Many media outlets have hyped projected 2008 food stamp usage as a “record high,” but as FNC's Brit Hume pointed out Wednesday night in showcasing a particularly misleading take in The Independent in London, a higher percent of Americans were on food stamps “back in the Clinton years.” Hume showcased the London paper's Tuesday front page headline, “United States of America 2008: The Great Depression,” which asserted that 28 million on food stamps in the U.S. represents “the highest level since the program was introduced in the 1960's.” Hume noted:

But critics suggest, however, that that number is misleading since 28 million people would be just 9.2 percent of all Americans. Back in the Clinton years, food stamp distribution reached at an all-time high of almost 10 and a half percent in 1993 and 1994 and 10 percent in 1995.

The Independent matched Monday's front page New York Times article, “As Jobs Vanish and Prices Rise, Food Stamp Use Nears Record,” in which Erik Eckholm asserted “the number of Americans receiving food stamps is projected to reach 28 million in the coming year, the highest level since the aid program began in the 1960s...” Lifting that story, on Monday's CBS Evening News reporter Bill Whitaker ominously intoned: “With jobs declining and prices for basics -- food, fuel, medicine -- on the rise, more Americans are expected to turn to food stamps in the next year than at any time since the program began in the 1960s.”

In a post earlier this evening, Lynn Davidson at NewsBusters chronicled the myriad errors in a March 31 Reuters "Factbox" relating to the Kyoto Protocol.

Among the errors Davidson noted was the wire service's claim that "The United States ..... came out against the pact in 2001" -- implying, but not actually stating, that the US government was perfectly happy with Kyoto until mean old George W. Bush came along. This is, of course, patently untrue.

The error made by Erin Gartner of the Associated Press in covering Chelsea Clinton's appearance at the University of North Carolina on behalf of her mother's presidential bid was more obvious. It is just the latest in a long line of direct or attributed misstatements the AP has let stand about the treaty's history in the US (HTs to Captain Ed at Hot Air and Instapundit):

What does it say about Reuters' environmental coverage when the news organization can't even get a basic “factbox” correct?

This March 31 Reuters “factbox” was supposed to explain “What is the Kyoto Protocol?” Instead, the media conglomerate pushed a biased eco-agenda and omitted anything that cast a negative light on the treaty or revealed problems. There was no mention of Kyoto participants failing to meet their targets or Japan trying to renegotiate because Kyoto is harming its economy. Reuters failed to report that greenhouse gas emissions are rising in the European Union and in many Kyoto-participating countries, such as Canada. Some, like Austria and Great Britain, are actually doing worse than the US in emissions growth. By skewing the data included in this factbox, Reuters massaged data to fit an agenda and crossed into advocacy journalism.

Reuters began by framing the US as the bad guy (all bold mine):

Chris Matthews got Barack Obama one-on-one on Wednesday night as part of "Hardball's College Tour," but didn't admit to getting a "thrill" up his leg from the Illinois senator's appearance. However, Matthews did ask Obama questions mostly from the left, like if he was "tough enough to take the heat," from "right wing radio," and warned him the "Republicans will bring [Jeremiah Wright] back."

On the lighter side, Obama didn't directly address Matthews about his leg tingles but did seem to make an allusion to it in the following exchange:

MATTHEWS: Let me ask you about, at any time in this campaign, did you have a chuckle that you just couldn't get rid of? Something weird that happened, that was so crazy that you just went to bed laughing about?

OBAMA: Oh I think that, that happens about once a day. You know? But then I stopped watching cable news.

MATTHEWS: Oh!

[APPLAUSE]

MATTHEWS: I got another set of cards in the back room.

(Obama chuckles)

The following questions from Matthews to Obama occurred on the April 2 edition of "Hardball":

Eric Alterman was the latest in a long conga line of liberal authors plugging their books on Comedy Central’s The Colbert Report on Monday night. He began by confusing the audience about God. Liberals refuse to take orders from God (since he doesn’t exist, or isn’t important enough to take orders from) or the Fatherland (conservatives-are-Nazis jokes always work with the stilted studio audience). But in the next breath, Alterman was claiming Jesus for the liberal side:

ALTERMAN: To be a liberal, Stephen, just means you believe in the truth. You don't take -- you don't take orders from God. You don't take orders from the Fatherland, you don't take orders from --

COLBERT: But God is truth. Jesus said I am the way, the truth and the light [sic]. What part of that don't you understand?

ALTERMAN: Jesus was a liberal. There he is [on the Alterman book cover], right next to Willie Nelson.

Of the three morning shows, only ABC's “Good Morning America” highlighted the implications of a new report on pork barrel spending by the group Citizens Against Government Waste [CAGW]. GMA was the sole network morning program to mention that Democrats broke their campaign promise to cut such pork projects in half. On Wednesday, NBC's “Today” show skipped the subject completely and although CBS's “Early Show” covered the report, correspondent Sharyl Attkisson ignored the $296 and $97 million, respectively, in pork spending that Democratic presidential candidates Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama are responsible for.

GMA reporter Jake Tapper, while discussing the just released Pig Book, a CAGW compendium of wasteful government spending, announced, “Congress stuffed into the fiscal year 2008 spending bills 11,610 pork barrel projects, the second highest total ever.” Tapper alone highlighted this salient point about the differences between Clinton, Obama and Republican Senator John McCain: “Senator Hillary Clinton is the biggest porker of the three. 281 earmarks worth $296 million. Senator Obama is next. 53 earmarks worth $97 million. Senator John McCain has never requested an earmark.”

ABC News anchor Charlie Gibson, in a news brief on Tuesday’s "World News," spun the Bush administration’s decision to fast-track the construction of a fence along the U.S.-Mexican border, focusing almost entirely on the "more than 30 laws and regulations to be bypassed," as the graphic accompanying the brief put it. "The Bush administration today announced plans to speed up construction of the fence along the Mexican border by sidestepping more than 30 laws that now stand in the way. The administration says it will use its authority to bypass those laws in an attempt to finish 670 miles of fence along the southwest border by the end of the year."

What Gibson left out is the fact that, as the Washington Post pointed out, the plan is "permitted under an exemption granted by Congress."

On its face, Hillary's email to supporters that just arrived in my inbox is a call to the highest civic values. In support of her demand to seat the delegates from Michigan and Florida, Hillary righteously writes [emphasis added]:

No matter where you were born or how much money you were born into, no matter the color of your skin or where you worship, your vote deserves to count.

But let's consider this a bit more closely. Has anyone previously suggested that the reluctance to seat the delegates from Florida or Michigan has anything whatsoever to do with the race or religion of voters there? Can Hillary allege with a straight face that this is some nefarious plot against voters of a certain hue or denomination? Of course not. We all understand what this is about. Obama doesn't want to seat the delegates because it would help Hillary in the delegate and popular vote count. And the DNC is reluctant to do so because the two states flouted party rules in moving up the dates of their primaries.

Note also Hillary's specific formulation. She could have simply written "your religion" but instead opted for "where you worship."

Will Barack Obama’s alleged charisma lead to Osama Bin Laden’s capture? According to "View" co-host Sherri Shepherd it will. Appearing on the April 1 edition of "The Tonight Show with Jay Leno," Shepherd first fawned over fellow guest David Beckham, then moved on to her infatuation with Barack Obama calling him "sexy" and dreaming of Obama as her prom date.

Shepherd, whom "View" creator Barbara Walters classified as one of the show’s conservatives, then described how Obama can win the War on Terror with his charm.

The April 1 Independent story about a looming "Great Depression" in the United States was positively risible. But as Jim Geraghty at National Review Online noted yesterday, the stark-looking photo for the paper's story (at right via Getty Images) was three years old.:

Their caption: "Disadvantaged Americans queue for aid in New York."

Here's the actual caption from Getty Images:

A federal judge on April 1 ordered Rep. Jim McDermott (D-Wash.), a veteran liberal legislator and Saddam Hussein stooge, to pay Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) $1 million for an illegally-taped 1996 phone conversation. Even the Associated Press, which we've taken to task numerous times for dropping party labels, noted McDermott's party affiliation. Not so the Seattle Times, McDermott's hometown paper:

A federal judge in Washington, D.C., says Congressman Jim McDermott owes an Ohio congressman $1 million for leaking an illegally taped phone call to the media.

Today's decision may end the dispute that began in 1996 when John Boehner (BAY'-ner) was taped talking about an ethics case involving Newt Gingrich. The tape reached McDermott who gave it two newspapers. He says it's a free speech issue.

Boehner sued and the case has been in the courts for a decade. A federal court ruled McDermott had no right to release the call.

The presidential campaign seems upside down, like a bad April Fool's joke. Suddenly, the titans of the liberal media are wondering out loud if Hillary Clinton should quit the presidential race, while Hillary is kindly greeting and grinning at every vaunted "vast right-wing conspiracy" media outlet from Dick Scaife's Pittsburgh Tribune-Review to Rupert Murdoch's Fox News Channel. Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell, a leading Hillary advocate, hailed Fox News as the fairest to Mrs. Clinton.

It is truly bizarre.

At the start of the new year, the dominant storyline was how the Clinton Juggernaut would eventually crush everyone in its path to the Democratic presidential nod. Certainly, Barack Obama's fundraising was matching hers, and his media clips were so sugary they'd make cotton candy seem bitter. But no one really believed Hillary would be where she is today, just three months later, finding herself hounded to go "home" to New York.

In yet another fawning interview with Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama on Wednesday’s CBS "Early Show," co-host Harry Smith touted Obama’s bi-partisan appeal: "Though he leads Hillary Clinton in national polls, Obama trails in Pennsylvania. He's hoping record voter registration and an extraordinary number of people who have switched parties to boost his chances." Smith then asked the Illinois Senator: "What is your sense from what your own people tell you about the switching that has taken place already in Pennsylvania in terms of Republicans coming over to support you?" Given Rush Limbaugh’s "Operation Chaos," in which he encourages Republicans to vote for Hillary Clinton to keep the Democratic race in turmoil, one wonders if this "extraordinary number" of Republicans crossing over for Obama is a similar effort rather than true support.

Even Obama had to admit that there was no solid evidence of a large Republican turnout for him, though he still insisted a "sizable" amount of support: "You know, at this point it's still anecdotal. I can tell you that there's not a rally we have in which we don't hear from a sizable number of people who say they've switched registrations or that they're a Republican and that they're going to vote for me in the primary and in the general election."

CNN correspondent Dana Bash, during an interview of Senator John McCain which aired on Tuesday’s "The Situation Room," raised the issue of whether the Republican presidential candidate felt voters’ pain on the economy. "[I]n this time of uncertainty, when there are so many people hurting, are you concerned that there are voters out there who hear that who say, John McCain is heartless when it comes to this issue?" The thought that McCain might be "heartless" was reenforced by inclusion of the chyron, "McCain & Voters’ Pain: Against Big Economic Bailouts." [Audio available here.]

Following her "heartless" question on the economy, Bash followed up by asking a particularly blunt question about whether the current economy would hurt him if it continued into the time immediately before the election. "If the headlines that are on the front page of the newspapers today are the same headlines on the front pages in late October, early November, does John McCain lose?"

Are the Girl Scouts of America to blame for America’s "obesity epidemic"? An ABC News website article suggested that. On an article charging overweight Americans face widespread discrimination, the piece then moved on to blame the food producers, not the individual that buys them for America’s widening waistline. Targeting the Girl Scouts specifically for the problem, correspondent Lee Dye charged "that little angel standing at your door is offering you a one-way ticket to obesity."

The article focused on one researcher, Rebecca Puhl, who blamed the problem on not only the big food producers, but also "genetics and some diseases" and implicitly scorned those who mentioned personal responsibility. "If it were that easy we wouldn’t have this epidemic we have now," Puhl charges. She also blames the food companies for making less healthy options "more accessible."

"We live in a very toxic food environment. We make it very easy for people to be unhealthy. Unhealthy foods, or junk foods, are accessible, cheap and engineered to taste very, very good. Healthy foods, like produce, are not as accessible, and are more expensive."

Business & Media Institute Managing Editor Amy Menefee appeared on "Fox & Friends" on April 2 to discuss the media's involvement in sparking recession fears.

Rescuing viewers from "solid recession talk," Menefee said that specifically network news reports already "have gone far beyond recession, they are already concerned about a depression."

"They're not tell-they're not allowing people on the networks to say ‘Hey, let's get this in perspective right now,' as you said we haven't had a quarter of negative growth yet."

Typical of too many Northern based media outlets, Politico indulged in a little South-bashing today with a story on a remark about Pennsylvania spoken in 2006 by Clinton Democratic operative James Carville (pictured at right in file photo). In attempting to explain the political climate of the Keystone state, Carville basically said that state looked like Paoli (a suburb of Philadelphia) and Penn Hills (a suburb of Pittsburgh) with Alabama in between. Despite Carville's claims that he didn't mean it as any sort of slam, Politico and many Pennsylvanians are acting as if being compared to the culturally conservative and religious parts of Alabama is an outrageous insult. This incident just shows once again that the political elite and the media are utterly biased against the American Southland in general and religious Americans in particular.

Representative of the hate for the South imbued in our nose-in-the-air political operatives is public affairs consultant, Larry Ceisler who has "ties to the Democratic Party" in Pennsylvania. Ceisler told Politico that being compared to Alabama is a "slander."

I have to give the Christian Science Monitor credit for at least discussing Rush Limbaugh's Operation Chaos which is his plan for Republicans to register as Democrats in order to vote for Hillary Clinton so as to cause yet more disorder in the Democrat party. One can search in vain in Google News for dreaded term "Operation Chaos," but with the exception of the Christian Science Monitor, the mainstream media shuns any mention of it despite the fact that registrations of Democrats in Pennsyvania are at record levels due to "mysterious reasons." Often when reading or watching media outlets describe the record number of Democrat registrations in the Keystone State without giving credit to Operation Chaos, I feel like channeling the late great comedian, Sam Kinison, who was famous for yelling: "Say it! SAY IT!!!"

Christian Science Monitor writer, Dante Chinni, finally said it in his article, "Rushing to register? Limbaugh’s efforts not yet showing signs of big effects in Pennsylvania." First Chinni discusses that which most others in the mainstream media refuse to even mention: