Conservatives & Republicans

In a scathing article for the Los Angeles Times on Sunday, reporter Robyn Dixon slammed Australia as “The adolescent country. The bit player. The shrimp of the schoolyard.” She contemptuously added: “For Australians it's not so bad – most of the time – to be so far away, so overlooked, so seemingly insignificant as to almost never factor in major international news. The lifestyle makes up for it…

Michael Specter comments that Francis “believes that science, rational thought, and data all play powerful and positive roles in human life,” but that the two GOP senators “seem as if they do not.”

As of Saturday afternoon and a full eight days after the first video of ObamaCare architect Jonathan Gruber surfaced, major broadcast networks ABC and NBC and the Los Angeles Times have persisted in keeping their audiences in the dark on this story.  Over the course of Friday evening and Saturday morning, news outlets that previously had ignored Gruber arrived on the scene included the …

Latest dispatch from the "dissent is patriotic" is dead front: Howard Dean has accused those who don't share his political views of being "authoritarian people who fundamentally don't believe in democracy." Poor Howard, who declared the times to be very "frightening and disconcerting," made his astounding accusation on today's Up With Steve Kornacki while attempting to explain the Republican…

Linda Greenhouse covered the Supreme Court for the New York Times for 30 years until accepting a downsizing buyout in 2008. She continues to write bi-weekly columns there. Greenhouse is absolutely appalled that the King v. Burwell lawsuit has gotten to the Supreme Court. As will be seen, she's also quite selective in her outrage.

Waldman says the Fox audience believes the world “is going [to] hell,” and that the channel’s frequent airing of sexually oriented stories and images helps to reinforce that belief. "Fox is a channel for the conservative id, where you can have your darkest thoughts and worst fears nurtured and validated. And of course, there's nothing the id likes better than looking at half-naked girls."

Appearing on TBS's Conan Thursday night, NBC's Meet the Press moderator Chuck Todd downplayed the big Republican wave in the midterm election: "...they didn't win because people said, 'We want to hire the Republicans.' Essentially this was an election of 'Well, alright, we're firing the Democrats'....I think the leadership knows that they have to prove that they can govern, that they're just not…

As ABC and NBC continued to censor any mention of the disparaging comments made by ObamaCare architect Jonathan Gruber from their Thursday night newscasts, CBS aired second story on Gruber with this one (and the other coming from Thursday’s CBS This Morning) airing on the CBS Evening News with Scott Pelley. While the report by CBS News national correspondent Wyatt Andrews covered what Gruber…

I think this makes six videos (CNN says they have Number 4, and I believe this is Number 5) of Obamacare co-architect Jonathan Gruber giving away the Obama administration's comprehensively deceptive game in drafting and promoting the Affordable Care Act, aka Obamacare. The most relevant 40-second snip is at the YouTube account and a Thursday afternoon post by the indispensable Jim Hoft at…

In a softball interview with Environmental Protection Agency administrator Gina McCarthy on Thursday, MSNBC host Andrea Mitchell teed up the Obama administration official to dismiss legitimate Republican criticism of the President's climate deal with China: "I wanted to ask you of course about this major breakthrough with China. And the criticism already from many Republicans....What are you…

At the top of her 12 p.m. ET hour MSNBC show on Wednesday, host Andrea Mitchell cheered President Obama "achieving a landmark climate agreement" with China to restrict carbon emissions: "I know this is going to take place over a long time, but – there are a lot of obstacles ahead, but this still marks a very big change from the stalemate between the U.S. and China..."

Well, if this doesn't beat all. Based on excuses provided by 63 people (35 percent) out of a "smallish sample" (I'll say) of 181 nonvoters, the Washington Post's Christopher Ingraham whined on Wednesday (HT Twitchy) about how "scheduling conflicts with work or school" kept people from voting last Tuesday. This alleged problem calls for solutions like "requiring employers to allow flexible…

The Esquire blogger Charles Pierce laments that Kansans gave their Republican governor another term even though his “extreme applications of conservative economics” have made the state “a basket case.” Kansas is apparently a "state full of clodhopping, drooling yahoos."

Major broadcast network NBC broke its silence and joined fellow networks ABC and CBS on Wednesday night in covering the news that the Alaska Senate race has been called with Republican challenger Dan Sullivan being declared the winner over Democratic incumbent Senator Mark Begich. NBC Nightly News aired a 23-second news brief on the election result, which gives the GOP at least 53 Senate seats…