Ronald Reagan

In her May 22 "Singles File" -- described as "A weekly playlist for the listener with a one-track mind" -- Washington Post music critic Allison Stewart suggested readers might want to download the new single "Reagan" by rap artist Killer Mike.

"The Obama years haven't been fruitful ones for sociopolitically minded rappers, at least until now," Stewart gushed, noting that the Atlanta musician "dusts off some late '80s ghosts on this unblinking and brutal track from his newest [album] 'R.A.P. Music.'" But when you check out the lyrics of the track, and read his May 21 interview with HipHopDX.com, what really becomes clear is Killer Mike's "unblinking" apology for the late terror-sponsoring Libyan dictator Muammar Qadhafi.

"It does appear this year that the ghosts of presidents past have been haunting the current race for the future leader of the country," MSNBC's Chris Jansing noted as she opened up a segment featuring Center for American Progress's Daniella Gibbs Leger and Republican Strategist Joe Watkins about how both President Obama and former Gov. Mitt Romney, but chiefly Romney, have invoked other presidents in their campaign rhetoric.

Jansing seemed perplexed at Romney campaigning by invoking the liberal Clinton -- saying Obama discarded the Clintonian pronouncement that the "era of big government is over" -- but she wasn't equally incredulous at Obama citing the late conservative President Ronald Reagan to boost his call for tax hikes for the rich. What's more, not once did Jansing highlight recent revelations that Obama has altered WhiteHouse.gov presidents biographies to gratuitously insert himself into them, even though that news item was covered earlier this week by the Bible-for-liberal journalists, the New York Times:

CBS Evening News anchor Scott Pelley was barely able to contain his laughter Wednesday night after playing a clip of President Obama invoking Ronald Reagan on behalf of his “Buffett Rule” tax hike quest. Nearly breaking into a laugh, a baffled Pelley wondered to CBS News political analyst John Dickerson: “So a vote for President Obama is a vote for Ronald Reagan?!” Dickerson snickered too. (Watch the video to see Pelley’s puzzled reaction.)

Pelley had set up the soundbite: “The President was in full campaign mode today and he even adopted a Republican idol as his own.”

New York Times columnist Paul Krugman's Monday column "The Gullible Center" bashed -- you guessed it -- Rep. Paul Ryan, and perhaps took a hidden swipe at "self-proclaimed centrists" who take Ryan's budget seriously, like fellow Times columnist David Brooks (Michael Calderone at Huffington Post noticed the jab).

It would not be the first time Krugman and Brooks conducted a secret grapple (Times policy discourages columnists from taking issue with each other.) In the fall of 2007 Krugman accused Ronald Reagan of launching his successful 1980 presidential campaign from outside Philadelphia, Miss., where three civil rights workers were murdered, as a sop to Southern racists. Brooks, himself an Obama fan, delivered an able defense of Reagan against Krugman's twisting of history, without mentioning Krugman, referring only to the slur "being spread by people who, before making one of the most heinous charges imaginable, couldn't even take 10 minutes to look at the evidence." Ahem.

ABC’s Sunday night tribute to Mike Wallace, who passed away Saturday night, highlighted several swipes at Ronald Reagan, thus, inadvertently or not, painting the “legendary” 60 Minutes correspondent as something less than an impartial journalist. Or maybe ABC News just enjoyed re-playing those hits on the late conservative President.    

World News anchor David Muir began with a clip of Wallace, from either 1976 or during the 1980 campaign, demanding of Reagan: “How many blacks are there on your top campaign staff, Governor?” Reagan replied: “I couldn’t honestly answer you now.” To which Wallace snapped: “That speaks for itself.” Unsaid: At the time, 60 Minutes didn’t have any non-white reporters.

Here's something you don't see every day from an Obama-loving media member.

Newsweek's Eleanor Clift actually wrote Sunday, "Romney is in better shape than Bill Clinton in 1992, or Ronald Reagan in 1980."

Give the man credit, he keeps setting new standards for delusion.

It was only weeks ago that liberal radio host Thom Hartmann was offering the most novel theory yet for the US-led invasion of Iraq, that it was a Rube Goldbergesque plot to privatize Social Security. (audio clips after page break)

If you heard a loved one fulminate like this, you'd be morally obligated to initiate a medical, substance abuse or psychiatric intervention.

Liberal radio host Thom Hartmann unleased the latest moonbat conspiracy theory on his radio show Monday in response to a caller disparaging government (audio) --

Bill Press has a new book out called “The Obama Hate Machine.” To read the blurbs, you might wonder if Press thinks no one should be allowed to criticize the president. Here’s Nancy Pelosi touting the book: "In a poisoned political climate, negative personal attacks on President Obama must have no place in our public discourse."

What’s next? A mandate forbidding inappropriate free speech? These tolerant liberals are out of control.

Thanks for sharing, Rachel, and confirming what we already knew.

The oh-so bright light in MSNBC's nightly firmament could barely contain her revulsion after Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels cited a familiar metaphor for America, that of the shining city on a hill, while delivering the official Republican response to President Obama's State of the Union address. (video after page break)

Alex Wagner made an eye-popping remark on her MSNBC program on Wednesday, as she hinted that she agreed with former Obama spokesman Bill Burton's assertion that Ronald Reagan would feel out of place in today's GOP. When Burton claimed that "Reagan wouldn't have a chance in this Republican primary right now," Wagner stunningly replied, "I think he'd be a Democrat probably" [audio available here; video below the jump].

The anchor, a former employee of the left-leaning Center for American Progress, also touted a quote from Thomas Mann of The Brookings Institution and Norman Ornstein of AEI, who claim in an upcoming book that the Republican Party has become "an insurgent outlier- ideologically extreme...scornful of compromise...and dismissive of the legitimacy of its political opposition."

Joy Behar, on Wednesday's edition of The View, delivered a rave review for Barack Obama's State of the Union of Speech as she gushed that it was "equivalent to Ronald Reagan's 'Morning in America' speech" and added "Republicans can embrace him" now. Behar then went on to say the President's speech, that was devoted to the kind of class warfare talk The Gipper would have despised, should motivate the Republicans to "start cooperating" and "stop this gridlock because it's not patriotic!" (Video after the jump)

Tuning in Morning Joe today, I half expected to discover on the set some professional mourners imported from North Korea, keening and crying over the political demise of Jon Huntsman.

Huntsman had had the Morning Joe crowd from hello.  The overwhelming winner of the bien-pensant MSM primary was amazingly popular—except with actual Republican voters, who didn't dig his moderate positioning and a tone that some found . . . well, how do you say "supercilious" in Mandarin?  Taking today's cake was Joe Scarborough finding Huntsman's "moderate temperament" Reaganesque, and claiming that in rejecting Huntsman, Republicans have "turned their backs" on Ronald Reagan.  Video after the jump.

During Tuesday's live coverage of the New Hampshire Primary on MSNBC, at about 6:53 p.m., Chris Matthews asked guest Tom Ridge why it is that "crazy neocons" and Republican "chickenhawks" always want to "go to war with other people's children."

As he began the interview, Matthews listed several Republicans who have not served in the military and whose children have not served, and then posed: (Video below)

This week the Today show is celebrating 60 years of being on the air, and for over 20 of those years the MRC has been documenting the NBC morning show’s liberal agenda. From past anchors like Bryant Gumbel blaming “right wing” talk radio for the Oklahoma City bombing and  Katie Couric trashing Ronald Reagan as an “airhead,” up through current anchor Matt Lauer wondering how Barack Obama would “manage the expectations” of being called “The Messiah,”
MRC analysts have been documenting the worst the show has offered.

The following are 10 of the most obnoxiously liberal examples of Today show bias from the MRC’s archive; for even more bias from the Today show anchors please visit the Profile in Bias pages of Gumbel, Couric, Lauer, Meredith Vieira and Ann Curry. (Top 10 Video Countdown after the jump)

Even with recent "improvements" which are still weak when compared to other post-World War II recoveries and which, as shown yesterday (at NewsBusters; at BizzyBlog), are less substantive than December's two major reported numbers (unemployment rate of 8.5% and seasonally adjusted job additions of 200,000) would indicate, it seems fairly likely that the nation's unemployment rate will be higher than it has been on the eve of any presidential election since World War II.

Thus, Paul Wiseman of the Associated Press, aka the Administration's Press, felt it necessary to show that what matters isn't the unemployment rate, but instead the rate's trend. In the process, he mischaracterized the state of the economy under Ronald Reagan in 1983 and 1984, ignoring the roaring economic growth which occurred during those two years, and gave only one sentence to a statistic -- number of jobs added or lost -- which has become as important as the jobless rate, if not moreso, in the intervening 28 years:

Appearing as a guest on Wednesday's The Colbert Report on Comedy Central, New York magazine's John Heilemann - also an MSNBC analyst and formerly of The New Yorker - made a gay joke about GOP presidential candidate Rick Santorum as he described the competitive election in Iowa. (Video below)

After host Stephen Colbert, playing the part of committed conservative wanting to pump up Santorum, asked of the Iowa results, "So, Santorum, this is a victory, right? He may have lost, but it's a victory," Heilemann took a shot at the former Pennsylvania Senator in his response:

In 1984, an Associated Press writer covering the Democratic primaries wrote that "In a presidential contest dominated by concerns over the economy, inflation, and unemployment, the Democratic candidates have been loath to acknowledge the extent to which Carter administration policies contributed to those problems. Democrats have also controlled Congress for most of the past three decades, which made it relatively easy to enact the policies Carter pursued."

Of course, that AP report really never happened. The establishment press never razzed Walter Mondale, Gary Hart, and the other 1984 Democratic presidential candidates about the ruinous Carter-Era inflation, 20%-plus interest rates, and high unemployment against which the Reagan administration was making significant progress in the early 1980s. But on Tuesday morning, Beth Fouhy at the Associated Press felt it necessary to wonder why this year's GOP primary candidates are rarely mentioning George W. Bush, even though the economy under Barack Obama is making relatively scant progress towards a genuine recovery and makes a much more appropriate target for criticism. Here was her comparable paragraph, plus the two which followed:

See-no-evil economic reporting during the Obama years has "somehow" missed a number of developments in the makeup of the American workforce which I believe would not have been missed (or deliberately overlooked, take your pick) if a Republican or conservative were in the White House. One of them relates to full-time employment.

Did you know that seasonally adjusted full-time employment in September 2011 was lower than it was when the recession officially ended in June 2009, and that this was the case for 26 of the first 27 post-recession months? What's more, the economy had over 8.7 million fewer full-time workers in November 2011 than it did when full-time employment peaked four years earlier in November 2007. Proof from the Bureau of Labor Statistics follows the jump.

When it comes to the MSM, it's hard to get more mainstream than Jon Meacham.  Former Newsweek editor. Current Random House editor.  Picked for a Pulitzer Prize.

So when someone of Meacham's genteelly liberal ilk unloads on Barack Obama in such stark terms, it's newsworthy.  On today's Morning Joe, Meacham flatly stated his belief that President Obama "doesn't particularly like people and politicians who don't like people are kind of in the wrong business."  Video and more after the jump.

The New York Times Sunday Review resembles the hard-left New York Review of Books more and more with every passing week. Formerly the Week in Review, the revamped Sunday Review is lighter on news analysis from liberal Times reporters and heavier on outside essays, often with a hard-left outlook. It’s put together by veteran Times man Andrew Rosenthal, who demonstrates his "alarm" about “right-wing” Republicans at his New York Times blog “The Loyal Opposition.” This week’s target: Ronald Reagan.

Yale professor Harold Bloom’s long essay, “Will This Election Be the Mormon Breakthrough?” was devoted mostly to attacking Joseph Smith, founder of the Mormon religion. But he included plenty of insults against the former president.

Listening to liberal talk radio is sometimes like just listening to the world being turned upside down. Liberal hosts make claims that are demonstrably ridiculous, and expect listeners to lap it up.

Case in point: Thom Hartmann praised the Occupy Wall Street protesters for changing the media conversation. He claimed that ever since Reagan was elected, the media has forbidden any discussion of the maldistribution of wealth, as if the words "Decade of Greed" weren't a media favorite, as if the "three million homeless" weren't routinely on the lips of liberal media personalities:

The Los Angeles Times reports "Police are searching for a man who tried to knock down a Ronald Reagan statue Sunday morning. Newport Beach Police received a call about 5:30 a.m. Sunday of a vandalism in progress at Bonita Canyon Sports Park on Bonita Canyon Drive. A witness said a man in dark clothes tried to attach a chain to the base of the statue. The chain was connected to the back of his pickup and he appeared to be trying to pull the statue down."

On the Stephanie Miller radio show on Monday, Miller said this act of vandalism "is one of America's funniest liberal pranks." Yet everyone knows Miller the reflexive partisan would get the vapors if anyone tried to damage the "Little Barry Obama" statue in Indonesia.

PBS's Charlie Rose opened last night’s Bloomberg/Washington Post GOP presidential economic policy debate by noting the round table format was like a “kind of kitchen table where families for generations have come together to talk and solve their problems.”

But through much of the debate it sounded more like Thanksgiving dinner with your liberal aunt and uncle as panelist Karen Tumulty of the Washington Post hammered the candidates from the left and moderator Charlie Rose used a 27-year-old Reagan sound bite to push candidates to come out in favor of tax increases.

Wouldn't it have been wonderful if while Ronald Reagan was President the media gushed and fawned over him the way they do now?

On this weekend's syndicated "Chris Matthews Show," the host actually spent half the program discussing with his guests why Republican presidential candidate Rick Perry is no Reagan (video follows with transcript and commentary):

After last week’s Republican presidential debate at the Reagan presidential library in Simi Valley, Calif., reporter Adam Nagourney took advantage of the spotlight to review on Tuesday both the Reagan and Nixon libraries, located some 80 miles apart on opposite sides of Los Angeles: “An Admiring Approach at the Reagan. History, Warts and All, at the Nixon.” His main concern: Not enough critical coverage and mentions of scandal at the Reagan library.

The result at the Reagan library is a decidedly modest accounting of the Iran-contra affair, the major scandal that hit the administration, which avoids laying blame on anyone. There is also a sympathetic accounting of the impact of Reagan’s economic policies that has drawn questions from Democrats and economic historians.