If Only Bush Had Called Domino's
"We talked to Cory Booker, the Mayor of Newark. This is a tweet he sent out last night, yes, on Saturday: 'Heading on a pizza run. I'm going to deliver 10 pizzas to those staying in our shelter at JFK.' So, I mean, you have the contrast, Michael Eric Dyson, between President Bush regretting he had a flyover of the storm zone [after Hurricane Katrina] and Mayor Booker personally delivering pizzas."
— David Gregory talking about Hurricane Irene on NBC's Meet the Press, August 28.
Exploiting Irene to Push Al Gore's Global Warming Agenda
"The scale of Hurricane Irene, which could cause more extensive damage along the Eastern seaboard than any storm in decades, is reviving an old question: are hurricanes getting worse because of human-induced climate change?"
— Lead paragraph of environmental reporter Justin Gillis's August 28 New York Times story: "Seeing Irene as Harbinger of a Change in Climate."
Fill-in host Chris Hayes: "How do you maintain hope? Because sometimes I read about the climate, and I just sort of despair. Or I want to throw in the towel. And I wonder, since you're out there every day, you're here talking to me now, how do you avoid that?"
Environmental activist/Daily Beast columnist Bill McKibben: "It's easy to despair. It's easy to despair today watching Irene come up the coast. It's going to come over the warmest water that's ever been recorded off the shores of New Jersey and New York. I mean, Irene's middle name is global warming."
— MSNBC's The Last Word with Lawrence O'Donnell, August 25.
Earthquake + Hurricane = More Excuses for Government Spending
Moderator David Gregory: "We're having a big debate over the budget in this town, the federal budget and deficit, and also the need for infrastructure improvements. We had an earthquake this week, which pointed out the fact that the East Coast is not prepared for something that is rare but still happened. And then just the kind of damage to our infrastructure that storms like this [hurricane] point up. What does it do to that debate?"
Georgetown Professor Michael Eric Dyson: "Well, I think it suggests that, a) you've got to be prepared....If you look at infrastructure spending, you've got to beef that up in order to be prepared."
— NBC's Meet the Press, August 28.
Begging Obama to Spend More: "Why Not Go for Broke?"
"I guess the question is, if the President thinks more should be done, if he thinks there should be more stimulus, why doesn't he just go for broke? Why doesn't he go out there and ask for it, make a case for it? I mean, in some sense, is he pre-settling? He's making a political calculus about what he thinks might be able to pass, and not getting out there and fighting for what he thinks is best of the economy."
— Fill-in host Savannah Guthrie to Obama campaign aide Robert Gibbs on NBC's Meet the Press, August 21.
Obama-Loving Media Has Buried Dear Leader's Successes?
"I was talking to a man outside the President's town hall in Atkinson, Illinois. He was pounding in flags a couple hours before the President's visit....He voted for Obama and he said he still believes in this President, but he said he must have the worst PR machine in history.... I said what do you mean by that? He said look at all of the good things he's done and we haven't heard about it."
— New York Times correspondent Jeff Zeleny on ABC's This Week, August 21.
If He Doesn't Think Like a CBS Reporter, How Can He Win?
"You believe in global warming; Rick Perry does not. Can you elect someone President, or can the Republican Party elect someone President, who doesn't believe in global warming?"
— Fill-in host Norah O'Donnell to John McCain on CBS's Face the Nation, August 21.
"He [Perry] referred to Social Security in his book as, quote, 'a crumbling monument to the failure of the New Deal.' He compared Social Security to a, quote 'bad disease' and that it was set up like a, quote 'illegal Ponzi scheme.' Can you elect a Republican to the White House who thinks Social Security is a bad disease?"
— O'Donnell to former RNC Chairman Ed Gillespie a few minutes later on the same program.
Jon Huntsman vs. "Intransigent" Tea Party "Anarchists"
"He's what used to be the mainstream of the party, he's the kind of Republican who could win a national election against Democrats. But for some reason, for various reasons, the Republican Party seems to have been taken over by the Tea Party movement, by these sort of patriotic anarchists. And someone like Huntsman in today's party really stands no realistic chance of getting the nomination."
— Slate editor-in-chief Jacob Weisberg on MSNBC Live, August 25.
"If you're the Republican nominee, how are you going to control these Tea Party — side of the GOP, because they are so intransigent. They've got their dander up. They have held the President to ransom successfully.... When you see, again, intransigence by some of the — particularly the Tea Party end of the Republican Party on this kind of thing, do you think again that it's bordering on bigotry?"
— CNN host Piers Morgan to Jon Huntsman on Piers Morgan Tonight, August 22.
Republicans = The Nasty Party
"Some people like — apparently on the right — the fact that he [Rick Perry] is so nasty against Obama. They like that....Is it [the GOP] a nasty party?"
— Host Chris Matthews on The Chris Matthews Show, August 21.
Are GOP Voters "Allergic to Brains?"
"So far, it is a couple of intellectual lightweights that are stealing the show. Since Michele Bachmann won the Iowa straw poll and Rick Perry entered the race, these two have been sucking up most of the media's attention, mostly for saying stupid stuff....That's a sad commentary on the state of our politics, isn't it? Here's the question: When it comes to presidential politics, why does America seem to be allergic to brains?"
— CNN's Jack Cafferty on The Situation Room, August 24.
Forget Reverend Wright — Time to Dig Into GOP Candidates' Religion
"If a candidate for president said he believed that space aliens dwell among us, would that affect your willingness to vote for him?...Yet when it comes to the religious beliefs of our would-be presidents, we are a little squeamish about probing too aggressively....We have an unusually large number of candidates, including putative frontrunners, who belong to churches that are mysterious or suspect to many Americans. Mitt Romney and Jon Huntsman are Mormons, a faith that many conservative Christians have been taught is a 'cult' and that many others think is just weird....Rick Perry, Michele Bachmann and Rick Santorum are all affiliated with fervid subsets of evangelical Christianity, which has raised concerns about their respect for the separation of church and state, not to mention the separation of fact and fiction."
— Outgoing New York Times Executive Editor Bill Keller in an August 28 column [1] for the paper's Sunday Magazine. The Times later issued a correction over Keller's false statement that the Catholic Santorum is an evangelical Christian.
"I wish that he and the New York Times was as concerned about religion and politics during the last campaign when it pertained to Barack Obama, who sat in a church with a hateful minister for 20 years. So I'm not sure if Bill Keller is the right person to preach to us about the importance of journalists asking about religion."
— Former CBS News correspondent Bernard Goldberg on FNC's The O'Reilly Factor, August 29.
CBS Touts "Life Made Easier" by Obama's Backdoor Amnesty
Anchor Scott Pelley: "The Obama administration announced a big change in immigration policy this week. Many undocumented immigrants with no criminal records will be allowed to stay in this country and apply for work permits. 300,000 cases will now be reviewed one by one...."
Correspondent John Blackstone: "Immigrant advocates like attorney Mike Silverman say the change makes economic sense. Each deportation costs an estimated $24,000....There are an estimated 11 million undocumented immigrants whose life in the shadows may be made easier with this policy change."
— CBS Evening News, August 19.
Dick Cheney, War Criminal
"The fact of the matter is — and people know my feelings about this pretty surely — he's a war criminal. Torture is a crime and this is a guy who can't travel to Europe anymore for fear of being — ending up in the Hague."
— Fill-in host Ron Reagan on MSNBC's Hardball, August 25.
Cheney's Memoir: Where's the Liberal Spin?
[2]"If this book were read by an intelligent person who spent the past 10 years on, say, Mars, she would have no idea that Dick Cheney was the Vice President in one of the most hapless American administrations of modern times....We've now had three self-serving memoirs from the past administration.... Future historians who have the stomach to try to figure out what happened under our 43rd President will be frustrated by all three books, because none of them wrestles with the enormous issues raised by this pugnacious administration and the world-changing messes it left for its successors to clean up."
— Washington Post associate editor Robert Kaiser in an August 30 review [3] of Cheney's just-released In My Time [2].
"Pretty Boy" Marco Rubio Hates Old People
"Florida Senator Marco Rubio got some good press this week for saving Nancy Reagan from a fall at a Reagan Library event. But when it comes to the rest of the American senior citizens, Rubio wants to leave them high and dry....Rubio is an early favorite to take the number two spot on the Republican presidential ticket next year thanks to his Tea Party ideology and his pretty boy looks. But his policies are downright ugly."
— MSNBC host Ed Schultz on The Ed Show, August 25.
Tina Brown's "Unfair Left-Wing Propaganda Machine"
"Last week's [Newsweek] cover featured a full-page, wide-eyed facial picture of Michele Bachmann, carefully selected to match the headline, which calls her 'The Queen of Rage.' That's the same Bachmann who won the Iowa straw poll and is one of the leading contenders for the Republican presidential nomination....When Newsweek was owned by the Washington Post, it was predictably left-wing, but it was accurate. Under Tina Brown, it is an inaccurate and unfair left-wing propaganda machine."
— USA Today founder Al Neuharth in his August 19 column [4].
Still Getting Chills Over Obama's Inaugural
"It was an amazing time to be in the capital, that's for sure. I have never experienced in my life anything like the swarms of people and the passion that I felt for the country.... [It] still gives me chills, even though the darkness has sort of overcome our country again."
— Actress Alicia Witt as quoted by the Washington Examiner's 'Yeas and Nays' column [5], August 17.
PUBLISHER: L. Brent Bozell III
EDITORS: Brent H. Baker, Rich Noyes, Tim Graham
DEPUTY RESEARCH DIRECTOR: Geoff Dickens
NEWS ANALYSTS: Brad Wilmouth, Scott Whitlock, Matthew Balan, Kyle Drennen and Matthew Hadro