We had a lot of fun sharing clips, tunes, and videos on a recent forum topic, I figured we should have a topic dedicated to that. I think it will be a fun place to share our favorites with each other.

I think there should be a couple ground rules:

1. Nothing obscene (porn, excessive vulgar language, or excessively violent)
2. It would be nice to give a bit of background about what you are sharing. For example: Why you like it, anything noteworthy about it, etc.

I look forward to seeing/hearing the things we want to share.

On Friday's CBS Evening News, correspondent Jeff Greenfield, formerly of CNN, pointed out the one-sidedness of Michael Moore's film Sicko during a report that explored whether the film was likely to impact the presidential race. Although Greenfield did not debunk any aspect of the film in his report, he pointed out that the film "does not include critics" of government-run health systems in other countries "championed" by Moore. And, regarding Moore's claim that typical Cubans receive the kind of quality care presented in the movie, Greenfield cautioned: "That assertion is likely to be sharply challenged."

Anchor Katie Couric set up the report by relaying a CBS News/New York Times poll finding that 90 percent of Americans support "fundamental change or a complete overhaul" of America's health care system as she contended that those happy with the system are "in a minority." Couric: "If you're happy with the health care system in this country, well, you're in the minority." (Transcript follows)

Webster’s defines “conservatism” as meaning “marked by or relating to traditional norms of taste, elegance, style, or manners.” Sadly, today there are those who call themselves “conservative” who have no interest in preserving tradition, who uphold no standards on the question of taste, and who have no appetite for appearing the slightest bit fuddy-duddy on the question of manners.

This kind of conservative has embraced the anarchical libertarian worldview which on matters of traditional manners and tastes throws caution to the winds, embracing the notion that the “market” – society’s lowest common denominator on cultural issues -- should decide. And if this erosion of traditional values leads to the disintegration of the culture, so be it.

This might explain why a managing editor of National Review Online, a brand name synonymous with conservatism, would be arguing that the F-word is not indecent on national broadcast television in prime time; insists that the idea of “community standards” in matters of public morality is out of touch; and perhaps most surprisingly, mocks the idea that “the sanctity of children’s ears” is a defensible moral cause, as if innocent kindergarteners can’t handle full-fledged cussing binges.

If you’ve been watching the mainstream media coverage of Michael Moore’s soon-to-be-released schlock-umentary on America’s health care system, you’ve probably been led to believe he is some sort of political genius.

But that’s certainly not the case. Moore used a handful of failings of the American health care system to make a case for a socialized program in the United States.

Moore targets the health insurers and the pharmaceutical industry with a parade of hardship stories, exploiting a few desperate people to make lots of left-wing points. He overly glamorizes programs in Canada, the United Kingdom, France and Cuba to convince his viewers there are no hardships in any of their systems.

Evolution and the Conservative

I hold conservative (or maybe libertarian) views on most topics. However, as an agnostic, I often find myself at odds with the views expressed by some conservatives – particularly when the conversation turns to the topic of evolution. I decided to try to put together an argument to suggest that there is, in fact, no real need for those of faith to attack evolution theory. I should make it clear, that this post is NOT an attempt to convince anyone that evolution is true and that it should be accepted. In fact, if you do decide to read this, you will see that I’m actually going to argue for something like the opposite of this.

I should first point out that I have nothing against those who hold strong religious beliefs. As an agnostic, I don’t believe in the existence of God but I also don’t reject the possibility. In a nutshell, for whatever reasons, I’ve never found the faith to believe in a supreme being. I view this as the result of the details of my life, not the result of some deep philosophical ideas that force me to intellectually reject the idea of God. It seems to me, that belief in God rests on faith and you can’t force faith. You have it or you don’t.

Wyoming's governor (Democrat Dave Freudenthal) just announced the successor to the late Republican Senator Craig Thomas. This AP story, which appears on numerous news outlet websites, highlights John Barrasso's many conservative qualities. It's entitled "Conservative Wyo. Surgeon Named Senator":

Barrasso, 54, will serve in Thomas' place until the beginning of 2009. He said on his application that he also intends to then run in a November 2008 special election to serve out the remainder of Thomas' term, which ends in 2013.

Barrasso also left no doubt that he will be a conservative voice in Washington.

"I believe in limited government, lower taxes, less spending, traditional family values, local control and a strong national defense," the orthopedic surgeon and state senator from Casper wrote in his application.

He said he has "voted for prayer in schools, against gay marriage and have sponsored legislation to protect the sanctity of life."

Update (Ken Shepherd): Maloney tells me he'll be on the John Gibson radio program on Fox News radio shortly after 6:20 p.m. to discuss this.

As NewsBusters reported here and here, liberals around the country are carping and whining about conservatives having too much control of AM radio.

In fact, just yesterday, the Center for American Progress issued an outline as to what needs to be done to counter what it views as an unfair dominance of the airwaves by conservatives.

With that in mind, Brian Maloney has taken a look at the data collected by the Center to identify just how bad things really are for those poor liberals trying to compete with the likes of Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, et al.

What Maloney found – not surprisingly – was that the Center fudged the numbers a bit to make it look like things were much worse than they actually are (emphasis added throughout):

The energy debate on the Hill could help determine policy and prices for decades. Just don’t expect CNN to report it in a fair way.

Instead, you get Ali Velshi, the ‘American Morning’ business reporter, taking swipes at energy companies and the Republican Party. While the GOP stopped plans for a new tax to pay for more Democratic goodies, Velshi said the Republican wasn’t “particularly sound.”

That’s OK, he also complained that the oil companies are “getting off free.” Apparently, Velshi, not always known for math accuracy, needs a tune-up when it comes to taxes. Oil companies paid an estimated $48.36 billion in income taxes in 2004. They also collect a similar number in excise taxes for Uncle Sugar.

Original caption:

Filmmaker Michael Moore, right, and Assembly Speaker Fabian Nunez, D-Los Angeles, left, look at a poster of Moore's new documentary 'Sicko' following a Capitol news conference in Sacramento, Calif., Tuesday, June 12, 2007.

New York Times movie critic A.O. Scott again defended (in a markedly defensive manner) dubious left-wing documentarian Michael Moore in his glowing review on Friday of "Sicko," Moore's new documentary on the U.S. health care system. Scott thinks it's Moore's "least controversial and most broadly appealing" movie, and "the funniest."

That's pretty strong praise from Scott. After the fatally flawed "Fahrenheit 9-11," Scott called Moore "a credit to the republic."

"His regular-guy, happy-warrior personality plays a large part in the movies and in their publicity campaigns, and he has no use for neutrality, balance or objectivity. More than that, his polemical, left-populist manner seems calculated to drive guardians of conventional wisdom bananas. That is because conventional wisdom seems to hold, against much available evidence, that liberalism is an elite ideology, and that the authentic vox populi always comes from the right. Mr. Moore, therefore, must be an oxymoron or a hypocrite of some kind."

Last week, the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas took over Gaza in what was described by many as a bloodbath.

Just days later, CNN’s Ben Wedeman filed a report from the region in which he glowingly praised these terrorists’ efforts to bring “law and order in the new Gaza.”

In a video segment that was aired at various times Thursday, Wedeman exclusively interviewed Gaza residents who seemed thrilled now that Hamas has wrested control of the region.

At the same time, no mention was given to: the killing that preceded his interviews, or the number of injured waiting for medical assistance and/or to be evacuated.

Maybe even worse, not one disgrunted resident was questioned (video available here, h/t NB member Allanf):

Update with link added below.

Reporting a new survey on the success of a federal voucher program in the District of Columbia, New York Times reporter Sam Dillon portrayed the federal program as a failure, albeit one that makes parents of voucher students feel good on the taxpayers' dime.

Here's how Dillon opened his story (emphasis mine):

Students who participated in the first year of the District of Columbia’s federally financed school voucher program did not show significantly higher math or reading achievement, but their parents were satisfied anyway, viewing the private schools they attended at taxpayer expense as safer and better than public schools, according to an Education Department study released yesterday.

Nowhere in his article does Dillon dive into problems that have plagued D.C. public schools that have helped push parents to seize the opportunity to send a child to private school on the public dime.

Instead, Dillon goes to lengths to castigate parents of voucher students as out-of-touch with reality about their child's education:

On June 22, all three networks covered the Senate bill mandating higher automobile fuel efficiency. NBC's "Today" only ran an anchor brief on the story, but ABC's "Good Morning America" and CBS's "The Early Show" both ran short stories on the news.

On "Good Morning America" David Kerley spun it in a positive fashion hypothesizing the bill "should save you some money." They then played the clip of Senator Diane Feinstein (D-CA) hailing passage of the bill implying the United States will be less dependent on Middle Eastern oil. GMA did play a clip of General Motors CEO Rick Wagoner stating "we think there are ways to do it that are smarter," but there was no mention of the potential increased danger of automobile accidents as documented by the CATO Institute.

Update (Ken Shepherd | 16:18 EDT): Victory is Graham's!

Tim Graham appeared on "Live Desk w/Martha MacCallum" today to discuss what appears to be NBC paying for a post-incarceration interview with hotel heiress Paris Hilton. He joked: "It just sounds like a bad MTV reality show called Pimp My News."

Video (2:36): Real (1.90 MB) or Windows (1.60 MB), plus MP3 audio (748 kB).

For a video archive of Graham and other MRC experts, click here.

Reviews for the movie "Evan Almighty," opening in theaters today, have been largely lackluster. The general consensus is that the talents of Steve Carell and the rest of the cast are largely wasted and the religious theme is somewhat bland. The plot in a nutshell is that Evan Baxer (Carell), recently elected to Congress, is recruited by God (Morgan Freeman) to become a modern-day Noah, building an ark in order to serve humanity on a Biblical scale.

Bruce Newman, reviewing the film for "San Jose's Mercury News," poses a vital question for any serious moviegoer:

One thing that's never clear is whether Evan has been elected to Congress as some kind of Rush-lovin', wilderness despoiling neo-con. And if not, why the first piece of legislation he hitches his star to is a bill that will open the national parks to development. This is boilerplate conservatism, and yet that doesn't seem to be who Evan is.

The June 22 "Today" show picked up on NewsBusters contributor and publicist Michael Chapman's post from two days earlier, "Robin Williams Slams Catholic Priests as Pedophiles, Spews Bigotry on NBC Tonight Show."

We've clipped the June 22 set-up piece by reporter David Gregory, as well as Catholic League president Bill Donohue's opening remarks in the discussion segment that followed.

Here's an excerpt from Chapman's entry:

Given the response to yesterday's Dilbert cartoon, here's a marvelous global warming spoof from the folks at Nitrozac and Snaggy:

As reported by NASSER KARIMI of the Associated Press a high-level Iranian cleric said Friday that the religious edict calling for the killing of Salman Rushdie cannot be revoked, and he warned Britain was defying the Islamic world by granting the author knighthood. Ayatollah Ahmad Khatami reminded worshippers of the 1989 fatwa during a sermon at Tehran University, aired live on state radio. Thousands of worshippers chanted "Death to the English."

Is it just me or ... is there a distinct lack of MSM report on things like this. Here is a man who wrote a book (the satanic versus) that made the Islamic Nation angry and they decided to issue a Fatwa (aka Death Warrent) for him. Now ... he is being honored for his achievements and contributions to England and all we hear is outrage. But ... why does this not make major headlines for reasons we should be absolutely TERRIFIED of Iran?

As most right-thinking people are aware, soon-to-be-Dr. Al Gore has refused to debate scientists and politicians that disagree with his views on manmade global warming.

Of course, as you know, the debate's over.

Potentially realizing that Gore has turned down such challenges in the past, a Wharton professor is willing to put his money where his mouth is that Gore’s cataclysmic planetary predictions are wrong.

*****Critical Update after the break with more specifics about the challenge.

As marvelously reported by the Daily Pennsylvanian (emphasis added throughout):

Happy Friday!

Coming coincident with the Thursday release of the Center for American Progress’s plans to assault conservative talk radio, Senators Hillary Clinton (D-New York) and Barbara Boxer (D-California) were overheard discussing the need for a “legislative fix” to the problem.

This information was relayed to radio host John Zeigler of KFI 640 AM Los Angeles by Sen. James Inhofe (R-Oklahoma) who witnessed the Senators talking about something that they heard on talk radio which upset them so that they said:

We’ve got to do something about this. These are nothing but far rightwing extremists. We’ve got to have a balance. There’s got to be a legislative fix to this.

For those interested, an audio of this discussion is available here, with the transcript to follow:

Meet the Greenes, "an American family trying to do their best to help the environment by living a green life. Take a virtual tour of their earth-friendly home and discover all the ways they conserve resources, pollute less and leave a smaller eco-footprint."

This welcoming banner sounds like something you'd see on Greenpeace.com or Climatecrisis.net (Admit it, you've been there, I go all the time to laugh at the latest ridiculous global warming headlines.)

Unfortunately "Meet the Greenes" is prominently displayed on the Web page of a major news organization. The offender? Statesman.com, the Austin American-Statesman’s home on the Internet.

"Meet the Greenes" is just one of the many delightful headlines in the "Living Green" section.

The MSM delights in highlighting President Bush's anemic poll numbers. Congress's approval rating in the latest Gallup poll was so shockingly, historically, low at 14% that the MSM could hardly ignore it.

But there was another finding emerging from that same Gallup poll that has received very little media attention: the societal institution that enjoys, by far, the highest confidence among Americans is, at 69%, the military.

Deputy Undersecretary of Defense Bill Carr discussed the Gallup findings on last night's "Right Angle," the Ithaca-based TV show that this NewsBuster hosts. While clearly pleased by the military's achievement in that regard, Sec. Carr was also duly diplomatic about it, as this exchange reflects.

RIGHT ANGLE HOST MARK FINKELSTEIN: So 70% for the military, 14% for Congress, which if my mathematics are correct, that's five times more confidence in the military than in the Congress. So perhaps some of the Pentagon officials should keep that in their back pocket the next time they're being grilled up on the Hill.

DEPUTY UNDERSECRETARY OF DEFENSE BILL CARR: We would never raise that.

But I just did.

View video here.