Fox News whines ‘far left media’ making fun of our ‘most embarrassing interview’ ever

By Eric W. Dolan/Raw Story

Fox News host Shannon Bream on Wednesday complained that “very far left media” had criticized the news network’s recent interview with a religious scholar who happened to be Muslim.

“The liberal media has remained quiet on the subject matter of the book but cannot control its outrage over that question: Why did you write it?” she said.

A Fox News interview with Reza Aslan last week went viral after BuzzFeed labelled it “the most embarrassing interview Fox News has ever done.”

Fox News host Lauren Green began the interview by asking why a Muslim was interested in writing a book about Jesus Christ.

The initial question alone was innocuous. But after Aslan explained his interest in Jesus — he was a former evangelical Christian and a religious scholar — Green continued to question his motivations. She insinuated the book was a secret attack on the core tenets of Christianity and that Muslim scholars could not write an accurate book about the historical Jesus.

Bream said Wednesday that Green was “taking so much heat” because people of the Muslim faith were overly sensitive.

Watch video, uploaded to YouTube, below:

Soledad slams Red State editor’s moderator critique: ‘You have lost your mind’

By Stephen C. Webster/Raw Story

CNN contributor and RedState.com editor Erick Erickson finally got a taste of journalistic pushback on Friday morning, in the form of a smiling Soledad O’Brien.

The CNN morning host confronted the conservative talker over a Twitter post he wrote Thursday night, attacking Martha Raddatz, moderator of Thursday’s vice presidential debate, for not taking charge of the conversation.

“I’m sorry, but I think Martha Raddatz did an atrocious job as a moderator,” he wrote. “She lost control of both sides repeatedly.”

In a follow-up, however, Erickson seemed to criticize the ABC News senior foreign policy correspondent for the exact opposite thing: taking charge too much and forcing the candidates to answer specific questions.

“Dear future debate moderators, don’t make the topics in your wheelhouse the focus of a debate millions might watch,” he wrote.

Appearing on CNN just 12 hours later, Erickson had to answer for the schizophrenic criticism. “I think you have lost your mind,” O’Brien said. “I actually thought that wasn’t losing control.”

“I think you’re a journalist and journalists are gonna give her cover,” he replied. “I thought she was horrible.”

Later in the interview, Erickson mentioned “this unemployment number” as something that the moderator should have focused on. However, Raddatz did ask about unemployment, noting that the national jobless rate “just fell below 8 percent for the first time in 43 months,” and asking the candidates how quickly they think it could be driven below 6 percent.

“I just don’t think moderators should make the focus of the debate their wheelhouse,” Erickson said.

“Yeah, I’m just gonna disagree with you on that,” O’Brien replied. “I think she did a teriffic job. I thought that she was super strong. Do you think that [the last presidential debate moderator] Jim Leher did a good job?”

“Actually, I don’t think that either of them…” Erickson said, trailing off. “At least with Jim… I think Jim Leher, at least he really got out of the way and let them talk.”

A CBS News snap poll of undecided voters found that 50 percent thought Vice President Joe Biden won the debate, whereas just 31 percent picked Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI).

This video is from CNN, broadcast Friday, October 12, 2012.

Billionaire Businessman Says Government Assistance For The Poor Makes People Lazy

By Pat Garofalo/Think Progress

During an appearance on CNBC’s Squawk Box on Tuesday, businessman Sam Zell — whose net worth is nearly $4 billion — claimed that government benefits are “disincentivizing” struggling Americans from wanting to succeed. After questions by CNBC’s Andrew Ross Sorkin, Zell blamed increasing income inequality and America’s lack of economic mobility on health care reform, tax credits for low-income workers, and unemployment benefits:

ZELL:The reality is as follows: the whole focus has been on how the, quote, one percenters, the 10 percenters, whatever these top earners have moved ahead of everybody. I wonder if there’s any correlation between while they were moving ahead, the rest of the government was subsidizing, subsidizing more and more people and disincentivizing them. Why is it always assumed that somebody doesn’t succeed because he can’t, as opposed to he doesn’t want to, or isn’t incentivized to. [...]

SORKIN: There’s no suggestion, at least that I’ve heard, that the reason why people have had a harder time rising through the ranks today is a function of the fact that they’re disincentivized to rise through the ranks.

ZELL: Wait a minute. I think that they are disincentivized by, in effect, if you don’t have to pay for your health care, that’s another thing you don’t have to worry about…For every step contributing to the progress at the top, there’s an additional step on the bottom to increase the earned income [tax credit], to extend unemployment insurance for 28 years.

Watch it:

Both Zell and CNBC co-host Joe Kernen claimed that Europe proves their point of view, saying that the European populace has “learned helplessness” due to government, rather than learning to succeed. However, economic mobility is actually higher in many European countries(with large social safety nets) than it is here in the U.S., where “65 percent of Americans born in the bottom fifth stay in the bottom two-fifths as adults, while 62 percent of those born in the top fifth of incomes stay in the top two-fifths.” It is growing income inequality, spurred by policies that benefit those at the very top of the income scale, that is killing economic mobility.

Meanwhile, as ThinkProgress reported, the lion’s share of tax breaks actually go to the richest Americans, not to those in the middle or bottom of the income scale. The bottom 60 percent of earners only garner 20 percent of the total tax breaks. Zell’s Tribune Company benefited from some of these breaks, saving $1.8 billion by filing taxes as an “S corporation,” rather than paying the full corporate income tax rate.

Ron Reagan: Poll truthers smoking ‘giant crack pipe’ in Fox News green room

By David Edwards/Raw Story

Ron Reagan, the liberal son of former President Ronald Reagan, on Thursday said that the so-called ‘poll truthers’ at Fox News like Karl Rove and Dick Morris who deny any poll that says President Barack Obama is ahead were so out of touch that they must be smoking a crack pipe in the network’s green room.

During a Monday segment on Fox News, Morris had claimed that Romney was “in a very strong position” even though polls showed him down in all nine battleground states.

“I believe if the election were held today, I believe Romney would win by four or five points,” Morris explained. “I believe he would carry Florida, Ohio, Virginia. I believe he would carry Nevada. I believe he would carry Pennsylvania — Pennsylvania. And I believe he would be competitive in Michigan.”

“People need to understand that the polling this year is the worst it’s ever been,” he insisted. “Because this is the first election where if I tell you who’s going to vote, I can tell you how they’re going to vote. … And the models these folks are using are crazy. They assume a Democratic edge of six or seven points.”

On Thursday, MSNBC host Chris Matthews asked Reagan why Fox News would invite Morris on to slam even their own poll — which showed Obama leading Romney nationally, 48-43.

“You sometimes imagine that back in the Republican green room, there’s this giant crack pipe that they’re all hitting on constantly, hitting it hard,” Reagan joked.

“It’s time to say, ‘Don’t bogart that, Morris’ because I think he’s been on that pipe longer than most,” Matthews agreed.

“It’s true, he bought the pipe, I think,” Reagan added. “But let’s not give them too much credit here. The rank and file actually believes some of this nonsense. They believe that evolution didn’t happen, global warming is a hoax, Obama is a Kenyan. But the people like Dick Morris — and Sean Hannity for that matter, who has spread a lot of this kind of propaganda — they know better than this and there is a method to their madness here.”

“They’re not delusional, they’re dishonest. They’re not crazy, they’re craven… What they’re trying to do here and accomplish here is to say in advance, if President Obama wins this election, it’s because the pollsters suppressed the Republican vote, it’s therefore an illegitimate election, he’s not really president. They’re setting the table for that.”

Watch this video from MSNBC’s Hardball, broadcast Sept. 28, 2012.

Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

6 Conservatives Who Think The Media Is Fixing The Polls For Obama

By Aviva Shen/Think Progress

With six weeks until Election Day, newpolling from Quinnipiac, the New York Times and CBS News shows President Obama leading in crucial swing states including Ohio, Florida and Iowa. As Obama’s lead grows, so does the number of conservatives who claim polls in general are biased and cannot be trusted. Similar to their dismissal of fact-checkers who flagged lies in Romney’s ads and Paul Ryan’s convention speech, conservatives are now claiming the media outlets that conduct the polls are attempting to discourage Republicans from voting by falsely tipping the polls toward Democrats.

Helping this narrative along is a new website, Unskewed Polls, which claims, after liberal media bias is removed, Romney is in fact beating Obama by a wide margin in every poll. Business Insider unpacked how the website is manipulating data to come up with a Romney victory.

Nicknamed “poll sample truthers” by Dave Weigel, the skeptics are falling over each other to explain how the numbers are lying:

Erick Erickson
Erickson, Editor-in-Chief of RedState.com and CNN political contributor, accuses the media of a “confirmation bias” that makes them conform their data to what they want: “The polls are confirming what the press thinks and that they have a larger than 2008 Democratic turnout is of no consequence to them.”

John McLaughlin
The Republican pollster explains the poll conspiracy: “The Democrats want to convince [these anti-Obama voters] falsely that Romney will lose to discourage them from voting. So they lobby the pollsters to weight their surveys to emulate the 2008 Democrat-heavy models. They are lobbying them now to affect early voting. IVR [Interactive Voice Response] polls are heavily weighted. You can weight to whatever result you want.”

Hugh Hewitt
Radio host Hugh Hewitt thinks the CBS/Quinnipiac/NYT poll is “junk”, choosing instead to focus on Rasmussen and Gallup’s daily polls, which have Obama leading by a smaller margin. These polls, he says, amounts to “lots of evidence this morning that their campaign is in terrific shape.”

Dick Morris
Tea Party icon Dick Morris insists if the election were held today Romney would win by “4 or 5 points,” carrying Florida, Ohio, Pennsylvania — leading Sean Hannity to exclaim, “Oh, come on!” Morris later declares, “The polling this year is the worst it’s ever been.”
Watch it:

Rep. Connie Mack (R-FL) 
Mack’s Senate campaign manager dismissed polls finding him behind in the Florida race, saying, “A variety of polls commissioned by the media have attempted to paint the Florida Senate race in a light that is simply not accurate.”

Bret Baier/Fox News
Bret Baier hosts a segment warning how “the fine print” of polls could skew data because of oversampling, which Business Insider attributes to higher voter registration among Democrats.

The Romney campaign is also insisting the data showing they are losing is inaccurate. One adviser scoffed, “Public polls are what public polls are,” and claimed they had an internal poll that put the race much closer.

UPDATE

Rush Limbaugh also outlined the pollster conspiracy on his radio show: “They’re all Democrats. They’re all liberals. They just have different jobs. The polls are the replacement refs. They see certain things. They don’t see other things. They don’t call certain things, and other things go by. In this case, what they’re trying to do is exactly what they’ve done in your case: frustrate you, make you pull your hair out, say, what the hell’s happening to the country? They want you thinking the country’s lost. They want you thinking your side’s lost. They want you thinking it’s over for what you believe. And that makes you stay home and not vote. That’s what they’re hoping.”

UPDATE

Not to be outdone, Sean Hannity accused the media of cooking the numbers deliberately on his radio show Wednesday afternoon: “They want to deflate enthusiasm of conservatives. The narrative the media would like to advance is, this is over, don’t even bother paying attention, let’s move on. That’s not true by any stretch. These polls are so skewed, so phony, that we need to start paying attention to what’s going on so that you won’t be deflated.”

Ann Romney Melts Down and Tells the GOP They are Lucky To Have Mitt

By: Jason Easley and Sarah Jones/politicususa

In a full blown meltdown, Ann Romney lashed out the Republican Party and told them that they were lucky to have her husband as their nominee.

In an interview with Radio Iowa, Ann Romney took a blowtorch and burned all the Romney bridges with GOP.

Mrs. Romney explained how “hard” campaigning was for her, “If you love someone, you see them maligned, attacked, all these things that happen in a campaign, you get very defensive.”

In other words, stop maligning Mitt Romney with his own words! Also, Mitt may call you victims, but you may not repeat what Mitt said. Got it?

Speaking of 2008, Ann spoke of how she “suffered” so very, very much and never wanted to do it again. She even made a video about how much she didn’t want to do it. And yet, she is not letting this affect her. And they are “going forward” with his campaign.

Ann Romney then launched into an attack on the Republican Party, “Stop it. This is hard. You want to try it? Get in the ring. This is hard and, you know, it’s an important thing that we’re doing right now and it’s an important election and it is time for all Americans to realize how significant this election is and how lucky we are to have someone with Mitt’s qualifications and experience and know-how to be able to have the opportunity to run this country.”

This is now total inter party warfare between the GOP and the Romneys. Ann Romney provided proof that the pressure has gotten to the Romney campaign, and they are cracking up. Let’s look at the lay of the land. Mitt Romney followed up his Libya debacle by calling half of America victims. Ann Romney then decided to tell her own party that it really hard to run for president.

What Ann Romney doesn’t seem to get is the Republicans that she derisively labeled as the “chattering class” are Republicans who have participated in winning presidential campaigns. People like Peggy Noonan and Mark McKinnon know what they are talking about, so when they tell Mitt and Ann Romney they are blowing it, it would be wise to listen up.

That’s the thing that this campaign has revealed about the Romneys. They aren’t wise. They are ambitious, reckless, narrow minded, out of touch, selfish, entitled, arrogant, uncaring, and a million other adjectives, but their biggest problem is that they aren’t smart.

Ann and Mitt Romney are living proof that money can’t buy intelligence. To the Romneys, the Republican Party is nothing but the help. Republicans need to keep their mouths shut and elect Mitt so that he can run the country.

Notice, Ann Romney didn’t say that her husband would serve the country. You people serve the Romneys. The Romney don’t serve anyone.

The Republican Party is lucky to have a nominee whose campaign is so incompetent that it may cost them a chance to retake the Senate, and their House majority.

It’s not like any other Republican could have stepped up to the plate and served as President Obama’s weak kneed punching bag for the last four months.

The Romney campaign is melting down before our very eyes, and Ann Romney’s channeling of Leona Helmsley is the cherry on top.

Convention Crackup: How The Right-Wing Media Unraveled This Week

ERIC BOEHLERT/Media MAtters for America

Fox News' Charles Krauthammer didn't like Bill Clinton's convention speech. At all.

While so many commentators, including Republicans, praised the address as perhaps the best Clinton had ever given, the conservative columnist reassured Fox News viewers that not only had former president's "self-indulgent" speech failed to soar, it had actually flopped  "beyond the hall." 

According to Krauthammer, Clinton made his speech extra long just to annoy Obama; just to get back at him for defeating Hillary Clinton in the 2008 Democratic primary.

It was that kind of week in the right-wing media. As Democrats gathered in Charlotte to officially nominate Obama, the conservative press tapped into its bottomless reservoir of resentment and slowly came undone, while all the time insisting the Charlotte production was a big failure.

Packed with strange public pronouncements about "slave blood," imprisoning the president, vaginas, aborting people, as well as rancid race-baiting, the right-wing Week in Review captured the unhinged element that powers the conservative movement on the eve of the final election push. And oh yeah, Fox's Dick Morris saidBill Clinton actually wants Obama defeated but won't say so because his "wife is a hostage" and "they'll kill her" if Obama loses.

The reason the meltdown matters is because of the conservative media's outsized influence within the GOP. Since Obama's inauguration, the conservative movement has become, first and foremost, a media-based one.The Republican Party and its presidential campaign now take commands from the far-right press. And don't forget, in May, Romney met for two hours with conspiracy-minded GOP bloggers to map out how the group could help his campaign.

This week, those conservative guiding lights couldn't contain their visceral contempt for all things Democratic. And they didn't even try. Rather than provide analysis (even the sharp-elbowed variety), commentators routinely stooped to embarrassing lows in an effort to tout their hatred.

There was CNN contributor Erick Erickson's off the wall, anatomical convention comparison:

CNN's Dan Loesch, wondering whether Democratic activist Sandra Fluke had been "aborted" from the convention lineup (she was not):

Accuracy in Media's Don Irvine, tweeting misogynistic taunts, also aimed at Fluke:

Meanwhile, the Washington Post's Jenifer Rubin opted for juvenile name-calling instead of analysis.

Then there was Rush Limbaugh, the proud Voice Of The GOP.

Limbaugh: Obama "Wasn't Down With The Struggle. He Doesn't Have Slave Blood."

Limbaugh: Venue Change For Obama Speech Means He Can't Fill "Black Panther Stadium"

Limbaugh: "Feminazis" Won't Like Michelle Obama's Speech Because "Loving Your Husband" Isn't In Their "Playbook"

Has trolling for shock-value relevance ever been more awkward or more unsightly?

Another telltale element of the conservative coverage this week was the eager embrace of delusion; a very weird compulsion to misstate simple facts as a way to prop up the preferred GOP Noise Machine narrative that the Obama campaign is in free fall. (Nate Silver, the respected polling data-cruncher at the New York Times,currently gives Obama a 77 percent chance of being re-elected; not exactly the portrait of a campaign in decline.)

At Breitbart.com,  Mike Flynn rushed in this week to announce that "not many people saw" Michelle Obama's convention speech and that the Democratic convention was attracting a drastically smaller audience, as compared to 2008. Flynn saw that as more proof that Obama's campaign faced a "a very significant enthusiasm gap."  

Right, except none of Flynn's claims about the convention audience reflected the reality that 26 million viewers tuned in on the night Michelle Obama addressed the delegates, compared to the roughly 22 million who watched on the night Ann Romney spoke at the GOP convention. And instead of a shrinking audience this year, Democrats over the first two nights in Charlotte actually grew their convention audience as compared to 2008, according to rating estimates.

At Breitbart.com, the story being sold to partisan readers was that the Obama convention was a ratings flop. Nielsen numbers confirmed the opposite was true.

That type of obfuscation goes beyond loyal spin and enters a realm of aggressive delusion.

It was that kind of week for the right-wing press.

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Romney To Obama: Let’s Agree Not To Discuss My Business Record Or Tax Returns

By Igor Volsky/Think Progress

Mitt Romney — who has placed his business record at the centerpiece of his presidential campaign — is now asking President Obama to stop discussing his tenure with Bain Capital.

During an interview with NBC’s Chuck Todd, the former Massachusetts governor asked Obama toavoid discussing “business or family or taxes or things of that nature”:

“[O]ur campaign would be — helped immensely if we had an agreement between both campaigns that we were only going to talk about issues and that attacks based upon — business or family or taxes or things of that nature.” [...]

“[W]e only talk about issues. And we can talk about the differences between our positions and our opponent’s position.” Romney said of his own campaign: “[O]ur ads haven’t gone after the president personally. … [W]e haven’t dredged up the old stuff that people talked about last time around. We haven’t gone after the personal things.”

The Obama campaign has turned Romney’s business past into a campaign issue, noting that the the governor himself touts that experience as his “main calling card” for setting the country on the right track.

Until recently, Romney seemed to agree. “Look, I’m very proud of my experience at Bain Capital. I hope people understand that I was investing other people’s money for them and was compensated if we were highly successful,” he told CNBC’s Larry Kudlow on July 23. “That’s the kind of record which I’m pretty proud of.”

Top surrogate and adviser John Sununu echoed this argument during a Romney campaign conference in May, saying, “I think the Bain record as a whole is fair game, and what you have to do is do an honest evaluation.”

Rush Whines Media is Harassing Romney

By Mike Sax/Evil Sax/ Diary of a Republican Hater:


For Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, et, al. to be claiming that someone else is harassing anyone is rich. After all haven't they been furiously printing up shirts that took the President's words out of context-'you didn't build that?'

    Yet listen to Rush wail:

    "“Now the reporters are harassing Romney,” Limbaugh said, referring to a Tuesday morning incident where a Romney press aide told journalists to “shove it.” “They’re trying to create gaffes. They’re working on behalf of Barack Obama. They are attempting to carry forth the meme that Romney’s foreign trip is a disaster, that it’s one gaffe after another. They’re trying to do this in the mainstream. And the fact of the matter is Romney is having a home run of a trip.”

Read more:http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0712/79210.html#ixzz22EmjRPdl

     Where to start? Rush claims that  journalists are trying to create gaffes? They sure don't have to try very hard with Mitt-born with a silver foot in my mouth-Romney. Romney's having a home run of a trip? He must have slept through London. Indeed, everywhere Mitt goes he loses friends. The rascally media hardly has a very hard time of somehow tricking him into making gaffes:

     "In one week abroad, Mitt Romney has managed to enrage both the Brits and the Palestinians. Now add to that roster his own press corps."

     "Over seven days in the UK, Israel and Poland, Romney held just one media availability for the U.S. traveling press — and even then, standing outside 10 Downing St. in London, he answered only three questions. While he gave a series of interviews to the major television networks, he granted no interviews to other U.S. outlets.

     "The snub has become the straw that broke the back of an already bitter press corps, long frustrated by limited access to the Republican candidate on the campaign trail. And those frustrations, which traveling reporters are voicing loud and clear online, are putting unprecedented pressure on the Romney campaign’s communications team."

Read more:http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0712/79200.html#ixzz22EthGuKp

      Isn't this actually all of a piece with the narrative on Romney? That he is incredibly secretive and not accessible? Remember when Stephanie Cutter accused Romney of running the most secretive campaign since Nixon? In reality I think he's worse than Nixon. 

     Nixon was a secretive President-although remember the reason we even have the Nixon Tapes is because he got this weird idea in his head that he should tape all his conversations in the White House the better to protect himself.

     I don't think we've ever seen such a secretive candidate:

     "The tensions came to a head in Warsaw today when reporters, increasingly aware that there would be no end-of-tour press avail with the candidate, began shouting questions at Romney as he walked back to his vehicle from a wreath-laying at their Tomb of the Unknown Soldier."

      “Kiss my ass; this is a holy site for the Polish people,” shouted Rick Gorka, a traveling press aide who has tussled with reporters before. “Show some respect.”

      "Gorka then told a reporter to “shove it.” (He would subsequently apologize to some of the reporters, calling his outburst “inappropriate.”)"

      There you go: Kiss my ass. I think that's an apt message. Remember it's not just directed at a particular reporter. This is Romney's attitude to the American people. This is why he doesn't think they deserve to even see his tax returns as every other Presidential candidate since his father, George Romney has done, since the 1960s. 

      This is why when people ask him what he will do he says they should elect him not and he'll tell them later. 

       "Members of the traveling press corps now wonder why they went all the way to Jerusalem and Gdansk to watch the candidate tour the monuments and hold meetings behind closed doors."

       “So it’s official: Romney is leaving a 7-day foreign trip after answer only 3 Qs from the media,” Ashley Parker of the New York Times tweeted Tuesday morning.

       ”Romney trip by the numbers: Three foreign countries, and three questions from the traveling press,” Kasie Hunt of The Associated Presstweeted a few minutes later."

       “We didn’t need to come all the way over here to handle photo ops,” another member of the press corps told POLITICO. “There is a growing frustration among reporters, a growing sense that the campaign doesn’t get it — we don’t want to screw you, we just want to do our job.”

      “Here’s a guy making his audition on the world stage, his trip has been defined by gaffes, and he gives us five minutes and three questions in front of 10 Downing,” said another. “The appetite grows with each gaffe, and the campaign isn’t making it easier on themselves.”

       "High-profile media personalities have also complained. Last week, NBC News political director Chuck Todd and his co-authors at NBC’s First Read blog lamented Romney’s decision to ignore the U.S. press even as he took questions from members of the UK media."

        “[T]hose of us that have traveled overseas and been involved in these VERY limited press avails have rarely seen heads of democracies TOTALLY ignore their own press corps but answer ANOTHER press corps’ questions,” hewrote in NBC’s First Read newsletter (Todd confirmed to POLITICO that he was the author of this paragraph). “Sure, it would have looked REALLY bad had Romney ignored the U.K. questions. But is the campaign so intent on limiting media access that the candidate won’t call an audible when standing next to a leader from another country who DOES want to take questions?”

      “There has been no press access to Governor Romney since we landed in Poland,” Van Susteren wrote on her blog. “We (press) are in a holding pattern (I can’t help but feel a bit like the press is a modified petting zoo since we are trapped in a bus while Polish citizens take pictures of us).”

       "Van Susteren, who interviewed Romney for Fox News but observed the distance the candidate kept from reporters in the press pool, expanded on those comments Tuesday afternoon."

       “I think it would be smarter if they interacted with the press,” Van Susteren told POLITICO. “What struck me is that when the candidate got on board, he never waved to the reporters in the back of the plane. Lots of times candidates will come back and talk. I was struck that there was no off-the-record chatter, not even a wave.”

       Van Susteren is from Fox News of all places-though she is a real reporter. Romney is not someone who aspires to be the head of a democracy but rather an aspiring Duke or Noble. He thinks it's his turn. He has a right to it. 

        "But those television interviews, with the likes of Matt Lauer and Wolf Blitzer, have hardly satisfied the expectations of the press corps, who now envy the access they had to candidates Barack Obama and John McCain in 2008. When then-Sen. Obama went overseas in 2008, he held four press conferences in as many countries and took at least 25 questions, according to the Obama campaign. McCain, meanwhile, was known to visit the back of his press bus frequently to talk with reporters."

       "The governor kept a very full and busy itinerary from the U.K. to Israel and on through to Poland,” Madden said. “The governor also made time for interviews that included every broadcast and cable news network, consisting of almost two hours of questions and answer time with those news organizations.”

      

“The people who are assigned to work with the press are generally less experienced, less familiar with policy or presentation,” one member of the press corps told POLITICO. “They have some really good people in Boston, but they need to put someone better in place — someone who is not going to scream, ‘kiss my ass.’”

But with 98 days until the election, some reporters said it might be too hard to repair relations. On occasion, Romney has been known to make the occasional trip to the back of the press plane, handing out chips or cookies to reporters. But reporters say such attempts at detente will be harder to make following his European tour.
“You can’t hand out cookies now when there are serious questions to ask, and there are very serious questions to ask that the campaign has refused to answer,” one reporter told POLITICO.
“I don’t think anyone wants cookies anymore,” said another. “This is the rough and tumble now. There are going to be tough questions — the American people want that, the campaign should know that, and they should know that it’s better for them if the answers come out now.”

     Thank you. That is a very important, vital point. These members of the press that a Rush Limbaugh loves to demonize have a very important, sacred job. It's to ask the questions we want answered. If Mitt Romney doesn't start answering them soon he won't have to worry about harassment much longer.

Bachmann rails against ‘activist’ court after health care ruling

By David Edwards/Raw Story

Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) on Thursday accused Chief Justice John Roberts and the four other justices who upheld President Barack Obama’s health care reform law of being part of an “activist” Supreme Court.

“It really is a turning point in American history,” Bachmann told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer. “We will never be the same again. … For my mind, this is clearly unconstitutional. There is no basis in the Constitution for the government to have this level of history-making expansion of power.”

“I urge people to read the dissent that was read from the bench by Justice Kennedy and joined in by Justices Alito and also Scalia,” she continued. “Because that opinion said very clearly that this was an activist court that you saw today. What they did was not just uphold Obamacare, this Supreme Court rewrote Obamacare in line with its own designs. So this is an even more far-reaching decision than anyone had expected or imagined.”

The Minnesota congresswoman went on to call on Americans “who believe in liberty and the Constitution” to elect presumptive Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney.

“If Barack Obama has a second term, we will not be able to get rid of Obamacare and we will remain mired much like Europe is today,” she warned. “We want to be Greece then follow the Supreme Court decision today and re-elect Barack Obama, but if we want to be a pro-growth economy and have millions of high-paying jobs then we have to replace Barack Obama.”

Watch this video from CNN, broadcast June 28, 2012.

Michelle Malkin freaks out, calls Juan Williams ‘snotty’ in heated ‘Hannity’ exchange

By David Ferguson/Raw Story

Blogger and “Twitchy.com” proprietor Michelle Malkin and Fox News political analyst Juan Williams engaged in a spirited bit of back-and-forth on Wednesday night’s edition of Fox News’s, “The Sean Hannity Show.”

During a discussion of revelations about the cyber warfare program against Iran, Malkin accused Williams of being mired in the prosecution of the Bush administration’s crimes.

“All you can do, Juan, is say ‘Plame, Plame, Plame,’” she said in a mocking baby-talk voice, “‘Blame, blame, blame, Bush, Bush, Bush.’”

Williams countered, “I tell you what, Michelle, I’m a real reporter, not a blogger out in the blogosphere somewhere.”

Malkin can be heard guffawing as he finishes the statement, and from there, the discussion went off the rails into an eye-rolling, scowling, sulk-off between the two pundits. As Williams asserted that no confidential information had been given away in the discussion of the Obama administration’s cyber-offensive against Iran, Malkin railed that Williams is no more a real reporter than she is, and reeled off a long string of anti-Eric Holder talking points.

Currently, the Attorney General is either obviously guilty of high crimes against his office and the nation and is going to be unseated any day or he’s merely the latest liberal bogeyman to be singled out for an hysterical Fox News witch hunt, depending upon whom you ask. Republicans havecalled for his resignation in the wake of what they feel to be the criminal mishandling of “Fast and Furious,” an operation intended to stop the flow of illegal guns across the border between the U.S. and Mexico.

Hannity gave Malkin the last word, which she used to further heap opprobrium at Williams’s feet.

“The American people,” — which, in the highly codified language of Fox pundits, generally means “Me, myself and I,” — “are sick of the kind of snotty condescension from liberal elite journalists like Juan Williams who tell us that the rest of us are not doing our jobs, when the point is that when Eric Holder was shamefully approved and nominated and approved to be Attorney General.”

Williams rolled his eyes to heaven and mouthed “Oh, my god,” before informing the glowering Malkin that she was “way off topic.”

Malkin replied, “So ‘real journalists’ are apologists for corrupt-ocracy?”

Williams threw up his hands and shook his head in frustration as the segment ended. No wonder he’s been telling people that hemisses working at NPR “big time.”

Watch the clip, embedded via Mediaite, below: