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They just can't stop themselves. This is what a panel discussion on Saturday's Fox News Watch over Chuck Todd trying to monopolize the press pool time in Israel devolves into when regular Jim Pinkerton opens his mouth. Forget the dog whistles, they've just gone straight for the blow horns again.

h/t Media Matters

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Ann Romney says that she blames the media for her husband's loss in the 2012 presidential election because the "universally felt opinion" is that reporters wanted President Barack Obama to be re-elected.

"I'm happy to blame the media," Ann Romney told Fox News host Chris Wallace in an interview that aired on Sunday.

"Do you think the media was in the tank for Barack Obama?" the Fox News host wondered.

"Anytime you're running for office, you always think you're being portrayed unfairly," Ann Romney explained. "And of course on our side, we believe that there's more bias in favor of the other side. I think that's a pretty universally felt opinion."

She added that the the president had not portrayed her husband fairly during the campaign.

"He is an exceptional, wonderful person," the former candidate's wife insisted. "He really is a selfless person that really, truly cared about the American people... And for him to be portrayed in a very negative light -- in another way -- was very hard."

"He has enormous skill sets in dealing with difficult issues, and I totally believe at this moment if he were there in the office that we would not be facing sequestration right now."

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I'm not sure why PBS and CBS News feel that the public needs to be treated to yet another fawning interview with former Vice President Dick Cheney, but maybe they're hoping to pick up some of that Fox viewership, because Charlie Rose's hour long disgrace propping this guy up is what we're usually treated to on that network.

Apparently Cheney doesn't mind the drone program and called it a "good program" -- but what bothers him about it is not what should disturb most of us, like whether it's legal, the lack of oversight, overreach by the executive branch and the fact that dropping bombs on civilians' heads is just going to create more enemies and potential blowback when people rightfully get sick of watching their friends and their family members killed.

No, Cheney doesn't care about any of that. What bothers him is that we're killing these supposed terrorists instead of torturing them as we were doing under the Bush administration.

Cheney: Obama wants to weaken U.S. role in world:

Cheney insists that Obama's worldview and foreign policy is making the U.S. "vulnerable to the future."

And while Cheney voiced support for Obama's use of drones -- calling it a "good program" -- he said the president's national security nominees reflect "choices ... based on people who won't argue with him" and in the case of Hagel, "I think he wants a Republican to be the foil ... for what he wants to do to the Defense Department, which I think is to do serious, serious damage to our military capabilities."

Turning to a controversial policy of the George W. Bush administration, Cheney defended the use of enhanced interrogation techniques, saying that officials engaged in a "very long, difficult and elaborate process" with the Justice Department to determine "where the red line is."

"And we got approval for the programs that did go, that they were quote 'not torture,'" he said, but added that ultimately the administration stopped the use of waterboarding "because there was so much flak over it."

Rose did actually ask Cheney why he won't call the program torture during the interview, but there was zero follow up to this response. You can add this interview to the mile long list of evidence that proves that anyone who claims that PBS is some "liberal" network deserves to be mocked roundly for such a ridiculous assertion.

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The Daily Show's Jon Stewart gave former Vice President and chickenhawk Dick Cheney some of the lack of respect that he deserves after he was out there going after President Obama for his national security nominees at a speech he gave in Wyoming over the weekend and his subsequent interview with the entirely useless Charlie Rose on CBS this Tuesday.

Here's more on that from our friends at Raw Story:

“You know,” said Stewart, “Cheney’s really confident in his opinions and analysis, probably forgetting that he sucked at this.”

He added, “Like, he was a shitty vice [president], but even if Obama wanted to take our standing in the world down a peg he couldn’t ’cause the Bush-Cheney Administration left him with no peg room. I guess Obama could’ve created lower peg space, maybe invest in deep sea peg-hole drilling technology, but unfortunately he can’t afford to because the previous administration left us in a bit of a cash crunch.”

“And by ‘previous Administration, I mean these motherf**kers,” Stewart added. “Where does he get the balls?” Steward wondered, admonishing his audience, “Please don’t say ‘cadavers.’”

“This guy was wrong every time,” Stewart continued, after showing clips of a few of Cheney’s less-than-accurate statements about Iraq that led the country into war. “Every time he analyzed it, he was wrong. You try that at work, see if you get to keep your job and be wrong every f**king time.”

As Stewart correctly pointed out here, there is no penalty in our corporate media for always being wrong. They should be ashamed of themselves for giving the likes of Cheney air time in the first place, but I've given up on the notion a long time ago that we're ever going to see that come to a stop any time soon. Once again, we're left with the fake "news" show making a mockery of one that actually considers themselves a news outlet --and rightfully so.

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Looks like Tommy Christopher at Mediaite figured out what we've been saying over here for a long time now... that David Gregory is a right wing tool who's constantly advocating for really bad Republican economic policies along with a bunch of his fellow Villagers in the media: David Gregory Tells Morning Joe That President Obama Must Gut Medicare To Succeed:

On a very special 2nd Quadrennial Barack Obama Day edition of Morning Joe, Meet The Press host David Gregory provided some more evidence against the mythical “liberal media bias” when he endorsed the emerging Beltway media consensus that in order to deal with debt and deficits, President Obama is going to have to gut Medicare. “He’s got to be able to convince his own party, but also to do something that, frankly, Americans don’t want done,” Gregory said of Medicare, “which is to have to give back some things.”

[...] what’s significant is that Gregory wasn’t offering merely pragmatic political advice, but actually endorsing the idea that the way to solve our fiscal problems involves cutting Medicare for beneficiaries.

Unfortunately for America, President Obama has already indicated a willingness to move in that direction, having already placed raising the Medicare eligibility age on the table. Raising the age will only shift those costs, at higher rates, and only partially away from the federal government. Those two extra years will either be paid for by the seniors themselves, who will be charged up to 3 times as much for health insurance on the individual market, or by the government in the form of Medicaid for those who can’t afford private insurance, or by private insurance companies.

What no one is talking about is that Medicare is a huge break for private insurers, who get to lay off their highest-risk patients onto the government. People with retiree group health insurance will be covered by their health insurance for those two extra years, at great expense to those companies. The amount of money they pay out in claims will far outstrip what they can take in in premiums, and the additional premiums will fall on those retirees’ employers.

The other problem is that, relatively speaking, 65 and 66 year-olds are bargains for Medicare, and eliminating them from the program would only succeed at making the overall pool of Medicare recipients older and sicker. If there was a way to eliminate the last 2 years of eligibility, you’d be on to something.

Gregory and his fellow beltway hacks Joe Scarborough and Tom Brokaw have been singing this tune for some time now as we've pointed out here over, and over, and over, and over and over again. And as Christopher rightfully noted out, there are ways to make Medicare solvent without turning it over to the private insurance market:

Continue reading »

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Poor, poor Wayne LaPierre. He's just been treated so unfairly by that evil "liberal media" that they love to demonize over at Fox. I wonder when Michelle Malkin is going to talk to her Uncle Rupert, because it seems there's a problem with some mixed messaging when it comes to whether NRA head LaPierre is being treated unfairly or if we should rightfully believe he's nuts.

Maybe someone can ask Malkin to go read these headlines first before she pretends it's just liberals that have a problem with LaPierre and his organization: New York Post, Daily News Blast NRA Speech (PHOTOS).

Regardless of what Rupert's publication thinks, here was Malkin on Fox & Friends this Saturday, attacking liberals for rightfully going after LaPierre and his bizarre, tone deaf press conference this week, and right in there with wingnuts like Rick Perry and company that want to arm school teachers.

Michelle Malkin Responds to Left-Wing Gun Backlash: ‘NRA Has Been Demonized by Crazed, Anti-Gun, Liberal Media’:

Fox News contributor Michelle Malkin weighed in on Fox and Friends this morning about yesterday’s remarks from NRA CEO Wayne LaPierre, which have triggered outrage among liberals and gun control advocates.

In the group’s first news conference since the Sandy Hook massacre last Friday, LaPierre addressed the press, calling for every school in the United States to implement a protection program, saying that guns in the hands of “good guys” is the only means to stop evil among us. [...]

Malkin believes the NRA has been demonized by the “crazed, anti-gun, liberal media,” adding that the ideas proposed by LaPierre have been embraced by some school districts, specifically in Texas and Oklahoma where teachers legally carry firearms in school.

Malkin also called out hypocrisy on the left, especially among celebrities who hire armed guards themselves at times, but then criticize the NRA’s position that possessing a firearm is necessary for self-defense.

“There’s this attitude of ‘armed guard for me, but not for thee,’” she said. Malkin went on to address another topic: the fights that have erupted in malls over Air Jordan sneakers in several states, including one incident in Texas where two people were killed.

I guess Malkin doesn't realize that there's a difference between armed security guards who are trained and specialize in providing security for someone, and the NRA's position which is to just put as many guns as possible into the hands of anyone that wants one, no matter how or if they're trained to handle the weapons, if they store those weapons safely, if they're emotionally and mentally competent and regardless of their background. Just arm everyone and anyone with any weapons they want is always the NRA's solution to everything.

And it's a hell of a leap to compare celebrities who can afford private security to wanting to force school teachers to do double duty and carry firearms in our schools. We all know Republicans hate those "union thugs" and want their wages slashed and their unions busted. Now they think they should have to provide armed security for their students as well. And as Lawrence O'Donnell reminded us Friday evening, that armed sheriff`s deputy at Columbine High School years ago didn't do those students a bit of good.

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Bill O'Reilly caught a really bad case of selective amnesia on his show this Monday night, when he pretended he didn't have any idea that his fellow host at Fox had gone on the air, not once, but at least three times, blaming the shooting at the elementary school in Newtown, CT on the "removal of god" from our schools.

Bill-O had his regular guest, flame thrower Bernard Goldberg on and the two of them were very quick to attack MSNBC's Andrea Mitchell for supposedly politicizing the shooting because she dared to talk about the fact that maybe we should have some reasonable gun laws in the United States. But when Goldberg actually criticized Fox for doing the same thing and politicizing the attack to suit an agenda, and without calling out Huckabee by name, slammed him for his remarks about school prayer, O'Reilly decided to act like he didn't have a clue as to what Goldberg was talking about.

If O'Reilly needs a refresher as to Huckabee's remarks, someone can tell him to go watch what he said here and here. As much as O'Reilly hates but follows Media Matters, who have had this on their front page for days now, I don't think there's a chance in hell he didn't know about what HuckaJesus said.

Here's your "fair and balanced" discussion on Fox. Goldberg with false equivalencies and Bill-O pretending he doesn't know about the hackery from the religious wingnut on his own network.

And if anyone needed any more proof that Huckabee is a blathering idiot, go read this article from this past April: Gunman Kills 7 in a Rampage at a Northern California University.

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You've gotta' just love it. From the network that did nothing but hammer on the drummed up fake Benghazi debacle and that has done nothing but attack President Obama ever since he became the Democratic nominee years ago, comes complaints about supposed "media bias" and favorable coverage received by President Obama during the last week prior to the election.

Host Jon Scott asked his panel on Fox News Watch (their so-called media watchdog show which almost makes Howard Kurtz's Sunday show look respectable... almost) what they thought about the poll by Pew Research, which showed President Obama receiving 29 percent positive coverage, and 19 percent negative, compared to Mitt Romney getting 16 percent positive and 33 percent negative.

What they failed to discuss was the fact that the study from Pew also stated that "The final week of the campaign marked only the second time in which positive stories about Obama outnumbered negative dating back to late August," or the fact that most of that positive coverage was due to his handling of the response to Hurricane Sandy. Mitt Romney was running around still campaigning and pretending to hold a "storm relief event," while President Obama was just doing his job. So heaven forbid that Mitt Romney might have actually deserved that negative coverage.

But the hacks at Fox can't believe everyone else didn't follow their lead with being the one organization that the study looked at, which still had much higher negative coverage for President Obama and positive for Romney during that final week. It's always rich watching the pundits over at GOPTV complaining about "media bias" from the other networks and media outlets and pretending that the rest of them are all liberal.

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From this Saturday's joke of a media "watchdog" show over at Faux News, the panel members of Fox News Watch spent one of their segments again perpetuating the myth of the so-called "liberal media" and complaining that those "elitists" haven't shown hatchet-man Dinesh D'Souza enough respect. And we got treated to the false equivalency of them comparing D'Souza to the way Michael Moore has been treated by the media and the awards he's won, as opposed to them generally ignoring D'Souza.

Nonny already went through D'Souza's god-awful movie for us here, so just go read the post if you haven't already -- Doing the Right Wing Limbo – How Low Can They Go?. And judging from his terrible interview with Piers Morgan, which was featured in Nonny's post, and with Bill Maher and Cenk Uygur who both just took him apart, I think the best thing D'Souza could do for himself is to avoid doing any more interviews -- unless of course they're at Fox where he's just going to get softballs lobbed at him.

I hate to break it to the hacks at Fox, but D'Souza is being treated with disdain by the media because he deserves to be, not because of some supposed bias against conservatives. Once again rather than having an iota of concern for the truth, the talking heads at Fox are playing the poor, aggrieved victim-card for D'Souza, who supposedly just can't get a break from those liberal snobs who just want to keep him down. Break out the waaammmbulance. There are a whole lot more talented and truthful people out there all over the country who would love to have the money behind them that D'Souza's had to fund his hit pieces on President Obama. Sadly most of them will never be receiving the national attention or the money that D'Souza has been for cranking out his garbage to poison our public and political discourse.

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At the so-called Values Voters Summit, which should have been called the lying-liars' wingnut summit, hypocrite and former gambling addict, Bill Bennett, came to Mitt Romney's defense and attempted to do some rehab for him after his disastrous response to the attacks on our embassies.

Bennett: The Press Attacked Romney on Libya and Tried to 'Kill This Truth in the Womb':

During his astonishingly smug introduction of Paul Ryan at the Values Voter Summit, self-styled "values czar" Bill Bennett blasted the Obama administration's response to the attacks in Libya and Egypt while hailing Mitt Romney's crass attempt to exploit them for political gain as a bold stand for truth.

After falsely claiming that the administration responded to the attacks "by shuddering and shaking and wondering at the consequences of our First Amendment," Bennett then declared that the fact that Romney's response was so widely pilloried as tactless and inappropriate by the media was itself proof that what he sad was true because the press sought to "kill this truth in the womb; something it is well-practiced at":

And as the Washington Post pointed out after noting this about his speech: Bill Bennett proposes new fact-checking, media-bashing formula. "Now there’s a fresh fact-checking model for you."

BENNETT: Whatever timing, wording or parsing one may want to bring up, one may want to suggest as an improvement on his remarks, his words had a shock effect, didn't they? They had a shock effect because they were true. When they are condemned so broadly, so almost universally, among the establishment press, it is likely that they are true.

Sorry Bill, but they were shocking because they were so easily disprovable, completely brazen and crass in how ill-timed they were, but hey, heaven forbid that should get in the way of your talking points here. Bennett had the feigned victimhood and the "liberal media bias" nonsense all wrapped up in one nice steaming sack of lies with this one. Nice "values" you've got there pal.