The liberal media is at it again. In an exclusive two hour interview airing this evening, CNN heartthrob Anderson Cooper interviewed Hollywierd's reigning queen of "blame america first," Angelina Jolie. In the interview, the pair canoodled over their experiences in Africa, where, they claim, people are starving. They showed videotape footage of people from small villages supposedly suffering from malnutrition, but we all know better than to trust video footage from the comrades over at the communist news network. I wouldn't be surprised if they totally fabricated all that footage. In fact, I remember a few years ago, President Bush went to Africa and he fixed all the starvation. But the liberal media doesn't want us to remember that. What was worse, Cooper and Jolie went against the coalition of the willing and sided with that old beurocratic dinosaur, the United Nations.

With Katie Couric lounging in the wings, Dan Rather is now expendable, and the suits at CBS News are squeezing him out of his last remaining gig on "60 Minutes." This has caused great distress for those who like their news to look like a long commercial for MoveOn.org, which is to say, the Dan Rather fan club.

CBS smiled politely as they pushed him away, but the Philadelphia Inquirer quoted an anonymous former CBS executive, who denounced the shove-off as "disgraceful. He's a legend. He gave his life to that company. Even though he made a big mistake, he did 43 years and 11 months' great work."

If Rather’s that great, why didn’t the executive have the courage to go on the record?

Rather had a Nixonian ending, resigning from the anchor chair in disgrace after being in complete denial about his own political corruption. It’s not surprising that some will now try to rehabilitate his reputation, but they won’t have much more luck than Nixon did. Dan Rather does not have a sterling record of journalism. He is a grand example of the anchorman as a powerful and partisan national politician who never had to be elected, yet had a lot more visibility and wielded a lot more influence than most elected officials.

When President Franklin D. Roosevelt read the newspapers he kept his eye out for what he called “howlers.” They were false or just downright foolish news items that gave him at least a chuckle and sometimes left him howling with laughter. He loved sharing “howlers” with friends.

I thought of FDR when I read an Associated Press report of the recent Iowa Republican convention ("GOP contenders court activists in Iowa"). The AP said:

Generally cast as a moderate, [Gov. Mitt] Romney sounded a theme of social conservatism before delegates at the state convention who are generally more conservative than most Republicans. "The family is the absolute foundation of our culture," Romney said.

OK, so we know what social conservatives believe is "the absolute foundation of our culture."

Organizations large and small, decent and hateful, terrorist and peace loving are reporting and commenting on the barbaric killings of two American soldiers in Iraq. One of them headlined its report:

Al-Zarqawi's successor gets the credit

So which organization put out the headline giving al-Zarqawi's successor credit for the barbaric killings? Did you guess al-Qaeda? That's very reasonable. Al-Qaeda certainly wants to build up al-Zarqawi's successor. What's more, al-Qaeda encourages its members and anyone else to kill American soldiers in Iraq. It's eager to give anyone credit for doing that. But it wasn't al-Qaeda. The headline comes from the Associated Press. Are you shocked? I was.

I long ago decided the AP is an untrustworthy, liberal/leftist agenda driven outfit passing itself off as a news organization. Still, the AP's Al-Zarqawi's successor gets the credit headline shocked me.

What to do? Letters to the editor? Most certainly. We need to let our local editors know they can't fool us any longer with the old "the AP did that" brush off. The editors of our papers pay the AP to do what it does. After we've done that, we need to do more.

We need a national conversation about how to provide our country as quickly as possible with an alternate news media that supports what America supports, civilization.

Hat Tip: Mike Williams

The CBS and NBC anchors signed off Tuesday night by delivering glowing tributes to Dan Rather, who officially departed from CBS News earlier in the day, with CBS’s Bob Schieffer calling him a “great reporter” and Brian Williams offering him “a tip of the Stetson.” Schieffer, who succeeded Rather as anchor of the CBS Evening News, exuded: “I'm going to miss Dan. He's been a part of my life for more than 40 years.” Schieffer touted Rather’s journalistic skills: “When a story broke, he wanted to be there. He thought that was the only way to report a story. That is the mark of all great reporters, that is what I most admired and will always remember about him. Dan Rather was one of the great reporters of his time.”

Williams closed the NBC Nightly News with a personal tribute to Rather’s career, ending: “As the man himself has been known to say many times and on similar occasions, a tip of the Stetson to you and we'll be seeing you down the road." On the controversy which led to Rather’s downfall, Williams asserted: “He was forced to resign 15 months ago after what has since been dubbed ‘Memogate,’ a story about President Bush's National Guard service, for which Rather later apologized.” Unmentioned by Williams: How Rather has yet to concede the story was false or based on forged documents. Last September, Rather declared: “The story is accurate." (Transcripts and links follow.)

A new documentary about Vice President Dick Cheney is set to air this evening on PBS. It’s called “The Dark Side,” and based upon a review published in today’s New York Daily News, it doesn’t appear to be very flattering.

First, the title comes “from a quote by Vice President Cheney in the wake of 9/11. Cheney said that the CIA, the Pentagon and other intelligence-gathering U.S. forces would have to ‘work from the dark side’ to glean information and combat and defeat terrorism.”

However, let’s be serious: what viewer isn’t going to assume that the title is a more direct reference to the movie “Star Wars,” and that Cheney is being depicted as Darth Vader? Forgive me, but as George Carlin said many years ago, you don’t have to be Fellini to figure that out.

The documentary then picks up some rather familiar liberal themes that we’ve all been hearing ad nauseum for years:

Now that CBS News and Dan Rather have officially separated, the Media Research Center has re-organized and updated our extensive archive of Rather's liberal bias from over the years. Our index page, "The Dan Rather File: Decades of Liberal Media Bias," features video of the infamous 1988 encounter with VP George H.W. Bush and has links to several compilations of quotes and videos, such as “Liberal Bias by Topic,” “Liberal Bias by Year,” “Journalists Praise Rather and Rather Defends His Discredited Story,” “Dan's Downfall: Forged Documents,” “'Corny in Kansas' Rather-isms” and “Rather Lame Denials of Bias.” For a quick overview of Rather's worst quotes, check our February 28, 2005 special four-page Notable Quotables, "Dan Rather's Legacy of Outrageous Liberal Bias."

Predictably, following what I suggested yesterday, ABC's "World News Tonight" hailed the election of the new female Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church USA as a "milestone" and a "significant advance for women in religion." To the media elite, it is a political victory for feminism, and the religious angle is barely worth mentioning.

ABC reporter Dan Harris hailed Bishop Katherine Jefferts Schori for denting the "stained glass ceiling," but said nothing about her theological beliefs, including her expressing the liberal view on CNN that homosexuality "is not a sin." The battle over gay clergy and "marriage," not female leaders, is the real battle in the Anglican Communion.

The Morning Call has an article about Allentown's gay pride parade. Just in case you thought the paper was going to treat the spectacle fairly, you should know that the paper's feature writer and weekly columnist was the parade's grand marshall... along with his man. And the paper, as a non-partisan observer and reporter of fact, helped fund the event.

Don't think for a minute the newspaper doesn't know how wrong all of this is.  Vicki C. Mayk, Morning Call director of community relations released a statement saying: "The highest duty of journalists in a democratic society is to provide credible information devoid of favor toward or obligation to any group or agenda." But that doesn't mean they would actually stop their reporter from... leading the train.

With all the fairness they could muster, the article takes a shot at point out how tragic it is that we don't accept gay marriage.

''They're normal and they do the same things as straight people do,'' Chadwick, who is not gay, said as a choral group sang the national anthem. Many gays and lesbians would like the list of ''normal'' things they do to extend to marriage... ''It's not for everyone,'' said Enrique Reid, 21, of Allentown, who sported a wide rainbow-patterned scarf around his waist and nothing else. ''As long as I am happy with that man. I don't need to put a ring on his finger.''

Walking around in nothing but a scarf? Oh yeah, that's normal, just like what straight people do.

There's a lot of buzz today on the burgeoning scandal over whether or not DailyKos blogger Markos Moulitsas and his partner, Jerome Armstrong, have been scamming Democrats by taking money from them on the sly and then promoting them to blog readers as straightforward endorsements. Lots of good stuff from Donkey Cons, Outside the Beltway, Flopping Aces, Hot Air, PJM, Ace of Spades, and Riehl World View.

The original source of the whole blogger investigation was an article printed in New York Times blog (disclosing how Armstrong was found by the SEC to have promoted junk stocks and bonds on the web) which never appeared in the print edition and is unreadable without a paid subscription to the web site. After the story came out, The New York Post printed its own story, and in the process taking the scoop. It's starting to seem as though NYT blogger Chris Suellentrop's editors did not deem newsworthy a story which reflected badly on the left-wing blogosphere despite devoting mucho coverage to it this month.

Big tip to Politburo Diktat for the graphic above.

I posted something called "Chubby Osama Bin Laden fake video found in Afghanistan." It challenged your unquestioning acceptance of the official story on 9/11 by pointing out the phony nature of this video and the fact that OBL is not specifically accused of guilt for the 9/11 event on the FBI website. An FBI spokesman said that was because they had no hard evidence. Just checked. No replies. Cat got your tongue? It is sad to see intelligent people like yourselves fooled by such obvious lies as the gov. has put out on 9/11. (By the way if the Dems took over the gov. I don't think they would do any better on 9/11.) To educate yourselves go to the website of the Scholars for 9/11 Truth: st911.org Zan Overall.

NBC's Campbell Brown couldn't contain her laughter this morning as The Nation’s liberal columnist Calvin Trillin poked fun at George W. Bush. Promoting his new collection of poems A Heckuva Job: More of the Bush Administration In Rhyme, Trillin cracked up Today show co-host Brown with such old poetic knee-slappers as: "Obliviously on he sails with marks not quite as good as Quayle's." Brown went on to praise Trillin's latest work as "great stuff" and predicted, "It's going to be a hilarious book." Brown even urged Trillin to recite verses from A Heckuva Job:

Brown: "But the new, the title of your book came from what you, perhaps feel, is the President's most memorable line thus far?"

CBS radio news just ran an item on the departure of Dan Rather. There was a surprising bit of candor in which CBS reported that Rather had "expressed frustration, feeling he'd been shelved by the network."

There was also a bit of - presumably - unintentional humor. We were treated to a clip of the Washington Post's [very liberal] media critic Tom Shales informing us that Rather "was a very activist anchor, and he changed the role of anchor."

The late Casper Weinberger, Ronald Reagan's secretary of defense, and Wynton Hall wrote a book entitled Home of the Brave: Honoring the Unsung Heroes in the War on Terror. RealClearPolitics has an excerpt.

The media have ignored heroes among the U.S. troops in Iraq, and have instead fixated on scandals representing a small percentage of troops, such as the New York Times' "love affair" with the Abu Ghraib scandal, manifested in 50 front page headlines.

After years of watching and reading coverage of the War on Terror, many citizens, including us, have been awestruck by the lack of balance and objectivity exercised by American reporters and news executives. The dearth of hopeful or heroic stories reported has given viewers a lopsided perspective.

Case in point: the New York Times and their love affair with the Abu Ghraib prison abuses. To date, the New York Times has devoted over 50 front page articles to the story! Currently, not a single individual chronicled in our book, Home of the Brave: Honoring the Unsung Heroes in the War on Terror, - some of the most highly decorated members of the United States military - has received a front-page story devoted to his or her valorous actions.

CBS has made the final announcement: Dan Rather is no longer at the network. CBSNews.com has the details, as well as a tribute to the former anchor's career. The moments they are most proud of are his two interviews with Saddam Hussein.

Dan Rather is leaving CBS after 44 years with the Tiffany Network.

Sean McManus, president of CBS News and Sports, made the announcement.

"Of all the famous names associated with CBS News, the biggest and brightest on the marquee are Murrow, Cronkite and Rather," McManus said. "With the utmost respect, we mark the extraordinary and singular role Dan has played in writing the script of not only CBS News, but of broadcast journalism."

Two weeks certainly aren’t a large sampling, but since the much-heralded – and over-celebrated – departure of the perky Katie Couric, NBC’s “Today” show actually widened its average daily viewing margin over second-place rival ABC’s “Good Morning America.”

As reported by the Associated Press (hat tip to Drudge): “‘Today’ beat second-place ‘Good Morning America’ of ABC by an average of 1.3 million viewers in the two weeks following Couric's last show on May 31, according to Nielsen Media Research. The NBC show's margin of victory (5.85 million to 4.92 million) was tighter during Couric's last full week on the air.”

Yikes. And, generating advertising dollars without Couric hasn’t been a problem either: “NBC also says it has earned about $25 million more in ‘upfront’ advertising sales for ‘Today’ in the fall than it did last year at this time, when the morning show was facing a stiffer challenge from ABC.”

Double yikes. Finally, one of NBC’s top brass might have added a bit of a parting shot at Katie to drive the point home:

CNN commentator Jack Cafferty appeared for a phone interview on the leftist Stephanie Miller show on Tuesday (9:30 AM D.C. radio time), as Miller oozed over how much she loved his "anti-Bush administration rants" and joked that the country needs "President Jack Cafferty." When the show's impressionist, Jim Ward, started doing a rather underwhelming Wolf Blitzer impression, suggesting Blitzer thinks President Bush is on a historical plane with Churchill and Abe Lincoln, Cafferty was self-deprecating about their on-air relationship, saying something like (paraphrasing): "Wolf comes from a more traditional news background," so it's odd for Blitzer to sit next to a "fringe lunatic" like him.

Miller mentioned several times how Cafferty is on her "future husbands list," and asked Cafferty for his take on the two soldiers found killed in Iraq today. He said there was not much to say, it's "horrible," and then sounded a lot like a Murtha: it's "time to get the Hell out of there...pack up and come home. Enough already." He claimed he was "not a peacenik," but the war "just reeks" and has "no upside" for America.

Well guys, hate to say I told you so but..

http://valis.gnn.tv/blogs/15947/Finally_the_proof_Thermate_used_to_destroy_WTC

http://prisonplanet.com/articles/june2006/200606Thermate.htm

Now, do you stick to your "the gov't is good" mentality and ignore the facts, or do you FINALLY do something about it.

p.s. Please don't say this is fake. This is a PhD scientist of over 30 years.

For a TV host, there's nothing much more difficult than interviewing a family member of someone who has been killed or seriously harmed. So when the uncle of one of the US soldiers kidnapped and killed in Iraq called for the offering of a massive ransom and a prisoner exchange, give Matt Lauer credit for having had the courage to challenge him.

Here's how it went down.

Lauer was interviewing Ken MacKenzie, a well-spoken, well-informed uncle to PFC Kristian Menchaca. Asked Lauer:

"A group linked to al-Qaeda on its website has claimed that they actually took Kristian and another soldier. What's your reaction to that?"

Replied MacKenzie::

"My reaction is the United States government should have immediately notified these Shura Council mujahadeen that the United States government was offering a $100-million reward and offering to exchange the 2,500 mujahadeen detainees that Prime Minister al-Maliki of Iraq plans to release several weeks from now. I think the U.S. government was too slow to react to this, they should have had a plan in place. Because the U.S. government did not have a plan in place, my nephew has paid for it with his life."

In the second hour of "The Early Show" on CBS Monday, co-host Harry Smith promoted one of Ted Kennedy's two new books this year: this one is a children's book called "My Senator and Me," written from the perspective of Kennedy's dog: "Splash." If you thought for one second that anyone at CBS was going to ask about the dog's name and er, Chappaquiddick, you might think "Captain Kangaroo" was still on the air.

MRC's Mike Rule reported that Smith asked vaguely about Kennedy's son Patrick and how his rehab is going, and then very gently asked Kennedy about "your feelings as we move forward" considering recent progress in Iraq. (A better question might have been: "So, Ted, still the best vote you ever cast?") I think the whole transcript is the best way to digest this interview:

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

In so many ways does the mainstream press demean conservatives who work on environmental issues.

In this Los Angeles Times piece by Jim Puzzanghera, conservatives wary of the Henry Paulson nomination are described as "causing problems" for Paulson because Paulson likes to watch birds.

Here's how the article begins:

WASHINGTON - As a three-decade Wall Street veteran and chairman of one of the nation's premiere investment banks, Henry M. Paulson Jr. makes a living watching markets.

But it's his hobby of watching birds that is already causing problems for his nomination as the nation's next Treasury secretary.

An ardent environmentalist, Paulson is expected to be questioned during confirmation hearings about his role as chairman of the Nature Conservancy, and whether he adequately cleaned up the organization's questionable land sale and tax break practices. Another potential sticky issue: a decision by Goldman Sachs, the investment bank Paulson heads as chairman and chief executive, to donate 680,000 acres of land in a remote section of Chile to an environmental group with ties to his son...