Over the past year, the media have served as cheerleaders for ObamaCare, praising the proposed legislation, while continuing slamming its critics. Here is just a sampling of some of the slanted coverage from the past 12 months.

Written by NewsBusters’ Kyle Drennen, edited by Bob

Is it all that simple, or does the president not know what he’s talking about…?

If that seems familiar, we covered this topic last summer in greater detail: “Playboy’s Conservative Women “Hate Fuck” Fantasy” and “Justifying The ‘Hate Fuck‘”.

Happy Women’s History Month!

Before some of you ask, I’ve been a professional graphic designer since the literal cut-and-paste days of 1976. I’ve been using Photoshop since 1998, so I know a bit about touching up and downright photo manipulation.

The Israeli soldier, who is the subject of the pic, has forearms that appear to have outlines while other parts of his body does not. Possibly just hairy arms. The soldier in the upper right doesn’t appear to have a shadow, not to mention this interesting abnormality (a sloppy crop mark?)  in the curb of the street that seems to be curving upward, an opposite direction than a convexing lens would have it do so. Now, the street may curve, but another curious note is the graffiti on the upper right that is in better focus than it should be.

Pardon my skepticism, as Palestinian photographers have Photoshopped images before.

h/t The Machine

Washington Post — Prius driver’s frantic 911 call
Associated Press — Prius driver tells harrowing tale
Associated Press — Pedal problems, suits accelerate for Toyota
CNN — Driver: My Prius took me for a ride
USA Today — Could runaway Prius case become Toyota’s crisis turning point?
ABC News — Toyota With ‘Stuck’ Accelerator Hits 94 MPH, Driver Rescued by California Highway Patrol

Okay, so you get the idea. It sounds like a good story.

There already was an evil corporation to pounce on, and now another hapless victim. However, the actual art of reporting was sorely lacking as very few media outlets decided to perform Journalism 1.01: verify. One outlet did and really made the case this was yet another example of a look-at-me type and a media that was easily suckered.

Toyota Hybrid Horror Hoax
“On the very day Toyota was making a high-profile defense of its cars, one of them was speeding out of control,” said CBS News–and a vast number of other media outlets worldwide. The driver of a 2008 Toyota Prius, James Sikes, called 911 to say his accelerator was stuck, he was zooming faster than 90 miles per hour and absolutely couldn’t slow down.

In fact, almost none of this was true. Virtually every aspect of Sikes’s story as told to reporters makes no sense.

The lack of skepticism from the beginning was stunning. I combed through haystacks of articles without producing such needles as the words “alleges” or “claims.”

And now, it’s cover-your-ass mode with the media….

It only makes one wonder how many other frantic calls (from shysters) we hear replayed in the media are real, or ones they were either too lazy or agenda-driven to get to the bottom of the story… which is their job.

I was talking about Obama and health care and I used the analogy of selling watermelons by the side of the road. It’s an expression that stretches to my boyhood roots in Southeast Texas, when country highways were lined with stands manned by sellers of all races. Now of course watermelons have become a stereotype for African Americans and so my analogy entered a charged environment. I’m sorry people took offense.
— Dan Rather, 3/10/10, Huffington Post

So, he’s sorry (after 1,251 words of clarification and justification) WE didn’t understand where HE was coming from. For those of you who expected an apology, I hope you didn’t bet the house.

Liberals constantly whine that Dixiecrats are now Republicans and real Democrats got their minds right. But who’s made the majority of racist statements over the last few years, and what are the chances a Democrat will issue the next one?

That bet I will take.

Bush-sucks, the-war-is-immoral, the-military-is-evil

After all of Hollywood’s Iraq movies have flopped (even the Oscar-garlanded “The Hurt Locker” earned only $15 million at the box office), one studio thinks it has the following secret to success: The previous films didn’t insult the United States enough. “Green Zone,” opening Friday, is a $100 million slime job that conjures up a fantastically distorted leftist version of the war and wraps it around a frantic but preposterous action picture.

We’re supposed to cheer for include Sunni officers who shoot down helicopters carrying American soldiers sent to assassinate them.

It must be nice to create products deemed important, that continue to flop, suffer few public repercussions, and still get paid.

Don’t try this at home.

It was not.

On Sunday, March 7th, Dan Rather said the following about the president…

Listen he’s a nice person, he’s very articulate…

When Rather got to “articulate”, I knew we had trouble brewing.

… this is what’s been used against him, but he couldn’t sell watermelons if it, you gave him the state troopers to flag down the traffic.

It’s also clear that Chris Matthews knew this would end bloody when he attempted to cut Rather off and stave off any further damage. I initially thought Matthews’ failure to post the segment (including what could be considered a racial slur against the President of the United States) an oversight, until I remembered that Chris Matthews forgot Barack Obama was black.

Read the rest on NewsBusters

According to Drudge,

SENATE WARNS EMPLOYEES TO AVOID THE DRUDGE REPORT
The Senate’s Committee on Environment and Public Works issued an urgent email late Monday claiming the DRUDGE REPORT is ‘responsible for the many viruses popping up throughout the Senate.’

The committee ordered hill staff: ‘Try to avoid’ the DRUDGE REPORT ‘for now’.

It may just be me, but I’ve never contracted a virus from the Drudge Report or any conservative site.

Maybe this is yet another example of Barbara Boxer liberals having an issue with people receiving opposing points of view via that annoying First Amendment.

NBC denies adding laugh track for Sarah Palin
NBC is denying a report that “The Tonight Show with Jay Leno” boosted apparent audience enthusiasm for Sarah Palin’s appearance by using a laugh track.

A report from liberal site Daily Kos is getting plenty of pickup saying the response of the live audience to Palin’s jokes was entirely unlike what NBC aired. Written by a member of the audience claiming to be a sound engineer….

Clearly the Daily Kos poster isn’t a Palin fan (and would lose a spelling bee if given the word “responsibility”).

I’m torn believing The Hollywood Reporter or The Daily Kos, because we all know the Kos wouldn’t lie.

First of all, laugh tracks are added all the time. Why do you think so many sitcoms are laugh-out-loud fests? Because they’re not. The laughs were added to protect the employed.

Secondly if it was done in this case, you can’t blame that post-production call on Sarah. Not like the Kossacks are listening…

I know sound. And it’s my opinion that audio portions of Sarah Palin’s March 2nd appearance on Jay Leno’s Tonight show were added or amplified, edited before broadcast to make it appear that Sarah Palin was more welcome than she was.

After sitting through the taping of the show in the studio I can recount many portions where there was little or no laughter or response, but at the later broadcast they are smoothed over with applause and laughter that WERE NOT THERE at the taping. Groans, hoots, grumbling, or just dead silence – all missing.

Soon after leaving the studio I basically tweeted, “Hey, was in the belly of the beast, attended taping of Palin on Tonight show, she bombed.”

It must be good to be you, and just to practice good journalistic standards, I’d like to hear a few more independent opinions by individuals who don’t hate Sarah Palin just because she’s Sarah Palin, and not rely on an aliased source.

We’re not the New York Times here.

Listen he’s a nice person, he’s very articulate. This is what’s been used against him. But he couldn’t sell watermelons if it, you gave him the state troopers to flag down the traffic.
— Dan Rather, Chris Matthews Show, 1/7/10, on Obama’s inability to get health care passed

This video was sanitized quicker than the Katie Couric library card video.

Will Ferrell as George W. Bush, Darrell Hammond as Bill Clinton, Dana Carvey as George H.W. Bush, Dan Aykroyd as Jimmy Carter and Chevy Chase as Gerald Ford, and Jim Carrey as Ronald Reagan. The video is directed by Ron Howard.

So we’re now to take financial advise from grossly overpaid actors, many of whom end up broke.

Funny, I don’t recall MSNBC showing this much concern when the Democrats were scaring the elderly (and fundraising on it) when President Bush was trying to get a hold on the ticking time bomb that is Social Security. I don’t recall the Democrats telling their many supporters to chill while they walked around in a daze saying they were “frightened” about this thing that Bush was doing or “frightened” about what the Republicans were doing.

And I NEVER heard MSNBC tell Democrat supporters to tone it down when supporters held “Bush: a mother fucker” signs along his inaugural parade route, booed him during Obama’s inauguration, or stop the racist caricatures of Condoleezza Rice, Clarence Thomas, and Janice Rogers Brown in major news publications, to name a few.

MSNBC, where were you then?

Video written by Kyle Drennen, edited by Bob

‘Grassroots’ Coffee Party Organizer Exposed as Obama Political Operative
Surprise! Surprise!

It turns out that the “grassroots” organizer of the “progressive alternative” to the Tea Parties, the Coffee Party, has been exposed as an Obama political operative. If you had read the profiles of the Coffee Party founder Annabel Park (video) in the Washington Post or New York Times you wouldn’t have had a hint as to her extensive political activity in the 2008 Obama campaign.

Park is a former Strategy Analyst at the NY Times who was one of organizers and operators of the United for Obama video channel at YouTube.

Google “coffee party” and see how many stories describe Ms. Park as a documentary filmmaker, with not one word of her affiliation to the Obama campaign. This is coordination from the White House and a bunch of unwitting, yet willing dupes being used again.

Obama must be really desperate to have to rely on the flakes again.

I remember being with my father and his friends as a child, and that saying was the rule, because of course, I had very little to offer an adult conversation. That was then.

I also remember the Bill Clinton/Whitney Houston 80s and 90s. Bill Clinton for coining the phrase “for the children” and Whitney Houston for that sappy song “The Greatest Love Of All’ with what we thought were harmless lyrics….

I believe the children are our are future
Teach them well and let them lead the way
Show them all the beauty they possess inside
Give them a sense of pride to make it easier

Between the two of them, talk about the makings of the big head.

Let me preface the remainder of this column by saying that when I refer to young people, I don’t mean all. Some of them get it. Obviously, most of them don’t.

Those kids grew up with progressive teachers who, because of the power of the grading system (which can make or break futures), told them they knew more than their ignorant parents; they knew more than simpleton adults. They’re opinions, despite the lack of life experience, were equal, important, if not superior, to adults. We gave them the technological means for self-expression which they now use to bully themselves and others.

They now believe they know everything because of what they were taught by educational authority figures. They believed in recycling, came home and told us we should too. They believed in the Palestinians, and came home and told us we should too.

Think about this: do you think young teen-aged girls, yapping away on cellphones about themselves and boys at the mall would soon be ready to place themselves between an Army bulldozer and a suspected terrorist hideout on the West bank without a little prodding from some opinionated college professors?

They now believe in global warming caused by evil corporations and our lust for the very fossil fuels that enabled us to take their lazy butts to the mall, came home and told us we should too. Then they believed in a man named Barack Obama for all the wonderful things he would do to fix this imperialist, racist, homophobic society that enabled them to live relatively carefree lives.

They came to our homes; they came to our schools; they came to our workplaces; they came via our television shows; they came to our websites and demanded we think like they wanted us to think, vote like they wanted us to vote, or else.

Now, they roam the streets when we have party conventions, destroy public and private property, wearing black masks in full view seemingly to give us all the middle finger of defiance while they intentionally break the law.

What else did that “or else” entail?

They got in our faces. They called us names when they couldn’t debate the realities of what Obama’s policies could cost us all, which was not big deal to them because most of them still live at home, don’t pay rent, don’t pay for food, don’t pay for their cellphone bill (and bitch when they exceed their text limits), don’t pay for the Internet bill, don’t pay for power, don’t do dishes, and many don’t even wash their own clothes, yet THEY KNOW what’s best for the nation.

THEY KNOW that Cap-and-Trade will be good for the economy and will create “green jobs” although they can’t tell us what specifically they’ll be.

THEY KNOW that universal health care is something they all want, although probably none of them could define it two years ago.

Personally, I’m tired of having arrogant, narcissistic children question my intelligence publicly online while they can’t even accurately spell their insults. I’m tired of being told my opinion on foreign affairs don’t matter because I never served (even though I am a Navy veteran). I’m tired of hearing Bill Clinton and Whitney Houston’s voices every time I’m told that my opinions don’t count because I won’t be around much longer, the world belongs to them, and they’ll show us with their soon-to-be-served Coffee Parties.

I plan of being around (as I’m not THAT old) when the social utopia they insisted would come about doesn’t and they whine because we saw this coming and didn’t warn them. I plan on being around watching them bitch and moan when they have to pay 80 cents on every dollar they earn because of socialist policies their president imposed on the rest of us that limits their freedoms. And they thought a grounding was bad. Soon they’ll have to pay for the privilege and it’ll be their own damn fault.

The very young people we sacrificed decades of our lives feeding, clothing, and housing have declared war on the rest of us. If you think I’m being sensational, ask yourselves this: where would we be today had those young people listened to the advise of those who’ve seen and experienced more? Would we be talking about “reconciliation” or “carbon credits” or “death panels”? Would our entertainment and education industrial complexes have had the power to turn the very children we supported with our unconditional love and toil against us?

Maybe, maybe not, but much of the youth of America has declared war on the rest of us and we all need to decide what we’re going to do about it.

Personally, with the coming midterm and presidential elections looming, I think I may offer what my father would’ve said.

Children should be seen and not heard.

And if that doesn’t work, “Shut up!”

The future looks bleak for the bears as they balance perilously on the ice that was bobbing around under their weight — but amazingly experts said the pair probably made it safely back to shore.

“… amazingly…”

The warmers will go down with the polar bears to keep this scam going, although polar bears can swim great distances. They are not drowning or dying out.

Those pushing the global warming hoax are.

California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger was dismissive of the Tea Party movement in a “This Week” exclusive interview with Terry Moran.  “The Tea Party is not going to go anywhere,” Schwarzenegger told Moran. “I think the Tea Party is all about just an expression of anger and dissatisfaction.”

In The Running Man there was this eternal question, “Steroids make you stupid?” And kudos to ABC’s Terry Moran for reciting the Democrat “Party of No” catchphrase talking point sincerely.