Those following the histrionics of "The Food Stamp Challenge" (previous NewsBusters posts here, here, and here; previous BizzyBlog posts here, here, and here) know that:

• Most of those engaging in it claim that the average Food Stamp recipient "only has $21 per person per week to buy food."
• The fact is that the program's monthly benefits (often referred to "Allotments"; scroll to the bottom for the monthly benefit table), when converted to weekly, range from $26.81 - $35.67 per person per week, depending on family size:

• Tom Blumer's blog
• 17 comments
• Read more

Keith Olbermann, the same guy that pooh-poohed the seriousness of the terror plot of the so-called Fort Dix Six, hinted on his "The News Hole" blog last night that he had a similarly dismissive attitude about the London bomb attempts of June 29.

[Olbermann covered the story on his program, but I have not had a chance to review the tape]

Here's the pearl of moonbattery from Olbermann's blog last night (portion in bold my emphasis):

As the world prepares for a deluge of Live Earth concerts featuring the Global Warmingist-in-Chief himself, more and more of his inconvenient hypocrisies are being exposed by scientists and writers across the planet.

The most recent exposé was written by a senior fellow of the Heartland Institute, James M. Taylor.

The op-ed, published Saturday by the Chicago Sun-Times, deliciously addressed the real assault on reason not covered in soon-to-be-Dr. Al Gore’s most recent work of political science fiction (emphasis added throughout, h/t NBer goldenthroat):

Original caption:

White House Press Secretary Tony Snow (C) performs with his rock band Beats Workin' at the Congressional Picnic on the south lawn of the White House in Washington June 19, 2007.

Townhall's Paul Nowak has perfectly captured the absurdity inherent in liberal paranoia of talk radio (h/t Power Line and mystery NB reader):

                               

At the end of Friday’s Today show on NBC, the marketing of Al Gore’s Live Earth concerts began, just eight days shy of NBC’s big three-hour Live Earth concert in prime time, hosted by NBC anchor Ann Curry and Carson Daly. (Not to mention the other 72 hours donated to Gore by NBC Universal.) NBC’s Friday guest was David DeRothschild, author of "The Live Earth Global Warming Survival Handbook." Like a good NBC employee, anchor Natalie Morales praised the climate-crisis cause: "Fantastic effort. It’s going to raise a lot of awareness."

The author mostly made the usual plugs for compact-fluorescent bulbs and other electricity savings, but the strange part (at least for late June) was urging everyone to wear a sweater and turn the thermostat down. Did they think they were recording a segment for Christmas break?

If the House of Representatives voted overwhelmingly on Thursday to reinstate the controversial Fairness Doctrine which has not been in force since the ’80s, do you think it would have been headline news?

Well, on Thursday, an amendment to the Financial Services Appropriations bill prohibiting funds to be used to impose the Fairness Doctrine on broadcasters passed in an extraordinary show of bipartisanship 309 to 115.

In fact, 113 Democrats joined 196 Republicans in favor of this funding ban. Yet, virtually no media reported the news.

Before we get to that, the following statement was made by one of the amendment’s sponsors, Congressman Mike Pence (R-Indiana) on Thursday:

As I mentioned earlier, I was covering the Democrats' presidential debate this week. After it ended, I took off to "spin alley" where the various candidates had little areas underneath those vertical political convention signs, intent on seeing if I could find (or make) something interesting.

The three top candidates did not show, although Clinton and Obama managed to get pretty good crowds with the b-team. John Edwards, meanwhile, got little attention. More than a few times, I saw other candidates' staffers slip over into his area. Edwards really owes Ann Coulter for saving him from being a silky version of Mike Gravel.

Speaking of slipping, Maureen Dowd was off the wagon at home instead of doing her job showing up to report on something. [Yes, lawyers, that was satire. She never did show incidentally.]

While Obama, Clinton and Edwards were off enjoying whatever it is that rich liberal Democrats enjoy, their less-popular rivals were out spinning the press. Chris Dodd was there. I didn't feel like talking to the guy. He just wasn't worth the time. I mean if you're going to run a snowball's-chance-in-hell campaign, you should at least have the common decency to be a little "off" for everyone's entertainment.

Remember when you were a kid and got caught telling a lie, but your excuse was that a pal "made you do it" and it was so hard to tell the truth anyway because of this reason or that? It didn't matter to your parents then, did it? Well, here we have Reuters revealing that they fell for a false story about 20 beheaded Iraqis that was planted by insurgents, but do they just admit it and take responsibility? No, they whine that it is "very hard" to get stories in Iraq because it is so dangerous for journalists there.

I can tell we are all rolling our eyes, aren't we?

On the 28th Reuters and the AP along with most major news sources recklessly reported that 20 beheaded bodies were found by "Iraqi Policemen" on the banks of the Tigris River near Salman Pak, 19 miles south of Baghdad.

I say recklessly because not one of these supposed professional news sources substantiated the story but merely accepted the "news" as fact with no corroboration. This is something we have seen dozens of times since we entered Iraq with these news services explaining away this breach of professional standards by saying that it is just too dangerous for journalists to be in those areas to do the leg work to make sure their stories are true before they publish them.

I’m not sure what derangement syndrome Bill Moyers is currently suffering from, but on Friday’s “Bill Moyers Journal” broadcast on PBS, the outspoken host went into an invective-filled tirade about media tycoon Rupert Murdoch that frankly was one of the most disgraceful exhibitions of liberal bias so far this year.

In his closing monologue, Moyers compared Murdoch to the Marquis de Sade, Imelda Marcos, and Satan himself.

I kid you not.

For those that can stomach it, what follows is a full transcript of this piece of…detritus. Those with a healthier GI tract can watch the video available here. And, more information concerning the press' biased coverage of Murdoch is available at the MRC’s Business and Media Institute.

Without further ado (h/t Dan Gainor, emphasis added, better fasten your seatbelts!):

In the eyes of most political observers, the Democratic takeover of Congress signaled tougher federal scrutiny of business interests, but those same pundits might make an exception for the entertainment industry given that Hollywood is a major financial base for Democrats. But when the Senate Commerce Committee held a hearing on children and TV violence on June 26, the roles seemed to be reversed: it was the Democrats taking the entertainment industry to task as socially irresponsible, while Republicans in general favored the do-nothing approach.

Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-W. Va.) began with a strong call for the television barons to stop pouring sewage into America’s living rooms, promising to introduce a tough bill next month to allow federal regulation of indecent, violent, and profane content on TV. He slammed Hollywood for putting its short-term profits ahead of the long-term interests of children by conducting "a never-ending race to the bottom," and insisted the industry was “unable and unwilling to police itself."

Happy Saturday.

Is Ron Hutcheson, White House correspondent of the McClatchy Newspapers, dreaming of a coup d'etat? You'd almost think so, judging by the opening line in the litany of gloom that is his article of yesterday, entitled Another Setback for Bush.

Writes Hutcheson:

The Senate's rejection Thursday of President Bush's immigration plan was the latest in a series of embarrassments that have exposed Bush's political weakness and shaken his hold on power.

"Shaken his hold on power"? Just what does Hutcheson mean? Are we in the United States of America or a banana republic? Does Hutcheson harbor hopes of turning on CNN tomorrow morning to find Hillary addressing the nation from the Oval Office, announcing that she has seized power to save the Republic?

The immigration bill for the second time is dead, well,for at least til after the 2008 elections.All because we, the people ,stood up and shouted loudly to our elected officials in Washington.The phone systems went down, computers crashed, fax machines went down, it was chaos.Good chaos, because of conservative talk radio,well informed listeners/voters/americans made our voices heard above the arrogancy of those in washington who wanted to shove the immigration bill down our throats.The big shot liberals are now trying to make us look like hateful, racist idiots.Let em' bark, truth hurts.We have the right to protect our country from illegals.Hell. here in Atlanta, they've mooched off healthcare to the point they're going to shut down the 3rd major hospital here in the last 10 years.Illegals sucked $88,000,000 apx.out of taxpayers last year.WE need to keep the calls going in to the offices, don't rest for a second,every time they try to pass some B.S.

The following was written for NewsBusters by Jason Aslinger, a private practice attorney from Greenville, Ohio. Portions in bold below reflect the editor's emphasis.

The media’s contempt for the conservative U.S. Supreme Court reached new lows this week when it used a dishonest play on words to imply that the Court was against racial diversity in public schools.

That distortion, however, paled in comparison to MSNBC's Keith Olbermann, who announced on his blog (appropriately named “The News Hole”) that the landmark case of Brown v. Board of Education had been overturned!

Olbermann would have you believe that the U.S. Supreme Court had returned us to the days of segregated public schools.

Under the intentionally inflammatory heading “TURNING BACK HISTORY,” Olbermann's "Countdown" staff wrote:

Like many people here, I've become disgusted with the current mainstream media. Networks that claim to report the facts, be it CNN, MSNBC, or Fox, usually just bombard me with loud pundits, flashing graphics, and the latest updates on Paris Hilton. Besides just that, though, I'm troubled by the way they change public discourse. Phrases like "neocons," "cut and run," "liberal nuts," "far right" and "far left" serve to dumb down how we see issues and feel the need to pick a side and cheer for them.

Even though I now get all of my news from C-Span and the internet, I still find plenty of labeling and partisan bickering (less Paris Hilton, thankfully). In particular, many buzz words, such as "liberal," "conservative," and "non-interventionist" have been used in so many different ways that my head is spinning.