Double Standards

Brokaw: Benghazi? We Really Needed Investigation of Iraq Invasion and Non-existent WMD
By Mark Finkelstein | October 23, 2015 | 10:06 AM EDT

Say, Tom, maybe you could lead a movement to retroactively impeach George W. Bush . . . On today's Morning Joe, Tom Brokaw, downplayed the significance of Benghazi, suggesting instead that what we really needed was "a big congressional investigation about the decision to go to war in the first place in Iraq for weapons of mass destruction that didn't exist."

Brokaw also underlined that more lives were lost in terrorist attacks on the US Marine barracks in Lebanon, the USS Cole and Khobar Towers than in Benghazi.  Brokaw made a point to mention that the attack on the Marine barracks happened during Ronald Reagan's presidency, but failed to disclose that the USS Cole and Khobar Towers attacks happened during the presidency of Hillary Clinton's husband.  Simple slip by Brokaw, no doubt.

Carl Bernstein Accuses Benghazi Committee of McCarthyism; ‘Reckless’ ‘Group of Demagogues’
By Curtis Houck | October 23, 2015 | 1:40 AM EDT

Roughly a minute after the 11-hour Benghazi Committee hearing with Hillary Clinton concluded on Thursday night, CNN’s Anderson Cooper 360 turned to political commentator Carl Bernstein, who drooled over Clinton’s performance while comparing Republicans to Joseph McCarthy and his House Un-American Committee for concocting an “abusive” hearing.In the next hour on CNN Tonight, Bernstein trotted out the same comparison against “a group of demagogues” while Hillary “did great” in using “the facts at her command.”

Trudeaumania Part Deux Grips the Associated Press
By Tom Blumer | October 23, 2015 | 1:02 AM EDT

The folks at the Associated Press aren't even trying to disguise how pleased they are after Canada's most recent elections swept the Liberal Party into power after almost a decade in the wilderness.

They're claiming that victorious Prime Minister Justin Trudeau seems destined to ignite the second installment of "Trudeaumania," the late-1960s press anointing which accompanied his father Pierre into that same position. It's quite clear that the AP is uninterested in informing readers about how awful Pierre Trudeau's actual record was. They instead want readers to believe that happy, reality-avoiding leftist days are here again.

ABC Bemoans Money Spent on Benghazi Committee; GOP Unable ‘to Draw Blood’ from Hillary
By Curtis Houck | October 22, 2015 | 11:13 PM EDT

Suddenly worried about government spending, the Thursday edition of ABC’s World News Tonight featured anchor David Muir complaining on three separate occasions about the cost of the House Select Committee on Benghazi while chief White House correspondent Jonathan Karl observed that Republicans “really didn’t succeed” in “draw[ing] blood” from Hillary Clinton.

CNN Goes Bananas for Hillary ‘Keeping Her Cool’; Blumenthal Questions Are ‘a Waste’ and ‘Baffling’
By Curtis Houck | October 22, 2015 | 5:54 PM EDT

Reacting to the first round of questioning in Thursday’s Benghazi hearing, CNN hosts and panelists couldn’t help but trip over themselves in gushing over how Hillary Clinton was “very confidence” in “keeping her cool” while answering “utterly baffling” questions about confidante Sidney Blumenthal that the American people supposedly do not “really care about” and see as “a waste.”

AP's Crutsinger Fails to Investigate How Jobless Claims Stay Low With Slow Hiring
By Tom Blumer | October 22, 2015 | 4:13 PM EDT

If a Republican or conservative was in the White House, the Associated Press's Martin Crutsinger would have found a reason to be unimpressed in his dispatch today about how low initial unemployment claims continue to be, even as hiring has been slowing down. (Ideally, reporters should just relay the facts and leave the theorizing out of their stories, but that ship has sadly long since sailed.)

Crutsinger exhibited no real curiosity because a Democrat is in the White House. Therefore, it's left to New Media to at least get the alternative ideas out there; a contributor at the contrarian blog Zero Hedge did that several days ago. After the jump, readers will find most of Crutsinger's report covering the Department of Labor's initial claims release today, and a healthly chunk of the just-mentioned Zero Hedge analysis.

NYT's Steinhauer Laments Success of GOP Freedom Caucus: 'Gerrymandered Districts...Web of Conservative Media'
By Clay Waters | October 21, 2015 | 12:40 PM EDT

New York Times political reporter Jennifer Steinhauer filed "Influence of Freedom Caucus Ripples Through Washington" for Tuesday's front page, a long hostile introduction to a page of label-heavy profiles of five congressmen from the Freedom Caucus. Steinhauer's tone was resentful of the success of the new wave of conservative congressmen, alleging they had achieved their goals through "highly gerrymandered districts" and an "intricately coordinated web of conservative media" (as opposed to the coordinated web of liberal media consisting of ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, the New York Times, and the Washington Post) and had made it "much harder to get things done" in Washington.

Networks Cheer Leftist Victory in Canada; Trashed Conservative Wins in Israel, UK
By Curtis Houck | October 20, 2015 | 9:57 PM EDT

On Tuesday night, the “big three” of ABC, CBS, and NBC applauded the victory Monday night by the leftist Liberal Party in Canada and leader Justin Trudeau, whom they declared to be the country’s “young, new leader” possessing “a little northern star power.” In contrast, when looking at reelection victories earlier in the year by the right-leaning David Cameron in the United Kingdom and Benjamin Netanyahu in Israel, the networks were far less kind and chastised the pair for an “undercurrent of nastiness” and “hard-line rhetoric” coming “at a price.”

NYT's Rudoren Shifts Stabbing Blame From Murderous Palestinians to Israel-Fueled 'Frustration'
By Clay Waters | October 18, 2015 | 5:49 PM EDT

Jodi Rudoren, the New York Times Jerusalem bureau chief whose reporting is heavily slanted toward the Palestinian cause and hostile toward Israel, made Sunday's front page with "East Jerusalem, Bubbling Over With Despair – The Frustration Behind a Series of Stabbings," which blamed Israel-fueled "frustration and alienation" for the "uprising." Rudoren's twisted priorities are evident both in the headline and her tone. Rudoren also discusses the "ugly barrier" built by Israel without mentioning all the Jewish lives it has saved from Palestinian terror.

Spinning for Dems, NY Times' Healy Accuses GOP of Sounding 'Dark Notes' in Focus on Substantive Issues
By Clay Waters | October 17, 2015 | 5:34 PM EDT

Reporter Patrick Healy made the front of Friday's New York Times marveling at how differently Republicans and Democrats see America, in "One Nation, Under Debate. Or Are There 2?" Healy, who is hypersensitive to the political strengths of Hillary Clinton, portrayed the Republican presidential field as dour and negative, while his strange choice of cultural commentators for a political story -- playwrights Christopher Durang and Tony Kushner -- betrayed a left-wing cultural perspective.

MSNBC Uses Long-Discredited Map Showing 70 Years of 'Palestine' Land Shrinkage
By Tom Blumer | October 17, 2015 | 12:29 PM EDT

Based on a map presented during a recent MSNBC broadcast, I'm left wondring why there's all this hand-wringing over a "two state solution" in the Middle East.

After all, according to that MSNBC map and the host of the program involved, "Palestine" has been around for almost 70 years, existing since 1946 (HT Sooper Mexican at the Right Scoop):

Tapper Starts Soft; Asks Hillary What She’s Learned about Bill ‘You Didn’t Know 40 Years Ago’
By Curtis Houck | October 16, 2015 | 5:45 PM EDT

Finally getting his chance to interview Hillary Clinton on Friday’s The Lead, CNN anchor Jake Tapper didn’t exactly measure up as while he did what other reporters failed to do in asking Clinton about her relationship with Sidney Blumenthal, he cozied up to her on the recent marking of her and Bill’s 40th wedding anniversary plus sarcastically asking he could “get your e-mail address.”