In the January edition of Vanity Fair magazine Christopher Hitchens becomes the latest in a seemingly endless parade of name callers and reputation-smudgers intent on spreading lies about Tea Partiers, Glenn Beck, and just about anyone else he doesn’t agree with politically.  I will not bother to address these shallow, baseless, and fact-free attacks on Beck and the Tea Parties.  They are quite capable of defending themselves.  My concerns are Hitchens’ inaccurate characterizations of the 9/12 Project.

The opening line of the piece contains a smear against the non-Beck affiliated 9/12 Project referring to the group as:

“the most hateful kind of populist claptrap,  (e.g. the fetid weirdness of GlennBeck’s 912 Project.)”

Really?  Fetid?

Mr. Hitchens did you even look into the 9/12 Project?  Have you any idea of what it stands for and what 9/12 members are doing? I seriously doubt that you did, as I am a founding member, part of the Advisory Board and the editor-at-large of the web site. All email inquiries come directly to me. Nothing was received from you, ever.  Checking with the other Board members, I can verify that none of them were contacted by you or by anyone with Vanity Fair.  Therefore, we can only assume that your statements about the 912 Project have not been vetted with any reasonable degree of journalistic standards.

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If Keith Olbermann’s viewers know what’s best for HIS show, why don’t you the people know what’s right for America?

Less than a month after he removed the benchmark segment “Worst Person In The World” from his MSNBC television program, Keith O. has relented to the will of the people.  (And by “people” I am referring to the faithful following of the troubled cable channel.)  Starting tonight, the old standard of name-calling and hate-mongering returns to MSNBC as WPITW is back!  (If you are reading this Keith, or having it read to you by a minion, I secretly crave to make the list.  Even if I’m just the Bronze medal winner, that would make my day and be a huge boost to my Right thinking street cred.)

Seeing that popular opinion carries sway with someone so often seen as inflexible, I wonder how Keith and MSNBC would now feel about the following controversial topics.

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The electronic media was abuzz on Friday with huge news of MSNBC’s President Phil Griffin and his decision to indefinitely suspend their prime time firebrand Keith Olbermann from the flagging cable news network.   This story was so big that CNN (the distant 2nd place for politics) covered it with a front page link to their story.

Allegedly Olbermann’s campaign contributions (reported first by Politico) to at least three Democrats running for office in the recent mid-terms caused the problem. Well, the contributions were not the actual problem, Mr. Olbermann’s lack of disclosure to his employer was at issue.  My new hero, Phil Griffin issued the following statement;

“I became aware of Keith’s political contributions late last night. Mindful of NBC News policy and standards, I have suspended him indefinitely without pay.”

As stated in a personal email sent to Phil Griffin (phil.griffin@nbcuni.com), I applaud him for showing the American people that rules matter, actions have consequences, and enforcement of the rules must be equal or the rules are meaningless.

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Working as a reporter for the election night coverage on Glenn Beck’s Insider Extreme webcast the other night, I spent five solid (and painful) hours tuned in to the cable network that uses the word Progressive so often that one expects Flo to pop in every hour with a cheerful quip about saving money on your car insurance.

MSNBC could have used some perkiness

Back to MSNBC’s live coverage of the midterm elections.  I’m not certain on the exact definition of torture, but I know it when I sit through five hours of it. Yes, for five truly torturous hours I was unable to tune away from NBC’s failed experiment in the news channel biz. I did persist,  making it all the way to midnight Eastern time when most of the significant races had been called.  Chris Matthews, Keith Olbermann, Rachel Maddow, Lawrence O’Donnell, and Eugene Robinson were considerably less jubilant than two years ago when the 2008 elections offered a markedly different result.  This broadcast initially had the tone of a wake as all assembled knew what was coming down the pike.

Here are the Top Five things I learned while being force-fed MSNBC’s election night coverage. (more…)

It was a beautiful Fall day, perfect weather to inspire a person (liberal, 18-30, mostly white) to jump on one of 200 buses paid for by the great comedy supporter Arianna Huffington and come to the Nation’s capital for some laughs. And come they did.  “Tens of thousands” gathered in Washington DC on Saturday for a corporate sponsored, astroturf rally/comedy show hosted by Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert.  We will no doubt hear wild estimates on the high and low end when it comes to the crowd size, but what’s the point? Aren’t we past the “mine’s bigger” argument yet? Perhaps not.

The size of the crowd was impressive by most standards, but I have to wonder if this event was, as MSNBC’s Luke Russert speculated in his live wrap-up, “this generation’s Woodstock”?   WOODSTOCK?  Really?

Luke, use the Force and open a history book.  Woodstock was three days of Peace & Music.  This was three hours of vertical integration and promotion. Perhaps in the attention-span challenged minds of these 20-30yr-olds, three hours is equal to three days.  But let’s just call it Laffstock 2010.

After the show, the insatiable press corps was even treated to more from Stewart & Colbert as they hosted a press conference.

Oh plu-leaze.  Could Stewart be any more of a tortured artist? (more…)

Tuesday’s edition of Hardball on the ratings-challenged MSNBC featured host Chris Matthews bailing out Florida gubernatorial candidate Alex Sink just one day after she was caught cheating during a commercial break in a televised debate.

As most politically savvy folks have heard, candidate Sink violated the debate rules when she was shown an electronic message from a now fired aide, during a break, via a smart phone. The message contained a tip for the Ms. Sink to help her parry an attack from her competition, GOP candidate Rick Scott.

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Following last week’s cable news bloodbath featuring the replacement of network chiefs at both CNN and MSNBC, I had to think,  “What will MSNBC and CNN be doing differently today, effectively the first day of the rest of their newsy lives?”

Well sir, CNN has a boatload of change in the offing.  Next week is the sort-of-anticipated debut of Parker Spitzer, CNN’s almost original idea of pairing a liberal and a conservative together in prime time.  And then in January, once Larry King finishes cleaning out his locker, we can’t wait to see what will happen when Piers Morgan steps into Larry’s time slot.

Not to be outdone, MSNBC has started the week with its finger pressed firmly on the pulse of America.  At 10 p.m. eastern tonight we will be treated to “The Last Word With Lawrence O’Donnell.”

Vice President Joe Biden (the man who believes he is second in the line of Presidential succession) and NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg will be part of the inaugural program that is replacing a replay of Keith Olbermann’s ratings-challenged show.  Vegas is posting better than 3-1 odds on Keith naming O’Donnell as tonight’s Worst Person in The World. (more…)

Bill Maher wants to be given credit, dammit!

After Christine O’Donnell surprised the Left by winning the GOP primary in Delaware, giving the Tea Party another win and more momentum, the politics of personal destruction kicked into overdrive.

First there was Rachel Maddow, her patented sneer plastered on her face, and MSNBC leading the charge by airing the 1996 anti-masturbation PSA that featured the now-candidate Christine O’Donnell:

After the seeing the heat generated by MSNBC, and from deep within his lair beneath the streets, Bill Maher immediately started trickling out clips from his video vault.  Then something amazing happened to Mr. Maher: the networks started calling again.  Big networks, places once considered to be institutions and defenders of the truth all wanted to talk with Bill Maher about Christine O’Donnell.  So it makes sense that the diminutive king of televised snarkiness has decided that he needs to be properly credited for creating the national attention focused on Delaware’s Tea Party Senate candidate.  Is he not like the man in the mask, living in the sewers and claiming credit for Christine’s meteoric rise to stardom?

No, I’m not talking about Erik the Phantom;  Bill Maher believes that he, Svengali-like, created Christine O’Donnell.  Wait, what? (more…)

The last-place cable news network, CNN, is the channel Wolf Blizter regularly calls “the place for politics.” It also operates a website with the motto, “all politics, all the time.” So you would expect the outlet to offer only the best and most credible analysis of the political headlines.

Last night, on the final primary election night across the country, it should be no surprise to any right thinking person that CNN opened the intellectual sluices and turned loose their political heavyweights to discuss the state of American politics. Presenting Larry King and Bill Maher.

As the political sands were shifting beneath their feet and with infomercial-like dialogue, Larry King and Bill Maher delivered what can only be described as the television version of throwing in the towel to FOX and MSNBC’s election night coverage.  The closest I can come to comparison is the now legendary dialogue between the “chef of the future” Ralph Kramden and the “chef of the past” Ed Norton in a classic Honeymooners episode: (more…)

If, in a county where President Obama won 69% of the vote less than two years ago, the President cannot fill a Community College Recreational Center with a scheduled event, you might consider that to be newsworthy.  Apparently the Mainstream Media did not.

Final results from the 2008 election show President Obama won the state of Ohio by a substantial amount.  A quick check of the final numbers shows Obama with 2,933,388 votes and McCain lagging behind with 2,674,491.  An election night drubbing, in a state that was considered by many media pundits to be a “battleground state.”

Looking at the final results via the county maps of Ohio you can see where the President’s strength was centered, mostly in large cities like Cincinnati, Toledo, Columbus and of course Cleveland.  Drilling down further we find that Obama beat McCain by a huge margin in Cuyahoga Country so logically that would be a place to hold a Presidential Pep Rally kicking off the mid-term election season. After beating John McCain by better than a 2:1 margin less than two years ago, one must wonder why the President’s recent speech from Parma, Ohio did not have a full house?  Additionally one must wonder why the MSM did not pick up on this fun fact? (more…)

In an era when satellite imagery allows one to count cars from space, and in a country fascinated with numbers (weekly box office take, home runs, calorie counting, etc) the MSM is having a difficult time with the math on Glenn Beck’s Restoring Honor rally held on the Mall in Washington yesterday.  By all reasonable estimates, nearly half a million people were in attendance, and yet, confusion (or perhaps subterfuge) rules the day.

CNN.com was reporting;  “large crowds” and “People filled the park by the Lincoln Memorial’s reflecting pool. . .”  I have a question for the writers at CNN.  If Beck’s 500,000-plus is considered a large crowd, what term would you use for the Sharpton rally held across town?  Oddly enough, no mention of numbers or size was included in the description of Sharpton’s event.  Was this done to diminish one or to equate the much smaller march with the enormous rally?

MSNBC.com reported, “Tens of thousands flock to the capital for a rally that largely avoided politics.” After attacking and analyzing the event for a week before it happened, the NBC’s minor league team mostly avoided putting the story in the spotlight, instead favoring a position on the U.S. news page.  There was a mention on the homepage with a link to a video entitled “LaRussa, Pujols speak at Beck Rally” – huh? (more…)

In his latest Time.com piece, Mark Halperin, Editor At Large and Senior MSNBC Political Analyst, has decided that the GOP must not jump into the furor surrounding the latest slip of the First Tongue as it relates to the controversy around the proposed Ground Zero Mosque.

Halperin is quick to point out that the situation has obvious “political potency” but he advises the GOP to avoid using it.  This is like asking Alex Rodriguez to layoff a hanging curveball because it’s late in the game and the Yankees have a large lead. What’s next, a slaughter rule for the upcoming elections?  Will your follow-up story on Time.com ask for candidates with a commanding poll lead to limit spending or fund raising in order to allow their opponent to catch up or save them from public embarrassment?

The savvy analyst also states what everyone else already knows, the GOP stands to win back a number of seats in the mid-term elections without pointing out the obvious problems with the President’s Ramadan Dinner statement being used as additional fuel on the campaign fires.

Halperin goes on to claim: (more…)

Remember the  day when “Nothing Happened?” to Ralph Melish back in 1973?

Oddly enough, 1973 was also the year that gave us Rachel Maddow, star of the ratings-challenged MSNBC. Perhaps as an infant, young Ms. Maddow heard the Python sketch and filed it away for use on a show she would host some 37 years later. Yesterday was that day, as Maddow decided she would cover and analyze things that did not happen.

A California Judge decides that he knows better than the 7 million California voters who supported Proposition 8 and overturns the will of the people. Fast forward a day later and MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow is indignant. But Maddow is not upset about the anger bubbling up from the GOP. Perhaps that is because there was little or none. On her Thursday night show, Maddow’s spent the entire first block of her show wondering why the GOP and social conservatives were not freaking out about this.

Maddow was incredulous. How dare they not play into MSNBC’s hand on this? Newsweek Senior Editor Jon Alter was called in to toss a few hollow theories on why the GOP was not convulsing and hollering because an activist judge decided that he knew better than the people. The two prattled on for nearly 15 minutes on a non-story. (more…)

It was April 15, 2009 when Speaker Pelosi pronounced the Tea Party protests as fake, using the term AstroTurf (as in phony grass roots).

The entire MSM covered that story and many worked overtime to brand the Tea Partiers as “AstroTurf” in an effort to discredit a genuine, homegrown movement the likes of which has not been seen in this country in decades.

Despite the fact that tens of thousands of people were part of hundreds of protest events held around the country on Tax Day 2009, NBC’s Chuck Todd appeared on the Today Show telling Matt Lauer the Tea Party movement was one that “hasn’t really caught on”:

On August 4, of last year, while on MSNBC’s Hardball, Senator Barbara Boxer joined in the discredit chorus, telling Chris Matthews that the protesters were “too well dressed” and too well organized to be legitimate: (more…)

Just a few short days after Octavia Nasr tweeted her fondness for the late Hezbollah leader Sayyed Mohammed Hussein Fadlallah, she’s out of a job.

The offending message? “Sad to hear of the passing of Sayyed Mohammed Hussein Fadlallah… One of Hezbollah’s giants I respect a lot.”  Bravo to CNN for having the courage to stand up quickly and act.  It took less than a week for this to unfold.

Interesting parallel is the Anita Dunn story.  It was just over a year ago when President Obama’s Communications Director made the shocking declaration during a commencement speech that one of her heroes was Chairman Mao: (more…)

For everyone who read the above headline and said, “not bloody likely,”  give yourself two points.   The silence is frightening.

People Magazine’s latest piece on that rapidly dimming Northern Light known as Levi Johnston is no surprise to people who know and respect Sarah Palin.  The only ones astonished to discover that a 17-year-old boy lied in order to get famous are the professional journalists who would rather interview Tina Fey pretending Sarah Palin than to be forced to actually speak with the former vice-presidential candidate herself.

It was a pretty good ride for Levi Johnston. After surfing the wave of celebrity that was primarily fueled by a willingness to lie about almost everything about Sarah, Todd and Bristol Palin, Levi has finally come clean in the pages of People, admitting; “”I publicly said things about the Palins that were not completely true.”

Not completely true?  As in, you lied, Levi?   You lied about the impending divorce of Sarah and Todd?  How about the story you told claiming the former Governor joked about her Down Syndrome baby, referring to the child as “retarded?”  What about the whoppers told on the CBS Morning Show, The Today Show, or Tyra Banks show? (more…)

Parenting books are filled with examples of how children learn by watching and imitating their parents.  So it should comes as no surprise to anyone when elected officials like Congressman Fortney Hillman “Pete” Stark treat them like fools or mock them for having the effrontery to question the work they are doing in Washington D. C.  After all, Stark was just following the lead of his Speaker and even the odd Senator or two.

When the Healthcare Bill was making the final lap we were told by Speaker Pelosi that “We have to pass the bill to find out what’s in it.”

Really?  That’s how government works?  We elect folks to represent us and they do whatever they want and deliver legislation like it’s a big surprise filled package to “We the people?”  I did not think that was the way government operated, but very few in the MSM media seemed to object to this effrontery from the Speaker’s office. After all — they’re on her side!

I guess that’s why we should not have been surprised when the 2000-plus  pages of a “financial reform” bill came lumbering down the pike and one of the architects of this bill, outgoing Senator Chris Dodd (D, Countrywide) was quoted as saying, “”No one will know until this is actually in place how it works.”

See what I mean?  The big people are doing it… why not a Congressman from California? (more…)

Chalk up another one for MSNBC.  No, no, no, silly… Not another gigantic, record-setting, massive, basic cable audience tuning in to see the liberal firebrand spewing his “Progressive” agenda to the MSNBC Kool-Aid drinkers… That never happens. But do not take my word on this, let the ratings speak for themselves.

Tuesday’s Ratings from TV By The Numbers 6 p.m.

1. Special Report w/ Bret Baier – 2,179,000 viewers
2. Ed Show —726,000 viewers
3. Situation Room—546,000 viewers

Fox News could cut its 6 p.m. ratings in half and still trounce either MSNBC or CNN.  Combining Mr. Ed’s numbers with Wolf Blitzer’s last hour doesn’t make up 60% of what Fox News garners in total audience levels.

Tuesday night’s show was nothing special, just another of Ed’s wildly irresponsible, blame-storming sessions. This all happened as Gen. Stanley McChrystal was on a plane headed to D.C. for either a caning or a canning.  You know the story; the General flapped his gums to a Rolling Stone reporter, he said a boatload of things that he never should have said to his troops much less a reporter.

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The President’s recent commencement address to Hampton University students in Virginia counseled the young minds about the dangers of being bombarded by too much information, but who knew that Joe Lieberman was listening when the President said:

Meanwhile, you’re coming of age in a 24/7 media environment that bombards us with all kinds of content and exposes us to all kinds of arguments, some of which don’t rank all that high on the truth meter. With iPods and iPads; Xboxes and PlayStations; information becomes a distraction, a diversion, a form of entertainment, rather than a tool of empowerment. All of this is not only putting new pressures on you; it is putting new pressures on our country and on our democracy.

The President also schooled the kids on how difficult it is to sift through all of the information on the web.  Perhaps he thinks the government should help us by winnowing out some of the inconsequential information?

All of that mind-boggling information and the new pressures on our country and our democracy must have triggered a response in this “independent senator” from Connecticut (who caucuses with the Democrats of course, just like the other “independent senator,” Bernie Sanders of Vermont), as Joe Lieberman has offered legislation that he claims will “protect” America during an emergency by giving the President power to shut down the Internet. (more…)

Wonkette needs to grow a pair… or buy a pair and have them installed.  Either way, I won’t care.

The recent “did she or didn’t she” piece about Sarah Palin’s breasts is just one more in the seemingly endless supply of petty attacks from the liberal wing of the Fourth Estate — which normally recoils in horror from any “objectification” of a woman’s body.

From Wonkette:

We got a political news tip on our Facebook page from Wonkette operative “Laura,” and it goes like this: “Sarah Palin 12/09 no boobs http://bit.ly/bmQtPJ #Sarah Palin today, Instant boobage!

So, let me understand this, a report that questions the legitimacy of the breasts of a former Governor of Alaska, former VP candidate, best-selling author, Fox News Host, and wildly successful public speaker is considered “political news?”

Why? (more…)