Immorality does not care what you look like. It does not care what your age, race, nationality, religion, sexual preference, or political affiliation is.  But .... There are Immoral Democrats.

Terrorists

I WONDER IF JOHN KERRY THINKS THIS IS IMMORAL. 

IN Lynn Stewart's Party (The Democratic Party) New York Sun Editorial February 17, 2005, and as reported on FOX news, Hinchey’s Hunch, Tuesday, February 22, 2005, By Brit Hume:

Never elected Democrat Senator Menendez, D-NJ, was for Ned Lamont, before he was against him. No wait, he's now for him again due to a different venue. My mistake.

Enlighten NJ has the details of how the NY Times blog played right along with a media hit on Republican Senatorial Candidate Tom Kean, Jr.

They claimed Kean fell into a political trap set by Menendez, so what if he had to lie to them to pull it off. How nice of them to call the Times later and change their tune once again ... after the event and the headline.

The two [Bob Menendez and Tom Kean] appeared at a candidate forum yesterday sponsored by the Metro West Jewish Federation, and they discussed the usual topics: the Iraq war, Social Security, and stem cell research.

As NewsBusters reported Friday, CNN recently aired videos supplied by terrorists inside Iraq showing snipers attacking American soldiers. As a result of this outrageous behavior, Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-California), chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, has asked for all of CNN’s reporters currently embedded with U.S. military units be removed. As reported by the Associated Press:

The chairman of the House Armed Services Committee asked the Pentagon on Friday to remove CNN reporters embedded with U.S. combat troops, saying the network's broadcast of a video showing insurgent snipers targeting U.S. soldiers was tantamount to airing an enemy propaganda film.

The tape, which came to the network through contact with an insurgent leader, was aired Wednesday night on "Anderson Cooper 360" and repeated Thursday.

The article continued:

The midterm elections are approaching and some members of the media are revving up their bias. MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann recently suggested that President Bush might be as big a threat as the terrorists. This was only a day after referring to conservative talk show hosts who visited the White House as the "Legion of Doom." CNN’s Jack Cafferty wondered if Karl Rove is planning an "October surprise" to salvage the Republicans’ chances in the midterm elections.

The print media have also offered unrestrained attacks from the left. A "Washington Post" report described House Speaker Dennis Hastert appearance as "a cross between Wildford Brimley and Jabba the Hutt." Nothing quite like objectivity, huh? A former "New York Times" bureau chief recently characterized the Christian right as "fascist." Perhaps he’d been chatting with "Newsweek" columnist Jonathan Alter. Alter told Don Imus he hoped the country has seen the last of "values voters."

The "Today" show fawned over Barack Obama, describing him as "electrifying" and a "rock star." This was on the same day that they giddily predicted a "perfect storm" to wipe out the Republicans in the midterms. Another early AM program, CNN’s "American Morning"encouraged author David Kuo to call for Christians to boycott the upcoming election.

Writing in Time Magazine for the October 23, 2006 issue, Leslie H. Gelb lamented “To me the relentless mud slide of insurgency and civil war in Iraq is leading to unacceptable strategic disaster for the U.S. There appear to be no viable paths to avoid it.”

This is a common theme used throughout both the print and electronic media today. If the American press were commanding the war in Iraq, we would already have bowed our heads in defeat.

Since that attitude is so prevalent among news outlets and publications, it was refreshing to hear a relatively simple, but thought-provoking suggestion offered on Fox News Live, October 20, 2006. Ghazal Omid, a Muslim scholar was a member of a panel that fielded questions about the war. When asked about the impossible insurgency situation, she suggested we put resolution to that element of the conflict in the hands of Iraq’s religious leaders.

This week’s cover story on "Why Barack Obama Could Be The Next President" is really part of an enormous package offering hope to liberals about defeating the conservative movement, especially the religious right. There is a six-page article by Joe Klein about being dazzled by Obama the "political rocket," a six-page excerpt from Obama’s book The Audacity of Hope, explaining how "progressives" can neutralize religious conservatives, and, just to stay on point, a three-page excerpt from David Kuo’s book Tempting Faith titled "Why a Christian in the White House Felt Betrayed."

Klein's cover story, titled "The Fresh Face," tried to sound detached that Obama’s not "quite ready to answer the tough questions." (As you’ll see, Klein’s tough questions are pressing from the left, and he’s unhappy that Obama’s slow to commit.) Klein began in typical jaunty fashion about how Obama wows a Rockford audience with "sly hipster syncopation" and how his style is "quietly conversational, low in rhetoric-saturated fat; there is no harrumph to him."

You have to wonder what the bigwigs at CNN were thinking when they decided to give King Bush-basher Jack Cafferty an hour-long special – the opener of a six-part series – less than three weeks before the midterm elections. Of course, the flipside is that they knew exactly what they were doing, and got exactly what they wanted – 60 minutes of anti-Bush and anti-Republican propaganda less than three weeks before the midterm elections.

Here are some of the lowlights that occurred in just the first five minutes (video here, hat tip to TVNewser). Cafferty began:

Original caption: Former President Bill Clinton speaks with reporters, Thusday, Oct. 19, 2006, during a campaign appearance for Democratic senatorial candidate James Webb in Arlington, Va.

"You, in the back with the red skirt, room 320."

Two weeks ago, The Washington Post's Steven Mufson reported a story the front page of the Business section about conspiracy theories floating around the Internet about "Big Oil" lowering gas prices to help the GOP in midterm elections. If that's news to you, you don't know Jack. Cafferty, that is.

Well now a real and open international conspiracy, OPEC, the international oil cartel comprised of mostly shady authoritarian countries, is working hard to raise oil prices by working in concert to limit oil supply.

Mufson wrote up the story for the Post, but it was shoved down to page D3 in today's paper.

You can read more about it at my article here.

Imagine you're a leading news magazine. You've published a major story claiming that Afghanistan is a brewing disaster in which Al-Qaeda can once again roam with impunity. So bad is the situation, say you, that for purposes of your article you've dubbed the country "Jihadistan."

Now comes the Pentagon, and in painstaking, point-by-point fashion, refutes so many of your article's assertions as to call its overall validity into question. How do you respond?

A. In a rigorous, systematic manner, you contest the Pentagon's arguments and prove that you were correct in the first place.

If the war in Iraq were solely a military engagement, it would have ended long ago. Al Qaeda and its ad hoc allies are militarily insignificant. In a standing battle, they'd be wiped out in a matter of minutes.

The enemy there realizes this and has moved to a strategy that emphasizes small skirmishes and targeting civilians, not in the hopes of winning the day, but in the hopes of intimidating Iraqis--and Americans. They've said as much repeatedly that their goal is to scare us and our allies into yielding.

With that fact in the public record, you'd think no American media outlets would play into this strategy. You'd be wrong, though. CNN continues to play al Qaeda's useful idiot by defending its airing of footage of American troops being sniped at by terrorists saying it's only interested in providing "the unvarnished truth:"

Media types are trying to understand why their carefully crafted agenda journalism, and fake and staged news, are not having the desired effect among the lumpen proletariat.

Reuters explains the latest mainstream meme, the public is "numb" to Iraq war deaths:

But with the U.S. military death toll hitting 2,787 on Friday, and with 73 deaths so far in October, it is shaping up to be the deadliest month for U.S. forces since the Falluja offensive two years ago.

Analysts said even local media coverage struggles to overcome the numbing affect of the steady flow of deaths.

Yesterday, I reported on a new Media Research Center study that documented how the ABC, CBS and NBC evening newscasts have aired just two unfavorable stories about Nancy Pelosi since she was elected House Minority Leader (about one every 24 months), and haven’t labeled her a “liberal” since November 14, 2002 — in spite of her hardcore liberal voting record, as admired by the liberal Americans for Democratic Action.

Now, it seems Pelosi’s media admirers are trying to coronate her as the next Speaker of the House even before the voters go to the polls. CBS News is touting a profile of Pelosi (“Two Heartbeats Away”) set to air on Sunday’s 60 Minutes, and this morning’s (Friday’s) Today show on NBC aired a long, nearly all-positive profile that carried the on-screen headline “Speaker Pelosi? The Race of Her Life.”

This is too extraordinary for words – not the possibility of it happening, but that anybody in the drive-by media would even suggest it. After all, if there ever was proof that the press are colluding with Democrats, here it is.

ABC News's "The Note" reported on October 19 that members of “The Old Media” are “giddy with excitement over the prospect of the Bush-Cheney-Rove-Mehlman machine losing," and are having “secret morning conference calls with Howard Dean and George Soros” to discuss how they “can keep the meta-narrative (‘The Democrats are going to beat Bush and run Congress!!’) going for another 19 days, without interruption.”

This is akin to Newsweek’s Eleanor Clift actually saying something bad about Bill Clinton. Yet, there it was, in black and white. Please be advised that the writers by-lined included Mark Halperin, David Chalian, Teddy Davis, Tahman Bradley, Sarah Baker, Catrin Jones, Erica Anderson, and Daniel Steinberger. As such, this wasn't one writer's opinion:

On last night’s Hardball, Bill Clinton was depicted as a unifying "Moses"-like figure while Karl Rove was portrayed as a divisive "evil genius." In describing Bill Clinton on a campaign stop at Georgetown University, NBC’s Kevin Corke used biblical terms: "It was as if Moses himself had returned. Former President Bill Clinton, the man some believe could figure prominently in helping to lead Democrats back to the political promised land, was back at his alma mater, Georgetown, for a major speech this week."

And then later in the program the Washington Post's John Harris, painted Clinton's politics as a "unifying" but Bush’s, specifically, Karl Rove’s politics as "divisive" as he and Hardball host, Chris Matthews wondered what the "evil genius," had "up his sleeve."

When Doro Bush Koch came on ABC's "The View" on Friday to discuss her book on her father, President George H.W. Bush, "My Father, My President," about 40 minutes into the hour, she was interviewed only by Elisabeth Hasselbeck and Barbara Walters -- no Rosie O'Donnell, no Joy Behar. Some of the questions were still less than soft. Walters asked about how her brother's drinking problem affected their mother. (She said that she didn't want to downplay the drinking problem, but that the media overplayed it...and mmm, still is, Barbara?) Hasselbeck asked about how Jeb Bush has suggested Bill Clinton's taking advantage of her father and his friendship, which she answered by talking of how kindly Clinton treated her dad on their tsunami tour in Indonesia.

One day after getting the celebrity treatment on "Today," Senator Barack Obama stopped by CNN’s "American Morning" to receive fawning questions from Soledad O’Brien. The big difference in the coverage is that while NBC's Meredith Vieira referred to Obama as a "rock star," O’Brien only mentioned that "some people say he is the brightest star in the Democratic Party." Isn’t it great when one media outlet differentiates itself from another? The morning host, who only mentioned Iraq and North Korea in passing, found time for particularly tough questions, including this hardball: "What’s your biggest fear?" Most of the anchor’s queries were of the short variety:

O’Brien: "Politics seems particularly mean these days."

Obama: "Yes."

O’Brien: "I think, we see partisanship that you see. And sort of, as you mentioned, in D.C. that you don't necessarily see in the American people. So why don't politicians get that?"

For general discussion and chat.

UPDATE: My BMI article is available here.

CBS's Katie Couric led her October 19 "Evening News" with salacious, but non-political developments in Foleygate pertaining to the ex-Congressman and his relationship as a teenager with a Roman Catholic priest.

But while her rivals at ABC and NBC also covered the Foley news, they also gave full reports on the Dow's record close above 12,000. Couric only briefly mentioned the news, and followed it with a brief item about how former NYSE chairman Richard Grasso was ordered to return millions from a retirement package.

Of course Grasso's overcompensation, while newsworthy, has no bearing on the actual health of the economy or the stock exchange. But including it without explanation as a complement to the Dow story is a way to negatively spin an otherwise positive development to a general news audience.

I will shortly post an article to the MRC's BusinessandMedia.org Web site and post an update when that article is available online.

Just in time for the holidays, the gang over at YouTube has added a new flag to their videos to assist their “community” in determining “inappropriate” content. Our friend at Ms Underestimated has created the following capture of the new screen being put into effect:

Frankly, this is every liberal YouTuber’s dream:

The Associated Press reported late Thursday evening that the chairman of the House Intelligence committee Peter Hoekstra (R-Michigan) has suspended a Democrat staffer over possibly being the source of the recently leaked National Intelligence Estimate to the New York Times (hat tip to Michelle Malkin): “In a letter to Hoekstra dated Sept. 29, Rep. Ray LaHood, R-Ill., a committee member, said the Democratic staffer requested the document from National Intelligence Director John Negroponte three days before a Sept. 23 story by the Times on its conclusions.”

For those that have forgotten:

Who is Jake Tapper? He was the chief political correspondent for the lefty Salon.com. His book about the 2000 campaign, Down and Dirty: The Plot to Steal the Presidency, was so biased against Bush that even fellow liberal Jonathan Alter panned it.

Tapper now patrols the political beat for ABC. But his lopsided report on congressional scandals on this morning's GMA reveals that he has lost none of his partisan edge. While Washington University prof Steven Smith was shown stating that 20 members of Congress are currently caught up in sex or money scandals, Tapper focused on seven: six Republicans and only one Democrat.

In Tapper's Republican Hall of Shame were:

• George Allen, for 'macaca' and other allegations of racial insensitivity.
• Don Sherwood, whose apolgetic TV ad Tapper described as standing for the proposition: "yes I had a mistress but I did not try to strangle her."
  
  
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One has to wonder how liberal cartoonist Ted Rall can sell his vitriolic scribblings to anyone other than the Nation and Keith Olbermann. Yet, maybe three weeks before an election, the drive-by media find this kind of stuff appropriate, for his October 19 offering (hat tip to Ms Underestimated) is a truly disturbed, ultra-left-wing insult to America’s soldiers and the President.

The strip was apparently fashioned after a letter written to the New York Times by a Major Gary P. Brickner who wrote of his experience walking through Newark