Blogger: Limbaugh ‘Distracted the Masses’ While the Rich Stole
When did Ronald Reagan’s tenure as president of the United States end? Officially, on January 20, 1989, but Washington Monthly blogger D. R. Tucker posits that in a sense Reagan stayed in office well after that. In a Saturday post, Tucker asserted that in 1988, some right-wing “ideologues” sought to “artificially extend the Reagan administration past its constitutionally limited time by propping…
Schieffer: Lack of Collegiality a Greater Danger Than Terrorism
Friday morning, Kyle Drennen at NewsBusters covered retiring Face the Nation host Bob Schieffer's appearance on CBS This Morning. Schieffer went into the same predictable whines seemingly every retiring establishment press reporter does as they're about to leave: there's too much money in politics, we can't control the news like we used to, congressional gridlock has never been worse, blah-blah-…
The Hill: 'Washington Is Ready to Spend'; Doesn't Mention How Much
Facts are such inconvenient things. Especially financial facts and figures.
On Tuesday, Rebecca Shabad at the Hill composed a 34-paragraph report entitled "Washington is ready to spend." Really? When have Congress or the White House not been ready to spend? Oh, I get it. She really means that they're getting ready to spend more. How much more? Readers will search in vain for anything beyond a…
Daily Beast Writer: Gay Marriage Could Be a ‘Liberal Wedge Issue’
A recent Gallup poll found that 31 percent of Americans self-identify as social liberals, and that an equal percentage call themselves social conservatives -- the first time since Gallup began conducting such surveys in 1999 that conservatives haven’t outnumbered liberals. On Tuesday, pundit Michael Tomasky seized on this development as an indication that Republicans no longer will be able to use…
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ABC Ignores Criticism of Obama Admin. Removing Cuba from Terror List
On Friday's World News Tonight, ABC's David Muir avoided mentioning the critics as he reported on the Obama administration removing Cuba from the list of state sponsors of terrorism. Instead, Muir spotlighted how "President Obama [told] us back in December his plans to restore diplomatic ties with the Cuban government," and that during a January 2015 visit to the island country, "the children of…
NPR Bewails Texas's 'Unqualified No' to Medicaid Expansion
Friday's Morning Edition on NPR did its best to try to promote the liberal cause of expanding Medicaid in Texas. Wade Goodwyn lined up six soundbites from pro-expansion talking heads, versus only two from former Texas Governor Rick Perry, an opponent. Goodwyn played up that "in hating the Affordable Care Act, the state is leaving on the table as much as a hundred billion dollars of federal money…
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Harwood Hits Rubio for Looking ‘Like a Schoolboy’ Compared to Hillary
CNBC Washington correspondent Richard Harwood and the co-hosts of CNBC’s Squawk Box briefly discussed during Friday’s show the age difference between Hillary Clinton and Republican presidential candidate Marco Rubio that included Harwood knocking Rubio for “look[ing] like a schoolboy” compared to Clinton.
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MSNBC Host Tees Up Pelosi to Question Rubio’s Catholic Faith
Wrapping up a live interview with Democratic House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi on Friday’s MSNBC Live, anchor Thomas Roberts invited the left-wing congressional leader to attack Republican presidential candidate Marco Rubio: “...we have the sound from the interview that Marco Rubio gave, where he painted a pretty broad brush in a characterization about those for and against marriage equality.…
Amanda Marcotte: Duggar Scandal Contains Lesson For GOP
In a Tuesday post for Slate, lefty pundit Marcotte explored the religious right’s fascination with (and perhaps exploitation of) the Duggar family and how it might change in light of the Josh Duggar sexual-abuse scandal. “The Duggars' [religious] extremism elicited admiration and maybe a little envy among the ranks” of Christian conservatives, Marcotte commented, “but perhaps now Republicans will…
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Mika Muzzles Talk of Sanders Writing That Women Fantasize About Rape
Willie Geist wondered out loud what would happen to a Republican candidate who had written that women fantasize about being raped--and Joe Scarborough questioned whether he would he still be in the race.
But when it's a candidate for the Dem presidential nomination who had written those words, well, that's a different story. On today's Morning Joe, when Scarborough raised the matter of Bernie…
New Yorker June 1 Cover Excludes Black, Female GOP Candidates
Old stereotypes die hard — especially the ones which have long been false.
The June 1 cover of The New Yorker Magazine depicts the Republican Party's current crop of declared and undeclared 2016 presidential candidates as an all-white-boys affair, showing seven of them in different locker-room postures, with Hillary Clinton peeping in through a window. How is this possible, you ask? Where are…
AP Hypes Fall of Texas's 'Divisive' Traditional Marriage Bill
Paul J. Weber of the Associated Press made his liberal slant clear in a Wednesday article detailing how a pro-traditional marriage bill failed to pass in the Texas state legislature. Weber played up the supposedly "divisive efforts by Texas Republicans to defy the U.S. Supreme Court if same-sex marriage is legalized." He clearly labeled the proponents of the bill as conservatives, but failed to…
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Nets Notice IRS Hacking; Punt on Holding Obama Admin. Accountable
The Big Three's morning newscasts on Wednesday and Thursday all covered the breach of an online IRS system by hackers that compromised the personal information of 100,000 taxpayers. However, none of the programs mentioned President Obama by name during their reporting, nor did they revisit any of the other problems or scandals involving the agency in recent years. CBS Evening News and NBC Nightly…
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Stephanopoulos Presses Santorum on Rand Paul Blaming GOP for ISIS
In an interview with newly announced Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum on Thursday’s Good Morning America, co-host George Stephanopoulos tried to put the former Pennsylvania senator on the spot: “Rand Paul had something interesting to say about ISIS this morning.” A clip followed of Paul declaring on MSNBC’s Morning Joe on Wednesday: “ISIS exists and grew stronger because of the…