The morning after House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy shocked Congress by announcing he was dropping out of the race to become the next Speaker of the House, CBS This Morning and NBC’s Today sprinted over to their analysts to tear into the “really pathetic” conservatives for creating a “chaotic” situation for the House that shows they’re “impossible to run.”
Political Groups
By Tom Blumer | October 9, 2015 | 10:43 AM EDT
Drew Magary is a regular columnist at GQ.com.
Apparently Magary, his editors and the publication's management have forgotten or don't care about what the "G" in GQ is supposed to stand for. Both the headline and the content of the writer's latest column flunk the "gentlemen's" test.
By Mark Finkelstein | October 9, 2015 | 10:34 AM EDT
Who is taking more glee from the current Republican turmoil over the selection of the next Speaker: Democrats or the MSM—or do I repeat myself?
Today's Morning Joe featured a clip from Andrea Mitchell's interview of Ben Carson in which she asked: "what does this just say about the Republican brand and the Republican party. Can it survive after this kind of chaos?" Wishful thinking, Andrea?
Will Press Cover State Dept. Envoy Declaring Russia's Bombing Shows Obama's Syria Policy Is Working?
By Tom Blumer | October 8, 2015 | 5:15 PM EDT It seems more than fair to say that establishment press coverage of the deteriorating situation in Syria has been much lighter than what we'd see if a Republican or conservatives was in the Oval Office. Additionally, what has been reported in the admittedly complicated situation has been confusing at best and misleading at worst.
There was a moment of disconcerting clarity today which, if reported, should disturb even those Americans who only have a vague understanding of what's going on in that country. As reported by Tim Mak and Nancy A. Youssef at The Daily Beast:
By Tom Blumer | October 8, 2015 | 3:39 PM EDT
Did you know that the "The Gun Lobby Rewrote the Second Amendment"?
No, really. Even though not a single word contained in that amendment has changed in over 220 years, you should believe it because former Obama administration official Cass Sunstein said so at Bloomberg View on Wednesday.
By Mark Finkelstein | October 8, 2015 | 8:36 AM EDT
For weeks now, Joe Scarborough has been expressing befuddlement over Ben Carson's appeal. It boiled over on today's Morning Joe, as Scarborough went on an extended anti-Carson rant.
Scarborough unleashed after clips were played from town halls in Iowa and New Hampshire in which Republican voters expressed strong support for the notion of Carson as a qualified president. Calling Carson unqualified to be president, Joe railed that he'd seen people like Carson on school boards who got into trouble because they were in "over their heads."
By Tom Blumer | October 7, 2015 | 7:02 PM EDT
Over at the Associated Press, Andrew Taylor, contrary to the wire service's usual practice, referenced a pre-official Congressional Budget Office report to tout the federal government's "improved" budget deficit. The CBO estimates that the deficit, which won't become official until the Treasury Department releases its final Monthly Treasury Statement of the fiscal year in the next week or two, will come in at $435 billion.
Predictably, Taylor didn't disclose three facts he could easily have relayed in his brief report's available space, instead choosing to create artificial drama over deadlines which are three weeks and two months away, respectively:
By Tom Blumer | October 5, 2015 | 10:28 PM EDT
Items found at the Associated Press, the New York Times and the Washington Post, in reporting that President Obama plans to visit Roseburg, Oregon later this week, have all failed to report that community leaders have said that his visit is not welcome.
The 4:10 p.m. PT (7:10 PM ET) entry at a running timeline at AP announced that "Barack Obama will travel to Oregon this week to visit privately with families of the victims of last week's shooting at a community college." None of the four previous items in the timeline as of 9:00 PM ET tonight mentions that town leaders, who believe they are appropriately expressing the community's sentiments, would prefer that he stay away.
By Tom Blumer | October 5, 2015 | 4:17 PM EDT
Poor Gary Legum at Salon.com. How dare supporters of the right to keep and bear arms as clearly defined in the Constitution's Second Amendment push back against the gun control movement's cynical exploitation of Thursday's Roseburg, Oregon massacre?
Legum is outraged that "The right tells us (again) to ignore the elephant in the room." He must mean the fact that the area in question at Umpqua Community College was a "posted" gun-free zone with only unarmed security guards, right? Of course not. Legum is upset over Americans' "irrational attachment ... to weaponry" — so upset that he descended into profanity and name-calling that would likely end his career forever if he were a right-wing commentator.
By Tom Blumer | October 4, 2015 | 11:11 AM EDT
Venezuela's Nicolas Maduro presides over a country which is falling apart thanks to the socialist policies of his government and that of his predecessor Hugo Chavez. The Economist describes the period since Chavez took over in 1998 as that of "authoritarian misrule" characterized by "by shortages of everything from poultry to pharmaceuticals, by inflation approaching 200% and by rampant corruption and crime."
It also cites the country's "dwindling cash reserves." Given the situation, the fact that a U.S.-based PR firm has recently and eagerly taken on the task of trying to make Maduro look good should be seen as appalling. But that hasn't been the case. The apparent silence of some of this PR firm's leftist clients arguably indicates that they tacitly support obvious oppression as long as the one engaging in it is a socialist. What little press coverage there has been of this firm's association with Maduro has been neutral to mildly laudatory.
By Michael McKinney | October 1, 2015 | 5:03 PM EDT
Chris Matthews on Thursday, filling in for Andrea Mitchell on Andrea Mitchell Reports, interviewed Congressman Jason Chaffetz. Rather than discussing the current investigation, which the Congressman leads, into Planned Parenthood's finances, Matthews grilled Chaffetz on his opinion of the stillborn footage included in a Center for Medical Progress video. He also lectured Chaffetz to watch more Hardball.
By Tom Blumer | September 30, 2015 | 11:59 PM EDT
Apparently, the establishment press is waiting for its marching orders on how to handle what an Investor's Business Daily editorial has already called a "scandal."
This one's a joint effort involving Hillary Clinton, Sidney Blumenthal, a recently deceased former CIA operative named Tyler Drumheller who worked with Blumenthal — and CBS News. As Mark Hemingway at the Weekly Standard reported Tuesday afternoon (i.e., now approaching two overnight news cycles ago), "Drumheller, the former chief of the CIA’s clandestine service in Europe who was working directly with Blumenthal as a member of Clinton’s spy network, was concurrently working as a consultant to CBS News and its venerable news program 60 Minutes." IBD's question, reacting to Hemingway's report: "Who is more corrupt, Clinton or the mainstream media?"