For the month of September 2012, MSNBC's The Last Word with Lawrence O'Donnell beat out Fox News' On the Record with Greta Van Susteren in the key demo, racking up 444k demo viewers versus Van Susteren's 441k.
This marks the first time since 2001 that MSNBC has topped Fox in 10 p.m. demo for a month.
It is also the first time that O'Donnell's show has ever topped its Fox News counterpart in monthly demo ratings.
Al Gore, barack obama, Bill Clinton, George H. W. Bush, George W. Bush, Gerald Ford, H. Ross Perot, James Stockdale, John F. Kennedy, John Kerry, John McCain, Lloyd Bentsen, michael dukakis, Ronald Reagan 
RELATED: Newt Gingrich: If Obama's 'Believable' In First Debate, 'High Likelihood' He'll Win Election
Gingrich said that one of the Romney campaign's biggest problems is its inability to take its core conservative themes and turn them into more immediate messages to respond to breaking news. The campaign, in his view, needs to go beyond simply repeating the same talking points.
'I think that there are some people who advise the governor who believe that simple repetition of a mantra will get you there' And I explicitly don't believe that. I think you in fact have to engage the American people, which means you have to engage the news media, which means you have to take your mantra and fit it into very specific illustrations that fit that day's topics.'
Gingrich warned that the 'methodical slow careful way' the Romney campaign has been approaching thing lately puts them 'out of step' with the media, and they suffer from an inability to win the argument as a result.
However, Gingrich did acknowledge the inherent challenges of being a conservative having to 'conflict with' a vast majority of the national media, and emphasized the importance of a Romney victory over President Obama.
h/t POLITICO
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Babies are one of the oldest props in politics and advertising, whether they are being kissed at campaign rallies or swaddled in fresh linens in a commercial for laundry detergent. And, of course, a little girl starred in the grandfather of all attack ads, President Lyndon B. Johnson's 1964 'Daisy' commercial.
But this year babies have surfaced in ads designed to help Republicans chip away at the overwhelming support the president enjoys among women.
Peters noted that these ads are 'almost always produced by teams of ad men, not ad women.' He quotes Linda Kaplan Thaler, a veteran of the Al Gore, Bill Bradley and Hillary Clinton campaigns, who said she found the ads to be beyond the pale.
'Scare tactics are nothing new, but with babies? This goes to new extremes,' Kaplan Thaler told Peters. 'And when you are in a situation where you are telling voters something and not inviting a real conversation, you run the risk of voters having their own conversation.'
Peters quotes CNN contributor and GOP consultant Alex Castellanos as the opposing voice speaking from a Republican perspective. Of course, the Republican perspective in this case agrees with the Democratic perspective.
'People know they're in a hole,' said Mr. Castellanos, the Republican advertising consultant. 'What they want is to know that there is light at the end of the tunnel. They don't want you to throw the baby in the tunnel.'
Unsurprisingly, MSNBC jumped on the opportunity to criticize Republicans for doing what politicians have done since Demosthenes. MSNBC anchor Thomas Roberts invited Kaplan Thaler on his program to talk about how off-base and atonal the messaging was behind the baby ads.
'It's such an obvious ploy,' said Kaplan Thaler. 'Women see thorough it.'
Roberts noted in passing that the Obama campaign is also running ads featuring babies. That did not inspire the kind of unequivocal condemnation that the pro-Republican ads engendered in the Democratic consultant Kaplan Thaler' In fact, her employment history could, at least partially, explain her muted reaction? ' Nah.
About 30 minutes later, Alex Wagner's panel on the MSNBC program NOW featured a segment similarly critical of the baby ads.
'Do you think this works with mothers,' Wagner asked Daily Show co-creator Lizz Winstead.
'It really works with babies,' Winstead replied to uproarious guffaws from her fellow panelists. She went on to say that women would not be receptive to ads featuring babies because they believe that women should have access to birth control and somehow Mitt Romney aims to curtail that access.
Never mind that the women Winstead does not believe will be receptive to this ad have already forgone their access to birth control at least once ' perhaps she thinks that he ordeal of caring for an infant is enough to refocus the mind of a young mother on the importance of access to contraception.
'This is counterintuitive for getting women, I think,' Winstead concluded, because why would a young mother care about her child's financial future tomorrow when there are abortion rights issues on the table today?
The MSNBC panel agreed that these ads were intended to target women voters, a segment of the electorate that Romney has 'forfeited' in their estimation over the course of the last four weeks. 'Welcome to America, baby,' Wagner said mockingly. 'You're teething and have $50,000 in debt.'
Like most misapprehensions and appeals to conventional wisdom, the simplistic belief that women care for nothing beyond their access to contraception results from having failed to do the requisite homework. When women are asked to rate candidates on things other than what are traditionally considered 'women's issues,' women are often more concerned with the state of the economy and debt than their Republican-leaning male counterparts.
In the latest bipartisan Fox News poll, 33 percent of women said that the government wastes or misspends 'more than fifty percent' of revenue compared with 29 percent of men. When asked if a potential terror attack or the growing national debt was a bigger concern to them, 53 to 29 percent of women answered the debt. Women are split, 44 to 44 percent, on whether the president's stimulus helped the economy by adding jobs or hurt it by increasing the debt.
Finally, by 64 to 27 percent, all voters (including men, women, Republicans and Democrats, across every income bracket and demographic) believe the news media has been more focused on trivialities than on serious policy issues. Given the recent focus of the news media on the increasing frequency of babies appearing in Republican ads, one would have to assume that voters are probably more informed than cable news programs give them credit for.
> >Follow Noah Rothman (@Noah_C_Rothman) on Twitter
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'We're on the edge of the cliff, and we have got to start fixing it now. Otherwise, we're leaving a disaster to our children's and our grandchildren's future,' the billionaire and data-processing company founder told USA Today. 'Nobody that's running really talks about it, about what we have to do and why we have to do it. They would prefer not to have it discussed'The last thing I ever want to see is our country taken over because we're so financially weak, we can't do anything.'
Perot, who criticized John McCain and pushed for current GOP pres. candidate Mitt Romney in 2008, says he doesn't have it in his to champion presidential candidates anymore: 'I'm too old to do it now.' Things were easier during the Clinton administration. The former Independent candidate continued:
'We were just lucky, going through a period where we had the money flowing. ' It was just good luck that made it happened. Right now we're going through a period of bad luck.'
He said about as much around the 2008 election cycle:
'The situation in 1992 was not nearly as bad as it is now,' he says. 'If ever there was a time when it was necessary to put our house in order, it's now. It's like having cancer and being in denial. The conduct of the House and Senate is an embarrassment to the nation.'
So what about implementing a third party challenger? Perot isn't confident our country could actually follow through with this:
'It's almost impossible to do it. It would be a very healthy thing if you could get it done and make it happen, but it's very difficult to do, and very few people would want to try. ' They know they're going to be butchered from day one for what they've done, and much of the media will participate actively in that.'
How's that for bleak? Read the full article here.
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Colbert told Winfrey that The Colbert Report came about as 'an attempt to do a pundit show like Bill O'Reilly or Sean Hannity.'
'We wanted to do something that was a pundit show where the character was well-intentioned, poorly-informed, high-status idiot,' he said of his popular show that originated as a spin-off from Jon Stewart's Daily Show.
When Oprah asked which newsmen inspired the comedic persona, Colbert answered, 'O'Reilly would be the biggest example because O'Reilly's the king. O'Reilly's been number one in cable news for fifteen thousand weeks running or whatever.'
'He's papa bear,' Colbert added, repeating his well-known nickname for the Fox host.
Anderson Cooper, or as Colbert describes him, 'the silver surfer of cable news, just shiny and kind of sexy,' also serves as inspiration. In addition, Geraldo Rivera and his 'real sense of mission' in his reporting has inspired the faux-news persona.
Watch below, via OWN:
[h/t HuffPost]
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'How do you think a second term will be different?' Crowley asked. 'It's clear that Americans are generally not happy with the economy, you all say you're not happy with the economy at this point.' So, what then, would change in second Obama term?
'We've come a long way from when we were losing 800,000 jobs a month,' Axelrod said. The goal is not just to fix the economy, but also to create a thriving middle class, he added.
Crowley interjected, asking what the plan is to get there. Axelrod cited vague, favorable-sounding ideas like 'responsibly dealing with the deficit while leaving money to invest,' focusing on education, research and development, and clean energy.
'Those aren't sort of specific proposals,' Crowley pointed out. Axelrod mentioned proposals regarding education and manufacturing, which, he said, will pass. 'But they haven't passed,' Crowley replied.
Axelrod then took a different approach, seeking to remind Crowley that the other side's proposals include massive tax cuts that 'skew' to the wealthy, and slash funding for education and research.
Crowley noted that she's not suggesting who to support, again circling back to her central question: Is there a new plan? Or is the plan to stay the course?
'The president has a series of specific proposals,' Axelrod said, without volunteering any of those specifics. 'We need a long-term plan, Candy. Not taglines for a show like this, 30 days before the election.'
The segment below, via CNN:
Keep your mouth shut and let Romney step in his own poop.
and who could ever forget the classic Batman vs. Penguin debate from '68?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l63SRpGXBHE
YOU FORGOT POLAND!
Hahahahhaha! Awesome!
http://09v.k.af
H. Ross Perot was right about the free trade'
Clinton didn't solidify anything in the debate vs Bush' he earned 43% of the vote to win the election. Ross Perot is what won the election for Clinton, not Clinton
Wish they would have a real debate instead of these glorified press conferences. Anyone who saw the movie 'Game Change' can see how it's possible to bs your way through these. The debate prep for Stupid Sarah says it all.
The Reagan line is still the best.
I loved this compilation. Thank you for the walk down memory lane.
OH LAWD! None of the movies hold a candle to the TV series.
(yettabronstein@yahoo.com)
August 15, 2012
Ms. Caroline C. Hunter, Commissioner
FEDERAL ELECTION COMMISSION
999 E Street NW
Washington, DC 20463
Dear Ms. Hunter,
By way of introduction I was an independent candidate for President of
the United States in 1964, competing with Senator Barry Goldwater and President
Lyndon Johnson.
Unfortunately, with a campaign slogan 'Vote For Yetta And Watch Things
Get Betta,' I lost by an
incredible landslide. Although I
did receive more write-in votes than either Johnny Carson, Mickey Mouse and
Betty Boop combined.
My subsequent autobiography, 'The President I Almost Was,' (HAWTHORN
BOOKS 1965) became a best seller, with the paperback edition (AVON BOOKS), and
I cried all the way to the bank.
By the way, Ms. Hunter, I also sing,
and my recording of 'I Want To Hold Your Hand,' was chosen by Sir Paul
McCartney as the best cover song for a Beatles album of their favorites.
Now, as a senior citizen, I am
writing another book, 'Let Mother Kiss It,' that embodies my homespun remedies
for all kinds of emotional aches and pains.
However, the purpose of this letter is to complain about a confusion
among voters
at the polls. For example, I voted today in Southbury,CT to
nominate candidates running for both the House and Senate in November.
I became totally confused when I entered the voter location in the
Southbury Fire Station. Because
Democratic and Republican voters were being separated! In other words, Ms.
Hunter, as a Democrat I was not going to be allowed to vote for a Republican
candidate, Mark Greenberg!
Instead, I was herded towards the Democratic voting booths where I was
handed a ballot with only Democrat names. And the instructions for choosing
candidates was a maze of confusion. I didn't have a clue how many or few I
could choose. And there was nobody allowed to help me unravel this mess.
Accordingly, Ms. Hunter, there has to be a complete overhauling of the
Voters' ballots for the November elections. Otherwise there is going to be
another Florida fiasco that confounded voters and lost the election for Senator
Al Gore.
Thank you for your prompt consideration to this important matter.
Sincerely
yours, Mrs. Yetta Bronstein
I wish I could find the great bit of Bob Dole dealing with his time running out for an answer in 1996. He handled it well, and it made me like the guy for his wonderfully dry sense of humor.
'Gore came off as neither masculine nor intimidating.'
So true.