CRITICAL UPDATE AT END OF POST

As NewsBusters reported Sunday, a new ClimateGate scandal has erupted involving a University of California at Berkeley professor accused of trying to mislead the public by hiding that his research determined global warming has stopped.

Some on the Left heralded the now questionable study including Nobel laureate Al Gore whose excitement was published at the Huffington Post Wednesday:

Climate skeptics were hoping this study would debunk data proving the existence of the climate crisis — instead it reaffirmed the science…With the evidence reconfirmed (again), I would hope that skeptics would rethink their position and join me in pushing our government, and governments around the world, to take steps to solve the climate crisis.

Quite comically, Gore was a little late to this discussion, for the article he linked to Wednesday was written by the Washington Post's Brad Plumer on October 20:

Back in 2010, Richard Muller, a Berkeley physicist and self-proclaimed climate skeptic, decided to launch the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature (BEST) project to review the temperature data that underpinned global-warming claims. Remember, this was not long after the Climategate affair had erupted, at a time when skeptics were griping that climatologists had based their claims on faulty temperature data.

Muller’s stated aims were simple. He and his team would scour and re-analyze the climate data, putting all their calculations and methods online. Skeptics cheered the effort. “I’m prepared to accept whatever result they produce, even if it proves my premise wrong,” wrote Anthony Watts, a blogger who has criticized the quality of the weather stations in the United Statse that provide temperature data. The Charles G. Koch Foundation even gave Muller’s project $150,000 — and the Koch brothers, recall, are hardly fans of mainstream climate science.

So what are the end results? Muller’s team appears to have confirmed the basic tenets of climate science.

Muller wrote the following at the Wall Street Journal the next day:

When we began our study, we felt that skeptics had raised legitimate issues, and we didn't know what we'd find. Our results turned out to be close to those published by prior groups. We think that means that those groups had truly been very careful in their work, despite their inability to convince some skeptics of that. They managed to avoid bias in their data selection, homogenization and other corrections.

Global warming is real. Perhaps our results will help cool this portion of the climate debate. How much of the warming is due to humans and what will be the likely effects? We made no independent assessment of that.

Plumer's colleague at the Post, the honorable Eugene Robinson, joined in the celebration on October 24:

The left's standard ad hominem allegations against conservatives are that they're dumb, crazy,  corrupt, or a combination thereof. The DKos gang resorted to all of them this week. Moreover, in not-especially-surprising news, Rosie O'Donnell reaches out to a Kossack.

As usual, each headline is preceded by the blogger's name or pseudonym.

Jed Lewison: It's Mitt versus the stupids  

…The best thing [Romney's] got going for him is that he's up against a pack of drooling idiots…

Something the Dog Said: Perry's dim even by GOP standards

…Perry is very unlikely to be the Republican nominee. Even a party that is dedicated to a war against expertise can’t survive having an idiot as their candidate for president…
 
sujigu: Conservatives are delusional and hypersensitive
 
…[C]onsider what I like to call "Conservative Persecution Complex"…
 
…[I]n their minds, verbal dissent is equivalent to being waterboarded, at least according to Gov. Brewer. The act of hearing something that they don't agree with is somehow tyranny.
 
This factors into [so] much I hear from the conservative side of the aisle. They live in a world of oppression, where all outlets of information, and society itself, is somehow out to get them…
 
Oftentimes when I talk to conservative friends and point out a flaw in their logic, they act like I've killed their parents. I mean seriously, you get knicked on the arm and you wail that someone's lopped the entire thing off. It's like a built-in slippery slope…

War on Error: Beware of fascist Tea Party election fraud

…In 2010 maybe it was a good thing that lots of Tea Party candidates got into the House of Representatives.  Perhaps their record prior to the 2012 election will scare more people to the voting booths.  

As long as the Conservatives counting the votes throughout the country don't cheat, maybe we can send these Uber Conservatives/Proto Fascists into history forever.

I think we need to line up some INTERNATIONAL OBSERVERS ASAP!

priceman: The Occupy movement has overcome media bias

…OWS has truly crashed through the corporate owned media gate…That is a major victory considering something else Bill Clinton did in 1996; The Telecommunications Act of 1996 creating the mega media conglomerates we know and hate today, at least those of us who know how damaging propaganda is. At least those living under the iron curtain knew their media was lying to them. We tell ourselves since this is the US our media only lies sometimes…

MinistryOfTruth (AKA Occupy Wall Street spokesman Jesse LaGreca): Here's hoping for exploding heads

…[T]he Rosie O'Donnell show just contacted me. I am sure the idea of me and Rosie in the same room will make some heads explode. That makes me even more excited to do it, the anguish of bigots motivates me…

White House senior adviser David Plouffe said on Sunday's Meet the Press that Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney "has no core" and would say "the sky was green and the grass was blue to win an election."

After Republican strategist Mike Murphy took exception with these comments during the program's roundtable segment, former NBC Nightly News anchor Tom Brokaw came to Plouffe's defense (video follows with transcript and commentary):

DAVID PLOUFFE, WHITE HOUSE SENIOR ADVISER: Mitt Romney continues to have 75, 80 percent of his party looking somewhere else. And so it'll be interesting to see if he can turn that around.

DAVID GREGORY, HOST: Will he be a diminished candidate if he's the nominee?

MR. PLOUFFE: Well, here's–we'll see what happens in the primary. I'd make, I'd make two points about him. One is he has no core. And, you know, every day almost it seems to be we find another issue. You know, he was supportive of doing things like a cap and trade agreement, now he doesn't think that, you know, climate change is real. He was to the left of Ted Kennedy on gay rights issues, now he wants to amend the Constitution to prevent gay marriage. He was an extremely pro-choice governor, now he believes that life begins at conception and would ban Roe v. Wade. So you, you look at–issue after issue after issue, he's moved all over the place. And I can tell you one thing, working a few steps down from the president, what you need in that office is conviction, you need to have a true compass, and you've got to be willing to make tough calls. And you get the sense with Mitt Romney that, you know, if he thought he–it was good to say the sky was green and the grass was blue to win an election, he'd say it.

During the roundtable segment that followed, Republican strategist Mike Murphy took issue with this:

MIKE MURPHY, REPUBLICAN STRATEGIST: What surprised me, and not a lot surprises me in politics, was that Mr. Plouffe went for direct personal character assault on Mitt Romney a little while ago. This is a White House staffer saying that the opponent has no core? That, that's harsh character attack politics, and I think he owes Romney a bit of an apology on that. I thought that was a step too far. Fight it out on the issues; there's plenty to disagree about. But that's a lot for, I think, a presidential staffer to say is about somebody. It's not fair.

The problem with this flip-flop politics, everybody's vulnerable in politics of that, because when you get new information, you change. Barack Obama ran and beat Hillary Clinton by being left of the Iraq war, talking about shutting down Guantanamo Bay, promise to the country. Gets elected, doesn't shut it down. Now, I'm not going to attack him for that because the reason he didn't shut it down, he got new information. I think he did the right thing. So you have to be careful. Everybody in politics who's ever looked at new information or done anything is vulnerable to the flip-flop attack. Certainly Romney is. But it, it's unfair to make that into a character assault like I just heard.

Murphy raised a good point. Given the number of key flip-flops Obama has made since Inauguration Day, it is extremely hypocritical for anyone in his administration to point fingers.

That didn't stop David Gregory from replaying Plouffe's comments at the end of the program to allow Brokaw to defend the White House adviser:

MR. GREGORY: We're back. Final moments with our roundtable. If you missed it, David Plouffe was here at the top of the program and broke new ground in how the White House is going to target the opponent in this race, going after Mitt Romney in a pretty aggressive way. Watch.

(Videotape, earlier this morning)

MR. PLOUFFE: He has no core. … You get the sense with Mitt Romney that, you know, if he thought he, it was good to say the sky was green and the grass is blue to win an election, he'd say it.

(End videotape)

MR. GREGORY: Tom, this was pretty aggressive. It's also a sign that the White House would like some of Romney's Republican challengers to be doing more against him in this area.

MR. BROKAW: Yeah. I think he's probably the one that, in the given field, that they fear the most come the fall, because they know that the establishment of the Republican Party thinks he's the best manager, make the best president. I don't quite agree with Mike in terms of it was unfair. I think using the core question probably took it over the edge just a little bit. But the record is there about how he's flopped and we're–we'll hear a lot more from Rick Perry on these very issues in the coming weeks.

Nice job of Gregory not only playing Plouffe's comments again, but also giving Brokaw an opportunity to support them while countering the views of the lone Republican on Sunday's program.

Funny how that works.

CBS’s Bob Schieffer unintentionally played the foil to Herman Cain on Sunday’s Face the Nation as Schieffer expressed his politically-correct displeasure with Cain’s “downright bizarre” Web video which briefly shows Cain’s chief of staff smoking, was flummoxed by Cain’s sense of humor (“You also said at one point that you might want to back that fence up with a moat and fill it with alligators. Was that a joke too?”) and was baffled by Cain’s accurate claim Planned Parenthood was spurred by the eugenics movement’s desire to reduce the black population.
 
On the ad, Schieffer decried how “it sends a signal that it’s cool to smoke” before he scolded Cain: “Well, let me just tell you, it’s not funny to me….I don't think it serves the country well, and this is an editorial opinion here, to be showing someone smoking a cigarette.” (video below)

He continued his lecture: “You're the frontrunner now and it seems to me as frontrunner you would have a responsibility not to take that kind of a tone in this campaign. I would suggest that perhaps as the frontrunner, you’d want to raise the level of the campaign.”

Seeing omniscient powers in Cain, Schieffer demanded: “Why don’t you take it off the Internet.”

When Cain said he’d have “no problem saying” people should not smoke, Schieffer insisted: “Well, say it right now.” Cain complied.

Audio: MP3 clip which matches the video

Over on Meet the Press, NBC’s Tom Brokaw was just as appalled, offering his derogatory definition of Cain’s 9-9-9 tax plan:

I was stunned by that ad that he did with his campaign manager ending up smoking a cigarette which, in my judgment, is one of the great health hazards in America in terms of lethal diseases and also the costs of it all. I think that maybe 9-9-9- stands for you’ve got nine months to live with lung cancer, nine months to live with emphysema, nine months to live with coronary artery disease. I can’t imagine why they thought that was an effective image.

Schieffer later treated Cain’s accurate recitation of the motivations behind Planned Parenthood founder Margaret Sanger as some kind of bizarre notion: “There was at one point back there when the question of Planned Parenthood came up and you said that it was not planned parenthood, it was really planned genocide because you said Planned Parenthood was trying to put all these centers into the black communities because they wanted to kill black babies before they were born. You still stand by that?”

When Cain said he does, Schieffer demanded: “Do you have any proof that that was the objective of Planned Parenthood?”

From the Sunday, October 30 Face the Nation:

BOB SCHIEFFER: I want to ask you about the ad that we just saw at the top of this broadcast. I just want to show you — and I will preface that by saying the person doing the talking here is your campaign manager Mark Block.

HERMAN CAIN: Chief of staff, yes.

SCHIEFFER: Just listen to this.

MARK BLOCK IN CAIN VIDEO: We've run a campaign like nobody's ever seen but then America has never seen a candidate like Herman Cain. We need you to get involved because together we can do this. We can take this country back. [SINGER: I am America, one voice united we stand. I am America, one hope to heal our land.]

SCHIEFFER: Mr. Cain, I have to ask you what is the point of that? Having a man smoke a cigarette in a television commercial for you?

CAIN: One of the themes within this campaign is let Herman be Berman. Mark Block is a smoker. We say let Mark be Mark. That's all we're trying to say because we believe let people be people. He doesn't deny that he's a smoker.

SCHIEFFER: Are you a smoker?

CAIN: No I'm not a smoker. But I don't have a problem if that's his choice. So let Herman be Herman, let Martin be Martin. Let people be people. This wasn't intended to send any subliminal signal whatsoever.

SCHIEFFER: But it does. It sends a signal that it’s cool to smoke.

CAIN: No it does not. Mark Block smokes. That's all that ad says. We weren’t trying to say it’s cool to smoke. We have a lot of people in this country that smoke, but what I respect about Mark as a smoker, who is my chief of staff, he never smokes around me or smokes around anyone else. He goes outside.

SCHIEFFER: But he smokes on television.

CAIN: Well, he smokes on television. But there was no other subliminal message.

SCHIEFFER: Was this meant to be funny?

CAIN: It was meant to be informative. If they listen to the message where he said America has never seen a candidate like Herman Cain. That was the main point of it. The bit on the end we didn't know whether it would be funny to some people or whether they were going to ignore it or whatever the case may be.

SCHIEFFER: Well, let me just tell you, it's not funny to me. I am a cancer survivor like you.

CAIN: I am also.

SCHIEFFER: I had cancer that was smoking related. I don't think it serves the country well, and this is an editorial opinion here, to be showing someone smoking a cigarette. You're the frontrunner now and it seems to me as frontrunner you would have a responsibility not to take that kind of a tone in this campaign. I would suggest that perhaps as the frontrunner, you'd want to raise the level of the campaign.

CAIN: We will do that, Bob. I do respect your objection to the ad. Probably about 30 percent of the feedback was very similar to yours. It was not intended to offend anyone. Being a cancer survivor myself, I am sensitive to that sort of thing.

SCHIEFFER: Would you take the ad down?

CAIN: Well, it's on the Internet. We didn't run it on TV.

SCHIEFFER: Why don't you take it off the Internet.

CAIN: It's impossible to do now. Once you put it on the Internet it goes viral. We could take it off of our Web site but there are other sites that have already picked it up. It's nearly impossible to erase that ad from the Internet.

SCHIEFFER: Have you ever thought of just saying to young people, don't smoke. 400,000 people in America die every year from smoking related-

CAIN: I will have no problem saying that. In fact-

SCHIEFFER: Well, say it right now.

CAIN: Young people of America, all people, do not smoke. It is hazardous and it's dangerous to your health. Don't smoke. I've never smoked and I have encouraged people not to smoke.

SCHIEFFER: It’s not a cool thing to do.

CAIN: It is not a cool thing to do. That's not what I was trying to say. Smoking is is not a cool thing to do.

SCHIEFFER: All right. You talked some about the missteps you have made in the campaign. I want to clear up just a couple of things to make sure your position is on the record. You talk about at one point, talking about immigration, you talked about sealing off the water with an electric fence that had barbed wire on the top and with a sign on it that said this fence can kill you. You said that. Then you went on Meet the Press and told David Gregory, listen I was just kidding. That was a joke. But then the next day you said well an electric fence is part of it. I want to ask you do you think part of solving this problem is putting an electric fence on the border?

CAIN: I believe that solving the illegal immigration problem means solving four problems. First secure the border for real. That will be secure with the fence, not necessarily electric, but a fence. Another part with technology and another part with troops because of some of the areas that are so dangerous. So it will be a combination of the three. Yes, I said that was an over-exaggeration. Secondly we've got to promote the path of citizenship that's already here. We've got to enforce the laws that are already here. And we've got to empower the states to do what the federal government is not doing. I was in Alabama yesterday. They passed some laws and now Justice Department, the Obama administration, is coming down on them just like they came down on Arizona. I don't agree with that. I believe that the actions that Alabama took and that Arizona took to try and defend themselves and then do something about this is the right thing to do.

SCHIEFFER: You also said at one point that you might want to back that fence up with a moat and fill it with alligators. Was that a joke too?

CAIN: That was totally in jest, Bob. Some people getting used to my sense of humor and as I get more attention I will tone down the sense of humor until I become President because America needs to get a sense of humor.

SCHIEFFER: That would be pretty expensive by the way.

CAIN (laughing): Right. It probably would.

….

SCHIEFFER: I want to ask you since we're on the subject of abortion, there was at one point back there when the question of Planned Parenthood came up and you said that it was not planned parenthood, it was really planned genocide because you said Planned Parenthood was trying to put all these centers into the black communities because they wanted to kill black babies before they were born.

CAIN: Yes.

SCHIEFFER: You still stand by that?

CAIN: I still standby that.

SCHIEFFER: Do you have any proof that that was the objective of Planned Parenthood?

CAIN: If people go back and look at the history and look at Margaret Sanger's own words that's exactly where that came from. Look up the history. If you go back and look up the history. Secondly, look at where most of them were built. 75 percent of those facilities were built in the black community and Margaret Sanger's own words, she didn't use the word genocide, but she did talk about preventing the increasing number of poor blacks in this country by preventing black babies from being born.

SCHIEFFER: So you would not see any advantage to having young mothers get counsel and advice that Planned Parenthood could give them? I mean, with so many black babies born out of wedlock?

CAIN: There are a lot of centers that offer sincere counseling rather than Planned Parenthood claiming to be those centers when in fact they would rather for the young lady to come in and say they want to get an abortion and facilitate that. Plenty of centers out there genuinely do that. What I'm saying is Planned Parenthood isn't sincere about want to go try to counsel them not to have abortions.

America's richest man isn't going to make President Obama, the folks in the Occupy Wall Street movement, or their respective supporters in the media happy.

Appearing on ABC's This Week Sunday, Bill Gates laughed when asked about the Buffett Rule saying, "You can't raise the taxes we need just by going after that one percent…to really deal with the deficit gap we're talking about, that alone just numerically is not going to be enough" (video follows with transcript):

CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR, HOST: The Buffett Rule, for instance, and all the other proposals the president is making are being called class warfare by his opposition. Do you agree with the Buffett Rule? Do you support that?

BILL GATES: Well… (LAUGHTER)

AMANPOUR: Why is it funny?

GATES: Well, I just can't imagine the — these millionaires and billionaires going down and — barriciding (sic) the streets because they're going to have to pay four or five percent more in taxes. I mean it's going to be rough for them… There certainly is a case to be made that taxes should be more progressive. And, you know, that — that's being debated by various people.

AMANPOUR: Do you support the Buffett Rule?

GATES: I'm not an expert on how we should do taxes. Clearly, you can't raise the taxes we need just by going after that one percent. Yes, I'm generally in favor of the idea that — that the rich should pay somewhat more. But to really deal with the deficit gap we're talking about, that alone just numerically is not going to be enough.

There are times when I'm sickened by what I see so-called journalists do on television.

Sunday was one of those times when Politico's Roger Simon, appearing on CNN's Reliable Sources, said being "a little bit racist perhaps, gives you good bona fides in a Republican primary. It shows them you're on the same side as they are" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

ROGER SIMON, POLITICO: Can I just say one thing about the birther issue? It's not a fun issue to poke somebody on. It is more than a little bit racist. It grew, not everyone who believes it is a racist, but it grew out of the belief that a black man could not be legitimately elected to the President of the United States. Now why would Perry use that in the primaries instead of saving it for the general when he's running against President Obama? Well, it's because being extreme perhaps, and, a little bit racist perhaps, gives you good bona fides in a Republican primary. It shows them you're on the same side as they are.

HOWARD KURTZ, HOST: So it’s a bit of a dog whistle.

SIMON: Absolutely.

Maybe Simon ought to talk to his colleague at Politico Ben Smith who informed MSNBC's Andrea Mitchell on April 22 of this year that birtherism was created by Hillary Clinton supporters when they correctly feared that Barack Obama was going to win the Democratic presidential nomination in 2008:

BEN SMITH, POLITICO: Actually, what it goes back to is the Clinton campaign, and not Clinton herself or her staff, but her supporters. As she was losing in the sort of really bitter spring of 2008, some of her passionate supporters were kind of grasping at straws for, you know, reasons he could be ineligible to run for president. Some of them said, “Well maybe his father’s a foreigner. Maybe that means he’s not a citizen.” And they got very excited about that, and then they looked at the law, and that turned out not to be true. And this was sort of a backup strategy, “Oh, what if he was actually born in Kenya?” And it was ludicrous, and they produced ludicrous, forged birth certificates and things like this. And this kind of bubbled through the ’08 campaign.

As such, birtherism didn't grow "out of the belief that a black man could not be legitimately elected to the President of the United States." It was a claim Obama wasn't born in America started by Clinton supporters who just wanted to defeat him.

Why does that little bit of history rarely surface when so-called journalists are discussing birtherism and racism in American politics?

Far more importantly, why is acceptable for someone like Simon to go on national television and accuse Republican primary voters of being racist especially in the context of birtherism which was created by Democratic primary voters?

Sadly, no one on the set including host Howard Kurtz offered a challenge to this deplorable nonsense.

I wonder why.

Brian Maloney at the Radio Equalizer identified the dirty mind Politico writer Glenn Thrush brought to talk radio (although if it's liberal talk radio, it's probably not safe for young audiences anyway). On the October 27 edition of the Bill Press show, Press and Thrush were discussing the very buzzworthy Herman Cain ad that concludes with Cain chief of staff Mark Block blowing cigarette smoke at the end.

Many media people wondered if this would send a bad pro-smoking message to America's youth. To Thrush, that seemed like a celebratory smoke after sex:

GLENN THRUSH, POLITICO: Didn't that just strike you as sort of weirdly being post-coital?

BILL PRESS: Because of the cigarette?

THRUSH: And the smile.

Maloney pointed out that Block didn't smile, but Cain does to exude confidence at the ad's end. So Cain is smiling at Block's "post-coital" smoking? There's a lot of Freudian psychoanalysis going on there. On his show, Rush Limbaugh ran several snippets of mocking/disapproving media patter, including CNN's John King: 

RUSH: That was John King, "To celebrate smoking at the end of a video I find reprehensible."  Can you imagine how uptight these people's lives are?  Can you imagine what it's like to be these people?  I just think about how tightly wound and uptight these people are.  Folks, I'm telling you this is who they are, this is a great illustration of how you have this holier-than-thou, superior bunch of people who are willing to condemn everything that you do that they disapprove of.  There's no freedom. There's no living your life on your own.  You're gonna be harassed if these people find out about it.

And then there's Obama.  He doesn't know how much he helped us with this comment of his yesterday. (paraphrasing) "Yeah, what the Republicans are saying, if they win, you're on your own."  Damn right we're on our own.  Hallelujah!  That's exactly what we want to be is on our own.  And he's out there trying to warn people, "If the Republicans win they're basically saying you're on your own."  Exactly right we're on our own.  We want to be on our own.  We do much better for ourselves than you do, you dolt, look what you've done.  I love it.

Anyway, there's one more sound bite on this smoking business.  It's from the Cain campaign.  This was yesterday on Fox, Megyn Kelly talking to Herman Cain's chief of staff Mark Block about the ad, and she asked him what the message behind the ad was.

BLOCK:  The message behind the ad was to our supporters that we're on a roll, we are excited about what’s happening. There was so subliminal message. In fact, I personally would encourage people not to smoke, it's just that I'm a smoker, and as a lot of the people on the staff said, "Just let Block be Block." That's what it was all about.

RUSH:  Mark Block is the guy's name, just let Block be Block.  I smoke, what the hell, none of your business.  It was an ad.  There's no secondhand smoke in an ad.  If you want to talk about influencing the kids then let's talk movies and let's talk rock music, and let's talk music videos, and if you want to talk about influencing the kids, that's all just a crock.

Millions of Americans are out of work, some of them for several years.

Yet the Washington Post's Bob Woodward said on the Chris Matthews Show this weekend that Barack Obama's top priority is getting reelected (video follows with transcript and commentary):

CHRIS MATTHEWS, HOST: Welcome back. Bob, tell me something I don't know.

BOB WOODWARD, WASHINGTON POST: That the White House has a secret plan to win the election, and it's complex and it's secret, but, look. Barack Obama wants to win so badly as I understand it, everything in the White House is driven by the election, and that level of commitment will take them to a point where he is going to show some leg in a way that people are going to say, “Wow, he really wants the job,” and this emotional connection could take place.

MATTHEWS: Wow! I am impressed by that.

After a commercial break, Matthews asked his guests, “What is President Obama's biggest goal on the world stage?”

Woodward doubled down:

MATTHEWS: Welcome back. Exactly 50 years ago, President Kennedy had to lead this country through a two-front face-off with the Soviets. Tanks confronted each other at the Berlin Wall, and the Soviets surprised the world with a test of a 50 megaton bomb. Here was President Kennedy 50 years ago.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

PRESIDENT JOHN F. KENNEDY: I do not have to dwell on the irresponsible nature of these Soviet actions. The Soviet Union has shown its complete disregard for the welfare of mankind.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

MATTHEWS: Well his single goal was to avoid the Cold War becoming a shooting war. But this week’s big question: what is President Obama's biggest goal on the world stage?

WOODWARD: Win the election. I mean that is the driving force, and I think, you know, it's political, but I think it is becoming an internal commitment because like most presidents, they think they're the person for the job.

MATTHEWS: The country needs him as he sees it.

Now imagine for a moment Obama were a Republican with a 9.1 percent unemployment rate and Americans taking to the streets to protest joblessness as well as income inequality.

Would the media be "impressed" with him ignoring all the nation's problems in order to get reelected?

Quite the country, this would be a sign of tremendous weakness that likely would be savagely attacked by press outlets from coast to coast.

But because Obama is so beloved that these folks want him to get reelected, they actually see this as a noble goal on his part irrespective of what ails the nation.

In essence, since their goal is returning him to the White House, they also don't care about the unemployed either.

To them, Obama's reelection is paramount, and they therefore see him making this his top priority above the nation's best interests as a smart move on his part.

And this is the state of journalism in 2011.

Maybe the video above should be broadcast at every Occupy event each day to inform protesters just how little the current White House resident and his media minions care about them.

Jonathan Alter, who spent 28 years at Newsweek, has been a columnist at Bloomberg News since early this year. Just this year, the reliably and insufferably liberal Alter, among many other things, called the Republican House's passage of Paul Ryan's budget plan in April an attempt "to throw Granny in the snow," and coldly calculated that in the wake of her shooting, Arizona Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords was more valuable to Barack Obama's reelection efforts alive than dead.

In early January, Alter, appearing on an MSNBC program, took great offense at Rep. Darrell Issa's suggestion that the Obama White House is "one of the most corrupt administrations ever," claiming that "there is zero evidence" of it. The Washington Examiner's Tim Carney proceeded to identify seven such examples. Alter must have been saying "la-la I can't hear you" during Carney's chronicle, as his October 27 column was an exercise in sheer fantasy from beginning to end (bolds are mine throughout this post):

---

Obama Miracle is White House Free of Scandal

President Barack Obama goes into the 2012 with a weak economy that may doom his reelection. But he has one asset that hasn’t received much attention: He’s honest./p>

… Although it’s possible that the Solyndra LLC story will become a classic feeding frenzy, don’t bet on it. Providing $535 million in loan guarantees to a solar-panel maker that goes bankrupt was dumb, but so far not criminal or even unethical on the part of the administration. These kinds of stories are unlikely to derail Obama in 2012. If he loses, it will be because of the economy — period./p>

Even so, the president’s Teflon is intriguing. How did we end up in such a scandal-less state? After investigating the question for a recent Washington Monthly article, I’ve been developing some theories./p>

For starters, the tone is always set at the top. Obama puts a premium on personal integrity, and with a few exceptions (Tim Geithner’s tax problems in 2009) his administration tends to fire first and ask questions later./p>

… But the White House’s intense focus on scandal prevention has had mixed results. The almost proctological vetting process has ended up wounding Obama as much as prospective nominees. He gets cleaner but often less imaginative officials./p>

… The vigilance about wrongdoing has worked better when it comes to oversight of the $787 billion stimulus program. The money might not always have been spent on the right things. But a rigorous process supervised by Vice President Joe Biden, and made transparent with the help of recovery.gov, has prevented widespread fraud and abuse./p>

… Every time Representative Darrell Issa, the Republican from California who leads a House investigative committee, calls the Obama administration “corrupt” without offering any evidence, he hurts his cause. It’s much harder to make a story register as a bona fide scandal when the political motivation is so obvious./p>

It’s also harder to find room for such stories when so much other news is breaking. Scandals like the Monica Lewinsky affair were almost a luxury of good times, when the nation could afford to obsess about a blue dress. Not these days./p>

…. According to a metric created by political scientist Brendan Nyhan, Obama set a record earlier this month for most days without a scandal of any president since 1977. The streak probably won’t last, especially if he gets a second term, where scandals are more common. But the impression of rectitude will be part of the voters’ assessment of him next year. He’ll need it.

Here's Brendan Nyhan's hysterical definition of a scandal:

Nyhan says that political scientists generally see The Washington Post as a solid indicator of elite opinion — so for his study, a problem officially curdles into a scandal once the S-word is used in a reporter's own voice in a story that runs on the front page of the Post. Bush made it 34-months before he faced a scandal in the Post. And as of this morning, Obama has beaten that record.

You read that right. A scandal is a scandal when — and only when — the Washington Post says it's a scandal, and only on its front page. For what it's worth, the headline at Associated Press story (possibly supplied by the subscribing outlet) called Solyndra a scandal on September 17.

For the rest of us, here is what a scandal is:

1. a disgraceful or discreditable action, circumstance, etc.
2. an offense caused by a fault or misdeed.
3. damage to reputation; public disgrace.
4. defamatory talk; malicious gossip.
5. a person whose conduct brings disgrace or offense.

In advance of a column I wrote in September in response to American University history professor Allan Lichtman's claim that the Obama administration had to that point been "scandal-free", I compiled a by no means complete list of items which would fit one of the five areas just described. In the column itself, I added Solyndra, LightSquared, and Operation Fast and Furious. Scandal-free? It's more like scandal fatigue.

As to Obama's honesty, the contrived tale of his mother's supposed lack of health insurance during the time leading up to his death will do for openers. There are roughly three dozen more arguable lies identified here since his term began. Honest, schmonest.

Jonathan Alter is of course entitled to his opinion, but he's not entitled to his own comprehensive set of made-up facts. Bloomberg executive Washington editor Al Hunt should have laughed Alter's column out of the building — but as another bondafide far-lefty, the odds are he thought it was brilliant journalism.

Cross-posted at BizzyBlog.com.

Perhaps you've seen it, the video of former Marine Corps sergeant Shamar Thomas accusing New York City police of brutality against Occupy Wall Street protesters.

Since the footage was posted Oct. 16 on YouTube, left-wing media have embraced Thomas as their one of their own, showering him with attention while avoiding potentially awkward questions about his background, such as Thomas's claim that his mother fought in Iraq and his father was deployed to Afghanistan. (video and audio clips after page break)

Thomas appeared on Ed Schultz's radio show Thursday and talked about the clash between Occupy protesters and Oakland police the night before (audio) –

SCHULTZ: What do you make of what unfolded in Oakland?

THOMAS: Well, what I make of what unfolded in Oakland, it looked like a war zone on our own territory. And what really got me to come out was an Iraqi veteran named Scott Olsen was shot by police and is in critical condition right now.  And this is, you know, something that I just spoke out against and, you know, it made me feel that we need, we have to do more and more veterans need to come up and help protect these people.

SCHULTZ: Well, what do you think, you think the law enforcement has been heavy-handed throughout all of this? It would seem to me that these protesters, and I have been there as well, they're well intended. They're not going there to be violent.

Except when they were "on the verge of a riot" during a broadcast of "The Ed Show" in Zuccotti Park earlier this month, according to Schultz's producer James Holm. (audio) More from Schultz on the alleged abiding pacificism of the flea party faithful –

SCHULTZ: And they're going there on a mission to be seen, to be heard, and to get the attention of people who can make a difference. And non-violent has to be the theme here. But how do you think that's been received by law enforcement? Do you think there's been a heavy-handed move by law enforcement?

THOMAS: Well, initially, you know, I had the idea that, you know, it's just a few, few, you know, bad police officers out of the crowd who don't know how to control themselves in these situations because a lot of police officers aren't necessarily, you know, trained to deal with peace. They're trained to deal with, you know, actual riots that are not peaceful.

Not trained to deal with "peace" — also known by police as having a slow day.

Yet another deceitful euphemism from the left — "peace" when what is meant is civil disobedience on a mass scale, with plenty of actual illegality — indefinite seizure of public property so that no one else can use it — tossed in for good measure.

"Peace" as in baiting police to provoke a forceful response, the only way the Occupy protests end with the protesters saving face, as they are painfully aware.

Appearing on "The Rosie Show," Thomas claimed he saw examples of police brutality on Oct. 5. Ten days later, Thomas showed up for a large Occupy protest in Times Square, accompanied by his aunt who recorded the video of him confronting police.

In the video, Thomas berates police for several minutes, becoming increasingly angry, bellicose and unhinged by their non-violent response to his outburst. What is obvious from the video is that, at least during this moment in the protests, it's not police who are unable to handle "peace" as exemplified by Thomas, it's him.

Odd indeed how Thomas claims to have witnessed police brutality on Oct. 5, yet when he went to Times Square on Oct. 15 with his aunt bringing along her camera phone, neither of them took the trouble to record evidence of these alleged public crimes.

I find it hard to believe that any former Marine and combat veteran acting in good faith and seeing actual examples of police brutality would not have the courage and presence of mind to confront those involved and demand their names and badge numbers. If Thomas has done this, he's also done a good job at keeping it secret.

When he appeared on Keith Olbermann's show, Thomas said "my goal in life is to inspire a generation." When that is a person's lofty aim, documenting evidence of the brutality he alleges is conveniently left to lesser mortals.

His conversation with Rosie O'Donnell reeked of dishonest left-wing discourse. "You reminded me of Martin Luther King, I have to tell you," O'Donnell told Thomas. "Oh yes, I've heard that a few times," Thomas responded, quickly adding, "That's an honor."

"You had such a profound sense of dignity," O'Donnell continued, of Thomas's profoundly undignified rant, "and what you were saying was so universally true, that even the police officers, who are just working-class people doing their jobs, right? …"

To which Thomas responded, "exactly" — which makes it all the more inexplicable that Thomas had bellowed at police, "How do you sleep at night doing this to people?! … If you want to go kill and hurt people, go to Iraq!"

O'Donnell, having described NYC police as "just working-class people doing their jobs," proceeded to show how she didn't mean a word of it, saying "they've been told to go down there and to, you know …" — wiggling her fingers to signify quote marks — "… maintain the peace …" In other words, the police aren't there to "maintain the peace," wink wink, but let's have it both ways, shall we?

My favorite part of the conversation came next, when O'Donnell said of police, "But they are sometimes meeting violence, right?" Thomas — "No, they're not meeting violence." O'Donnell quickly corrected herself, but the damage was done — "The police are perpetrating, I'm sorry, violence, in an effort to control the crowd."

So much for them as working-class heroes just doing their jobs.