In a bit of news that probably won't be blared too loudly by the MSM, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) strongly implied that Cindy Sheehan misled him in a letter that precipitated their meeting today (Tuesday, September 27, 2005). Sen. McCain believed the meeting would be attended by "constituent mothers" from Arizona. But when the encounter transpired, that was not the case.

After their afternoon meeting, Sen. McCain was interviewed on the Sean Hannity Show (radio). Sean asked the Senator about the meeting. (Audiotape on file, emphasis mine.)

HANNITY: Let me ask you about your meeting with Cindy Sheehan today. I don't have a lot of time. How did it go?

McCAIN: Uh, we agreed to disagree. I was a little disappointed, and let me tell you why. I got a letter from her, which I got in my hand. It says, "I am a constituent of yours. I, along with a number of constituent mothers representing Cindy Sheehan from Arizona ..." basically. OK? So, I agreed to meet with her, and nobody, no mother or family member from Arizona showed up.

Gaggle is a daily comic strip about the Washington press corps and Larry the press secretary. Larry deals with the shenanigans of reporters who couldn't imagine anyone voting for a Republican.

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Story compares caffeine to Steroids, but leaves out how commonplace it is.

     A new energy drink for kids, KickStart Spark was treated as a gateway drug and as bad as steroids on the September 26 ABC “World News Tonight.”.

     ABC’s problem with the beverage was the amount of caffeine it contained – less than a cup of coffee. While the report mentioned that children already consume a lot of caffeine from soft drinks and chocolate, it exaggerated the danger and downplayed the benefits of KickStart Spark.

     Reporter Dan Harris began the story by linking the drink to a major drug controversy. “There's been growing concern about the use of performance-enhancing substances by young people since baseball’s steroids scandals.”

     ABC then interviewed Einstein Medical College dietician and nutritionist Keith Ayoob on the drink and heard his fears it will lead to more hazardous behavior. He explained, “It worries me that first it starts out with caffeine, and then it goes on to other things that could be even more dangerous.” The report didn’t explain what would be worse.

     If caffeine were a gateway drug, then this nation would be in peril. The average American consumes 1.64 cups of coffee per day. Fifteen percent of the average beverage consumption per person was coffee and tea in 2004. Worldwide, more than 400 billion cups of coffee are consumed every year.

     No one who liked the drink or anyone from the company, Advocare, was shown in the report. The company’s Web site was displayed on the screen, and quoted twice. The first time was a simple statement of what the product does – “provides focused and long-lasting energy that's just right for children.” The second time the company’s statement was quickly refuted.

     Advocare stated that KickStart Spark “contains vitamins and minerals essential for children's balanced nutrition.” Harris quickly responded that “nutritionists say children can get those vitamins without the caffeine, just by eating healthy foods.” While a true statement, no mention if getting vitamins and minerals with caffeine is worse than no vitamins at all. According to Advocare's Web site, only 8% of children are getting all of the daily recommended nutrients.

On CNN's “American Morning” today, host Miles O’Brien and correspondent Aneesh Raman downplayed the significance of the announcement that the number 2 al Qaeda operative in Iraq was killed on Sunday by a joint Iraq/U.S. maneuver.  In fact, their exchange suggested that even if the head of al Qaeda in Iraq, Abu Musab al Zarqawi, was killed or captured, things still wouldn’t improve in that country:

RAMAN: But, Miles, it's always unclear whether the capture of anyone outside of the Zarqawi himself, will really impede this organization.

M. O'BRIEN: Well, you have to ask the question, if they get Zarqawi, will that stop it either?

Yet, maybe more interesting is that the report began with Raman discussing a suicide bombing in Baqubah that killed nine innocent Iraqis rather than the news about the death of the #2 al Qaeda operative.

What follows is a complete transcript of this report, and a video link.

This was on the second segment on last night's Hardball with Chris Matthews. Rep. King mowed Chris over once again:

KING: Chris you want me to answer the question. Just because the President doesn't watch you on television doesn't mean he's not doing his job. Franklin Roosevelt wasn't hired to listen to radio accounts of D-Day. You're hired to do the job and the President can do his job without having to listen to Chris Matthews or Andrea Mitchell or Tim Russert or any of the others. He is doing his job.

Video available in WMV.

The dramatic aftermath of Hurricane Rita moved the latest “antiwar” rally to page 12 on Sunday's New York Times (although the front page accidentally sent readers to page 14). But the warp and woof of the reporting was the same. Reporter/publicist Michael Janofsky’s report followed all the traditional rules.

1. Highlight the massive turnout. “Vast numbers of protesters from around the country poured onto the lawns behind the White House on Saturday to demonstrate their opposition to the war in Iraq, pointedly directing their anger at President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney.” Give Janofsky credit for noticing the rally’s central focus: anti-Bush anger.

2. Channel protest-organizer claims that this wasn’t another scattershot rally attacking every problem from a different radical direction. “[B]ut unlike the more varied themes of recent protests against administration policies, antiwar sentiment on Saturday was consistent throughout.” This certainly does not match conservative reporter Byron York at National Review : “For a demonstration that was ostensibly about the war, there was a lot of talk about other things. Especially Katrina.”

Rene Syler delivered this little blurb at 8:01 today on the Early Show:

In upstate New York, a plea deal in a teacher sex case. Beth Geisel, a former Catholic school teacher, will be sentenced in November for having sex with a 16-year old student. The 42-year old mother of four will serve six months in jail.

Maybe I'm missing something, but why is Geisel's status as a "mother of four" included? The woman is a self-confessed rapist, having had sex with a minor, and what's more a minor under her care and responsibility as a school teacher. But with the news item delivered as it was, it sounds almost like we should feel sorry her for her being kept from her kids from the next six months just because she had a tryst with some guy.

The media is starting to admit that it "recycled and amplified" many "unverified reports" about violence in New Orleans following Katrina.

The LA Times reports:

"The New Orleans Times-Picayune on Monday described inflated body counts, unverified 'rapes,' and unconfirmed sniper attacks as among examples of 'scores of myths about the dome and Convention Center treated as fact by evacuees, the media and even some of New Orleans' top officials'....

"Journalists and officials who have reviewed the Katrina disaster blamed the inaccurate reporting in large measure on the breakdown of telephone service, which prevented dissemination of accurate reports to those most in need of the information. Race may have also played a factor.

Nearly three times as many of those polled in a new Gallup survey said they believe the media are “too liberal” than “too conservative.” Gallup's Tuesday press release for the poll, which is earning publicity for how it found that “trust and confidence in the news media is up” from last year, reported: “When asked about the news media's political slant, Americans are much more likely to say they are too liberal (46%) than they are to say they are about right (37%) or too conservative (16%). Those views are consistent with what Gallup has measured since 2001. The percentage of Americans saying the news media are too liberal has ranged between 45% and 48%, and has always been the plurality response. There has been a slight increase in the public's sentiment that the media are too conservative, from 11% in 2001 to 16% today.”

Last year, 48 percent saw the media as “too liberal” compared to 15 percent who thought the media were “too conservative.” Given the plus/minus three percent margin of error, the numbers are essentially unchanged from last September. More results follow.

From Tom Shales's WaPo review this morning of the new Geena Davis vehicle, "Commander-in-Chief":

But when she gets tough, she's formidable, even if "the issues" in the pilot are not exactly earth-shaking. Chief among them is the case of a young woman in Nigeria who, by local custom, is to be buried up to her neck in sand and stoned to death for the crime of having sex and giving birth before marriage.

Maybe such things really happen, but by leading off the series with it, Lurie suggests that the show won't be about a female president and her problems of adjustment but instead about a myopic busybody who sees herself as a feminist first and leader of the people second (or third).

In the weeks that have followed Hurricane Katrina hitting New Orleans, much of the mainstream media have been pointing a finger of blame at the federal government for not properly funding that city’s levee system.  This morning, CNN did a report that tears some holes in this premise.

On “American Morning,” John King visited South Lafourche Parish, Louisiana, a coastal community just thirty-five miles south of New Orleans.  What he found was quite surprising: a town that has been hit by Katrina and Rita just like New Orleans, but has not suffered near the damage. 

Why?  Well, because the local community decided to augment federal funds for their levee system with local tax dollars to install higher quality storm and hurricane protection than what surrounding parishes and cities did.  As a result, CNN this morning gave us all a wonderful look at what happens in this nation when local communities look out for themselves without relying on the federal government's protection. 

What follows is a full-transcript of this interview, along with a video link. 

http://www.oilydog.org -- BEWARE: it is a sad picture albeit the dog is still on his feet, in the picture, and no one (as usual) knows exactly what happened to him afterwards except, we do know this: the journalists who took the photo walked away.)  So I am putting this song out on the web in various places.

the water's going down today
there's workers going by
and journalists are out there too
to profit while they spy
the work is cleaning oil
which has leaked and made a bog
and up to them comes begging
just a little oily dog

the working guys they give him pats
he was hoping for much more
he needs water, and he needs to get
this oil off his fur
the working men have work to do
the boss is there to mind
perhaps they think there's hope because
the journalists are behind