Though I am a NB fan, I noticed that there are a lot of people who don't like Bill O'Reilly. Sure, I know he believes in Global Warming and supports REASONABLE gun control, but I see nothing wrong with that. I would rather agree with O'Reilly than with Al Gore or any of those environmental terrorists. As a self-proclaimed neoconservative, I just happen to have read Culture Warrior, his superb book, and I agree with him 100% on the ongoing culture war. Can't you guys just go soft on O'Reilly? Please feel free to give me your opinions.

The MRC's Brad Wilmouth alerted me to a slip of the tongue Wednesday night by ABC anchor Charles Gibson, who didn't catch and correct his error -- at least in the 6:30pm EDT feed of World News. In a brief item on the congressional resolution labeling a 1915 massacre of Armenians as "genocide," Gibson inadvertently said "Americans" instead:

Hard to believe, but there was a political fight in Washington today over something that happened 92 years ago. In 1915, as many as a million and a half Americans were killed by Ottoman Turks...

Video clip (20 secs): Real (600 KB) or Windows Media (700 KB), plus MP3 audio (100 KB)

Ann Coulter did her best to drop a bomb on the October 10 episode of "Tucker" on MSNBC. At the conclusion of her interview, Ann Coulter announced (video) that the National Enquirer was just reporting that John Edwards had an 18-month affair while on the campaign trail. You can read the story here.

Before going any further, this allegation must be met with a healthy degree of skepticism. First of all, the story is originating from the National Enquirer, which in and of itself, raises questions as to the story's reliability. Secondly, Coulter had a notorious run-in earlier this year with Elizabeth Edwards on an MSNBC episode of "Harball." Coulter would have every motivation to repeat a salacious tabloid sex allegation about John Edwards.

With that said, though, you would think that the mere allegation would be worthy of a media frenzy based upon its recent behavior. The media have extensively covered the "bathroom sex" case of Senator Larry Craig. Before that, the media happily reported when Sentator David Vitter's phone number showed up in the records of the "DC Madam." Even before that, the Mark Foley story lingered for a month during a crucial point in the 2006 campaign.

Network morning news programs showcase musicians all the time with concert series and the like, and sometimes musicians make political statements in between songs, as Bruce Springsteen did on the September 28 "Today" show. But usually those segments are fluffy revenue raisers meant to hook audiences with popular musical acts. The politics are notable for their general left-wing slant, but otherwise unconnected to the news reporting on the program or the network.

Not so with Michael Stipe's appearance on the October 10 "Anderson Cooper 360," which will give Stipe and his band REM a platform to make a politically correct ecological statement in line with CNN's upcoming special, "Planet in Peril."

According to CNN.com:

(CNN) -- Rock group R.E.M. plans to debut a song from its upcoming album Wednesday on CNN's "Anderson Cooper 360°" program.

David Herszenhorn's front-page "Political Memo" for Wednesday's New York Times was devoted to the fight over Graeme Frost, the boy pushed forward by the Democrats to deliver the response to Bush's weekly radio address on the State Children's Health Insurance Program (S-CHIP).

The inimitable Mark Steyn is one of several conservative writers unhappy with Democrats "desperate enough to send a boy to do a man's job."

Herszenhorn accused Republicans and "conservative bloggers" of attacking the boy and his family. While not as bad as the local coverage in the Baltimore Sun as outlined earlier by Ken Shepherd, there is a hostile tone:

Warmer winter. No - colder winter. No. Warmer winter, definitely warmer winter.

Last night's network news broadcasts made the Energy Department's most recent prediction for this year's winter climate, released yesterday, sound like a report from Dustin Hoffman's "Rain Man."

On CBS's Evening News, Katie Couric stated that "the government predicted today that temperatures this winter will generally be above average. Even so, it will cost you more to heat your home."

Video montage (1:07): Real (1.81 MB) and Windows (3.78 MB) and MP3 audio (518 kB).

But ABC's "World News with Charles Gibson" led its broadcast with the Energy Information Administration's report by saying "Tonight, news of a cold wind a coming that promises to have a chilling effect on the American pocketbook," and continued to sing a different tune than Couric, professing that "the average American homeowner will pay 10% more for heating during what will be, generally, a colder winter."

On September 29, 2007, Baltimore 12-year old Graeme Frost became the Democratic poster child, literally, for SCHIP. Frost read the Democratic Party's official response to the president's weekly radio address, attacking President Bush for his veto of a Democratic-sponsored bill to balloon federal spending on the 10-year old program.

The Baltimore Sun ran a story that morning noting young Graeme Frost's brush with political football history, and two days earlier ran a gauzy profile on Graeme's mom and dad and their push for the Democratic SCHIP expansion here. But now that conservative bloggers have been raising questions about the portrayal by Democrats and the Baltimore Sun of the family's financial plight, the Sun is hitting back by attacking conservatives bloggers as heartless and obsessive, Michelle Malkin noted on her blog.

On Tuesday's "Good Morning America," co-host Chris Cuomo and media critic Howard Kurtz ignored the role that liberal bias has played in the decline of ratings for the network evening newscasts. At the same time, Cuomo and Washington Post reporter seemed to be proud of the media's ability to turn Americans against the war in Iraq. Kurtz, who has written a book on the subject, asserted, "I believe that these newscasts in 2005 and 2006 played the biggest single role in helping to turn public opinion against the war."

Cuomo agreed and complimented the journalist's analysis. He enthused, "It's easy to say, 'Oh, well. The war was unpopular. People were looking for the unpopularity of it. At some point, the networks gave that to them.' But you have a more penetrating look at it. You take a look at it in terms of the role of the nightly newscasts in shaping the ideas about the news..." According to Kurtz, the top three network anchors kept "framing the story in such a way" that the bad news finally had an impact. And while the two reporters wondered about the effect the iPod and internet are having on network low ratings, at no time did they discuss liberal bias or salient facts such as that journalists backed John Kerry over George Bush by a two-to-one margin.

Those pesky conservative suburbanites and their market forces! They'll be the ruin of the Minneapolis Star-Tribune, bellows Anonymous.

Hugh Hewitt and Ed Morrissey have taken on the unattributed complaints of a self-described Star-Tribune ("Strib") veteran, who laments that his beloved paper is becoming a right-wing shill for, gasp, hiring a token conservative opinion columnist.:

The Rake, a local alternative newspaper here in the Twin Cities, published an interesting cri de coeur from "one Strib veteran" about the direction of the Minneapolis Star-Tribune. The anonymous attribution wears thin in the first line of the quote:

I have discovered one solution to keeping track of where you have been and the comments you have made so you can have a conversation with someone that can stretch over several days or even weeks. And it's easy too! Much improved over the last time I tried this, prior to the most recent upgrades of the site.

I don't think I am the only one with this problem, as I have seen it mentioned on the blogs and here on the foums. I am not able to get on, due to the time constraints of having a real life, sometimes for days or even weeks at a time, and it is difficult to try to carry on some semblance of a conversation with someone because of losing track of where that last comment was made. Scrolling through pages of blog entries after one or two busy newsdays to find one you're pretty sure you made a comment in, and then having to scroll through the comments to see if you have a reply, is frustrating, to say the least. I'm sure, since I have been tracking my comments, that the same thing is happening to others, as I will comment to their comment, and not get a reply in return after more than one or two days go by. So it's on to other stuff.

Never doubt the left-wing tilt of the Washington Post - even the Business section. Today's Steven Pearlstein column delivered the almost universal left-wing outlook on yesterday's GOP debate.

It was bad enough that moderator Chris Matthews didn't ask enough business/economy questions - choosing instead to dwell on capturing Osama or inside baseball about politics. But Pearlstein took a noxious outlook on the debate and blasted former Sen. Fred Thompson in a chat that followed.

"The truth is, when you compare Ron Paul to Fred Thompson on substance, Thompson comes across as a nothing-burger," Pearlstein said during the Post chat. Later on, he got even more mean-spirited.

Tuesday’s Metro section of The Washington Post covered a controversy at D.C.’s George Washington University, where fliers appeared on campus blaring "HATE MUSLIMS? SO DO WE!!" Post reporter Susan Kinzie mentioned that the GWU chapter of the conservative Young America’s Foundation denied the posters were theirs, and Kinzie noted that it was probably a prank, since the fine print at the bottom had the words "'Brought to you by Students for Conservativo-Fascism Awareness' -- and a postscript recommending a BBC video on the politics of fear." But while Wednesday’s article in Metro confirmed that it was a prank "produced by students who were attempting to mock those they thought were trying to stir fear of Muslims," YAF wasn’t named anywhere in the article as the vindicated victim.

Jason Mattera of YAF is rightfully upset: "The Post mentions Young America’s Foundation three times, even though the fliers were obvious hoaxes. Yet the paper’s article today explaining that the fliers were fabricated doesn’t mention Young America’s Foundation even once! The Post will report possible incidents of hate speech, but when those incidents turn out to be contrived, the paper doesn’t vindicate those who were targeted!!!"

With politicians and newspapers like they have in California, it's no wonder the state has become a magnet for millions of illegal immigrants. The latest lunacy? The legislature has enacted a bill giving illegals scholarships to state universities. And the Los Angeles Times predictably wants Gov. Schwarzenegger to sign it into law.

The so-called "California Dream Act" was cooked up by state Sen. Gil Cedillo (D-Los Angeles). In its editorial of today, "Make the Dream Reality," The Times plays lip service to the problem the law would create: "We understand the objections that arise when a society extends benefits to illegal immigrants that once were reserved solely for legal residents. The easier life becomes for those who crossed our borders illegally, the more incentive there is for others to follow."

Exactamundo. But wth its next breath the newspaper brushes off the very problem it identified:

Just when you thought it was safe to turn on your radio again, a major media advocate has issued a strong warning to companies thinking about hiring Don Imus: Don't you dare!

For those that have been out of the country since the beginning of the year, one of the original shock-jocks got himself in trouble in April when he referred to the Rutgers women's basketball team as "nappy-headed hos."

After being fired by CBS Radio and NBC, Imus has been mounting a comeback, and is in serious talks with two leading radio outlets.

Unfortunately, as measured by its press release Tuesday, the National Association of Black Journalists isn't pleased (emphasis added throughout, h/t Dan Gainor):

Your turn. Possible talking point: Any debate post mortems?

At the top center spot of Wednesday's front page -- above those debating Republicans -- The Washington Post spotlights its interview with Hillary Rodham Clinton. The headline is "Clinton Cites Lessons of Partisanship: Senator Says She's Best Equipped to Unite America." (Washingtonpost.com changed its header to "Clinton Cites Her Resilience.")

Since when has Hillary been either a uniter, or a centrist? Post reporters Anne Kornblut and Dan Balz offered little skepticism (and no account of her consistently liberal voting record) in their account of her remarks, summed up with this: "I intend to win in November 2008, and then I intend to build a centrist coalition in this country that is like what I remember when I was growing up."

http://news.silverse... has Ted Butler's latest column, which has a nice graph for people who don't want to bother to read about it. Especially in a volatile thing like silver, this derivative risk presents substantial risk of institutional default (this despite supposedly being "well regulated" by the same people senselessly attacking the company I work for in a gigantic lawyer-welfare program!). Guess who gets to pay for the irresponsibility then?? See what Dr. Paul means in the part of the debate I missed yesterday?? Can people here see why I find this hypocritical of big government for allowing it and the antilibertarian-biased media for not-covering the fiscal/legal scandal at all?
JMR

The ruckus over the Rush Limbaugh "phony soldiers" statement is dying down. It ought not to. There is a huge story here.

What did Rush say? In a September 26 conversation with a caller to his program who claimed the media never interview "real soldiers," but just people out of the blue, Rush added for emphasis, "the phony soldiers."

The left saw its opportunity and pounced with a vengeance. Led by the George Soros-funded and Hillary Clinton-inspired Media Matters outfit, it unleashed a scorched-earth attack on Limbaugh for insulting the military, stating that any servicemen or women who might oppose the war in Iraq had been defamed by the talk show host as "phony soldiers."

The television networks, newspapers, and leftist blog sites were ablaze with stories about Democratic outrage. There were calls for his show to be yanked from the Armed Forces Radio Network. There were demands that Clear Channel make Rush apologize, and that advertisers pull their sponsorship.