At his National Press Club appearance on Monday, Reverend Jeremiah Wright re-affirmed several of his past incendiary allegations -- and added at least one new one equating U.S. troops to the Roman legions who killed Jesus -- but only ABC's World News noted that as the network journalists preferred to paint Barack Obama as a “victim” of Wright and all three evening newscasts highlighted Wright's attack on Dick Cheney for not serving in the military.

CBS's Dean Reynolds, who spent more time on Wright's attack on Cheney than on anything crazy Wright said Monday, explained that “as for questions about his patriotism, Wright pointed to his Marine service compared to Vice President Cheney's five deferments from duty.” Wright: “I served six years in the military. Does that make me patriotic? How many years did Cheney serve?”

NBC Nightly News anchor Brian Williams set up the story from Andrea Mitchell by stressing how “one veteran politico today” dismissed Wright's comments as “a 'circus' and a 'sideshow.'” Mitchell soon repeated how “Obama supporters described the whole thing as a media circus.” Viewers then heard from former Senator Bill Bradley followed by Washington Post editorial writer Jonathan Capehart, the man who in March hailed Obama's speech on race as “a very important gift the Senator has given the country.” Monday night Capehart lamented how “the victim in all of this is going to be Senator Obama's campaign.”

Near the end of Sunday's Meet the Press, NBC reporter Andrea Mitchell boldly stated that racism has been a "real factor" in the Obama vote on the ground in Pennsylvania and Ohio. Apparently, because many voters are racist, they have a "willingness to believe totally erroneous things about Obama," like he didn't put his hand over his heart during the Pledge of Allegiance. (Ahem, Andrea, there's photographic evidence of that "totally erroneous" charge.)

Let me just say something from being on the ground in Pennsylvania and in Ohio. I think racism is a real factor here.  I don't think it's being polled correctly because I don't think it can be polled correctly.  I think it is what you see in some of his failure to connect with a particular sector of the electorate.

One small step for David Axelrod, one giant leap for Barack Obama away from Jeremiah Wright . . .

When chief Obama strategist Axelrod appeared at the end of this evening's Hardball, I expected him to dodge the current Rev. Wright controversy with some bromide about the reverend's right to express his opinions. But—in evidence of just how badly Wright's current comments are hurting Obama—Axelrod surprised me by acknowledging that he wished Wright hadn't piped up and suggesting that the good reverend's out for Numero Uno. Axelrod did manage to work in a blame-the-media angle.

View video here. [Note: Axelrod comments come after Matthews takes shot at Bill Kristol.]

CBS News journalist Richard Butler doesn't know who kidnapped him (for some two months), but he thinks it was some Iraqi policemen who are sympathetic to, of all folks, Hezbollah:

Butler, a British journalist kidnapped with his interpreter on Feb. 10, was rescued by Iraqi troops on April 14 when he was found with a sack over his head in a house in Basra.

He was taken from a hotel room in Basra, where he was on a trip to meet the chief of staff for anti-American cleric Muqtada al-Sadr.

Men wearing police fatigue uniforms and armed with AK-47's hustled him out of the room and into a car. He was first taken to a police station in Basra and then was held in different places — including three nights where he was sealed into a small room between two walls, he said.

While he was held, he heard a lot of Hezbollah propaganda video and Hezbollah ringtones on mobile phones, but he can't be sure his captors were affiliated with the organization.

C'mon. If I didn't post it. Someone else would have.

http://www.youtube.c...

I'll check in from time to time and help out where appropriate.

-PJ

What would be the proper response to the tragic story of a father killed by a great white shark? For "Good Morning America" guest host Barbara Walters, apparently, it was to quote from the trailer of the 1978 film "Jaws 2." Reporter Miguel Marquez recounted the story of Dave Martin, the San Diego man killed by a shark off of the California coast last Friday. He explained, "Dave Martin's family is defiant. They say the shark attack hasn't ended their love of the sea."

When the segment cut back to Walters, she observed, "But perhaps that family should remember that line 'Just when you thought it was safe to go back in the water.'" Maybe journalists should be told that they don't need to have a pithy quote to end every segment. Perhaps viewers should be glad that she didn't choose other famous "Jaws" quotes, such as "This was no boat accident!" or "You're going to need a bigger boat."

Does it seem the ultimate of political ironies that media are using the same strategy that helped Bill Clinton win the White House in 1992 to prevent him and his wife from returning to the Oval Office in 2009?

After all, even people that haven't been around the political block a few times should certainly find the following all too predictable press strategy all too familiar (picture courtesy Times Online):

How perfect.  The director of some of Hollywood's most revoltingly violent, sexually explicit, culturally corrosive movies has an even more destructive hobby on the side: iconoclasm. 

Paul Verhoeven, director of "Basic Instinct," "Robocop" and "Showgirls," turns out to be a member of the academically suspect Jesus Seminar, and in September he will publish a book attacking the foundational Christian doctrine that Jesus was conceived by the Holy Spirit.

For the past twenty years, the Dutch filmmaker has reportedly been attending meetings of the Jesus Seminar and researching his biography, "Jesus of Nazareth: A Realistic Portrait."  Fox News quotes a spokesman for Amsterdam publishing house J.M. Meulenhoff saying Verhoeven "hopes it will be a springboard" for making a movie about Jesus' life.

NBC's Matt Lauer appeared live from Buenos Aires, Argentina as part of the latest installment of the "Today" show's "Where In The World Is Matt Lauer?" ratings gimmick and he went out of his way to assuage viewers that NBC News was doing their part to stay "green" in his travels.

Prompted by an e-mailer's question, read by co-host Meredith Vieira, Lauer assured the "Today" audience that they were going to purchase "carbon off-sets," as he dutifully noted: "We are taking great note of a green side of this trip, as much as humanly possible."

The following exchange occurred on the April 28, "Today" show:

MEREDITH VIEIRA: Listen I've got some e-mail questions that have been coming. And first off is Shaun from Jersey City, New Jersey, and he, who asks, "I have not heard any mention on how Matt Lauer plans to offset his carbon footprint from his upcoming trip around the world. I'm surprised that you have not incorporated a 'green' perspective into this year's trip?" What do you have to say, Matt?

High food prices may be affecting middle-income families, but an anecdotal report on CBS's "The Early Show" April 28 made the situation seem as if one family's use of a food bank was "the new face of hunger."

CBS reporter Priya David highlighted Pablo and Ada Melecio, a couple who recently lost their jobs and have elected to use a food bank to make ends meet. Ada Melecio said their "mortgage payments started falling behind and all the interest on that plus all the credit cards" were making their situation even worse.

Are Reverend Jeremiah Wright’s comments shouting "God damn America" comparable to Rosa Parks famous refusal to give up her seat? According to "The View’s" Sherri Shepherd it is. Discussing Wright on the April 28 edition, Shepherd, with Joy Behar’s backing, called Wright’s anger "righteous" and compared it to Rosa Parks’ famous protest.

SHEPHERD: And I remember, I remember you said, not going back, but you said "when can we go to the place where they say ‘forgive them they know not what they do’?" Anger is sometimes a very good thing, because I’m thinking of Rosa Parks. Had she not been angry and said "no I’m not going to get up. I’m tired my feet hurt."

BEHAR: Yes, righteous rage.

SHEPHERD: It’s righteous and that’s what Jeremiah has.

HASSELBECK: Enlighten me.

SHEPHERD: No, but I’m saying he had a righteous anger. Martin Luther King was angry, he was very angry.

Washington Post staffer Eli Saslow introduced readers of his April 28 front-page article to a handful of newly registered North Carolina Democrats. But the hype about gas prices from the plight of one of the Democrats from Raleigh struck me to be a probable case of fuzzy math.

Meet 18-year-old Kyla White, a senior at Raleigh's Enloe High School and a part-time receptionist at a local Sports Clips hair salon who drives a 1997 Honda (emphasis mine):

She wanted to vote for a multiracial America, one in which peers wouldn't call her "too white" for being one of a handful of black students in the Enloe honors program. She wanted to vote for no more Code Reds. She wanted to vote for lower gas prices.

She wanted to vote for Obama.

On Sunday’s CBS "60 Minutes," anchor Bob Simon talked to members of the Israeli Air Force and asked one pilot, Captain Omri, about air strikes in the Gaza strip in which civilians occasionally are killed:

It's a classic guerilla war. Fifty dollar rockets made in the back alleys of Gaza against Israel's $50,000 missiles. The Israelis will tell you that kind of expense buys precise weapons which limit collateral damage. But it also gives the air force the capability of assassinating their enemy's leadership. The Israelis call this "targeted killings"; the Palestinians call it murder. Have you hit any targets?

Simon then went on to say to Omri: "But I must tell you, your face, your manners, your demeanor, you don't look like a killer. And yet what you do a lot of the time when you're over Gaza, you're killing." The pilot responded: "I agree. I don't think I'm a killer. When I look at my face in the mirror, I don't see a killer."

In her two-part profile of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia aired on Sunday night's 60 Minutes, Lesley Stahl seemed repeatedly surprised by how Scalia in person isn't the “polarizing figure” who protesters call a “fascist,” as she conceded: “What's interesting is the difference between how you appear in person and the image that you have. Because the writings are so often combative, and your friends say that you're charming and fun.” In short, Scalia really does not match the left-wing characterization of him adopted by Stahl's media colleagues.

Stahl opened her piece by describing Scalia as “one of the most brilliant and combative justices ever to sit on the court” before contending that he “is a polarizing figure who invites protestors and picketers.” As she spoke, viewers heard from a man with a matching sign: “Scalia is a fascist!” Stahl told Scalia what she's heard about him: “'He's evil.' 'He's a Neanderthal.' 'He's going to drag us back to 1789.'” Stahl informed him: “The public sense of you is that you make your decisions based on your social beliefs.” Citing “Roe v. Wade and affirmative action,” she elaborated, “His critics argue that originalism is a cover for what they see as Justice Scalia's real intention: to turn back some pivotal court decisions of the 60s and 70s.”

Kevin Sack devoted his front-page New York Times Week in Review piece, "The Short End Of the Longer Life," to two recent government reports showing what he finds to be disturbing trends in life expectancy in the United States.

No, it's not on the decline. But one study found that "the life expectancy gap is growing between rich and poor," while the other found "statistically significant declines" in life expectancy for women (not men) in a minority of American counties, many clustered in the Appalachia region. And guess who's cited in the third paragraph as an expert on such matters? Failed presidential candidate John Edwards and his left-wing view of "Two Americas."

The Times painted the findings in crusade-like terms, similar to President Kennedy putting the spotlight on the poor and hungry in rural Appalachia. The paper's propaganda push came complete with a half-page black and white photo of a little girl in Kentucky standing before a portrait of her great-grandmother, reminiscent of Walker Evans' photos in Let Us Now Praise Famous Men."

Later in the segment on CNN’s "Newsroom" between Tony Harris, David Gergen, and Roland Martin after the Reverend Jeremiah Wright speech at the National Press Club (which Mark Finkelstein blogged about earlier), Gergen suggested that "it’s time for him [Rev. Wright] to get off the stage, and frankly, for the media, I suggest, to move on." He also twice characterized the whole affair as a "sideshow" [audio available here].

Shortly after a commercial break which came in the middle of the discussion, Gergen, in response to a question from "Newsroom" co-host Tony Harris, said of Rev. Wright, "Every time he appears, he just gives legitimacy and a hunger by those who oppose Barack Obama to re-run those tapes, to keep him at the center of controversy, to let this overhang and define Barack Obama, when it has, you know -- it has very, very little to do -- it's a very marginal piece of who Barack Obama is and what he stands for."

Gergen then talked about how the Rev. Wright issue was a distraction, and how the preacher should have handled himself after the controversy broke, all the while heaping praise on him, and at the end, making his "move on" suggestion.

College textbooks are overpriced and something should be done. Why, Congress should even step in! That is the message that The New York Times wants us to understand and I can't say it is, in and of itself, entirely the wrong message -- save the whole bit about Congress stepping in, of course. But, as is typical of The New York Times, their story is only a small part of the whole story. In their exuberance to shake a finger at book manufacturers and in their hurry to blame capitalism the Times missed the bigger story.

The Times reports that "College students and their families are rightly outraged about the bankrupting costs of textbooks that have nearly tripled since the 1980s." They also report that a bill is pending in Congress that would "require publishers to sell 'unbundled' versions of the books..." This, the Times feels, is the right move to solve the problem. Any first year economics student, however, knows there is far more to it than just slapping more regulations on book publishers.

Well, I actually received a better response to my Friday post than I expected - but still mainly just the usual attacking-the-messenger/avoiding-the-issue crap...

Never-the-less I will forge through as always – for the greater good, for the noble Christian cause, undaunted - and see if I can get any brains to engage:)

very sorry:)

April 25, 2008 - 15:14 ET by TruthMonger

I was out yesterday afternoon and I see bigotboy and his henchies had an Open Thread pile-on - with some unresolved questions - so here is the belated update - tracheostomy style - see y'all Monday - until then - maybe you guys could drag a Muslim or two behind your pickup trucks:)