2012 Presidential

Mitt Romney recently told CBS’s Scott Pelley that a leader would “say which of those things that you should take out of the budget that are no longer essential,” and when pressed to be specific, Romney nominated "the subsidy for PBS,” and subsidies for Amtrak, the NEA, and the NEH. This raises one obvious question. In moderating tonight's first general election debate of 2012, can longtime PBS…

Jay Leno again waded deeply into presidential politics on Tuesday evening. Commenting on Vice President Joe Biden's "middle class has been buried" gaffe, the NBC Tonight Show host said during his opening monologue, "I’m sorry, which candidate is he campaigning for? I’m confused" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

All Clint Eastwood wanted to convey at the Republican convention “is that maybe our government would be as fiscally responsible as he is,” comedian/actor Tom Dreesen, a friend of Eastwood’s, explained Friday night on CBS’s Late Show. “And that’s all he came to say.” David Letterman asked Dreesen, who has a role in Eastwood’s new movie, Trouble with the Curve, about Eastwood’s much-ridiculed…

The media are out in force Tuesday evening trying to convince people that the 2007 video of Barack Obama revealed by the Daily Caller is old news and nothing that should concern anybody. Doing her part is Salon editor Joan Walsh who quickly published a rebuttal entitled "Right-wing Racial Panic: Hannity and Carlson hype a 2007 Obama video and prove they're having an ethnic nervous breakdown":

Politico edged ever closer towards total parody on Tuesday with a headline that seriously wondered, "Joe Biden: Sex symbol?" Senior Washington correspondent Jonathan Allen gushed, "Joe Biden’s bringing sexy back — to the Medicare-eligible set." The journalist, who touts his "National Press Club’s Sandy Hume Award for Excellence in Political Journalism," rhapsodized, "The vice president, who…

The day before Wednesday's presidential debate, CNN hosted liberal journalist Carole Simpson to give her take on the event. Not surprisingly, she laughed at Mitt Romney while praising President Obama. "Romney is practicing zingers. He's not very funny," Simpson mocked Romney, before laughing. What did she say for President Obama? "I think he's much more comfortable in his skin."  [Video…

CNN reported a new bombshell in the ongoing Libya fiasco on Monday night, while the networks had already moved on from the story. CNN's Erin Burnett disclosed that "key intelligence" was left out of the post-Libya narrative given to the American public. The networks made no mention of Libya all day Monday and through Tuesday morning after being late to new developments in the story.   "[T]…

The sky is falling, Mitch McConnell warns. Correction: the sky is falling, Mitch McConnell warns, according to Rachel Maddow. Big difference. (video after page break)

Talk about missing the elephant (or is it donkey?) in the room – on Tuesday's CBS This Morning, Nancy Cordes reported that Senator John Kerry is "playing Mitt Romney in mock debates" with President Obama before Wednesday's debate. But she didn't once mention that Kerry's debate skills didn't help him in 2004, when he lost a presidential race to President George W. Bush. Cordes did note that…

The New York Times's Sunday Styles section offered some hard-hitting journalism about the toned-up and good-looking First Couple, complete with fabulous photos. Joyce Purnick mock-criticized Michelle Obama for looking so "toned and elegant" in "(Psst: We Feel Bad About Our Arms.)" Text box: "It's time to face the truth: we don't all look like the first lady." I had expected to keep mum about…

As of 2 PM ET, various searches at the national web site of the Associated Press, aka the Administration's Press (on "furious"; on "Univision"), Reuters ("furious"; "fast and furious"; "univision"), and United Press International ("furious"; "Univision") indicate that the three wire services have given no coverage to reports from Univision exposing the wider geographic scope and far more fatal…

There’s that clichéd saying of “where’s there smoke, there’s fire.”  Some in the media should have heeded that advice since a plurality of Americans sees a bias in the polling conducted between President Obama and Governor Romney.  Oh, and, by the way, this information comes from a Daily Kos/SEIU poll, so it's hardly a right-wing source. Justin Sink of The Hill wrote today that: 

In their continuing push to rig the election for Barack Obama, none of the three broadcast networks – ABC, CBS, or NBC – devoted a single second of coverage to Univision’s politically devastating  investigative report about the Obama Administration’s lethal gunwalking scandal, Fast and Furious. Media Research President Brent Bozell reacted: "“This is another example of the media deliberately…

The latest cover story in the New York Times Book Review is a long, pseudo-erudite bashing by Mark Lilla of a conservative book, marinaded in Lilla's selective view of the history of Progressivism in the United States. Lilla, humanities professor at Columbia University, lambastes Charles Kesler's "I Am The Change – Barack Obama and the Crisis of Liberalism." The text box portrayed conservatives…