In his culture column this week, Brent Bozell wonders why on Earth the GOP doesn't have the wherewithal to attack the sleaze in Hollywood entertainment? Polls show a sizable majority are disgusted. But maybe it's because Hollywood is the big Democratic beehive you don't want to disturb. Or maybe by picking on TV network entertainment divisions, you're also picking on TV network news divisions. Or fussing about indecency makes you look square to independents? Whatever the reason, it's another season of never mind:

Looking back at the fall campaign, it’s yet another cycle in which the Republican political brain trust sidestepped the issue of America’s growing concern for indecency oozing out of almost every perfumed pore of Hollywood. This time it may have been the fatal mistake.

Here is an update to The Case For Invading Iraq And Removing Saddam Hussein From Power. (v.2.1)

Hat Tip to Chris Donohoe, Sua Sponte 75, NL207, and (**) for some of the descriptions & links.

I. Saddam was known to have WMD and used it in at least 3 separate situations.

1. S. Hussein used Chemical weapons in the Iran-Iraq War [answers.com]
2. Hussein used Chemical weapons vs. the Kurds in N. Iraq  [phrusa.org] and here  [Free Republic]
3. S. Hussein used Chemical weapons against the Sunnis in S. Iraq [Human Rights Watch]
4. Statements to the effect that Iraq had or was seeking WMD made by: President Clinton, Madeline Albright, Sandy BergerRep. Nancy Pelosi, Sen. Carl Levin, V.P. Al Gore.  Also see this for many of the same or similar remarks [Snopes & acsa.net]
5. Letter to Pres. Clinton, signed by: Sens. Carl Levin, Tom Daschle, John Kerry, & others 10-09-1998. [Snopes]
6. Letter to Pres. Bush, Signed by Sen. Bob Graham & others, Dec, 5, 2001.  [Snopes]

II. There is a long list of WMD, delivery systems, and banned conventional weapons found in Iraq

Actual caption:

Virginia Democratic candidate for Senate Jim Webb answers reporters' questions after a campaign rally at Virginia Union University in Richmond, November 2, 2006. (Jonathan Ernst/Reuters)

US Iraq policy: from mistake to disaster? By Prof. Dr. Muhammad Shamsaddin Meglommatis The US Iraq policy was not bad; if anything, it was badly conceived and lamentably implemented. Current discussions and rumours about a forthcoming partition of Iraq to Shia, Sunni and Kurds reveal that, misguided, the US Middle East policy has become a major threat to the US global interests. Partition without any reference to Philosophical Principles will be disastrous. More voices have recently suggested the partition of Iraq as the last chance of America for a triumphant exit in Iraq.

So is Zogby independent and unbiased?

Let me relate an interesting experience that occured this morning. One to four times per month, I receive a Zogby Interactive survey (poll) in my e-mail. I've been getting them for a few years now, and I'm fairly contientious about filling them out. They follow a fairly static pattern, first they ask several questions establishing my location in the country, then ask for political affiliation, followed by three to ten pages of political, voting/issue questions, followed by demographic information. Then comes today.

I started filling out the questionaire as normal. What state do you live in? What county do you live in? What party do you consider yourself a member of? At this point normally starts the who would you vote for in this matchup, that matchup type questions, who most reflects your values, what is most important to you this election, and so on. Not today, however. I answered Republican to the party affiliation question, and was next presented with two questions. Yes only two:

John Kerry shows us that his apology was completely hollow and that his comments about the military being dumb and lazy weren't really a botched joke afterall. Why else would his campaign website have this on the front page?

 Click for larger image

This isn't just a simple case of software picking up a feed with keywords, as the image above shows Kerry's people took the time to design the torn paper image of the key part of the editorial. It's a link to this editorial from the Seattle Post-Intelligencer entitled:

Unless you’ve been asleep all day, you are well aware of a New York Times article published Friday concerning a website the federal government set up last March to “make public a vast archive of Iraqi documents captured during the war.” Conservative talk radio and blogs have been enthralled by this piece, in particular, the following paragraph (emphasis mine):

Among the dozens of documents in English were Iraqi reports written in the 1990s and in 2002 for United Nations inspectors in charge of making sure Iraq had abandoned its unconventional arms programs after the Persian Gulf war. Experts say that at the time, Mr. Hussein’s scientists were on the verge of building an atom bomb, as little as a year away.

In a report about this issue early Friday morning on MSNBC, Andrea Mitchell was highly critical of conservative bloggers, and said that these revelations would be harmful to the Bush administration just before Tuesday’s elections (video here):

During the Friday edition of "The Situation Room," CNN’s Jack Cafferty summarized an international poll that showed many Europeans think President Bush is a greater threat to world peace than North Korea. He solemnly intoned that the results show "just how low the United States image has sunk." After reading the survey, Cafferty asked his audience this question:

Jack Cafferty: "...What does it mean when our closest allies think that President Bush is a greater threat to world peace than either North Korea or Iran?"

"Situation Room" host Wolf Blitzer had an answer:

Blitzer: "It means we got a serious problem internationally."

Which Game Are You Watching?

It’s a few days before mid-terms and one would think there is a football game out there. The hitting, tackling, punting... who has a real game plan and who doesn’t?

Foley has been recognized as a mistake and is long gone, in memory only. The dems are still tackling him. Fox, who’s not still covering him? How long have they requested an apology from Rush? Personal attacks continue, promises continue, and denigration of success continues as well.

The conservative side has failed in some respects as well. Illegals remain in our country and spending over and above Iraq has been excessive. Katrina was necessary yet abused. Even so, the economy has seen no better days and America is protected.

Done.

Problem number 1 is being overlooked. Problem number 1 has been defied by the dems. Problem number 1 will lead to our eventual destruction. Problem #1 is Iran/N Korean nuclear production. Foley and taxes and stem cells and walls and illegals and whatever will not make a damn bit of difference if we are attacked.

“If I could have gotten 51 votes in the Senate of the United States for an outright ban, picking up every one of them, Mr. and Mrs. America, turn 'em all in, I would have done it.” – Senator Dianne Feinstein, CBS-TV’s 60 Minutes, February 5, 1995

“It will be forgotten, on the one hand, that jealousy is the usual concomitant of violent love, and that the noble enthusiasm of liberty is apt to be infected with a spirit of narrow and illiberal distrust. On the other hand, it will be equally forgotten that the vigor of government is essential to the security of liberty; that, in the contemplation of a sound and well-informed judgment, their interest can never be separated; and that a dangerous ambition more often lurks behind the specious mask of zeal for the rights of the people than under the forbidden appearance of zeal for the firmness and efficiency of government. History will teach us that the former has been found a much more certain road to the introduction of despotism than the latter, and that of those men who have overturned the liberties of republics, the greatest number have begun their career by paying an obsequious court to the people; commencing demagogues, and ending tyrants.” – Alexander Hamilton, Federalist Papers, Number 1.

Last night on the CBS Evening News, anchor Katie Couric saw lost jobs on the horizon as she pointed to an uptick in wages as productivity remained unchanged in the third quarter.

Then this morning the government announced a 4.4% unemployment rate, the lowest it's been in five years, as well as a healthy upward revision in the September job totals.

You can find more of my article on this here at the MRC's BusinessandMedia.org Web site.

On CBS’s Early Show Friday morning, political correspondent Gloria Borger declared the usual disdain for political ads: "They started out innocently enough, but political ads this season quickly turned brutal. And in some cases, downright nasty." The only clip shown to illustrate: the "Call me, Harold" GOP ad in Tennessee. But "call me" jokes are nothing compared to what the three network morning shows did with the brutal and nasty news stories the networks aired on Rev. Ted Haggard this morning, rushing to air with allegations from a gay male prostitute and drug dealer that the Reverend paid him for sex and methamphetamines.

Whatever happened to the networks trying to develop a story and answer investigative questions for themselves before running allegations? It’s four days before the election, and apparently there are conservative Christian voters to demoralize. When female accusers suggested that President Clinton was guilty of sexual harassment or rape – certainly a case of hypocrisy by liberal feminist strictures – the networks and national print media waited, and waited, and waited...

With less then a week before Election Day, members of the mainstream media are doing everything they can to elect Democrats. MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann has stepped up his fevered attacks, referring to President Bush as both "stupid" and a liar. Later on in the week, he included Media Research Center President Brent Bozell in the November 2 "Worst Person in the World" segment.

Speaking of cable networks, an analysis of the CNN "Broken Government" special shows that Lynne Cheney was right in denouncing it as nothing more then left-wing Daily Kos-style propaganda.

Over on CBS, "The Evening News" featured a laudatory segment on "trend setting" California. Not so coincidentally, all the trends were liberal. On the subject of morning bias, "Today’s" David Gregory turned over a segment to Michael J. Fox and his promotion of Democratic candidates.

Completing the network trilogy, ABC’s "Good Morning America" talked to a group of "real-life actual voters"in a Ohio diner. Oddly enough, none of these hungry citizens seemed to like Republicans very much. Perhaps this was a Democratic diner.

One of the side effects of the left's control of the media is that Democratic politicians often have trouble dealing with criticism because they aren't subjected to the 24/7 scrutiny that Republicans usually face. This leads them to fall apart when they come into contact with a reporter that doesn't defer to them like usual.

Minnesota's Democratic nominee for the governor's office, Mike Hatch, provided an example of this yesterday in the face of questioning about his running mate's apparent lack of knowledge about the subject of the gasoline additive ethanol.

Mike Hatch’s aggressive reputation showed through Thursday for one of the few times in this year’s heated gubernatorial race.

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

NPR's weekend program "On The Media" ran several interviews on Obama-mania in their last edition, including a talk with National Journal media writer William Powers. After discussing the many steps of national media hype, Powers suggested Obama was really a black Kennedy:

NPR host Brooke Gladstone: "In this recent round of what a lot of people are calling Obama-mania, would you say that there is now a media consensus about Obama, that he's just a natural?"

William Powers: "Oh, I think there's a consensus that he is The Natural, the most preternatural political figure we have seen since the Kennedys. The Kennedys come up constantly in these comparisons.

Gladstone: "The Kennedys or one particular Kennedy?"

It’s a few days before mid-terms and one would think there is a football game out there. The hitting, tackling, punting... who has a real game plan and who doesn’t?

Foley has been recognized as a mistake and is long gone, in memory only. The dems are still tackling him. Personal attacks continue, promises continue, and denigration of success is defied.

The conservative side has failed in some respects as well. Illegals remain in our country and spending over and above Iraq has been excessive. Katrina was necessary yet abused.

Done.

Problem number 1 is being overlooked. Problem number 1 has been defied by the dems. Problem number 1 will lead to our eventual destruction. Problem #1 is Iran/N Korean nuclear production. Foley and taxes and stem cells and walls and illegals and whatever will not make a damn bit of difference if we are attacked.

I was just beginning my read of Ellen Goodman's Boston Globe column today, which argues that Nancy Pelosi is being "demonized" and "used to frighten voters everywhere." Goodman gripes that, among other things, Pelosi is being depicted as a Michael Moore clone. By superb serendipity, at that very moment, Rush Limbaugh began a systematic catologuing of Pelosi's votes over the years proving that the possible Speaker-to-be is, well, a Michael Moore clone.

Rush cited this Washington Times editorial, noting that Pelosi:

ABC's "Good Morning America" picked up a new complaint by union organizers against Wal-Mart. The company actually wants its employees to show up on time for work.

GMA stacked the deck against the company with 3 of 4 man-on-the-street interviewees scoffing at the company's policy. Employees are allowed three late arrivals before being assigned a "demerit" and risk being fired for racking up demerits in a short period of time.

In other words, it's not exactly zero tolerance.

My full story can be found here.

The new (November 13) edition of People magazine is out with a sympathetic profile of the embryo-destruction lobbyist Michael J. Fox, nice slanted reading for the weekend before the election. Reporters Susan Schindehette and Mike Lipton concluded with how Fox "at one point even raises the specter of what his ultraconservative Family Ties alter ego, Alex Keaton, might think about his support for Democrats. 'I think he's probably tell me to put my tie back on no matter how hot it is,' says Fox with a grin. 'But I think he would tell me I'm doing the right thing.'" (Conservatives who remember that show could say of Alex, "Ultra-conservative? A guy with a Richard Nixon lunchbox??")

As you might suspect, People's account largely drained the partisanship out of the Fox crusade. The word "liberal" is never applied to him, and the word "Democrat" is sparse. In photo captions, we learn Fox appeared at an event for "pro-embryonic stem-cell candidate Tammy Duckworth." In another, he's "at an Ohio rally for Rep. Sherrod Brown."

In "Church Leader Resigns After Gay Sex Claim," today's Washington Post reports on the resignation of the Rev. Ted Haggard as president of the National Association of Evangelicals. His resignation was prompted by an accusation that he'd paid for homosexual sex.

It didn't take long for Post staff writer Alan Cooperman to link the incident to next week's much-anticipated Democratic sweep. The sixth paragraph:

"Although he has avoided endorsing political candidates, Haggard has been a staunch ally of the Bush administration. Some political observers said his resignation was more bad news for Republicans trying to rally their conservative Christian base to turn out for the midterm elections."

Today's New York Times admitted that in yesterday's edition an article on the John Kerry imbroglio was more than a little wrong.

Yesterday's piece "Flubbed Joke Makes Kerry a Political Punching Bag, Again" included:

"But with a single word — or a single word left out of what was supposed to be a laugh line directed at the president — Mr. Kerry has become a punching bag again, for Republicans and for his own party."

Gosh darn, just that one, single, individual pesky word that was missed opened Monsieur Kerry once again to that infamous Republican attack machine.

Not exactly. Today the newspaper has appended the following correction:

"A Political Memo article yesterday about the fallout for Senator John Kerry over what he called a 'botched joke' referred incompletely to the differences between prepared remarks and what he actually said about the Iraq war to students at Pasadena City College in California on Monday. Mr. Kerry not only dropped the word 'us,' but he also rephrased his opening sentence extensively and omitted a reference to President Bush. Mr. Kerry’s aides said that the prepared text read: 'Do you know where you end up if you don’t study, if you aren’t smart, if you’re intellectually lazy? You end up getting us stuck in a war in Iraq. Just ask President Bush.' What he said: “You know, education, if you make the most of it, you study hard, you do your homework and you make an effort to be smart, you can do well. If you don’t, you get stuck in Iraq.”