Imagine you're Larry King. You've landed the first interview with Floyd Landis, the winner of the Tour de France with a great feel-good story - until he flunked a drug test.

What would be the first question you'd ask? OK, this is Larry King. Not known as the 'king' of the hardball, so to speak. So grant Larry a few warm-up questions to put Floyd at ease. But eventually, at some point, as painful as it might be, DON'T YOU HAVE TO ASK LANDIS IF HE CHEATED?? I mean, what the heck else is the purpose of the interview?

But along with millions of others [OK, Larry's ratings haven't been that great in recent years. Let's say 'thousands of others'] I waited in vain for a question that never came. Larry King never asked Floyd Landis if he took performance-enhancing drugs that accounted for the high testosterone ratio levels the post-race test detected.

CBS anchor Bob Schieffer on Friday night forwarded the idea that the Israeli situation in Lebanon matches the U.S. miscalculation in Iraq. “Despite this heavy bombing that Hezbollah's been getting from the Israelis,” Schieffer told reporter David Martin, “they continue to attack and some critics are saying the Israelis may have made the same mistake that the United States made in Iraq, and that is underestimated what they were up against.” Martin didn't address Schieffer's comparison of the Israel-Hezbollah war with the Iraq war, but he did confirm that “Pentagon officials say both U.S. and Israeli intelligence have underestimated the strength, capabilities, and resilience of Hezbollah.” (Transcript follows)

hello all and welcome to my first attempt. i couldnt find a 'suggest topic' link so i supposed i have to do this to submit content to this site.

http://infowars.net/articles/july2006/280706Distort.htm

http://www.newshounds.us/2006/07/28/fox_news_and_sean_hannity_distort_reality_of_israeli_war_protest.php

same story both places. is this place newshounds friendly? i suppose ill find out quickly.

Two measures on the war in Iraq were recently offered in the United States Senate. Both envisioned getting out as soon as possible. Both gave tacit support to Al-Qaeda. Both lost.

Thank heavens.

I know it's a brutal idea. If America fails to control the outcome in Iraq, the price of your gasoline will go up. And your heating oil. And your propane. And your diesel. And thousands of products you buy. In fact, not only will the price go up, you will have to suffer through the chaos of gasoline shortages. And shortages of diesel, propane and heating oil fuels.

It’s not every day a politician calls for a 100-percent tax rate on national TV. Even the most liberal-friendly of journalists would be inclined to question such a punitive idea. But when former presidential candidate Dennis Kucinich called for such a tax on the “windfall profits” of oil on the July 28 “Early Show,” CBS’s Hannah Storm didn’t even bat an eyelash.

Opening an interview segment with the liberal Rep. Kucinich (D-Ohio) and the libertarian Cato Institute’s Jerry Taylor on the so-called windfall profits tax, Storm asked Kucinich how such a tax would “translate to consumers and help the people who are paying at the pump.”

Jeffrey Lord writes in the American Spectator that the extreme partisanship of CBS Evening News anchor Walter Cronkite is what created Fox News. For decades, CBS led all the others in being the most actvist network, and the sheer brazenness of that activism is what spawned the Fox News Channel.

Physicist Fritjof Capra, in his bestseller The Tao of Physics, writes that "by the very act of focusing our attention on any one concept we create its opposite." In other words, to use the language of physics, when Mr. Cronkite's very focused liberal world view blinked into the American consciousness, its conservative polar opposite blinked into existence along with it. The problem with Cronkite and his fellow "cultural artists" is that over time there emerged what seemed to many Americans as a very, very conscious decision to shut out the conservative world view altogether or, if forced to give it air time, to misrepresent it.

Thus Barry Goldwater found himself being portrayed on the CBS News as a Nazi sympathizer. A Republican Senate move to broaden the authority of the Senate Watergate Committee to investigate not just the 1972 presidential campaign but reports of Democratic malfeasance in the presidential campaigns of 1968 and 1964 was not simply defeated in the Democratic Senate but uninvestigated completely by Cronkite's CBS.

The following letter was sent on Friday to Rob Owen, President of the Television Critics Association, in reaction to reports that about 100 TV critics walked out of a presentation by Fox News Channel Chairman and CEO Roger Ailes, in protest of Fox’s "conservative spin."

Rob Owen, President
Television Critics Association

Dear Mr. Owen:

I was appalled when I read news accounts about the utter lack of respect that so-called "fair" and "balanced" members of your organization exhibited toward Fox News Channel’s Chairman Roger Ailes Monday night. Such open contempt for Fox speaks volumes about their personal intolerance and disdain for any point of view that doesn’t reflect their liberal ideology.

Those poor MSMers. They can't stand Ann Coulter. And they know that every time they vilify Ann, it only serves to drive her fame and sales of her latest book, Godless. But they just can't 'hep' themselves. They can't resist precisely the kind of mean-spirited barbs that make Ann's case and boost her bottom line.

Chris Matthews was a splendid case in point on last evening's Hardball. Consider the very first words out of Matthews mouth to Ann: "The question I have is do you have a soul? Really." See what I mean?

Blame the U.S. for a lack of diplomacy in its support of Israel is the theme of Friday’s “news analysis” by reporter Helene Cooper, “2 Steps Back: Rice’s Careful Diplomacy Falters Under Renewed Assertiveness by the U.S.”

Along the way, Cooper states as fact the usual misleading clichés about Bush’s “go-it-alone approach” to diplomacy and war.

“For the past year, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has worked assiduously to resurrect the importance of traditional diplomacy and building consensus among world leaders after America’s go-it-alone approach to Iraq.”

After being plugged relentlessly by the New York Times and other "objective" media outlets, the ratings for Air America continue to drop. Brian Maloney has the details:

Like an ice cream cone left in the hot July sun, Air America Radio's ratings are melting in some key (read: liberal) regions of the country.

Based on fresh ratings data released Thursday evening, the "progressive" radio network has lost strength in three cities where it had previously found the most listener support: Portland, Seattle and Denver.

Representing the spring 2006 Arbitron reporting period, these results provide one of the two most important report cards for the entire year.

Already Arabic channel Al Jazeera wants to start an English version to run in the U.S., with a TV studio in Washington. It will be TNN, the Terrorist News Network, competing against CNN.

But now another America hater, Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez, wants to launch a channel in the U.S.

Reports the AP:

CARACAS, Venezuela Telesur has expanded to 17 Latin American countries in its first year on the air. Now officials with the TV network financed by Venezuela and four other nations is eyeing U-S markets.

Telesur today marked its first anniversary.

In the July 31st edition of Newsweek, Senior Editor Jonathan Alter declared Bush's veto of stem cell funding "may well doom thousands to die prematurely," and blamed the decision on Bush's "inflexibility, obsession with his conservative base, religious arrogance and contempt for scientific consensus."

Alter began this week's column, entitled, "It Was A Veto Of A Lifetime," in ominous tones: "July 19, 2006, was a dark day for anyone who, like me, has experienced life-threatening illness. President Bush's veto of a modest bill that would have merely allowed surplus embryos from fertility clinics to be used for pathbreaking research instead of tossed in the garbage is more than a political blunder. And for those with a friend or relative who is sick - in other words, almost everyone—it is more than an abstraction. By slowing cures for several major diseases, this decision may well doom thousands to die prematurely. It contradicts the whole idea of what it means to be 'pro-life.'"

For your viewing pleasure, MSNBC decided to add to the Friday Night Fights series with a special Thursday edition. However, as "Hardball's" producers must have believed the challenger in the left corner, host Chris Matthews, was going to be outmatched by the challenger in the right corner, they decided to film the segment with an audience conveniently stocked with Ann Coulter haters. As a result, the fight turned more into a tag-team wrestling match than traditional mono-a-mono boxing.

It was quite evident from the onset that this was going to be a team effort by Matthews and his audience when he began:

Now, I want to know right off the front -- we`re going to use our audience in a very profane way. Who loves Ann Coulter? (APPLAUSE) Who vomits at the mention of her name? (APPLAUSE)

Nice way to introduce your guest, Chris. It seems impossible to imagine you introducing someone like Al Franken in such a fashion. Yet, Matthews wasn’t done. His next uppercut came only seconds later when he asked Coulter, “Do you have a soul?” This was followed a bit later with a right hook when Matthews said Ann was "All brain, no heart."

With that as pretext, this is a melee that must be watched to be fully appreciated. Here is the video. Pay particular attention to the people standing behind Coulter strategically placed to always be shaking their heads in disgust on virtually every one of her words. And, make sure that you have no drinking vessels around when Matthews asks Coulter to elaborate on the position she recently espoused concerning a former president’s sexual preference. (Transcript follows).

(Update: For those interested, here is a video of the beginning of the interview, as well as another part of this segment.)

I dont' know about you, but when I think petroleum industry expert, I think Comedy Central's Jon Stewart.

Okay, I don't, and The Washington Post's Tomoeh Murakami Tse probably doesn't either. But that didn't stop the Post reporter from tossing the liberal comedian into her story on oil profits:

The big numbers have become a popular target of politicians in an election year and fodder for late-night comedians.

On Wednesday, Jon Stewart told his "Daily Show" audience that BP PLC's $7.27 billion profit meant that the British oil giant made $55,000 a minute during the quarter.

"How did they do it? It's not just unmitigated greed. BP's secret is they drill into banks," Stewart said, as the image of a drill boring through a ceiling into a vault popped up on the screen.

Can you imagine the Today show or other MSM program airing a segment offering advice to men on how to train their wives to display better behavior . . . by treating them like zoo animals? A segment illustrated with footage of hyenas, baboons and other members of the wild kingdom undergoing training? Don't bother to answer.

Yet, incredibly, that's just what the Today show did this morning. Oh, with one small difference. It was a how-to . . . for wives who want to train their husbands.

'Today' introduced the segment this way: "One woman discovered she could train her husband the way they train animals at the zoo. Does your husband act like a sea lion, or a baboon, or a hyena?"

From ecology, it has been learned that a complex interplay of factors and forces results in the balance of nature that environmentalists insist can be easily thrown out of whack should any one of these readings stray too far from the optimal norms. As the pinnacle of the food chain, a number of these principles apply to human beings and their societies as well.

For example, one of the strongest human desires is to copulate and produce children. These urges are kept in check by the responsibility of having to provide for and take care of the offspring that could potentially result from the physical intermingling of man and woman preferably in the context of binding matrimony.

As such, most rational people discipline themselves to have no more children than they are capable of taking care of. However, Washington, D.C. Mayor Anthony Williams wants to upset the delicate balance by instituting a program where government school students in the city could receive three meals per day at government expense.

Supporters say the program would “take a big step towards ending child hunger.” However, such a proposal hardly has the best interests of children at heart.

For by taking over the task of procuring and distributing the nutritional allotments of some 20,000 children, the government is unhinging from parenthood one of the fundamental reasons for this most important of human undertakings, namely providing for the kids you yourself had the fun of making.

Very few are going to have the courage to admit it, but often the families enrolled in these assistance programs are rarely ever headed by model parents. Now being freed almost entirely of the burden of expending their energies tending to the progeny they do have, by no longer having to provide three meals a day, what is to prevent parents tottering along the edge of delinquency and neglect from either spending the money freed up by not having to pick up most of the family food tab during the week on luxuries they don’t deserve such as plasma screen TV’s and nose piercings or to revel in additional promiscuity resulting in additional babies they have no intentions of raising properly?

Those wracked by the sex fever gripping our society will invoke their favorite refrain that it’s nobody’s business how those on public assistance conduct their lives. Maybe so if these people had kept their business to themselves and not come forward to suckle off the public teat with the same lack of discretion they exhibited in bedding multiple partners. But once these people come forward and admit they are unable to effectively run their own lives by demanding assorted forms of assistance despite not suffering from a crippling disability, the matter becomes the business of all taxpayers.

Another fundamental question few have the courage to ask in this overly communitarian age is why do the rest of us have to pay for other people’s kids to eat? Frankly, are these kids even starving?

Though the American people have been duped into believing these meals are all that stand between the youngsters that receive them and malnutrition, that is not necessarily the case. For you see, in DC, students are eligible for free breakfasts irrespective of income.

Theoretically, citizens of modest means could end up financing the meals of the well-to-do such as members of Congress or successful interest group functionaries. Who’s to say the expanded program won’t invite all comers to dine at the government trough?

Neither is the program simply about the bare nutrition needed to survive. With low cost stores such as Wal-Mart, Aldi’s, Save-A-Lot, and even Dollar Tree there is no reason why any self-respecting parent can’t get some kind of food into their offsprings’ bellies.

They might not eat like kings and their parents might have to delay getting that tattoo or the gold teeth they wanted, but to put it bluntly, no where are these luxuries guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution or the Declaration for those unwilling to provide for themselves. If they can work their tails in bars and nightclubs, they can work their hands on the jobsite or in the office.

One of the most memorable lines ever uttered on the Simpsons (quite an accomplishment on this television classic with so many memorable moments) was set in the future when Lisa Simpson is President. Milhaus as presidential advisor says to her that the only thing school lunches and midnight basketball got us was a generation of supercriminals that didn’t requite sleep.

In many ways, the human economy is as delicate and as beautiful as the natural environment. And like it, should any one of the components be unduly stimulated, the whole system faces the possibility of collapse with civilized man becoming yet another endangered species.

By Frederick Meekins

As many age and grow saddened that the pleasures of this life diminish and are to soon come to an end, they often cope with this existential crisis by criticizing the young for behaviors they themselves use to participate in and wish for future generations lives of struggle and material deprivation. Normally, such disgruntled reflection provides a kind of psychological outlet through which to vent pent up frustrations and anxieties, however, it can be cause for concern when those making these kinds of complaints implement such ramblings as the foundation of public policy.

According to WorldNetDaily.com, in a commencement address at Long Island University and in a speech before the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, Hillary Clinton declared to the youth of the nation that “work is not a four letter word” and that the young have a “sense of entitlement” having grown up in a “culture that has a premium on instant gratification”.

Isn’t a Clinton the last one that should be lecturing us on the perils of instant gratification as the old man pretty much wrote the book on this behavioral pathology throughout the 1990’s? However, it must be noted that what the wicked witch of the east is talking about is not so much the wastefulness and licentiousness endemic to the ruling elite but rather codespeak of revolutionary globalists that the American people enjoy too high a standard of living and must have Third World levels of squalor imposed upon them.

For in justifying her comments, the battle ax continued, “I just want to set the bar high because we are in a competition for the future.” Yet I wonder how much of her salary and book proceeds she is willing to forego for the sake of national productivity.

And it is highly doubtful she is speaking out against welfare recipients, the backbone of the contemporary Democratic Party. Rush Limbaugh observes in a quote in the WorldNetDaily account that Senator Clinton is sponsoring a bill to build 15,000 houses with high speed Internet for those on low income.

It’s bad enough to build houses for the indolent at government expense, but how can you justify giving them high speed Internet? I ask the junior witch from New York who will be getting instant gratification under such a program without working for it?

As the woman who just a few years ago realized “janitors are people to” as if this was some kind of breakthrough in the Grand Unified Theory, Hillary isn’t exactly in touch with those outside the New York/Washington loony bin. After all, her own spawn pulls down a six figure salary as a “consultant”, basically a position where she sits around doing nothing for which her primary qualification is having sprung from their loins of her progenitors.

Apparently, Hillary fails to realize that as politicians like her continue to expand education budgets to the point where almost anyone can acquire one irrespective of whether or not the actually deserve one in terms of aptitude, the value of an education has been diminished to such an extent that pursuing a degree provides the recipient with little economic advantage as college graduates today barely qualify today for jobs --- if the positions have not already been shipped overseas --- that used to be filled by high school graduates. Eventually, Americans will need a PhD in Economics just to say, “Hi, welcome to Wal-Mart.”

Maybe since Hillary has lived high on the hog for so long, it’s time she gave back to the community and all that other it takes a village drivel and herself partake of that low-paid menial labor the rest of us are suppose to be content with.

It seems she is not the only Clinton having done one thing and imposed something else on what to them are the lesser classes of the human race. Apart from his whoring around, one of the things Bill Clinton was most famous for was his love of nutritionally ambiguous snacks. However, if this former President no longer in office has his way, he will hold unprecedented power over what children in public schools will be allowed to ingest; no doubt making them fit little minions of the New World Order in that not only will they have lean bodies fit for all kinds of public project slave labor but also be of diminished critical capacity unaccustomed to questioning what is demanded of them since they will have been conditioned that it is their place to pliantly accept the decisions made for their lives by those claiming to be their betters.

According to an accord hashed out between the Alliance For A Healthier Generation (an entente consisting of the William J. Clinton Foundation and the American Heart Association) and Cadbury Schwepps, Coca-Cola, PepsiCo, and the American Beverage Association, only low calorie and nutritious drinks are to be sold in the nation’s public schools. So while Bill Clinton spent a goodly portion of his Presidency shoving sweet things into his mouth and into the mouths of others (some while on their knees under the desk in the Oval Office where Reagan wouldn’t even remove his suit coat much less unzip his pants), if these captains of industry and institutional eleemosynary have their way, school children will be denied the decision regarding what far less offensive syrupy substances they may take into the human body.

Those hoodwinked by all the hype about an obesity epidemic relieved that someone has stepped forward to address this alleged crisis have missed the point. Encase some have forgotten or prefer to live in a liberal fantasyland, Bill Clinton is not the President anymore. Shouldn’t he be out building houses for the homeless or something?

Is it just me or is anyone else as disturbed as I am that unelected personalities not even in the government responsible to no one are able to exert such control over the lives of average Americans as to what we’ll be having for lunch? Shouldn’t the free market influenced by the decisions of individual consumers determine what is on the menu?

Those still not convinced will respond that the concordat only affects public school cafeterias and vended snacks. Students are perfectly free to bring their own junk food from home.

Maybe so for now. But once the initial details are worked out, what is to stop Clinton and his minions from conspiring together and issuing an edict that henceforward food manufacturers will only produce healthy foods such as beansprouts and seaweed? Furthermore, few will be left to resist such a decree as most will have been conditioned since childhood that theirs is not to reason why but to submit cheerfully to the plans both mundane and grandiose of the vaunted overlords.

Those that fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it. America has yet to fully recover from it’s last go-a-round with the Clintons. I doubt the country could take much more with Hillary in the White House and Bill free to impose his will upon the nation and the world beyond as either a private sector powerhouse or as even Secretary General of the United Nations, as some have proposed, and still retain what little liberty we have remaining.

By Frederick Meekins

MRC's Brent Baker has noted ABC News' hyper-ventilation over Exxon's 'breathtaking' profits. This morning it was NBC's turn.

As everyone knows, the way to decrease the price of a product is . . . to raise taxes on it? As contradictory as the notion might sound, it appears to be the Today show's preferred solution to $3/gallon gas.

It was the news of Exxon's $10.3 billion second-quarter profit that gave Today an opening to air its n-th iteration of the 'soaring gas prices' story. In an innovative bit of demagoguery, Today even displayed a clock informing us that Exxon racked up profits at the rate of $1,317.66 per second.

The fact that Jason Leopold doesn't have a television show is a significant reason to believe that there is some sanity within the TV news business. However, the fact that Keith Olbermann still has one after years of failure does make one wonder about the mental acuity of the folks at MSNBC.

When you think about it, aside from its host, "Countdown with Keith Olbermann" has a lot of things going for it. It's got nice graphics, some different music to it, and a snappy pace. Far left bloggers routinely urge their readers to watch. It never fails to get good press from liberal journalists whose greatest fantasy is Roger Ailes getting hit by a bus--which may explain why so many of them have been taken by a guy whose bizarre antics, strange demeanor, journalistic ineptitude, and ridiculous pomposity should have gotten him laughed out of the news business in under three months.

It's probably safe to assume that Olbermann is aware of all this. How else could one explain his latest desperate ploy for attention, donning a mask of Bill O'Reilly while doing a Nazi salute? Now, via Olbermann Watch, we learn that NBC and the "Countdown" staff planned the entire thing.

Surprised? I sure was. I mean who ever would have thought that a guy who is afraid to interview anyone to the right of Hugo Chavez for fear of getting embarrassed would ever need to plan such brilliant humor out beforehand?

Of course, Bob Cox and the other OW folks might be lying. After all, it's quite possible Olbermann came up with the joke right after a brief bathroom break with his Bill O'Reilly hand puppet.

If Democrats win big this fall, David Gregory's Thursday story on NBC Nightly News may look prescient, but his effort to show how Republicans are newly in trouble in suburban Philadelphia suffered from several analytical flaws. Of those in four featured soundbites, three complained about Iraq, including one comment from a Democratic congressional candidate who hardly represented any trend among Republicans, and one lamented Bush's lack of “fiscal responsibility.” Unmentioned: Illegal immigration, an issue on which many Republicans disagree with Bush. Gregory served up as emblematical of Republican troubles a “lifelong Republican” and two “Republican voters,” but while they may be frustrated with national Republicans, if they are truly Republicans why would they vote for a candidate from the opposition party? Gregory described the Haverford area as “reliably Republican in the past,” asserting that “this year the mood has changed.” But seconds later, he undermined his premise when he acknowledged that the area “has been trending Democratic in recent years, even narrowly supporting John Kerry for President."

At the top of his piece, viewers saw a zoom-in on a car's bumper sticker with an image of a woman pulling out her hair:
“Haven't You Had It with Republicans?
“Vote for Change!”