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Suddenly, bloggers, opinion people, columnists and, yes, pundits who haven't paid attention to anything I have been saying or writing for the past 18 months are all over me. Suddenly, I find myself in the center of a firestorm over Obama's economic policies, taking enfilading fire from the "liberal" media (from serious columnist Frank Rich to entertainer Jon Stewart) while being defended by Rush Limbaugh, the standard-bearer for the Republicans. I'm uncomfortable being in the crosshairs of columnists and comedians I enjoy, and I find the embrace of Rush Limbaugh most certainly strange if not antithetical to many of my...

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WASHINGTON -- President Barack Obama enjoys widespread backing from a frightened American public for his ambitious, front-loaded agenda, a new poll indicates. He is more popular than ever, Americans are hopeful about his leadership, and opposition Republicans are getting drubbed in public opinion, the new Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll suggests. POLL: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123612000246123253.html#project%3DWSJNBC090302%26articleTabs%3Dinteractive

Just listening to CNN online and heard Rick Sanchez interview this Media Matters guy and made no mention of MM's affiliations or slant, just that he works for "a media fact check group". I wanted to barf. It's to be expected coming from CNN, but here's the real shocker: they picked apart a Republican congressman's response (forgot his name) to a question. Sanchez asked him about spending and earmarks under the Bush Administration and why he's making a big fuss now instead of back then. The congressman rattled off several bills that Bush supported that he fought Bush on. Enter...

Democrats took a swipe at Republicans - and conservative talk show host Rush Limbaugh - with a Web page launched Wednesday morning on the official site of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. The page - found at imsorryrush.com - allows users to construct a Mad Libs-style message to Limbaugh using "the secret Republican Apology Machine" and sign it with the name of prominent Republicans who've released mea culpas to Limbaugh recently - including Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele. [Snip] Limbaugh made headlines on his radio show when he stated, four days before Barack Obama's inauguration, that he wanted...

Top Democrats believe they have struck political gold by depicting Rush Limbaugh as the new face of the Republican Party, a full-scale effort first hatched by some of the most familiar names in politics and now being guided in part from inside the White House. .... The seeds were planted in October after Democracy Corps, the Democratic polling company run by Carville and Greenberg, included Limbaugh’s name in a survey and found that many Americans just don’t like him. “His positives for voters under 40 was 11 percent,” Carville recalled with a degree of amazement, ... "I hope he fails,”...

Conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh rejected reports that he is rooting for the failure of President Obama on his syndicated radio program Tuesday. Instead, he suggested that President Obama stands to gain from an economic failure. “I am an average citizen…I have a microphone,” Mr. Limbaugh said. He argued that he has been financially fortuitous in his life and asked why he would want to see the economy fail and his capital shrink. Mr. Limbaugh also responded to White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel’s comment on CBS’ ‘Face the Nation’ Sunday that Limbaugh “is the voice and the intellectual...

For this week's poll, we take a que from the Rasmussen poll. They're asking you to predict "The One's" approval at the end of this April. We're taking a longer term view. As in, the number that will have the greatest bearing on the 2010 mid-term elections. So, this week's question is: "What will Obama's public approval rating be on Labor Day, 2010?" Your options: Around 70% (all hail "The One"!) Around 60% (smooth sailin' for Dems in mid-terms) Around 50% (dicey mid-terms) Around 40% (ruh-roh!) Much less than 40% (Eject! Eject!) Click here to cast your vote and comment

IN LETTER, ORACLE ADMITS TO ERRORS IN WORST-EVER '08 Warren Buffett admitted to doing some "dumb things" in 2008 - the worst year for Berkshire Hathaway in the 44 years he has run it. A brutal stock market decline amid a teeth-gnashing recession pushed Omaha-based Berkshire to a 96% drop in profits, its fifth straight quarterly earnings decline. Buffett, known as the Oracle of Omaha for his decades-long record of picking value investments, said buying ConocoPhillips shares when gas and oil prices were at their peak was perhaps the dumbest move in 2008. Berkshire bought 84.9 million shares at $82...

Senator: Demise of newspapers helps GOP @ 3:12 pm by Hill Staff Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) said on Friday that the demise of daily newspapers is helping the Republican Party. Coburn, responding to a question from an attendee about media bias at the Conservative Political Action Conference, said, “The daily newspaper will die.” Coburn added that advances in technology, such as the Internet, Twitter, text messaging, and YouTube, are helping Republicans get their message out because policymakers don’t need to rely on daily newspapers as much as they used to. The conservative senator, who agreed with the assertion that the...

In his latest “Memo from Cairo,” New York Times correspondent Michael Slackman virtually begs the Obama administration to avoid using the word “terrorist” in reference to Hamas and Hezbollah. According to Slackman... calling these groups “terrorists” turns off the Arab world, in which people view Israel as the “real terrorist,” whereas Hamas and Hezbollah are just “trying to liberate their countries.” In turn, intimates Slackman, using a “loaded word” like “terrorist” when describing Hamas or Hezbollah makes peace impossible. Let’s leave aside for a moment that Slackman has managed to pass off his own view on the mind-numbingly dull one-man’s-terrorist-is-another-man’s-freedom-fighter...

Introduction: ...At the outset of a book chapter describing the 2001 analysis from this project (Paterson, 2005), I asked if media convergence and the migration of news consumers to the Internet democratise information flow - as conventional wisdom suggests - or simply disguise a steady reduction in information diversity. Here I seek to approach the problem more definitively. The hypothesis of reduction of information diversity saw preliminary support from my 1999 and 2001 data, and other academic and industry reports. And so I pose the following hypothesis for testing through longitudinal analysis: In the last five years, international news flow...

A couple of years ago, when speaking to a local group, I mentioned that The Chronicle was losing money. A couple in the back of the room rudely applauded. How thrilled those two must have felt when - if - they learned of Chronicle Publisher Frank Vega's announcement Tuesday that the Hearst Corp. will implement "significant" workforce cuts. If the cuts don't pay off, then the Hearst Corp. will "offer the newspaper for sale or close it altogether." Bloggers and e-mailers are crowing. If The Chronicle is shuttered, they'll be dancing a jig. Many conservatives feel a warm glow at...

A Democratic pollster based in North Carolina says his poll of Texas Republicans shows U.S. Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison with a big lead on Gov Rick Perry for governor—the primary battle they stand to have next year. “If the Republican primary were held today, Rick Perry’s tenure… would be coming to an end,” Raleigh-based Public Policy Polling said online today. Its survey suggests Perry trails Hutchison 56-31 percent among likely GOP primary voters. The group polled 797 likely Republican primary voters from February 18-20. The survey’s margin of error is +/-3.5%. Other factors, such as refusal to be interviewed...

What's with the personal attacks against Bobby Jindal, who gave the Republican response to Obama's speech last night? The MSM and faux conservatives (CINO's) are piling on Jindal with Ad Hominem attacks, with one calling Jindal's speech "almost childlike," and are focusing on the delivery of his speech, rather than on the particulars in his speech. What is it with this liberal obsessive fixation on how something is said (the delivery) - which seems to be the case when Obama gives a speech - rather than on what is said?

Filmmaker John Ziegler has released a new documentary about the media’s coverage of Barack Obama and Sarah Palin before the election — and he asserts that Palin was held to a “completely different standard” than the other candidates. Ziegler, whose film is “Media Malpractice: How Obama Got Elected and Palin Was Targeted,” appeared on the “Today” show on Monday morning. In a sometimes heated exchange with host Matt Lauer, he said: “I was outraged during the primaries. I think the Hillary Clinton supporters have an awful lot to be outraged about. A lot in this film is about the primaries...

In her new book, Guilty: Liberal ‘Victims’ and Their Assault on America — ironically, currently #2 on The New York Times Best Sellers List — Ann Coulter excoriates America’s newspaper of wretched. Here are a few of her disclosures: * “On October 15, 2008, the Obama campaign’s internal pre-debate talking points were inadvertently released to the media.” On the same day, The New York Times ran a story in its politics blog, “The Caucus,” that bore striking similarities to the Obama memo. For instance, both predicted that McCain would bring up Obama’s ties to ex-terrorist William Ayers. The Times essentially...

WHEREAS: National television news has failed to tell the truth or perform the function of providing truthful and valid information to the American public; WHEREAS: National television news has failed to inform the American public about vital facts concerning the presidential election and the candidacy of President Barack Hussein Obama; WHEREAS: National television has failed to inform the American public about vital public policy and political questions, specifically, the activities of the Federal Reserve Bank; monetary inflation; national economic policy; and subsidies to corporations and banks; WHEREAS: National television has lied to the American public about the Iraqi War: I...

NEW YORK - The Al Jazeera Network plans to announce on Thursday that it has signed a deal to run its news on Worldfocus, a syndicated nightly news program produced in New York and distributed throughout the United States. The deal would help the international news network, one of the top services in the Arabic-speaking world, broaden its reach in the United States, where it so far has been available to only a limited audience. Worldfocus, hosted by former NBC News correspondent Martin Savidge, is produced by New York City public broadcaster WLIW and syndicated to a number of Public...

A lot has been written about George W Bush's unpopularity around the globe - but what about those places where the outgoing president was popular? As he leaves office with a record high domestic disapproval rate - 73%, according to an October ABC News/Washington Post poll - President George W Bush can perhaps take some comfort from the fact that this feeling is not uniformly shared abroad. While the shoe-throwing incident in Iraq may come to symbolise the world's opinion of a president who is often referred to as the worst in America's history, some corners of the world will...

Sunday's New York Times ran two columns that advocated for investigations into America's use of coercive interrogation techniques - known to editorial writers as "torture" - of enemy combatants, as well as one that opposed a show trial. Also Sunday, television's "24" uber-agent Jack Bauer stood before a U.S. Senate subcommittee investigating intelligence abuses and gave a bombastic Senate inquisitor what-for: "Please do not sit there with that smug look on your face and expect me to regret the decisions that I have made, because, sir, the truth is, I don't." Asked if he had tortured a suspect, the Kiefer...

Connecticut is considering a bailout for local papers. But government assistance always comes with a catch. In the case of government aid of newspapers, it will destroy the ability of those papers to function as watchdogs. As journalism professor Paul Janensch told Reuters, "You can't expect a watchdog to bite the hand that feeds it." That's why the news out of Connecticut is very disturbing. Two small-town papers have been in danger of being shut down because of decreasing revenue and poor management decisions. Journal Register Corp. recently had to sell the two papers, The Bristol Press and The (New...

The Nov. 6 Reuters headline, "Media bias largely unseen in U.S. presidential race," was laughable because almost everyone saw it. American voters by an 8-1 margin said they witnessed a pro-Obama press, and even Time's Mark Halperin said the "extreme pro-Obama coverage" represented a "disgusting failure of people in our business." Sadly funny examples galore make up the evidence. The most famous was MSNBC's Chris Matthews saying on Feb. 12 that when Obama spoke, "I felt this thrill going up my leg." But during 2008 other journalists fell in love: New York Times reporter Michael Powell in January: "He has...

Looks like ABC News is starting out 2009 with a partisan bang. On its main page, ABC News is hosting a slide show featuring what it is calling the "All Time Dumb Quotes." Now, these are not all strictly political dumb quotes, to be sure. They also have the empty headed Christina Aguilera, that sharp as a tack Jessica Simpson and other denizens of the Hollywood Mensa club among the 16 featured quotes -- and some of them are doozies, too. But, there are six political quotes five by Republicans and one by Tina Fey making fun of a Republican...

Republicans moved aggressively over the weekend to link scandal-tarred Gov. Rod Blagojevich to President-elect Barack Obama -- a guilt-by-association tactic that represents a significant gamble for a party still looking to pick itself up off the electoral mat. The Republican National Committee released a web video (read: electronic press release) over the weekend that dug up a series of pro-Blagojevich quotes from Obama -- dating back to 2002. That video followed hard on a series of statements from the RNC over the last week that sought to raise questions about the nature and depth of Obama's ties to Blagojevich and...

I will admit it, Sometimes the Mainstream Media's Bias makes me stark raving, frothing at the mouth, CRAZY. Many of you readers have concurred with my opinion, especially during the two years since the Presidential election began. Former newsman Bernard Goldberg, a vocal critic of his former industry, is a bit more rational on the subject. He claims that the bias of the Mainstream Media is worse than it has ever been : Well, what do you think, as a very funny guy who looked like Joe Pesci said, what do you think the media would do if it was...

Democrats have had success running against what they called a GOP 'culture of corruption.' Now the party hopes the political fallout from the Blagojevich case and others will be limited. By Janet Hook December 10, 2008 Reporting from Washington -- The arrest of Illinois Gov. Rod R. Blagojevich on Tuesday marked the latest in a series of scandals involving Democratic politicians -- an ironic turn for a party that won control of Congress in 2006 in part by saying it would end a "culture of corruption" under Republican leadership. Democrats also highlighted Republican ethical problems in the successful bid to...

It has been quite a strange couple of weeks since I decided to commission a Zogby poll of Obama voters. I chose to do this at great personal expense to determine whether interviews I did on Election Day (for a forthcoming documentary I am producing on the media coverage of the election) were indeed representative of the larger population. In a nutshell, here’s what happened next: I suddenly become a favorite target of the Internet’s left-wing attack machine. Zogby was forced to defend the poll and two days later, his organization partially abandoned it. The video of Obama voters trying...

It was supposed to be a joke. As an endless parade of corporate beggars marches to Washington in search of handouts for their beleaguered industries, some of us in the news business snarked that journalists would be next in line. I launched a Newspaper Bailout Countdown Clock on my blog after The New York Times Company's bonds plunged into junk territory in October. A few weeks later, columnist Jon Fine published a tongue-in-cheek memo in BusinessWeek outlining a federal newspaper rescue proposal. The jibes were meant to be facetious critiques of for-profit enterprises demanding massive taxpayer expenditures under the guise...

On the night before Thanksgiving, just an hour after Rosie O'Donnell had publicly belly-flopped with a horrible attempt at an old-time variety show on NBC, Barbara Walters made a fool of herself interviewing Barack and Michelle Obama. The toughest questions dealt with whether there was enough "change" in his cabinet picks, and whether he was "waffling" on tax hikes for the rich -- questions his (and ABC's) liberal base would enjoy. Let's go back eight years. On the Friday before the Inauguration, Walters interviewed then-President-elect George Bush and his wife Laura. But it was only one part of a routine...

Barack, The Amazing ObamaBy Mark S. McGrew Barack Obama is truly an amazing man, with many amazing friends. He has succeeded where countless others have failed. And he has also succeeded where many before him have succeeded with the same time honored methods.He has managed to create an illusion of a Public Office that does not exist, The Office of the President Elect.Barry Sotero, AKA Barack Obama, along with the Democratic National Committee and the Federal Election Commission have successfully ignored a Federal Lawsuit asking him to produce a valid Birth Certificate. When the time to respond to that lawsuit...

Wonder why the media have been looking at Republican presidential contenders for three years, 11 months from now, and paying quite a bit of attention to Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal? The push on to make him the frontrunner way in advance has more to do with the left’s agenda than covering a good horse race. Ever since Jindal succumbed to the electoral politics bug, liberals have recognized the danger he presents to their agenda. Jindal does not apologize for his conservatism but neither does he come off as much of an ideologue; he articulates it well both at a philosophical...

If you read the NY Times this weekend, you would have read that the Mubai terrorist attacks were the fault of Muslim Extremists and the Hindus. In this disgusting Op-Ed they tried to give an even handed explanation of the horrid events last week. They refused to acknowledge that the Muslim murderers were targeting Jews and Westerners. Hell, the refused to acknowledge that they were terrorists, they were militants. But its not just the NY Times, their lead was followed by most of the Mainstream Media. ENOUGH ALREADY !! THEY WEREN'T MILITANTS THEY WERE TERRORISTS....LIKE MOST OF THE ISLAMIC TERRORIST...

Poor Lieberman. A few months back, his aides contacted me about testifying in front of him and Congress regarding the Muslim Brotherhood. During our conference call, his aides seemed to have determined that my characterization of the Brotherhood was not very "nuanced" (evinced by the incessant question, "But some of the Brotherhood are ok, right?" to which I would always answer "No.") Anyway and as expected, that settled that, and I was never re-asked to testify. But even though they took all these "safeguards," here Lieberman is: accused by Muslims of being, in essence, an Islamophobe. "Arab Americans want Lieberman...

Zogby is under fire for publishing a poll showing the gross ignorance Obama voters have of the ticket they voted for: The 12-question, multiple-choice survey found questions regarding statements linked to Republican presidential candidate John McCain and his vice-presidential running-mate Sarah Palin were far more likely to be answered correctly by Obama voters than questions about statements associated with Obama and Vice-President–Elect Joe Biden. They could answer questions about McCain and Palin, even erroneous ones asking which candidate considered it a foreign policy credential to be able to see Russia from his or her house? Answer: Sara Palin, but not...

NEW YORK, (AP) -- MSNBC was the victim of a hoax when it reported that an adviser to John McCain had identified himself as the source of an embarrassing story about former vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin, the network said Wednesday. David Shuster, an anchor for the cable news network, said on air Monday that Martin Eisenstadt, a McCain policy adviser, had come forth and identified himself as the source of a Fox News Channel story saying Palin had mistakenly believed Africa was a country instead of a continent. Eisenstadt identifies himself on a blog as a senior fellow at...

By now you’ve all heard the Fox News report last week that “unnamed� former McCain advisers leaked that Sarah Palin was confused about whether Africa was a continent, and which countries were in NAFTA. I was perfectly happy staying under the radar as an anonymous source for Fox News‘ Carl Cameron, but now that Palin has accused her accusers of being “unprofessional…jerks…cowards… taking things out of context, and then tried to spread something on national news� and begun to cast doubt on the Fox News report, maybe she’s right to a certain extent. For those of us on the McCain...

Poll: Obama has 16-point lead over McCain By The Associated Press The Associated Press – Tue Oct 28, 1:10 pm ET THE POLL: Pew Research Center, national presidential race among registered voters. THE NUMBERS: Barack Obama 52 percent, John McCain 36 percent. OF INTEREST: This is the fourth consecutive survey by Pew that shows McCain trailing Obama among registered voters since the end of September. Asked whether McCain would be like President Bush or go his own way, 47 percent say the Republican would continue Bush's policies compared with 40 percent who say McCain would take the country in a...

Suppression robo? A reader in Northern California's El Dorado County reports getting what may be a voter supression robocall on his answering machine at about 7:40 Eastern: “This is a breaking news alert. Early returns show Barack Obama will win Florida, Ohio and Virginia, closing John McCain’s only path to the White House. The Obama landslide a virtual certainty. Early returns also show Democrats will have large majorities in both houses of Congress regardless of final results from Western states like Colorado and California. This is a breaking news alert.” Identification of caller was blocked. Please shoot me an e-mail...

At least one broadcast network and one Web site said Monday that they could foresee signaling to viewers early Tuesday evening which candidate appeared to have won the presidency, despite the unreliability of some early exit polls in the last presidential election. A senior vice president of CBS News, Paul Friedman, said the prospects for Barack Obama or John McCain meeting the minimum threshold of electoral votes could be clear as soon as 8 p.m. — before polls in even New York and Rhode Island close, let alone those in Texas and California. At such a moment, determined from a...

UTICA, New York - As Election Day nears in the U.S. Presidential race, Democrat Barack Obama has increased his lead to 7.1 points over Republican John McCain, up from a 5.7 point advantage in yesterday's report, the latest Reuters/C-SPAN/Zogby daily tracking poll shows. Pollster John Zogby: "Barack Obama is where he needs to be and John McCain is not. In a multi-candidate race, assuming the minor candidates can win around 2%, 51% can win. Obama holds the groups that he needs and continues to hold a big lead among independents and his base. McCain seems to be holding his base...

Mark Whitaker, head of the NBC News DC bureau, got off today's laugh line when he described Barack Obama as having "lifted himself up from the streets of Hawaii." Oh those mean streets of Hawaii. You know, the sort pictured here at the Punahou school that Obama attended from 5-12th grade. While attending Punahou, Obama lived with his grandparents. His ill grandmother has been in the news lately. But how many readers are aware that grandma Dunham was . . . a vice-president of the Bank of Hawaii? View video here.

Any young journalist covering a presidential campaign is likely to have read Timothy Crouse's classic book on the 1972 election, "The Boys on the Bus." In the first chapter, the author describes the pecking order of print journalists. At the top of the food chain are the wire-service reporters, particularly the reporters from the Associated Press, the oldest of news organizations -- those hard-bitten, vigilant correspondents who set the agenda for everybody else. "Wire stories are usually bland, dry and overly cautious," Crouse wrote. "There is always an inverse proportion between the number of persons a reporter reaches and the...

After releasing this morning’s numbers showing McCain ahead in Ohio and Florida, the Strategic Vision polling company received several death threats through the contact e-mail on the company’s web site. David Johnson, the CEO of Strategic Vision, shared the messages with National Review Online. One of the messages stated: My goodness, your polls stinks. There are 3 polls that have Obama by double digits and only yours has Obama down. WOW!. How come your poll is the only one giving Palin high favor ratings? I think you nee dto be careful tonight when you get in your car and might...

Palintology by: Lance Nation, October 24, 2008 What can this correspondent write about Gregory Charles Royal’s recent press conference at the National Press Club (NPC)? Honestly, I thought the Jeff Dufour and Patrick Gavin article in the DC Examiner summed it up perfectly. Entitled A presser on how not to do a presser and dubbed “A Royal Disaster,” the Dufour and Gavin piece marvelously captured the only true usefulness of this event: “Seasoned Washingtonians are well-versed in the art of the press conference. But have you ever thought about what it is you shouldn’t do at a presser? In case...

The media coverage of the race for president has not so much cast Barack Obama in a favorable light as it has portrayed John McCain in a substantially negative one, according to a new study of the media since the two national political conventions ended. Press treatment of Obama has been somewhat more positive than negative, but not markedly so. But coverage of McCain has been heavily unfavorable—and has become more so over time. In the six weeks following the conventions through the final debate, unfavorable stories about McCain outweighed favorable ones by a factor of more than three to...

A reporter hired by Newsweek to cover the presidential primary has written an article admitting that he was biased.Writing in the latest issue of GQ magazine, Michael Hastings describes his personal feelings about various candidates, including Rudy Giuliani, John McCain and Hillary Clinton, and admits that he could not be objective about the people he covered: If that sounds like I had some trouble being “objective,” I did. Objectivity is a fallacy. In campaign reporting more than any other kind of press coverage, reporters aren’t just covering a story, they’re a part of it—influencing outcomes, setting expectations, framing candidates—and despite...

(CNSNews.com) – As the U.S. troop surge in Iraq has succeeded, leading to a dramatic decline in the number of U.S. casualties in that country, The New York Times’s coverage of the Iraq war also has declined, falling to an all-time low in the last two months, according to a CNSNews.com analysis of stories retrieved on the Nexis database. At The Washington Post, coverage of the war has been significantly lower this year than in previous years. In the months leading up to the 2004 and 2006 elections, when U.S. casualties were running higher in Iraq, coverage of the Iraq...

The best way to avoid shock and demoralization from a repeat of the 2004 exit poll nightmare is to expect it again this year and ignore it. Remember that pleasant afternoon on Election Day 2004 when the exit polls were leaked showing a Kerry blowout in the making? Politico. More recently, in 2004, exit poll data that began circulating early in the afternoon led to short-lived Democratic elation and deep Republican anxiety. By evening, some of President George W. Bush’s key strategists were frantic, emailing reporters at polling organizations to better understand the gap between what they were finding on...

On Thursday's ABC World News, anchor Charles Gibson's lead-off story was on the presidential campaign: "Two weeks, five days to go, home stretch. Barack Obama and John McCain began today laying out their closing strategies. And while Obama continues to hold a double-digit lead in most national polls, it is the results in individual states that are all important." The emphasis on Obama's supposedly huge, possibly insurmountable lead is used by some in the mainstream media to suggest the inevitability of a Democratic win. But you have to wonder, at least in this instance, what polls ABC News is...