Obamaville March 1 - Pundits Punt on Veracity

.

Apples are Oranges to Media Experts

Time goes by ever so slowly in the race for the Republican nomination but a few things are already quite obvious.  First, there is no effort for some media to hide, disguise or claim balanced coverage because media objectivity has been thrown to the winds with a little over 8 months left in the campaign.

Not that it makes a lot of difference because the public long ago assumed media bias was a new facet of journalism in America.  Of course Fox News is the conservative standard but they are not necessarily Republican leaning as no one has done more to undermine efforts by Romney to pick up conservatives than the Fox personalities.

Sometimes it seems they are in cahoots with MSNBC and their parent NBC the way they keep implying Romney is struggling to get the backing of leading conservatives.  Back in the days of honest philosophical differences all the Republican candidates used to pledge to support whomever won the nomination at the convention.

That was how Reagan was so successful in capturing cross over voters from the Democrat and Independent ranks.  Now it seems the candidates put themselves above the party by threatening to withhold support for the eventual nominee, threatening a third party candidate, and even threatening to back someone new who might be seduced into entering the race at the last minute.

Loyalty to party seems to have become a lost principle.  Accommodation of all views from conservative to moderate to liberal also seems to be lost on our present flock of politicians.  Perhaps they have hopes of demanding a litmus test on proper conservative attitudes before pledging support, a narrow minded view that has failed miserably in the past.

It would seem rather obvious from the Reagan, Bush, Clinton and Bush years in the presidency that America has become far more moderate than conservative conservatives might like but reality is a powerful motivator to put philosophical loyalty in the middle where it belongs if one intends to serve all Americans.

Reagan proved you could be conservative and compassionate while the Bush family and Clinton proved being moderate was the only way to survive.  No doubt the nation needs a strong dose of fiscal conservatism to get out of the mess the liberals and conservatives have left us but eliminating budget deficits, reducing the national debt and fixing the entitlement mess also requires a lot of compassion to minimize the damage on people.

On the Democrat side of the media ledger very few media outlets show any desire to be anything but an extension of the Obama press office.  In the fifteen presidential elections I can remember I've never experienced anything like the media intimidation from the White House.  Not even Johnson or Nixon had the mainstream and cable media eating out of their hands like Barack Obama.

I suspect it is partly a response to the often heavy handed treatment of the media by Bush II insiders who never trusted the media and probably for good reason.  Backing Obama gave the media a chance to get even.

There is clearly a left leaning tendency on the part of most of the media which has come to the surface as the media lost all sense of balanced coverage and objective reporting.  And of course there is the fact Obama is Black, a Democrat and clearly wants big government, all draws to a liberal media.

It has been a long time since the liberals had a chance to influence the government gravy train, to dominate the news through reporters and anchors, and to control most of the cable news talk shows where they can sell books and book speeches.

Over the past few decades there were liberal stalwarts including The New York Times and Washington Post on the print side and PBS on television but the success of cable mouthpieces, first conservatives and then liberals, broke down the objective principles of journalism and opened the floodgates to news media stars interested more in making news than reporting it.

Rush Limbaugh is one of few media stars honest enough to admit that the role of talk shows is to entertain.  I suspect most of the public still thinks they report the news, fair and balanced news, choosing to ignore the advocacy and lack of objectivity of most of the media stars.

CNN has come a long ways from the days when Ted Turner ruled falling off the cliff of objectivity into the abyss of liberalism.  Some supposedly news shows like Soledad O'Brien and others make no attempt to hide their anti-conservative bias while the prime time news tries to downplay it but always stacks the panels of "experts" with liberals and Democrats, usually liberals as well.

Well there is still one place in CNN where you get balanced news coverage, that is the HLN (Headline News) Morning Express Show with the ever bubbly Robin Meade who has gradually taken over the morning news and entertainment slot and has the only six hour time slot, 6 am until 12 noon, on television.  She is also the only news personality who is part Native American.

MSNBC might as well be located in the Obama White House because even their so called Republican voices or pretenders defend Republican principles like France fought off the German invasion in World War II.  In other words, from Joe Scarborough's ego to former GOP National Chairman Michael Steele's outsider status they are far more concerned with protecting their own personal image than defending the Republicans.

NBC as a matter of principle still seems to project the GE party line which means you give homage to anyone who gets you $9 billion in tax free profits a year and Obama did just that.  Yet sometime NBC contributor Tom Brokaw and Meet the Press anchor David Gregory have both continued to avoid being caught up in the liberal stampede.

CNBC, the financial news network, is the exception to the rule in the NBC family as any blatant liberal bias would cost them their dominate position as the financial news source of America.  Of course their preoccupation with Warren Buffett, staunch billionaire Obama backer, who gets more CNBC air time than anyone on the globe, is an ongoing source of aggravation to conservatives but Buffett always has some common sense financial advice, not to mention he is the most successful investor on Wall Street over the past 50 years so he deserves to be heard no matter what his political beliefs.  No one can say he is not a successful capitalist.

CBS used to be the most liberal network but NBC might have stolen the crown away.  At ABC you at least have a balance between anchor Diane Sawyer from the Republican battlefields and George Stephanopoulos, a Clinton/Obama creation, although George has far more air time to promote the liberal cause with other ABC news programs.

Ironically, if you really want balanced news coverage of politics in America your only hope is to turn to BBC whose world news coverage dwarfs anything on American networks and whose political coverage of America may sometimes be bewildered by the bizarre political and campaign process, but always seem to give it objective coverage.

Now you still have one last choice when it comes to the mainstream and cable news coverage and that is to turn off the television.  You might even do it for health reasons.  It would certainly lower your blood pressure.  It would keep you from believing all those lies.  And it might give you a chance to find out what your kid is doing on the Internet social media.

.

CBS Anchor Katie Couric Manipulates Murkowski to Maul Sarah Palin

.

Katie Couric, CBS News anchor and self appointed leader of the Sarah Palin attack pack, has renewed her three year long mission to rid the world of the threat of Sarah Palin as president. Her latest attempt to poison the public perception of Palin was on her news show last night.

She had the current Senator, Lisa Murkowski, write in leader in the Alaska Senate race, as a guest. It did not take Katie long to turn the attention of Murkowski to fellow Alaskan Palin and her qualifications to be president. Since Palin backed the Tea Party candidate who upset Murkowski in the primary, there was no love lost between them.

Couric urged Murkowski to unload on Palin and she did, saying some pretty critical statements as if she and Palin had known each other quite well for a long time. Which of course they did, at least know each other.

First, Senator Murkowski told the Associated Press on Friday that she wouldn’t watch former Governor Sarah Palin’s reality-television show about the state of Alaska.

Then Monday night, she added that she also doesn’t think Ms. Palin would make a good president.

“I just do not think that she has those leadership qualities, that intellectual curiosity that allows for building good and great policies,” she told Katie Couric on CBS News. “You know, she was my governor for two years. And I don’t think that she enjoyed governing.”

In the CBS interview, Ms. Murkowski said “we really don’t have much of a relationship.” She added that Ms. Palin “is not really that keyed into the state anymore. She is looking, obviously at a bigger pond.”

The Alaska senator added that she prefers a candidate who "goes to bed at night and wakes up in the morning thinking about how we're going to deal with" important issues.

Couric: "What's up with your relationship with Sarah Palin? Can you explain it?"

Murkowski: I'm still her senator. I'm going work hard to represent her, too. We don't really have much of a relationship."

Couric: "You have said you would not support Sarah Palin for president because she is not worldly enough."

Murkowski: "I just do not think that she has those leadership qualities, that intellectual curiosity that allows for building good and great policies. You know, she was my governor for two years. And I don't think that she enjoyed governing."

No matter what Palin does, Murkowski says 2012 is still a long way off and she's certain of one name that won't be on the ballot.

But didn't Katie forget to mention that Lisa Murkowski holds the Senate seat given to her in 2002 by her own father when he became governor amid cries of nepotism from the public? And didn't her father, Governor Frank Murkowski, purchase a $2.7 million jet airplane for the exclusive use of the governor, himself, in 2005? Wasn't it the same jet he took on a $13,000 Asian trip after he lost the primary election just before he had to leave office?

It was that jet and other allegations of corruption that convinced a young mayor from Wasilla, Alaska, a certain Sarah Palin, to challenge the mighty Governor Murkowski in the 2006 Republican primary where he finished dead last to Palin and one other challenger. After Murkowski spent 22 years in the Senate and 4 years as governor, Sarah Palin had brought his career in public service to a crashing end.

With Palin governor the state prosecuted Frank's former chief of staff convicting him of felony fraud in arranging corporate bribes for Murkowski's re-election campaign. Is it any surprise Sarah Palin opposed the daughter of the Governor she beat and endorsed a Tea Party candidate who won the primary/? Then again, Katie forgot to mention that there was a lot of bad blood between Murkowski and Palin ever since Palin drove her dad out of office.

Why would CBS bother with the facts or let us know the background behind the hostility Murkowski exhibited when asked about Sarah Palin by Katie Couric? It should be the truth and the public who decide if Sarah Palin is to serve us in any capacity, not Couric and the left leaning media.

For three years people like her have presented a one sided view of Palin, seeking out any rumor or fiction and putting it under the media spotlight in hopes it might make her look bad to the public. The Lisa Murkowski interview is just the latest example of CBS reporting along with such stellar masterpieces in investigative journalism like exclusive bombshell revelations about the Palins from none other than Levi Johnston, resident Alaska goof ball.

Let the people decide if Sarah Palin is qualified to be president with their votes, it is the American way. Just like it is Sarah Palins right to run for president should she so choose in our system of democracy. The media should stick to reporting the news, and stop trying to manufacture the news. That is the American way as well.
.

Sarah Palin calls CBS Reporters "Corrupt Bastards" - CBS Responds in Doubletalk

.

If ever there was a clear case of how Sarah Palin is treated by the Lame Street media it is this latest gun battle. Sarah hear a tape of KTVA television reporters planning stories to smear the Palin backed Tea Party candidate in Alaska, Joe Miller, and understandably went public calling the actions and words of the reporters acts by "corrupt bastards".

She added that CBS might stand for the Corrupt Bastards Club in deference to the Katie Couric effort to embarrass her during a CBS campaign interview. The CBS network in NYC was inundated with calls about it and promptly put out the following statement:

“KTVA News is owned by the Alaska Broadcasting Co., not CBS. No CBS staffers were involved and CBS has no knowledge of and no comment.

Conveniently, CBS forgot to mention that KTVA is, in fact, a CBS affiliate just as Palin stated. One supposes they meant to imply they had nothing to do with KTVA. According to Wikipedia, "In the broadcasting industry (especially in North America), a network affiliate (or affiliated station) is a local broadcaster which carries some or all of the program line-up of a television or radio network, but is owned by a company other than the owner of the network.

That would indicate that KTVA is a CBS affiliate, contrary to the omission by CBS, and there is usually direct ties between the news departments of the network and their affiliates. With all the efforts by CBS to discredit Sarah Palin since 2008, did CBS news ever use the CBS affiliate reporters at KTVA for field reports from Alaska? Most likely, and if they did they are trained and indoctrinated in he network ways.

The actual CBS affiliate, KTVA, responded in an equally bizarre fashion. The station’s General Manager Jerry Bever vehemently denies that, responding on KTVA.com:

“While the recording is real, the allegations are untrue,” adding, “The perception that this garbled, out of context recording may leave is unfortunate, but to allege that our staff was discussing or planning to create or fabricate stories regarding candidate Miller is absurd. The complete conversation was about what others might be able to do to cause disruption within the Miller campaign, not what KTVA could do.”

The clips I heard clearly indicated the reporters were discussing ways to trap the campaign into bad press by searching out sex offenders in crowds at a Miller event or causing "chaos" at a campaign event and showing a fight. Try as they might, someone got caught planning a very un-journalism like attack on Miller and Palin was dead right, it does reflect the Corrupt Bastards in the media who attempt to manufacture the news.
.

CBS Promotes Smut to Smear Palin in desperate News Ratings Grab

-



CBS News led by CBS Anchor just cannot stop trying to smear Sarah Palin long after Katie Couric failed to generate higher ratings when she attempted to embarrass Palin during a campaign interview.



In fact the backlash against Couric was fierce as she steadily sank to the lowest ratings in network news history finishing a distant last with little more than 5 million viewers. Her counterpart at NBC, Brian Williams saw the same erosion in ratings after the election as NBC and the MSNBC cable network also attempted to smear Palin every chance they got.



The latest move by CBS is an Early Morning Show interview with Levi Johnston, the father of Palin's granddaughter. Somehow CBS and MSNBC think Palin is still a major threat to "real women" on the liberal left and her early success with her new book has infuriated those leftist elitists who have been trying to silence Palin ever since she took the political world by storm.



Still two weeks away from release, the Palin book, Going Rogue - An American Story, is literally driving the liberal media insane. When CBS has to dig up the 19 year old disenfranchised father of Bristol Palin's baby, then give the story a provocative lead as follows, it shows CBS News is either desperate for higher ratings or supportive of promoting pornography since Johnston is announcing a nude spread he is doing for Playgirl magazine.



ANCHORAGE, Alaska, Oct. 8, 2009



Levi Johnston to Pose Nude for Playgirl
19-Year-Old Father of Sarah Palin's Grandchild Training Hard to Buff-Up for Magazine Spread



If malice had no role in this why would CBS News be the only network to give it national television exposure? Why would any headline writer with journalistic integrity focus on Sarah Palin and her grandchild when highlighting a nude photo spread by a lunatic from the Alaska backwoods? Neither Palin nor her grandchild had anything to do with this attention starved maniac and his nude photo shoot.



MSNBC was quick to feature the CBS interview in a rare showing of competitors cooperating but then the bond of extreme socialism runs deep and no one in media is more socialist than MSNBC. It is a fact well known to the public as MSNBC ratings fail to reach one million viewers most of the time, more than ten times less than competitor Fox News.



Fact is Fox News has more viewers than every competitor on cable combined. As for CBS and Katie Couric, they should be paying less attention to smearing Palin and more preparing for more bad news as Diane Sawyer will soon become the ABC Evening News Anchor and dear Katie could fade farther into the depths of disastrous ratings.



As for Sarah Palin, she has a million dollars and a best selling book and will be featured on Oprah who vowed to keep Palin off her TV show during the campaign because she was backing Obama. I guess Palin has a much more Christian attitude than our media since she can forgive and forget media efforts to hurt her.



-

Letterman - Liberal's Palin Basher Gets Bashed

-



It was just another joke on national television last night when David Letterman made a routine of his confession that he has been having sex with a number of his staff at CBS. Imagine that, the man who made millions of dollars bashing Sarah Palin and her teenage daughter under the banner of morality seems to have a different standard for his morality.







But then Hollywood and the liberal media are leading the way in condemning the arrest of the man convicted of drugging and raping a 13 year old, Roman Polanski. Somehow those who paid big bucks to smear Palin by paying off anyone including her daughter's fiancé for unsubstantiated dirt think drugging and raping a thirteen year old is no big deal.




As for Letterman, did he use his position as one of the most powerful people in media and television to seduce staff or did he simply hire Letterman groupies that appealed to him. Were any of his conquests young pages, or married? In the corporate and political worlds such action would lead to firing, or in the case of politics destroying one's career. Letterman will most likely face neither, due to the strange silence of the liberals so quick to condemn Palin and her daughter.




CBS, struggling to drag itself out of last place in the media ratings race can ill-afford to dump the late night star but Letterman only averages about 5 million viewers per night. He is finally beating out the Tonight Show on NBC but that has more to do with Jay Leno being replaced by Conan O'Brien. Even Leno, now in prime time every night, draws only about 6.5 million viewers.




So the good news is not that many people really watch Letterman, 5 million out of 300million. The bad news is he influences far more because the liberal media uses him to attack their opponents. What does the liberal press have to say about this sordid affair?

The San Francisco Examiner, Pelosi's home base, said "Letterman creates brilliant hour of TV from woes." The Los Angeles Times says, "Letterman admits to affair, says he was a victim...". The New York Times buried the story on page four in a small story with no pictures.




Now in the first show of the new television season when Letterman was going aginst O'Brien and the Tonight Show for the first time who came to his rescue to give him a ratings boost, Barack Obama. Yes, the President of the United States pays back the television personality who did the most vicious and unsubstantiated attacks on Sarah Palin during the campaign, attacks that benefited the Obama ticket.




One wonders how the president will respond to the conduct of yet another supporter who went astray. So far those around him have been doing him no favors with their bizarre behavior.

Letterman Cannot Stop Sucking Up To Obama - Trashes Palin

This week acerbic-tongued Letterman once again demonstrated he can be the liberal mouthpiece and hack for Obama by trashing Sarah Palin in his monologue and Top Ten List for reasons that defy explanation. His raw sexual innuendos about Palin and raunchy jokes about how her 14 year old daughter got "knocked up" defy reason and good taste and demonstrate that as a lackey for Obama he is doing him no good.

Maybe he has been told to finish the hatchet job on Palin that he started during the campaign because after all the smear tactics of the liberal left media Palin remains more popular than ever. And with oil prices having more than doubled since Obama was elected and refused to authorize more domestic oil drilling, his popularity has been taking a fast track down.

Letterman was always the tool of the leftists with his tirades against McCain and Palin but this time he went far beyond his worst performances to date. Perhaps it was because this was the first week that Conan O'Brien took over the far more popular Tonight Show making Letterman a two-time loser to Leno and O'Brien as the King of Late Night TV.

Letterman has been known to have an acid tongue and he even apologized to Paris Hilton for raging about her jail time, but then Paris was an Obama supporter and she is a millionaire, two requirements to be friends with good old Dave.

Well Letterman has been a distant second to NBC's Johnny Carson, Jay Leno and now Conan O'Brien so maybe it is time CBS retire the old man before be gets them in lawsuits.