Open Thread Friday
Discuss the news of the day and anything else you'd like.
October 5th, 2012 7:49 AM
Late Show Runs Cymbalta Depression Ad Parody of Obama
David Letterman is a Barack Obama sycophant (he once fawned over Obama’s “great courage and great intelligence”), but even he couldn’t deny Obama’s poor debate performance.
Thursday’s Late Show featured a clever parody of Lilly’s ad for their anti-depression drug, Cymbalta, a spoof with scenes of Obama during Wednesday’s presidential debate dropped into the real TV ad.
October 5th, 2012 2:03 AM

The Washington Post Co. Sinks Ever Deeper Into Reliance on Government
James Taranto at The Wall Street Journal smelled a conflict-of-interest problem when "The Washington Post Co. said Monday that it has agreed to acquire a majority stake in Celtic Healthcare, a provider of skilled home health-care and hospice services in the Northeastern and Mid-Atlantic regions.”
The Post has offset losses in its core journalism businesses with profits from its Kaplan…
October 4th, 2012 10:46 PM

Maddow Asks Plouffe If Debate Strategy Was For Obama to Be a Wimp
Give the woman credit, this would explain it.
After last night's debate in Denver, MSNBC's Rachel Maddow asked Obama adviser David Plouffe to be "candid" in explaining the president's lackluster performance (video after page break)
October 4th, 2012 7:16 PM

Busted: Hillary Clinton Caught Checking Out Christina Aguilera
One of the classic Hollywood pictures of all time is actress Sophia Loren staring at Jayne Mansfield's breasts at Romanoff's restaurant in 1957.
On Wednesday, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton shared a similar moment with pop diva Christina Aguilera at Wednesday's George McGovern Leadership Award Ceremony in Washington D.C.
This was Clinton and Aguilera Wednesday (photo courtesy Getty):
October 4th, 2012 7:01 PM

Norah O'Donnell Jabs Romney on Big Bird Line: 'Silly Thing to Bring Up
On Thursday's CBS This Morning, just hours after Mitt Romney's "crisp" debate performance, Norah O'Donnell stuck to her fixation on playing up the Republican's supposed negatives. O'Donnell maligned how Romney phrased his opposition to the federal government's subsidization of PBS: "This may have been the first time in a presidential debate that Big Bird was mentioned. It seems kind of like a…
October 4th, 2012 5:47 PM

A Puzzled George Stephanopoulos Wonders: 'Where Was the President?' Wh
A puzzled George Stephanopoulos on Thursday wondered what happened to Barack Obama during the previous night's presidential debate. Talking to fellow Democrat Donna Brazile on Good Morning America, the host quizzed, "...A lot of the President's supporters, you see it on Twitter and in the blogs, you heard it on television last night, where was the president? Where was the fight?"
Brazile…
October 4th, 2012 5:12 PM

GOP Congressman Lays Into CNN for 'Doing a Disservice' to Struggling A
When CNN laughably focused on Mitt Romney cutting funding for "Big Bird" as a key debate moment, Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart (R-Fla.) took CNN to task on Thursday for hyping such a frivolous detail.
"I think focusing on a light moment, which was clearly what it was, is doing a disservice to the people of America who are struggling," Diaz-Balart ripped into CNN. He also mocked anchor Carol…
October 4th, 2012 5:07 PM

Surprise: New York Times Actually Takes Seriously Obama 2007 Video Pra
In a bit of a surprise, New York Times reporters Jeremy Peters and Jim Rutenberg filed a longish article on a recently unearthed Obama video from 2007 showing the president in a fiery, racially charged mode and praising his anti-American pastor Jeremiah Wright, a video downplayed or ignored by most of the mainstream media: "Race at Issue for Obama As Right Revives '07 Talk."
Less surprising…
October 4th, 2012 5:03 PM
NBC's Gregory Declares 'Math Simply Doesn't Add Up' in Romney Tax Plan
On Thursday's NBC Today, in an attempt to deflect from Mitt Romney's strong debate performance, fill-in co-host David Gregory grilled Romney advisor Ed Gillespie on the Governor's tax plan: "...he wants to extend the Bush tax cuts, he wants to have further tax cuts beyond that, he wants to increase military spending and he rejected a 10 to 1 ratio when it came to cutting spending and raising…
October 4th, 2012 4:54 PM

PBS Strikes Back: 'Romney Does Not Understand the Value the American P
Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney during Wednesday's debate with Barack Obama said he would end the federal subsidy to PBS.
On Thursday, PBS struck back with the following statement:
October 4th, 2012 4:54 PM

MRC's Bozell: Media Focus on Obama's Poor Performance Glosses Over His
Yes, the media are admitting the patently obvious: Mitt Romney won Wednesday's presidential debate. But, NewsBusters publisher Brent Bozell observed, the media are still shielding Obama by insisting that the president was merely stylistically off his game, rather than deficient on substance.
"It's all about how Obama was lackluster, how Obama wasn't firing on all cylinders.... No," Bozell…
October 4th, 2012 4:15 PM

The Washington Post Even Tilts the Obits: 'Visionary Scientist' vs. 'F
The obituary pages of Wednesday’s Washington Post displayed a very obvious bias in labeling two political figures. On page B7, the Post honored radical-left ecologist Barry Commoner. The Post’s Matt Schudel began: “Barry Commoner, a visionary scientist and author who helped launch the environmental movement in the United States and whose ideas influenced public thinking about nuclear testing,…
October 4th, 2012 4:13 PM

Al Gore Blames 'High Altitude' in Denver for the President's Poor Deba
Something odd happened to the liberal media after the first presidential debate on Wednesday. They couldn't for the life of them put any postive spin on the president's lackluster performance. There was nothing they could say that could take away from Mitt Romney's clear victory, but then came the excuses. Some blamed Jim Lehrer for his inability to moderate properly, others cited what must've…
October 4th, 2012 3:54 PM