There was very little if no coverage of the burning in effigy of a US soldier during the anti-war rallies. I find the omission troubling.

What does it take to be a liberal in Eric Alterman's book? In his current column at The Nation, The Many Man-Crushes of Chris Matthews, Altermann labels Chris Matthews a "centrist" that MSNBC sandwiches between the "right-wing" Tucker Carlson and "taken-for-a-liberal Keith Olbermann."

"Taken-for-a-liberal Keith Olbermann"? Sounds like Keith hasn't quite earned his lefty wings in Eric's estimation. I mean, after all, Olbermann has only called for President Bush's impeachment, accused the Bush administration of representing a new form of fascism, and generally chewed the leftist curtains in his overwrought "Special Comments."

If Keith's liberal street cred is suspect, I wonder how Eric might view the credentials of others on the left? Let's imagine:

If soon-to-be-Dr. Al Gore’s testimony on Capitol Hill yesterday wasn’t funny enough for you, Conan O’Brien’s satirical cast of a new NBC, made for television movie about problems facing the White House is sure to give you a chuckle.

The video is here courtesy of YouTube (h/t Allah at Hot Air), and a list of the cast follows after the break for those of you who prefer your comedy in writing.

However, please be forewarned that some degree of liberal bias is in this casting, as O’Brien clearly took stronger swings at Republicans. Yet, all in all, it’s pretty funny:

With a lot of the R power brokers hinting of breaking camp with folks they have already endorsed upon hearing of a possible Presidential run by Fred Thompson, could he be the Great R Hope? I'm certainly listening, as so far no other R candidates seem electable to me. But thank God neither does Hillary or O'bama.

As in the past, no one will ever hear of any successes in Iraq for any reason. Especially if it has anything to do with President Bush's new plan for success.

Today's Edwards announcement is an object lesson in how easy it is for us in the blogosphere to run with something juicy without double-checking the facts and/or being very, very careful to precisely word our posts so that we don't tell readers to take something to the bank that hasn't been confirmed.

It's also a lesson in how to promptly and gracefully face the music and admit error.

Earlier today, Politico's Ben Smith ran with a single anonymous source today at shortly past 11:00 a.m. saying that former Sen. John Edwards (D-N.C.) would suspend his presidential campaign so he could tend to his wife, Elizabeth, as she battles breast cancer.

That source turned out to be wrong. Edwards will continue his campaign and Smith promptly admitted and apologized for his error (his blog post was submited at 12:34 EDT, just after the Edwards announcement). [continued...]

After grilling White House spokesman Tony Snow, the March 22 edition of CBS’s "The Early Show," followed with a fawning story on former Vice President Al Gore and his testimony on Capitol Hill. Anchor Russ Mitchell kicked it off calling Gore "a big celebrity with a message about global warming."

Correspondent Gloria Borger exclaimed the former vice president "looked like a winner." CBS then played a sound bite of Senator Barbara Boxer (D-CA) offering praise to Mr. Gore calling him "a role model for us all." After briefly playing a clip of Congressman Joe Barton (R-TX) grilling Al Gore, Borger called him a "professor" and reminding the audience that "he could still run for president." The transcript is below.

"Welcome to Walden Pond, Fifth Avenue style," wrote Penelope Green in the March 22 New York Times.

Green's 2,247-word profile of a family striving to have no environmental impact for one year took up roughly two-thirds of the home section front and another two-thirds of a page inside.

The story was a glowing account of Colin Beavan, Michelle Conlin and their 2-year-old daughter's life of eco-extremism: forgoing toilet paper, only buying organic food grown within 250 miles of Manhattan, and not using the TV, incandescent light, dishwasher, coffee maker, the elevator or any emitting form of transportation.

Green made the family's experiment sound idyllic and pleasant, though surely Conlin's trip to work on her unpowered scooter in the recent snowstorm was anything but. The Times writer also missed the very serious irony of the story. Mr. Beavan and his wife and child are living a "No Impact" life for one year, so he can write a book about it. Last time I checked books are still printed on paper ... just not toilet paper.

                                                                                                                                                                    

Joel Mowbray writes a very alarming op-ed for the Wall Street Journal’s opinion page, the Opinion Journal, about the disturbing change in direction for the US-financed Al-Hurra cable news network, which is supposed to be a sort of Middle Eastern “Voice of America,” reaching directly into homes and exposing people to the kind of stories that Al-Jazeera won’t show. At one time, Al-Hurra condemned terrorism and terrorists and supported the fledgling Iraqi government, but now, the US taxpayer-funded network has reversed a policy banning terrorists as on-air guests and broadcast most of a speech by Hezbollah leader Sheih Hasan Nasrallah. Why the change? This is the network’s new direction under “longtime” CNN producer, Larry Register. Mowbray describes some of the changes (emphasis mine throughout):

Something rather extraordinary occurred last December which had extremely ominous implications for stock investors around the world, but got totally ignored by the media.

In fact, if not for a recent video posting at YouTube, and a March 20 article in the New York Post, these spectacular revelations would still be well under the radar.

On December 22, CNBC’s James Cramer did a web interview for TheStreet.com TV. In it, he told TSC’s executive editor Aaron Task about how he used to manipulate stocks and the market when he was a hedge fund manager, and explained how such people today can’t “do anything remotely truthful” if they want to make money (video available here).

As TSC reported in a recap at its website the same day (emphasis added throughout):

Time's Joe Klein is pleased that Al Gore isn't squishing out on global warming in order to make a 2008 campaign run more palatable for the American people.

As if that wasn't a liberal-enough talking point, Klein's March 22 "Swampland" blog post describes Gore's willingness to resort to the usual tax and spend policies as "putting his [Gore's] money where his mouth is." Portion in bold is my emphasis.:

Yesterday, I wrote--based on incomplete reporting of ongoing testimony (no criticism of live-blogger Brian Beutler; the hearing was in midstream when I posted)--that Al Gore seemed to be backing away from his carbon-payroll tax swap. I haven't seen the complete testimony, and the press reports are not sufficiently wonky to give all the relevant details, but it appears that Gore is still up for the tax swap (an idea I supported in this column last year). In fact--no surprise--he's for a very tough global warming regime, including a ban on new coal-fired power plants and an intense cap-and-trade regime.

I speculated yesterday that if he stepped away from the tax swap, it might mean that Gore has political plans--but that speculation obviously was idle and kind of dumb. In 2000, Gore proposed spending $150 billion on global warming over the next 10 years (essentially, he wanted to spend the entire budget surplus on global warming...you remember the budget surplus). So he isn't averse to putting his money where his mouth is on this issue, even when running for office. Is he running? Dunno. But, as Jake Barnes once said to Lady Brett Ashley (or vice versa), it would be nice to think so.

Rush H. Limbaugh, Sr., only had a storied legal career, the respect of Missouri Democrats and Republicans, and a stint of service to his country as Eisenhower's ambassador to India.

But to Newsweek's Holly Bailey, President Bush signing a bill naming a federal courthouse in honor of Rush Limbaugh's grandfather was a substantial distraction from the real "people's business" in Washington:

Never mind the whole U.S. attorneys' mess: President Bush is busy doing the work of the people. What's he up to? On Wednesday afternoon, the White House press office forwarded reporters this nugget from the president's schedule:

STATEMENT BY THE PRESS SECRETARY

On Wednesday, March 21, 2007 the President signed into law:

H.R. 342, which designates the United States courthouse in Cape Girardeau, Missouri, as the Rush Hudson Limbaugh, Sr. United States Courthouse.

Bailey cleared up any confusion for readers who might be unaware that Rush Limbaugh is the third in a line of Rush Hudson Limbaughs, and that his grandfather was a hard-working and well-respected pillar of the legal community in southeastern Missouri who died 11 years ago at age 104.

But in closing her March 21 "Gaggle" blog post, Bailey snarked that it's "Good to know that the president isn't letting another little scandal distract him from the people's business." [continued...]

For general discussion and comment...

UPDATES added at end of post with video link (11:08 EDT) and full transcript (12:17 EDT) as recorded by MRC/NB's Justin McCarthy.

Who needs Chuck Schumer, so long as you have Harry Smith [file photo]? Dems might well be asking themselves that this morning, after the Early Show host went after Tony Snow on the attorney firings in a manner that might have made the senior senator from New York look statesmanlike in contrast.

Things got so bad that at one point, the eminently affable Snow accused Smith of badgering him, and later suggested the CBS anchor was acting like a partisan, not a reporter. Things ended on the worst possible note, as Smith accused Snow of hiding the truth from him. See transcript below, which while complete can't convey the rancor of Smith's tone or his manifestly angry body language.

HARRY SMITH: The man out in front answering questions from the press about this is White House spokesman Tony Snow. He's with us this morning. Good morning, sir.

TONY SNOW: Good morning, Harry.

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The Washington Post can never decide whether its Page Two columnist Dana Milbank is writing news stories or editorials or "news-itorials." But his "Washington Sketch" on Al Gore's Wednesday testimony is artistic indeed, casting Gore as the "champion of scientific thought" and conservative Sen James Inhofe as the William Jennings Bryan character in "Inherit the Wind," the sad back-woods Bible-thumper arrayed against the wisdom of modernity:

Al Gore, star of an Academy Award-winning film, was in town for a double feature on Capitol Hill yesterday. But instead of giving another screening of "An Inconvenient Truth," the former vice president found himself playing the Clarence Darrow character in "Inherit the Wind."

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

This is in response to this:

acaiguana Says:
March 21, 2007 - 12:24

So, WhichWing, what is your view of the 'perfect' world?

Since you obviously don't like this one.

It is a serious question.

ACA

First off, I'd like to say that I won't even attempt to describe a perfect world, but I will try to share a few ideas that would, in my opinion, contribute to a better world.

The Huffington Post is featuring a post by the man who blasted Hillary Clinton with an edit of the Apple Computer spinoff of George Orwell's anti-authoritarian "1984." The creator of the video is the former Internet communications director for Sherrod Brown's 2006 Senate campaign and until today was employed by Blue State Digital; a company that provides internet technology services to many presidential campaigns, including that of Barack Obama.

The video creator is Philip de Vellis and he explains his reasoning as follows:

Is it the media’s job to keep American citizens aware of statements made by foreign officials that could shed light on what we’re up against in winning the wars in Iraq and on terrorism? Or, should the press keep the caustic comments of such political officials from the public in order to maximize the impression that all the problems in the world are caused by the Bush administration?

While you formulate an answer, consider the following statements made by the Syrian Minister of Culture during a speech aired on Iranian television (video available here courtesy of Memri TV):  

The so-called Al-Qaeda is in my opinion, an illusion. It is a bunch of organizations which used to be supervised by the CIA, and used to commit crimes in some Arab and Islamic countries.

Nice, huh? Alas, he was just getting warmed up blaming terrorism on America:

GORE REFUSES TO TAKE PERSONAL ENERGY ETHICS PLEDGE

WASHINGTON, DC – Former Vice President Al Gore refused to take a "Personal Energy Ethics Pledge" today to consume no more energy than the average American household. The pledge was presented to Gore by Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.), Ranking Member of the Environment and Public Works Committee, during today's global warming hearing.

Senator Inhofe showed Gore a film frame from "An Inconvenient Truth" where it asks viewers: "Are you ready to change the way you live?"Gore has been criticized for excessive home energy usage at his residence in Tennessee. His electricity usage is reportedly 20 times higher than the average American household.

Code Pink this is your monster and you got what you deserve!!!

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