Obama White House Tells Fox to Take a Hike

Chrysler ad a political football

(NEWSER) - God bless America ... and the Chrysler bailout ... seemed to be the message that left football fans misty-eyed after Clint Eastwood's Super Bowl Chrysler ad. It's "halftime" in America, and we're all pulling together for a brighter economic future, says the gravelly-voiced star. But Eastwood was opposed to the bailout that made the Chrysler turnaround possible, and now the ad has become a political football as Dems score points with it and the GOP tackles it, notes ABC News . “Saving the American Auto Industry: Something Eminem and Clint Eastwood can agree on," crowed White House spokesman Dan Pfeiffer on Twitter, referring to Eminem’s Chrysler ad during last year's Super Bowl. "Powerful spot," chimed in Obama re-election strategist David Axelrod. But George Bush's political maven Karl Rove snapped that he was "offended" by the ad, which he argued was orchestrated by the administration to paint a rosy future. More»

Roger Ailes' plan was a winner, anchor says

(NEWSER) - Fox News has plenty of critics— including Kermit the Frog and Miss Piggy —but it also has more viewers than its two closest rivals combined, according to the latest Nielsen Ratings. The figures show that Fox is the most-watched cable news channel for the 10th year in a row, averaging 1.86 million viewers in prime time, while MSNBC had 775,000 and CNN had 689,000, the New York Daily News reports. More»

CNN, MSNBC, and Fox say they won't air his response

(NEWSER) - If you're hoping to watch Herman Cain deliver the Tea Party response to President Obama's State of the Union Address tonight, you're going to have to do it online , because none of the three major cable news networks tell the Atlantic Wire they plan to carry it. "We don't plan on taking it," an MSNBC spokesman says, and a CNN spokesman says much the same. Even conservative bastion Fox News says it won't broadcast the speech live, though it will stream it on FoxNews.com. More»

Editorials largely take the president to task

(NEWSER) - Barack Obama's decision to reject TransCanada's Keystone XL oil pipeline has set a lot of tongues wagging, with some of the biggest papers in the country devoting today's editorials to it. Here's what they're saying:

• "We almost hope this was a political call," says the Washington Post , "because on substance, there should be no question." Without the pipeline, TransCanada will sell to China, and US refineries will import from the Middle East—resulting in a lot more oil crossing the ocean in tankers.

...because he's not terribly interested in fighting it

(NEWSER) - Democrats saw the way Mitt Romney's super PAC destroyed Newt Gingrich in Iowa, and it terrified them, because President Obama's super PAC—or as Politico terms it, "not-so-super PAC"—doesn't have the muscle for anything like that. "It's like when China got the bomb," says one Democrat close to the PAC, "We thought we were the ones with cash supremacy. That's clearly not the case." Obama's Priorities USA Action has just $5 million in the bank, less than half Romney's $12 million. More»