Networks Promote White House Fearmongering on Sequester Cuts, Ignore i
The NBC, ABC, and CBS evening newscasts on Tuesday all recited the same White House talking points as anchors and correspondents wrung their hands over the upcoming sequester budget cuts set to take effect on March 1. While all three broadcasts touted President Obama using "dire language" to warn against the cuts – only amounting to less that three percent of the federal budget – none of them…
ABC Hypes Return of Robin Roberts By Touting Her Biggest Fans: The Oba
ABC's Good Morning America on Wednesday welcomed Robin Roberts back from sick leave by surprising the co-host with her biggest fans, Barack and Michelle Obama. Within two minutes of the show's open, George Stephanopoulos kicked off the celebration by cutting to the Obamas. He hyped, "We have a lot of surprises for you this morning. We're going to start with one from 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue…
MSNBC's 'Cycle' Gives Daschle Platform to Bash Hagel Filibuster; No Me
Ten years ago, then-Minority Leader Tom Daschle (D-S.D.) held together a Democratic filibuster of President Bush's nomination of Miguel Estrada to the Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia. Tom Curry of NBCNews.com notes that Republicans tried to end debate and proceed to an up-or-down vote seven times before eventually giving up. Frustrated with Daschle's obstructionism,…
LAT's Hennessey: 'Obama's Vacations Have Been Rare, Brief and Regularl
My nominee for Media Puppet of the Day (we should consider making such an award a daily or weekly event) is Kathleen Hennessey at the Los Angeles Times.
From her perch at the paper's Washington bureau, she wrote a pathetic story today about how President Obama is so much more relaxed now that he's in his second term. Among other howlers, Hennessey claims that "Obama's vacations have been rare…
48 Hours After 'Kill' Order, Bogus AP Rand Paul Item Is Still at Sever
Following up on an item posted yesterday -- 48 hours after it issued an order to subscribing publications and outlets to "kill" a story it filed on Sunday ("Sen. Paul: Voters want to round up immigrants") claiming that Kentucky Republican Senator Rand "sees voters wanting, quote, 'somebody who wants to round people up, put in camps and send them back to Mexico,'" the story is still present on…
Malkin Column: Democrats Heart Medicare Fraudsters
Hey, remember when President Obama crusaded against Medicare fraud and vowed to crack down aggressively on scammers who've bilked the program out of an estimated $90 billion? Like Archie and Edith Bunker used to sing: Those were the daaaays.
While Democrats pretend to protect the elderly and disabled, leaders of the People's Party have pocketed gobs of campaign contributions from fat-cat…
Politico Pair Cry a River of Crocodile Tears Over 'Obama, the Puppet M
Instead of doing the work they were supposed to be doing last night -- i.e., following their publication's mission statement, which is (or maybe was) to "turn ... reporters (i.e., themselves) loose on the subject we love: national politics" -- Jim VandeHei and Mike Allen spent over 1,800 words whining.
Their disingenuous complaint: The Obama administration supposedly has insurmountable…
Republicans Afraid of Appearing on Sunday Shows With Me, Brays Ed Schu
Ed Schultz seems chagrined that he rarely appears on the Sunday talk shows. Naturally, Republicans are to blame, at least as far as Schultz is concerned.
But buried inside this rant on his radio show Friday is what is likely the actual reason you seldom see Schultz on Sunday mornings. (audio clip after page break)
Bill Plante: Obama-Tiger Woods Photo Would Have Been GOP 'Propaganda
The irony must have been lost on Bill Plante when he reported on Monday's CBS This Morning that President Obama "did golf with Tiger [Woods], but we didn't see a picture of it. They [the Obama administration] don't like to show a picture of the President at leisure doing anything. They see this as propaganda for the Republicans."
However, exactly two weeks earlier, on February 4, 2013,…
NBC and ABC Avoid Asking Tough Benghazi Questions to White House Chief
While new White House chief of staff Denis McDonough was grilled about the Benghazi terrorist attack on CBS's Face the Nation on Sunday, NBC Meet the Press moderator David Gregory only lobbed a single softball on the scandal, while fill-in host Jonathan Karl ignored the topic all together on ABC's This Week. The White House was unwilling to even allow Fox News Sunday host Chris Wallace to…
Politico: Jesse Jackson Jr. and His Wife 'Lost Track of the Line Betwe
In anticipation of Jesse Jackson Jr.'s indictment on Friday afternoon, Jonathan Allen and John Bresnahan at the Politico seemed all too willing to hand out sympathy cards to Jackson and his wife, both of whom stand to do time in prison for offenses relating to their raid of the congressman's campaign funds.
Specifically, the Politico pair wrote: "It’s a story of a Chicago power couple that…
'Good Morning America' Giddy Over Possibility Hillary Might Run
If Good Morning America's giddiness over the prospect that Hillary Clinton might run for president is any indication of how the MSM will treat the story, it's gonna be a long-g-g-g four years.
The excited GMA crew was looking for any harbinger--from falling meteorites to the number of baskets scored by an ABC reporter in a charity game--that Hillary might throw her pantsuit into the ring. A…
PolitiFact Labels Totally True Rubio Statement on Obama and Sequester
Anyone who thinks that setting a parody site of PolitiFact would be a good idea should reconsider. The site already parodies what a true fact-checking effort would look like on a nearly daily basis.
On Tuesday, the site's Molly Moorhead evaluated Marco Rubio's claim during his State of the Union response speech that spending cuts involved in sequestration were originally the idea of President…
Rachel Maddow Hyperbolic in Deceit About GOP Filibustering Hagel
The Republican filibuster of Chuck Hagel for defense secretary is utterly unprecedented, claims an insistent Rachel Maddow -- providing that you ignore previous examples of filibusters aimed at cabinet nominees.
On her MSNBC show last night, Maddow described GOP use of the filibuster to block Hagel's nomination as seismic in significance and astronomically rare in frequency. Not surprisingly…