Everybody and his cousin in the starboard side of the Blogosphere has linked to the Daily Caller’s first expose inside the paranoid Media Matters bunker, the sequel to their brilliant 2010 reporting on the JournoList, the self-described “non-official campaign” in the Beltway media to help elect Obama president in 2008. And speaking of which, note this in yesterday’s article:

“The entire progressive blogosphere picked up our stuff,” says a Media Matters source, “from Daily Kos to Salon. Greg Sargent [of the Washington Post] will write anything you give him. He was the go-to guy to leak stuff.”

“If you can’t get it anywhere else, Greg Sargent’s always game,” agreed another source with firsthand knowledge.

Reached by phone, Sargent declined to comment.

“The HuffPo guys were good, Sam Stein and Nico [Pitney],” remembered one former staffer. “The people at Huffington Post were always eager to cooperate, which is no surprise given David’s long history with Arianna [Huffington].”

“Jim Rainey at the LA Times took a lot of our stuff,” the staffer continued. “So did Joe Garofoli at the San Francisco Chronicle. We’ve pushed stories to Eugene Robinson and E.J. Dionne [at the Washington Post]. Brian Stelter at the New York Times was helpful.”

“Ben Smith [formerly of Politico, now at BuzzFeed.com] will take stories and write what you want him to write,” explained the former employee, whose account was confirmed by other sources. Staffers at Media Matters “knew they could dump stuff to Ben Smith, they knew they could dump it at Plum Line [Greg Sargent’s Washington Post blog], so that’s where they sent it.”

Smith, who refused to comment on the substance of these claims, later took to Twitter to say that he has been critical of Media Matters.

Smith was also a self-confessed member of the JournoList; as Glenn Reynolds notes, MMFA and the JournoList share some remarkable traits:

Of course, to the extent that Media Matters affects coverage it’s because left-leaning journos regard it as legitimate, and want to help. In this regard, like JournoList, it’s a “self-herding device.”

And like the JournoList, a way to take ordinarily mild-mannered folks and whip them into a frenzied mob.

But Ed Morrissey, the source of our headline above, wonders if the Daily Caller didn’t out-think themselves and wound-up burying the lede on their story:

The actual story here might be the reverse of how Carlson et al frame it here.  This sounds as though the White House uses Brock and Media Matters to conduct a proxy war against its perceived enemies in the news media and to push its propaganda out through the MSM.  The DC’s descriptions of attacks on reporters and media outlets who don’t fall in line would make MMFA a very valuable pitbull for Jarrett and Obama, and one with some plausible deniability, at least until now.  This should really be the screaming red flag in the article, rather than some of the salacious tidbits about Brock.

Interestingly, just a few days ago someone else connected the White House to Media Matters, along with a warning that their relationship could cost Obama the next election.  The name of that right-wing nut?  Alan Dershowitz:

Read the whole thing (both Ed’s post and the underlying Daily Caller article).

Another timely question is posed by P.J. Salvatore of Big Journalism: “Who did MMfA tick off that so many sources as of late are throwing them under the bus?

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Near the end of his life, Osama Bin Laden gave up on his chosen profession, and advised his relatives to enter the 21st century, Walter Russell Mead writes:

The big news today: according to family members, by the end of his life Osama bin Laden was telling his family to “Go to Europe and America and get a good education.”

What? The great Islamic umma, center of global culture and light of the world has no universities where the children of the Great Jihadi can get a decent education?  The clueless, hell-bound infidels of Europe and America make the Sons of the True Faith look incompetent and backward on the vital matter of educating the young?  It isn’t enough to sit on a dirt floor in Pakistan memorizing the Koran and learning how to wear a suicide bomb vest?

But what about the obligation to take up the cause of jihad and violence and crush the evil doers in the West?

Never mind about all that, Osama supposedly told his children and grandchildren.  “Do not follow me down the road to jihad,” he said.  “You have to study and live in peace and don’t do what I am doing or what I have done.”

All those Salafi ideologues promoting the idea of jihad against the West as a sacred obligation compulsory on all Muslims are presumably choking on their beards as they read these words.  The homosexual-hangers and the adultress-stoners are having a bad morning. No doubt they will tell themselves that this story is yet another lie from the cynical west, but they will have to wrap themselves ever more tightly in the delusions and wishful thinking that blinker their thoughts — and undermine their political effectiveness.

They’ll give up on jihad right around the same time that ClimateGate convinces the a different group of religious zealots to change their own destructive course. (QED)

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Richard Rushfield of Ricochet paints a damning portrait of a news channel twenty-odd (very odd) years past its prime, and riding on fumes. “Tonight, in its coverage of the death of Whitney Houston, CNN gave its viewers a horrible glimpse into the hollowness at its core:”

As the very young Saturday anchor on duty scrambled to fill the air time, viewers and Houston fans were treated, on top of the usual grasping at straws inanities to the following:

• A parade of America’s leading ghouls and vultures fighting for their a bit of air time in the wake of the death including Al Sharpton, Dr. Drew and Hollywood publicist Howard Bragman – the latter a regular presence on Breaking News Hollywood death broadcasts, this time appearing with the stunning report that the Grammy Party of Clive Davis, Houston’s mentor, was likely to be affected by the news.
• A reporter stopping people on the street to gleefully break the news of Houston’s death and capture their stunned reactions, like some sort of Letterman prank.
• The only “news” the Cable News Network provided in these first hours has thus far been reading of celebrity tweets responding to the death.  The fun began in the first hour of the coverage when the anchor suddenly announced that Malcolm Jamal Warner had tweeted his condolences. The 140 character regrets of Kim Kardashian among others soon followed.

This seems to be what we need a major news organization for these days: to read celebrity tweets to us.  Because apparently they think 140 characters are more than we could get through on our own.

Because Twitter has been so kind to the network’s on-air “talent.”

Related: Another recent look at the MSM bungling a celebrity’s obit: “Joe Paterno, 1926-2012; CBS Jumps the Gun Reporting Obit.”

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The weekend before the election of 2004: Walter Cronkite tells Larry King* that George Bush and Karl Rove had captured Osama bin Laden and were evidently holding him in cryogenic storage at the Ministry of Defense alongside Austin Powers, Evel Knievel and Vanilla Ice.

Flash-forward to election year 2012: “Current TV** host Cenk Uygur claimed President George W. Bush had no interest in finding Osama bin Laden,” adding that Bush was “sitting on his ass.”

Bill Clinton could not be reached for comment.

Related: “Oh my: Majorities of liberal Democrats now support drone strikes, keeping Gitmo open.” Fancy that.

* The Piers Morgan of your parents’ generation.

** No, we’re not sure what that refers to, either.

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“Do Aliens Go Invisible by ‘Going Green,’” the Discovery Channel asks for reasons unknown, other than perhaps it being a slow news day:

Canadian science fiction writer Karl Schroeder has come upon a novel solution to the failure of astronomical observations to solve the Fermi Paradox. He proposes: “any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from nature.” (This is a takeoff on Arthur C. Clarke’s posit: “any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.”)

In other words, smart aliens have “gone green” and generate no waste products that we could detect. They therefore blend into the galaxy. Therefore, “artificial and natural systems are indistinguishable,” writes Schroeder.

Our response is in video form at the top of the post.

Beyond that rebuttal, the Discovery Channel doesn’t appear to be any hurry to do their part to accelerate this process by discontinuing their cable TV channel and deactivating their Web server, but it is a reminder of the end game of radical environmentalism: putting the toothpaste of western civilization and technological progress back into the tube and returning mankind to a primitive pre-industrial state.

Andrew Cuomo, New York’s Democrat Governor, appears to be particularly eager to help.

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Ann Coulter goes all-in for Mitt Romney:

“you owe me and you’d better be as right-wing a President as I tell people you will be!”

– Ann Coulter on Hannity last night recounting her exchange with Mitt Romney

That’s the quote The Blaze and Mediaite are jumping on to highlight — a pundit who has taken a lot of hits for her defense of Romneycare insisting to the candidate that he really does pursue a conservative course once in government. One dares even imagine how sharp Coulter’s barbs would be for a President Romney devolving back into Massachusetts Moderation.

Another one that’s more important though is the quote I chose for the headline. “We’ve killed off Rockefeller Republicans” Coulter declares, pointing out that Romney, Gingrich, and Santorum have little ideological differences and juxtaposed with John McCain are much more conservative.

I missed the memo — Romney is in many ways a good man, and would be a far better president than Barack Obama — but then that’s not setting the baseline very high. But if only by way of RomneyCare, isn’t he the very definition of a Rockefeller Republican?

Related: Gabriel Malor at Ace of Spades on “Mitt Romney and the Tea Party Pundit.”

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It’s no coincidence that SF stands for both “science fiction” and “San Francisco” — terms that are increasingly interchangeable as a once great city continues to collectively go further off a cliff:

Above the Law may need to hire a full-time legal bathroombeat reporter.

A few days ago, we learned that Harvard Law School named a bathroom after an alumnus with an, umm, unusual last name.

Last night, we received a tip about the San Francisco branch of a national law firm that delivered an office-wide email concerning “restroom etiquette.” The email is hilarious, and if nothing else, impressively thorough. They thought of everything. The missive covered tips for masking awkward bathroom noises, suggestions for choosing a urinal, and an emphasis on the ways bathroom behavior can affect your professional reputation.

Let’s see which firm has (toilet) water on the brain, and take a look at the memo after the jump….

Without further ado, the hygienically minded firm is Lewis Brisbois Bisgaard & Smith.

I prefer the video version, myself:

Related: In Florida, an “environmentally-friendly” restroom goes “unexpectedly” horrifically wrong.

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How desperate are Obama’s media supporters to fling the charge of racism to prop his support? As Noel Sheppard writes at Newsbusters, this desperate: “New MSNBC Anchor Likens Obama-Brewer Face Off to 1957 Integration Confrontation in Little Rock:”

MELISSA HARRIS-PERRY: The fact is, when I see that still, I cannot help but to be reminded of the still photograph that was captured in 1957 in Little Rock, Arkansas, of the young woman Hazel screaming at a young Elizabeth Eckford on her way trying to get into Little Rock High School, Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas. And the reason I bring up that image is because what we’ve come to know about Hazel in the years later is that as a young woman, Hazel, the young woman who was screaming at Elizabeth Eckford, was not herself sort of particularly, you know, full of racial animus or anything like that. But she was, she was caught up in this moment of racial anxiety, of making this point against these people who were coming in and trying to force their way into the school, and she sort of enjoyed the show or being able to yell at Elizabeth Eckford in this moment. But that image captured all of the ugliness, all of the nastiness of the larger political milieu, and I feel that this picture does as well.

It’s fascinating watching a half-century of civil rights progress tossed out the window by an overzealous newsreader employed by General Electric to defend the president. I love the “I cannot help but to be reminded” throat-clearing at the beginning of her stemwinder. If that’s the first metaphor that pops into your mind, you probably should have scrolled through the Rolodex a little longer before reducing the most powerful man in the world — who can nuke billions and has spent trillions — to an oppressed black teenage schoolgirl living 65 years ago in the racist south.

And just a reminder — it’s still January. The “fun” is just getting started.

Related: “Real Time Guest KOs Maher and Bashir: If Brewer Were Dem Pointing Finger at GOP Prez, You’d Praise Her.”

Oh sure, that’s different, and female empowering and stuff.

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When “liberal pundits” were raving over the concept of an “Arab Spring” last year, the facts on the ground were very often “unexpectedly” different from how the concept was sold to the rest of the world. Kate McMillan of Canada’s Small Dead Animals liked to quip at the time, “What We Really Need Is Democracy. With a totalitarian party to vote for.” At National Review Online last week, Andrew McCarthy wrote that from the so-called Arab Spring’s point of view, that’s a feature, not a bug:

Of course, conventional wisdom in the West holds that the Arab Spring spontaneously combusted when Mohamed Bouazizi, a fruit vendor, set himself ablaze outside the offices of the Tunisian klepto-cops who had seized his wares. This suicide protest, the story goes, ignited a sweeping revolt against the corruption and caprices of Arab despots. One by one, the dominos began to fall: Tunisia, Egypt, Yemen, Libya — with rumblings in Saudi Arabia and Jordan as well as teetering Syria and rickety Iran. We are to believe that the mass uprising is an unmistakable manifestation of the “desire for freedom” that, according to Pres. George W. Bush, “resides in every human heart.”

That proclamation came in the heady days of 2004, when the democracy project was still a Panglossian dream, not the Pandora’s box it proved to be as Islamic parties began to win elections. Like its successor, the Bush administration discouraged all inquiry into Islamic doctrine by anyone seeking to understand Muslim enmity, indulging the fiction that there is something we can do to change it. Inexorably, this has fed President Obama’s preferred fiction — that we must have done something to deserve it — as well as the current administration’s strident objection to uttering the word “Islam” for any purpose other than hagiography. In this self-imposed ignorance, most Americans still do not know that hurriya, Arabic for “freedom,” connotes “perfect slavery” or absolute submission to Allah, very nearly the opposite of the Western concept. Even if we grant for argument’s sake the dubious proposition that all people crave freedom, Islam and the West have never agreed about what freedom means.

Once again, a reminder that 1984 was a warning, not a user’s guide:

Winston was struck, as he had been struck before, by the tiredness of O’Brien’s face. It was strong and fleshy and brutal, it was full of intelligence and a sort of controlled passion before which he felt himself helpless; but it was tired. There were pouches under the eyes, the skin sagged from the cheekbones. O’Brien leaned over him, deliberately bringing the worn face nearer.

‘You are thinking,’ he said, ‘that my face is old and tired. You are thinking that I talk of power, and yet I am not even able to prevent the decay of my own body. Can you not understand, Winston, that the individual is only a cell? The weariness of the cell is the vigour of the organism. Do you die when you cut your fingernails?’

He turned away from the bed and began strolling up and down again, one hand in his pocket.

‘We are the priests of power,’ he said. ‘God is power. But at present power is only a word so far as you are concerned. It is time for you to gather some idea of what power means. The first thing you must realize is that power is collective. The individual only has power in so far as he ceases to be an individual. You know the Party slogan: “Freedom is Slavery”. Has it ever occurred to you that it is reversible? Slavery is freedom. Alone — free — the human being is always defeated. It must be so, because every human being is doomed to die, which is the greatest of all failures. But if he can make complete, utter submission, if he can escape from his identity, if he can merge himself in the Party so that he is the Party, then he is all-powerful and immortal. The second thing for you to realize is that power is power over human beings. Over the body but, above all, over the mind. Power over matter — external reality, as you would call it — is not important. Already our control over matter is absolute.’

Or to put it another way, “Islam fits me really well,” a 34-year old music teacher in post-Christian Stockholm, Sweeden was quoted as saying in the L.A. Times in 2010 after he converted. “I am completely against capitalism.”

(H/T: 5′F.)

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In what amounted to a love letter to California’s Democratic Governor Jerry Brown on Thursday’s NBC Nightly News, special correspondent Tom Brokaw gushed: “It’s not sunshine every day for the California economy, but Jerry Brown has not given up on big dreams. His new big dream, a high-speed rail line from the north to the south…”

Anchor Brian Williams set the scene for Brokaw’s fawning report: “California is mounting a comeback led by a man whose name has been synonymous with California government for decades.” Brokaw sympathetically declared: “The one-time boy wonder of California politics is now the state’s aging lion….Sticking up for his state.”

–”NBC’s Brokaw: California’s ‘Aging Lion’ Jerry Brown ‘Has Not Given Up On Big Dreams’” at The Media Research Center, on Friday.

Via POLITICO’s Reid Epstein, NBC News and Tom Brokaw are loudly objecting to the Mitt Romney campaign’s use of footage from the 1990s in an ad blasting Newt Gingrich over his House ethics charges.

Brokaw, whose statement noted he was speaking on his behalf, said, “I am extremely uncomfortable with the extended use of my personal image in this political ad.  I do no [sic] want my role as a journalist compromised for political gain by any campaign.”

– The Politico, Saturday.

(Hey, all Romney has to do is call for higher gas prices or denounce conservative bloggers, and all will be golden with the “non-ideological” Brokaw once again.)

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“President Obama leaves event promoting clean energy in a motorcade of 22 fossil-fueled vehicles:”

On January 26, 2012, President Obama visited a Las Vegas UPS plant. Stimulus subsidy for said UPS plant to purchase natural-gas-powered trucks: 5.6 million dollars. Stimulus subsidy for North Las Vegas green energy plant that laid off 200 workers yesterday: 5.9 million dollars. Using taxpayer dollars to leave an event promoting clean-energy vehicles in a motorcade of twenty-two fossil-fueled vehicles: Priceless.

It’s time to end all energy subsidizes, and let average Americans, like the President does, select the fuel they want, free of government interference.

For Obama, it’s just like a weekend jaunt at Martha’s Vineyard. Still though, they got out of the driveway at least; clearly the Oba-cade is making progress with its driver’s lessons. Recall this post from May of last year:

What goes around…

Obama needled one questioner who asked about gas prices, now averaging close to $3.70 a gallon nationwide, and suggested that the gentleman consider getting rid of his gas-guzzling vehicle.

“If you’re complaining about the price of gas and you’re only getting 8 miles a gallon, you know,” Obama said laughingly. “You might want to think about a trade-in.”

…Goes aground:

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We know why Obama enjoys being president; why do the other candidates? As Seth Mandel writes at Commentary, “There’s an episode of the hit TV show ‘The West Wing’ in which the president’s likely re-election opponent is asked why he wants to be president and flubs the question. The president’s advisers enjoy a good laugh at their opponent’s mistake–until they realize their boss also doesn’t know why he wants to be president:”

This is not to suggest there are no differences between Romney and Obama or between Gingrich and Obama. But there is a puzzling incoherence. I like the spirit behind Gingrich’s resuscitation of the space program. But it’s unrealistic to suggest a permanent American moon colony won’t cost the federal government a fortune.

Gingrich criticizes the president for spending too much while trying to do too much and then proposes radical changes that would cost billions, probably trillions. And as for Romney, in one sentence he criticizes the president for demonizing success and then sheepishly suggests maybe he shouldn’t have been able to make or vastly increase his personal fortune.

They all want to be president. But they all need to make a better case for why they want to be president.

Obama’s current channeling Groucho Marx’s Professor Quincy Adams Wagstaff character in Horse Feathers — even before he knows who the GOP candidate will be, whoever he is, he’s against him. But then, the antediluvian Obama’s the very definition of a reactionary, so he’s got that going for him, at least.

Actually, given their inability to articulate how they differ on policy, these have to be the least inspiring presidential candidates on both sides of the aisle, since, well, 2008. Is it too late for a do-over?

Related: Jay Cost adds, “Somebody else – somebody with the ability to make the case for reform in a sober and courageous manner – should jump into this race. And not just to keep Obama from a second term. If 2012 is a decisive election – then we need a candidate with the courage and rectitude to make the choice clear to the voters, so that once in office he has the mandate to fix this mess.”

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“Some said the state of our union was getting stronger, while others said it was getting weaker,  but I was getting bin Laden.”

– PBHO¹ at the SOTE², as neatly summarized in a single sentence by Prof. William A. Jacobson. (I actually did a quick Google — it really does sound like something Barry¹ would say to a crowd, doesn’t it?”

1. Apologies for the non-MSNBC-approved terminology there.

2. State of the Election speech. But for Obama¹, aren’t they all?

Update: Boil that boilerplate! (Video moved to top of page to not conflict with ad.)

Related: You can answer this question for the president in the coming months.

More: Obama pulls trigger on January Surprise: a mass refinancing plan for U.S. mortgages. What could go wrong?

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Scheduled for release to the Kindle and in analog dead tree form in April — the 17th, not the 1st surprisingly — is The Occupy Handbook, complied by Janet Byrne and published by the Hachette Book Group, the second largest publisher in the world, according to Wikipedia.

The book’s Amazon description claims:

Analyzing the movement’s deep-seated origins in questions that the country has sought too long to ignore, some of the greatest economic minds and most incisive cultural commentators – from Paul Krugman, Robin Wells, Michael Lewis, Robert Reich, Amy Goodman, Barbara Ehrenreich, Gillian Tett, Scott Turow, Bethany McLean, Brandon Adams, and Tyler Cowen to prominent labor leaders and young, cutting-edge economists and financial writers whose work is not yet widely known – capture the Occupy Wall Street phenomenon in all its ragged glory, giving readers an on-the-scene feel for the movement as it unfolds while exploring the heady growth of the protests, considering the lasting changes wrought, and recommending reform. A guide to the occupation, THE OCCUPY HANDBOOK is a talked-about source for understanding why 1% of the people in America take almost a quarter of the nation’s income and the long-term effects of a protest movement that even the objects of its attack can find little fault with.

Since it’s likely still in pre-production, for completion’s sake, here are some helpful suggestions to flesh-out the book:

• Which police cars have the smoothest surface to excrete against.
• What not to say to the media when you’re interviewed after an altercation with the police.
• Why David Duke totally digs OWS.
• The camp rapist: misunderstood soul?
• How to be the first protest dedicated to preserving the status quo.
• How my $90,000 in student loans for a degree in deconstructionist lesbian poetry led me to spend 93 days sleeping in a tent in downtown New York.
• #Occupymobiusloop: How to run up your student debt even more studying #OWS.
• Occupy Your Backyard! It’s not just for ten year olds playing GI Joe anymore.
• How to win friends and influence people by terrorizing minimum wage bank tellers.
• Those who attempt to appease you are simply showing weakness — attack! — whether it’s 1939 or 2011.
• Radical Chic: look sharp — look Soviet!
• Left-wing anti-Semitism: the hot new trend for the 21st century.
• The Bible: Like the Constitution, it’s over 100 years old and outdated. Best to discard by throwing it at your enemies.
• Churches too are part of the 1 percent. Steal with impunity.
• JFK was a plutocratic One Percenter. Ask not what you can do for your country. Ask what your country can do for you!
• If we’re so hip, how come the people supporting us are so damn old?
• Why is a prominent spokesman for General Electric supporting OWS?
• If we’re so radical and dangerous, why do establishment media sources like the New York Times, a major publishing house, and Time magazine think we’re so cool?

I’m sure there are numerous other topics that could help make this title the best it can be, so feel free to add yours in the comments. Or maybe just occupy the Hachette Book Group’s New York offices, since they’re giving such protests their blessing by going all in with them.

(Headline suggested by the eminent Abbot H. Hoffman.)

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“NBC‘s Chuck Todd blasted Stephen Colbert’s recent political exploits, saying the Comedy Central host is essentially making a mockery of the political system and likely pushing an anti-Republican agenda.”

As opposed to Todd’s employers at NBC and (especially) MSNBC.

Related: The Anchoress on the MSM and their non-denial denial (as Jason Robards portraying Ben Bradlee would say, to continue the theme of actors playing journalists) on the Standing-O Newt Gingrich received when he told CNN’s John King where to put his microphone:

Perhaps they are in denial. They have a very tidy playbook about how to go about destroying Republican candidates: you call them stupid; you call them crazy; you feature ugly or unflattering pictures of them; you delve into their trash and their college transcripts (but only theirs) or you expose their sins (but only theirs), confident in the knowledge that people are sheep, susceptible to gossip and the media’s leading leash; conservatives, after all, are judgmental “values voters” who will (according to the playbook) be repelled by tawdry stories of narcissistic (Republican, only) politicians who serially cheat on their wives!

And last night, John King asked a question about Newt Gingrich’s past marriage issues — this is a big gun that’s supposed to do serious damage — and the thing backfired on them; it blew up in their hands as the audience “became uniform” in expressing its disgust not for the tawdry politician, but for the press that has become so nakedly overt in its bias, and so selective in what it finds newsworthy and what it does not.

The standing ovation for Newt’s remarks were not an endorsement of his behavior — many conservatives are troubled by Gingrich’s past and character does matter to them, while other conservatives are remembering their own sins and falling back on what they know of mercy, for the time being. No, that ovation was an endorsement of Gingrich’s disdain for the mainstream media, which they share, and a declaration to that same media that their playbook is played-out.

If the MSM is looking for balance when it comes investigative political reporting, a couple of modest proposals may be found here.

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Mission Accomplished!

In October of 2007, Barack Obama told his loyal early followers, “We’re going to keep on praising together. I am confident that we can create a Kingdom right here on Earth.”

And lo, today, the Kingdom has risen.

The Magic Kingdom:

Disney says the president will be at the Magic Kingdom, which means guests can plan for heavy security. Main Street USA will be closed for the duration of the president’s time there. Guests will be re-routed to other parts of the park. Disney is also cancelling extra magic hours for the Magic Kingdom, and pushing back the “Celebrate a Dream Come True” parade.

As Robin Williams once said, don’t ever visit Pluto, it’s a Mickey Mouse planet. And presidents with a reputation for magical thinking (shared with his most rabid followers) probably shouldn’t visit Disney World in an election year. The optics of this aren’t quite John Kerry swimming through the Fallopian tubes bad, but as BuzzFeed notes, “13 Photos Of Barack Obama At Disney That Will Probably Turn Up In Attack Ads.” (Gentlemen, start your downloads.)

Mediaite carps, “They really couldn’t find any other land in Disney World to do this in, like Fantasyland, or maybe Adventureland? On the other hand, at least they avoided shutting down Liberty Square.”

Liberty Square has been permanently shut down since November of 2008; Adventureland is far too jingoistic sounding for our postmodern anti-colonial president, and really — doesn’t he already own a permanent condo in Fantasyland?

Also note the duality — or perhaps the karma — of the timing: Disney is welcoming Obama onto its grounds for a photo-op, even as its news division is delivering questionable crackback hits to his current two chief opponents.

Related: Caption contest!

(Thumbnail on PJM homepage by ExJon, formerly of the Exurban League.)

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…Unlike Joe Biden, be sure to memorize which sports team is which:

The Giants are going all the way!

That sentiment would draw cheers in San Francisco during the baseball season, but when it was shouted by Vice President Joe Biden during a campaign event Wednesday it drew jeers from the crowd.

The vice president, who is well known for his gaffes, mixed up the San Francisco baseball and football teams when trying to cheerlead for the 49ers before their playoff game showdown Sunday against the New York Giants.

Biden, speaking at an event in the Financial District in support of President Barack Obama’s re-election, told supporters that “the Giants are on their way to the Super Bowl.”

When the comment drew boos from the crowd, Biden quickly apologized, saying he was used to talking about the San Francisco Giants’ baseball victories.

I haven’t heard a gaffe like that since FDR went on ESPN in 1929 and confused the Frankford Yellow Jackets with the Staten Island Stapletons.

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Newsweek ponders the intelligence of President Obama’s critics:

On the other hand, unlike Newsweek, they actually know he is the president. Recall this classic Newsweek gaffe from 2010:

Unlike Newsweek, they’re also more likely to display a healthy skepticism towards statist hacks such as Al Gore…

…and Joe Biden:

And also unlike Newsweek, they also believe in intellectual diversity:

Though unlike Andrew Sullivan, they’re probably not debating who’s more conservative — John Kerry or Barack Obama? (Or Ron Paul, for that matter.)

Like Ann Althouse, in her initial take on Newsweek’s cover, I haven’t bothered to read Andrew’s actual article, but all I can say is, based on the cover that was created to promote it, why does he want to belittle his editor Tina Brown, so? Journalism’s first rule of interoffice relations is “don’t **** where you eat,” (I’ll let you fill-in whatever four letter euphemism you prefer in the asterisks), and by painting with such a broad brush, Andrew, or his headline writer, has certainly blown past that.

Actually, that’s not all I can say — I was reluctant to mention the Newsweek cover, since Newsweek ran it for one reason only. In their last days as a magazine owned by the Washington Post, they openly came out hard left. After the Post unloaded the paper for a buck, the Tina Brown/Jane Harman version of the magazine hasn’t exactly altered that perception. So they’re adopting the strategy that Hollywood ran with after the 2004 election: attempt to work their Red State non-audiences into a lather in the hopes of generating publicity for their far left projects. And of course, attempting to get rival camps playing off each other has long been the M.O. of Politico as well.

I’m not sure what it says about the right’s election chances this year; though if past performance is any indication, we saw an accelerating number of “Why Does America Suck?” stories in the fall of 2010, when it was obvious that the MSM had lost their side of the aisle in at least one house of Congress.

Hollywood has been surprised in the past when conservatives have ignored their more outré fare; I think that would have been the better strategy here as well, but once Power Line, Hot Air and Instapundit all piled on, too late for that.

Besides, to paraphrase a riff Jonah Goldberg used to describe RatherGate back in 2004, Newsweek cover this week is like a pinata — you can whack it from any angle, and all sorts of gifts fall out.

QED.

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As spotted by Noel Sheppard of Newsbusters:

At a screening of Asghar Farhadi’s critically lauded “A Separation” at Sony’s screening room, the Iranian director spotted the “Fahrenheit 9/11” filmmaker in the audience. Farhadi quipped, “Michael Moore is the most famous director in Iran,” and said everyone knows his movies because they’re shown on national TV there.

Iran’s legendary army of distaff cinematic auteurs that HSBC bank keeps mentioning must be fuming right now.

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One of the benefits of the Iowa Caucasus was watching the MSM drop the mask and remind its viewers how much it really, really hates them. Even when it comes to slagging what was a Blue State in 2008. (See also: the Bitter Clingers harangue against liberal Hillary Clinton voters in Pennsylvania by Obama and the more fevered of his celebrity endorsers.) But one Iowa man armed with a video camera and plenty of NSFW-language dares to fight back:

After watching this video, it seems obvious why Iowa is the only state in the Union where Mandom is both legally sold — and required by law for men to wear. As for the rest of us, as Jim Treacher writes, “Can you handle this? (Hint: No. You cannot):”

Oh and speaking of Iowa, President Obama weighs in on his success there in 2008, and how he’s followed through on his campaign promises:

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