I of course won't say the district. Big brother would love to know.

I will  write an article exposing the hypocricy of this website to a small town independent newspaper.

These people claim to want freedom of the press but if folks disagree with them and expose their frailties, their voice gets shut down. They have hijacked the once honorable conservative Republican party (when Eisenhower was in office. He did not have to cheat to win) and frequently use honest great leaders such as Churchill as heroes for their party.

Large corporations and lobbyists back right wing "think tanks" like this and won't be happy until there is no one that challenges the media controlled by a few very powerful people.

I'm sure you will censor this article as you have so many other folks.

On tonight's Hardball, Chris Matthews pretty much allowed Howard Dean to slam Sen. George Allen without challenging him on his assertions. Asked about Allen, Dean said that he served with Allen while they were both Governors and that Allen "doesn't belong in public service." Dean also said that Allen "always shooting from the hip, he never thinks through what he means, and he caters to the wrong instincts in people" of which the "macaca" incident is supposedly proof.

Video available here.

Matthews did ask Dean if he knew what "macaca" meant but did not ask Dean if he knew what it meant before this incident, which seems like the more obvious question to me. My bet is that he didn't have a clue much like the vast majority of people in this country including, perhaps, Allen himself.

What an obnoxious post at the official Lamont Campaign blog. Let me get this straight, to hurt Lieberman, his opponent is bragging about what looks like a fascist tactic of denying someone an ability to be heard via the Internet? Is that what Lamont's idea of democracy is? I hardly see this as a positive, and certainly not something worthy of bragging about.

And these vendors who are allegedly denying Lieberman service don't have much to brag about either. Suddenly independent, or heaven forbid, Republican dollars are no good, assuming one happened along? That isn't business. It's trying to close off debate and limit one's speech. There was a time when I thought that was precisely what the Democratic Party was about.

The Washington Post on Wednesday maintained its iron grip on Republican ethnic gaffes with political reporter Jim VandeHei repeating the Democratic talking points against Montana Sen. Conrad Burns, who’s made several jokes about Latino workers having their citizenship papers. The headline, playing off their incessant Macaca riffs, is “Comments Haunt Another Senator.” (They don’t mean Hillary’s Gandhi-gas-station joke.)

Just so you know that this is a one-sided tactic, the Post didn’t notice in June that San Diego Democratic congressional hopeful Francine Busby told a largely Latino audience, “you don’t need papers for voting,” until after she lost, despite playing up her chances over the last weekend as a possible bellwether of big GOP losses. Now look at the first paragraphs of VandeHei's story and ponder if it doesn't sound like he's writing for the Democratic Press Release Service:

"Countdown" host Keith Olbermann has questioned the timing of terror arrests and alert levels before, but on the August 22 edition of the MSNBC show, he indicated that democratic governments are using the fear of terrorism, the same terrorists they are "supposedly" hunting:

"It is a fair question to be skeptical of the skeptics to ask why would the British police, why would anyone exaggerate the threat of violence fueling unwarranted fears? But theoretically, at least, it is clear that both terrorists and governments, supposedly hunting terrorists, have motives, both of them have motives, to keep people afraid."

Olbermann utilized the arraignment of British suspects in the plot to blow up U.K. airplanes as an opportunity to replay a ten minute long segment, entitled "The Nexus of Politics and Terror" from last October. In the piece, negative events for the Bush administration are linked to their proximity of terror warnings. The "Countdown" host prefaced the story, which aired at 8:35PM EDT, by questioning if the arrests in England have been hyped:

Everybody on the blogosphere is on this story today, and have been since Drudge broke it mid-morning. Here's just one entry from MsUnderestimated's site:

Gaza Militants Claim Fox Kidnapping

Anita McNaught, wife of kidnapped journalist Olaf Wiig Freelance cameraman. Olaf Wiig was kidnapped last week A previously unknown militant group has said it kidnapped two journalists seized nine days ago in the Gaza Strip. A fax from the “Holy Jihad Brigades” to news agencies demanded the US release “Muslim prisoners” within 72 hours.

MsUnderestimated's site has lots of links to many other of the bloggers out there writing about this. AllahPundit at HotAir has the AP video, and Rusty Shackleford at MyPetJawa are posting up-to-the-minute updates.

It seems that the Lebanese army is starting to inspect and neutralize all of the unexploded artillery and other ordinance that Shamnesty is so worried about. This photograph is rather odd, though. It's extremely grainy, due to high levels of jpeg compression, but it purports to be two members of the Lebanese Army inspecting an unexploded missile. What's odd is that the object they're studying doesn't readily appear to be a missile to me—Could it be an external fuel tank? Some other piece of artillery? Humpback whale? Beats me. As usual, if you have exceptional eyesight and vast stores of military knowledge, be sure to chime in and let me know what you think. I'm also looking to analyze some of the other pictures as well, so if you're up on your weapons identification skills, be sure to check it out!

The new season of CBS’ hit show "Survivor" was previewed on this morning’s "Early Show," and viewers learned that the show will have a segregationist beginning as contestants will be divided according to their race. In the past, tribes on the show have been determined by age or sex or by choosing sides, but this is the first time they have been determined by race, a fact which seemed to appall the co-hosts of "The Early Show."

At the top of the 8:00 hour, Harry Smith asked a random man gathered on the plaza for his reaction to this news, and the response was "it should be pretty interesting." Harry Smith, declared that a "safe" answer, which caused co-host Rene Syler to exclaim:

Reports European Jewish Press:

A group of Israeli filmmakers were dropped from the schedule of the Documentary Film Festival in the French town of Lussas last week with their films replaced by movies by Palestinian and Lebanese filmmakers.

The directors received a letter from the directors of the festival explaining that they were dropped because of the latest Middle East crisis.

In what appears to be the latest in a long list of cultural boycotts against Israeli artists, the letter informed the Israelis that their films would be replaced.

Lack of detachment

According to Ynet News, the letter, signed by the festival’s director, artistic director, and program director, claimed that “it is difficult to look at films from the countries involved in the current war with the same degree of detachment.”

What's news this Wednesday?

(Correction) While the speech appeared on the web the morning of the 22nd, it was apparently given the prior week. - Dan

When Iran met its self-imposed deadline of responding to a UN Resolution by August 22nd, much of the MSM coverage reported Iran's claim that it was ready for serious talks. That's exemplified by an AP article linked at bottom. But the MSM failed to tell the whole story of Ahmadinejad's day.

While some outlets did balance that with punditry suggesting it was mainly a ploy to buy more time, no MSM outlets reported how Ahmadinejad actually started the day. He gave a political speech calling for England and America to bow and surrender.

NY Times theatre critic/playwright George Hunka's "A Sermon on Corporations, Neighborhoods and Loss" celebrates a left-wing performance artist for exposing the evils of large corporations. Hunka, of course, is writing this for the New York Times, part of a modest little enterprise known as the New York Times Co., which had revenues of a mere $3.4 billion in 2005.

"Reverend Billy -- the alter ego of the performance artist Bill Talen, bleach-blond pompadoured and an impressive presence at 6-foot-3 in his pale brown leisure suit -- struts, preaches and sings his way across the Spiegeltent stage at the South Street Seaport, bringing his anticorporatist, environmentalist message to the converted via a sermon and several songs, accompanied by the Church of Stop Shopping gospel choir and a seven-piece band."

On the August 22 edition of "NBC Nightly News," host Brian Williams described a gas station in Illinois that accidentally sold unleaded fuel for 30 cents. He sarcastically recounted the story this way:

"The pumps were quickly shut down amid fears that oil company profits might plummet. But for one brief, shining moment, we the consumers won. It was like the old days before you needed to refinance your home to refill your tank."

It should be noted, according to New York magazine, that Brian Williams makes $4 million a year. Sounding a bit like a radio DJ dedicating a song, the "Nightly News" anchor also announced that the story was "for all those who quietly suffer at the gas pump every day across this country, watching those numbers fly by."

This isn't exactly media bias, but since the myth of the conservative corporation is one of my personal favorites to demolish, I couldn't help but link to a Human Events study showing that conservative groups get far less money from Fortune 100 companies than liberal groups do. Here's an excerpt:

Rusty and Allah are all over this example of just how lazy Hezbollah has become in their efforts to provide fake news. The official Hezbollah web site (with an appropriate Iranian URL) is showing a picture of a ship being ripped apart in an explosion. Hezbollah claims that the ship was an Israeli ship hit by a Hezbollah missile.

The top picture below is the photo as shown on Hezbollah's site.

And Hezbollah did hit an Israel ship, the INS Hanit, a Saar 5 class missile boat, most likely with an Iranian-made C-701 "Kosar" type missile, on July 14, 2006.

The bottom picture is the INS Hanit (photo credit: Sweetness & Light):

Note the damage (most noticeably the scorch marks) near the waterline directly under the Hanit's helicopter hanger, roughly three-quarters of the way to the stern. Note also that while the ship was reported to have serious internal damage and four Israeli sailors died in the attack, the ship is largely intact, the keel unbroken, and the ship otherwise, from this view, externally undamaged, where the ship in the Hezbollah photo to has literally been broken by the blast, the aft half of the ship behind the explosion several degrees out of alignment with the fore.

Amnesty International seems to have missed the obvious. And, in other news, the sun rose in the East today.

Read the report here. Then, when you're done, read about how Hezbullah hides behind civilians. Amnesty International, as usual, shows itself to be as reputable as Kofi Annan.

I'm working on skimming through the report to pick out the most rediculous quotes.

Hillary Rodham Clinton is featured in a flattering black-and-white photo on the cover of Time magazine this week -- the 10th cover story for Hillary Clinton since she appeared on the national scene hitched to Bill Clinton's wagon in 1992. That's got to be a record of sorts. But one thing was very different this time. The headline featured a poll question with two little boxes to check: "LOVE HER" or "HATE HER."

What? Someone might not love her? This must be the handiwork of Time's new Managing Editor, Richard Stengel. He’s made a public fuss about his desire to see Time be a major player in the shaping of America's opinions.

This newest cover story is a departure from the norm, the royal covers she's so often received, with titles like "Ascent of a Woman," "Turning Fifty," "Hillary In Her Own Words," and the late-Lewinsky-scandal classic, "'It's Nobody's Business But Ours.'" The normal Time magazine Hillary cover could be mistaken for the cover of Ladies' Home Journal. (There was one exception. One cover in 1996 carried the caption "The Truth About Whitewater" and featured a harshly spotlighted Hillary, but it wasn't advertising a Time article inside, but a book excerpt from James Stewart's "Blood Sport.")

What does Maureen Dowd want? Her column of today is the latest evidence of a woman torn between the imperatives of modern feminism and a not-so-secret longing for more traditional domestic arrangements.

The topic of Ring-a-Ding-Bling [subscription required] is marriages in which the husband plays a decided second fiddle to the wife. You might think that Dowd-the-feminist would celebrate marriages in which women play the leading role. But, with one notable exception, she expresses little but scorn for husbands whose wives have the upper hand.

Mo's Exhibit A is the Britney Spears/Kevin Federline couple. Dowd begins by professing that "to make fun of Mr. Spears [would be] too easy — shooting tuna fish in a can, as they say." By referring to Federline as "Mr. Spears" Mo has of course mocked him already. Then, utterly ignoring her own precept, she proceeds to ruthlessly ridicule him, describing his recent attempt at rap music as "even more deliciously atrocious than anticipated," also letting us know that "the hip-hop community reacted with amused disdain."

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

Continuing with the misleading headline theme, an AP wire story running in the Kansas City Star was entitled "British gen. says Iraq mini "civil war."

That sounds suspiciously like the prevailing conventional mainstream media wisdom. If you read the article, however, you'll find that the general actually stated several times that this was really not the correct terminology to be describing the situation in Iraq, and stressed it repeatedly. No matter - statistics and studies have shown that few people read much farther than the headers and the first paragraph of any given news story, and the point is to implant in the reader's brain a framework before they even read the story. Mission accomplished. Click read more for the context the header doesn't provide.