Appearing on Tuesday's The Ed Show, MSNBC political analyst Jonathan Alter urged both liberals - euphemistically calling them "progressives" - and non-liberals to support President Obama's economic plan and advised Obama to "fight, fight, fight," and argue that Republican opposition would mean they are "standing in the way of you getting a job."
After host Ed Schultz asked Alter about the GOP response to Obama's plan, the MSNBC analyst soon appealed to Americans to support the bill:
Apparently the media civility police have become so sensitive to any slight of President Obama that MSNBC host Andrea Mitchell actually invented one such controversy out of thin air during her 1 p.m. ET hour show on Thursday. [Audio available here]
Speaking to Obama advisor Melody Barnes, Mitchell declared: "John Boehner today just slammed the President and said, you know, that the American people shouldn't be forced to watch some politician they don't want to listen to and frankly, most of them would rather watch a football game. Is that disrespectful?"
Tonight Brian Williams will moderate, along with Politico's John F. Harris, the GOP presidential candidate debate at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library. If recent performances by the NBC Nightly News anchor are an indication, candidates (particularly those favored by the Tea Party) should recognize his hostility to their agenda and be prepared for a number of topics and questions from the left.
Ever since its emergence, Williams has undercut the Tea Party, its champions within the GOP, and its cause of fiscal conservatism. At the same time, Williams has heralded its chief opponent Barack Obama.
Update: Williams incessantly peppers Republicans with questions from the left during debate.
(video after the jump)
If we gave out a prize for the media personality who was the biggest drama queen over the non-scandal regarding the disagreement about when President Obama should address a joint session of Congress, I'd nominate Mediaite's Tommy Christopher, who yesterday insisted that "Speaker John Boehner Should Resign For His Unprecedented Insult to the President":
Speaker John Boehner politely suggesting that President Obama can be accommodated to give an address to a joint session of Congress a day later than the date he originally requested is "contemptuous," "cynical" and "craven" to the New York Times editorial board.
In their top editorial headlined, "Oh, Grow Up," the Times childishly whined about Speaker John Boehner's "unprecedented" request.
MSNBC's Richard Wolffe went there. The political analyst for the Lean Forward network actually played the race card in his analysis of why the Republican Speaker of the House John Boehner did not accept Barack Obama's big foot move to deliver a speech to Congress on the same night as a GOP presidential debate, as he pondered: "it could be, let's face it, the color of his skin."
Appearing on Wednesday's edition of The Last Word with Lawrence O'Donnell, Wolffe made the following accusation of racism:
(video after the jump)
CBS's Bill Plante hyped the supposedly "testy confrontation" between President Obama and Speaker Boehner on Thursday's Early Show over scheduling a presidential address to Congress: "This may prove that there is no argument too petty in today's Washington." By contrast, on Wednesday's CBS Evening News, Norah O'Donnell placed more blame on Obama for giving Boehner only a "15-minute heads-up."
Plante began with his "petty" line during his report just after the beginning of the 7 am Eastern hour, and added that "it was the timing of the President's speech that became the subject of a testy confrontation between the President and the Speaker, and the Speaker won." An on-screen graphic trumpeted the "speech spat: Obama & Boehner spar over jobs address."
"Speaker Says No, So Obama Delays Speech" is how The New York Times's September 1 front page headline spun the short squabble over the timing of President Obama's upcoming speech before Congress on his job creation plan. "Spat Over Which Day to Address Economy," added a subheadline.
The online version opted for a headline that went lighter on the loaded language: "Obama Moves Jobs Speech After Skirmish With Boehner."
For their part, Times writers Helene Cooper and Jackie Calmes ginned up the perpetual lament of partisan discord in Washington, before going on to portray President Obama as the bigger man for amending his initial wish to speak to Congress next Tuesday at 8 p.m. Eastern:
I sure hope Washington Post columnist E.J. Dionne as well as other unapologetic Obama-loving media members were watching MSNBC's "Morning Joe" Thursday.
After Mika Brzezinski read a snippet of Dionne's "Obama's Paradox Problem" wherein he basically blamed all that ails the nation on GOP obstruction, Joe Scarborough accurately noted, "the President owned – OWNED! – Washington, D.C., in 2009 and 2010" (video follows with transcript and commentary):
On CBS's Sunday Morning, CBS's Anthony Mason bizarrely compared top Republicans to Soviet autocrats during an interview of President Obama. After claiming that there was a "Cold War chill" between the two parties in Washington, Mason asked Obama, "Margaret Thatcher famously said when Gorbachev took power in Russia, 'I can do business with this man.' Can you do business with the Republican leadership?" [audio clip available here; video can be downloaded here]
The journalist asked mostly softball questions in the excerpts of the interview shown during the lead segment of the 9 am Eastern hour program. He first asked about the Democrat about his new armored bus: "How do you like your new bus?" The correspondent followed up by stating that the vehicle had a "slightly Darth Vader quality to it."
As NewsBusters has been reporting, the Obama-loving media have largely been gushing and fawning over the current White House resident taking a vacation on Martha's Vineyard as the economy appears to be heading into a double-dip recession.
Giving an interesting insight into the President's decision to not call Congress back from its summer break to tackle the problems facing the nation was New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd who wrote Sunday:
Sometimes I wonder how liberal media members could possibly live in the same country as I do and hold such startlingly absurd ideas about it.
Take for example Fareed Zakaria who on the CNN program bearing his name this Sunday is going to tell viewers that America would likely still have a AAA credit rating if we had a parliamentary system of government with a prime minister rather than a president (video follows with transcript and commentary):