It seems our Presidente is celebrating the re-opening of the New Orleans Mexican Consulate. Link provided below. It seems there are around 50 of these Mexican Consulates in the US, dependending on the source you look at.

One of my co-workers talks about how his wife, who is a seventh grade public school teacher, is constantly asked by the Mexican kids why they cannot say the pledge of allegiance to the Mexican flag in school.  You guys that live outside of Texas need to understand that Texas is about to turn into a blue state- like Mexifornia.

Last year La Rasa allies in the Texas State Senate were able to block a voter ID law even after it was found that hundreds of illegal aliens had registered to vote in just one county alone. I have seen one estimate that there are 2 million illegal aliens in Texas.  This does not count the anchor babies and the vast numbers of recently "naturalized" adults - many with "dual citizenships " like Dr Juan Hernadez, John McCain's Hispanic outreach director.

Like the Spanish Music station bumper sticker I saw yesterday we are deluged with "con mas reconquistadores."

http://michellemalkin.com/2008/04/21/video-whats-calderon-up-to/

Earlier tonight I caught a story on KIMT TV in Mason City, Iowa, about how the weather is delaying planting.  Reporter Michael Benning interviewed a farmer, James Thomas, of Rockwell, Iowa.  What caught my ear came toward the end:

However if the weather does cooperate, farmers are set to have a very good year. The price for corn has increased from less than $2.00 to nearly $6.00 per bushel in the last few years. Soy beans have jumped from nearly $6.00 to more than $13.00 per bushel.

"Everybody feels good now, because it's fun to sell grain at high prices," said Thomas.

That's also driven Iowa land values up in by 2/3 in five years. Thomas says it almost seems too good to be true.

"In the back of your mind, you're wondering if it's gonna crash.”

Some economists believe there's a reason to be concerned too. They say the farming economy is eerily similar to the year’s right before it crashed in 1980's.

"It was hard on everybody, and very stressful," said Thomas.

http://newsbusters.org/blogs/nb-staff/2008/04/21/open-thread#comment-595484

foolish enough to break the agreement but to brag about it?

If they had a reality show for international politicians called "Biggest Loser" the most popular nominee for the title would be Mikhail Gorbachev, the man that lost his whole country, not merely an election. Yet, every once in a while and for some untenable reason, this communist loser is trotted out by the US media as some sort of expert on international politics. Unsurprisingly, his opinion is always sought to act as an attack on a Republican politician or policy. This time it is the All Headline News service trotting out old spotty in order to wag a finger at GOP presidential candidate John McCain.

Back on March 18th, McCain reiterated his idea of creating a new international organization styled as a "League of Democracies." McCain imagines this organization as a chance to renew the commitment of the world's democratic nations to the concept of helping others grow as well as lending more support to those already so formed.

The McCain campaign, once known as the most media-pandering perpetual Republican campaign in modern history, is passionately protesting the Washington Post’s Sunday story suggesting John McCain’s "volcanic" outbursts of anger could be disqualifying. (I blogged it here.) McCain aide Mark Salter was quoted by Ramesh Ponnuru on The Corner, saying the story in 99 percent fictional: "The story about the Young Republican in 1982 is entirely fictional. The Bob Smith incident is entirely fictional. The Karen Johnson story is entirely fictional. Most of the others are exaggerated beyond recognition." This severe a charge will need to be answered by the Post.

At NRO’s Media Blog, Greg Pollowitz has more detail. The Karen Johnson featured in the McCain story is a less-than-respectable source, since she’s a 9/11 "truther," someone who suspects a grand American conspiracy to kill our own people. Greg quoted one newspaper account:

On Monday’s CBS "Early Show"co-host Harry Smith reported live from the Wilkes University campus in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania and talked to college students planning to vote in the upcoming Democratic primary, one of whom, Raquel Wheby, explained: "Tomorrow morning is -- it's very undecided. It's going to be the goose bump moment when you get in there and then you just pick one and go with it." Smith seemed to like that description of voting for a Democrat because he then exclaimed to the crowd of applauding college students: "Wow, let's go for the goose bump moment tomorrow."  

Smith began the segment by excitedly declaring: "You guys fired up? We've got some first time voters for us that are going to talk to us right now about what's going on in their lives and what they're going to do when they get a chance to vote." He went on to talk to a Hillary Clinton supporter, David Sborz, who said of the New York Senator: "Because I think her inspiration, her focus, her leadership. Her will to break through the glass ceiling has really motivated a spirit in me to really support her." Smith then turned to Patrick Austin, a student supporting Obama who explained his reason for voting: "I'm a Barack Obama supporter. And I support him because I think his policy is realistic. I think he has charisma, he's intellectual, he's well spoken and, you know, he has an aura about him, I think, that most -- draws most people to him."

Following that fawning over Hillary and Obama, Smith talked to Wheby, who was still undecided. Wheby explained why she was torn between the two candidates, while taking the opportunity to mock John McCain at the same time: "I'm at the point where I won't know till I'm in the booth tomorrow. I think this campaign has been one of the first that has the first feasible black candidate, the first feasible female and the oldest running man ever." That line received laughter from the entire crowd of students in the room as well as from Smith himself.

Sandwiched neatly between the U.S. papal visit and the Keystone Primary, former President Jimmy Carter picked an excellent time to visit U.S. State Department-designated Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO) Hamas and yet receive scant press coverage.

Yet Carter's embrace of Hamas, his newfound respect in the state-run Iranian media, and his all-but-explicitly leveled allegations of a Zionist conspiracy behind U.S. foreign policy present a strong case for media scrutiny, as well as the media's role in presenting the comments for denunciation by presidential contenders Sens. Clinton, McCain, and Obama.

For its part the Los Angeles Times appears to be taking notice, judging from the coverage from its Middle East affairs blog Babylon & Beyond. From an April 21 posting by Borzou Daragahi in Beirut and Ramin Mostaghim in Tehran (emphasis mine):

So much for the alleged conservative conglomerate media. Broadcasting & Cable magazine reports leftist actor Tim Robbins drew a standing ovation last week before the National Association of Broadcasters convention in Las Vegas for attacking the corporate media for distracting the country from real (liberal) issues with Britney and Hasselhoff stories. But Robbins also sneered that "talk radio geniuses" like Rush Limbaugh and Bill O’Reilly called him a "traitor" for opposing the Iraq war, and now he "stands chastened" as everything in Iraq is a utopia of democracy and prosperity. The magazine did not note that in April 2003, ABC touted Robbins claiming a McCarthyesque "chill wind" of censorship was blowing across America.

Broadcasting & Cable critic David Bianculli was supposed to host Robbins for a Q&A at the convention, but when Robbins said he brought a speech that he was told was too preachy and negative to give, broadcasters yelled that he should give the speech, so he did. Far from being miffed at having his moderator’s role snuffed, Bianculli glowingly recounted the highlights:

The day after Pope Benedict XVI departed the U.S. after a six-day visit, Blaine Harden of the Washington Post lamented the Catholic Church’s influence in the Philippines, specifically, the government of Philippines "acceding to Catholic doctrine" by "supporting only what it calls ‘natural’ family planning," rejecting "modern contraception" as part of family planning." Throughout his article, titled "Birthrates Help Keep Filipinos in Poverty," Harden painted a bleak picture of "the fastest-growing segment of the Philippine population," which is "very poor people with large families," and sought to blame their poverty and backwardness on their following Catholic teaching, brushing aside corruption and other factors that contribute to poverty. A photo accompanying the article in the print-edition of the Post showed a poor Filipino mother in her shack with her four children, two of whom are naked.

Harden described the Church’s influence throughout the article, hinting that it had created a climate of fear in the country "An organization that is helping Espinoza [a poor Filipino woman who plans to get a contraceptive intrauterine device] agreed to introduce this reporter to her on condition that it not be named. The group’s health workers said they fear retaliation and harassment from officials in the national and city government, as well as from the Catholic Church." He immediately mentioned after this that in 2005, the "Catholic bishops in the southern Philippines announced that they would refuse Communion to government health workers who distributed birth control devices."

Interesting media news this Monday as Newsweek takes a look at the coming war between the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal. The mag's piece in turn sparked a newspaper industry news boomlet as other publications rushed to find out whether Newsweek's claim that liberal Democrat Republican New York mayor Michael Bloomberg might give the New York Times Company a cash infusion to "protect the brand."

Not so, says Bloomberg, who denied the claim that he was trying to get into the newspaper biz or purchase a share in Times Co.

An excerpt from the excellent Newsweek piece that started it all is below the fold...

With Pope Benedict back in Rome, the media are rendering their verdict of the pontiff's U.S. visit. The pontiff did "better than expected" seems to be the verdict coming from secular journalists, who, of course, found that the pontiff bested the low expectations of unnamed "experts."

Take the following from Washington Post staffers Michelle Boorstein and Jacqueline L. Salmon (emphasis mine):

NEW YORK, April 20 -- After thanking the United States for his "many memorable experiences of American hospitality," Pope Benedict XVI headed back to Rome on Sunday night, ending a six-day visit in which he directly confronted the clergy sex-abuse crisis and surprised many by drawing large, enthusiastic crowds.

[...]

The Press doesn't care about these things, why should you?

This originally appeared in the April 21st edition of Human Events.

The Media's Reaction to George and Charlie

ABC's Charlie Gibson and George Stephanopoulos slipped and let a bit of actual reporting seep into their Democrat Presidential debate moderation efforts on April 16. They mistakenly engaged in fifty minutes worth of pertinent inquiry, largely regarding the patriotic perspectives and numerous troubling relationships of Illinois Senator Barack Obama -- and to a lesser extent examining the fact that New York Senator Hillary Clinton has a Herculean ability to create her Living History out of whole cloth.

The response from the Left has been withering and unremitting.

The Politico, in an April 18 headline, stated the obvious "Obama’s secret weapon: The media," though it’s not much of a "secret" weapon. John F. Harris and Jim Vandehei noted the backlash against ABC for daring to ask the tough questions, and many mainstream journalists rallying behind Obama after the debate.

"Last fall, when NBC’s Tim Russert hazed Clinton with a bunch of similar questions — a mix of fair and impertinent — he got lots of gripes from Clinton supporters.

"But there was nothing like the piling on from journalists rushing to validate the Obama criticisms and denouncing ABC’s performance as journalistically unsound."

John Harris, formerly of the Washington Post, called for many journalists to "go through detox, to cure their swooning over Obama’s political skill" and noted even co-writer Jim Vandehei "seemed to have been bitten by the bug after the Iowa caucus." Vandehei admitted he found Obama to be "pretty electric myself."

On Monday morning, April 21, CNN aired "America Votes 2008” with Rick Sanchez, (11:30 AM CT) a segment that featured reporter Sanchez visiting Penn State University to talk to some of the students about the upcoming Pennsylvania Democratic Primary. In the aftermath of CNN's visit, some of the students involved in the taping are alleging that Sanchez was so virulently skewed to the left that he berated and bullied students who held a differing point of view. It was reportedly so bad that CNN crewmembers even apologized to several students for Sanchez' incivility.

On Sunday, CNN touted Sanchez’ Pennsylvania segments as putting him "on the road in Pennsylvania ahead of Tuesday's crucial vote" and claims to be interested in "what's on their minds before they cast their ballots?" But at the Penn State University segment, at least as far as at least some of the students involved are concerned, what was on their minds didn't interest Sanchez at all. To the contrary, what was on his mind was all that concerned him they allege.

Want to talk about really inconvenient truths?

Well, despite Nobel Laureate Al Gore's massive campaign to scare the world into thinking the planet is facing imminent doom at the hands of global warming, Americans don't seem to be buying it.

In fact, a new Gallup poll released moments ago revealed, "a little more than a third say they worry about [global warming] a great deal, a percentage that is roughly the same as the one Gallup measured 19 years ago."

Hehehehehe.

Here are the exquisitely delicious details (emphasis added):

Dan Gainor appeared on Fox News's "Fox and Friends" to talk about the latest issue of Time magazine, which had a Photoshopped cover of World War II Marines raising a tree instead of the American flag at Iwo Jima.

Gainor told viewers of the Saturday morning broadcast April 19, "Time magazine basically tried to co-op an icon of American heroism to push their global warming agenda. They're trying to claim that their war against global warming is similar to what our veterans endured during WWII."

He went on to say that there were 28,000 casualties and more than 6,000 people killed at Iwo Jima, exclaiming, "That's real war."

In the past several years, on any given day -- including holidays, mind you! -- you couldn't swing a dead cat without hitting a media member complaining about how America's respect within the international community had declined under George W. Bush.

This makes Friday evening's editorial in Investor's Business Daily all the more astounding.

Readers are strongly advised to prepare themselves for an alternate state of reality before proceeding any further (emphasis added, h/t NB reader Andrew Gill):

For general discussion and debate. Possible talking point: is the dollar bottoming:

The euro could slip from its recent record highs against the dollar amid a schism between the European Central Bank and the Continent's political leaders.

In reality, the dollar bottomed against other currencies last year, including the pound and the Canadian dollar. This year, bottoms seem to have already been made against the yen and the Swiss franc.

If monetary policy at the ECB is FINALLY going to loosen -- after almost a full decade of American and international pressure to do so! -- the bear market in dollars could be over.

Do you agree, or see this as wishful thinking? Maybe more important, in a global economy, do we want a stronger dollar despite carping and whining about its weakness? Finally, if the dollar rallies, will media notice?