This is incredible! A terrorist held at Camp Gitmo is claiming that he was tortured! (Gret strategy)

This terrorist is no ordinary terrorist, he’s Mohammad al-Qahtani, the so-called "20th hijacker, who is being held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba." TIME’s puff piece on these new allegations include comments by his new lawyer who affirms that Mohammad claims he was tortured and takes back all those things he said. See the full article at http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1169322,00.html

But wait, there is more!

TIME magazine is ALSO releasing an 83 page interrogation of Mohammad al-Qahtani.  TIME itself refers to this interrogation as "secret" and "highly classified" but there is NO indication that it was declassified before being published.  At least if it was declassififed it only aids the enemies of the United States instead of aiding the enemies AND committing treason).

Think the mainstream media has let go of its anger over the events surrounding the release of Vice President Dick Cheney’s hunting accident to the press? Judging from the tone of his comments on today’s American Morning, CNN’s senior national correspondent John Roberts certainly has not. Roberts, formerly biased over at CBS News as the MRC’s Rich Noyes reported here, appeared shortly after 8am to discuss President Bush’s speech in India. After trumpeting the latest CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll showing the job approval numbers for the President slipping, Roberts attributed the decline to a "tired" White House staff.

John Roberts: "But there’s no question that the people at the White House have, you know, they’re almost like the gang that can’t shoot straight–"

That’s when Roberts took his shot at the White House and Cheney:

Roberts: "–and when they do shoot straight, they don’t tell people about it for 24 hours. But the problem could be that they’re, they’re suffering real fatigue there, that they’re burned out, that they need to bring in some new blood."

The transcript of the segment with American Morning co-host Miles O'Brien is behind the cut.

Since the national elections nearly two years ago, radio talk show host Michael Savage has becoming increasingly nasty toward the conservative establishment. He pouted over not being invited to the White House after Bush's reelection and then when TV shows ignored his latest book. Now that he's acting like a loose cannon, he's almost proving their judgement correct. Maybe he will join Air(head) America soon and he sounds as though he has become buddies with Democratic operative and MSNBC's Chris "Goebbels" Matthews who hosts "Goofball." Indeed, hell hath no fury like Savage scorned. Even if it means a rapport with a TV network that fired him.

As MRC’s Brent Baker pointed out, NBC’s Lisa Myers did a tremendously balanced report on Thursday’s “Nightly News” concerning videos of the government’s response to Hurricane Katrina. With this recent media frenzy generating a new round of finger pointing largely in the direction of 1600 Pennsylvania Ave., it seems that there is another video from around this period that is deserving of greater press coverage.

As reported by the MRC’s Brad Wilmouth on October 8, 2005, Lisa Myers did a piece for the NBC “Nightly News” on October 7 addressing a number of key mistakes that Louisiana Governor Kathleen Blanco made during this crisis which the media now seem content to ignore. In this segment, Myers played a video recorded by CNN wherein Blanco admitted that she was slow in bringing in federal troops to the area, and actually waited until Wednesday, August 31 to ask the president for this assistance. In addition, the piece specifically addressed how she and New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin ignored warnings by experts that it would take 48 hours to evacuate the city, and, instead, after “[praying] that the impact will soften,” issued the mandatory evacuation just 20 hours before Katrina made landfall.

What follows is a transcript of this segment as transcribed by Wilmouth, along with an MSN video link (hat tip to Gary Hall). Also following is a video link courtesy of Ian Schwartz of Expose the Left of the CNN segment with Gov. Blanco. Pay particular attention to how Blanco is grilled by CNN's Miles O'Brien, and her responses.

Ellen Goodman writes an advice column for the Democrats, as journalists sometimes are wont to do. I have to admit, I see this as a huge opportunity for the Democrats:

The good news for the Democrats was and is that unmarried women are the most progressive block in the demographic neighborhood.

In the words of Republican pollster and soundbitetress Kellyanne Conway, "Women who have what we call the four magic M's — marriage, munchkins, mortgages and mutual funds — are much more likely to vote." And vote Republican... Women who are unmarried because of three magic D's — delay, divorce and death — are more likely to vote Democratic. But less likely to vote at all... Many believe the best place for Democrats to go fishing for new voters is in the pond of 20 million single women who either aren't registered or don't vote.

[says Anna Greenberg] "Unmarried women are insecure about politics." They know less, are more likely to admit it, and a good half told her that people shouldn't vote unless they are informed... We know, alas, that women are less informed about objective facts such as, say, how many justices serve on the Supreme Court.

Ok, so the game plan for the Democrats is to drag out 20 million warm bodies activist candidates who are completely uninformed about how the world works, i.e. the perfect Democrat, and get them to vote by any means possible.

I find it facinating, this admission that the "most progressive block in the demographic neighborhood" is also the most uninformed. Maybe if they spent a little time learning about the world it might help them find a man, not to mention find a better political candidate.

Hours before the AP released its videotape featuring just a voice of Gov. Kathleen Blanco insisting meekly that she didn’t think the levees had been breached, National Public Radio’s "All Things Considered" aired an interview of Gov. Blanco with "ATC" co-anchor Michele Norris. (She pronounces it "Me-chelle.") Norris tells the listener the audio is a bit dated ("We sat down with her in New Orleans this week"), but her questions are incredibly mild and sympathetic, with no question of Blanco’s judgment or competence during or since the hurricane and flooding -- or her "Martha Stewart" state office refurbishing (see below). 

Norris began: "The state’s been promised more than 10 billion dollars in recovery assistance from the White House, but Louisiana Governor Kathleen Blanco says the state needs much more help...She said lawmakers in Washington can’t fully understand her state’s needs until they see the devastation for themselves."

In a common, subtle move of media sympathy, Norris avoided airing her initial question, airing just the Governor’s answer, merely underlining the horror in the hurricane’s path. Blanco explained:

http://www.glumbert.com/media/freakout.html

Sorry, I couldnt Resist!  BAD DTOM,,,,,Q((:~{>

Have a great weekend, Democrats: Sen. Hillary Clinton has a “widely respected record,” Republican “attacks” are backfiring, and she’s still no liberal.

Friday’s front page is dominated by Patrick Healy’s “Clinton Challenger Pulled From Reagan-Era Hat,” on the newest Republican candidate challenging Sen. Hillary Clinton for the Senate this year.

Sen. Clinton’s opponent, whoever it turns out to be, is in for an uphill battle. But the Times doesn’t give Kathleen T. McFarland any shot at all (check out that dismissive headline, which seethes with a sense of Republican flop-sweat). Her name isn’t even mentioned until the fifth paragraph.
 
 Healy’s story fits the bill.

Reuters CEO Tom Glocer, speaking at the Online Publishers Association conference in London, said journalists need to adapt to the new media.

Reports the London Guardian: "Tom Glocer said that media organisations needed to understand their true value in order to make the most of the online world."

"I believe the world will always need editing," he said. "Just because everyone has the potential to publish their own blog, doesn't mean they're all worth reading. The role of companies like ours is to edit and filter, and provide open tools for the audience. The good stuff will float to the top.

As NewsBuster Mark Finkelstein pointed out this morning, Hollywood’s liberal streak is now so obvious even the news media are taking notice. But it isn’t just that celebrities are liberal activists in their spare time — liberal talking points are also finding their way onto TV and movie screens.

Case in point: Last night’s ER, NBC’s long-running medical drama. The March 2 episode saw the much-promoted return of “Dr. John Carter,” played by Noah Wyle, who left the show at the end of last season. Last night’s episode had John volunteering at a refugee camp in Darfur, Sudan, where hundreds of thousands have died in a real-life humanitarian catastrophe. Even as they portrayed the Janjaweed militia as the chief villains, the ER writers couldn’t resist taking a potshot at inaction by a supposedly racist U.S. Congress. Windows Media or Real Player

At a conference speech Thursday, former vice president Al Gore announced the formation of a coalition of political, labor, and religious groups which will soon begin making ad buys on America's television channels warning of the dangers of global warming. Gore also called on the nation's TV outlet owners to match the group's purchases with equal amounts of time gratis. No doubt some will take him up on his offer. Can you imagine, though, if say, Newt Gingrich were to call on media companies to match spending for a program arguing for the need to cut federal spending? He'd have been laughed off the stage.

What got into Good Morning America? Each of the network shows ran its compulsory pre-Oscar segment this morning. But while Today was airing a bland piece on the freebies that celebrities in attendance get in gift bags, GMA's segment had a most unexpected angle, asking whether Hollywood has become too political - read 'liberal.' As Tim Graham has noted, Jon Stewart and George Clooney have denied that Hollywood suffers from any such bias, but GMA host Charlie Gibson acknowledged the slant frankly.

He framed it this way:

"Now we turn to the politics of the Oscars. We've talked a lot about the culture wars in America, the blue state/red state divide, the clash between more traditional moral values and more liberal points of view.

For the second consecutive night, MSNBC's Keith Olbermann, citing recently released videotape of Bush administration officials meeting before Hurricane Katrina struck, questioned the honesty of Bush's September statement that nobody "anticipated the breach of the levees," claiming that the possibility of a "breach" had been talked about during the videotaped meeting. But also on this second night, the Countdown host ran a story filed by NBC's Lisa Myers in which she torpedoed Olbermann's claim, citing meteorologist Max Mayfield's recollection that "nobody talked about the possibility of levee breach or failure until after it happened." Olbermann, evidently not noticing this, continued as if her report had supported his attack on Bush rather than disproved it. Guest Dana Milbank of the Washington Post even followed up by directly referring to Myers' report as evidence of Bush's "credibility" being undermined, even though Myers clearly argued in her piece that Bush's version of the story was supported by her investigation. Milbank: "It undermines the President's credibility, and now people are getting at this question of his honesty and his secrecy." (Complete transcripts follow)

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

In the past couple of days, there has been a media frenzy over a video released by the Associated Press showing President Bush being informed that the levees in New Orleans could be “topped” as a result of Hurricane Katrina. Just hours ago, the AP reported that it has another video taken after the hurricane hit wherein Louisiana Governor Kathleen Blanco is heard telling Administration representatives that the levees had not been breached.

The article began: “In the hectic, confused hours after Hurricane Katrina lashed the Gulf Coast, Louisiana's governor hesitantly but mistakenly assured the Bush administration that New Orleans' protective levees were intact, according to a new video obtained by The Associated Press showing briefings that day with federal officials.”

It then detailed what Blanco said:

MSNBC versus NBC News. MSNBC's David Shuster, at the top of Thursday's Hardball, and NBC's Lisa Myers at the start of the NBC Nightly News, played the identical soundbites from Max Mayfield of the National Hurricane Center warning, on Sunday August 28, about his “grave concern” the levees in New Orleans could be “topped,” and a clip of President Bush four days later maintaining that "I don't think anybody anticipated the breach of the levees." But they used the soundbites to prove opposite assessments. Shuster contended that Mayfield's video “seems to contradict what President Bush said about Katrina” since Mayfield's warning “clearly” means that “the President's team did anticipate the breach.”

Lisa Myers, however, recognized the meaning of words and how water flowing over a levee, topping it, is not the same thing as a breaching, the collapse of a levee, which is what occurred. Myers explained: "Today Mayfield told NBC News that he warned only that the levees might be topped, not breached, and that on the many conference calls he monitored, 'nobody talked about the possibility of a levee breach or failure until after it happened.'” (Transcripts follow.)