On Monday Representative Darrell Issa threatened Attorney General Eric Holder with a contempt of Congress if he does not fulfill Mr. Issa’s subpoena from October 12, 2011. Hardly anyone reported it. But then when I went to Google “Issa Eric Holder” this evening and a bunch of results came up. Unfortunately it was not about Mr. Issa’s statements. Instead it’s all about Mr. Holder and the Department of Justice’s remarks.

I’ve mentioned before it’s unusual for the Old Media to run any Fast and Furious news if the AP didn’t run something first. Same thing with this story. AP didn’t bother to post a story about Mr. Issa, but as soon as Mr. Holder says something they’re all over it. It’s quite pathetic and reminds me of Pavlov’s dog. This is the explanation of Mr. Issa’s letter:

Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., made the accusation in a letter threatening to seek a contempt of Congress ruling against Attorney General Eric Holder for failing to turn over congressionally subpoenaed documents that were created after problems with Fast and Furious came to light. Holder was to testify Thursday before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, which Issa chairs.

That’s it. No mention that this is a response to his subpoena on October 12, 2011. No mention of the emails sent Friday night. But the media goes crazy and reprints this article.

Not every outlet used the AP story though. The Washington Post again had an original piece written by Sari Horwitz! Weird, isn’t it, that she writes original posts when the DOJ and Democrats are on the defense. Surprise surprise! The story is on the front page of the website.

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Remember this? Yes, last Friday night the DOJ dumped documents on Congress about Fast and Furious. Anyone with an ounce of common sense & critical thinking skills would come to the conclusion based on the emails between Monty Wilkinson, Attorney General Eric Holder’s then deputy chief of staff, and then-US Attorney Dennis Burke, Mr. Holder and quite possible Assistant Attorney General Lanny Breuer knew about Operation Fast and Furious.

The majority of the media ignored the documents. They took the AP article and printed it, but buried it among other articles. Only NPR, The Daily Caller, and CBS had original articles. The New York Times really buried it: Even if you searched for it you wouldn’t find it. The AP article mentions the emails at the very end, but just repeats the talking points instead of using their common sense. “Mr. Wilkinson does not recall discussing this aspect with the attorney general.” Come on people let’s use our brains! Do you believe Mr. Wilkinson, Mr. Holder’s deputy chief of staff, did NOT tell his boss about this?

But Congressional Democrats and the media don’t think this way. Instead of investigating further they simply take someone’s word, even if it sounds suspicious. This morning I saw an alert from The New York Times. The Democrats on The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee cleared the Obama administration of any wrong doing. This is the same Times that ignored the Friday night document dump. This story appeared on the front page of their US section and is an original piece written by Charlie Savage. Ironically the article by Pete Yost at the AP is the most concise one he’s written about Fast and Furious. Gee, I wonder why. The Huffington Post put Mr. Yost’s article on the front page of their politics section. What’s this I see? The Washington Post actually didn’t publish the AP article, but had Sari Horwirz write an original piece? I believe that hasn’t happened since September.

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- Who cares about a liberal paper’s endorsement of a moderate candidate?

- Joy. Kathy Griffin announced as Anderson Cooper’s co-host for NYE.

- Whoopi Goldberg defends Romney’s “zany” remark.

- AIM says the remark didn’t start with Romney, but rather with the reporter.

- On phony headlines.

- Comedy gold.

- Debunking the latest PPP poll. Only 32% of its sample didn’t caucus with any party in 2008, so how does this make them “likely” to caucus with any party this go around?

- Joy Behar ends her show on HLN.

- AP names bin Laden death as its top story of 2011:

The killing of Osama bin Laden during a raid by Navy SEALs on his hideout in Pakistan was the top news story of 2011, followed by Japan’s earthquake/tsunami/meltdown disaster, according to The Associated Press’ annual poll of U.S. editors and news directors.

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A story on horrific poverty oddly gives me hope for local TV news.

As a local TV news/sports anchor for almost 30 years, one of my biggest problems with the business was when young producers or reporters would cut-and-paste a story from the Associated Press and just report it as gospel. I’m sure there were times when I made this mistake as well, but there were also times when I would take information I knew was inaccurate and change it in the script or just change it “on the fly” on set. Then I would spend the next two hours in meetings having to explain why I did what I did. Usually, my answer went something like this, “If I’m the face of this story, I’m not going to report something I know is inaccurate just because the AP says it is.” I would win the battles with facts, but after a while stations prefer to have news anchors who just shut up and read (if that makes sense).

This brings me to the remarkable thing that KNBC in Los Angeles did this week. A recent AP story claimed that 1 in 2 people were poor or low-income. A startling number, certainly. KNBC just flat out said that those numbers may be way off.

“Those figures appear to be wrong, perhaps based on a misunderstanding of the data by journalists who did not go back to the source to doublecheck their figures, said analysts at the U.S. Census Bureau district office in Los Angeles.”

Kudos to KNBC for doing its homework, double-checking the numbers and not just cutting-and-pasting from the Associated Press. Of course, if KNBC is right, you’ve got to wonder why the AP got this so wrong and how many other local stations across the country just reported the story as they got it from the AP. Online that 50% number, that KNBC says is inaccurate, spread like wildfire.

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His name is Stephen Bloom and he teaches journalism at the University of Iowa (that’s right, he’s on the taxpayer teat). Because he sees Iowans as little more than supporting players in “Deliverance 2: The Caucus,” he hates the idea that such backwards, rednecked, predominantly Caucasian, inbred, Jesus freaks (that *ahem* handed caucus and general election victories to Barack Obama) are so influential in our presidential election process.

In doing so, however, Bloom did prove a point that at least one Iowan is backwards, bigoted, hateful, prejudiced, and intolerant — himself.

—–

AP:

Only a few weeks before the first Republican presidential contest, some Iowans are on the attack like never before.

They’re writing angry blog posts, doing research to discredit their opponent and railing against elites, but this vitriol isn’t aimed at Republican candidates. It’s focused on University of Iowa journalism professor Stephen Bloom, whose article for The Atlantic magazine’s website painted Iowans as uneducated Jesus freaks who love hunting and don’t deserve the political clout they will exercise Jan. 3….

In the article, he paints Iowa’s cities and rural areas as economic wastelands with little culture. He calls the state politically schizophrenic with Republicans living west of Des Moines and Democrats to the east. He describes rural areas as hotbeds for suicide and filled with the uneducated, the elderly and meth addicts. He calls the Mississippi River “commercially irrelevant” and describes cities along it as “some of the skuzziest” he’d ever seen.

Bloom, who is Jewish, complains that Iowans constantly talk about Jesus and hunting. “That’s the place that may very well determine the next U.S. president,” Bloom, a New Jersey native who came to Iowa in the early 1990s from San Francisco, concludes….

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I need to start off all my posts about Operation Fast and Furious with this statement: Thank goodness we have Sharyl Attkisson, Katie Pavlich, Matthew Boyle, and Cam Edwards. Seriously, without them Operation Fast and Furious would stay hidden. So please thank them and support them as much as you can.

December is only 14 days old and so much has happened in the Operation Fast and Furious story. However if you don’t pay attention to those reporters I mentioned earlier you wouldn’t know because the Old Media is still doing their best to ignore or bury the story. Here’s some of the developments:

Friday, December 2: Department of Justice dumps 1400 pages of documents on Congress to show why they put inaccurate information in their February 4 letter.

Wednesday, December 7: Documents show ATF wanted to use Fast and Furious to make case for gun regulations. and Senator Grassley, on the Senate floor, says it’s time for Lanny Breuer to go.

Thursday, December 8: Attorney General Eric Holder testifies in front of the House Judiciary Committee.

As of today, Tuesday, December 13, 57 members of Congress are calling for Holder’s resignation.

I am not shocked at all the media ignored Ms. Attkisson’s breaking story about the ATF using Fast and Furious to enforce more gun regulations. After all, it would be admitting all along that we were right and they were wrong. They thought we were crazy because we knew Fast and Furious was a way to put restrictions on guns, but now they’re eating their words and I bet they’re delicious! I searched the Old Media’s websites and couldn’t find anything on it. If I am wrong please let me know.

This one cannot be blamed on new media. Senator Grassley didn’t tell this to Mr. Boyle or even pen an op-ed for The Washington Times. No, he said this on the Senate floor for everyone to hear. However, the media buried the story. Only The Washington Times had it on their front page. The other major outlets posted a story about it, but you had to search for it. It wasn’t on the front page or the front page of the US and politics sections. While ABC World News and NBC Nightly News did not talk about it on their programs, the ABC and MSNBC websites did post the AP story.

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MSM fact-checkers are an absolute cancer on our political process, a cynical and partisan conceit created by the left-wing media that allows them to arbitrarily judge what is and is not the truth, all in an effort to bring down Republicans and boost Democrats. I won’t even mince words here, the Politifacts and Anderson Cooper’s “Keeping Them Honest,” and the like must be exposed and neutralized. Conservative media and anyone else interested in truth and objective reporting must get the word out about this charade.

Good heavens, the “Pulitzer Prize winning” Politifact has gone so far as to protect Obama from “Saturday Night Live.”

No, really.

During the 2008 campaign, I watched in awe as fact-checking became a very effective weapon against the McCain-Palin camp. Get as angry as you want at this insidious practice, but the invention was pure genius. By disguising their left-wing agendas as “facts” and “truth,” these MSM fact-checkers allowed the left-wing media to turn every Republican criticism aimed at Obama into a backfire.

It goes a little something like this:

1. Republicans launch an effective attack.

2. Obama’s Media Palace Guards find a way to call that attack dishonest.

3. Obama’s Media Palace Guards then make the so-called dishonesty the issue.

4. *Poof* the narrative immediately turns from criticism of Obama into the dishonesty of Republicans.

5. That narrative lasts for days, putting our side on defense and off message.

If that particular scenario sounds familiar, that’s because it’s already happening in this campaign.

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Fifty-two Congressmen, including Representative and GOP presidential candidate Michele Bachmann, are demanding Attorney General Eric Holder’s resignation over Operation Fast and Furious. While the new media has reached out to Congress, there is still no excuse for the Old Media to not say anything, especially since these Congressmen held a press conference Tuesday, November 15.

Then again, are you shocked NBC Nightly News and ABC World News didn’t cover the press conference? We know all year Mr. Williams and Ms. Sawyer have never mentioned Operation Fast and Furious once. If they covered the press conference they’d be forced to talk and explain Operation Fast and Furious. I’m disappointed CBS didn’t run a story on the press conference, but since they’ve been on top of the story I’m willing to forgive them. Here are some topics NBC and ABC thought were more important than congressmen calling for Mr. Holder’s resignation:

• Low cost Lipitor!
• Annie Leibovitz says go iPhone!
• Texas court says dogs have sentimental value
• ACL injuries
• New Kennedy tapes

They will do anything to avoid talking about Operation Fast and Furious. Like Cam Edwards said they’d run an entire 30 minute show on Brian Williams and puppies before they talk about Fast & Furious. (more…)

- Blowing apart the meme that free speech is being suppressed due to journalist arrests:

Put together by Josh Stearns, this document has been a great resource to track journalists working on Occupy Wall Street stories around the country who’ve been arrested. So who are they? Only seven of the 25 arrested are full-time employed traditional news-gathering employees. A number were student reporters; a few were interns; a larger number were freelancers. Some work for traditional “objective” news organizations; others work for “non-objective” news organizations, like Alternet and Indypendent Reader.

Yes, Alternet and Indypendent Reader, two lefty websites, the latter which comes across more as activism (replete with glowing reports of #OWS) than an actual media website. The presupposition you’re supposed to share as a reader of their memes is that every single arrested journalist was the antithesis of Natasha Lennard. If the hyper-fellation of this movement in the press is any indication–as well as the press’s blatant obfuscation of the rapes, shootings, etc. therein–it’s not a leap of logic to assume that other members of lefty media sites perhaps crossed the line of observation-to-participation like Lennard.

Now consider this: the Society for Professional Journalists statement.

The number of journalists arrested at Occupy Wall Street has now reached six (there may be more), but the Society of Professional Journalists (SPJ) has had enough. It is publicly denouncing the arrests of those covering all Occupy protests and is demanding that Michael Bloomberg and city officials from across the country drop the charges against detained reporters.

Funny: According to SPJ’s own bylaws, some of those arrested might not even qualify for membership within the group. For whom are they speaking? The couple of AP photogs arrested? When the cops order you to get out of the way your media cred doesn’t recuse you from following the law. The press can be aggressive to the point where they ignore the physical safety of others, even presidential primary candidates. Why have some media present at the exact same locations not been cuffed whereas a couple others were? The futile attempt to argue this as an attack on the press only underscores further media bias.

I’m willing to give some of them the benefit of the doubt, but they can’t rage “against” the machine after being its lapdog for fifty years, all while expecting public sympathy. If they want to be truly revolutionary, they’ll pull a Steve Kroft and stick a camera in Nancy Pelosi’s face while asking her how she came in to that Visa IPO or maybe set up shop in the DOJ while Holder fidgets under Fast and Furious scrutiny.

- Remember when MSNBC’s Contessa Brewer freaked out over this? Will MSNBC breathlessly report on the firearms at OWS? Will they report on the shootings already happening? Or the other crimes?

- AOL/Huffington Post is hemorrhaging talent:

At least three top names from the company have departed this month, including Brad Garlinghouse, head of the company’s Silicon Valley office, who quit last week. Mr Garlinghouse’s departure came on the same day that Sarah Lacy, a senior writer at TechCrunch, said she was leaving, and just days after Saul Hansell, a former New York Times reporter who was a senior editor at the Huffington Post, quit his job.

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Occupy Wall Street’s imploding, Obama and the Democrats own the chaos, and now the AP is panicking.

 But first a little context…

Something happened this month that the mainstream media and the Left (but I repeat myself) never expected. Two months ago, the White House, Democrats, and the MSM were all sure that the #OccupyWallStreet movement would save them in 2012. With thousands of astro-turfed morons in the streets raging against Wall Street, Obama’s allies hoped to use said morons to create a silver lining in the economic cloud he himself created. 

The plan was a simple one. The path to Obama’s second term requires that enough voters forget that our current economic woes are the fault of a failed President who enjoyed two years of having every single item on his wish-list passed by Congress. And so the idea was to create Occupy in order to give the MSM the cover they desired to spend every single day up until the election talking about greed and income inequality in order to blame both for the stagnant economy.

The hope was that by repeating this message incessantly, enough voters could be convinced that Wall Street, and by extension, evil Republicans, were to blame for our chronic unemployment, record deficits, and stillborn economic growth. President Obama who?

Fortunately for America, this plan has not only failed miserably it has backfired completely. Thanks to the rise of New Media and our unwillingness to let the MSM’s lies, bias, and cover ups stand for even one more day, Occupy is in its death throes and might take the President and Democratic party down with it. First and foremost, we uncovered the lie that Occupy was grassroots and then we exposed every Occupy rape, poop, death, overdoese, old woman thrown down the stairs, attack on a police officer, and public act of masturbation. In the process, public opinion turned against the Occupiers and as a result these Leftists have started doing what the Left always does when they lose, have a tantrum.

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- AP scolds reporters for Tweeting about OWS arrests.

- Did the Newspaper Guild just endorse #OWS?

Sure sounds like it.

Guild launches online forum for journalists covering protests
09 Nov 2011

Covering the Occupation Movement can be hazardous.
A growing number of reporters and photographers have been tear-gassed, threatened with arrest or otherwise bullied by police. And while overzealous authorities appear to be the worst offenders, protesters also have been known to turn on anyone who seems to represent “corporate media” — most likely a media worker, sometimes a union member, trying to do a job.
In response, the Newspaper Guild has launched a Facebook page, called “Occupied Journalists,” to serve as an online forum for media workers to share survival strategies and anecdotes from the streets. Sara Steffens, a staff organizer in Oakland for the Guild and its parent union, the Communications Workers of America, said the online forum began when “we started hearing a lot of reports from all over the country from journalists running into trouble covering the protests.”

Police can tell the difference between a journalist simply covering what’s happening and a journalist who’s forgotten their objectivity and has joined in the protests.

I don’t recall them doing anything like this with the tea party, do you? Of course, the tea party didn’t have altercations with the law and respected our men and women in uniform. [via]

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I need to thank my friend Sean Arther for bringing this to my attention on Twitter. (Thank you!) He read my article on Dana Milbank, an op-ed columnist for The Washington Post, who claims Operation Fast and Furious is not a scandal. He remembered the intense media coverage in November 2000 when someone leaked George Bush’s 1976 DUI arrest. The media coverage was so intense that the LA Times ran an article about the coverage. One part caught my eye. [bold my emphasis]

Only a few major dailies–among them the Washington Post, the Baltimore Sun and the Dallas Morning News–considered it front-page news. Others, such as the Los Angeles Times and the New York Times, mentioned the arrest on Page One but ran a full story inside.

Editors at the Washington Post initially decided to keep the story inside. But they changed course as the story gathered steam during the night on the news wires.

“In the end, after a lot of discussion back and forth, . . . I decided that this was front-page news pure and simple,” said Executive Editor Leonard Downie. Bush’s acknowledgment that he had withheld the information, Downie said, “struck me as a newsworthy decision, to not disclose this when there was a long-standing issue about his personal conduct in the past.“

Interesting! Let me see if I have this right. A DUI arrest from 1976 deserves the front page. A federal funded operation that has resulted in the death of hundreds, including federal agents, does not deserve the front page.

Wait, what? I don’t see the logic. (more…)

On October 31, government officials broke up a drug ring in Arizona. The New York Times had a great article on it, and even though it wasn’t on the front page, it was in a good spot in the US section of their website. But that’s where my compliments stop, because the AP reported a major development the following day: two guns in that raid are connected to Operation Fast & Furious.

Put aside your personal feelings about The New York Times and remember they are The New York Times. They’re supposed to be the “best” source of printed news for us. Usually, when you want information on an important subject you head to the Times. Not this time. The AP posted the update at 7:10PM EDT. ABC News posted the report that very same night. Actually if you Google the title, “AZ Sheriff Says 2 Guns Tied To Fast & Furious” there are a lot of hits! (more…)

Why is it so hard to answer such a simple question? I’m having the same problem with The Washington Post. Their ombudsman, Patrick Pexton, emailed me a short note:

Hi Mary:
I actually am not a spokesman for The Post, although I do monitor everything it does. I speak out on issues as they come up and as I think they need raising. As I have pointed out in my last e-mail to you, I have addressed Fast and Furious in my column and in my blog, and have urged that it be covered thoroughly and that the coverage continue. I have also raised this issue internally.
I don’t think the fact that a Post story raised an earlier, similar operation under President Bush’s administration, makes that story partisan. It makes it contextual.
The Post is doing an excellent job on the Solyndra scandal, and in fact has led on that story. It is doing reasonably well on Fast and Furious. But these stories take time, digging, and resources. The Post is not unlimited in any of those.
Thanks for reading The Post.

I’m glad Mr. Pexton is keeping pressure on to keep Operation Fast & Furious a priority and is telling those that readers have been wanting more coverage. However, we still haven’t received an answer as to why readers have to search and comb the website to find articles on Fast & Furious. I repeated my questions to him in my response.

Dear Mr. Pexton:

(Before we start I know you pointed out I write on conservative site Big Journalism. However, I’m NOT a conservative. I’m a Libertarian.)

Thank you for your response. I’m thankful you’re staying on top of this and urging to keep this story going. I just wish the people would listen to you because they had no problem putting in a lot of effort making sure America was kept up to date on Attorney General Alberto Gonzales’s firing of 7 US attorneys.

I decided to compare the two more thoroughly and I’ll share with you guys the results. Now, since the subpoenas for Eric Holder were just now issued I’ll only compare the coverage from when the story broke to the issuing of the subpoenas.

The US attorney’s scandal first appeared in the Post on January 19, 2007 and the actual subpoenas were issued on March 8, 2007. Between those dates 20 articles, blogs, editorials, discussions were published. Another thing to note: All were written by Post writers, not taken from other news sources like AP. Those pieces weren’t just developments either. Some were about different people in Congress calling for Gonzales to resign.

The first piece I saw at the Post was January 30, 2011 and I admit the pieces from January to about June/July were great. But once it was revealed that the scandal went deeper than the ATF the articles started to dampen. I also cannot find an article about Issa questioning Holder on May 4.

I noticed when there were talks of sending Gonzales a subpoena the Post actually had a Post writer write an authentic article. However, when there were talks of sending Holder a subpoena the Post published the AP article. When Gonzales was sent a subpoena the Post wrote another authentic article. Yet when Holder was sent a subpoena the Post used the AP again. I’ve also noticed recently you guys have been using the AP and CBS articles a lot more for Fast & Furious coverage.

Plus, like I said before, us readers should not have to search and comb your website to find any information on Operation Fast & Furious. We shouldn’t have to write to you Mr. Pexton about where we can find Fast & Furious information on the website. A scandal like this should be on the front page or at least the front page of the US or Politics page. Instead when the memos were released and talks of subpoenas were going on we had articles about Mr. Perry’s rock or Romney’s faith on those front pages.

Again, why does the Post deem Fast and Furious not important? If you can’t give me the answer please point me to the person who can. Readers like myself need to know. Should I contact Ms. Horwitz?

Thank you,
Mary

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So here you have some public official caught on film casually using the word “nigger” to describe black children, he’s forced to resign as county commissioner, and this is all the information the Associated Press passes along:

WEDOWEE, Alabama — A county commissioner from east Alabama has resigned after being videotaped using a racial slur to describe black children.

Birmingham television station WBRC reports that longtime Randolph County Commissioner Thomas “June” Waldrep submitted his resignation on Tuesday. In a letter, the 80-year-old Waldrop apologized for anything he said that was offensive.

A video posted on Youtube shows Waldrep repeatedly using a racial slur to refer to black children attending a Boys and Girls Club. Waldrep doesn’t seem to know he is being recorded in the video.

In his resignation, Waldrep says he hopes his actions through the years spoke louder than his words.

Gee, isn’t something missing?

And it’s not a fluke, either, because you can read various versions of the story here, here, and here and there’s still a little something missing. In fact, after a good faith search on my part, this something that’s missing couldn’t be found in any news story on the Web. We had to confirm Waldrep was a Democrat through a Lexis/Nexis search.

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What a phony-baloney plastic banana good-time rock-and-roll optic photo-op that was. — Rush Limbaugh

In an article titled  ”Michelle Obama’s Target Trip,” Politico palace guards for Obama and buries the lead:

Never has a Target dash caused such a ruckus. Jennifer Lopez could probably shop at Target without creating a stir equal to that caused by the first lady after she made an unannounced, midafternoon trip Thursday to the mega-retailer in Alexandria, Va. …

A matter causing some suspicion about the trip is how an Associated Press photographer happened to be in position to catch the first lady — in baseball hat, sunglasses, flowered top, with tan purse and shopping bags — leaving the store.

“Good source work,” said Paul Colford, a spokesman for the wire service in New York.

The pictures were taken by Charles Dharapak, a veteran White House photographer for The Associated Press. The well-regarded Dharapak cheerfully declined to give POLITICO an exclusive on his exclusive.

“We have been besieged with interview requests, but Charlie has done not a single one,” Colford said.

Oh, it was just “good source work.”

Then why isn’t the photographer talking? Why no interviews? What we have here is a member of the media refusing to report. Are you suspicious, because I’m suspicious.  But do you want to know who isn’t suspicious? Politico.

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In an Associated Press article published last night, Becky Bohrer writes the following: [emphasis ours]

[Governor Sarah Palin's attorney] John Tiemessen, in a letter to the publisher of Crown Publishing Group Monday, cites an email that author Joe McGinniss allegedly sent a blogger in January seeking substantiation for several rumors that have surrounded Palin’s family. That email was posted online last week by Andrew Breitbart.

The email in question was not “allegedly sent.” Both Joe McGinniss and the party the email was sent to, Jesse Griffin, are on the record verifying the email.

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From the AP:

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Barack Obama’s promise Thursday that everything in his jobs plan will be paid for rests on highly iffy propositions.

It will only be paid for if a committee he can’t control does his bidding, if Congress puts that into law and if leaders in the future – the ones who will feel the fiscal pinch of his proposals – don’t roll it back.

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The actual story? Members of both parties are conflicted about whether to let the payroll tax cut expire in order to pay for Social Security benefits.

The way AP reported it?

News flash: Congressional Republicans want to raise your taxes.

Impossible, right? GOP lawmakers are so virulently anti-tax, surely they will fight to prevent a payroll tax increase on virtually every wage-earner starting Jan. 1, right?

Apparently not.

Many of the same Republicans who fought hammer-and-tong to keep the George W. Bush-era income tax cuts from expiring on schedule are now saying a different “temporary” tax cut should end as planned. By their own definition, that amounts to a tax increase.

The tax break extension they oppose is sought by President Barack Obama.

Many NPR affiliates repeated the same line in its news bulletins yesterday, telling listeners that many of the same Republicans who wouldn’t let the Bush tax cuts expire are now eager to start the payroll tax again. They’ll tax the poor, but not the rich.

The problem? Neither the AP nor NPR presented a single quote from a Republican who explicitly advocates the return of the payroll tax. All the quotes from Republicans in the original AP story discuss the policy implications of the payroll tax, but do not actually express a position on whether it should stay suspended.

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Lions, and Tigers and Bears! RNC scares the Make-Believe Media. Oh, My!

The AP characterizes the newest RNC campaign ad as a “dark” GOP “attack” that has a “wide-eyed girl … fearfully watching a TV” show that “portrays Obama as a dupe of China that has mastered the United States by 2017,” the end of his second term in office.   CNN calls the ad a “future doomsday scenario.”  WaPo labels it a “foreboding” portrayal of “Obama as a tool of Chinese masters.”   Even fair and balanced Fox News calls the ad “ominous.” Yikes!

So far, the RNC has rolled out four “Change Direction” ads, each presenting serious and straightforward predictions of bad times ahead if Obama is relected in 2012.

I say it’s truth in advertising, but I guess there’s just too much gravitas in the spots for the lefties.  Mustn’t scare the “bed-wetters” in the media!  (h/t Michael Walsh)  So, to help out the RNC lighten the tone, I suggest an ad ridiculing Obama’s record of accomplishments.  With some professional polish, this might do the trick:

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