2012 Presidential

Apparently the Democratically controlled Senate miraculously passed a budget a mere two weeks ago, yet no media sources reported it. Until, that is, MSNBC contributor Karen Finney. The former DNC Communications Director made this laughable assertion on the August 15 Martin Bashir program she was substitute-hosting. In a back-and-forth debate with RNC Communications Director Sean Spicer,…

There were some stark contrasts on the campaign trail in Wednesday's New York Times. After Vice President Joe Biden warned a racially mixed south Virginia audience of the Republican ticket: "They're going to put y'all back in chains." A five-paragraph brief on Biden's comments by Rebecca Berg made page A14 Wednesday, including a brief quote of Mitt Romney's counterattack on the Obama camp in…

Beginning an otherwise positive story on Wednesday's NBC Today about vice presidential candidate Paul Ryan's intense exercise regimen, P90X, correspondent Kelly O'Donnell managed to work in this jab: "He's doing a workout you've probably seen all over late night TV. Call it extreme. And we're not talking about his politics here." [Listen to the audio or watch the video after the jump]

Maureen Dowd brings her brand of sour sarcasm to bear on Mitt Romney's vice presidential pick Paul Ryan in her Wednesday New York Times column "When Cruelty Is Cute": "Who better to rain misery upon the heads of millions of Americans?" I’d been wondering how long it would take Republicans to realize that Paul Ryan is their guy. He’s the cutest package that cruelty ever came in. He has a…

Wednesday's CBS This Morning did its best to spin Vice President Joe Biden's "he's going to put y'all back in chains" slam of Mitt Romney and even forwarded the Obama campaign's own talking points on the controversial line. Both Anthony Mason and open Obama supporter Gayle King inserted language that the Vice President didn't even use in his original speech on Tuesday. During an interview of…

Andrea Mitchell's Freudian slip was showing on her MSNBC show this afternoon. Mitchell's moment of unintentional honesty came during a discussion with Chris Cillizza of Joe Biden's ugly remark yesterday to a largely African-American audience that Mitt Romney would "put y'all back in chains." As noted here, Capehart defended Biden on Morning Joe today, claiming he had "nothing to apologize…

Self-absorbed New York Times columnist David Brooks is famous for his insipid belief that Barack Obama's pant crease meant that he'd be "a very good president," now it looks as though the Washington Post has decided to join him in sartorial absurdity by dispatching reporter Katherine Boyle to write a 700-word piece pondering the meaning of Paul Ryan's suit size. Is this the beginning of a…

If you thought the Democrats would be satisfied with the fact that a solid phalanx of liberals have been chosen to moderate the presidential (and vice-presidential) debates, you would be wrong. Now they want to dictate what questions will be forbidden from being asked at the debates. I kid you not. The Politico reports on the question that the Democrats want to make taboo: Some Democratic…

Was Soledad O'Brien borrowing from liberal Talking Points Memo again? She was caught red-handed doing so Monday night, and her challenge to Romney's budget on Wednesday's Starting Point seemed awfully similar to TPM's take on the matter. O'Brien not only echoed TPM's liberal criticisms of Romney's budget, but featured a Fox News clip that TPM quoted from the heart of its piece titled "Paul…

Some Biden gaffes easily get papered over by the media. Others, like yesterday's racially insensitive remarks, are too big to ignore. And that's precisely when the dutiful Obama/Biden acolytes at MSNBC go into full spin mode, defending the indefensible. Take Ed Schultz. Following Biden’s controversial crack before a largely African-American gathering that Mitt Romney will unchain Wall Street…

In an interview with Republican National Committee chair Reince Priebus on Wednesday's NBC Today, co-host Savannah Guthrie slammed Paul Ryan's proposed budget: "And the Ryan budget makes some very hard decisions and has some huge spending cuts....But how can you justify in the Ryan budget defense spending that stays flat and then giving a massive tax cut, which predominantly benefits the…

The bias of the nation's top political reporters in favor of President Barack Obama is so obvious that just 18 percent of the American public believe that journalists are favoring his challenger, Republican Mitt Romney. In a poll conducted by Rasmussen Research, a significant majority (59 percent) of those surveyed said the media have treated Obama better than Romney. The rest were not sure.

Jesus Christ would favor a tax rate as little as 50 percent and as high as 100 percent. So really, President Obama's preferred tax rates are a bargain. That's one of the big "idea" of Erika Christakis's August 14 Time magazine Ideas blog post, "Is Paul Ryan's Budget 'Un-Christian'?" Christakis has a master's in education but apparently hasn't a clue about exegeting Scripture, nor does she…

Of the three morning shows on Wednesday, only CBS acknowledged the racial tinge of Vice President Joe Biden telling a mostly black crowd that Republicans will "put y'all back in chains." ABC's Good Morning America, instead, tried to explain away and provide context for the Democrat. NBC's Today vaguely alluded to GOP concerns about the remark, but didn't mention race. (On Tuesday, the CBS…