By Mark Finkelstein | November 4, 2015 | 6:41 PM EST

Can you imagine the liberal outrage if a Republican called a prominent African-American Dem candidate "Chauncey Gardiner," the simple soul from the Peter Sellers film Being There? The cries of racism might well cost such a hapless Republican his job. 

But don't expect James Carville to pay any price. On today's With All Due RespectCarville said that a frustrated Bush "can't believe that Chauncey Gardiner [laughs] and Trump and all these people are running ahead of him." Given that Carson and Trump are the two front-runners, and that Carson, while brilliant, is soft-spoken, there would seem little doubt that Carville meant his Chauncey crack for Carson.

By Tom Blumer | November 3, 2015 | 5:37 PM EST

As is so often the case with such stories, one can tell how favorable or disappointing a government report on the economy was by whether a story about it is still present at the Associated Press's "Top Business News" page several hours after its release.

Today's news from the Census Bureau on September's factory orders and shipments, released at 10 a.m., was extremely disappointing. Thus, it is utterly unsurprising that Martin Crutsinger's AP story covering that report was not at the "Top Business News" page a mere six hours after its release (it likely came off even earlier, as I didn't check the page until just after 4 p.m.). The AP economics writer's coverage, though bit of an improvement over prior months' efforts, still left important gaping holes.

By Mark Finkelstein | November 3, 2015 | 9:50 AM EST

Who said it? "Get rid of all this corporatism, this corporate welfare . . . I would love to have the government stop this corporate welfare--that's what I want . . . This is a huge racket that's wrecking the country." 

Did you guess Bernie Sanders? Probably not because you read the headline. Yet no one could be blamed for thinking it was Sanders. But indeed, it was Charles Koch, who said it in an interview with Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski that aired on today's Morning Joe. Charles Koch--one of the infamous Koch brothers that the MSM and Dems love to demonize as the epitome of greedy capitalists, the pair that Harry Reid accused of "dishonesty" and being "un-American." 

By Tom Blumer | November 3, 2015 | 12:59 AM EST

Truth, the cinematic attempt to make heroes out of the agenda-driven journalists who produced and broadcast the fraudulent 2004 CBS News story about George W. Bush's Texas Air National Guard service, went into wide distribution this past weekend, with utterly disastrous box-office results.

Readers, in between moments savoring the film's apparent descent into oblivion — though it will almost certainly be revived in left-controlled high school and college classrooms for years to come — really should read William Campenni's writeup at the Daily Signal. It puts the final stake in the heart of any attempt by anyone with an ounce of sense to claim that Dan Rather's and Mary Mapes's 60 Minutes report has any remaining credibility whatsoever. After the jump, let's have some fun looking at the movie's weekend attendance figures.

By Tom Blumer | November 2, 2015 | 10:49 PM EST

On June 30, the Washington Post announced that it would be "compiling a database of every fatal shooting in the United States by a police officer in the line of duty in 2015." The Post has been "tracking more than a dozen details about each killing — including the race of the deceased, the circumstances of the shooting, and whether the person was armed."

The paper's work thus far has been a revealing exercise which should be getting far more attention than it is. I believe would be getting the needed attention if the revelations were different. You see, the analysis of fatal shootings thus far shows that, in layman's terms, the overwhelming majority of them were wholly justified (HT to an Investor's Business Daily editorial).

By Mark Finkelstein | November 1, 2015 | 11:12 AM EST

I took it for granted that a leftist like Bernie Sanders would be opposed to the death penalty. Still, I was truly shocked to see Sanders—not in some throwaway comment on the campaign trail but in prepared remarks on the Senate floor—flatly call the death penalty "murder." On his MSNBC show this morning, Al Sharpton played the clip to illustrate how Sanders is working to differentiate his policy positions from those of Hillary Clinton, who says she supports the death penalty in "rare" cases.

Question: how can we begin to explain the moral compass of liberals like Sanders who call imposing the death penalty on adults duly convicted of heinous crimes "murder," but refer to the killing of innocent, unborn babies as "choice" or other grotesque euphemisms like "women's health?"

By Tom Blumer | October 31, 2015 | 11:58 PM EDT

A Friday evening story at the New York Times covered the Obama administration's decision to "try to block the release of a handful of emails between President Obama and former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton."

In it, reporters Michael D. Shear and Michael S. Schmidt demonstrated that President Obama undoubtedly did not tell the truth in his interview with CBS News's Steve Kroft in a 60 Minutes episode which aired on October 11.

By Tom Blumer | October 31, 2015 | 10:47 PM EDT

On Thursday, the government reported that the nation's economy turned in yet another quarter of poor economic performance, estimating that its gross domestic product grew at an annual rate of 1.5 percent in the third quarter.

The business press almost universally downplayed the news, and told readers that the fourth quarter will be better. No one talked about how much the tepid growth of the past six-plus years since the recession officially ended has been sacrificed in the name of misguided and dangerous Keynesian stimulus. As is so often the case, an editorial at Investor's Business Daily did that, performing a job the press has consistently refused to do.

By Tom Blumer | October 31, 2015 | 9:17 PM EDT

Many of the state cooperative health insurers, or "co-ops," set up under the provisions of the Affordable Care Act, aka Obamacare, have gotten into serious financial trouble quite quickly. Almost half have cracked up completely. Specifically, as noted at Forbes.com on Thursday morning, "[O]f the 24 Obamacare co-ops funded with federal tax dollars, one (Vermont’s) never got approval to sell coverage, a second (CoOportunity) has already been wound down, and nine more will terminate at the end of this year."

Perhaps the most expensive such blowup to date has occurred in New York. An unbylined Associated Press blurb about how New York's co-op will be forced to close its doors in just a month, seen after the jump, is a perfect example demonstrating why the general public may never learn about Obamacare co-ops' track record of miserable failure:

By Tom Blumer | October 30, 2015 | 9:34 PM EDT

People in glass houses shouldn't throw stones. And people who ridicule the level of others' speech patterns should check theirs first.

CNBC didn't do that. Instead, on Thursday, as I noted in a previous NewsBusters post, it childishly rushed out a grade-level evaluation of the Republican presidential candidates' speech patterns during the first three debates, including the Wednesday train wreck it rudely hosted, and created a graphic with the title, "Are you smarter than a GOP candidate?" Payback is sweet (bolds are mine):

By Tom Blumer | October 29, 2015 | 3:50 PM EDT

It would appear that CNBC isn't going to take the criticism of its debate panelists' awful conduct last night lying down.

In what appears to be an all too predictable immature response to the dressing-downs several Republican presidential candidates administered to certain of their moderators as a result of their juvenile behavior and insulting questions — particularly John Harwood and Carl Quintillana — the network has rushed out ratings of the top ten GOP candidates' speech patterns during the first three debates, with an obvious undertone: Ignore these candidates; they're just a bunch of dummies.

By Mark Finkelstein | October 29, 2015 | 8:29 AM EDT

Tuning into Morning Joe today, the question on this NewsBusters' mind was whether—given that MNSBC and CNBC are corporate cousins—Joe Scarborough would have the guts to go after John Harwood. He did. 

In at least three segments this morning, Scarborough criticized Harwood for what he called his "embarrassing" performance as moderator of the GOP debate last night. Scarborough's repeated criticism on Harwood's blatant anti-GOP bias led Joe at one point to ruefully observe "I'm sure I'll get in trouble for saying this."