- Donald Trump to self: You’re fired.

- Chris Moody says that Trump sent him a critique of his piece, linked above:

If this is really his, and Moody has a great poker face, Donald Trump really puts a circle as the dot for his exclamation points? Call him a trainwreck all you want to, but I love that he did this (if he did. I want to so badly believe).

- Ace of Spades chews up the author of “My Tim Tebow Problem“:

… while this guy is coming from the Jewish perspective, he is more crucially coming from a liberal perspective, and he’s been taught, as many liberals have been, that Hatred is a powerful and useful weapon, and can be righteously wielded against the Unworthy.

[...]

… the idea of a new age of pogrom based upon the Tim Tebow throwing a football seems to be a reactionary one, conceived in hatred, executed in bitterness.

- MSNBC is looking to add more progressives to their echo chamber.

- Whoa: Russian blogger harnessing opposition to Putin is emerging as the opposition leader. Ew: He has a dark side. How dark? Think Russian nationalism and neo-Nazism.

(more…)

ABC’s “This Week” is bringing back George Stephanopoulos little more than a year after Christiane Amanpour replaced him and sent him to NYC for their morning show. There were rumors of Amanpour’s departure for some time, that the shakeup came from both parties with Amanpour longing to do more field reporting as opposed to sitting behind a desk.

NEW YORK — George Stephanopoulos is returning to Sunday mornings at ABC News, replacing Christiane Amanpour as host of the political talk show “This Week.”

ABC said Tuesday that Stephanopoulos, who returns Jan. 8, will remain as host of “Good Morning America,” although likely on a four-day schedule.

Amanpour, meanwhile, enters an unusual job-sharing role where she will become ABC’s global affairs anchor, contributing to prime-time shows on world news, while also being host of a daily show on CNN International.

[...]

Critics wondered from the start whether the Iranian-born Amanpour, a veteran foreign correspondent for CNN, was a good fit for a panel show dominated by American politics. It hasn’t budged from third place behind NBC’s “Meet the Press” and a resurgent “Face the Nation” on CBS, with the ABC show down 1 percent in ratings from last year.

(more…)

Potential good news via the New York Post:

Christiane Amanpour may soon be giving up the anchor chair on ABC News’ “This Week.” Sources say network honchos are mulling who might replace the award-winning journalist, who has struggled in the ratings since she jumped from CNN to take the reins of the public affairs show in August 2010. “There are discussions of Amanpour’s role changing to that of a global affairs anchor,” a source said. Possible names to fill her seat include ABC’s Jonathan Karl, Terry Moran, Matthew Dowd and Jake Tapper. “Good Morning America” anchor George Stephanopoulos, who hosted the show for eight years, may take back his role and “pull double duty” by hosting the morning show and the Sunday political talk show.

“This Week” has never recovered from the loss of David Brinkley, a legendary newsman respected by both left and right for his objectivity and probing intelligence. Placing former Clintonista George Stephanopoulos in that chair seemed like the worst idea ABC News could’ve possibly made, at least until Christiane Amanpour was hired to take his place.

Regardless, both of those left-wing partisans who disguise themselves as objective journalists were slaps to the face of Brinkley’s legacy, but there have been brief, shining moments when the “This Week” planets have realigned.

(more…)

I’ll be on ABC’s “This Week” this coming Sunday. The topics include the Cain Train, his chances, and the GOP primary.

(more…)

- Forbes discovers that in addition to starving Gilad Shalit, the Red Cross didn’t get a chance to examine him before fame-seeking Shahira Amin shoved a microphone in his face for Egyptian TV in a likely forced interview:

This is no small detail: The issue of Shalit’s medical condition (physical and mental) lies at the very heart of why the interview should never have taken place.  So does the fact that a masked Hamas soldier – from the group’s armed wing – stood with a camera in that interview room. Just how “released” could Shalit have felt at that moment – in an Israel-unfriendly country such as Egypt – to freely consent to an interview?  Considering that masked Hamas men were the only people he could see for five years, did he feel he was in any position to say no?

- The dream job for people who want to work at a network that nobody watches has arrived: CurrentTV is hiring. This could be your boss!

- “60 Minutes” lands the exclusive Ruth Madoff interview

- Twitter mulls over a revamp. Cue Facebook-level complaining.

- Former Obama speechwriter Jon Lovett created a new sitcom, “1600 Penn,” about a dysfunctional First Family. From the NRO comments:

Hasn’t this show already been on for nearly three years on all four broadcast networks plus FNC, CNN, MSDNC, CDNC and all three C-SPAN channels? Personally I never found it funny or interesting, and I can’t wait until it gets cancelled next November. (Although we’ll still be stuck watching the remaining episodes until the following January.)
Later,
Joe

I hear the critics already panned the reality show version.

(more…)

In case you were wondering if “The View” views the Democrat memo, wonder no more.

“They’re at the White House, they’re all over the country. But I just think it’s very, very strange when people say ‘you know, this group is doing this, this group is doing that.’ When we’ve criticized the Tea Party when they spit on people that were going in to their work. It’s very different than putting your hand up and saying ‘you know, stop taking a ga-billion dollars and throw some of that money because cause you’re not putting any jobs out there,’” Whoopi Goldberg says on “The View.”

(more…)

- Why is Media Matters tax exempt when they’re so overtly and directly political regarding issues before Congress?

- ABC’s Christiane Amanpour knows a little bit about occupation and revolution. But what does she know about Occupy Wall Street, versus the tea party?

- Plus, is the media reporting the real story behind the “occupy” movement? Mother Jones isn’t  known as the most objective  outlet  for  news, after all.

- Yahoo includes Bill Clinton in its lists of “successful stars.” Of course Bush didn’t make the list.

- It does seem somewhat curious that, hand-in-hand with the Occupy movement, comes the return of Van Jones. Both just in time for Obama’s re-election effort. Imagine that!

(more…)

The video below is apparently a preview of “This Week With Christiane Amanpour,” and while we won’t see the entire interview until it broadcasts tomorrow morning, from what we do see it looks as though Nancy Pelosi, the instigator of the Great Tea Party Smear of 2010, is once again allowed by the corrupt MSM to get away with trotting out this thoroughly debunked anti-Tea Party trope:

“I didn’t hear [Eric Cantor] saying anything when the tea party was demonstrating — actually spitting on members of congress right here in the Capitol.”

The Tea Party spitting on members of Congress never happened. [And Cantor did condemn Tea Party "epithets" at the time, though those accusations were also disproved. - JP] Pelosi knows it. Amanpour knows it.

But who knows? Like I said, that’s just a preview and maybe in the full interview Amanpour challenges the hell out of Pelosi for trying to get away with floating the spitting fairy tale … again. And maybe a unicorn will bring me my coffee with those little muffins I like with the walnuts.

First, a little context and background…

In late March of 2010, after using a number of procedural tricks to jam ObamaCare down the throats of the American people, Pelosi attempted to change this narrative by grabbing a big old gavel for a quick jaunt through a sea of peaceful Tea Partiers who had gathered to protest the passage of the heath care bill. It’s common knowledge that the then-Speaker of the House could’ve easily avoided antagonizing this group by taking another route to her destination, but the obvious idea was to paint a smug, screw-you grin on her face and attempt to create an incident that would abruptly change the subject from this wildly unpopular legislation to the villainous Tea Party’s behavior. In one fell swoop, Democrats and their media allies were hoping to socialize medicine and destroy a growing grassroots citizens’ movement.

Unfortunately for all those involved, the Tea Party didn’t take the bait and just let her walk on by without uttering anything more than “kill the bill.” But little setbacks like reality never stop the Left, so her fellow travelers — Rep Andre Carson (D-IN), Rep. Emanuel Cleaver (D-MO), and Rep. John Lewis (D-GA) — just made a bunch of stuff up after their own incident-free stroll down Tea Party Lane.

(more…)

George Soros, billionaire investor and grand patron of the American institutional left, has just failed in his attempt to have his 2002 conviction for insider trading in France overturned. He plans to appeal.

The Soros result has gone virtually unnoticed in the U.S. media, which has paid more attention to a rather lame attempt by Bloomberg Markets magazine to develop the Koch brothers conspiracy theory into a tale of global corruption.

How bad was that article? The Atlantic summed it up nicely:

The article purports to be a hard-hitting exposé on the giant multinational, run by billionaire brothers Charles and David Koch. According to Bloomberg, 14 reporters around the globe worked for six months on the story. What did they turn up? Really, shockingly little. And what’s worse: from the very outset, the reporters’ bias against the Koch brothers is utterly clear.

Meanwhile, Media Matters for America–the Soros-funded, self-appointed would-be censor of conservative opinion–continues hankering after the Koch brothers.

And just in time to catch the Astroturf fever of #OccupyWallStreet, Democrats are rumored to be heading to this weekend’s Sunday news shows armed with talking points about the Koch brothers’ alleged past dealings in Iran through a foreign subsidiary.

Yet Rahm Emanuel, who will appear on NBC’s Meet the Press, and Nancy Pelosi, who will appear on ABC’s This Week, received campaign contributions from companies alleged to have operated in Iran through subsidiaries–including Honeywell, for example, which has contributed to both. (more…)

- Joe McGinniss terrified “too busy” to pimp his book on Fox.

A Fox spokesperson said, “We’ve reached out to Random House to book Joe and was told by them that ‘he’s too busy to go on Fox News.’”

- Esquire on Jon Stewart:

He’s not so funny anymore, and it’s not only because he’s come to take himself seriously. It’s because in the Obama era, we’re starting to see the price of refusing to stand for anything.

(more…)

The round table discussion; the green room discussion follows after the jump.

(more…)

ABC’s Christiane Amanpour practically begs Mitch McConnell to raise taxes:

***
NY Times Columnist Carr says Kansas, Missouri “middle places,” land of “low sloping foreheads”:

“If it’s Kansas, Missouri, no big deal. You know, that’s the dance of the low-sloping foreheads. The middle places, right? …Did I just say that aloud?” – David Carr, NY Times

*** (more…)

Even the Devil can quote Scripture.

Oh! Well that’s good to know. I guess we can all go back to what we were doing before and pretend that the Muslim Brotherhood didn’t just last week call for war with Israel:

A leading member of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt told the Arabic-language Iranian news network Al-Alam on Monday that he would like to see the Egyptian people prepare for war against Israel, according to the Hebrew-language business newspaper Calcalist.

Muhammad Ghannem reportedly told Al-Alam that the Suez Canal should be closed immediately and that the flow of gas from Egypt to Israel should cease “in order to bring about the downfall of the Mubarak regime.”

“The people should be prepared for war against Israel,” he said, adding that the world should understand that “the Egyptian people are prepared for anything to get rid of this regime.”

(more…)

The exchange below that Christiane Amanpour has with pro-Mubarak Egyptian protesters is odd. They tell her that they hate America, that they want Mubarak, and then at the end she seemingly ignores an Egyptian with an English accent who politely asks for a moment of her time. It’s a very weird clip to release. Why? Does it seem to anyone else that there is this floating narrative that Mubarak supporters are villains?

Nobody is arguing that Hosai Mubarak was a stand-up leader. A dictator for thirty years, he’s the lesser of a bad choice if the other choice is leadership from a candidate like Sami Enan who has Muslim Brotherhood backing. If the opposite to Mubarak is an actual fair election, then it’s a good thing. But when has there been an actual fair election in a similar political climate in the past? More importantly, when has this administration actually stood up for the results of a fair election when it doesn’t jive with the wishes of the dictocrat who wants to remain in power?

(more…)

Our pals at the Media Research Center bring the Christmas cheer with a highlight reel of the year in liberal media bias.  Enjoy:

Over the past couple of months, a lot of readers of my website, AtlasShrugs, have been asking me why I go on these consistently belligerent TV shows to discuss Islam, knowing that:

• It is going to be a hostile environment;
• I will be debating liars, deceivers and Islamic supremacists;
• I will be defamed, smeared and slandered;
• The playing field will be grossly unfair;
• I will be interrupted, cut off, and rebuked;
• I will be given much less time than my opponent.

I will tell you why. It is an opportunity, however compromised. Voices like mine, Robert Spencer’s, Wafa Sultan’s and Ibn Warraq’s are never heard in the mainstream media. The truth is hidden from the masses, and the media’s criminal negligence is cloaked in good intentions. Well, the road to hell is paved with good intentions.

This is guerrilla warfare in the information battlespace, in the war of ideas. These media opportunities were hardly perfect, but they were something. Why make perfect the enemy of the good? They were better than the traditional blackout on our freedom- defense initiatives. It was a shot, and I was taking it and running with it, no matter how disgusting it all was.

From the media’s perspective, the Ground Zero mosque was an historical phenomenon. For the first time, a major news story became the most important national and international news story without the media. Think about that. Unlike the fringe pastor in Florida, who tweeted a Qur’an threat and the media descended like locusts to a Florida backwater to create a news story, a narrative, the Ground Zero mosque was not shaped by the media, not covered by the media — not at first anyway. (more…)

We have finally reached the number one, most left-biased journalist in America today on our top ten count down and our most biased journo pick probably won’t surprise any of you. Even though she just “retired” due to her outrageous bias and hatred for Israel, we just have to give the number one most biased slot to the ever-vitriolic Ms. Helen Thomas, long time employee of United Press International (UPI) and the Hearst New Service.

Thomas was an over 50-year employee of UPI but in the year 2000 she quit the wire service because it was bought by News World Communications which is affiliated with the Unification Church. She was proud of herself, though, because according to her she was “never, never accused of bias” in her reporting.

I worked for United Press International for more than fifty years, and I wrote straight copy. I was never, never accused of bias. I did not bow out of the human race. I permitted myself to care, to believe, to think. But I assure you, I assure you that it did not get in my copy.

But that isn’t what her record says. Bias was epidemic throughout. In May of 2000 the MRC went back and found at least half a dozen instances where Thomas readily revealed her bias. Instances range from Ronald Reagan’s days in office up to the year 2000 when she quit UPI.

The MRC found in part: (more…)

As we continue with America’s most left-biased, working journalist list, we feature a woman that takes herself quite seriously and un-ironically as a non-opinion-styled journalist. CNN’s Christiane Amanpour really does think that no one can tell that she is a true-blue left-winger. Sadly, there is that all too human penchant of fooling oneself as much as one tries to fool others with this one. But that doesn’t stop her from making the claim.

In 2008, for instance, Amanpour said of herself:

I stay away from commentary and I stay away from ideology. All this stuff that we have seen marching into the space of fact-based news over the last several years, the highly opinionated, highly ideological [demagoguery] that exists and masquerades as journalism. I draw a line and I stay in the fact-based reality.

Nice story, that. Reality, though, seems to diverge a bit from Amanopour’s self-serving assessment.  Let’s take Amanpour’s recent altercation with Marc Thiessen, for example.  During a recent appearance on her show, the former Bush speech writer took Amanpour to task for saying that the waterboarding tortures perpetrated by Cambodia’s genocidal communist organization Khmer Rouge was exactly the same sort used by the Bush administration on terror suspects.

Here is how Amanpour characterized the waterboarding practices during her filmed visit to the Khmer Rouge torture camps: (more…)

Really, can it get any worse? Can once-proud media organizations sully themselves any more? Andrea “NBC News, Washington” Mitchell married to Alan Greenspan. Christiane Amanpour married to former Clinton Administration mouthpiece Jamie Rubin.  Speaking of Clinton hacks, James Carville and Paul Begala, shacking up together at CNN. And now this. From Newsbusters:

To highlight the announcement that Bianna Golodryga had been named co-anchor of the weekend Good Morning America, ABC blurred the lines of journalism on Sunday and brought on the host’s fiancee, Barack Obama’s Director of the Office of Management and Budget, Peter Orszag.

In a fawning piece on Golodryga’s life story, an onscreen graphic identified Orszag only as the journalist’s fiancee. At the end of the segment, the Democratic official strode onto the set, surprising the host. Only then, almost as an aside, did co-anchor Bill Weir explain, “…For those who may not know, Bianna’s fiance is in President Obama’s cabinet.”

What a surprise! A news anchor engaged to an Obama Administration official.  And one with, shall we say, a Lothario-like past. Pillow talk — what pillow talk? We’re all professionals here!

In the old days, such relationships were grounds for firing, not a promotion. But the demoralized ABC News obviously no longer cares about propriety, integrity or anything else. Today, sleeping with a source is simply good “journalism.” Not to mention, “access.” (more…)