The Grand Dame of the White House Press Corps, Helen Thomas has been there and done that in terms of reporting happenings at White House press conferences since what seems like forever. Rumor has it that Thomas was even in Clara Bow talkies, but I digress.

In any event, she recently put her two cents in (1.65 cents adjusted after inflation) in regards to her views of Israel. Her statements make you wonder:

• Has she lost her mind?
• Has she OD’d on the Obamaaid?
• Is she anti-Israel?
• All of the above?

Perhaps this is just me, but Thomas should do all of us a favor and retire. It’s just that simple.

H/T to: The Lid

Some good news for those who do not watch MSM news or read the MSM rag sheets, also known as toilet paper:

According to NEWSMAX:

Larry King’s CNN show has plunged so drastically in the ratings that it now lags behind even Rachel Maddow’s 9 p.m. program on MSNBC.

“Larry King Live” has lost half of its audience since the last presidential election, to an average of just 725,000 viewers a night.

Maddow drew around 1 million viewers a night during the first quarter of the year, while Sean Hannity’s 9 p.m. show on Fox News leads with 2.8 million viewers, according to Nielsen Media Research.

Joy Behar’s new talk show on CNN’s sister network HLN, is closing in on King, with 530,000 viewers, and it sometimes beats King’s show, The New York Times reports.

The Times also reports that “CNN executives will not say whether they will renew Mr. King’s contract when it ends next year.”

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President Obama “scares” MSNBC anchor Chris Matthews.

Matthews was such a staunch Obama supporter during the campaign that he admitted that one of the candidate’s speeches sent a thrill up his leg. But during a recent appearance on Jay Leno’s NBC show, the “Hardball” host discussed the Gulf of Mexico oil spill and declared: “The president scares me. When is he actually going to do something?

“And I worry. I know he doesn’t want to take ownership of it. I know politics. He said the minute he says, ‘I’m in charge,’ he takes the blame, but somebody has to. It’s in our interest.”

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Readership of The Wall Street Journal has risen 20 percent since Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. acquired the paper in 2007, according to a new study by The Media Audit research firm.

The Journal is now read by more than 4.3 million adults in the 80-plus markets the firm monitors. That amounts to 3 percent of all adults in those markets.

Media Audit attributes the gain to the Journal’s increased coverage of politics and general news, Editor & Publisher reported.

The New York Times’ readership has remained flat during the same three-year period — 4.4 percent of U.S. adults read The Times, the same as in 2007.

This is pathetic, folks. Some hack named Joe Klein over at Time magazine actually thinks that Obama was all that and a bag of chips in reference to the televised healthcare summit. Here is his two cents on Obama and the healthcare summit:

Shame on me. I was elsewhere yesterday and missed the health care summit. I’m catching up now, and the tea leaves seem to indicate that Obama came out well ahead of the Republicans. How do I know that? From Matt Drudge, of course. I mean, Drudge’s takeaway from the summit is that the President talked a lot--actually, the President, the Congressional Democrats and Republicans each spoke an equal amount–the Times of London found it boring and the networks turned to other programming.

Reading between the lines, you can conclude that the Republicans had nothing very interesting, or clever, to say (and were never able to get the President’s goat). And that the President was his usual, unflappable, well-informed self. You can also conclude that not much progress was made at the summit, as Karen reports here–but that’s a huge surprise, right?

Reading further, in the New York Times, I can’t find any indications that the Congressional Democrats were actually present at this meeting. Certainly, they had nothing notable to say, no new compromises to propose–which leads to another obvious conclusion: the Republicans have been absolutely recalcitrant in this process, but the Dems are no bargain, either.

I remain convinced that if the Republicans actually wanted to deal with this issue, they might have gotten some major concessions from the President–malpractice reform, for sure; perhaps a greater use of insurance polices that emphasize catastrophic coverage (as the Republicans wanted), maybe even a system–as John McCain proposed during the campaign and health wonks everywhere favor–that truly limited the deductability of  corporate health care benefits. To get these things, however, the Republicans would have had to say yes at some point. As in, YES, I’ll vote for the bill if you throw in malpractice and pay for it with the money you get from limiting deductability. That is what happens in a negotiation. That is what is supposed to happen in a democracy.

But the obvious truth here is that the Republicans do not want any sort of health care bill to pass at all because they do not want to hand President Obama a victory. Shame on them.

It is plain to see that Klein just doesn’t get it. He says that he didn’t watch the summit yet has the gall to bash the GOP as the party who doesn’t want any healthcare bill to pass – all because of depriving the POTUS of a victory. Whatever that means.

And Joe goes on to say that Obama, the Democraps and Republicans all got equal time speaking – which is not the case at all.

Then there was the disrespect from the mouth of Obama; conveniently, Klein didn’t bring that up. Obama dissing McCain and a host of others. Obama saying he lost track of the time in terms of speaking because “he is the president.” And just as importantly, Obama refusing to get rid of “reconciliation”. The narcissism, the condescending attitude and just plain being out ofd touch – all three traits were on full display at the summit.

So for some hack from a MSM magazine to just assume that the GOP doesn’t want helathcare reform in order to score political points is wrong and ignorant.

Which explains why TIME’s readership is on a par with MSNBC’s viewership – down in the basement. TIME ceased to be a magazine a long time ago and they just illustrated that in spades by ill-advisedly putting Klein’s diatribe online.

Well done, Andrew. About time someone spoke up against the MSM who, by the way, still do not get it.

The MSM – and apparently President Obama – still do not get it. Come to think about it, they’re still out of touch, as well. The Blame Bush game is old, antiquated and played out, no matter how subtle that you try to be. Get over yourselves.

The mainstream media are stepping up their less-than-subtle charges of racism against 2008 Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin.

Reviewing Sarah Palin’s smash bestseller, “Going Rogue” in the latest New Yorker magazine, New York Times Book Review editor Sam Tanenhaus suggests the former Alaska governor may have a dark side of ethnic bigotry.

Tanenhaus cites the new book, “Sarah From Alaska,” co-authored by Scott Conroy, who covered Palin’s campaign last year for CBS News, and Shushannah Walshe, who covered it for Fox News.  “Palin’s father, Chuck Heath,” Tanenhaus writes, told Conroy and Walshe that Palin left college in Hawaii after only a single semester because “the presence of so many Asians and Pacific Islanders made her uncomfortable.”

Here is the ambiguous quote from Heath that Tanenhaus bases his accusation on:

“They were a minority type thing and it wasn’t glamorous, so she came home.”

Extrapolating further, Tanenhaus asserts that “Race is often the subtext of populist campaigns; their most potent appeal is to whites who are feeling under siege by changing economic and cultural conditions. Palin’s strength with this constituency can only have grown since the last election.”

Tanenhaus adds, “It’s the reason that her bus tour is passing through the small cities and towns (Fort Wayne, Indiana; Washington, Pennsylvania) where the 2008 election might have been won … She is avoiding major cities in the Northeast and on the West Coast, a pointed assertion of her contempt for metropolitan élites.”

Even her marrying a high school sweetheart with Eskimo blood doesn’t let her off the racialist hook, according to Tanenhaus.  Palin is “circumspect on the issue of ethnicity,” in “Going Rogue,” according to Tanenhaus, “pointing out that [husband] Todd, whom she met in high school, is ‘part Yupik Eskimo’ and opened her to the ‘social diversity’ of Alaska.”

Other liberal media have accused Palin of veiled racism.  In a clip posted on Newsmax.TV last month, MSNBC “Hardball” host Chris Matthews commented of a Palin book tour stop in Michigan, “Well, they look like a white crowd to me … not that there’s anything wrong with it, but it is pretty monochromatic up there.”  Matthews added that he thought there was a “tribal aspect to this thing, in other words white versus other people.”  And he attacked Palin’s assertion in an interview with Fox News’ Sean Hannity that Fort Hood shooter Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan should have been “profiled.”

Reacting to Tanenhaus’ article, the New Republic under the headline, “Palin Question of the Day,” last week complained, “Why – and readers should weigh in – has this gotten absolutely no media attention?”  The Huffington Post was asking on Sunday, “Did Sarah Palin leave Hawaii because there were too many Asians?”

A posting on the leftist Daily Kos Web site says, “what this really shows is Palin’s deep-seated provincialism that has been on display ever since the campaign.  And it’s that very provincialism – knowing where the ‘real’ America is – that appeals to her devoted Know Nothing followers.”

If Tanenhaus’ ability to leap to the conclusion that Palin is “uncomfortable” around non-whites seems curious, so does the schizophrenia of some of his recent political analysis. 

In his New Republic article early this year declaring conservatism dead, which he expanded into a book, “The Death of Conservatism,” he described Barack Obama as “a president who seems more thoroughly steeped in the principles of Burkean conservatism than any significant thinker or political figure on the right,” referring to British parliamentarian Edmund Burke. 

Now, some months later, in his review of Palin’s “Going Rogue,” Tanenhaus, apparently whistling a new tune, says Obama “means to usher in the third phase of liberal reform that began with the New Deal and continued with the New Frontier-Great Society initiatives.”

Take this for what it’s worth, but at least some small factions within the lamestream media seem to be – to put it mildly – criticizing President Obama.

Katie Couric may be best known for her unflattering interview with Sarah Palin. But her nightly news broadcast this past Monday night may be an indicator that the big liberal media are now turning their guns on Obama.

Couric said on “CBS Evening News” that Americans are growing “disenchanted” with Obama and are openly questioning his credibility.

“Is the honeymoon over?” anchor Couric said at the beginning of her correspondent’s report. She further added:

“Although President Obama has been in office less than a year, many Americans are growing disenchanted with his handling of the enormous problems he and the country are facing, from healthcare to unemployment to Afghanistan.

“His poll numbers are sliding, and at least one poll shows his job approval rating has fallen, for the first time, below 50 percent.”

Correspondent Chris Reid chimed in:

“The president is getting battered on everything from the economy to foreign policy. Some polls show Americans are increasingly questioning his credibility.”

The report asserted that while Obama talks about dealing with unemployment, which is over 10 percent and expected to rise, he has developed “no new ideas” for dealing with the problem.

CBS also cited a poll showing that only 14 percent of Americans believe Obama’s claim that healthcare reform won’t add to the budget deficit, and only 7 percent believe that the stimulus has created any jobs at all.

The report also criticized the president for being “indecisive” on Afghanistan, and for returning from his recent Asian trip “with little to show for it.”

An expert was quoted as describing his trip as the “amateur hour,” as he did not line up agreements with foreign countries before venturing abroad.

Is this the beginning of a “snowball effect”? Only time will tell, but this development can only be nothing but bad news for Obama at this point. And to think that it wasn’t that long ago when the President could do no wrong with the liberal media. Stay tuned to The Republican Temple as further developments become available.