A really marvelous video was posted at YouTube today depicting a somewhat fictional press outlet – the People’s News Network – reporting on the American invasion at Normandy as if it happened today with the present antiwar media.

Lots of fun moments for those possessing a sense of humor (video available here, h/t NBer Bender).

I don't know who created it, but it marvelously captures how today's media would have reported events 63 years ago.

Discussing the G-8 summit with CBS's Jim Axelrod, Katie Couric on Wednesday night portrayed an “adamant” President George Bush as the antagonist causing Russian President Vladimir Putin to be “annoyed” about NATO plans to install a missile shield in Poland, a controversy, she fretted, that is distracting attention from global warming. “Economic issues and climate change were supposed to be the main topics,” Couric asserted on the CBS Evening News, “but they're being overshadowed by the dispute between President Bush and Russia's President, Vladimir Putin, over NATO plans to install a defensive missile shield in Eastern Europe,” a shield designed to protect Europe from missiles launched by rogue states.

Referring to Putin's threat to aim missiles at Europe, Couric pressed Axelrod, who was on scene in Rostock, Germany: “Putin is annoyed about this missile defense system. Why is President Bush so adamant about this?” Couric's next question displayed concern about the impact on an agreement on global warming: “I know that global warming was at the top of the agenda. Has that fallen off the radar screen, given all this chatter?”

Observant critics of the illegal immigration plague sweeping across the United States point out the irony that, while those sneaking across the boarder often have no desire to acclimate to the culture into which they are intruding, they have little problem accepting American money. However, if a policy implemented by one business catches on eventually, those sneaking into this great land will more likely find an odious trashphile rather than a shining city on a hill.

A Texas-based pizza chain has instituted a program to accept pesos as payment for the eatery’s wears. The company claims it is implementing the program to tap into the Hispanic market (and in the very same breath those advocating such a marketing strategy would admonish the rest of us that they never consider ethnicity in reference to social matters).

Radio host and blogger Brian Maloney has an excellent takedown of liberal bloggers who accused Bill O'Reilly of recently lying about the New York Times's coverage of the JFK Airport terror plot.

[NewsBusters sister publication TimesWatch.org dealt with the Times downplaying the terror plot here and here.]

Below is the relevant excerpt from Maloney's blog, "Radio Equalizer," portions in bold are my emphasis:

After Rush Limbaugh, Bill O'Reilly and other hosts lambasted the Sunday New York Times for burying news of the JFK terror plot bust, Think Progress, News Hounds and other lefties accused them of lying.

By claiming the story actually was covered on page one and even asserting that O'Reilly intentionally misled viewers by showing only the top part of the page on camera, these smear sites were truly pulling a fast one.

When is nothing better than something? When it's a limited health insurance policy, according to the USA Today.

The June 6 story by Julie Appleby emphasized problems with such insurance and questioned "whether such policies provide a false sense of security."

Critics beat out supporters in the story by a ratio of 2:1. Appleby cited two experts from different pro-universal health care advocacy groups and two unsatisfied customers.

Both advocacy groups took a hostile stance toward the health insurance industry, but Appleby gave readers no sense of the organizations' liberal positions - which included an affiliation with the liberal Kaiser Family Foundation.

This is not the first time Appleby has provided viewers with a one-sided view of health care issues. In August 2005, she wrote a story complaining about the expense of health care. But she buried the major reason for high costs: medical progress that saves more lives than ever before.

John Tierney was once an iconoclast libertarian columnist for the New York Times who now writes for the Tuesday Science section every two weeks. But yesterday, Tierney stepped back into politics and made a powerful political point by taking on the sainted Rachel Carson, the author of the infamous proto-environmental book "Silent Spring," a book that has become required reading in school for the last generation, and was indirectly responsible for the banning of the pesticide DDT in poor countries, with deadly consequences.

"For Rachel Carson admirers, it has not been a silent spring. They’ve been celebrating the centennial of her birthday with paeans to her saintliness. A new generation is reading her book in school -- and mostly learning the wrong lesson from it."

Story after story about Rupert Murdoch’s purchase offer for Dow Jones & Company, which owns The Wall Street Journal, has criticized the prospect as a threat to journalism, questioned the media mogul’s “editorial integrity” and attacked his character.

Journalists, media critics and the union representing the Journal were up in arms.

“[P]robably not quite as frightening as the day we learned Kim Jong Il has the bomb, but close … very close. It could be worse. We might have discovered, for example, that Saddam Hussein had stashed all those missing weapons of mass destruction in a Pasadena storage locker rented to Osama bin Laden,” said a Los Angeles Times column.

I am going to Israel this fall, any advice?

Who would have thought that chivalry would still be alive at the liberal Associated Press? Yet in its story on the split between Larry and Laurie David, the venerable wire agency states the age, 59, of the creator of Seinfeld, but not that of his activist wife, producer of Al Gore's "Inconvenient Truth."

Isn't the feminist AP the home of strong women, proud of every wrinkle?

For the record, Laurie hits the half-century mark next March . . . unless of course a global-warming catastrophe stops the clock for all of us before then.

As people who are following the G-8 summit in Germany are well aware, it is highly doubtful that any meaningful accord will be reached at this meeting concerning CO2 emissions. In fact, reports out of Europe and Asia for many weeks leading up to this event have made this eventuality quite clear.

Yet, this didn’t prevent the Los Angeles Times’ Ron Brownstein for blaming the lack of such an agreement on President George W. Bush.

In an op-ed published Wednesday entitled “Don't Sugarcoat Climate Change; Calling out Bush's intransigence on emissions caps may be the best way for other G-8 countries to get the U.S. to budge on global warming,” Brownstein chose to ignore all of the facts surrounding this issue, and instead pointed an accusatory finger at the media’s favorite target (emphasis added throughout):

As the negotiations about whether to sell the Wall Street Journal's parent company appear to be moving along between Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation and the Bancroft family, owners of a special class of stock which gives them control over Dow Jones.

Whenever Murdoch is going hard for a media asset, it inevitably sets off concerns among those on the left (such as the employee unions at Dow Jones) that the purchase of an outlet by News Corp. will somehow comprimise its editorial integrity since Murdoch is a very active manager in his properties. Those concerns seem to be less about editorial process and more about political considerations since Murdoch is far from the only active media mogul.

In an editorial today, the Journal pointed out that Arthur "Pinch" Sulzberger is heavily involved in managing the New York Times:

[T]he Bancrofts are unique in their hands-off ownership. They are often compared as family newspaper proprietors to the Grahams at the Washington Post or the Sulzbergers at the New York Times. But members of those families run those newspapers, exerting influence over the news and opinion operations. In that sense, those newspapers are hardly "independent" of those families.

With no shortage of items documenting how the American media are liberally biased, it’s often easy to forget how the European media are so much more dominated by the hard left. In his cover story on the war in Afghanistan in the June 11 Weekly Standard, Michael Fumento recounted his experience embedded with the U.S. military at Forward Operating Base Lagman in the Zabul province of Afghanistan.

Fumento was assigned quarters with two Spaniards working for the Associated Press. One of them seems to be in a mind-meld with Rosie O’Donnell (“he believes 9/11 was a Bush administration conspiracy hung on al Qaeda”) while the other reporter “never takes off his Che Guevera T-shirt.”

No wonder the European press thinks our media are just a bunch of Bush administration cheerleaders!

Emigrating to Cuba is a novel idea; however, it would doom our planet. Just think of the logistics for ALL of the Hollywood left's move. They would have to drive their gas-guzzling, global warming SUV's, stopping at every Star-Bucks along the way, probably allowing their vehicles to idle - emitting earth-ending, as we know it,
- auto fumes- while they sip and talk of how grand each and every one of them are. And of course their private jets would make the trip as well - emitting earth-ending, as we know it - aviation fumes. Then, all of their pure-bred European pets - because
anything European has to be better than anything American - would also make the trip - emitting earth-ending, as we know it - Euorpean pet vapors. Indeed, the list is long, for such a journey would elevate the global-warming particulates to

In the spirit of Noel Sheppard's earlier D-Day remembrance post, I thought I'd share with you some kind words a Marine stationed in Iraq sent me via Facebook*:

I've really enjoyed NB over the last couple of months while stuck in Iraq. I've gotten a couple of laughs at the idiots in the MSM and those laughs go a long way to make the time behind this desk pass quickly. Pass my thanks along to the rest of the NB crew? God bless and Semper Fi.

I should also mention the writer, Cpl. Marcus Penn, blogs over at A Soldier's Perspective.

Check out his blog when you get the chance, his byline is "Cpl M."

*Corporal Penn is also a member of our Facebook group, "NewsBusters.org Readers."

During Tuesday night’s Republican debate, CNN anchor Wolf Blitzer attempted to goad Representative Duncan Hunter into agreeing that the national GOP should be "following that Arnold Schwarzenegger example" in California. This is the fourth time since the 2006 midterms that Blitzer, host of CNN's "Situation Room," has lobbied for the GOP to adopt the liberal policies of the Republican governor.

During the preamble to his question, Blitzer noted how "popular" Schwarzenegger is with moderates and approved of how the former actor attempts to "forge a consensus."

CNN’s cheerleading for Schwarzenegger’s brand of Republicanism began shortly after the midterm election. On November 9, Bill Schneider, a reporter for Blitzer's "Situation Room," wondered about the GOP's future:

MSNBC's Joe Scarborough contacted NewsBusters a few moments ago with the relevant transcript from his June 1 "Morning Joe" program, lamenting in an e-mail that our "follow up blog on Newsbusters... actually omits fact that there was a long discussion started by female athlete re pole exercising. Transcript shows whole thing taken wildly out of context."

Here's the transcript, as forwarded by Scarborough to us after receiving same from Christopher Licht, executive producer of "Scarborough Country":

As NewsBusters reported Monday, although a terrorist plot to destroy the leading airport in the region was thwarted, the leading newspaper in the area, the New York Times, chose to place the article about the incident off of the paper’s front page Sunday.

This has created a bit of a backlash around the nation, and from readers who sent questions to the Times’ national editor Suzanne Daley about this decision (h/t Charles at LGF).

First, the questions (emphasis added throughout):

By Mark Harris, NationalPoliticalDigest.com

Six and a half years ago, our country elected a new president. On one side, out of breath from such a narrow victory, the Republicans were giddy with anticipation. We, I’m on that side, had virtual control of the federal government. Even though the majority of voters went for the other guy, the Constitution had decided the conclusion. President George Bush assumed the mantle of power with all the “pomp and circumstance” that went with hopes for a new direction. Unfortunately, that new way included some very sobering distinctions. We were saddled with an existing recession and only a few months later, ofcourse, the eye opening and tragic saga of “9/11”. I say saga because terrorism against the United States had existed for years. The Clinton Administration had simply refused to recognize how important it had become to our future.

Just to lighten things up a bit, I thought I'd post some real brain-teasers. Feel free to answer all or any of the questions posed.

Ponder these questions when you don't want to think about important stuff!

If you choke a Smurf, what color does it turn?

Is it OK to use the AM radio after noon?

What do chickens think we taste like?

What do people in China call their good plates?

What do you call a male ladybug?

What hair color do they put on the driver's license of a bald man?

Why didn't Noah swat those two mosquitoes?

Why do they sterilize the needle for lethal injections?

Why is it called tourist season if we can't shoot at them?

Why do you need a driver's license to buy liquor when you can't drink and
drive?

Why isn't phonetic spelled the way it sounds?

The Media Research Center’s Culture and Media Institute (CMI) is releasing an analysis showing how significant numbers of Americans blame the mass media for degrading the country’s moral values. The report, based on a poll of 2000 adults conducted exclusively for CMI last December, also found that those who say they spend the most time watching television are somewhat more likely to eschew traditional values.

You can read the whole report here (be warned, however, it is a very large 13.7MB PDF file). Among the key findings:

Nearly three-fourths of the public (73%) says the entertainment industry has a negative effect on moral values, and more than half (54%) say the news media is also helping to erode traditional values.

For general comment and discussion...

As a starter if you're interested, does anyone else find protests by anti-globalization types a little odd at a G-8 summit largely about curbing CO2 emissions?

The reader is warned to proceed with caution, for the piece of…"journalism" to be addressed here is truly one of the most vile and disgraceful examples of Bush Derangement Syndrome I’ve seen.

In fact, it is so much so that I will not copy one single sentence of this detritus beyond the headline which appeared at the Huffington Post early Monday morning, and is still prominently featured there 58 hours later, which tells us a lot about the proprietor and her readership.

With “How to Foil a Terrorist Plot in Seven Simple Steps,” screenwriter and director Nora Ephron has despicably disgraced all Americans working for various federal agencies as they risk their lives trying to protect this nation from another terrorist attack.

Big HT to Larry Elder, who brought this up on his radio show Tuesday (5/5/07). And thanks, Les!

On the May 26, 2007, episode of his syndicated radio show "Costas on the Radio," veteran sports broadcaster Bob Costas asserted that George W. Bush was not even "among the 500 most qualified people to be President." He then stated that it is "an inescapable fact," that "all doubt has been removed," that the Bush presidency is a "tragically failed administration."

Apparently in earlier recent episodes of his show, Costas had hosted guys like Tim Russert, Bernard Goldberg, Bill O'Reilly, and Bill Bradley. So it seems that Costas felt the need to air a few things out on this particular day. (All emphasis mine:)

Some people may wonder about the [political] feelings that I've expressed, and I won't get into all the particulars. I think it is now overwhelmingly evident, if you're honest about it, even if you're a conservative Republican, if you're honest about it, this is a failed administration. And no honest conservative would say that George W. Bush was among the 500 most qualified people to be President of the United States. That's not based on political leaning. If a liberal, and I tend to be liberal, disagrees with a conservative, they can still respect that person's competence and the integrity of their point of view.

Carl Bernstein's new biography of Hillary Clinton has been attacked for being too "nasty" (according to Barbara Walters), but in an interview in the second half-hour of Tuesday's Early Show, he sounded more like a Hillary supporter, defending her "great love affair" with Bill and describing his book as the first whole portrait of "this epic life, this great American life," the story of "a huge persona." Early Show host Harry Smith had no interest in Hillary's role in policy-making, focusing Bernstein only on the messy Clinton marriage and why she stayed with the president.

Smith began: "The top three Democratic presidential candidates met last night at a forum on religion, a very familiar subject to Senator Hillary Clinton. Faith has always been a huge part of her life."