A Friday afternoon dispatch at the Politico from Carrie Budoff Brown and Jennifer Epstein tells us that "The White House is putting the finishing touches on a post-Labor Day schedule that will send the president to states where he’s still popular."

The list of states where the Politico pair alleges that's the case is quite short: "Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Illinois and California." That's it. Obama, in a situation resembling that of Richard Nixon in the final months of his presidency, when "Tricky Dick" was mocked for being able to find friendly audiences in just a few Southern states, is apparently toxic everywhere else, just in time for midterm elections. Moreover, it didn't take much research to show that the Politico's pair's claim Obama is "still popular" in most of those five states is either false or shaky — especially after considering that such polls are all too often overloaded with Democrat and liberal respondents.

New York Times music writer Jon Caramanica wrote about former Nickelodeon TV star Ariana Grande’s second album last Sunday with the simply inaccurate headline “Staying Safe, Exploring Sassy.” It’s a misleading headline, because Grande is beginning to walk the path to what might be called “the full Xxxtina,” when Christina Aguilera felt the need to “grow up” and sing very overt sexual songs.

Caramanica just grew silly by arguing Grande’s first album last year was some sort of throwback to Fifties “Puritanism,” as if she was singing Annette Funicello songs about pineapple princesses (okay, that was early Sixties):

We've all heard the never-ending cry from liberal Democrats that conservative Republicans dodge diversity by favoring white males as hosts and guests on their television programs to the detriment of people in such groups as women and blacks.

However, in an article on the Reuters news service, writer Chloe Angyal charges that such “liberal lions” as Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert of the Comedy Central cable channel are obviously hypocritical regarding this topic since “their guest rosters more closely resemble a GOP national convention than they do the liberal vision of a diverse and equitable America.”

If there is a terrorist attack on U.S. soil by ISIS, we had better hope that Fox News or New Media outlets don't report it first. Because if they do, based on behavior seen in two stories during the past day, Americans who depend on the establishment press to deliver their news won't find out for hours, if not longer.

The first story concerns news tonight from three different sources — Judicial Watch (HT National Review's The Corner), Breitbart, and Fox News — is that "Islamic terrorist groups are operating in the Mexican border city of Ciudad Juarez and planning to attack the United States with car bombs or other vehicle born improvised explosive devices." The news is six hours old. As of 9:25 EDT, the Associated Press has nothing on these developments, not even the Obama administration's heated denials. The New York Times also had nothing, not even in its "evening briefing." The second concerns Nidal Hasan, the convicted 2009 Fort Hood mass mass murderer.

CNN's John Berman pressed White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest on Friday's New Day over President Obama's eyebrow-raising disclosure that "we don't have a strategy yet" to deal with ISIS inside Syria. When Earnest claimed that "we do have a comprehensive strategy for dealing with" ISIS, especially in Iraq, Berman shot back, "ISIS has been in Syria for quite a long time. How can you have a comprehensive strategy for dealing with ISIS at all if it doesn't include Syria?"

The anchor later wondered, "Did the President just announce to ISIS leaders that he has no intention to strike them with military action in Syria in the next few days or weeks?" Earnest asserted that Mr. Obama's remarks sent "a very clear message to everybody around the world." However, Berman wasn't buying his guest's spin: [video below the jump]

MSNBC’s Krystal Ball substituted for Ronan Farrow as host of his MSNBC show on Friday and remarked with a guest during a segment on the Islamic terror group ISIS that their reported waterboarding of their captives, including the late James Foley, can be blamed on the U.S. detention facility in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba and what happened at Abu Ghraib in Iraq.

After shifting gears from talking about the increased terror alert in the United Kingdom and fears across western Europe that hundreds of their citizens have joined ISIS and could return to commit terrorist attacks, Ball mentioned an article in The Washington Post that reported ISIS captives were waterboarded. She then asked MSNBC terrorism analyst Evan Kohlmann what he thought about this news. [MP3 audio here; Video below]

Some of the country's biggest newspapers avoided highlighting Barack Obama's "we don't have a strategy" comment in their headlines on Friday. The President made the remark in response to questions about how he will deal with Islamic militants in Syria. Yet, although this seemed to be the main takeaway from Thursday's news conference, the New York Times chose this bland headline: "Obama Urges Calm in Face of Crises in Ukraine and Syria." 

USA Today opted to focus on Russia with the banner headline. Regarding the Middle East, the paper redirected: "Poll: Amid foreign crises, more Americans support U.S. action." A smaller box off to the  far left read: "No Strategy Yet in Syria, Obama Says." In the article itself, it wasn't until paragraph eight (on page A4), that writer Susan Page mentioned the comments. 

MSNBC host Alex Wagner and Sam Kass, the personal chef to the Obama family, will marry this weekend in New York with Barack and Michelle Obama in attendance. This prompted a gushing front-pager on Kass in The New York Times on Friday. The headline is “Obamas’ Foodmaster General.”

Times reporter Jennifer Steinhauer wrote Kass “found himself an astounding beneficiary of luck and timing as he blazed a trail of cruciferous vegetables into the first lady’s heart.” He’s now one of “her top policy advisers.” The Times pulled one of those amazingly selective uses of the jump to keep MSNBC off the front page of this cozy story:

Politico's Josh Gerstein was in top keister-covering mode last night in dealing with President Barack Obama's latest stated indication that U.S. foreign policy is adrift.

To him, the President's admission that “We don’t have a strategy yet” was just an "awkward choice of words" and an "inartful phrase." (By the way, over six years after after one of Obama's flaks first used it to defend the then-candidate's flip-flop on DC's strict gun ban, something he originally believed was constitutional until the Supreme Court's ruling in the Heller decision, "inartful" is still not a recognized word. Yet its use continues to spread.) Excerpts from Gerstein's grief-stricken groaner follow the jump (bolds and numbered tags are mine):

On Friday morning, the major broadcast networks were out in full force to defend President Obama after his remarks at a press conference Thursday afternoon in which he said that “we don’t have a strategy yet” in how to militarily address the Islamic terrorist group ISIS in Syria.

Leading the way was NBC’s Today, where co-host Matt Lauer told NBC News political director and moderator of Meet the Press Chuck Todd that “[c]ritics pounced” when Obama made that remark and wondered if they took “his words too literally.” [MP3 audio here; Video below]