Rinos continue to capture news media facetime by dissimulating their party. Even though the Hagel yelling isn’t noticed, McCain’s reversal is scoring points.

Dick Morris, FOX

... As Congress sifts its way through the various resolutions on the war in Iraq, Senator Hillary Clinton will find herself on the spot, torn between preserving her mainstream viability by supporting the troops in the field and maintaining her front runner status in the Democratic Party by courting the anti-war left. She will be asked to vote on Senator Barack Obama’s bill to set a timetable of troop withdrawal culminating in a total pullout by March 2008, and on bills to cut off funding for Bush’s "surge" of twenty thousand extra troops.

To date, Hillary has rejected setting a timetable, saying that it undermines our mission and encourages the enemy to hang in there, and says she will vote against cutting off funds for our troops while they are in harm’s way. If she continues with these positions, she will become the right of the Democratic 2008 field. Obama may also oppose a funding cutoff, but his focus on a timetable for withdrawal would put him to Hillary’s left. And former VP candidate John Edwards, who doesn’t sit in the Senate anymore, will loudly proclaim his support for both a timetable and a funding cutoff, making him the left flank of the three-way race. ...

Who leads the polls today? After devoting extreme efforts to erase her recent pro-Iraq past, Sen Clinton pulls to the front of he democrats. Even so, as Dick Morris asks, can she be in two places at once (satisfy the middle)?

On the other side Mayor G just walked into what appears to be virtual acceptance. He supports Iraq.

If the public endorsed cut and run on the same level news media and our democrat congress tells us, how does one explain Hagel’s struggle, Sen Clinton’s dilemma, or Mayor G’s success?

Has anybody read this al-reuters attack piece?

http://www.reuters.c...

I couldn't ever imagine reuters doing a similar article with one simple word changed.... "right" into "left" and the piece being about let's say Soros for example.

It simply would not happen.

And to add insult to injury, al-reuters quotes a liberal activist without accurately labeling him as such.

================="Because of his prominence, Falwell still carries some weight among religious conservatives but he doesn't have the organizational power that he once had," said John Green, a political scientist at the University of Akron.=================

The steamy love affair between the Los Angeles Times and Barack Obama shows no signs of letting up. The archives at the Times will show that yesterday's big announcement by Obama was reported today with 1,215 words on page A17 (here, Sunday, February 11, 2007). In truth, there was actually more than this. There was also a 16-square-inch, full-color photo of Obama prominently displayed on the front page (see the image here). Barack is shown waving happily in front of a large backdrop of the American flag. (By the way, nowhere does the word "liberal" appear anywhere in the article!)

A few days old but a goodie. I've seen in this one report something that's often missing from network treatment of the minimum wage issue: a quantification of how much the government wage mandate affects the bottom line for small businesses, and ends up screwing over the little guy.

"New wage boost puts squeeze on teenage workers across Arizona" (The Arizona Republic)

Mark Messner, owner of Pepi's Pizza in south Phoenix, estimates he has
employed more than 2,000 high school students since 1990. But he plans
to lay off three teenage workers and decrease hours worked by others.
Of his 25-person workforce, roughly 75 percent are in high school.

"I've had to go to some of my kids and say, 'Look, my payroll just
increased 13 percent,' " he said. " 'Sorry, I don't have any hours for
you.' "

Messner's monthly cost to train an employee has jumped from $440 to $580 as the turnover rate remains high.

"We go to great lengths to hang on to our high school workers, but
there are a lot of kids who come in and get one check in their pocket
and feel like they're living large and out the door they go," he said.
"We never get our return on investment when that happens."

In the Scooter Libby trial, the jury heard a tape of NBC Washington Bureau Chief Tim Russert sounding very much like a liberal Democrat expressing glee at approaching indictments in the Plamegate prosecution of Patrick Fitzgerald on MSNBC's Imus in the Morning on October 28, 2005 (in the 8:30 half hour). He said "Santa Claus is coming tomorrow." MRC's Mike Rule dug out the tape to give people outside the courtroom some of the flavor of that giddy conversation: 

Imus: "Here's somebody, if this person who we're going to talk to now doesn't know [who will be indicted in the CIA leak case, or even if indictments are coming] nobody knows. The Washington Bureau Chief for NBC News and the host of 'Meet the Press' Tim Russert. Good morning Mr. Russert."  

Ted Kennedy is a moderate.

Don't believe me? Ask the Boston Globe. Better put, have a gander at the paper's editorial cartoon of today. What does the Globe mean by saying that Mitt Romney "once worshipped at the church of moderation"? No doubt the Globe has in mind Mitt's glory days of 1994, campaigning against Ted Kennedy for his Senate seat.

As the Globe documented here, in 1994, Romney aligned himself with Kennedy on abortion, arguing that it should be safe and legal. He also voiced support for the controversial abortion pill RU-486. And when it came to gay rights, Romney portrayed himself as being an even more ardent advocate for the cause, promising "more effective leadership" than Kennedy on winning "full equality" for gays and lesbians, opposed a federal constitutional amendment banning gay marriage, and advocated gays serving openly in the military.

Nigel Calder is probably not a household name in America, as he used to be the editor of the British science magazine New Scientist, and is more recently an author and BBC screenwriter. With that as pretext, he wrote a column for the Sunday Times in which he absolutely slammed the recent hysteria and junk science surrounding anthropogenic global warming (emphasis mine throughout):

When politicians and journalists declare that the science of global warming is settled, they show a regrettable ignorance about how science works. We were treated to another dose of it recently when the experts of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change issued the Summary for Policymakers that puts the political spin on an unfinished scientific dossier on climate change due for publication in a few months’ time. They declared that most of the rise in temperatures since the mid-20th century is very likely due to man-made greenhouse gases.

Calder wonderfully explained how a ten percent uncertainty in science is not something to be easily dismissed:

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For someone who by his book title claims the mantle of "audacity," Barack Obama is a mighty timid guy. Will the MSM look beyond his rhetoric of inclusion and consider his actual positions? If so, they'll find that nowhere has he had the courage to break from the most doctrinaire, predictable brand of liberalism.

For my sins, I went through the text of his announcement speech of yesterday, ignoring the high-flown appeals, focusing instead on the policy implications. Here are annotated excerpts.

• Of his time in the Illinois legislature, he spoke of "mak[ing] the tax system more fair and just for working families." Liberal code for making taxes more steeply progressive, with "working families" thrown in for good class-warfare measure.
• Of the founding event of our country, the Revolution, he said "in the face of tyranny, a band of patriots brought an Empire to its knees." Beyond the factual error -- far from being brought to its knees the British Empire survived very nicely for more than another 150 years -- note how he casts the Revolution first and foremost as a struggle against imperialism rather than as a quest for individual liberty.
• Of the great Depression, he said "we put people back to work and lifted millions out of poverty." That's a vote for the welfare-statism of FDR's New Deal.

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The vicious anti-Catholic (and in general, anti-religious) bloggers hired by the John Edwards campaign came under surprising condemnation from liberal columnist (and PBS NewsHour pundit) Mark Shields and liberal NPR reporter Nina Totenberg on the Friday night TV talk show "Inside Washington." Shields said he hesitated to agree with Bill Donohue of the Catholic League, but he was "right." Shields dared go where media accounts have not, explicitly reading Amanda Marcotte’s sleazy joke about the sperm of the Holy Spirit and Mary aborting Jesus with the Plan B pill, saying "if she had written similarly about a Jewish person, an Islamic person, a gay or a lesbian, she would be banished to the outer darkness." Totenberg called it "disgusting."

Only Newsweek’s Evan Thomas seemed to try and make excuses for Edwards by slamming bloggers in general: "Read blogs. They're full of that kind of stuff."

Last week, NewsBusters bloggers Scott Whitlock (here and here) and Mark Finkelstein (here and here) separately addressed "Good Morning America" anchor Diane Sawyer's softball interviews with Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad.

It's a shame it didn't come out before then, but this weekend Parade magazine released its 2007 World's Worst Dictators list. Al-Assad came in at number 10, up 6 slots from the 2006 list.

Oh well, I guess it's helpful to have the next time Sawyer enlarges her carbon footprint by flying around the world just to ask another thug completely innocuous questions while enjoying the touristy trappings of a Potemkin village.

Don’t expect to read about this in the New York Times, or have it discussed by Matt and Meredith on Monday.

A new book will be released next week making the case that global warming is likely much more caused by cosmic rays than any human activity. As reported by the Daily Telegraph (emphasis mine throughout):

Scientists say that cosmic rays from outer space play a far greater role in changing the Earth's climate than global warming experts previously thought.

In a book, to be published this week, they claim that fluctuations in the number of cosmic rays hitting the atmosphere directly alter the amount of cloud covering the planet.

The article continued: