transformation from the not too distant past," and spends the rest of the report comparing the Republicans under Boehner to the Denny Hastert-Tom Delay regime. It's as if the years from 2007 through 2010, featuring the Nancy Pelosi-Harry Reid regime's Louisiana Purchase of Mary Landrieu, the Cornhusker Kickback to Nebraska's Ben Nelson, the $3.5 billion "clean energy" boondoggle to Ohio Congresswoman Marcy Kaptur, and so many, many others, never happened and don't exist. What a journalistic disgrace.

In a front-page “news analysis” piece this morning, Times national political correspondent Jeff Zeleny pronounced that “After a Protracted Fight, Both Sides Emerge Bruised.”

Yet Zeleny’s analysis was chock full of the typical liberal bias slant that puffs up President Obama, slams the Tea Party as “intractable” and ignores the partisanship of liberal Senate members, particularly Harry Reid (emphasis mine):

Late last night, President Obama announced that Democrat and Republican leaders had agreed on a plan with Obama's approval to raise the debt ceiling. The plan would prevent any possible defaults that could occur on August 2 if the deal is not passed in Congress.

The plan is still subject to congressional approval, and many Democrats and Republicans are already speaking out against it. Check out a summary of the deal after the break, and let us know your thoughts in the comments.

Saturday night in Cincinnati, Fox 19's Kimberly Holmes Wiggins interviewed Ohio Democratic Senator Sherrod Brown from Washington about the state of the debt-ceiling debate. A full transcript follows.

Contained therein readers will see the untruthful establishment press memes which have dominated their coverage, and all too typical disgraceful and predictable demagoguery by Brown. Similar reports involving other Democrats likely played on stations across the nation this past weekend.

Strap on the duct tape. Here goes (bolds and numbered tags are mine; link is to the station's video home page):

Speaking on the floor of the Senate Saturday, Marco Rubio (R-Fl.) said, "If we had a billion dollars for every time I heard the words 'Tea Party extremist,' we could solve this debt problem."

Proving his point about the vitriolic name-calling of conservatives so prevalent now, New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman began his most recent piece, "Watching today's Republicans being led around by an extremist Tea Party":

House Speaker John Boehner and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid have both released debt limit plans, but if House Republicans don't support Boehner's plan, they could be handing President Obama an easy victory.

The debt limit debate has not only sharply divided Republicans and Democrats, but it might also be forcing a schism among Republicans who favor a permanent solution now versus Republicans who want a temporary fix with better solutions later, opening the door for Reid's plan to gain greater support. Do you think Republicans should support an imperfect Boehner plan? Or do you think they should avoid compromise and find a better solution? Let us know what you think in the comments.

If her gig at Time magazine doesn't work out, Jay Newton Small could always try working in Harry Reid's press shop.

She certainly knows how to butter up the Senate majority leader. Witness Newton Small's latest Swampland blog post at Time.com where she denounces House Republican debt ceiling plans as "histrionics" while forecasting a resolution to the debt ceiling deadlock that has Reid saving the day (emphasis mine):