A couple of left-wing groups organized a small protest outside the U.S. Capitol on Wednesday to denounce imaginary “cuts” in spending on programs for the poor, but instead of properly labeling the protesters or pointing out how the “cuts” are nothing more than a slowing of the rate of long-soaring growths in the programs, NBC Nightly News anchor Brian Williams saw non-ideological “religious activists” who were “arrested after a sit-in protesting a controversial Republican budget bill that will cut $42 billion from a range of federal programs, including health care for the poor and elderly, child care, student loans and food stamps."

Williams probably took his cue from AP reporter Elizabeth White, who led her dispatch by citing how “U.S. Capitol Police arrested 115 religious activists who were protesting a House Republican budget plan's cuts in social programs...” She described Jim Wallis, “the event's organizer,” simply as the “founder of the Christian ministry group Sojourners.” In fact, Sojourners, and co-sponsor Call to Renewal, are quite liberal. Even Wednesday's Washington Post, in a story previewing the protest, tagged Sojourners as a “liberal Christian journal.” Sojourners liked the AP story so much, they posted it on their Web site. (Lengthier transcripts, and an earlier example of NBC's hype of “cuts,” follow.)

On MSNBC's Countdown show on Wednesday night, while host Keith Olbermann attacked Atlanta-based syndicated conservative radio talk show host Neal Boortz, a photograph of former Democratic Senator Max Cleland of Georgia was mistakenly displayed on-screen.

During his regular "Worst Person in the World" segment, Olbermann normally chooses three nominees to be awarded the dishonor of that name. His three nominees are labeled as "Worse," "Worser," and "Worst." Boortz was given the runner-up label of "Worser" because of comments Boortz posted Monday on his blog regarding the possibility of clemency for death row inmate Stanley "Tookie" Williams. While Olbermann read the story on Boortz, whom he referred to as "one of those commentators who give free speech a bad name," Cleland's photograph was shown on-screen. (Once again, Olbermann picked up on something from the far-left Media Matters, which at least posted a picture of the real Boortz.)

Video: Real or Windows Media, plus MP3 audio

Below is a transcript of Olbermann's comments on Boortz from Wednesday, December 14:

Keith Olbermann: "The runner-up: Neal Boortz. He was another one of those radio commentators who give free speech a bad name. In a blog posting, Boortz predicted that California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger would commute the sentence of convicted killer Stanley 'Tookie' Williams because if he didn't, quoting Boortz here, 'there will be riots in South Central Los Angeles and elsewhere.' Boortz added, 'There are a lot of aspiring rappers and NBA superstars who could really use a nice flat-screen television right now,' unquote. So the guy's not only got no handle on predicting events, but he's also a racist? Okay."

This morning, it was the New York Times publishing a positive story about tomorrow’s historic elections in Iraq. ABC News has been doing a lot of optimistic segments on this subject since Sunday. Tonight, it was the “NBC Nightly News’” turn (video link to follow). Brian Williams introduced the segment by first suggesting that the “American media often cannot report the good news in Iraq because travel is still so dangerous.” He continued: “But tonight, we do have some extraordinary pictures of life there, and there are signs you'll see of progress.”

Richard Engel then showed young boys playing soccer on a street, a fashion show that occurred a month ago, along with a film festival. Then, on to the bastion of capitalism, the Baghdad stock exchange, where “without computers, traders take orders by phone and execute them by hand, an average of $3 million in shares trades here a day, 10 times the amount under Saddam.”

Wal-Mart is renowned as one of America’s largest retail chains. The company earned this distinction in part by fostering a reputation based on traditional American values. However, in a manner similar to how the other institutions overseeing this nation have betrayed what this great country was originally based, this beloved weekend destination and rainy-day hangout has sold out to radical tolerance and diversity.

For retailers such as Wal-Mart, Christmas is really a joyous time since it is the time of year such establishments bring in the lion’s share of their profits. You would think these merchants would not be ashamed to publicly acknowledge the celebration contributing so abundantly to their own prosperity. However, from the shame exhibited at the mention of the word “Christmas”, you’d think the greeting was some lewd comment scrawled across a restroom stall.

Hurricane Katrina is apparently still killing people. OpinionJournal.com's James Taranto reports:

Back in September we noted that some twisted souls on the Angry Left were hoping for an enormous death toll from Hurricane Katrina, because they thought that would hurt President Bush politically and diminish the 9/11 attacks and the threat of terrorism more generally. The actual death toll turned out to be in the low four figures--a terrible tragedy to normal people, but a disappointment for the aforementioned lefto sickos.

A story in the Associated Press, however, suggests that some people want to inflate the Katrina death toll. "Even as the official toll continues to rise when more bodies are found in once-flooded homes, the real total may never be known," the AP says. "The victims are scattered far and wide, and the connections of their deaths to the storm are not necessarily obvious."

Examples include "13-month-old Destiny McNeese, who rolled onto her stomach and suffocated on an air mattress after her family fled from Kentwood [La.] to Kentucky":

In this week’s edition of the New York Observer (hat tip to the Huffington Post), famed actor, writer, and movie director, Woody Allen, cast aspersions on President Bush, while gushing over former President Clinton. At the end of a piece by Suzy Hansen covering a range of topics from his past movies, his current one, and his life at the age of 70, the article concluded with Hansen asking Allen’s opinion of a number of people. When asked about George W. Bush, Allen responded:

During an interview with Karen Hughes Chris Matthews, harking back to his days in the Carter administration, pondered if America's polices were to blame for Osama Bin Laden's attacks. Matthews asked Hughes: "Are we sometimes to blame for the hell that we’ve raised? That`s all I`m asking. Is it always the other guys` fault, or do we do things that send signals that we are the enemy of those people?"

About 15 minutes into Tuesday's "Hardball," Matthews posed the following question to Hughes:

Two "breakthoughs" in stem-cell research announced at roughly the same time have, based on Google News searches, received very disparate treatment in news coverage.

Click here to view the Google News screen shot. Note: the "hours ago" indicator is only for the lead item listed. Both stories originated in news coverage in the early AM on December 13.

The first, originally covered by the Louisville Courier Journal, is about adult stem cells and how researchers are claiming that they can be made to do all the tricks that, until this "breakthrough," embryonic stem cells have been thought to be able to perform:

University of Louisville researchers have coaxed stem cells from adult mice to change into brain, nerve, heart and pancreatic cells. That could lead to treatments for human diseases and end the debate over embryonic stem cells.

"We have found a counterpart for embryonic stem cells in adult bone marrow. This could negate the ethical concerns," said Dr. Mariusz Ratajczak, leader of the research team and director of the stem-cell biology program at U of L's James Graham Brown Cancer Center.

This adult stem cell "breakthough" had only 31 "related items" in a Google News search as of about 10 AM today, with no apparent coverage by the Associated Press or the New York Times. United Press International is the only major wire service or major newspaper that has mentioned the story.

The second, primarily covered by The Washington Post's Rick Weiss ("Human Brain Cells Are Grown In Mice") appeared on Page A03 of the paper on Tuesday, December 13, and is about embryonic stem cells:

The New York Times finally checks out the Democrat-Jack Abramoff connection -- briefly, anyway.

Philip Shenon's "Democrat Returning Donations From Abramoff's Tribal Clients" reports that Democratic Sen. Byron Dorgan of North Dakota, ranking Democrat on the Senate committee investigating controversial lobbyist Jack Abramoff, is "returning $67,000 in political contributions from Mr. Abramoff's former partners and Indian tribe clients."

But although there is an obviously juicy hypocrisy angle to this story (Dorgan has been an outspoken critic of Abramoff), Shenon's story is relegated to a short piece at the bottom of page 24 in Wednesday's edition.

He notes:

"The ranking Democrat on the Senate committee investigating the Republican lobbyist Jack Abramoff announced on Tuesday that he was returning $67,000 in political contributions from Mr. Abramoff's former partners and Indian tribe clients. The lawmaker, Senator Byron L. Dorgan of North Dakota, has been accused of hypocrisy by Republicans for having not acknowledged the contributions from Mr. Abramoff's clients while at the same time sharply criticizing him in hearings of the Senate panel, the Indian Affairs Committee."

CBS’s Hannah Storm interviewed long-time Bush ally and current ambassador Karen Hughes on this morning’s “The Early Show,” and appeared rather testy and ready for a fight (video link to follow). Storm began by painting an incredibly negative view of Iraq leading up to tomorrow’s elections, and then hammered Hughes on why the ambassador thinks things will get better after Iraqis go to the polls for the third time this year: 

“What makes you think that the elections will be a turning point? What makes you think they will make Iraq a more secure place for its citizens and the U.S. troops there?”

When Karen Hughes cited a poll that showed growing optimism in Iraq it was no surprise that Matt Lauer was already armed with a poll he preferred that showed the opposite. In the 7:00am half hour Lauer asked Karen Hughes about America’s image in the Middle East: "When you travel around the world especially to Muslim countries, places like Pakistan and, and Egypt and Saudi Arabia when you talk about the subject of Iraq do the people that you talk to see U.S. forces there as occupiers or liberators"

Karen Hughes: "Well I think Matt actually it's very interesting. One of the things I came home with was the impression that people around in the region look at Iraq and they have a, a view that I don't think is supported by the Iraqi people themselves. They look at Iraq and they see the daily violence. And a lot of people told me, they worry that Iraq is not better off when in fact polling shows that the Iraqi people themselves believe their lives are pretty good and that they feel, I saw a poll this week 71 percent of the people in Iraq feel that, that their lives are good now and they're even greater numbers are optimistic that their lives will be even better a year from now. And so I think that's important that people in the region see that the Iraqi people themselves feel that they are better off than they were under the tyrannical rule of Saddam Hussein."

Medienkritik reports that German magazine Der Spiegel has a story entitled, "Execution of Tookie Williams: Self-Righteous State Organized Murder."

The article details how absolutely angry and furiously outraged Europe's moral elite is with the execution. In other news, German business ties with the Sudanese government are booming, thanks in part to direct support from the German government. Wonder how many black Africans the Sudanese government has executed of late? How "excruciating" was the death they suffered? Apparently not "excruciating" enough for the German media to care enough to report about its own government's dealings there...

Another article was headlined, "Execution in California: Williams' Excruciatingly Long Death."

They call the magazine “Newsweek,” but in today’s 24-hour news cycle, a weekly magazine that is seen as a recycler of old news is courting a death wish. To avoid this, Newsweek gives us haughty pieces of attitude, not only in the cover stories, but on the cover itself. Remember the cover on Iraq with the words “Bush’s $87 Billion Mess”?

This week’s edition is the latest in a series of let-‘er-rip Bush-bashing covers. It pictures President Bush floating encapsulated in a bubble with the headline “Bush’s World. The Isolated President: Can He Change?” The headline on the cover story inside is “Bush In A Bubble.” They worry that Bush is possibly “the most isolated president in modern history.”

Late last night, the New York Times decided to run a story alleging major ballot fraud on the eve of the Iraqi elections through fraudulent ballots from Iran:

Less than two days before nationwide elections, the Iraqi border police seized a tanker on Tuesday that had just crossed from Iran filled with thousands of forged ballots, an official at the Interior Ministry said. The tanker was seized in the evening by agents with the American-trained border protection force at the Iraqi town of Badra, after crossing at Munthirya on the Iraqi border, the official said. According to the Iraqi official, the border police found several thousand partly completed ballots inside. The official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly, said the Iranian truck driver told the police under interrogation that at least three other trucks filled with ballots had crossed from Iran at different spots along the border.

But there is one problem with the Times article... the single-sourced story appears to be totally false:

The head of Iraq's border guards denied police reports on Wednesday that a tanker truck stuffed with thousands of forged ballot papers had been seized crossing into Iraq from Iran before Thursday's elections. "This is all a lie," said Lieutenant General Ahmed al-Khafaji, the chief of the U.S.-trained force which has responsibility for all Iraq's borders. "I heard this yesterday and I checked all the border crossings right away. The borders are all closed anyway," he told Reuters....

USA Today practiced a “rip and read” of liberal talking points on winter heating costs with it’s headline for Richard Wolf’s December 12 story, “Some may face choice: Whether to heat or eat." Wolf’s article centered on critics of the Agriculture Department’s (USDA) decision to deny the requests of five states for a boost in food stamps spending.

The self-declared “nation’s newspaper” cribbed from a December 12 press release by America’s Second Harvest, whose headline read, “Heat or Eat? Millions of Americans Forced to Make the Choice This Winter; Energy Costs and Food Insecurity Reach Record Highs.”

Inside the A section today, Washington Post reporters Jonathan Weisman (economics beat) and Alan Cooperman (religion beat) combine to publicize the latest stunt by religious leftist Jim Wallis. The story is headlined: "A Religious Protest Largely From the Left: Conservative Christians Say Fighting Cuts in Poverty Programs Is Not a Priority." Give the headline writer a thimble of credit for at least using "Left" in the headline, although it may seem required for contrast. But the Post makes the typical liberal Wallis assumption: that the Christian imperative to help the poor is completely synonymous with favoring government welfare programs. Christians apparently must give at the office, instead of giving from their own wallets and hearts.

"We recognize the right of all women to choose whether, when, and under what circumstances to bear children. Reproductive freedom and responsibility are essential to other rights and opportunities, including pursuit of education, employment, financial security and a stable and fulfilling family life. Restrictions of reproductive choice are especially burdensome for young women and poor women. Girls Incorporated supports a woman’s freedom of choice, a constitutional right established by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1973 in Roe vs. Wade."

Would you say the foregoing statement, from Girls Inc. [see it here on the Girls Inc. web site]:

One has to wonder after reading two Associated Press articles.

The first, not attributed is about the Detroit Mayoral vote recount. Two Democrats are involved in the contested result. Neither candidate's party affiliation is named.

The second , by AP's Susan Gamboa, is about Prosecutor Ronnie Earle issuing "subpoenas for bank records and other information of a defense contractor involved in the bribery case of a California congressman" in the case of Tom Delay.

Setting aside the fact that Randy Cunningham is a FORMER congressman (properly identified later), no mention is made of Mr. Earle's Democrat affiliation. But Mr. Delay's "Texans for a Republican Majority" gets a mention. Additionally, one of the later paragraphs states that "Earle alleges that DeLay and two coconspirators funneled $190,000 in corporate contributions through the Texas political committee and an arm of the National Republican Committee to seven GOP state legislative candidates."

On Special Report with Brit Hume on Fox News, 13 December, 2005, Senator Joe Biden (D, Delaware) said the following in reply to President Bush’s third policy speech on Iraq, in Philadelphia yesterday:

“Failure to get a consensus constitution spells doom for our policy in Iraq. So what is the plan, Mr. President? That is still lacking.”

After saying that means participation by the UN, NATO, and Iraq’s neighbors, Biden added:

“If this time next year nothing has changed concerning in terms of our success rate, we will be out of Iraq. The American people will not sustain this.”

The transcript of this is not up yet, but these quotes are TiVo’ed and accurate.

The full answer to these historically foolish statements by Senator Biden were given by President Bush in the first ten minutes of his speech in Philadelphia, on Monday. Bush began by recounting the history of America writing its own Constitution. He took time to note that our first attempt to draft an acceptable constitution was an abject failure. Under the Articles of Confederation, our government failed financially, and there were armed rebellions in the streets.

As the President carefully pointed out, it took us “eight years to write our Constitution.” The Battle of Yorktown effectively ended the American Revolution in 1781. It was not until 1789 that our Constitution was both written and ratified, to replace the Articles of Confederation, which had failed.

So the first historical nonsense stated by Senator Biden was that the American people will not “sustain” more than a one-year wait to obtain workable constitution.

But the worse error in Senator Biden’s remarks, as compared to America’s own constitutional history, was his claim that to be successful, Iraq had to write a “consensus constitution,” acceptable to its neighbors. Is the Senator totally ignorant of recent history? Money, fighters and weapons are leaking into Iraq across its borders with Iran and Syria. Just today, Americans captured a tanker truck that came in from Iran which concealed thousands of forged ballots for the current Iraq election.