After the press spent last weekend gushing over liberal bloggers with nothing but glowing coverage of the YearlyKos convention in Chicago, the media's fascination with the Netroots continued with reckless abandon this weekend.

On Saturday, the Washington Post published an op-ed by Daily Kos founder Markos Moulitsas, to be followed by a debate on Sunday's "Meet the Press" between the head Kossack and the chairman of the Democratic Leadership Council, Harold Ford, Jr.

Are media recognizing the power of the Netroots, or just trying to assist their efforts to move the Democrat Party further and further to the left?

Regardless of the answer, Moulitsas continued to posit in the Post the same absurd assertion from his keynote address last weekend that he and his ilk represent the center of American politics (emphasis added):

Actual op-ed column, or parody of MSM mockery of Middle America? You be the judge of today's p.p.v. opus by Gail Collins, New York Times columnist turned Editorial Page Editor now returned to her column-writing roots. We'll begin with the title, Republicans in the Straw, and proceed to these excerpts:

• Today 40,000 Republicans are expected to make a pilgrimage to a large tent in Ames, Iowa, where they will eat an enormous amount of free food and vote for a presidential candidate. Mitt Romney is going to serve barbecue, and one of his sons has just visited all 99 counties. I don’t think we need say more.
• Romney moves around with so many photogenic sons, daughters-in-law and grandchildren that they look like one of those singing families that were so popular in the ’70s.
• The Iowa State Fair is not actually about politics so much as about finding new things to deep-fry.
  

Best-selling science fiction author Michael Crichton has penned a glowing review of Bjorn Lomborg's soon to be released book "Cool It: The Skeptical Environmentalist's Guide to Global Warming."

For those unfamiliar, Lomborg is an adjunct professor at the Copenhagen Business School and former director of the Environmental Assessment Institute. Although he believes in anthropogenic global warming, his controversial view is that there are far more serious problems facing the planet that governments should spend time and money solving.

As a result, his "Skeptical Environmentalist" series of books continually evoke great debate internationally.

With that in mind, the following are snippets of Crichton's review of Lomborg's most recent installment (emphasis added, h/t Glenn Reynolds):

Original caption:

U.S. President George W. Bush speaks to the media in the Rose Garden of the White House, August 2, 2007, following a meeting with members of his cabinet.

At OpinionJournal.com on Thursday ("Fair but Unbalanced -- How the media promote false pessimism about the economy"), Brian Wesbury, who has written several times on the disconnect between the strong economy and the public's perception of it (previous references here, here, here, here, and here), had another generally stellar column about what is nonetheless a relatively small piece of the problem.

Wesbury ascribes much of the disconnect to TV's need for "balance," when giving positive and negative views equal weight is often in reality unbalanced:

If one guest or expert is a "bull," then the other must be a "bear," to keep things fair. Or, if there is a single guest on air, the host often takes the other side of the issue in order to keep things balanced. Get some sparks between guests, a little argument here or there, and it's even better for the ratings. The bigger the audience, the better the show, that's the way the advertisers see it. It's basic supply and demand.

But this idea of presenting both sides of an issue, while entertaining, informative and seemingly balanced, may paradoxically create a warped perspective of the economy.

On Wednesday, all 202 Republican members of the House of Representatives cosponsored a bill that would permanently repeal the controversial Fairness Doctrine.

Didn't hear about this?

Well, how could you, for not one major media outlet bothered to report it.

Not one.

As announced by Rep. Mike Pence (R-Indiana):

So, have you heard that Fox News' Bill O'Reilly isn't fond of liberal bloggers?

In case there was any confusion about this issue, the outspoken host made it quite clear on Thursday's "O'Reilly Factor" when he told political consultant Dick Morris:

I think it's a danger to have blackmailers, which is what these bloggers are, active in the political process.

Ouch.

Yet, that might not have been the best moment in this segment, which also included a lengthy discussion about why Democrat presidential candidates are spending so much time bashing Fox News (video available here):

I just happened to see an article about the difficulty that "migrant" workers are having finding jobs. The article was not what caught my eye...the apparent photoshopping of a "migrant" worker trying to find work by standing in traffic did.

 Take a look at the photo...the daylight illumination looks cloudy, with diffused lighting from a high sun angle. Look at the worker—a sharp sunlit angle from the left, not matching anything else in the image. Running it through Photoshop seems to show that this is a composite image.

Check it out:

http://www.miamiherald.com/news/americas/story/197218.html 

Those Nutty Christians

On Tuesday’s "Nightline," co-anchor Martin Bashir filed a report on businessman Tom Monaghan, founder of a Catholic university in Florida and a community that will attempt to embrace traditional Christian values. Bashir regurgitated a two-year-old criticism that the town has "been described as a Catholic Jonestown, a kind of Catholic Iran, where individual rights and liberties are curtailed."

How Hot is it?

The various network news shows have come to this shocking conclusion: It’s summer and it’s hot. Could global warming be to blame? Ann Curry, guest anchoring NBC’s "Nightly News" on Tuesday, speculated, "Record heat and drought in the United States and Europe. New fears tonight that it's all the result of global warming." Harry Smith, over on CBS’s "Early Show," had the same idea. The morning show anchor definitively asserted, "Before we do anything else, there is in fact, global climate change.

For general discussion and debate...

It seemed like a comedy sketch meant to parody the unique Larry King interviewing style but last night satire met reality when King interviewed several transgendered people on his show. Because Larry didn't change his typical interview style a bit, the show came off as both extremely surreal as well as unintentionally hilarious. Here is a portion of the transcript from King's August 10 show which melodramatically begins with this introduction:

Exposing the True Isolationists

by Ron Paul

July 24, 2007

http://www.lewrockwe...

http://www.boston.co...

Does anyone else feel as sick to their stomach as I? Some are going to say this is more humane? These "doctors" are criminals executing innocents! Where was the trial? What chance for appeal? 

It is time for those among us with a conscience to rise up and slap this process back in the alley where it belongs, it rises to the level of repugnance and community has to say, NO MORE!

Charles Krauthammer has a great syndicated column (h/t: Protein Wisdom) out that sums up the New Republic Scott Thomas Beauchamp scandal quite well:

For a month, the veracity of The New Republic’s Scott Thomas Beauchamp, the Army private who has been sending dispatches from the front in Iraq, has been in dispute. His latest “Baghdad Diarist” (July 13) recounted three incidents of American soldiers engaged in acts of unusual callousness. The stories were meant to shock. And they did.

In one, the driver of a Bradley Fighting Vehicle amused himself by running over dogs, crippling and killing them. In another, a fellow soldier wore on his head and under his helmet a part of a child’s skull dug from a grave. The most ghastly tale, however, was about the author himself mocking a woman that he said he saw “nearly every time I went to dinner in the chow hall at my base in Iraq.” She was horribly disfigured, half her face melted by a roadside bomb. As she sat nearby, Beauchamp said loudly, “I love chicks that have been intimate — with IEDs. It really turns me on — melted skin, missing limbs, plastic noses.”