- Logo test: Which newspaper brands do consumers trust most? Yikes. Not USA Today!

Despite having the second-highest circulation of any U.S. newspaper, the USA Today was the least trusted brand among both consumers and local service professionals, actually

- Crushing progressive media minds all across the blogosphere: Bill Ayers admits to the Obama fundraiser that the Obama camp had called a “myth.”

- Media inquiries forced forward Cain’s latest accuser.

- Ann Coulter heavily censored on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.”

- Eliot Spitzer returns to cable news.

- Daily Kos’s Markos Moulitsas “uber moron emeritus“:

When it was reported that Republicans had signaled they might go along with an extension of the payroll tax cuts, Markos jumped on Twitter to declare a victory for Occupy Wall Street. He then cranked out ablog post which comes off like someone who has never done an end zone dance trying to do the Ickey Shuffle for the first time.

In the world where Occupy had never happened, Republicans would’ve held these tax cuts hostage without suffering any ill repercussions. Why would they? The chattering class and Beltway media would be droning on endlessly about deficits and other things that didn’t matter.

See that? “Deficits and other things that didn’t matter.” This is actually mainstream Progressive belief. Remember this the next time a Democrat pretends to care about fiscal responsibility. They don’t care. But I digress.

In this world, Occupy has thrust income inequality to the forefront of the political debate — so much so that typically immovable Republicans are afraid to feed that narrative.

In other words, a ragtag bunch of hippies with supposedly no demands have done what Democrats have never been able to do — get Republicans to cry “uncle”.

Yeah, Markos. That ragtag bunch of hippies have gotten the evil Republicans to say they’ll probably back the extension of a TAX CUT.

Today’s opening snark courtesy of Journolister Dave Weigel from his Slate perch:

Big Government breaks the news that Bill Ayers hosted a fundraiser for Barack Obama; well, this was broken by Ben Smith in 2007, but still.

I call it a “snark” because the word “lie” feels a little harsh during this holiday season. However, it’s just a fact that Big Government didn’t position the piece as “breaking news” and as far as I can tell it wasn’t even a featured story. But you have to admire a guy like Weigel who poses as an objective journalist and yet sees no news value whatsoever in new video of a notorious domestic terrorist speaking openly about his relationship with a sitting President of the United States.

But is it really that Weigel saw no news value in it or that he knows that Obama’s re-election could be in even more trouble were he to receive the kind of vetting Journolisters like Weigel did everything in their power to prevent in 2008?

Naturally, Weigel isn’t alone. Here’s Politico’s Ben Smith joining in on the wrist-flicking of the new Ayers video:

Oh, and did you know Ben Smith was also a member of Journolist and that something he didn’t find at all, uhm, “footnote-y” was the possibility that Sarah Palin might own a tanning bed.

Priorities.

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CHRIS MATTHEWS:  Tonight, President Barack Obama. Let’s play Hardball.

OBAMA:  Hello, Chris. Hey, you ever see someone about your ADHD problem?

MATTHEWS:  Too busy. Sir, recently I criticized you pretty harshly. You came on anyway. I’d like to kiss and make up.

[from off screen]

MICHELLE:  You keep your distance, buddy boy.  I’m watching.

MATTHEWS:  Yes’m. Sir, rumor is you cut the Asia trip short for clandestine meetings with the Supercommittee.

OBAMA:  Not true, Chris. I returned earlier, but for a more important reason than rescuing our economy: I wanted to save the NBA season, and in so doing show the world I deserve the Nobel Peace Prize.

MATTHEWS:  You’re involved in the negotiations?

OBAMA:  Hush-hush summit at Camp David. Reverend Jackson and Secretary of State Clinton were my lead mediators. Kobe Bryant and David Stern agreed to represent their constituents. (more…)

In this weekend’s featured interview in the Wall Street Journal, Juan Rangel, the leader of United Neighborhood Organization (UNO), attempts to sanitize the history of what was once one of the most notorious Alinskyite “community organizing” groups in Chicago.

Rangel paints his group as the moderate, patriotic alternative to the victim-mongerers at the National Council of La Raza and other Hispanic groups.

WSJ: Juan Rangel of UNO

The truth is more complex.

UNO is the Mexican-American ACORN, founded in 1980 by radicals who were tied to the left-wing academic/activist Chicago clique that would later produce Barack Obama. (more…)

Smitten by her blonde curls and still blissfully unaware of how cruel the world could be, at the age of eleven I called my first crush on the phone fully confident it would end with the beginning of a lifelong romance. Yes, I had watched many a friend go down in a flaming ball of fail in similar situations, watched them die slow deaths brought on by awkward pauses and fits of panic blanking the mind. But that wasn’t going to happen to me. I had learned from their trauma. There was no way anything could go wrong because I … had written a script that laid out every possible conversational scenario…

If you’re wondering how my pathetic little phone call went, watch Laura Flanders’ sorry attempt (video here) to confront Andrew Breitbart. Methinks that the moment Flanders learned she would be on national television seated next to Breitbart, visions of liberal glory popped off in her fevered mind as she plotted to publicly demand he apologize to Shirley Sherrod.

Train meet wreck. Ooh, that left a mark. But the truth usually does.

I was in the audience last night (pretty sure that’s Alex Marlow and I clapping all by our lonesome at the 11:05 mark), and while the crowd (who took our solo applause in stride) was obviously on Flanders’ side politically, her humorlessness eventually cost her their sympathy. Throughout the night, she tossed out one wet blanket after another with her joyless left-wing talking points that violated the spirit of the conservation. Eventually, in the “Overtime” segment, Breitbart turned to her and said:

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This weekend, President Obama’s senior advisor David Plouffe stepped into the Donald Trump MSM-birther fray, dissing – what he termed – Trump’s “sideshow” public appearances.

“There may be a small part of the country that believes these things, but mainstream Americans think it’s (Trump’s birther remarks) a sideshow,” said Plouffe.

“Birther,” is, of course, the media’s pejorative term for those that believe the President is not a natural born U.S. citizen. Back in June 2008, after months of speculation, then candidate Barack Obama succumbed to the political pressure and released a “Certification of Live Birth” from the State of Hawaii. Unfortunately for Team Obama, a certification is not the original record of live birth, the document has only continued to fuel the controversy.

Enter Donald Trump.

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Try to remember how you felt on the days after the horrible events of September 11, 2001. I remember our country experiencing something close to Dr. Elisabeth Kübler-Ross’s famous stages of grief. Except instead of “acceptance” being the final stage,  our nation swelled with an enormous sense of patriotism and resolve best represented by the bi-partisan members of Congress singing “God Bless America” on the steps of the Capitol, President George W. Bush’s rallying rescue workers on a pile of rubble, and flags being flown on almost every porch in America. Do you remember those days and those feelings? Now, ask yourself:  What kind of person would instead take the occasion of the day after the attack to lead a rally condemning America and holding the terrorist murderers up as martyred heroes?

Van Jones is that kind of person.

In a recently discovered video, the former White House appointee and current hero of the liberal elite and de-facto Huffington Post/AOL editorial director is seen telling the adoring crowd,  “It’s the bombs that the government has been dropping around the world that are now blowing up inside the U.S. borders.”  He said this after a whole host of speakers from the radical fringe fringe denounced our country and her policies and hijacked the tragedy to justify unloading a laundry list of cliched, left-wing reasons to blame America for the acts perpetrated by radical Islamist totalitarian terrorists.

Remember, this rally was taking place while the bodies of 3,000 Americans were still smoldering in the rubble of the World Trade Center and American heroes were putting their lives at risk at ground zero in a massive humanitarian effort.  What kind of monsters would use this occasion to turn Americans against one another?

It’s no wonder that this man is embraced and honored by groups like the once-relevant, now-radical NAACP and was given the high honor of holding a Presidential appointment in the first year of the Obama Presidency.  He speaks the revolutionary “blame America first” rhetoric of Bill Ayers, Jeremiah Wright and Malik Zulu Shabazz. (more…)

It’s not fair to blame Beck for violence committed by people who watch his show.

This tiny journalistic fig leaf appears midway through Dana Milbank’s latest article for the Washington Post. The remainder of Milbank’s 750-word piece is devoted to blaming Glenn Beck for violence committed by those who watch his show. Or, more specifically, the violence of two specific men who had watched Beck’s show.

The first is Byron Williams, a two-time felon who was on parole, out of work, and living with his mother. Two weeks ago, Williams was stopped by police en route to “start a revolution” by killing members of the ACLU and the Tides Foundation in San Francisco. We don’t know where Williams heard about the Tides foundation, but based on an interview with William’s mother, Milbank implicates Beck. Of course this is, at best, guilt by televised association. Glenn Beck has never met Williams or encouraged him or anyone else to take up arms against the Tides Foundation (or anyone else).

And this turns out to be Milbank’s best argument. When he tries to offer the proverbial 2nd point required to draw a line, he blows it completely: (more…)

More than a week since a New York Times story on the Obama-approved program to assassinate U.S. citizens named as terrorists, Keith Olbermann still has not condemned that program. One reader correctly observed that Olbermann reported on the story in early April but, inexplicably, without commentary or expressing an opinion and, instead, he gave a commendably fair and balanced presentation almost worthy of broadcast on Fox News. As Glenn Greenwald noted at Salon:

What’s most striking to me about all of this is that — as I noted yesterday (and as Olbermann stressed) — George Bush’s decision merely to eavesdrop on American citizens without oversight, or to detain without due process Americans such as Jose Padilla and Yaser Hamdi, provoked years of vehement, vocal and intense complaints from Democrats and progressives. All of that was disparaged as Bush claiming the powers of a King, a vicious attack on the Constitution, a violation of Our Values, the trampling on the Rule of Law. Yet here you have Barack Obama not merely eavesdropping on or detaining Americans without oversight, but ordering them killed with no oversight and no due process of any kind. And the reaction among leading Democrats and progressives is largely non-existent, which is why Olbermann’s extensive coverage of it is important. Just imagine what the reaction would have been among progressive editorial pages, liberal opinion-makers and Democratic politicians if this story had been about George Bush and Dick Cheney targeting American citizens for due-process-free and oversight-less CIA assassinations.

And back then, as he did with Bush, Olbermann castigated Obama as a fascist; a criminal committing impeachable offenses.  Oh, wait.  I’m sorry.  No, he didn’t. (more…)

Back in September, after the Giles-O’Keefe ACORN reveal had blown through the alternative media with Katrina-strength winds, the New York Times‘ public editor, Clark Hoyt (Mr. Collins to the Gray Lady’s Lady Catherine de Bourgh), wondered if just maybe the paper had tuned in a bit late to the story.  Managing editor for news Jill Abramson joined him in the public fret-fest, conceding the Times was “slow off the mark,” blaming “insufficient tuned-in-ness to the issues that are dominating Fox News and talk radio.” Hoyt then disclosed that Abramson and executive editor Bill Keller “would now assign an editor to monitor opinion media and brief them frequently on bubbling controversies.”

“Clueless Clark”

Who was this individual assigned by the Times to give them a window on the alien universe of Fox, talk radio and the conservative blogosphere? Keller – the Times‘ transparency and all that — announced he/she would remain anonymous, since he wanted to spare “X” “a bombardment of e-mails and excoriation in the blogosphere.”

Oh, and here’s how Hoyt concluded his column:  “Despite what the critics think, Abramson said the problem was not liberal bias.”

And they say the Times has no comics section! (more…)

I couldn’t believe I was having this conversation. It felt like a scene from a movie that conveniently ties plot points together when two critical characters in the storyline share a moment of implausible significance – where the intrepid reporter finally runs his target to ground.

So at first I had trouble getting my words out. “I’m Andrew Breitbart,” I exhaled. Instead of hanging up, Bertha Lewis laughed like someone I would probably like in a different setting – but certainly not in this lifetime now that we are permanently and publicly tied to one another as media-based adversaries.

I knew the awkwardness of the moment would turn into trouble when I started asking her pointed questions and, sure enough, we soon we found ourselves in trouble.

“Did you go to the White House last year?” I asked.

Bertha Laughed heartily.  ”No,” she said.

“Really?” I pushed.

“No. One hundred percent not. Not this year. Not last year. Not ever,” she stated firmly, all the while maintaining an awkward and ironic joviality that was likely born of the weirdness of our impromptu exchange. (more…)