2012 Presidential

Our good friend Dan Joseph of our sister site MRCTV is in Charlotte to cover the Democratic Convention. Yesterday he walked around Carolina Fest, a free festival in the Queen City preceding the start of the convention, the theme of which is "We make it possible." Dan talked to street vendors who insisted that, yes, they built their business, without help from the government. Of course there…

Christian eschatology sees Jesus Christ as the central, salvific figure of all of human history. So it's perhaps blasphemously fitting that MSNBC's Chris Matthews sees his messiah as the object of all of American history. "President Obama is the product of our turbulent history, all that came before led to him," Matthews insisted in the closing portion of his "Barack Obama: Making History"…

The Politico, in its report on what turned out to be the center-right's "Empty Chair Day," covered the reaction of one prominent member of organized labor to Clint Eastwood's supposedly horrible (if you believe leftist pundits) speech at the Republican National Convention. If it was really that awful, they would be taking pity on Clint. Instead, they're getting hostile, meaning that the…

Playing to a crowd of Democrats in Charlotte cheering on Democratic operative Chris Matthews as he hosted his MSNBC program, Howard Fineman blurted “I survived Tampa and am now glad to be here in Charlotte,” before he derided the Republican gathering: “That convention was like dropping a bowling ball in a sand box.” (An apparent reference to the lack of a post-convention bounce in the polls for…

ABC reporter Arlette Saenz reported for The Note on Joe Biden’s speech Sunday in the Green Bay area, including this statement: "In Afghanistan, we have lost 1,980 fallen angels as of yesterday, and I’m precise because every single one of those lives deserves to be recognized. Wrong: The U.S. death toll in Afghanistan at the end of August was 2,101. Biden somehow subtracted from the Defense…

Of the three morning shows, only ABC's Good Morning America on Monday highlighted two drunken delegates at the Democratic National Convention, one of whom was forced to leave North Carolina. Fill-in host Lara Spencer touted the story, asserting that "things are already off to a shaky start." Reporter Cecilia Vega explained, "Two California Democratic delegates partied into the wee hours of…

Sunday brought an overload of New York Times columnists, including former reporters, calling the previous week's Republican National Convention a celebration of lies and extremism on abortion and gay marriage. Times columnist and former White House correspondent Maureen Dowd was given more room than usual to rant about Paul Ryan and the Republicans in her Sunday column, "Cruel Conservatives…

Since Wednesday, the Obama-loving media have been working overtime trying to disprove a number of statements made by Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan during their respective speeches at the Republican National Convention in Tampa. On ABC's This Week Sunday, George Will called out Washington Post fact-checker Glenn Kessler for claiming Ryan had mislead Americans about a GM plant closing in Janesville…

Chris Matthews appeared on the Labor Day edition of the Today show to promote his fawning new documentary, Barack Obama: Making History. (The subtitle for MSNBC's special on Romney was much more restrained: "The Making of a Candidate.") The liberal host also insisted that, "from now on," the media will watch Paul Ryan for lies. [See video below. MP3 audio here.] Today reporter Carl…

Bogus media "fact-checking" continues, and the New York Times's Michael Cooper is leading the pack. His Saturday "Political Memo," "Fact-Checkers Howl, but Campaigns Seem Attached to Dishonest Ads," marks Cooper's second foray into the burgeoning genre in two days, focusing on the alleged false statements emanating from Mitt Romney's ads and the Republican National Convention podium. Cooper…

Republican vice presidential nominee Paul Ryan is a Catholic – but not a good enough Catholic in the eyes of the media. Writers, bloggers, and talking heads have hammered Ryan for his supposed “dissent” from Catholic teaching. Journalists have falsely claimed that the bishops “rebuked” Ryan and called his budget “un-Christian.” Writers who usually scorn the Church and its hierarchy fretted…

It's irresistible to play the game of imagining the MSM response had a prominent Republican been caught saying of Barack Obama that "a few years ago this guy would have been carrying our bags."  In the case of a Mitt Romney or Paul Ryan, calls for them to quit the campaign would be echoing from the halls of MSNBC to the shores of the New York Times. But let a Democrat say it, in the person…

The week of the Republican convention found Kossacks reflecting on what they already believed about the party: that its members are plutocratic racists and its vice presidential nominee Paul Ryan is a lying sociopath. As usual, each headline is preceded by the blogger's name or pseudonym.

As the GOP convention wrapped up, the Obama-Biden reelection team sent out a fundraising e-mail Thursday with an appeal from 2004 Democratic nominee John Kerry, claiming that conservatives and Republicans may spend more than 40 times as much money on "smear ads" in 2012 as they did on the "swift boat" ads that challenged Kerry's incessant military heroism narrative and Vietnam soldier-smearing…