Richard Gere Wanted His Latest Film Character to Be a Lovable Cheater

In an interview with Steve Pond of the entertainment website The Wrap, actor Richard Gere explained his latest role, headlined "Why My Cheating 'Arbitrage' Financier Is Like Bill Clinton." Gere plays a hedge-fund manager with "silky-smooth confidence" forced to play a "high-level con game" with authorities as he cheats on his wife (played by Susan Sarandon): "You know he's got problems, but…
Tim Graham
September 18th, 2012 4:08 PM

Undisclosed 'Former' Dem Operative Posts at WaPo on How 'Welcome For S

BizzyBlog and NewsBusters commenter dscott brought an item at a Washington Post business blog to my attention earlier today. Entitled "Fed action a welcome move for small businesses" and appearing very early this morning, it claims that Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke's third round of quantitative easing, aka QE3, is "confidence-building move" and "a reassuring sign to the financial…
Tom Blumer
September 18th, 2012 4:02 PM

Flashback: Letterman Glows to Obama: ‘I Can’t Tell You How Satisfy

President Barack Obama will appear on tonight’s Late Show with David Letterman for the second time during his presidency. Below, a reprint of my short rundown of his first appearance on the CBS show back on Monday, September 21, 2009: David Letterman, who still regularly ridicules former President George W. Bush – and has even accused him of committing “war crimes” and lacking “humanity…
Brent Baker
September 18th, 2012 3:57 PM

Video of Romney at Private Fundraiser May Have Been Illegally Recorded

The now-infamous video of Mitt Romney speaking to donors at a private fundraising event in the Sunshine State back a few months ago may have been recorded in violation of Florida law, Tony Romm of Politico reported this afternoon: The rules in Florida — where Romney spoke at a private fundraiser — generally require consent from both the person recording and the person being recorded when…
Ken Shepherd
September 18th, 2012 3:39 PM

NYT Cairo Reporter Apologizes for Free Speech: U.S 'Feels Limited...Fr

Is the First Amendment up for debate? On Monday's front page New York Times Cairo bureau chief David Kirkpatrick soft-pedaled the extremism that caused Muslims in several countries to violently protest America on the pretext of an amateurish film uploaded onto Youtube:  "Cultural Clash Fuels Muslims Raging at Film – Devout Values Conflict With Free Speech." One would hope that "free speech"…
Clay Waters
September 18th, 2012 3:37 PM

NBC: Motivation for Secret Romney Video 'Not Political,' Just 'Simple

Wrapping up a report for Tuesday's NBC Today about the hidden camera video of Mitt Romney speaking at a fundraiser, national investigative correspondent Michael Isikoff laughably proclaimed: "The source who made the secret video insisted to NBC News that the original motivation was not political but simple curiosity, to see what Romney would say in this unscripted setting." [Listen to the audio…
Kyle Drennen
September 18th, 2012 3:26 PM

NYTimes: Hidden Mitt Video Calls Into Question if 'Romney Is, at Base

A secretly recorded video of Mitt Romney speaking at a fundraiser about the "47 percent of the country who are dependent on government," put out last night by the liberal magazine Mother Jones, calls into question whether Romney is "at base, an empathetic and caring man." That's according to the New York Times, which rushed the Monday night breaking news onto Tuesday morning's front page in a…
Clay Waters
September 18th, 2012 2:45 PM

Only CBS's Crawford Notes Obama 'Spurred Similar Controversy' With His

On Tuesday's CBS This Morning, Jan Crawford stood out as the only Big Three network journalist to play a clip of Barack Obama's infamous "cling to guns and religion" barb at conservatives, as she covered the recently-released secret recordings of Mitt Romney remarking about the "47 percent of the country who are dependent on government." Crawford remarked that Obama "spurred similar…
Matthew Balan
September 18th, 2012 1:07 PM

MSNBC Brings On Democrat John Lewis To Whine That Voter ID Laws Are Ra

Continuing with its obsession over voter ID laws, MSNBC once again treated viewers to a one-sided segment to trash Republican efforts to maintain voter integrity.  Speaking with MSNBC’s Richard Lui on Wednesday, Congressman and civil rights activist John Lewis (D-GA) slammed GOP voting efforts as racist, suggesting the success in numerous states in passing these laws showed Americans have…
Jeffrey Meyer
September 18th, 2012 12:48 PM

WaPo's Woodward Hawks New Book on CSPAN; Predictably Laments Compromis

Liberal Washington Post associate editor Bob Woodward appeared on the September 17 C-SPAN program Washington Journal to hawk his new book The Price of Politics. In the process, Woodward promoted the same stale narrative that compromise is dead in Washington mostly because of those rascally, conservative Republicans, but sought to import a fair measure of melodrama to the stalemate in…
Matt Vespa
September 18th, 2012 12:36 PM

NBC's Scarborough Rants: Romney Having 'One of the Worst Weeks of Any

Appearing on Tuesday's NBC Today, MSNBC Morning Joe host Joe Scarborough made one hyperbolic doomsday declaration after another about Mitt Romney's campaign: "This is one of the worst weeks for any presidential candidate in a general election that any of us can remember....Unemployment is still 8% plus, the economy is still in tatters, and Mitt Romney is blowing this race." [Listen to the audio…
Kyle Drennen
September 18th, 2012 12:29 PM

Hyperbolic ABC: 'Bombshell Rocking' Mitt Romney's Campaign Is Sending

The hosts and reporters of ABC's Good Morning America on Tuesday launched a hyperbolic attack on Mitt Romney's "secret tapes," trumpeting the "bombshell" that is sending "shock waves" through the campaign. The ABC program devoted three segments to the release of tapes of the presidential candidate talking at a fund-raiser about the "47 percent of the country who are dependent on government…
Scott Whitlock
September 18th, 2012 11:59 AM

Open Thread Tuesday

Discuss the news of the day and whatever else is on your mind.
NB Staff
September 18th, 2012 11:42 AM

Current TV Host Jennifer Granholm Continues Animated Rant She Started

The liveliest speaker at the Democratic National Convention has been hosting her own show on Current TV for almost 8 months now. A relatively new cable network co-founded by Al Gore that goes out of its way to hire all of the unabashedly liberal pundits it can get. Former Michigan governor Jennifer Granholm has fit right in. On Friday night’s episode of The War Room, the Canadian-born talk…
Ryan Robertson
September 18th, 2012 11:38 AM