John Amato speaks for me:

Right wing TV Pundits destroy every segment on Democratic Convention 

Every time I turn on the TV and watch CNN and FOX (my hotel doesn’t get MSNBC) every Republican operative controls the dialog and direction of the panel discussion and it’s disgusting. Just one example—Hillary Clinton gave a brilliant speech last night, but every Amy Holmes-type talking head throws as much cold water on the speech as he or she can. The result is that the Dem talkers spend the rest of the time disputing the outrageous claims made and thus the GOP controls the entire framing and the entire segment. It’s shameful that the networks are allowing this to happen. I saw Jeffrey Toobin tell Amy that she was out of her mind with some of her comments and the discussion continues to that end. Soledad O’Brien comes back and says “well, that was a lively discussion.” Oh, no it was not. It’s a calculated ratf&@k. This is going on all day and all night.

Why is the Democratic Convention being ruined by these creeps? And why do all the networks allow it to happen? Why do we need them on in force to counter what is supposed to be our event?

I’m in Denver and it’s a completely different atmosphere. Party unison abounds, but you’d never know it from watching TV. Karl Rove acts like the biggest troll known to man—making sure to point out every little detail he dislikes. Well, his mission is to get McCain in the White House. But he’s the expert that Chris Wallace goes to for his “unbiased” take.

Will the Democratic talkers be allowed to do the same to the Republican Convention? I think not. It will be viewed as being an incredible event.

Update 1: After Bill Clinton spoke, it took Chuck Todd exactly 1 minute to attack Obama using a bulls**t Republican talking point that Obama is "borrowing" Biden's experience.

Our friends at Media Matters have launched an excellent new media watch blog called County Fair:

Why "County Fair"?

Longtime Springsteen fans may have caught onto our new blogs's name; it's copped from the relatively obscure, Nebraska-era song of his. (Here's a nice analysis of the tune; here are the lyrics.) After running out of "media"-based name possibilities for the blog (we're pretty sure they've all been taken by now), we just liked the idea the song conveyed of a meeting place for folks to gather.

By David Swanson

Imagine being so angry that you couldn't find a job that you were able to decide, as a man in Tennessee just did, that the way to solve your problems was to attack liberals - the people who support (albeit ineffectively) workers' rights, union rights, and fair trade, who oppose NAFTA, oppose tax breaks for shipping jobs overseas, support investing in job creation at home rather than wars abroad, and want to tax corporations and the super-rich rather than small businesses and working people.

A week ago, our Obama Escrow Pledge campaign made the Wall St. Journal. Today we made the NY Times:

Bob Fertik, president of Democrats.com, a progressive Web site, started asking his readers last month to pledge money to an escrow fund for Mr. Obama, as opposed to contributing to him outright. The idea was to make Mr. Obama rethink his decision to support the Bush administration’s wiretapping measure.

Last night, Chris Matthews and Terry McAuliffe got into a remarkably frank debate over whether The Media wants Hillary Clinton to stay in the race until the Convention (Matthews) or get out now (McAuliffe).

Our likely nominee Barack Obama now leads John McCain by 2.7% in the RCP Average - an astonishing achievement given the month-long Corporate Media sh*tstorm over Rev. Wright.

This is fantastic news for Democrats because the endless primary has been fairly negative, although not nearly as negative as many pundits and bloggers have claimed.

Exit polls in NC and IN showed a lot of Clinton supporters are angry at Obama, and this is depressing Obama's polls. When Clinton eventually drops out and endorses Obama, that will give Obama's polls a significant boost - possibly adding 5% to his lead.

And then Obama will be able to raise and spend huge amounts of money to go after McCain, while McCain scrounges for pennies.

The Democrat-hating Corporate Media keeps hammering the idea that Democrats are bitterly divided. Today's exit poll show roughly half of Clinton's supporters say they wouldn't vote for Obama in November, while roughly one-third of Obama's supporters say they wouldn't vote for Clinton.

Charlie Gibson and George Stephanopoulos are feverishly defending the questions they asked Obama and Clinton as perfectly legitimate. So BarbinMD has a few equally legitimate questions for the Corporate Media to ask McCain:

Wednesday's ABC debate enraged the Netroots, and the Corporate Media is really feeling the heat. I believe this is the first time MSNBC has acknowledged the power of the Netroots, although of course they turned it into an attack on Hillary Clinton rather than themselves.

I should never flip the dial to MSNBC when Chris Matthews is on because he's insane, but alas, I occasionally do.

Today, following the Bill Cunningham flap, Matthews is trying to figure out which way John McCain should play the radical right: should he pander to them to get their votes, or triangulate against them to get moderate votes? Here's his math:

I think McCain can pick up three votes for very vote he loses on the right, because I think you're right, the right will vote and I also think those suburbs are looking for a candidate still. That's why we keep hearing about Bloomberg.