A night after NBC anchor Brian Williams featured, as his sole expert of the impact of race in the Katrina disaster, left-wing professor Michael Eric Dyson who charged that Barbara Bush's suggestion -- that many victims were better off in their new cities -- “reinforced the reputation of the Bushes as clueless patricians,” Williams confronted President George W. Bush Tuesday with the insult, as if Dyson is some sort of authoritative figure. Williams hit Bush with this indictment: "You have apologized for the damage, but what about the damage to your presidency? And, Mr. President, here's what I mean. Most of the analysts call it your low point. A lot of Americans are always going to believe that that weekend, that week, you were watching something on television other than what they were seeing, and Professor Dyson from the University of Pennsylvania said on our broadcast last night it was because of your 'patrician' upbringing, that it's a class issue."

Williams soon demanded to know if Bush has “any moments of doubt that we fought the wrong war, that there's something wrong with the perception of America overseas?" When Bush replied that “the war came to our shores, remember that. We had a foreign policy that basically said let's hope calm works. And we were attacked," Williams gratuitously retorted: "But those weren't Iraqis." Williams also advocated a tax hike in the guise of a question: "The folks who say you should have asked for some sort of sacrifice from all of us after 9/11, do they have a case, looking back on it?" (Transcript follows)

It appears that the Leftists have found themselves a new human rights cause to protest---the "torture" of imprisoned Saddam Hussein by forcing him to watch the 'South Park' movie portraying him as having a "special relationship" with Satan. Here is the report on this abuse of Saddam via Yahoo! News:

Former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein is being made to watch his appearance in cult cartoon South Park while he is behind bars.

The deposed leader on trial in Iraq was featured in the movie spin-off as the lover of the devil. South Park: Bigger, Longer and Uncut featured Hussein and Satan attempting to take over the world together.

Speaking at the Edinburgh International Television Festival, South Park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone said US Marines guarding the former dictator during his trial for genocide were making him watch the movie "repeatedly".

"I have it on pretty good information from the Marines on detail in Iraq that they showed him the movie last year. That's really adding insult to injury. I bet that made him really happy," Stone said.

    A couple of years ago, then-NBC anchor Tom Brokaw denounced me for seeking to do “as much damage, and I choose that word carefully, as he can do to the credibility of the news divisions,” and then he pleaded for Dan Rather, Peter Jennings, and himself: “These three aging white men are stuck somewhere in the middle trying, on a nightly basis, to give a fair and balanced picture of what’s going on in the world.”

     If the credibility of the network news divisions is based on giving a “fair and balanced” picture of today’s world, then ABC, CBS, and NBC have done all the damage to themselves. To steal from Lincoln, it is beyond our poor power to add or detract. A case in point:

I think we now know Tucker Carlson's strategy for winning 'Dancing With the Stars': multiple partners.

That might be the only way to explain Carlson's odd defense of Warren Steed Jeffs, the polygamist leader arrested today. On his MSNBC show of this afternoon, Tucker was outraged that Jeffs had been placed on the FBI's Ten Most Wanted list:

"His crime was wanting to enter into life-long arrangements with women, or facilitating that between a man and . . . was this guy trying to undermine America, destroy our way of life or murder our citizens? No! What the hell was he doing on the Top Ten list?"

A CNN.com poll equates President Bush with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. The question: "Who would win a debate on world issues between President Bush and Iranian President Ahmadinejad?"

To ask that question means you are willing to believe the two are on the same level, despite Ahmadinejad's calling the Holocaust a "myth."

Naturally, CNN would not haved compared President Clinton to Slobodan Milosevic.

It should surprise no one who CNN.com readers picked to win the debate. If there were such a debate, CNN viewers would take bathroom breaks during Bush's closing and opening statements.

Are you a conservative? If so, have you ever asked yourself why you sometimes feel obliged to inject painfully obvious statements into your debates with liberals? Here's what I mean. Suppose you're arguing in favor of criminal profiling at airports with a radical leftist, and you're making the point that most international terrorist groups are comprised of Muslim men between the ages of 18 and 40. Immediately following that statement you find yourself saying something like: "Of course, that doesn't mean that ALL Muslim men in that age group are terrorists." You mention this even though you know that the little voice in the back of your mind is about to say: "No Sh**, Sherlock! Did you figure that out all by yourself, or did you have to consult a five-year-old first?"

Are you a conservative? If so, have you ever asked yourself why you sometimes feel obliged to inject painfully obvious statements into your debates with liberals? Here's what I mean. Suppose you're arguing in favor of criminal profiling at airports with a radical leftist, and you're making the point that most international terrorist groups are comprised of Muslim men between the ages of 18 and 40. Immediately following that statement you find yourself saying something like: "Of course, that doesn't mean that ALL Muslim men in that age group are terrorists." You mention this even though you know that the little voice in the back of your mind is about to say: "No Sh**, Sherlock! Did you figure that out all by yourself, or did you have to consult a five-year-old first?"

One of Rush Limbaugh’s many pet peeves with the "drive-by" media’s coverage of Hurricane Katrina has been reporters nagging that the Bush administration wasn’t doling out money fast enough only to turn around and then complain that much of money has been wasted in various scams. A prime example of this was NBC’s Norah O’Donnell on last night’s Hardball. O’Donnell, determined to deny the administration any successes, asked the Washington Post’s Eugene Robinson:

"A year later and less than half of New Orleans residents have moved back. There have been, according to government watchdog groups, at least $2 billion in fraud and waste, scams, et cetera. Can Bush claim that there's any success in what's happened in the Gulf Coast in the past year?"

Choosing a ‘God Squad,’ When the Mind Has Faded is an article that is a perfect example of the editorial position of a newspaper misleading with a headline.

When headlines like this are chosen, one wonders what exactly is going through the mind of the headline writer (most should know that headline writers are often different people than the authors of the article). Regardless, though, the headlines reflect the policy and position of the paper, which may or may not be the same as that of the article's author.

This example of a headline that does not really fit the article comes to us from the August 29th edition of the New York Times topping what is billed as an "essay" about the efficacy or sense of giving dialysis to a patient with brain damage, paid for by the tax payer.

Nat Hentoff in his article for the Village Voice (http://www.villagevoice.com/news/0635,hentoff,74291,6.html)

claims that Judge Anna Diggs Taylor teaches President Bush about the Constitution.

Actually, I wonder if she or Nat Hentoff have actually read the US Constitution and the Bill of Rights.

1) Free Speech does not mean that your speech cannot result in negative consequences.

2) Free Speech does not gurantee the right to be heard, or it this case, the right not to be heard. (???)

3) Their is no right to privacy. There is a right against illegal search and seizure -- the word "listen" nor "privacy" is not part of the 4th Amendment.

Unlike Tuesday’s "Today Show," where Matt Lauer advanced a conspiracy theory that the levees were blown up intentionally, on today’s "Early Show" on CBS, co-host Harry Smith pounded Ray Nagin with the notion that nobody has done enough to help the people of New Orleans recover from Hurricane Katrina. Smith challenged Nagin’s leadership abilities:

‘...And, quite frankly Mr. Mayor, a lot of folks in this town have lost faith in you. Can you lead this city to the future?"

Smith complained at the slow pace of cleaning up the city and rebuilding and suggested the city is unlivable:

"You know, as we walk around this city, we're in a neighborhood where there is one house that's been restored next to five houses that haven't been restored. There is still debris around. There have been so many tens of thousands of people displaced. They're making a new life in Atlanta or Houston or even Salt Lake City. What argument would you give to them to come back to a place like this?"

Looking for a "passionate, compassionate, great, great" man? Well, according to CNN’s Kyra Phillips, they do indeed exist.

During CNN’s live coverage of President Bush’s remarks from New Orleans, Phillips was unaware that her microphone was on and picked up portions of a conversation she was having with another woman, apparently in a CNN restroom. At 12:49pm EDT, those listening carefully could hear Phillips praise her husband:

Phillips: "Yeah, I’m very lucky in that regard with my husband. My husband is handsome and he is genuinely a loving, you know, no ego–you know what I’m saying. Just a really passionate, compassionate great, great human being. And they exist. They do exist. They’re hard to find. Yup. But they are out there."

Phillips also inadvertently revealed how she feels about her sister-in-law:

Phillips: "..Brothers have to be, you know, protective. Except for mine. I’ve got to be protective of him...Yeah. He’s married, three kids, but his wife is just a control freak."

Video clip (1minute 38seconds): Real (2.6MB) or Windows Media (3.06MB), plus MP3 audio (478KB)

The full transcript is behind the cut [including one vulgarity]:

Will Thoretz is the company spokesman for VNU Media, the company that owns Editor & Publisher and employs Editor Greg Mitchell, a man that has something of a "truth problem" according to Michael Silence, and seems to be on the wrong side of an example of "journalistic malpractice" according to Stephen Spruiell.

Mary Katharine Ham of Townhall.com attempted to contact Mitchell at Editor & Publisher for comment several times yesterday, but Mitchell has thus far decline to respond. Ham also tried to contact Will Thoretz of Editor & Publisher's parent company, VNU Media, and while she was able to speak to his assistant, Thoretz has not responded to Ham to date.

Color me skeptical, but evidence indicating that one of your editors has severe ethical issues should demand an immediate response of some sort, unless, of course, the decision has been made to stonewall the story and hope it goes away.

If the topic doesn't fit, you must discuss it (on this thread).

After his kid-gloves interview with Mike Wallace, Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has full confidence in his ability to get a favorable debate moderator to oversee a televised debate between himself and President Bush. Perhaps Katie Couric?

Reports Reuters:

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad voiced defiance on Tuesday as a deadline neared for Iran to halt work the West fears is a step toward building nuclear bombs, and challenged President Bush to televised debate.

In a news conference, Ahmadinejad condemned the U.S. and British role in the world since World War Two but made no direct mention of the international nuclear confrontation.

On this morning's Today, NBC's Matt Lauer asked New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin to address the conspiracy theory that the levees were intentionally blown up to protect white neighborhoods at the expense of African-Americans. Reciting a question Brian Williams posed in his special, Lauer asked Nagin: "And finally the elephant in the room, if you will, Mr. Nagin. There are still people in the black community, many people, and Brian Williams touched on this in a special last night on NBC, who believe that the day after Katrina struck New Orleans the levees were breached intentionally. That they were blown, if you will, to flood black and poor neighborhoods to spare middle-class white neighborhoods. It would seem very difficult for New Orleans to move forward until that's directly addressed. What do you say about it?"

The strongly independent New York Times withholds a story to comply with the government? There must be a catch and there is: the government is not American and the withheld story is bashing terrorists.

Reports the Times on itself:

If Web readers in Britain were intrigued by the headline “Details Emerge in British Terror Case,” which sat on top of The New York Times’s home page much of yesterday, they would have been disappointed with a click.

“On advice of legal counsel, this article is unavailable to readers of nytimes.com in Britain,” is the message they would have seen. “This arises from the requirement in British law that prohibits publication of prejudicial information about the defendants prior to trial.”

Faking news photos isn't just for Islamic propagandists any more.

A TVNewser reader has caught CBS in the act, altering a photo to make new anchor Katie Couric's waistline appear slimmer than it really is.

Question: Is CBS doing better now that it's only faking news to make its anchor look skinny, or is it doing worse now that it's making phony pictures instead of relying on nutjobs to do it?

UPDATE 11:21. Commenter 1sttofight correctly points out that Couric's face is also slimmer. It seems her arms are, too.

UPDATE 08:30 by Mark Finkelstein: CBS has now admitted that it "retouched" Katie's photo, but claims it was done "without the knowledge of Katie Couric or CBS news management," and Couric is quoted as claiming "she prefers the original photo 'because there's more of me to love.'"

Elsewhere on the fake Middle Eastern news front, the Second Draft has two must-see videos (HT: Instapundit) that look at a famous "news" item from 2000 in which a young Palestinian boy is reportedly shot by Israeli soldiers while crouching behind a barrel. The footage was filmed by a Palestinian cameraman working for a French television station. Upon further examination, like many pictures from that part of the world, the video appears to not be what actually happened.

The documentary looks at other video shot by cameramen sitting behind the boy and his father, right in the line of Israeli fire who did not sustain any injuries, leading to the conclusion that the boy was not killed by Israelis but by Palestinians. Follow the link above for the second video. Both are downloadable on the Second Draft site for those unable to view Flash.

Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld finally articulated at least a portion of what conservative bloggers have been pointing out for some time - Islamist terror groups have had considerable success in planting and slanting stories within the Western mainstream media:

FALLON NAVAL AIR STATION, Nev. (AP) -- Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said Monday he is deeply troubled by the success of terrorist groups in "manipulating the media" to influence Westerners. "What bothers me the most is how clever the enemy is," he continued, launching an extensive broadside at Islamic extremist groups which he said are trying to undermine Western support for the war on terror. "They are actively manipulating the media in this country" by, for example, falsely blaming U.S. troops for civilian deaths in Iraq and Afghanistan, he said. "They can lie with impunity."

Rumsfeld stopped short of pointing out what became obvious during the Israeli-Hizballah conflict in Lebanon; that the mainstream media's use of local reporters and photographers has virtually ensured its infiltration by terrorist sympathizers. Likewise, Rumsfeld did not mention that the tainted reporting serves the purposes of Democrats running on anti-war platforms.

Reuters claims this armored car was hit by two missiles from an Israeli helicopter.

As you can see, Isreal's new missiles are quite different than the standard Hellfire and TOW ATGMs of the past, both of which, designed for tanks, would have minced an armored car such as this one. Ths armored car is said to have been hit not once, but twice by missiles, and the only apparent damage is a hole that seems to be surrounded by rust. Corrosion, or explosion?

I think it is fairly obvious that if the Israelis did fire two missiles at this armor car, that the car did not take a direct hit. Tanks can't survive the ATGMs Israel uses on their helicopters, and armored cars have much thinner armor than tanks. It would have cut through one side, detonated, and left a shattered, burning hulk. There was no explosion, and even a dud would have completely punched through the vehicle, exiting the other side with a noticable hole. The photo below shows no such penetration on the opposite side.

Is it news to anyone that Michael Brown thinks he got a bum rap on Katrina? As shopworn as was his concatenation of complaint this morning, Matt Lauer treated it with the enthusiasm of a Live at Five reporter on the scene of a fresh accident out on county route 11.

You knew this was coming: Lauer got things off to a Bush-bashing start with the famous "you're doing a heck of a job, Brownie" clip of the president congratulating Brown for his work at the beginning of the relief effort.

Matt moved things along with a series of 'helpful' questions/comments:

Lauer: "You warned the president and no help arrived?"

Brown says he did.

Lauer: "The stupid talking points [defending the relief efforts] should be thrown out the window when people are dying."

Brown agrees.

Lauer: "Do you think that you have been handed all of the blame for this situation? Should the president share the blame?"

A New York Times editorial and an op-ed piece by one of its house columnists have something interesting in common this morning: stamp-your-feet frustration with the way the world is and an inability to suggest what should be done about it.

In The Falling Paycheck, the Times editorial board complains that real wages aren't keeping up with the economy's continued expansion. "American employees have not shared in the wealth they’ve helped to create," laments the Old Gray Lady. Sure sounds as if the Times subscribes to the 'surplus value' theory of labor. And we know who came up with that.