The Christmas season is upon us, which means it’s that special time of year for the American Civil Liberties Union and Americans United for the Separation of Church and State to make sure no wayward city council will allow a whiff of frankincense on government property. They must send out direct-mail fundraising letters asking "Help Us Crush a Creche at Christmas!"

The Christmas season is also that time of year when the business world implores us to consider the material as more important than the spiritual, all in the spirit of “the holidays.” So we celebrate instead the arrival, on Christmas Day, of iPods and DVDs.

This year there’s a new twist. The Nativity scene has become commercialized – but in a way you would never imagine.

540 Republican voters surveyed were asked

Do you want to hear more about the Mormon Faith?

Do you consider Mormons to Christians?

Do you think that people will vote against a Mormon?

Are you less likely to support Romney because he is a Mormon?

What is your religous affiliation?

and finally who would you vote for among the GOP canidates

Democrats were asked about experience issues and defeating the GOP.

http://www.newsweek....

In the fall edition of Ms. magazine, author L.S. Kim interviewed former ABC news anchor Carole Simpson to discover that it used to be that the news was presented "not in the public’s interest, but in white men’s interest." If that sounded plausible forty years ago, it certainly does not today. But feminist bloggers thought that Kim's article was "one of the standout articles." Here's how Kim quoted Simpson:  

As Carole Simpson, a trailblazing African American woman who was ABC’s former weekend anchor for World News Tonight, explains, the news of old wasn’t delivered by men but solely decided by them. " And they were usually white, middle-aged, and upper-middle-class," says Simpson, currently a faculty member at Emerson College School of Communications. "The news they presented was not in the public interest, but in white men’s interest. News about, for, and by women was relegated to ‘women’s pages’ or ‘women’s shows.’"

Who is Hillary looking at and what is she thinking?

Who is the biggest climate sinner? Not China, says the AP.

The Associated Press reported November 7 an interest group's findings that Saudi Arabia and the United States are the worst "climate sinners" for not taking drastic attempts to cut carbon emissions. But it accepted the group's "relatively positive" assertion that China's emission growth will slow in the future.

The news wire story picked up by USA Today reported that Saudi Arabia was the biggest sinner because its policies block attempts to curb greenhouse gases and the U.S. was second because it refuses to sign the Kyoto Treaty.

Where did China rank? 17th.

"The Senate's 88 to 5 vote" on a one-year reprieve for middle class taxpayers on the Alternative Minimum Tax (AMT) "blew a $50 billion hole in the Democrats' promise not to pass any spending or tax measure that would add to the deficit," Washington Post's Jonathan Weisman and Jeffrey Birnbaum reported today. The staff writers then rounded up three "conservative 'Blue Dog' Democrats" from the House of Representatives to rail against the Senate for lacking the courage to "take a tough vote," in the words of Rep. Mike Ross (D-Ark.).

But just how conservative are these "conservative" Blue Dogs? Try slightly left of dead-center.

A conservative organization known as Freedom's Watch has had its advertisements rejected by NBC.

What was the heinous content of these ads?

A show of support and thanks to America's troops serving around the world during the holidays.

I kid you not.

As reported moments ago by the Associated Press (emphasis added):

Does Mitt Romney believe atheists should enjoy freedom? "Good Morning America" co-host Diane Sawyer apparently isn't too sure. On Friday's edition of the ABC program, the co-host discussed the 2008 presidential candidate's speech on his Mormon faith and wondered about Romney's comment that "freedom requires religion." "Is there going to be a question whether humanists or even atheists, agnostics deserve freedom," she asked "This Week" host, and former Clinton operative, George Stephanopoulos. (This is the same Diane Sawyer who has repeatedly objected to '08 contender Mike Huckabee using the phrase "Christian leader" in a campaign spot. She derided that as "heavy handed" and possibly crossing a line.)

In response to the loaded question, Stephanopoulos simply replied, "I think that's a fight that Romney is willing to pick." In a segment setting up the interview, reporter Dan reiterated the same themes and fretted, "What about non-believers?" He then negatively spun the speech: "Did Romney go too far in blurring the line between church and state?"

Matthew Balan's item on CNN describing (unlabeled) Planned Parenthood and the "conservative" Heritage Foundation is all too common. It happens almost daily. It's even worse when radical leftists are unlabeled, and conservatives are described as "hard line." Liberals can't even describe their own ideological brethren as ideological.The difference in Wolf Blitzer’s labeling of Seymour Hersh and Pat Buchanan on Tuesday’s edition of The Situation Room is merely the latest lesson. Blitzer plugged upcoming segments this way:

How did the Bush administration apparently get it so wrong [on Iran] -- the intelligence community -- even as they were turning up the war rhetoric? I'll speak with Sy Hersh of The New Yorker magazine. He broke the story, actually, a year ago and got slammed by the White House for reporting it. Plus, Pat Buchanan, the hard-line conservative -- you're going to find out why he thinks immigrants are right now destroying the American way of life. Pat Buchanan is standing by to join us live this hour.

Washington Post staffers Jonathan Weisman and Steven Mufson gaver readers of the December 7 paper an article on a "comprehensive energy bill" that passed the House of Representatives without delving into Republican criticism that the bill lacks any provision to produce or procure more energy domestically, such as from interior and off-shore natural gas and oil reserves.

Weisman and Mufson noted in the lede that the bill will raise "fuel-efficiency standards" and "require increased use of renewable energy sources" and later quickly dispatched with Republican opposition by finely chopping Minority Leader Rep. John Boehner's (R-Ohio) criticism:

Even House Minority Leader John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) -- who assails the measure as a "no-energy" bill and as a tax increase that would raise, not lower, energy costs -- lauded the CAFE (corporate average fuel efficiency) standards as a good and reasonable compromise.

Oh really? On it's "Online Newshour" Web page, PBS -- hardly a right-wing news venue -- gave readers more of Boehner's critical quote:

Let’s now return to the goo at GQ, part 2. In his glory-to-Bill prayer of a story, George Saunders lamented how the media isn’t half-kind enough to the man they hope is President Clinton the First: "To observe Clinton up close is to get a mini seminar in the deficiencies of the media in conveying the real scale of our public figures." Clinton is enormous. Saunders pushes comparisons to Gandhi, Mandela, and Martin Luther King, as well as Frank Sinatra, Willie Mays, and Michael Jordan. Clinton's heart is immense, his talents prodigious. He is so brilliant he makes the writer feel like an idiot: "Because when Bill Clinton’s at your table, you don’t really want anyone else talking, and that includes you. When you do talk, you feel stupid. I mean, you are stupid."

Saunders does more mooning over Bill as the man stands in the bright sun listening to boring speeches by local African dignitaries:

CNN, in a report on the Centers for Disease Control’s finding that the teen birth rate increased in 2006, focused attention on what liberals surmise is a partial cause of the increase - President Bush’s advocacy of abstinence-only sex education. CNN correspondent Mary Snow, in her introduction to her report, noted that, "no one is saying for certain whether the rise in teen pregnancy is in fact a trend, but it is bringing attention to abstinence-only programs, and the roughly $176 million the federal government spends on them each year."

The report, which aired during the 4 pm Eastern hour of Thursday’s "The Situation Room," featured three sound bites from both sides of the debate. Two came from Cecile Richards, the president of Planned Parenthood, whose political leanings are never mentioned. The third came from Robert Rector of The Heritage Foundation, which is described as a "conservative think tank."

[Update, 12:20 pm Eastern: Kristen Fyfe of MRC's Culture and Media Institute pointed out the biased reporting of the New York Times and the Washington Post on the CDC report.]

Director's Note: In my rush to get to a meeting, I neglected to give credit where credit is due.  David G., you are indeed the Man.  -- SM

(Yet Another) Smarter Than the Media

As wily and wary as we have come to know the media to be, the many members of Team Clinton just keep out-Foxing them (apologies for the mention of the Hellish network).

In a great many of the media's post-game analyses of the Thursday, December 6^th Mitt Romney religion speech, including that of the Associated Press, we are treated to the negative reactions thereto of one Costas Panagopoulos, who is rightly (if only partially) identified as "a political science professor at Fordham University".

Amongst his many analytical stylings on Romney's effort:

In reading the Associated Press's 9:09 a.m. report covering the Bureau of Labor Statistics November Employment Situation Report, one can't help but think that it was hoping for worse news than arrived. Unemployment remained at 4.7%, and 94,000 jobs were added during the month, beating expectations of 4.8% and 70,000, respectively.

After spending five paragraphs relaying the news, it began hitting us with negative commentary that almost had to have been drafted in advance (scare words bolded):

Still, a lingering fear among economists is that consumers will cut back on their spending, throwing the economy into a tailspin. The odds of a recession have grown this year, although Federal Reserve officials, the Bush administration and others are hopeful the country can avoid one.

Then, after brief foray into the good news about wage growth (up 0.5% in November, beating expectations of 0.3%), AP wrapped by going into four paragraphs that almost could have been written into a DNC press release (over-the-top negative words and phrases bolded by me):

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To give you an idea of what lengths Nobel Laureate Al Gore and his media minions will go to present him as a champion for the environment, the Associated Press Friday published a story about the Global Warmingist-in-Chief taking public transportation in Norway (emphasis added, h/t NBer Sick-n-Tired):

Former Vice President Al Gore arrived in Oslo today to accept the Nobel Peace Prize he shared for the campaign against global warming, and shunned the traditional airport motorcade in favor of climate-friendly public transport.

Touching, dontcha think, especially as the piece totally ignored what Gore's carbon footprint will be on the trip. Fortunately, Libby Rosenthal of the International Herald Tribune got a copy of the schlockumentarist's itinerary, and it's filled with inconvenient truths the sycophants at AP dare not share (emphasis added):

FNC's Bill O'Reilly on Thursday night centered his "Talking Points Memo" around the findings in the MRC's Media Reality Check study released earlier this week, "Good News = Less News on Iraq War: As Surge Succeeds and Casualty Rates Fall, ABC, CBS and NBC Lose Interest In Iraq War." O'Reilly pointed out how U.S. casualties and violence are way down from six months ago. Then, citing the MRC's numbers with a chart displaying them on screen, he observed how now "there is far less carnage in Iraq and far less reporting about the war. Since the surge began, Iraq war stories on the nightly news programs have dropped from 178 a month to 68 in November. Those stats were compiled by the conservative watchdog group Media Research Center and you can read the report online at mrc.org."

Video (2:35): Real (1.91 MB) and Windows (1.60), plus MP3 audio (1.19 MB).

Key findings from the study (also available here as PDF file) by MRC Research Director Rich Noyes:

For general discussion and debate. Possible talking point: Where's that recession the media keep predicting?

As stocks collapsed in November, press member after press member warned of a looming recession. Yet, the market has exploded again, and employers added more jobs in November than expected.

What's your crystal ball saying for 2008? Will the economy keep chugging along, or will the media and the Democrats get their Christmas wishes of a recession ahead of the first Tuesday in November?

"We'll go to a revival and then go to Guantanamo Bay and torture some people just for fun." -- David Shuster on evangelicals, 12-7-07

So astonishingly malicious were the words of David Shuster today that they leave me at a loss for words of my own. So let's just say it simply: David Shuster is an anti-evangelical bigot.

Video (0:35): Real (991 kB) and Windows (1.11 MB), plus MP3 audio (274 kB).