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CBS, NBC Give Scant Coverage to Santorum’s 2016 Announcement
Following Rick Santorum’s announcement Wednesday that he will mount a bid for the 2016 Republican presidential nomination, CBS and NBC largely punted on news of a seventh Republican candidate entering the field with a combined 37 seconds of airtime on their Wednesday evening newscasts. Over on the Spanish-language networks, however, the coverage was even less as there was zero mention of Santorum…
Writer: Michelle Obama Breaks Right’s ‘Rules of Racial Discourse’
Last Friday, author and historian Garry Wills, who blogs occasionally at the New York Review of Books site, praised Michelle Obama for challenging, in her recent Tuskegee University commencement address, conservatives’ complacency about race in America. Specifically, Wills approved of the first lady’s “breaking all of the four rules of racial discourse the right wing now wants to enforce.”
“The…
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Carly Fiorina Runs Circles Around Andrea Mitchell, Blasts Hillary
During a live interview with Carly Fiorina on Wednesday, MSNBC host Andrea Mitchell fretted over the Republican presidential candidate’s attacks on Hillary Clinton: “She's had a lifetime, though, in public service. Going back to before she was first lady in Arkansas. She can argue that she's got a record on women's issues, from the Beijing Women's Conference to all of her work with the Children's…
AP: Bill Clinton's Shell Company Only Evidence of 'Complexity'
The Associated Press and Stephen Braun did all they could to cover for the Clintons yesterday.
First, the wire service attached the most boring headline imaginable to Braun's story about Bill Clinton's shell company shenanigans: "Bill Clinton company shows complexity of family finances." The message to subscribers, particularly the broadcast networks: "This is boring and time-consuming. Don't…
Conan O'Brien Mocks Hillary Clinton's Six-Figure Speaking Fees
TBS host Conan O'Brien took a new comedic shot at Hillary Clinton in a Wednesday post on Twitter – specifically, six-figure speaking fees that the former first lady charges; and, along with her husband's speaking engagements, has netted the couple $30 million in 16 months. O'Brien wrote, "I'd love to have @HillaryClinton as a guest on the show, but I can't afford her speaking fee."
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'Bipartisan' CNN Panel Slams Marco Rubio's 'Hate Speech' Warning
Wednesday's New Day shut out social conservatives from a panel discussion on Senator Marco Rubio's Tuesday remark that "if you do not support same-sex marriage, you're labeled a homophobe and a hater," and that "the next step is to argue that the teachings of mainstream Christianity – the Catechism of the Catholic Church – is hate speech." Instead, the CNN morning show brought on a Republican…
Lefty Bloggers: Case Against Obamacare ‘Idiotic,’ ‘Preposterous’
Tuesday’s New York Times piece on how the problematic phrase “established by the state” got into and stayed in the Affordable Care Act provoked a great many blasts from lefty bloggers at the plaintiffs’ case in King v. Burwell. Two especially heated posts came from MSNBC’s Steve Benen and Esquire’s Charles Pierce.
Benen, a producer for The Rachel Maddow Show and the primary writer for the show’s…
AP: ‘Ugly Fallout’ for GOP if Court Rules Against ObamaCare
In an effort to preemptively denounce a Supreme Court ruling against ObamaCare, on Monday, the Associated Press warned of “ugly potential fallout” if health insurance subsidies in the law were struck down. The article began by fretting: “A Supreme Court ruling due in a few weeks could wipe out health insurance for millions of people covered by President Barack Obama's health care law.”
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AP Fails to Report Obama's Claim That 'Our War in Afghanistan' Is Over
Today at Arlington Cemetery, President Obama said — not kidding — "For many of us, this Memorial Day is especially meaningful; it is the first since our war in Afghanistan came to an end." He immediately added: "Today is the first Memorial Day in 14 years that the United States is not engaged in a major ground war."
At the White House's twitter account, one finds the first of those two sentences…
Salon: ‘The U.S. Military Is a National Security Threat’
In the early 1990s, politicians floated the term “peace dividend” regarding a hoped-for post-Cold War reduction in the U.S. defense budget, and Pentagon spending indeed fell somewhat in the mid- and late ‘90s. Sean McElwee, a research associate at the lefty think tank Demos, argues that America now needs a post-9/11, post-Afghanistan, post-Iraq peace dividend which would allow greatly increased…
Blogger: Current GOP Lawmakers ‘Dumbest We've Ever Had’
Today’s conservative legislators may not be as dumb as a box of rocks or so dumb it takes them an hour and a half to watch 60 Minutes (HT: Rodney Dangerfield) but Daily Kos writer Hunter is willing to claim that they’re “the dumbest we've ever had. You have to credit the tea party Republicans for that one—they know what they want, and by golly if it can ooze its way into a suit and tie they'll…
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Keith Ellison: 'Proud to Stand' with Rand Paul
Not the endorsement someone heading into the Republican primaries would normally want, but it's the one Rand Paul got. On today's This Week [hosted by Jonathan Karl in the absence of Stephanopoulos], far-left Rep. Keith Ellison declared that on a variety of issues he is "proud to stand" with Rand Paul.
Roll the video and watch Bill Kristol look on beningly as Ellison praises Paul. Let's read…
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NYT: Hillary Should Stop 'Playing the Freak,' Keep Avoiding the Press
Jason Horowitz at the New York Times thinks that Hillary Clinton shouldn't bother dealing with the press.
In describing Hillary Clinton's campaign effort in Iowa, Horowitz wondered how, in "a carnival atmosphere," Hillary Clinton "gains politically from playing the freak" by deigning to take questions from the press, thus clearly suggesting that she would be better off if she didn't bother, and…
Ezra Klein: Voters Will ‘Eventually Punish’ Obamacare Opponents
“The dogs bark, but the caravan moves on.” That proverb sums up Vox editor-in-chief Ezra Klein’s Friday analysis of the policy and politics of Obamacare.
In this metaphor, the dogs are ideologues on both sides who, heedless of evidence, have been barking (and snarling and growling) at each other about the Affordable Care Act. As Klein noted, “Social scientists have [determined that] the more…
