Yesterday I posted, The New York Times gets it wrong again. A Feb. 10 New York Times page one story, "White House Knew of Levee's Failure on Night of Storm," reported President Bush was “on vacation in Texas” on Aug. 30, the day after Katrina hit the Gulf Coast.

In fact, on Aug. 30, the President began his day in San Diego where he took part in an anniversary observance of V-J Day and visited a Naval hospital. Later he flew to Arizona to speak on medicare; after which he flew to Texas. Throughout the day, the President was kept informed of Katrina developments and made decisions regarding relief efforts.

Today, there's this in the Times' Corrections section:

After President Bush delivered his speech on the U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln in April 2003 welcoming U.S. troops home from Iraq and declaring an end to major combat operations, the media for some time sought to embarrass Bush each time American soldiers were killed by recounting how many U.S. troops had died since that speech, and by referring to the "Mission Accomplished" sign displayed at the time. On Monday February 6, MSNBC's Keith Olbermann used his Countdown show to resurrect references to that speech with a new addition to his regular signoff, which he has repeated each day during the past week, in the form of recounting the number of days it has been "since the declaration of 'Mission Accomplished' in Iraq."

Olbermann, who has long used his Countdown show to criticize President Bush regarding the Iraq War, has typically ended each night's show with words similar to, "That's Countdown for tonight. Keep your knees loose. Good night and good luck," before balling up a piece of paper and tossing it toward the camera. On the February 6 show, Olbermann first inserted words into his signoff tallying the number of days since the display of the "Mission Accomplished" sign. After the final segment on Monday, the Countdown host ended his show: "That is Countdown for this, the 1,012th day since the declaration of 'Mission Accomplished' in Iraq. I'm Keith Olbermann. Good night and good luck." Olbermann repeated this recounting each night of the week. (Transcripts follow)

Al Franken wrote a blog piece for the Huffington Post on Saturday entitled “Reflections on the Wellstone Memorial and the King Funeral,” wherein he tried to explain how people of his political persuasion behave at what most Americans believe to be solemn events. In the way that only a man who best understands how lying liars lie, Franken began his piece by employing an uncanny amount of revisionist history to refute contentions that the behavior of the crowd at Paul Wellstone’s memorial service in October 2002 was unfitting the occasion: “The chapter was mainly about how cynically Republicans used the memorial politically as they complained that the Democrats had used it politically. And how the mainstream media, many of whom had neither attended the memorial nor seen it on TV, bought into the Republican spin.”

Now THAT’S an interesting concept – mainstream media buying into Republican spin. That happens as often as hell freezes over. Franken continued:

On the Washington Post op-ed page today, Colbert King snidely protests the conservative feeling that liberals turned the Coretta Scott King funeral into a bit of whooping political theater. "The fuss over the funeral is probably the silliest snit of all."

King raised several straw men. First, how could you expect a funeral for a political icon like Coretta not to raise issues of racism, poverty, and war? (But we didn't expect it to be free of political themes. We did expect it to be free of whooping ovations of sentences that seemed designed to embarrass the President as he sat there.) Second, he claims this is the way black Baptist funerals are. (But the "mourners" were not worshiping Jesus, saying Amen to their Lord in loud voices. They were whooping at liberal anti-Bush sentiments. If that's a black Baptist funeral, then it IS as much a campaign event as a religious event.) King concludes:

“Address, please.”

“What?”

“Address, please.”

“Address?” questioned the elderly gentleman.

“Yes, address.” the clerk impatiently clarified.

“What do you need my address for?

“To complete the transaction.”

“To complete the transaction?” questioned the elderly gentleman. “I am paying cash for my groceries.”

“Oh,” replied the clerk, “You’re one of those people.”

The elderly gentleman just shrugged his shoulders. “I suppose so.” He simply smiled, having no idea what the cashier was talking about.

“Well, gramps, I still need your address.”

“My address? I just want to buy these groceries.”’

“Look, let me get this though your old, thick head: I can’t let you buy these groceries, for the sake of the Community, until you tell me your address.”

When's the last time you recall a prominent elected official being called a morning malt liquor drinker on live national TV? It just happened on the Today show.

Today was no doubt looking for a light touch when co-host Campbell Brown interviewed New Orleans magician, comic and eccentric extraordinaire Harry Anderson in a pre-Mardi Gras piece on "Life after Katrina." But the NBC show surely got more than it was bargaining for.

When Anderson took some shots at FEMA and the federal response to Katrina, Brown, in an apparent bid for balance, responded:

"Let me ask you about Mayor Nagin, because your mayor has come under a lot of crticism too for how he's handled the rebuilding effort. What do you think of the mayor?"

Over at Townhall, columnist Larry Elder wrote about an interview on National Public Radio's "Fresh Air with Terry Gross." Most of the interviews and reviews on that show are about arts and culture, but politics are also a topic. It airs on at least 350 NPR affiliates across the country. Elder writes about her interview with former Congressional Budget Office director Douglas Holtz-Eakin about the inappropriateness of the Bush tax cuts. (Audio can be found here.) He centers in on the liberal questioning:

Gross: "This is the first time, as far as I understand it, that we've cut taxes during wartime. What does the math look like, paying for Iraq while cutting taxes?"

For two consecutive nights, MSNBC's Keith Olbermann has ignored the recent report from AP detailing Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid's dealings with disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff. But on Friday, the MSNBC host devoted a segment on his Countdown show to discussing an email written by Abramoff that disputes President Bush's claim that he does not know Abramoff.

Olbermann compared Bush's memory to the excellent memory of Richard Nixon, recounting the story of Nixon's 1959 meeting with the Chicago White Sox in which the then-Vice President knew all of their names. After reading an email Abramoff wrote to Kim Eisler of Washingtonian magazine in which Abramoff claimed Bush "has one of the best memories of any politician I have ever met," Olbermann brought aboard correspondent David Shuster to discuss whether Bush has been honest in his denial of knowing Abramoff.

The latest op-ed piece by liberal Los Angeles Times columnist Rosa Brooks is called, "When crass is called for" (Friday, February 10, 2006). It begins with the eye-opening line, "It's time to take a stand against civility, decency and appropriateness."

The rest of the column is essentially a defense of the tasteless remarks by Rev. Joseph Lowery and former President Jimmy Carter at the funeral of Coretta Scott King on Tuesday. At one point of her piece, Brooks unbelievably declares, "I saw nothing uncivil about the remarks made by Lowery and Carter."

And in her concluding paragraph, Brooks shrugs (emphasis mine), "And if Bush was offended by Lowery's and Carter's remarks? Tough luck."