On Thursday's Countdown, MSNBC's Keith Countdown made Brent Bozell, President of the Media Research Center which runs NewsBusters, the “winner” of his nightly “Worst Person in the World.” Bozell's offense? Asserting that “probably a hundred Generals in the field in Iraq would disagree” with describing the situation in Iraq as a “civil war.” Olbermann demanded: “Okay, name them. We're waiting.” But seconds before Olbermann had inadvertently made Bozell's case as he recalled how “in August and September alone, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, General Pace and General Abizaid and General Casey all admitted that at minimum, Iraq could be headed to civil war.” Yes, “could” be “headed” for civil war, but not in one.

And, for someone who propounds to be such a stickler for accuracy (on Tuesday he ridiculed FNC for dropping one letter from his name), Olbermann flubbed a basic fact. Just as he did the last time he denounced Bozell as the “worst” (November 3 NewsBusters item), Olbermann called the Media Research Center the Media Research “Council.”

A night after the media were full of reports about how Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki had “snubbed” President Bush by deciding to not join a meeting with Jordan's King, Maliki snubbed CBS anchor Katie Couric who, nonetheless, teased “my interview with Iraq's leader” -- a session which she conducted by hastily sitting on a coffee table and which consumed barely 30 seconds of her newscast. Viewers heard two answers from Maliki, but just one question from Couric, a question the CBS Evening News played both in the up top tease and later in Couric's brief re-cap of her time with Maliki in Amman: “How frustrating has it been for you, Mr. Prime Minister, to not have greater authority sooner?"

Despite the brevity of the exchange, and how it was conducted with Couric sitting on the corner of a coffee table to face Maliki who sat on a sofa, Couric touted how “he sat down for a rare interview just after his meeting with the President.” Without irony, she noted how Maliki had “a lightning-fast summit” with President Bush.

Video clip, which best conveys the hurried nature of the encounter and how Maliki jumped up at the end (1:09): Real (2 MB) or Windows Media (2.4 MB), plus MP3 audio (400 KB)

Congressman-elect Again Calls on Jennings to Concede... SARASOTA, FL. (NS/BuchananForCongress) - Congressman-elect Vern Buchanan said today's analysis of Tuesday's parallel testing of Sarasota County voter machines shows no problems with the machines, further verifying the election results of November 7. The Congressman-elect renewed his call today for his former opponent Christine Jennings to concede the election... "The analysis of Tuesday's testing is further conformation of the official results of the election," said Buchanan. "It is an honor and a privilege to have been chosen by the voters to represent this District in Congress.   I hope that this exercise, combined with additional testing on Friday will erase any lingering concerns voters might have about the reliability of these machines.

Thanks to former President Clinton and victories in the recent midterm elections, Democrats are now launching a full out attack on Fox News, the only television news outlet that holds them accountable. Congressman Barney Frank (D-MA) appeared on Wednesday’s The O’Reilly Factor to explain his recent attack on Fox News and once again lashed out on Bill O’Reilly when he issued him challenging questions. O’Reilly asked Congressman Frank what his position is on income redistribution.

Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA): "Bill, will you please stop interrupting if you want a serious discussion?"

Bill O’Reilly: "No. I'm not going to interrupt. When you say something dopey, I'm going point it out. What do you think you are, the czar of the interview?"

For the second consecutive year, CBS seized upon the opportunity to view the White House Christmas decorations to ambush First Lady Laura Bush with questions about Iraq. However, when CBS interviewed first lady and Senator-elect Hillary Clinton in 2000, Jane Clayson ignored policy questions and instead highlighted Mrs. Clinton’s accomplishments and inquired about Mrs. Clinton’s favorite Christmas traditions.

On Thursday’s "Early Show," co-host Hannah Storm portrayed Iraq as hopeless and was dismayed that U.S. troops are not being withdrawn:

"And can you offer them words of comfort and hope as I think many of them were hoping that perhaps with the recommendations of the Iraq Study Group that maybe we would begin a gradual pullout of troops but yet, once again we hear today that our troops will be there indefinitely."

It may surprise conservatives, but CNN reporter Bob Franken alleged on Thursday’s "American Morning" that Democrats are eager to label Iraq a civil war in order to undercut U.S. support for remaining in the country. Considering the cable network’s cheerleading for the Democratic Party in the recently completed midterm elections, this plainspoken statement must have been unintentional. Franken’s comment came in the midst of an otherwise typical CNN report. The segment highlighted how all respectable individuals and organizations call the conflict a civil war, so why can’t President Bush? Remarking on the popularity of the civil war terminology, Franken offered an explanation for the Democrats embrace of the phrase:

Bob Franken: "But many experts say that designating this a civil war will undermine U.S. support even more, which might explain why so many Democrats are jumping on the bandwagon."

It's a competitive bout of conservative-bashing out of the Michael Richards N-word rant at the Laugh Factory. Newsweek had two columns from black staffers, both mentioning George Allen and "Macaca." Time just had one, by the white TV critic James Poniewozik, but in referring to Richards, Mel Gibson, and the canceled O.J. Simpson special, he works in Allen, the RNC Harold-Ford-mocking ad, and Rush Limbaugh's alleged hate for Michael J. Fox:

All this followed an election whose lowlights were the macaca incident, an ad playing off miscegenation fears and a radio host mocking a disabled man. It's as if the U.S. were experiencing collective Tourette's, regurgitating decades of dutifully sublimated hate--Borat, with real people. As disturbing as the bigotry was the role of the people expressing it. Politicians and entertainers, after all, succeed by knowing our hearts and minds. We are, in a real way, implicated in their achievement and their disgrace. So you'd think this explosion of public ugliness might spur some kind of national soul searching. Did we somehow encourage their bigotry, by ignoring softer forms of it in our pop culture? Did they think on some level, conscious or not, that they spoke for us? Were they right?

The New York Post is reporting that sales of the seventh season of "Seinfeld" on DVD are 75 percent higher than lasts year's sale of season six. According to this pattern, a media dressing down should also help sales of Mel Gibson's new "Apocalypto."

Season 7 of the popular sitcom is outselling the Season 6 set (released on the same day last year) by more than 75 percent, and more than 90 percent over season 5 at some online DVD retailers, according to TMZ.com.

On Barnes and Nobel's Web site, the DVD set is the sixth-best selling and Amazon ranks it in 12th place.

It seems that one prominent member of the ultra-left in our country is starting to get the sinking feeling that he was duped by the Democrat bait and switch campaign strategy. Schlockumentartist and leading propagandist Michael Moore practically issued a fatwa at his website Wednesday demanding Democrats bring American troops home from Iraq immediately or suffer the consequences in the next elections (grateful hat tip to NB member “aero”, emphasis mine throughout):

The responsibility to end this war now falls upon the Democrats. Congress controls the purse strings and the Constitution says only Congress can declare war. Mr. Reid and Ms. Pelosi now hold the power to put an end to this madness. Failure to do so will bring the wrath of the voters. We aren't kidding around, Democrats, and if you don't believe us, just go ahead and continue this war another month. We will fight you harder than we did the Republicans. The opening page of my website has a photo of Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid, each made up by a collage of photos of the American soldiers who have died in Bush's War. But it is now about to become the Bush/Democratic Party War unless swift action is taken.

Moore followed with an outline that couldn’t be any clearer:

With each passing day, the media are debunking all the myths they helped foster about what the Democrats would do if they regained control of Congress. This one is beautiful, for it has to do with issues of national security, which was considered very important by voters just three weeks ago. As reported by the Washington Post’s Jonathan Weisman, but buried on page A7 (grateful hat tip to NB member “dscott,” emphasis mine throughout):

It was a solemn pledge, repeated by Democratic leaders and candidates over and over: If elected to the majority in Congress, Democrats would implement all of the recommendations of the bipartisan commission that examined the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

But with control of Congress now secured, Democratic leaders have decided for now against implementing the one measure that would affect them most directly: a wholesale reorganization of Congress to improve oversight and funding of the nation's intelligence agencies. Instead, Democratic leaders may create a panel to look at the issue and produce recommendations, according to congressional aides and lawmakers.

Isn’t that wonderful? Sound like a classic bait and switch? Regardless, the piece continued:

The winner of the 2008 presidential election will be the candidate who uses the internet the best according to Google CEO Eric Schmidt.

After listing several examples of politicians who were victims of highly effective internet campaigns, Schmidt elaborated on why the web is important:

"This is going to happen over and over again as people use these new media to communicate," Schmidt said at a speech to the Republican Governors Association in Miami. "The ones that take advantage of this most effectively will be the ones that will be the winners of the next election.

Yesterday John Gibson, host of "The Big Story" on Fox News, wondered if a national TV network, NBC, should make the country's foreign policy.

Let me introduce you to somebody. His name is Robert Wright. He is the chairman of the NBC television network, which is actually a few networks including CNBC and MSNBC. In essence, he runs those networks.

Since I used to work over there and know Mr. Wright and know how things work somewhat, I am confident I am right when I say Bob Wright decided, or at least approved, NBC's policy to refer to whatever it is that is now going on in Iraq as a civil war.

The Pentagon doesn't think so. The White House doesn't think so. Even CBS Evening News Executive Producer Rome Hartman said he thought NBC's decision wasn't so much a news judgment as a political judgment.

Iraq Commission reportedly going to recommend gradual withdrawal.

Anonymous cable news exec: "Everyone has an agenda [...] All reporters are biased. Why not be open about it, transparent? We shouldn't pretend. The audience is looking for honest opinions, for opinions they can relate to."

The military and the AP are disputing the authenticity of a man, Jamil Hussein, claiming to be an Iraqi government official. The AP says he's the real deal, the military says he's a terrorist tool.

On his November 28 program, CNN's Lou Dobbs accused a major American corporation of sponsoring terrorism. But in leveling his charge, Dobbs didn't bother to give viewers a balanced perspective on American exports and business dealings in foreign countries that, to say the least, are not the nicest neighbors on the geopolitical block.

But while it's understandable to be critical of American companies doing business in Syria or Sudan, how exactly does selling cars and trucks to civilians in those countries amount to "bankrolling" terrorism?

My full article is available at the MRC's BusinessandMedia.org Web site. Before the election we documented Dobbs's bias in favor of liberal Democratic policies in his self-appointed defense of the average Joe in what he believes is the Bush administration's "War on the Middle Class."

Here's a sample:

The Minneapolis Star Tribune is currently investigating how one of its editorial writers has been taking portions of New Yorker magazine editorials and inserting them into his own articles. The Power Line blog raised one of the allegations and has the details.

How often do you watch a show like MSNBC’s “Hardball” just hoping that one of the guests will spank the host when he makes an obvious misstatement, or is just being rude? Well, such occurred Wednesday when David Shuster, filling in for the vacationing Chris Matthews, tried to bully Iraq’s ambassador to the United Nations Feisal Istrabadi

Right from the get-go, it was apparent that Shuster had no intention of showing any respect whatsoever to this dignitary, which of course was in stark contrast to how he gushed and fawned over former President Jimmy Carter just 24 hours earlier as reported by Mark Finkelstein. This is not to suggest that anyone should be accorded the respect of one of our former presidents. Instead, it was the comparative disrespect which was so striking; it was almost as if Istrabadi was a Republican.

Toward the end of the interview, it was clear that the Ambassador was getting tired of Shuster’s belligerence, and decided to fire back when the guest-host said:

With a grateful hat tip to Hot Air, all NBers that are devout ‘Seinfeld’ fans in desperate need of some comedy-induced sanity in the midst of Michael Richards’ racist breakdown must watch this video created by the folks at National Lampoon. It’s quite hysterical, and extremely well done.

Please be advised that it is a bit raw with unedited footage of Richards’ rampage, as well as being a tad off-color – obvious pun intended.

Have fun.

It's hard to be a sunny optimist when considering the situation at Iraq. Things are tough, no doubt. That said, was Today, the show whose NBC News parent famously declared "civil war" earlier this week, giving us a fair-and-balanced view of matters this morning when the only expert we heard from expressed the most unalloyed pessimism on Iraqi prospects?

Meredith Vieira interviewed Richard Haass, President of the Council on Foreign Relations and former principal adviser to then Secretary of State Colin Powell. At the end of their conversation, Vieira summed up Haas's views this way: "You do not believe that there is anything about the situation that is winnable, I take it."

No opinion pieces having particularly incited my ire at my normal haunts of the NY Times, LA Times or Boston Globe this morning, I ventured over to the Huffington Post, and found this beauty by Cliff Schecter, "Are You Psychotic? Because Empirically That Makes You Susceptible To Being A Republican."

It in turn touted a study by a social work master’s student at Southern Connecticut State University purporting to find that there exists "a direct link between mental illness and support for President Bush."

Click here for instructions on running Gaggle daily on your site. There's also an archive of previous toons available here.

The National Science Teachers Association has now officially responded to Laurie David's Washington Post op-ed (see Noel Sheppard's Newsbusters post on the op-ed here) essentially accusing the group of being captive to corporate interests when it declined a gift of 50,000 "An Inconvenient Truth" DVDs for distribution to classrooms.

It doesn't say so, but presumably the NSTA is also responding to MSNBC anchor Keith Olbermann's Monday evening accusation that the NSTA president, Linda Froschauer, is "available at the right price," a statement made by Olbermann in a commentary that appears to have been based on the Laurie David Washington Post op-ed.