Barack Obama

Former Democratic governor of Pennsylvania turned MSNBC contributor Ed Rendell said something on Tuesday's Hardball that is going to make a lot of jaws drop. "Even people who lost their jobs are better off" under Obama (video follows with transcript and commentary):

Taking into account how the majority of Hollywood supports the Democratic Party no matter what, it should come as no surprise that Entertainment Tonight continues to produce segments of political fluff in an election year. The president himself showed up for a softball interview with his wife on Aug. 15, where he insisted that his re-election campaign hasn’t “tried to divide the country.” …

James Taranto, who puts together the Wall Street Journal feature Best of the Web, was in excellent form Monday on the shifting standards of a certain economist turned partisan hack columnist who writes for the New York Times. When it comes to Republican presidents, four years is plenty of time to deal with inherited economic problems, but when it comes to Obama, "you've got to be kidding" that…

If journalists were interested in fairness, there's nothing more basic than giving a similar amount of airtime to each major party convention. An MRC analysis finds that's exactly what CBS and ABC did, giving virtually identical airtime to the Republican and Democratic conventions on their morning and evening news shows. But NBC skewed in favor of the Democrats, donating 25 percent more…

New York Times White House reporter Jackie Calmes filed from Charlotte on Saturday after the Democratic National Convention had passed, "Democrats Face a Juggling Act Over Jobs." Surprisingly, Obama loyalist Calmes discerned political problems in the president's anti-business rhetoric. More predictably, she defended Obama's anti-entrepreneurship remark "you didn't build that," accusing the…

The title of John Cassidy's column in the New Yorker is "Rational Irrationality" but after reading the reason he gives for Barack Obama ditching his outdoor stadium speech at the Democrat convention in Charlotte, NC, I think it would be safe to ditch the "Rational" part of the column title. One of the big reasons why Cassidy pretty much comes off as completely irrational was his explanation…

Poll cooking season is officially in full swing. The headline today at the Washington Post reads: "Among likely voters, Obama-Romney close." Dan Balz and Jon Cohen report that in a September 7-9 poll, "the (presidential) race remains close among likely voters, with Obama at 49 percent and Romney at 48 percent, virtually unchanged from a poll taken just before the conventions." Ah, but Obama…

Promoting his fawning profile of President Obama for the October issue of Vanity Fair on Tuesday's NBC Today, contributing editor Michael Lewis described a game of basketball he played with the commander in chief: "...it was actually very revealing...he doesn't let anybody treat him like the president. If you're watching the game, you'd have no idea who – which one is the president...he likes a…

ABC's Diane Sawyer, in a Nightline interview with the Washington Post's Bob Woodward Monday, aggressively defended President Obama from any blame for last summer's debt ceiling crisis. "Barack Obama was hostage to events outside his control" due to a "Republican Congress newly dominated by the Tea Party" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

Conservative talk radio host Steve Malzberg and NewsBusters' associate editor Noel Sheppard had a lengthy Spreecast conversation Monday about the media's support of pedophilia, its love affair with Bill Clinton, and its hatred of Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney (video follows with highlights and commentary).

CNN deemed it newsworthy enough to interview an Obama-supporting restaurant owner who gave the President a bear hug on the campaign trail. The Situation Room host Wolf Blitzer tossed softballs to guest Scott Van Duzer, a registered Republican, on Monday afternoon. "It's the campaign stop everyone's talking about. The President of the United States got a lift, literally, from a super-…

The media have "nostalgia" for Bill Clinton and a "tedious marriage" with President Obama, according to panel members on Sunday's Reliable Sources. Is media bias any more evident when reporters admit the media had a past love affair with the current Democratic president and pine for the days of his Democratic forerunner? CNN's Howard Kurtz mused that "the extraordinary media reaction to Bill…

At the top of Monday's NBC Today, co-host Matt Lauer eagerly touted an Obama campaign photo-op: "One pizza shop owner in Florida got a little excited when he met President Obama, gave him a bear hug and then lifted him up....By the way, he's a Republican." [Listen to the audio or watch the video after the jump] In the report that followed, chief White House correspondent Chuck Todd announced…

Monday's Washington Post has a front-page Style section piece on an Obama fundraiser at a New York city gay bar called Eastern Bloc that you frequent if you like "commie decor" and think "early-80s porn playing non-stop over the bar added to the ambiance." (UPDATE: The gay mag The Advocate reports CNN anchor Anderson Cooper's "boyfriend Ben Maisani co-owns Eastern Bloc.") Post reporter…