Point and Click Journalism

"Here's Barack Obama's 'bold and innovative plan to reform America's tax code':

"A new $500 income tax credit for everyone who works and pays payroll taxes.

"A new mortgage interest tax credit for homeowners who can't currently take advantage of the existing mortgage tax deduction.

"Elimination of all income tax for seniors with incomes under $50,000 per year.

"A new program in which the IRS sends prefilled tax returns to people with simple taxes.

"I know that it's unfair to expect Obama to live up to his own hype every day. Not every proposal from his campaign is really going to be bold and innovative, even if he says it is. But really, if he's planning to campaign as the guy with fresh ideas, he's going to have to do better than this.

"#1 is basically a convoluted way of reducing payroll taxes. It's OK, I guess. #2 is dumb. Why should homeowners get even more special treatment than they get now? #3 is just special interest group pandering. There's no reason a senior citizen making $45,000 should be exempt from paying income tax. #4 is fine, but trivial, and doesn't actually change the tax code at all.

"I know the Obama fans out there are going to jump all over this, but I have to say that the guy's losing me. He's an inspiring speaker, and given the realities of how presidents exercise power that's no small thing. But he sure is cautious to a fault."

Former ABC correspondent Richard Gizbert takes a swipe at Jon Stewart for his handling of John McCain:

"McCain is a candidate for President of the United States. And he lies.

"McCain's most recent appearance was made over the phone from New Hampshire and the two men tossed around ideas for new names for McCain's campaign bus, the Straight Talk Express.

"They kibitzed a little. They called each other my friend and joked about how McCain's 11th appearance on the show was a record.

"There was no examination of the candidate's ideas, no exploration of McCain's ludicrous statements on the so-called 'Petraeus' (read: White House) report on the so-called surge (read: escalation) . . .But as Stewart said, repeatedly, in their most recent broadcast encounter, John McCain is his friend.

"By giving this kind of politician a free pass on his show, Jon Stewart is doing the very thing he has quite rightly criticized the mainstream media for: failing to do the job we have come to expect from him.

"He may be helping his friend, the candidate. But he's hurting America. And it's not funny."

But it's okay if he kids around with Democratic candidates, as long as he roughs up Republicans?

I've been scouring the Net, searching for anyone this side of Mary Mapes who says Dan Rather helped himself with his $70-million suit against CBS. No luck. Here's what media observers are saying, starting with Huffington Post's Rachel Sklar:

"Is it rational? Opinion seems to be . . . no. Not so much, to revive the single worst mistake you ever made and try to explain it by saying that it wasn't really yours. Whoever counseled him on that strategy was an idiot -- if he had thrown his lot in with the other fired staffers, admitting responsibility but not all the responsibility, seeing as [former CBS News chief Andrew] Heyward had signed off on the piece and Moonves had all but exculpated Heyward. The scapegoat charge might have rung more true if others below Rather -- the guy who said those words on screen -- had not been fired while Rather kept his job."

National Review's Jonah Goldberg:

"Now he's back like a crazy man who shows up unannounced at the Christmas party smelling like cabbage and old newspapers, wearing a trench coat but no pants. He wants $20 million in compensatory damages and a whopping $50 million in punitive damages. I'm no fancy lawyer guy, but last I checked, punitive damages were awarded to send a signal that 'this must never happen again.' So what's the 'this' here? That network news divisions should never again spend weeks selling off their credibility like a fire sale at Wal-Mart, claiming their story was 'fake but true,' only to cave in to reality and admit they made a mistake?"

Jeff Jarvis: "Dan Rather is proves himself once again to be such a egotistical fool. He's crying -- puffy red eyes and all -- and suing CBS because they eased him aside (when they should have dumped him long before). He still refuses to take responsibility for muffing a story and harming his own credibility and that of the network and, for that matter, the profession . . .

"And he has such an oversized ego that he can' t see how egotistical it is for him to sue for not getting enough attention and airtime. The bottom line remains that he reported to the world a story that relied on documents that turned out to be fake but by refusing to seek the truth on them or acknowledge the issue for days -- or even until now -- he pulled the rug out from under his own story and his own reliability. He shows that as many charged, he does have a grudge with George Bush."

Roger L. Simon of Pajamas Media says "the extent of the former anchorman's delusions . . . now approaches clinical cognitive dissonance. Rather somehow still believes he was promulgating the truth, unable to make the obvious distinction between what he 'feels' to be true and an evident forged document.

"Or he seems to believe that because his arguments thrash about like some pathetic wounded animal, one moment implying that CBS forced him to promote a lie and the next implying that it wasn't a lie after all. Cognitive dissonance, indeed."

Howard Kurtz hosts CNN's weekly media program "Reliable Sources."