1. Brokaw Scolds Bush for “Rolling Up Record Deficits”
After President Bush’s Thursday afternoon press conference, NBC’s Tom Brokaw remarked about how by advocating more tax cuts Republicans are “rolling up record deficits again.” CNBC’s Ron Insana, however, undermined Brokaw’s concern. CBS’s Dan Rather noted how Bush wanted to re-nominate two judicial picks which the Democratic Senate Judiciary Committee rejected, explaining: “Judge Owens was resisted because of her positions against abortion, Pickering on questions of racial prejudice.” But, Rather quickly added, “mind you those were questions, accusations.”

2. Bush Allows Helen Thomas to Pose Left-Wing Question
President Bush let Helen Thomas pose two questions to him. She declared that there are two “impressions around. One, that you have an obsession with going after Saddam Hussein at any cost. And also that you covet the oil fields.” Following Thomas, ABC’s Terry Moran wondered if attacking Iraq “would generate a tremendous amount of anger and hatred at the United States, and out of that you'd essentially be creating many new terrorists who would want to kill Americans.”

3. Newsweek Editor: Bush’s “War Policy is a Crock”
Bush’s “war policy is a crock," the Yale Daily News quoted Newsweek Senior Editor Michael Hirsh as declaring. Hirsh argued during a forum on Wednesday: "This is a hugely risky operation for potential gains that probably won't justify the risk."

4. NBC on Frost: “A Politically Shrewd Centrist”
Like CBS’s Bob Schieffer the night before, on Thursday night NBC’s Lisa Myers portrayed Martin Frost as a moderate, describing him as “a politically shrewd centrist.” But as FNC’s Carl Cameron pointed out, Frost may be less liberal than Pelosi and be appealing for support from his party’s true moderates, but he’s still liberal: “Frost regularly scores between 70 and 80 percent for his voting record among traditionally liberal special interest groups, whereas Pelosi is up around 90 percent.”

5. NBC’s CEO Calls CNN “Liberal”
NBC CEO Bob Wright told the New York Daily News that he thinks MSNBC is “in the middle” politically, but he realizes that CNN “has traditionally been on the liberal side.”

6. Jennings Afraid of Toby Keith?
At the Country Music Awards broadcast Wednesday night by CBS, host Vince Gill, when he introduced Toby Keith, took a shot at Peter Jennings. To audience applause, Gill joked that he asked Jennings, “'you wanna come down and introduce my pal Toby?’ He didn’t show. He didn’t come. He’s afraid he’s gonna get one of them boots up the ass is what happened.”

7. Dennis Miller: Bush “Makes Me Proud to be an American Again”
Comedian/actor Dennis Miller is the opposite of comedian Bill Maher. While Maher rants about the evils of the U.S. and complains about how “depressing” it is that President Bush is “so popular when he has really done so little” to fight terrorism, Dennis Miller on Wednesday’s Tonight Show praised Bush’s anti-terrorism efforts, favored attacking Iraq and juxtaposed the “wocka-wocka porno guitar of the Clinton administration” with how Bush “makes me proud to be an American again. He’s just a decent guy.”

8. “Top Ten Signs President Bush is Getting Cocky.”
Letterman’s “Top Ten Signs President Bush is Getting Cocky.”

Brokaw Scolds Bush for
“Rolling Up Record Deficits”

     After President Bush’s Thursday afternoon press conference which, amazingly, ABC, CBS and NBC carried for its entire 45 minutes at 2pm EST, NBC’s Tom Brokaw remarked about how by advocating more tax cuts Republicans are “rolling up record deficits again.” CNBC’s Ron Insana, however, undermined Brokaw’s concern by pointing out how “as a percentage of GDP” deficits are lower now than ten years ago and “even Democratic economists” concede deficits are not bad during an economic downturn.

     Meantime, over on CBS, Dan Rather noted how Bush wanted to re-nominate two judicial picks which the Democratic Senate Judiciary Committee rejected, explaining: “Judge Owens was resisted because of her positions against abortion, Pickering on questions of racial prejudice.” But, Rather quickly added, perhaps realizing his reflexive repeating of liberal spin, “mind you those were questions, accusations.”

     NBC brought aboard Insana from CNBC and he re-capped Bush’s interest in making the tax cut permanent as well as cutting the capital gains rate and eliminating the double taxation of dividends. That prompted Brokaw to worry: “Ron, what is so striking to me is that Republicans have always been the party of fiscal responsibility, but they're again saying, 'deficits? ah, we don't worry about deficits. We had them all during the '80s. We survived.' And they're rolling up record deficits again.”

     Insana allayed Brokaw’s fears: “Absolutely. As a percentage of GDP, Tom, the deficits are smaller than they were in the mid to late-1990s, but you're right deficits are being accumulated again. Now, even Democratic economists would also point out that during periods of slow economic growth, or when there's a risk of recession, deficits are not a bad thing. So, if the President can get these things through there are some economists who agree it's the right thing to do in this environment.”

     In summing up what Bush said at his November 7 encounter with reporters, on CBS Dan Rather relayed: “The President made it clear he wants his judgeship nominations speeded up and approved, that he would revive the controversial, at least from the Democratic stand point, the nominations of Priscilla Owens out of Texas and Tom Pickering out of Mississippi. Judge Owens was resisted because of her positions against abortion, Pickering on questions of racial prejudice. Mind you those were questions, accusations.”

     In a back to the future moment, Rather was a century off in recounting what Bush said about Dick Cheney in 2004: “The President also said that when he runs in 1904, he didn't announce his, but said if he ran Dick Cheney would indeed be his vice presidential choice at that time.”

Bush Allows Helen Thomas to Pose
Left-Wing Question

     President Bush, an enabler. An enabler of the abusive left-wing rants of Hearst Newspapers columnist Helen Thomas, whom Bush inexplicitly called upon third, before any of the TV Network reporters, at his Thursday afternoon, November 7 press conference.

     After Thomas, ABC’s Terry Moran wondered if attacking Iraq “would generate a tremendous amount of anger and hatred at the United States, and out of that you'd essentially be creating many new terrorists who would want to kill Americans.”

     Thomas’s question: “Mr. President, what is the logic of your insistence on invading Iraq at some point, which may someday have nuclear weapons, and not laying a glove on North Korea, which may have them or may produce them? Both of which, of course, would be against international law. And I have a follow-up.”

     Naturally, Bush’s answer didn’t satisfy her and she demanded:
     “You are leaving the impression that Iraqi lives, the human cost doesn't mean anything-”
     Bush: “Say that again?”
     Thomas: “You are leaving the impression that you wouldn't mind if you go to war against Iraq, but you deal with another nation which may have weapons in a different way. But there are two other impressions around. One, that you have an obsession with going after Saddam Hussein at any cost. And also that you covet the oil fields.”
     Bush: “Yes. Well, some people have the right impressions and some people have the wrong impressions.”

     Next, ABC’s Terry Moran posed a Thomas-like question: “On Iraq, you've said many times that if Saddam Hussein does not disarm, he will be disarmed militarily, if necessary, by the U.N. or the U.S. and others. There's a school of thought that says that going to war against Iraq would be a dangerous and misguided idea because it would generate a tremendous amount of anger and hatred at the United States, and out of that you'd essentially be creating many new terrorists who would want to kill Americans. What's wrong with that analysis?”

     Actually, that’s really not a Thomas-like question since Moran at least was expressing concern about American lives when Thomas is much more interested in the lives of terrorists and those living in areas harboring them.

Newsweek Editor: Bush’s
“War Policy is a Crock”

     Bush’s “war policy is a crock," the Yale Daily News quoted Newsweek Senior Editor Michael Hirsh as declaring. Hirsh argued during a forum at Yale University on Wednesday: "This is a hugely risky operation for potential gains that probably won't justify the risk." Now that’s the Helen Thomas school of reasoning.

     Jim Romenesko's MediaNews (http://www.poynter.org/medianews/ ) highlighted the November 7 Yale Daily News story about the forum, a story which offered only one other quote from Hirsh, who oversees international news coverage in the U.S. edition of Newsweek. An excerpt of the story by Jeremy Kutner:

Amid rising concern over the possibility of war with Iraq, three professors and Newsweek senior editor Michael Hirsh discussed the feasibility and consequences of a military campaign Wednesday....

Before an audience of about 80 students and faculty members, the 90-minute roundtable discussion featured history professor Abbas Amanat, religious studies professor Frank Griffel, history professor John Gaddis and Hirsh.

Throughout the talk, which consisted of 10-minute speeches by each of the panelists followed by a question and answer session, the four speakers disagreed over interpretations of the need for a war.

The capture of Congress by the Republicans in Tuesday's election led many of the panelists to believe that war was increasingly likely.

"[The election] was an overwhelming endorsement of Bush personally and will give him the backbone to act out against [Iraq]," Gaddis said.

Hirsh said that he thought the war was inevitable.

"I believe that the United States will be at war with Iraq by January or March of next year," Hirsh said.

Despite Hirsh's assurances that a war would break out, he remained firmly against military intervention, citing the Administration's inability to link Iraq to al-Qaida as a prime reason to hold off on immediate confrontation.

"The war policy is a crock," Hirsh said. "This is a hugely risky operation for potential gains that probably won't justify the risk."

Gaddis emerged as the only speaker willing to consistently defend the Bush administration's active pursuit military action....

     END of Excerpt

     For the entire article: http://www.yaledailynews.com/article.asp?AID=20610

     Romenesko linked to a bio of Hirsh on the World Economic Forum's Web site which listed his current Newsweek position as “Foreign Editor, overseeing the US edition's international news coverage.” That’s online at: http://www.weforum.org/site/knowledgenavigator.nsf/Content/Hirsh%20Michael

NBC on Frost: “A Politically Shrewd Centrist”

     A night after CBS’s Bob Schieffer claimed the race to succeed Dick Gephardt as House Majority Leader is “between liberal Democrat Nancy Pelosi and the moderate Martin Frost,” NBC’s Lisa Myers similarly portrayed Frost as a moderate. On Thursday’s NBC Nightly News and CNBC’s The News with Brian Williams, she described Pelosi as “a high octane San Francisco liberal” and contrasted her with Frost, whom she dubbed “a politically shrewd centrist.”

     But as FNC’s Carl Cameron pointed out on Thursday’s Special Report with Brit Hume, Frost may be less liberal than Pelosi and be appealing for support from his party’s true moderates, but he’s still liberal: “Frost regularly scores between 70 and 80 percent for his voting record among traditionally liberal special interest groups, whereas Pelosi is up around 90 percent.”

     As the November 7 CyberAlert pointed out, Pelosi certainly is on the left, earning a mere 2 percent lifetime rating from the American Conservative Union (ACU) while the liberal Americans for Democratic Action (ADA) has approved of 94 percent of her votes during her House career. But Texan Frost is not all that much less liberal. The ACU gave him a 16 percent lifetime rating and he’s earned 74 percent approval over his lifetime in Congress from the ADA. For links to those ratings numbers: http://archive.mrc.org/cyberalerts/2002/cyb20021107.asp#4

     Back to Thursday night, November 7, Myers asserted: "The favorite to replace Gephardt, the current minority whip, Nancy Pelosi, a high octane San Francisco liberal who opposed empowering the President to go to war with Iraq. She spent the day working the phones. Her opponent, Martin Frost of Texas, a politically shrewd centrist considered more of an inside player than a front man. He said the country moved right in the election and that Pelosi is too liberal."

     On the upside, the media’s perception of Frost as a moderate is causing reporters to actually use the liberal label for a liberal.

     A check of the ACU’s rundown of votes in 2001 that they rated revealed that Frost voted against overriding Clinton ergonomics rules, against requiring 2/3 majority for tax hikes, against making it a criminal offense to injure or kill a fetus during the commission of a violent crime, against a bill to allow federal scholarship money to be used at private schools, against a small reduction on funding for the National Endowment for the Arts, for continuing ban on oil drilling in Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, against medical savings accounts, and against a bill that would stop spending money to carry out an executive order that requires federal contractors and other recipients of federal assistance to provide translators for people lacking English skills. All conventional liberal views.

     Frost took a non-liberal position on just a few things: He opposed imposing car CAFÉ standards on SUVs, voted in favor of delaying U.S. submission to the International Criminal Court and supported a constitutional amendment to ban flag desecration. For the full vote rundown: http://www.acuratings.com/acu_doc.cgi?ACT=1&USER_ID=1091&YEAR=2001

NBC’s CEO Calls CNN “Liberal”

     The CEO of NBC may think MSNBC is “in the middle” politically, but he realizes that CNN “has traditionally been on the liberal side.” 

     The New York Daily News quoted Bob Wright in a story about how MSNBC President Erik Sorenson’s tenure may be short-lived at the ratings-challenged network. An excerpt:

....When asked whether the MSNBC boss would keep his job, Wright declined to respond, saying only that he "is working his tail off" at turning around the network.

"It clearly signifies his tenure is short-lived," said Jack Myers, editor of media newsletter Myers Report.

Wright was down on MSNBC, saying the No. 3 cable news network has "a programming issue" and trying to fix it "has been a struggle." He drew a distinction between MSNBC and its sister network, financial news channel CNBC, which has slipped in the ratings but still makes "tons of money" -- nearly $300 million in projected profits this year.

Speculation has been rife that Sorenson's days are numbered. Pressure from NBC and its parent company, General Electric, has mounted following a failed attempt to revive MSNBC with an overhaul that included the hiring of liberal talk show host Phil Donahue....

"Fox News Channel has taken the lion's share of the audience with a Rush Limbaugh approach, and CNN has traditionally been on the liberal side," Wright said. "We're caught in the middle."

     END of Excerpt

     The story is online at: http://www.nydailynews.com/business/story/33076p-31334c.html

     If they realize the “Rush Limbaugh approach” works best, why don’t they try it?

Jennings Afraid of Toby Keith?

     At the Country Music Awards presentation in Nashville on Wednesday night broadcast by CBS, host Vince Gill, when he introduced Toby Keith, took a shot at Peter Jennings. To audience applause, Gill joked that he asked Jennings, “'you wanna come down and introduce my pal Toby?’ He didn’t show. He didn’t come. He’s afraid he’s gonna get one of them boots up the ass is what happened.”

     The MRC’s Kristina Sewell alerted me to how Gill reminded viewers of how Jennings had refused to allow Keith to sing his post 9-11 song, “Courtesy of the Red, White and Blue,” during ABC’s Independence Day prime time broadcast of musical acts: 
     “This shy guy, really shy, don’t really know how he feels about things. He was last year’s Male Vocalist of the Year and tonight he’s nominated for six. Six awards. Congratulations, that’s not impressive, it’s not just impressive, it’s just a hair greedy. I tell you what, I love the fact that this guy’s a little bit controversial, and I love that he says what he means, and I like that in a man. And I tell you what, when he asks the musical question 'Who’s your daddy?’, I personally called ABC and said 'Hey Pete, Pete Jennings, you wanna come down and introduce my pal Toby?’ [audience cheers] He didn’t show. He didn’t come. He’s afraid he’s gonna get one of them boots up the ass is what happened. Toby Keith everybody!”

     The “boot up the ass” reference is to lyrics in the song which apparently disturbed Jennings:
“This big dog will fight/
“When you rattle his cage/
“And you'll be sorry that you messed with/
“The U.S. of A./
“'Cause we'll put a boot in your ass/
“It's the American way.”

     Previous CyberAlert items on Jennings versus and Keith and others castigating Keith:

     -- Country singer Toby Keith accused ABC’s Peter Jennings of booting him from an ABC 4th of July special, to be hosted by Jennings, because Jennings objected to the lyrics of Keith’s song, “Courtesy of the Red, White and Blue.” CNN’s Wolf Blitzer, who interviewed Keith about the matter, repeatedly described Keith’s song as “controversial.” With a RealPlayer clip of Keith on CNN: http://archive.mrc.org/cyberalerts/2002/cyb20020614.asp#3

     --Promoting his new album this week, Toby Keith has been firing away at ABC and Peter Jennings for “lying” about why he did not appear on ABC’s prime time Independence Day special. And a Washington Post reporter denounced the song for containing the “meanest” of Keith’s lyrics and for conveying “vivid, simple shades of black and white, good and evil.” http://archive.mrc.org/cyberalerts/2002/cyb20020726.asp#9

     -- Toby Keith wrote “warmongering lyrics” in which he’s “advocating terror” in a song that may “push people toward intolerance,” Justin Ewers of U.S. News & World Report contended in a Q & A with Keith. Keith ridiculed Peter Jennings: “Jennings wanted to join hands and sing 'Kumbaya.’ In his sterile environment at his news desk, he didn't realize I'd struck a common chord with America.” http://archive.mrc.org/cyberalerts/2002/cyb20020808.asp#5

Dennis Miller: Bush “Makes Me Proud to
be an American Again”

     Comedian/actor Dennis Miller is the opposite of comedian Bill Maher, the former host of ABC’s Politically Incorrect. While Maher rants about the evils of the U.S. and complains about how “depressing” it is that President Bush is “so popular when he has really done so little” to fight terrorism, Dennis Miller on Wednesday’s Tonight Show praised Bush’s anti-terrorism efforts, favored attacking Iraq and juxtaposed the “wocka-wocka porno guitar of the Clinton administration” with how Bush “makes me proud to be an American again. He’s just a decent guy.”

     Miller offered Jay Leno an explanation for his apparent shift to the right over the past few years: “I began to go off liberal America when they insisted to me that Rudy Giuliani was a bad guy...they always like tinged on the Nazi reference. ‘He’s a storm-trooper! He’s a bad guy!’ Every time I’d go to New York it was cleaner and safer and I’d think, 'Wait a second how bad a guy can this guy be?’”

     For Maher’s election night comments on CNN: http://archive.mrc.org/cyberalerts/2002/cyb20021106.asp#6

     Last week when Larry King suggested to Maher that Americans “try to do good, don't we? I mean we're basically good,” Maher rejected the notion: “No. Not for the rest of the world.” Maher proceeded to charge: “Iraqis, I think, feel that if we drove smaller cars, maybe we wouldn't have to kill them for their oil because certainly the first Gulf War was about cheap gas.” More: http://archive.mrc.org/cyberalerts/2002/cyb20021104.asp#9

     MRC analyst Geoffrey Dickens took down much of what Miller, who was a commentator on ABC’s Monday Night Football last season and who has had a weekly half-hour comedy show on HBO, observed using his wry wit on the November 6 Tonight Show on NBC:

     Jay Leno: “I’m fascinated to hear your take on the election. Because you always have a little different look at things than most Hollywood people.”
     Dennis Miller: “I want to congratulate my President. I think he had a great day. I think George Bush is a good man.”
[applause]
     Leno: “Yeah? He did a fine job.”
     Miller: “I think, I think he’s a good man and I think he’s done a fine job in these last two years. I don’t think he’s a great man but I would prefer that our President would be a good man because great men tend to believe they're great men and then they end up not being great men any more. I like Bush because he seems like a regular decent guy. And you know what? He’s a big picture guy. Which just shocks me. Because when he first came into the office I think many of us thought that he was the sort of guy who watched television one pixel at a time. But uh, shockingly he’s proven himself to be a big picture guy. I like his sense of humor. At least I hope it’s his sense of humor. I uh, sometimes think it’s Norm Crosby’s sense of humor. But uh, I think the thing I like most about him is that he’s not Clinton. I just think he’s a decent guy. I mean, you know...”
[applause]
     Miller: “I’m telling ya when I watch those, the videotape of the retarded kids playing uh, tee-ball on the White House lawn, on the field that he built for them.
     Leno: “Yeah.”
     Miller: “And I juxtapose it with Clinton and the wocka-wocka porno guitar of the Clinton administration. I just like Bush, he makes me proud to be an American again. He’s just a decent guy.”
     Leno: “He is a decent guy. But do you-”
     Miller: “And you know what, what? Jay what, what are the Democrats really offering? You know I consider both sides in an election before I vote. I looked at what the Democrats are saying. They’re saying, 'Listen we want more of your money and we’re not really keen on preemptively protecting you from bad guys.' You know what folks? I don’t want the bad guys to have the next move. I don’t want to see two more big buildings blown up.”

     Miller soon explained: “Listen, I began to go off liberal America when they insisted to me that Rudy Giuliani was a bad guy. You remember that years ago? How they told us Rudy Giuliani, they always like tinged on the Nazi reference.”
     Leno: “Right, right, yeah right.”
     Miller: “'He’s a storm-trooper! He’s a bad guy!’ Every time I’d go to New York it was cleaner and safer and I’d think, 'Wait a second how bad a guy can this guy be?’ And now you don’t hearing anybody saying that because it’s been proven out that Rudy Giuliani is a good man....”

     After an ad break, he elaborated on Iraq: “It’s not a perfect world. Listen I think Bush’s old man could have ended this whole dilemma in the Middle East around 12 years ago. We were like two exits away on the Jersey Turnpike from croaking this toad and we back off because the coalition doesn’t want us to go up the road. Are you kidding me? The coalition? This better not happen again. You know Tony Blair is a cute kid and one of my favorite Martin Short characters in waiting, but the simple fact is we don’t consult the Brits on anything anymore. We haven’t listened to them since our boys dressed up like the Hakawi tribe and boosted all the Tetley tea in the Beantown Harbor around 200 years ago. I don’t want to ask the Brits what to do here. We gotta assassinate Saddam Hussein. Why have we taken assassination off the table as a viable political tool? And yet they’ll tell you the collateral damage of civilians is acceptable. But you’re not allowed to assassinate the main pain in the ass. My theory is if you have trouble with your conscience pretend you’re trying to kill the guy next to him and think of him as collateral damage, alright?! If that will allow you to get to bed at night.”
[applause]
     Miller: “Listen. Negotiating with Saddam Hussein is about as practical as practicing aroma therapy on a French man. Okay? It’s not going to happen.”

     Miller took on liberal wimpiness: “You know I find our approach to the, the war on terrorism to be amazingly non-chalant. I mean the simple fact is we are not being protective enough of ourselves. I think that was a mandate yesterday saying, 'Listen! We don’t want these morons trying to croak us!’ You know when the Al-Qaeda made a big mistake? Is when they whiffed that dog on videotape? That got the liberals into it. Because they’re all sitting at home with their Marmaduke day-planner saying, 'Wait a second? They croaked a puppy? Now it’s on mother-[bleeped]!”
[applause]

     For more on previous Tonight Show appearances by Miller: http://archive.mrc.org/cyberalerts/2002/cyb20020620.asp#4

     And with a RealPlayer clip of Miller when he scolded journalists: http://archive.mrc.org/cyberalerts/2001/cyb20011107.asp#7

“Top Ten Signs President Bush is
Getting Cocky.”

     From the November 6 Late Show with David Letterman, the “Top Ten Signs President Bush is Getting Cocky.” Late Show Web page: http://www.cbs.com/latenight/lateshow/

10. Didn't even try to hide fact he voted 5 times yesterday

9. Claims he has a plan to "tax poor people back to the Stone Age"

8. Instead of the United States Marine Band, now travels with the Foo Fighters

7. Encouraging his daughters to drink more in public

6. On CNN, referred to Tom Daschle as his "bitch"

5. Three words: Presidential Rally Monkey

4. He's been mispronouncing bigger words lately

3. Told Secret Service agent, "Go ahead -- punch me in the stomach"

2. Screams "Boo!" at Dick Cheney

1. He just gave Monica a call

     > Tom Brokaw is scheduled to appear Friday night on CNN’s Larry King Live and PBS’s Charlie Rose.

     > I meant to get to it today but didn’t, so for Monday I promise a comparison between media predictions and who actually won the Senate and gubernatorial elections.  -- Brent Baker