The advocacy on display Monday by "CBS Evening News" anchor Katie Couric was almost unimaginable.

In her "Notebook" video posted at CBSNews.com, Couric read a poem fashioned after Clement Clarke Moore's classic "The Night Before Christmas."

Without any regard for hiding her position on healthcare reform legislation currently before Congress, Couric used the coming holidays as an excuse to wax poetic about her wish that Sen. Olympia Snowe (R-Maine) would "save Harry Reid's Christmas with a deal she brought forth" (video embedded below the fold with poem transcript, h/t Story Balloon, file photo):

Without question one of the most vehement, unapologetic Sarah Palin haters on national television is NBC's Norah O'Donnell.

So contemptuous of the former Alaska Governor is O'Donnell that she actually went to a Palin book signing event last week armed with crib notes to attack fans of the outspoken conservative.

Seeing this as the straw that broke the camel's back, Palin documentarian John Ziegler has called for NBC to fire O'Donnell.

In a piece he published at his website, Ziegler outlined his reasons:  

Newsweek's Howard Fineman thinks Barack Obama is a lot like Ronald Reagan.

This humorously comes coincident with MSNBC's Chris Matthews declaring the current White House resident "Carteresque."

Obviously they can't both be right, right?

Of course not, for in the case of "Channeling the Gipper: For inspiration, Obama looks to Reagan," Fineman couldn't be more wrong (h/t Jennifer Rubin):

In the wake of Saturday's Senate vote to move forward with debate on controversial healthcare reform legislation, CNN's John King may have posed one of the best questions asked on any of Sunday's political talk shows:

To get Senator [Mary] Landrieu's vote, just to proceed, just to go across the starting line, language was inserted in the bill that gives her state up to $300 million. To get Senator [Ben] Nelson's vote, [Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid] agreed to drop a request that you take away the antitrust exemptions for insurance companies...[Is healthcare reform] important enough to buy votes?

This marvelous question was asked on Sunday's "State of the Union." In attendance were Democrat Senators Sherrod Brown of Ohio, Michael Bennet of Colorado, and Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire.

Better still, King pointed a finger at President Obama who promised during the campaign "to change the way Washington works" (video embedded below the fold with partial transcript, h/t Breitbart TV):

Chris Matthews appears to have lost that loving feeling for Barack Obama. 

On "The Chris Matthews Show" Sunday, the once smitten MSNBCer called some of Obama's recent mistakes "Carteresque":

In the Carter presidency, the optics were not exactly robust, and Ronald Reagan rode that to a big victory in 1980. Is the Obama White House sending some Carteresque signals these days?

These "signals" included bowing to the Emperor of Japan, getting nothing on his trip to China, and deciding to try terrorists in New York City.

Potentially as surprising as Matthews bringing these issues up was the Washington Post's Anne Kornblut and David Ignatius agreeing with him (video embedded below the fold with transcript):

NBC's "Saturday Night Live" offered viewers a parody movie trailer of the disaster film "2012" Saturday evening.

The premise: former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin and Fox News host Glenn Beck have been elected President and Vice President, and the world is coming to an end as a result.

In an apparent attempt at fairness and balance -- or maybe the real point! -- the "credits" jokingly showed the film was created by the DNC (Democratic National Committee) and authored by MSNBC's Keith Olbermann - "A Political Disaster of Epic Proportions."

"On Election Day 2012, Planet Earth is Going Rogue" (video embedded below the fold, h/t our old friend Ms Underestimated):

NBC's "Saturday Night Live" really went after President Obama in its opening sketch Saturday evening.

Not only that, his policies involving economic stimulus, healthcare reform, and Cash for Clunkers were also exposed as having absolutely no positive or future impact on unemployment.

The setup was Obama, played by Fred Armisen, doing a press conference with Chinese President Hu Jintao, played by Bill Hader.

As Jintao, through interpreter played by Nasim Pedrad, realized how much money the United States owes China, he questioned how we were going to pay them back if Obama's policies "to save money involve spending even more money."

Realizing he's being lied to, Jintao asked Obama to kiss him - "I like to be kissed when someone is doing sex to me!" (video embedded below the fold courtesy Story Balloon):

On Thursday, following news that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) had delayed a vote on cap and trade legislation until next year, the ranking Republican on the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee James Inhofe (R-Okla.) chose to rub it in at Chairwoman Barbara Boxer's (D-Calif.) expense:

The fact that this whole idea on the global warming, I'm glad that's over and gone, done. We won, you lost, get a life. 

With Saturday's healthcare reform vote not going conservatives' way, it seems we all could use a much-needed laugh (video embedded below the fold):

Martha Stewart on Wednesday said former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin is "a dangerous person" and "anyone like that in government is a real problem."

Speaking with HLN's "Showbiz Tonight" producer Jenny D'Attoma, Stewart also said Palin is "very boring" and "confused." 

Ironically, when asked if she has seen any of Palin's recent interviews, Stewart replied without recognizing the hypocrisy, "I wouldn't watch her if you paid me" (video embedded below the fold with transcript, h/t Mediaite):

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) on Saturday said the Senate shouldn't "focus on a man who has been retired for many years and writes a column once in a while."

This comment was directed at Washington Post columnist David Broder whose article to be published Sunday and already available online was harshly criticial of the healthcare bills in both chambers of Congress.

Given Broder's well-known stance as a left-leaning writer, Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) referred to the piece in his opening remarks to Saturday's healthcare legislation debate noting that the Post's "distinguished senior columnist, certainly not a political conservative, expresses his reservation as a citizen about the steps that we could be about to take."

This led Reid to make his disparaging remark moments later (video embedded below the fold, relevant sections at 1:00 and 8:45):

A major charitable event is happening in Little Rock, Arkansas, Saturday, and former Bill Clinton apparently will not be in attendance because MSNBC's Keith Olbermann has politicized it on his "Countdown" program.

As Arkansas News reported hours ago, "Nine hundred people or more will get free medical attention from noon to 7 p.m. at the Statehouse Convention Center."

Unfortunately, according to the liberal website FireDogLake, Clinton has decided not to attend as a result of some of the things Olbermann has done on his program related to this event (h/t Hot Air):

U.S. News and World Report's Bonnie Erbe came down strongly Friday on the $100 million "bribe" given to Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-La.) in the Senate's healthcare reform bill.

What makes this shocking is Erbe's consistently far-left leaning views regularly reported by NewsBusters.  

Readers are advised to strap themselves in tightly, for the following blog posting by Erbe is quite a departure from her normal liberal views:

CNN's John King on Thursday claimed Attorney General Eric Holder intentionally avoided Sen. Lindsey Graham's "stumping" question during the previous day's Senate Judiciary Committtee hearing because he didn't want to admit that trying Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and other 9/11 suspects in a criminal courtroom is indeed precedent setting.

As NewsBusters reported Wednesday, Holder appeared stumped when Graham asked, "Can you give me a case in United States history where a enemy combatant caught on a battlefield was tried in civilian court?"

Speaking with WOR radio's Steve Malzberg Thursday, King said, "He knew the answer to the question. He just wasn't going to say it because...he did not want to be the one saying this is the first time we've ever done this" (15-minute audio available here, relevant section at 6:50, partial transcript follows along with embedded video of Graham-Holder exchange):

E-mail messages between high-ranking scientists appear to indicate a conspiracy by some of the world's leading global warming alarmists to falsify temperature data in order to exaggerate global averages.

Those involved allegedly include: James Hansen, Director of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies; Michael Mann, famous for Mann's "Hockey Stick"; Gavin Schmidt, NASA climate modeler, and; Stephen Schneider, Stanford professor and Al Gore confidant.

A statement released Friday by the alarmist website RealClimate has confirmed that e-mail servers at the University of East Anglia's Climate Research Unit (CRU) in Norwich, England, were hacked recently with contents illegally made available over the Internet. 

Although the authenticity of all these e-mail messages has yet to be proven, what's currently available points to a coordinated attempt to manipulate climate data by those directly involved in advancing the theory of anthropogenic global warming.

New Zealand's Investigate magazine reported Friday that it has verified these e-mail messages are indeed real:

UPDATE AT END OF POST: Gore prominently quotes Deuteronomy, "I’m offering you the choice of life or death."

The cover of Nobel Laureate Al Gore's new book "Our Choice: A Plan to Solve the Climate Crisis" was intentionally doctored to exaggerate the appearance of hurricanes in the northern hemisphere as well as reduce the amount of ice present in the Arctic.

Maybe even more ominously, Florida was so diminished it's almost totally gone.

As reported by Florida State University hurricane expert Ryan Maue at the website Watts Up With That, the truth was apparently inconvenient for the Global Warmingist-in-Chief (h/t NBer Blonde):

If a prominent white man said all white men in Congress should vote for or against a pending piece of legislation, what do you think the media firestorm would be like?

As you ponder, consider that Jesse Jackson on Wednesday told a reception held by the Congressional Black Caucus, “You can’t vote against healthcare and call yourself a black man.”

Although the comment was first reported by The Hill at 5:42 PM EST Wednesday, LexisNexis and Google news searches identified astonishingly little media coverage.

Here's The Hill's report:

The attacks on former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin took an interesting turn Wednesday when MSNBC's Chris Matthews suggested that racism is at the heart of her support.

Much like mainstream media coverage of this year's Tea Parties, Matthews and "Hardball" guests Norah O'Donnell and Salon's Joan Walsh made an issue of how "white" the crowd was at a Palin book signing event in Michigan.

"This is a largely white -- almost no minorities in this crowd," reported MSNBC's O'Donnell live from the scene.

Matthews reiterated, "Well, they look like a white crowd to me," later claiming, "I think there is a tribal aspect to this thing, in other words, white vs. other people."

Walsh added, "I think you`ve got that same kind of paranoid tea party, maybe even birther crowd that talks about the Constitution, without really understanding what they are talking about" (video embedded below the fold with transcript, h/t Greg Hengler via NBer Thomas Stewart):

During Wednesday's Justice Department oversight hearing by the Senate Judiciary Committee, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) stumped Attorney General Eric Holder on what should have been a fairly routine question for America's top law enforcement official.

Maybe more surprisingly, NPR reported it at its website.

As NPR's Frank James noted, "The exchange started with Graham stumping Holder with a question one would have thought the attorney general would have been prepared for."

I quite agree (video embedded below the fold with partial transcript, h/t Steve Malzberg):

The Left and the media may hate her, but Sarah Palin is a ratings sensation.

Such appears to be the case given the announcement that Monday's episode of "Oprah" was the most watched for the daytime talk queen in two years.

Palin even drew more viewers than pop singer Whitney Houston when she sat with Oprah earlier this year.

Just imagine all the sighs and rolling eyes in newsrooms from coast to coast.

As THR.com reported Wednesday (h/t TVNewser):

For the second time in only six days protesters have emerged at venues where Nobel Laureate Al Gore was scheduled to speak about global warming.

Vandals on Thursday spray-painted graffiti on the walls of Keller Auditorium in Portland, Oregon, just hours before the former Vice President will talk about his favorite bogeyman.

This follows Saturday's protests against Gore in Boca Raton, Florida. 

The Oregonian reported moments ago: