While President Obama was ignoring the worsening crises in Japan and Libya in favor of making his NCAA basketball tournament picks, House Republicans were busy dealing with a real emergency... namely, federal funding of NPR.
True presidential leadership—the type that only money can buy—would've resulted in Obama donning a HazMat suit and flying to Tokyo to help put out the reactor fires.
Instead, he chose UConn to win its third straight women's national championship.
Let's all hope for the best, but prepare for the worst.
Morning lineup:
Meet the Press: Energy Secretary Steven Chu; Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Adm. Mike Mullen; Sen. Carl Levin (D-MI); Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL); Roundtable: Andrea Mitchell (NBC News), Helen Cooper (New York Times), E.J. Dionne (Washington Post) and Kim Strassel (Wall Street Journal).
Face the Nation: Energy Secretary Steven Chu; Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Adm. Mike Mullen; Rep. Ed Markey (D-MA); Sen. Richard Lugar (R-IN).
This Week: Energy Secretary Steven Chu; Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Adm. Mike Mullen; Former Secretary of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff; Former New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson (D); John Ritch (World Nuclear Association); Roundtable; Diane Sawyer (ABC News), David Muir (ABC News), Bill Weir (ABC News) and Clarissa Ward (ABC News).
Fox News Sunday: Energy Secretary Steven Chu; Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Adm. Mike Mullen; Sen. Lindsay Graham (R-SC); Sen. Jack Reed (D-RI); Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY); Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH); Roundtable: Brit Hume (Fox News), Mara Liasson (NPR/FNC), Bill Kristol (Weekly Standard) and Juan Williams (Fox News).
State of the Union: Energy Secretary Steven Chu; Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Adm. Mike Mullen; Former CENTCOM Commander Adm. William Fallon (Ret.); Former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Richard Myers (Ret.); Sen. John McCain (R-AZ); Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT); Reliable Sources: Dr. Sanjay Gupta (CNN); Former ABC News Anchor Ted Koppel.
The Chris Matthews Show: Katty Kay (BBC); Andrew Sullivan (The Atlantic); Michael Duffy (TIME); Norah O'Donnell (MSNBC).
Fareed Zakaria GPS: Chairman/CEO of Sony Howard Stringer; Pakistani Reporter Ahmed Rashid.
Evening lineup:
60 Minutes will feature: a report on the debate surrounding a publisher's plan to expunge the word "nigger" from Huckleberry Finn (preview); an interview with New York's Archbishop Timothy M. Dolan in which he discusses the Catholic church's sex abuse scandal (preview); and, a report on a New York charter school's experiment with paying non-unionized teachers a higher salary (preview).
On Comedy Central:
The Daily Show and The Colbert Report were in reruns this week, so there are no new videos to share.
Instead, here's Jon Stewart's recent coverage of the Republican war on women.
The Daily Show
Monday: Author Sarah Vowell ("Unfamiliar Fishes")
Tuesday: TBA
Wednesday: TBA
Thursday: TBA
And Stephen Colbert's recent interview with liberal hero Anthony Weiner.
The Colbert Report
Monday: Artists Steve Martin & the Steep Canyon Rangers ("Rare Bird Alert")
Tuesday: Ayman Mohyeldin (Al-Jazeera)
Wednesday: Author Nathan Myhrvold ("Modernist Cuisine: The Art and Science of Cooking")
Thursday: Jody Williams (Nobel Women's Initiative)
Elsewhere:
After failing at elementary history last weekend in Massachusetts New Hampshire, Michele Bachmann used her remedial math skills to prove the media's liberal bias.
"We all know there’s a double standard in the media … as we know all 3,400 members of the mainstream media are part of the Obama press contingent," she told The Laura Ingraham Show.
3,400 members of the MSM! Where did she even get that number? (Probably a blog? Or a Culver's kids menu placemat?) It seems a bit ... small, actually. The New York Times Co. has more than 7,500 employees. The Bureau of Labor Statistics counts 5,820 professional "Broadcast News Analysts" alone!
Even assuming that some of those analysts are good conservatives, the entire point of the bias myth is that liberals vastly outnumber conservatives in the supposedly objective media. If there are just 3,400 members of the MSM, then the vast majority of reporters, editors, pundits, journalists and publishers must be both outside the mainstream and also fair and unbiased.
Meanwhile:
Bachmann's potential 2012 running mate, Sarah Palin—who is now less popular among independent voters than Charlie Sheen—came face-to-face with the lamestream media while building her foreign policy credentials at a shopping mall in India.
It appears that our coverage from yesterday has been a source of great consternation in the Palin camp -- which was not the intended result of our reportage. Since last evening there has been a virtual blackout of all information about her movements.
IRTV would want Ms. Palin to enjoy India to its fullest and would like her to know that we wish her well. And since we have established that someone from their team is actually viewing this blog, as no other media outlet is covering Ms.Palin (they are, it appears, not interested), we are confident that this message will get passed on to her.
And in related news:
James O'Keefe—who makes a pretty good living playing the media for fools—decided that what's good for the goose is not so good for the gander.
"You can take still pictures. If you want to ask him to film an interview afterwards, you can ask him for that, but you cannot film or record during the event, that's what he requested," Bayshore Tea Party member Charles Measley tells the photographer in a video posted on the newspaper's website.
"This is a guy that's in trouble with the law, he's got lawsuits up the gazoo for trying to help you with your freedom," Barbara Gonzalez, founder of the Tea Party group says in the video. "Because I feel like the people who came here to pay a lot of money, I don't want him to walk off."
The only winning move is not to play.
- Trix