James Lovelock, father of the “Gaia” theory that the entire earth is a single living system, was one of the many voices that’s predicted environmental calamity will result from carbon dioxide emissions.

He claimed in 2006 that “before this century is over billions of us will die and the few breeding pairs of people that survive will be in the Arctic where the climate remains tolerable.”

But he has told MSNBC that he overstated the case and now acknowledges that “we don’t know what the climate is doing.”

“We thought we knew 20 years ago,” he said. “That led to some alarmist books — mine included — because it looked clear-cut, but it hasn’t happened.”

The 92-year-old Lovelock notes that “the climate is doing its usual tricks” and concedes “there’s nothing much really happening yet” even though “we were supposed to be halfway toward a frying world now.”

by OutloudOpinion.com For more Podcasts visit www.outloudopinion.com

Even the Washington Post admits the conservative talk-show giant has survived a monthlong crusade to cow sponsors and stations into dropping Limbaugh over intemperate remarks he made about a coed fan of ObamaCare.

“Stations are standing by him,” the Post reported, and “advertisers are trickling back to his program.”

Turns out the ad losses were far fewer than liberal Media Matters claimed in a running tally on its website.

In fact, virtually all of Limbaugh’s long-term sponsors stuck with the show, in spite of relentless brow-beating by both Media Matters and MSNBC, which also works closely with the White House.

Of the 180 stations that carry Limbaugh, only two dropped him. And both are based in deep blue states, Massachusetts and Hawaii. Even the Beltway’s top AM station wasn’t cowed by the left-wing assault.

by OutloudOpinion.com For more Podcasts visit www.outloudopinion.com

Now that HBO's Sarah Palin-bashing film "Game Change" has premiered, it is fascinating to note that its two heroes are the very advisers who not only were responsible for the worst presidential campaign in decades, but also ended up backstabbing the candidates they represented.

As John Podhoretz wrote at the Weekly Standard:

[McCain-Palin senior adviser Nicolle] Wallace is the movie’s heroine. She is the voice of reason, the increasingly alarmed witness to the evil McCain has perpetrated by foisting Palin upon the world. It is through Wallace’s interactions with the vice-presidential candidate that we see confirmed every bad thing anyone has ever said about Palin (save that she is not the mother of Trig—it steers clear of that Sullivanian filth). Wallace (played by Sarah Paulson) delivers screenwriter Danny Strong’s inadvertently hilarious Blue State zinger when, dripping with righteous scorn during a confrontation with Palin, she says with disbelief, “Yeah, you’re just like Hillary.”

This happened near the end of the film after Palin's infamous interview with former CBS Evening News anchor Katie Couric.

As Podhoretz accurately noted, it was Wallace that set up this interview, and who should have been excoriated given the results.

Instead, the film depicted this as being all Palin's fault, with her left afterward in an on-screen tantrum that concluded with the former Alaska governor throwing her cellphone at a wall.

Such disparagement was standard fare in HBO's "Game Change," which despite book co-author Mark Halperin's claim Palin critics would come away with a more favorable view of the object of their disaffection, this would only be true if you turned off your television after the first hour.

Hour two was filled with the typical Palin-bashing Americans have been exposed to since McCain named her as his running mate in August 2008.

In one scene, Julianne Moore as Palin doesn't know that the Queen of England has nothing to do with actually governing her country.

Is this what Halperin thought would raise America's appreciation for the GOP's first female vice presidential nominee? Maybe he got that little absurdity from Wallace who's had terrible things to say about the former Alaska governor since Election Day 2008.

As NewsBusters reported, Wallace told the Morning Joe crew in December 2010 that Palin had "troubling deficiencies." "Heaven forbid" her becoming "the leader of the free world."

This was nothing new for Wallace who seems to frequent MSNBC to smear the candidate she used to work for.

And she's just one of the heroes of HBO's "Game Change." As Podhoretz noted, there was another:

Wallace’s deeply principled revulsion is mirrored by that of Steve Schmidt (Woody Harrelson), the McCain campaign chief whose initial excitement at Palin’s political skills and smarts is fast superseded by his awareness of her religious fanaticism (Schmidt gets a horrified look on his face when she says she sees the hand of God at work) and her ignorance.

Yes, if ever you wanted circumstantial evidence that the sources within the McCain campaign who spent October 2008 dumping on Palin anonymously might have included Wallace and Schmidt, you need look no further than HBO’s Game Change. The movie presents a moral case for the disreputable conduct of aides who, we can presume, fearlessly drop dirty dimes anonymously to save their own standing in the liberal culture from which they desperately wish not to be excluded.

As NewsBusters reported, MSNBC's Chris Matthews this weekend said Harrelson's performance as Schmidt was "the role of the century."

It appears that for a Republican to be held in high esteem by the liberal media, all he or she need do is run a failed presidential campaign – McCain-Palin suffered the biggest landslide since Michael Dukakis in 1988 – and then backstab the candidates you represented.

This strategy worked nicely for Wallace who in 2010 published the best-selling political thriller "Eighteen Acres" which many believe took additional shots at Palin.

As for Schmidt, he's now a regular MSNBC contributor.

Unlike crime, it seems failure and backstabbing do pay, and are enviable qualities for Republicans looking to curry favor with America's media.

On the debut of the Melissa Harris-Perry show on MSNBC, after starting the show with a discussion of why she believes it is a good thing for the Republican Party to be a strong party – for the sake of having a competitive, multi-party system to give voters choices – the show soon predictably moved toward talk of alleged racism in the Republican Party.

At one point, she showed video footage of liberal Republican presidential candidate Nelson Rockefeller from the 1964 Republican National Convention condemning "extremists" in the party. After a clip of a black audience member applauding the speech, Harris-Perry cracked:

I love the last black Republican left in the party just clapping, "Yes, please repudiate them," right?

A bit later in the show, guest Dorian Warren – an assistant professor at Columbia University – charged that the Republican Party's strategy is to be a "white Southern party," with Harris-Perry, apparently agreeing, then adding, "And apparently an all-male party."

After she complained about the recent talk of social issues like birth control as being irrelevant to the creation of jobs, Warren jumped back in to claim that "the vast majority of women disagree with the Republican party's position on reproductive rights and reproductive justice."

Below is a transcript of the relevant portion of the Saturday, February 18, Melissa Harris-Perry show on MSNBC:

MELISSA HARRIS-PERRY: I want to play Republican presidential candidate Nelson Rockefeller at the 1964 Republican National Convention giving a speech that was very unpopular because he was actually attacking the far right wing of his party, and we'll see the response here.

NELSON ROCKEFELLER: These extremists feed on fear, hate and terror. They encourage disunity. These are people who have nothing in common with Americanism. The Republican Party must repudiate these people.

HARRIS-PERRY: I love the last black Republican left in the party just clapping, "Yes, please repudiate them," right?

…

ASSISTANT PROFESSOR DORIAN WARREN, COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY: But here's the second thing. This is what I don't understand. The Republican strategy is basically to be a white party, and a white Southern party. And the time is, the clock is ticking on that demographic in this country.

HARRIS-PERRY: And apparently an all-male party. I mean, what I kept feeling this week is, I hear you, when I first heard the discourse of the Tea Party, you know, as much as I wasn't in agreement with it, I kind of like populist movements that are asking for jobs and asking and worrying about, you know, about the effects of big government.

But the shift now has moved more toward the so-called moral, ethical, racially problematic and now this contraception language? You know, jobs are simply not located in my uterus. Like, wherever they are, wherever they might be, you know, created, that's just not where they are. So why is so much policy language around that?

WARREN: The vast majority of women disagree with the Republican Party's position on reproductive rights and reproductive justice. Three out of four women disagree with the Republican Party. And, again it's a short-term strategy, the Republican Party has decided to go all in for 2012 on getting as many old and white male voters as they can; 2016, 2020, this country looks very, very different. And I'm not sure what the strategy is, medium and long-term, to actually be a viable party, a competitive party.
 

Al Sharpton on Friday said something that every American on both sides of the aisle should totally fear.

"You cannot have rights voted on," the MSNBC anchor actually said on HBO's Real Time. "You have tyranny by the majority" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

REIHAN SALAM, NATIONAL REVIEW: If one state, if you have the voters of that state actually affirmatively vote for same sex marriage, it would actually change the discussion pretty dramatically. When you look at what happened in the early seventies with Roe v. Wade, there were a lot of folks who favored liberalizing abortion laws and then there was significant numbers of people who didn’t. Now, constitutionalizing, nationalizing that settlement changed the dynamic. And so, something that might have happened state by state in Democratic fashion didn't happen that way and that engendered a huge amount of resentment.

If you have a situation where state by state people’s minds are changing. If you look at people under the age of 40, they favor same sex marriage far, far more than people over that age. If you have it happen in a way where people feel, “You know, we heard the argument,” and people embrace this, fair enough, that argument is lost and, you know, you're not going to be able to reverse that by referendum.

I think that Mo is absolutely right that that is the more stable way, and I think that folks who are advocating same sex marriage should recognize that, because when you have it happen in the courts, it doesn't have the legitimacy that it would if it happened through a popular vote.

As should be obvious, the discussion was dealing with the 9th Circuit Court in California striking down that state's Proposition 8 which made same sex marriages illegal.

National Review's Salam observed that the people's voice in such a controversial issue is essential in actually resolving the matter long term. Here we are almost 40 years after nine justices on the Supreme Court decided the fate of abortion in this country and we're still arguing about it.

As such, maybe citizens' views in such a contentious matter should be required to truly settle it.

Not surprisingly, Sharpton didn't see it that way:

AL SHARPTON: No, but you have tyranny by the majority. You cannot have rights voted on. If you, if you do not, the role of government is to protect people. And if, if you had civil rights voted on, I'd be sitting in the back of the bus and with a bad eye driver you'd be sitting next to me. So don't think about voting for rights.

First off, that was a despicably cheap shot at the dark-skinned Salam who's the son of Bangladeshi immigrants. Sadly, liberals have no problem making racially-insensitive comments aimed at conservatives.

But the rest of Sharpton's point was equally preposterous. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 was approved by both chambers of Congress with wide majorities. It passed 289 to 126 in the House and 73 to 27 in the Senate.

Although this didn't come to a popular vote across the nation, at least 535 members of Congress representing the wishes of the electorate decided on this groundbreaking piece of legislation.

That's a far cry from what happened Tuesday when three judges – not appointed by the people of California but instead hand-picked by governors – overruled the wishes of millions of citizens they're supposed to serve.

If this is what Sharpton thinks is justice, and he really believes "You cannot have rights voted on," it's a total disgrace that any news outlet – even the farce that is MSNBC – gives him a national platform to speak such nonsense.

Associate Editor’s note: As you are likely aware, since the financial collapse of 2008, charities and non-profit organizations have seen a sharp reduction in donations. Although the environment has improved, contributions are still nowhere near where they were prior to the recession. Unfortunately, the Media Research Center has not been immune. With this in mind, your support has become more important than ever. With a critical election approaching, the liberal media needs to be monitored 24/7. As we have been predicting for months, the press are willing to do anything to get their beloved politicians elected and/or reelected. As such, we need your help to fight this fight. Any contribution, even $10, is greatly appreciated. Please consider a tax-deductible gift to the Media Research Center to help us battle the liberal media. Thank you.

Not surprisingly, the Obama-loving media are having a field day with Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney's comment to CNN's Soledad O'Brien regarding not being "concerned about the very poor."

MSNBC's Lawrence O'Donnell Wednesday decided to make an even bigger deal out of this issue by cherry-picking Rush Limbaugh to make it appear the conservative radio host shared the press's view (video follows with transcript and commentary):

LAWRENCE O’DONNELL: If there was anyone in America who you might expect to cheer you on for saying “I'm not concerned about the very poor,” it would be Rush Limbaugh. But even rush, as much as he might share that feeling with Romney, knew it was a very, very stupid thing to say.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

RUSH LIMBAUGH: "I'm not concerned about the very poor. We have a safety net there." The safety net is one of the biggest cultural problems we've got!

Everybody knows what he's trying to say but he didn't say it and he makes himself a target with this stuff. He comes across as the prototypical rich Republican. And it's gonna make it harder and harder and harder and harder to go after Obama because this turns around on him. You know, all these Wizards of Smart in the Republican establishment say, "We can't have Newt out there! Why, Newt's gonna be the topic. We need Obama to be the topic. We need Obama to be the guy campaign's about. If Newt's out there, it's only gonna be about Newt." Well, what evidence is there that it's not gonna be about Romney with these kinds of statements?

(END VIDEO CLIP)

O’DONNELL: Rush Limbaugh worried about the prototypical Republican? Rush who makes at least $50 million a year and flies in his own Gulfstream everywhere he goes worried about the prototypical rich Republican?

Actually, that's not what Limbaugh was worried about at all. Here's a transcript of Rush's full comments regarding this matter with the edited out sentences in bold:

LIMBAUGH: "I like firing people." "I'm not concerned about the very poor."

Both of them, if they're stand-alones and taken out of context, are big problems — and they indicate a problem. Taken in context — which isn't going to happen with the Drive-By Media. Taken in context, it's understandable. But I even have a problem with this in context.

"I'm not concerned about the very poor. We have a safety net there." The safety net is one of the biggest cultural problems we've got!

We had better be worried about it just like we had better get angry over Obamacare. Obamacare is worth getting mad about. Mitt said that it wasn't. This biz, "I'm not concerned about the very poor. We have a safety net there"? Right, the safety net is contributing to the destruction of their humanity and their futures!

Everybody knows what he's trying to say but he didn't say it and he makes himself a target with this stuff. He comes across as the prototypical rich Republican. And it's gonna make it harder and harder and harder and harder to go after Obama because this turns around on him. You know, all these Wizards of Smart in the Republican establishment say, "We can't have Newt out there! Why, Newt's gonna be the topic. We need Obama to be the topic. We need Obama to be the guy campaign's about. If Newt's out there, it's only gonna be about Newt." Well, what evidence is there that it's not gonna be about Romney with these kinds of statements?

Notice that O'Donnell skipped the introduction and a very large chunk in the middle that particularly included, "The safety net is contributing to the destruction of their humanity and their futures!"

This was Limbaugh's point: the safety net is a terrible thing and Romney – a Republican presidential candidate – was praising it.

Limbaugh continued with this theme later in the show:

LIMBAUGH: Everybody knows what he's trying to say here, but you give them "I'm not concerned about the very poor," you chop it off there and it could be about anything. I'm not concerned about the poor in the way they're eating. I'm not concerned about the poor and the car they have. I'm not concerned about the poor and where they live. You can do all kinds of things with that. And it isn't gonna be enough to say, (crying) "You've taken that out of context." We know what he's trying to do. He's trying to zero in and tell the middle class, "I'm thinking of you." But this repair the safety net stuff? The safety net is contributing to poverty. The safety net contributes to poverty. It does not solve it. We've got proof every year since the Great Society and whatever else Johnson named it, starting in the sixties.

As such, Limbaugh's point was that Romney by praising safety nets for the poor was sounding like a liberal and not a conservative who thinks these entitlements are harming the society.

With all the things conservatives have to be concerned with regarding the former Massachusetts governor, him coming out in favor of safety nets complicates matters further.

But that's not what this MSNBC host imparted to his viewers.

Quite the contrary, by editing out significant portions of Limbaugh's commentary, O'Donnell made it seem that Rush agreed with him and the rest of the liberal media on why what Romney said earlier in the day was wrong.

As we've been saying for months, the press are going to do anything to get Obama reelected including cherry-picking conservatives to make it seem even the Right opposes the Republican candidate.

Associate Editor’s note: As you are likely aware, since the financial collapse of 2008, charities and non-profit organizations have seen a sharp reduction in donations. Although the environment has improved, contributions are still nowhere near where they were prior to the recession. Unfortunately, the Media Research Center has not been immune. With this in mind, your support has become more important than ever. With a critical election approaching, the liberal media needs to be monitored 24/7. As we have been predicting for months, the press are willing to do anything to get their beloved politicians elected and/or reelected. As such, we need your help to fight this fight. Any contribution, even $10, is greatly appreciated. Please consider a tax-deductible gift to the Media Research Center to help us battle the liberal media. Thank you.

In the latest edition of National Review (dated February 6), comedy writer Rob Long knocks the political shtick of Stephen Colbert. He says Colbert causes a certain kind of “LOL” or laughing out loud – “mostly, they’re not laughting. They may be smiling wryly, or nodding in agreement, or noting in a subdued fashion the wit behind the statement, but they’re not laughing out loud. They’re agreeing.”

In short, they're awarding Clever Points, which is different than guffawing. Long finds the whole shtick "geriatric" in tone:

Stephen Colbert – and his partner on Comedy Central, Jon Stewart – hew to a fairly predictable lefty line. It’s not MSNBC left, or The Nation left – though they earn a lot of LOLs from that crowd, no doubt. It’s more along the lines of the Good Taste Left – NPR, The New Yorker, that sort of thing. Which is why the whole idea has a certain geriatric quality to it. What Colbert is trying to do, or his pompous persona that represents, to his LOLing viewers, a sharply etched blend of the entire lineup of Fox News, is mock the primary process and the idea of Super PACs especially.

Oh, my aching sides…

Long then explained Colbert's "Mitt the Ripper" ad — that if Romney believes corporations are people, he's a serial killer. He's not amused:

Look, if this kind of thing is funny to you, then don’t let me stand in your way. Go ahead and LOL all you want. But notice, if you would, that you’re not actually laughing. No one has caused those involuntary explosions of breath to burp unexpectedly from deep inside you. Nothing snuck up on you. It’s exactly what you expect from Stephen Colbert. He’s a liberal pretending to be a conservative – you can tell that instantly, because he’s playing a moron – and all conservatives are morons, see? – and he’s rich enough to set up a real super PAC to mock arcane campaign-finance rules and the current Republican front-runner.

It’s not funny. It’s what we call “NPR funny.” And predictably, the Good Taste Liberals are eating it up. The rest of us, not so much.

As for Comedy Central shows, Long wrote he preferred Tosh.0, which makes him actually LOL.

MSNBC's Martin Bashir spent a good part of his on air time Monday calling Republicans liars as he foolishly confused two extraordinarily simple pieces of economic data thereby making it he that was commiting a falsehood.

After calling Tea Party Express founder Judson Phillips a liar on his 3PM program, Bashir said the same thing about Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich on The Ed Show roughly five hours later while in both instances wrongly claiming there were more food stamp recipients when George W. Bush was president than there are now (video follows with transcript and commentary):

MARTIN BASHIR: Gingrich lies repeatedly. First of all, we know today that more people were collecting food stamps under George W. Bush than are under President Obama. So, that’s the first, something like a difference of about a half a million people.

What's amazing here is Bashir made exactly the same mistake as he did about five hours earlier.

As previously reported, the number of food stamp recipients is currently at an all-time high having grown 44 percent since Obama was inaugurated.

Unfortunately, much like his colleague Al Sharpton did on Saturday, Bashir is confusing two pieces of data and seems incapable of getting it right even with five hours to do so.

Having seen NewsBusters article about his mistake earlier in the day, Bashir responded via Twitter:

As USA Today reported Wednesday:

Newt Gingrich claims that "more people have been put on food stamps by Barack Obama than any president in American history." He's wrong. More were added under Bush than under Obama, according to the most recent figures.

That's correct. Although we only have numbers through last October, food stamp recipients have grown by 14.2 million under Obama. During Bush's two terms the increase was 14.7 million.

This is what Bashir was referring to when he said "something like a difference of about a half a million people."

But, much as he did earlier, Bashir confused the two pieces of data saying "we know today that more people were collecting food stamps under George W. Bush than are under President Obama."

Not true. What "we know today" is that as of October 2011, there were 46.2 million people on the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program as compared to only 32 million when Obama was inaugurated.

We also know that 500,000 more folks joined SNAP during Bush's eight years than in Obama's first 32 months. 

Unfortunately, the overbearingly smug and condescending Bashir seems incapable of differentiating these two pieces of data and properly reporting them to his albeit tiny audience.

As Scarlett O'Hara said at the end of Gone With the Wind, tomorrow is another day.

Associate Editor’s note: As you are likely aware, since the financial collapse of 2008, charities and non-profit organizations have seen a sharp reduction in donations. Although the environment has improved, contributions are still nowhere near where they were prior to the recession. Unfortunately, the Media Research Center has not been immune. With this in mind, your support has become more important than ever. With a critical election approaching, the liberal media needs to be monitored 24/7. As we have been predicting for months, the press are willing to do anything to get their beloved politicians elected and/or reelected. As such, we need your help to fight this fight. Any contribution, even $10, is greatly appreciated. Please consider a tax-deductible gift to the Media Research Center to help us battle the liberal media. Thank you.

Chris Matthews loathes Mitt Romney and reveres John F. Kennedy. Oddly enough, when Matthews vilifies Romney, you'd swear he was talking about Kennedy.

Matthews, author of the JFK hagiography "Elusive Hero," had this to say about Romney last night during MSNBC's coverage of the New Hampshire primary while jousting with former Granite State governor John Sununu  (video after page break) –

MATTHEWS: Do you actually think use of terms like, I feared pink slips, and I'm unemployed, another phrase he uses when he campaigns for office, is appropriate at a time we have about eight-plus, eight and a half percent unemployment? You think that's appropriate for a candidate to identify with the unemployed when at no time in his life has he feeled (sic), has he felt economic insecurity? He's the son of the head of a US auto company. I don't see that's relevant he's ever felt economically insecure. Has he?

SUNUNU: I think any time you go into a job and you're the last one there, you're worried about getting pink slipped.

MATTHEWS: Yeah, I know.

SUNUNU: I think the fact of the matter is is this is a guy who is (sic) truly done virtually every-, all his success is attributed to the hard work that he did and put in. This is a country in which somebody can start and have that kind of great success. And to bregrudge him now for having been successful I think is kind of anti-American, don't you?

MATTHEWS: No, I just wonder why a fella who's been to boarding school and has gone to elite universities and never had to sweat in his life, never had to worry in his life about putting a meal on the table, should go out there and offer himself as some sort of Uriah Heap. Is that fair?

Romney — "the son of the head of a US auto company," Matthews points out, referring to George Romney, who grew up poor to become president of American Motors, governor of Michigan, GOP presidential candidate, and Cabinet member to Richard Nixon.

Kennedy — son of Joseph Kennedy, Prohibition-era bootlegger, Wall Street financier (lowest form of life, Chris, remember?), Roosevelt's first appointment to the SEC ("It takes a thief to catch one," FDR told intimates) and notorious appeaser who thought the Nazis were just nifty.

Matthews derides Mitt Romney as "a fella who's been to boarding school" — much like JFK, who went to Choate. Romney attended "elite universities," he complains. True enough — Stanford, Brigham Young and Harvard. Kennedy — Stanford, Princeton, London School of Economics and Harvard.

Romney has "never had to worry in his life about putting a meal on the table," Matthews fumes. Much like Kennedy — as to be expected of a young man whose family was one of the richest in the nation as he came of age and remained so through Kennedy's entire life.

Matthews' double standard demonstrates an awkward truth about liberals. Contrary to widespread belief, they don't hate wealth. They only hate it when conservatives are wealthy.