Fox News In The Tank For Romney

Newt Gingrich is certain that Fox News looooooooooves Mitt Romney.

I think FOX has been for Romney all the way through,” Gingrich said during the private meeting — to which RealClearPolitics was granted access — at Wesley College. “In our experience, Callista and I both believe CNN is less biased than FOX this year. We are more likely to get neutral coverage out of CNN than we are of FOX, and we’re more likely to get distortion out of FOX. That’s just a fact.” [...]

I don't know where to begin with this! Oh yes I do.

Of course, that was then, this is now. NOW they've always been for Romney.

President's 12 Year Old Daughter In Liberal Press Cover-up!

Let me open by admitting that I'm surprised this story isn't getting more traction in certain circles.

Have you heard that Malia Obama, the president’s daughter, is reportedly spending her spring break in Oaxaca, Mexico? Allegedly, she’s jetting off with some of her classmates and 25 Secret Service agents to a country that the State Department has said all Americans should avoid. But something is different about the latest “Obama vacation controversy:” references to it are disappearing from the Internet — and fast.

Couldn't find anything about this on Fox News, for example! OMG, FOX NEWS IS IN ON IT!

It's not like it's a big secret though, because the President commented about Malia's being okay after the Mexican earthquake. And the press secretary released a statement that they did ask the news media to "not to report on or photograph the Obama children when they are not with their parents and there is no vital news interest."

So people who are raising a fuss about this either think that the American people have a right to know what Malia is up to, or they think that the press who cooperates with this request are in the pocket of the Obama Administration.  However as I said, this isn't getting a lot of traction so it seems that most people think it's reasonable to keep our noses out of the Obama children's lives. Which means, I guess, that most people are reasonable.

I can live with that.

He's Still Totally Socialist

Here's a screen grab from Politco, a few hours ago.

Strangely that union, Wisconsin 1948, has a flag that looks exactly like the Wisconsin state flag. In fact, that's what it is.

I think I see what's going on here. When conservative commentators say that the unions are against Scott Walker, they mean the entire state of Wisconsin is against Scott Walker. When they call the unions "thugs" they mean Wisconsin is a state of thugs. And so on.

Don't Release the Photos, Leak Them

In response to the hue and cry about releasing the evidence of Osama Bin Laden's death - well let's face it, why would you expect people to buy the photos at face value? People who don't believe we killed Bin Laden now aren't going to be convinced by pictures. Shopped! I can tell because of the pixels.

If the photos come out in any official capacity, there is a segment of the population that simply won't believe them. On the other hand, if they come out via Wikileaks and Obama decries the appearance of them on the public scene, that should put the matter to rest. Word to the wise!

A Little Conspiracy Mongering

The one item today on World Net Daily that DOES mention Bin Ladin is an exclusive interview with Abu Saqer of Jihadiya Salafiya, an Al-Qaida leader. What I'm wondering is how come World Net has exclusive access to this Al-Qaida leader? What did they have to trade with him to get this access?

Since there are much more widely-read news sources in the west, World Net Daily must have been especially accommodating to Al-Qaida in order to get this article. I mean, in a giving-aid-and-comfort-to-the-enemy kind of way. It's one thing to report on what a source says, but to cultivate an exclusive, well, I'm just saying that given how WND and Al-Qaida are both so much against the President of the United States it's a little suspicious.

If they loved America, it would be called AMERICANet Daily, wouldn't it?

I Hope You're Still Allowed to Read This

Another thing I'm for has been implemented by the FCC! This time it's Net Neutrality. Though it's an imperfect compromise (wireless carriers are allowed to regulate content, wired one are not - I think) it's something anyway, and something is better than nothing.

The rightwing spin on this is a little more crazy than usual, indicating that the right is getting their information from other sources than the rest of us. As far as they're concerned, if the government is preventing regulation of content that means the GOVERNMENT IS REGULATING CONTENT. Not allowing big media companies the option of blocking content is a blow to free speech, and will eventually lead to a revival of the fairness doctrine.

Think about this - the right are upset that the interent won't be under the control of the liberally-biased-big-media companies. What the hell!

Headline of the Morning

Gridlock or chaos?
What will happen if Republicans seize control of Congress?

From BBC.co.uk.

Me, I'm pretty sure it will be gridlock.

A Little More About Juan Williams

I don't really have anything new to add to what I said last week, but hopefully I can say it a little better.

Juan Williams wasn't fired from NPR for saying a racist thing. He was fired because his job there was as a news analyst, someone who boils down news stories and makes them easier to understand. Suppose Juan Williams is called upon to explain the Kenneth Gladney "beating" on NPR and last week he had said this on another network: "Well personally, it's pretty obvious to me that the Teabaggers are a bunch of liars." Or if he had simply put quotes around the word beating. You would not trust his version of the Gladney story.

Similarly, even measured as he was on O'Reilly, Williams reavealed a prejudice that excludes him from fairly covering most of the important stories nowadays. And he was measured. Look at this: “Wait a second though, wait, hold on, because if you said Timothy McVeigh, the Atlanta bomber, these people who are protesting against homosexuality at military funerals, very obnoxious, you don't say first and foremost, we got a problem with Christians. That's crazy.” So in context the comment that is said to have gotten Williams fired is very mild indeed. In fact, that's a viewpoint I frequently espouse myself, and just like Juan I can't seem to get any traction with it.

I can't see into the minds of NPR executives but I suspect the real problem is that Juan is working for Fox at all. Just being associated with that network is admitting that you are no longer interested in fairness and balance. Pop quiz: who is the sexy liberal at Fox? Estrich? Colmes? Juan Williams? They're stacking the deck in every way they can come up with to battle their percieved bias in the rest of media. It should be their job to balance within the network, not the entire media landscape. Why? Because they advertise themselves as a whole drink, not a tonic.

(Yes I know Colmes doesn't work there any more. He was too charismatic for them.)

Anyway, Williams is not hurting much from his firing. He signed a $2 million contract the next day and celebrated by guest-hosting the Factor. I'll be interested to see when THAT happens again!

Seriously, No Questions

I think we can safely assume that  one of the agenda items once the Tea Party gets control of all branches of government this Novemeber is the elimination of that bothersome, question-askin' press.

The editor of the Alaska Dispatch website was arrested by U.S. Senate candidate Joe Miller's private security guards Sunday as the editor attempted to interview Miller at the end of a public event in an Anchorage school.

Tony Hopfinger was handcuffed by the guards and detained in a hallway at Central Middle School until Anchorage police came and told the guards to release Hopfinger.

Hopfinger has not been charged but the owner of the Drop Zone, the private security firm that's been providing Miller's security, accused Hopfinger of trespassing at the public event, a town hall sponsored by the Miller campaign. The owner, William Fulton, also said Hopfinger assaulted a man by shoving him.

Anchorage Police who responded to the call said they would leave it to the District Attorney's office to decide whether to prosecute. They spent more than an hour taking statements, then left.

Hopfinger, who was holding a small video camera, said he was attempting to draw out a statement from Miller on why he was disciplined by the Fairbanks North Star Borough when Miller worked there as a part-time attorney. After Miller walked away, Hopfinger said, he was surrounded by Miller supporters and security guards and felt threatened, so he pushed one of them away.

Why was Miller speaking at a public school? I thought those guys hated public schools! Next you'll tell me he drove on ROADS to get there! At least he had the grace to use private security guards instead of police to enforce the non-existant law of trespassing at a public event. And you just know that the lamestream media is going to use this to make Miller look bad. As if physically restraining reporters for trying to knock a guy off message wasn't reasonable! AmIRight?

Of course I was being facetious in the first paragraph - obviously item number one will be dismantling the government, like they promised. Silencing the press will be... well, they'll need the government to do that. Once they silence the press and eliminate the Sharia Law threat, that's it, no more government! Oh and preventing Gay Marriage, because people can't be allowed to do anything they want.

If It Bleeds, It Leads.

Oh come on.

Danger: robots with knives could attack humans accidentally

German researchers have warned that robots in the home could prove dangerous - particularly when armed with sharp objects.

To discover what would happen if a robot wielding a sharp tool - such as a knife or a screw driver - accidentally struck a person, researchers at the Institute of Robotics and Mechatronics, part of the national aerospace agency in Wessling, south-east Germany, programmed a mechanical arm holding a variety of instruments to strike a series of substances that mimicked human tissue.

Similarly, from previous issues of the Guardian...

Automobiles may one day hunt down and kill pedestrians

Gutenberg's new "Printing Press" may shut down monasteries

Invention of "fork" may make it impossible to hold food with fingers

Penicillin discovery threatens nation's bread supply

Tea Party Not As Popular As You've Been Led To Believe

See below for a question from the most recent Fox News poll.

10. – 16. I'm going to read you the names of several individuals. Please tell me whether you have a generally favorable or unfavorable opinion of each one. If you've never heard of someone, please just say so. (RANDOMIZE)
SCALE: 1. Favorable 2. Unfavorable 3. (Can't say) 4. Never heard of 
*** SUMMARY CHART ***
Favorable
Barack Obama 50%
The Internal Revenue Service 49%
The Democratic Party 42%
The Republican Party 40%
The Tea Party Movement 36%
Nancy Pelosi 29%
Harry Reid 16%


Yes, even Fox News polls put Barack Obama, The Democrats, the Republicans AND THE IRS higher than the Tea Party. As I continually say, bias in news reporting doesn't make a difference. The IRS!!!! Don't forget to file this week.


Still, watch your back Harry Reid.

Brenda Starr, Girl Reporter

Sarah Palin last night on Jay Leno's show:

I think the mainstream media is quite broken and I think there needs to be the fairness, the balance in there — that’s why I joined Fox. Fair and balanced, yes. You know because, Jay, those years a go that I studied journalism it was all about the who, what, when, where, and why, it was not so much the opinion interjected in hard news stories. … As long as there is not the opinion under the guise of hard news stories — I think there needs to be clear differentiation.

Clearly we were all wrong about the nature of Palin's gig... she's not going to be a pundit or commentator, but an old-fashioned shoe-leather journalist! Just the facts! Like Fox News' intrepid Griff Jenkins! I look forward to seeing her out there, keeping her opinions to herself, just delivering the hard facts, dressed in a trenchcoat and shouting above the gale-force winds.

Unless she's just lyin' again about everything.

It Hasn't Been Such A Bad Week After All

Attention arch-conservatives: this Supreme Court decision to relax restrictions on political ad spending isn't as good for you as you thought.

Here's my thinking. In the broad sense, conservatives tend to trust corporations because they are usually run by older, richer people, who are conservative. Therefore it can be assumed that they will spend on ads that favor conservative candidates and causes. This is why liberals have been so angry about the decision. They believe that corporations will swing elections with a blitz of lies at the last minute.

However, the corporations that most conservatives DON'T trust are the big media. You know, that famous liberal media bias. And who do you think is going to get all that ad money, mmmmm? That's right! CBS, NBC, ABC! Meaning the other 360 days before the election, the entire liberal media can afford to poison our minds against Sarah Palin.


That's why they call me Mr. Brightside, honey.

The Free Market Speaks

Lou Dobbs resigned from CNN last night. Though I didn't see it happen, I understand he didn't allude to the well-known root cause: his show had simply become unprofitable. Dobbs couldn't attract sponsors.

Okay, admittedly the sponsors were pressured by special interest groups who objected to a few things that Dobbs had said. Okay more specifically, he is a crazy closeted white supremecist who was operating outside of his natural habitat. Since he wasn't on Fox News he stood out like a sore thumb. I'm prettty sure CNN got a lot of email from the non-white supremecist citizens of Aztlan as well. Damn, America! I meant America! I gotta remember to not slip up like that again or we'll be found out.

Incidentally, it's ironic about the white power thing since his own complexion is closer to orange. He and John Boehner are two members of the same weird race.

Well, now that Dobbs' career is completely over, for good, I'll miss him. Adios Lou!

There Is A Perfectly Reasonable Explaination For This

The liberal media never identifies Democrats if they're involved in scandals. Yes! No one involved in a scandal is ever associated in the press with the Democrat party.

Therefore, Fox has to do this once in a while, just to balance things out. In the big scheme of things, this freeze frame is completely accurate.

(h/t Wonkette, which probably added the crayon scrawlin' themselves)

A Rough Press Conference

Here's some of the questions the Obama lovin' far left liberal media posed at the press conference this morning.

Major Garrett, Fox News: In your opening remarks, sir, you said about Iran that you were appalled and outraged. What took you so long?

Followup: Are Iranian diplomats still welcome at the embassy on Fourth of July, sir?

?: Wouldn't that drive private insurance out of business?

"Chip": Were you influenced at all by John McCain and Lindsey Graham accusing you of being timid and weak?

?: ... how many cigarettes a day do you now smoke? Do you smoke alone or in the presence of other people? And do you believe the new law should help you to quit? If so, why?

My favorite, because it's acknowleged that this is one that Obama knew was coming, and he specifically asked for it. Nico Pitney from the Huffington Post: I wanted to use this opportunity to ask you a question directly from an Iranian. We solicited questions on tonight from people who are still courageous enough to be communicating online. And one of them wanted to ask you this: Under which conditions would you accept the election of Ahmadinejad? And if you do accept it without any significant changes in the conditions there, isn't that a betrayal of -- of what the demonstrators there are working to achieve?

My point in taking these questions and not posting the answers is this - the press isn't coddling this guy at all. They're not being mean either, but it's not the Gannon-fest that people like, say, Warner Todd Huston are painting it to be.

Kill the Shepard

Many people rely on Fox News because they believe it is the only unbiased source of reporting on television. That's why when someone on Fox suggests that they may be mistaken, they demand he be fired.

On June 10, (Shepard) Smith was in the middle of three hours of coverage of the killing at the Holocaust Museum in Washington, in which officials identified an elderly anti-Semite as the killer. He then mentioned a prior warning by the Department of Homeland Security about right-wing extremist groups and connected that to the angry e-mail messages he had been receiving.

“When a crazy man has walked into a Holocaust museum and shot the security guard, maybe that’s an appropriate time to warn people: you’ve got a crazy person in your life, keep an eye on him,” he said in an interview in his Manhattan office last week.

Mr. Smith said he fully anticipated one result of those comments: the nasty e-mail increased.

“Thousands of them,” Mr. Smith said. “And I know they don’t mean the things they say. I know they don’t hate me and want death on my family.”

He thinks it's bad for him, imagine the mail Juan Williams gets! If I'm Shep, I'm getting pretty tired of swimming upstream all the time; maybe I'm looking for a new gig at CNN or somethin'. Why not? At least there, his far-left moonbattiness (do you know he insisted that people were trapped in the Houston Astrodome after Katrina? Brownie himself hadn't even heard that one!) will go unnoticed.

A Plea for Clarification About Media Bias

Okay, I'm not going to convince you that the MSM isn't liberal-biased. If you believe that, there is not amount of counter evidence that will prove otherwise. So let's move on - why is it a problem?

Since you know I'm an idiot, assume that you'll have to explain EVERYTHING that's wrong with this unfair situation. Give examples!

I Need Help Here

Over at WHERE ARE MY KEYS there is a post about how people are essentially giving up on Obama, based on a Gallup poll. To illustrate, they're using this graph:



When I pointed out that Obama comes out looking pretty good in this poll (more people approve of his performance than disapprove) they said "but approval for his policies is lower than approval for HIM." I'm paraphrasing. Furthermore, they point out, approval for his policies has dropped significantly.

And admittedly it has dropped, that's true. Whether its significant is subject to debate. Still, to point at that graph and crow about it seems pretty wingnutty to me. And of course, there is the overarching, always hanging in the air, question: If they media is so lefty-biased, how did a thing like this happen? Why didn't NBC stop it?

Obviously, if the media was truly fair, Bush would have never went below 60% approval and Obama would be at 15% right now. I was crazy to even ask.

My Racist Ex-Girlfriend Was Right!

Last year about this time, a woman I was dating warned me not to support Obama over Hillary Clinton. "Don't vote for him," she whispered, "he'll only help his own kind." I laughed it off and broke up with her over that and other issues, but today I read this.

The following comes from the official Friday schedule for President Obama, which was just released by the White House.

Later in the afternoon, the President and the First Lady will attend a reception with the National Newspaper Publisher Association in the State Dining Room, where they will be presented the Newsmaker of the Year award. This event is closed press.

Not sure whether to laugh or cry.

UPDATE: Actually, not as outrageous as it seems: I am advised by the White House that exclusive access was granted to the NPPA, a 67-year-old federation of more than 200 black community newspapers, on terms similar to the access granted regularly to lots of media organizations for exclusive interviews. The organization or its members are expected to make a record of the event.

So maybe she was right? I don't know. It's not like this is such a huge event or anything. Still, the people demand to know the truth! Why can't Joe the Plumber do a remote for this?

(h/t to Publius for the original tip)