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Promoting Anti-Bush "Bombshell" |
 "Tonight, gasoline has been thrown on a fire that’s never really gone out. The
accusation that the Bush administration badly misled the American public about
the case for war with Iraq. In a new book, journalist Ron Suskind claims he has
new evidence to show the case was more than a failure of intelligence — it was,
he writes, an out and out deception."
— NBC Nightly News anchor Brian Williams, August 5.
"Also ahead, a scathing new book from a Pulitzer-prize winning reporter that
claims the Bush administration’s case for war in Iraq wasn’t a mistake but
deliberate deception. His claim? It is worse than Watergate....Now to that new
bombshell book that claims the White House deliberately misled the American
public about the case for war in Iraq. The author: a Pulitzer-prize winning
journalist."
— NBC’s Meredith Vieira promoting her interview with author Ron Suskind on
the August 5 Today about his book, which alleged the White House asked
the CIA to forge documents linking Iraq to the September 11 attacks.
"Shocking allegations about the President’s determination to invade Iraq. A
brand new book claims the White House forged a key piece of evidence and turned
a blind eye to another. This hour, the book’s bombshells and the
administration’s adamant denials."
— CNN’s Wolf Blitzer on the August 5 Situation Room.
vs.
"Ron Suskind has written another book. It’s getting lots of attention. And
the main charge is almost certainly false.... To believe Suskind’s account...you
would have to believe: 1) that the Bush administration ordered the CIA, in
writing, to forge a letter that was a rather obvious hoax; 2) that the CIA,
hostile to the Bush administration and leaking against it at every turn, eagerly
complied."
— The Weekly Standard’s Steve Hayes in a posting to his magazine’s
Daily Standard blog, August 5.
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Admiring "Much Loved" Edwards |
"Okay, much loved, worked for the poor, a man who was self-made, and all about
integrity and honesty. Considering all of that and this stunning admission, what
type of political career could this man have going forward?"
— Fill-in anchor Melissa Long on CNN’s Saturday Morning August 9,
asking deputy political editor Paul Steinhauser about news former Democratic
candidate John Edwards cheated on his wife.
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Scorning a "Stupid" Campaign |
"Some say that John McCain has tried to subtly portray Obama as not quite
American enough, playing up Obama’s popularity abroad....ABC News has learned
that an independent conservative group has been filming in Indonesia where Obama
spent a few years during his childhood. So even if Senator McCain does not draw
attention to that unusual quality of Obama’s youth, someone will."
— Reporter Jake Tapper on ABC’s World News, August 11.
 Correspondent Dean Reynolds: "The sharper edge by his aides and the
candidate is further evidence that the McCain campaign has changed....[with]
splashier events reminiscent of a previous Republican campaign for the White
House [video of George W. Bush campaign event]. But it’s more than staging, it’s
tone....Remember, this was McCain months ago."
McCain: "I’ve pledged to conduct a respectful campaign."
Reynolds: "But now it frequently seems respect takes a backseat to
ridicule."
— August 13 CBS Evening News.
"Some Republicans wonder about the new approach. McCain’s own mother said
using Paris Hilton in this controversial ad to insult Obama was, quote, ‘kind of
stupid.’"
— CBS’s Dean Reynolds on the August 6 Evening News. |
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"Dishonest" Swift Boaters Return |
"It was right around this time four years ago that the dishonest and highly
effective Swift Boat attacks on John Kerry began. Now [author Jerome Corsi] the
man who started it all, with a book about Kerry, has one out attacking Obama.
Can the Swift Boaters repeat their success, or does Obama know how to fight
back?"
— Fill-in host David Shuster, MSNBC’s Hardball, Aug. 13. |
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Legitimizing Left-Wing Paranoia |
 CNN reporter Dave Mattingly: "When you listen to this John McCain ad,
it might sound like Barack Obama has a Messiah complex....But not everyone’s
laughing. Some Democrats say the ad, which appears only on the Internet, is
infused with hidden messages to evangelical Christians — messages that
Barack Obama isn’t the Messiah at all." ...
Steven Waldman, CEO, Beliefnet.com: It reenforces things that they’ve
been hearing around the Internet, that maybe Barack Obama is, in fact, the
anti-Christ."
— CNN’s Newsroom, August 15. |
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McCain: Scarier than Putin’s Tanks |
 Clip of John McCain on the radio talking about the invasion of Georgia:
"I think it’s very clear that Russian ambitions are to restore the old Russian
empire."
CNN’s Bill Schneider: "Some voters may worry: Does he want to start a new
Cold War? The risk for McCain is that he could overplay the issue and frighten
war-weary voters, whose priorities are at home right now. The Russians are doing
a pretty good job of frightening people already."
— CNN’s Situation Room, August 12. |
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Windfall Profits Tax — Why Not? |
"Senator Obama, he’s calling for a windfall profits tax — $65 billion, five
years — oil companies, in his plan, pay it. And when the public sees the kind of
profits that the oil companies are making, isn’t it fair that they wonder, ‘why
not?’"
— ABC’s Charles Gibson to Exxon Mobil CEO Rex Tillerson on World News,
August 13. |
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The "Conservative" Evan Bayh? |
"[Senator Evan] Bayh, whose father, Birch, was a liberal Democratic Senator and
presidential candidate in 1976, has compiled a moderate-to-conservative record
both as Governor of Indiana from 1988 to 1996 and as Senator since 1999....This
spring, he frustrated Democratic leaders by holding out against new spending in
the federal budget. But that reflects his fiscal conservatism...."
— New York Times reporter Carl Hulse describing possible Democratic VP
pick Evan Bayh, August 12. In 2007, Bayh received a score of 95 out of a perfect
100 from the liberal Americans for Democratic Action. |
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Fantasizing About Jailing Rove |
"A reluctant witness and a Congress that wants answers. We’re talking about
[former White House advisor] Karl Rove and questions about the firing of
those federal prosecutors. Some say he should go to the Capitol jail if he
doesn’t talk. Is there really such a thing?"
— CNN’s Wolf Blitzer on the Aug. 7 Situation Room introducing a
story on options for imprisoning Karl Rove on Capitol Hill if he refuses to
cooperate. |
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Ruing Olympic "Party Crashers" |
"Double-edged sword though, with this great spotlight, China can say to the
world, look where we have come, look who we are, but that spotlight can also be
co-opted by party crashers who have a bone to pick with this country. How
worried are the people here about that?"
— NBC’s Matt Lauer questioning Beijing Foreign Studies University professor
Teng Dimeng, August 4 Today. |
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Harry Hails "Legendary" Liberal |
 "Helen Thomas has been covering the White
House for-ever, almost 50 years now. We’re going to talk to Rory Kennedy,
director of a new documentary about the legendary journalist....Where she sits
and what she does day after day after day, I’m not sure we value enough."
— CBS’s Harry Smith on The Early Show, August 14. |
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Evil GOP Destroyed the Duke |
"He was pilloried over the Pledge of Allegiance in schools and over a prisoner
furlough program that had begun under his Republican predecessor. America got to
know who Willie Horton was because the Republicans introduced them to each
other, and the Dukakis campaign seemed incapable of fighting back. When
unfounded rumors arose concerning Dukakis’s mental health, then-President Ronald
Reagan chimed in that he ‘wasn’t going to pick on an invalid.’ Much of the
campaign was so feverish that Lee Atwater, the Republican consultant who was its
principal architect, apologized for it on his deathbed."
— Boston Globe Magazine’s Charles Pierce in an August 3 piece
on the 20th anniversary of the Dukakis campaign |
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Bush "Urinating on Constitution" |
"So, besides urinating on the Constitution
and the rights and freedoms every American soldier has ever fought to win and
protect, the Bush administration has now decided that when its victims have
actually served their sentences, doled out under its own medieval, quote,
‘justice,’ unquote, system, it still might not choose to set them free, thereby
giving that Constitution and our country a second pass on the way out."
— MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann on Countdown, August 7, discussing how a
convicted terrorist may be detained at Guantanamo Bay after his five year
sentence is up. |
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The GOP Nominates Another Idiot |
"It occurs to me that John McCain is as intellectually shallow as our current
President....Bush goes bumbling along, grinning and spewing moronic one-liners,
as though nobody understands what a colossal failure he has been....I fear to
the depth of my being that John McCain is just like him."
— Jack Cafferty in commentary at CNN.com, August 19. |
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What Show Is She Watching? |
"For all its eviscerations of the administration, The Daily Show is
animated not by partisanship but by a deep mistrust of all ideology."
— New York Times book critic Michiko Kakutani profiling Comedy Central
host Jon Stewart, August 17. |
PUBLISHER: L. Brent Bozell III
EDITORS: Brent H. Baker, Rich Noyes, Tim Graham
MEDIA ANALYSTS: Geoffrey Dickens, Brad Wilmouth, Scott Whitlock, Matthew Balan, Kyle Drennen,
and Justin McCarthy
RESEARCH ASSOCIATE: Michelle Humphrey
INTERNS: Lyndsi Thomas, Peter Sasso
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