Having known that many banks now pander to illegal aliens, I have been curious as to how that related to the mortgage crisis. The fact that the media has NOT been pushing some theme like "immigrants less likely to default" has made me very suspicious.  Michelle Malkin gives just a tiny hint at what is going on in the article I link to below.  It may open in the comments portion so you may have to scroll up to read it.

http://michellemalkin.com/2008/05/12/open-borders-and-the-mortgage-mess/

Here is a sad example of the subtle anti-war bias that the MSM constantly hides in stories even when they are heartwarming tales of the great things our soldiers do for the people of Iraq. In this case, it is the Sacramento Bee putting in some almost subliminal anti-war sentiments in the mouth of Staff Sgt. Luis Falcon who worked his heart out to get some prosthetic legs for an 11-year-old Iraqi girl who lost her legs to a road side bomb. This is a wonderful story that is marred by the SacBee's attempt to interject into the story doubt about the war effort in Iraq.

As it happened, Staff Sgt. Falcon made friends with little Shahad Abbas who had been the victim of a road side bomb that was detonated as she was walking to school. Her little brother was killed in the blast. Falcon had been visiting the girl and was bringing her gifts of toys and medical supplies when at last she asked him for new legs so that she might again walk to school.

To his credit, Sgt. Falcon worked his heart out to get the poor girl those prosthetic legs and he succeeded in his goals. It is a heartwarming tale and highlights just one of the thousands and thousands of similar stories being lived out by our soldiers on a daily basis throughout Iraq and Afghanistan.

Don't you just love the MSM? They can't even report good news without interjecting their doom and gloom, agenda driven verbiage into any report. This time it is the Associated Press with the good news that the Marines and the rest of America's armed forces have reached their recruiting goals. In fact, many branches of the service exceeded them. All good news, right? Well, naturally the AP had to throw some cold water on the good tidings. You see, according to the AP the Marines fulfilled their recruiting goals because of a "slow economy" and despite Iraq being an "unpopular war." They just can't let it go, can they?

After giving us the details that the Marines surpassed their recruiting goals the AP had to remind us that U.S. forces were "stretched thin by the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan" and that those joining the service are doing so because -- and here is that old canard again -- "other job possibilities" are limited for them.

MoveOn.org sponsored a contest for the best 30-second pro-Barack Obama TV commercial. The winner, according to the Associated Press's article, "MoveOn ad features pro-Obama Republican," was an ad starring Air Force veteran John Weiler. The spot includes Mr. Weiler, whose military service is to be commended, saying "I've been a Republican since before I could actually vote." Not only that: "I'm a lifelong Republican and I'm voting for Barack Obama."

I don't know if Mr. Weiler is a lifelong Republican as he claims. I do know that if the Associated Press is accurate in its reporting, he must have been an extraordinary serviceman.

"He served in the Air Force from 1983 to 1989, leaving the service as a master sergeant," according to the AP. Is that not amazing? The Air Force Enlisted Promotions Fact Sheet shows promotion to Master Sergeant (E-7) requires eight years in the service. According to Military.com, "The average service wide active duty time for advancement to the rank of Master Sergeant is 17.06 years."

NBC Nightly News anchor Brian Williams on Monday evening gave credibility to the extremist environmental theory that the Earth is reacting to mankind's mistreatment by spawning a rash of tornadoes. Williams reported how “this has been one of the most active, deadly tornado seasons in a long time” with more tornadoes so far this year than through August last year. He then forwarded to NBC Weather Plus meteorologist Bill Karins the kind of reasoning he hears during his daily routine:

I talked to three people, casual conversation today, all of them smart, saying “I don't know, we must be doing something to our Earth.”

Karins gently corrected him: “Well, there are correlations that can be made. Global warming not quite one of them. La Nina, more likely.”

Does the media treat hypocrites of differing political preferences similarly? The evidence would suggest not. When noted Christian televangelist Jim Bakker was found to have committed adultery and mail fraud back in 1986, the national media were beside themselves with glee, running hundreds of stories about Bakker's hypocrisy. The same pattern repeated itself with other Christian evangelists, including George W. Bush supporter Ted Haggard in 2006, a case that Wikipedia admits "may have affected voting patterns in the 2006 elections". The media made sure to feature the haggard case as a front-page story during the run-up[ to the election, probably hoping (correctly as it turned out) that it would help the Democrats take control of Congress. However, the shoe is now on the other foot.

Famed left-wing radio personality Bernie Ward of San Francisco, a former priest who had one of the loudest and most consistently anti-George W. Bush voices in the entire nation, was found guilty of possessing and distributing child pornography on Friday and will serve at least five years in prison. ward tried to argue that he was "doing research" on child pornography, but as the San Francisco Chronicle reported:

Them thar Wellesley gals is so country. Kinda like good ol' "can I git me a huntin' license here" John Kerry, nothing makes Hillary Clinton feel more comfortable than to find herself in the hills and hollers. Thus it was entirely natural, and not at all a cynical campaign ploy, for Hillary to slip into some country vernacular when addressing a Mountain State gathering.

Check out the video, aired on this evening's Hardball, of Hillary speaking in West Virginia today. There was something of a Southern cast to Hillary's accent throughout, but it hit a high note with her "sumpin'."

It's really telling ya a lot about history to point out that it was West Virginia that made it possible for John Kennedy to become president. Now, John Kennedy didn't have the number of delegates he needed, when he went to the convention in 1960, but he had sumpin' equally as important: he had West Virginia behind him. Because, it's a fact, that Democrats don't get elected president unless West Virginia votes for you, and --

Washington Post environmental reporter-slash-advocate Juliet Eilperin penned a front-page piece in Monday’s Post on how John McCain is "instinctive" on environmental matters, pulling a "balancing act," which means insufficiently radical enough to please the Sierra Club and their media friends. Eilperin’s piece was loaded with the opinions of environmental "interest groups" without any group or any policy being labeled as liberal:

McCain's lifetime League of Conservation Voters score is 24 percent, compared with 86 for Obama and 86 for Clinton; Defenders of Wildlife Action Fund's conservation report card gave him 38 percent in the 108th Congress and 40 in the 109th.

When [LCV chief Gene] Karpinski tells audiences about McCain's environmental scorecard rating, he said, "jaws drop....I tell them, 'He's not as green as you think he is.' "

In this week’s cover story, Newsweek’s Richard Wolffe and Evan Thomas juxtapose Democratic talking points about the sliminess of Republicans (“successfully scaring voters since 1968”) and testimonials to the managerial wizardry of Barack Obama (“he has ‘grace under fire’”) and present the entire package as an insightful look inside “The O Team.”

The eight-page spread, decorated with several behind-the-scenes photographs of the candidate and his top aides, paints Republicans and independent conservative groups as the source of all campaign nastiness. The authors even question whether John McCain, who has earned innumerable media accolades as a champion of more government regulations on free speech (“campaign finance reform”) is not perhaps a co-conspirator with those awful conservatives:

On Sunday’s CBS "60 Minutes" anchor Morley Safer interviewed left-wing actor Alec Baldwin and spent some time focusing on Baldwin's liberal activism: "And yet it's his off-screen performances that can get in the way of a truly gifted man. And often it's his liberal politics that make him red meat for his critics." Baldwin explained to Safer: "They hate liberals who can throw a punch." And when Safer asked: "‘They’? Who's ‘they’?," Baldwin responded: "They, the vast right-wing conspiracy that's after me."

An admiring Safer described Baldwin’s activism this way: "Liberal politics has always been his passion...He has an impressive grasp of the issues and spends a huge amount of his time and money supporting causes he believes in: animal rights, the environment, the arts." Safer then went on to continue to portray Baldwin as a victim of the "right-wing conspiracy":

SAFER: But his bare-knuckled approach to political discourse...

BALDWIN: Not all Republicans are as insane as these extremist conservatives.

SAFER: ...has made him an easy target for conservative junkyard dogs like Sean Hannity.

SEAN HANNITY: He's unhinged. Let's be honest, he's not really bright.

What part of "free" in "free-market" does the Associated Press not understand?

The news wire's Glen Johnson is reporting today that Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) plans on unveiling a plan to combat global climate change "while adhering to free-market principles."

Johnson explains:

McCain's major solution is to implement a cap-and-trade program on carbon-fuel emissions, like a similar program in the Clean Air Act that was used to reduce sulfur dioxide emissions that triggered acid rain.

Industries would be given emission targets, and those coming in under their limit could sell their surplus polluting capacity to companies unable to meet their target.

A cap-and-trade programs would certainly be a market, but it would be an artificial one imposed on manufacturers by government fiat. The key word in free-market being of course, free.

It would be correct to call a voluntary cap-and-trade program created by industry groups outside the pressure of government regulation a "free-market" solution, but the component of force by government here only puts an Adam Smith happy face on a Karl Marx mandate.

On Sunday’s CBS "60 Minutes," anchor Scott Pelley looked at the healthcare provided to illegal immigrants in U.S. detention facilities: "Before 9/11, about 100,000 detainees went through this system each year; but today, with stricter immigration rules, that number has tripled to more than 300,000. The surge appears to have overwhelmed the medical care provided to the immigrants. Now a Washington Post investigation joined by 60 Minutes has found evidence that immigrants are suffering from neglect, and some don't survive detention in America."

Pelley then highlighted a few extreme examples of poor medical care, beginning with Joseph Dantica, an 81-year-old minister from Haiti who fled the country and was detained in the U.S.. After only 48 hours in custody, Dantica became ill: "Records show that two days later, during an asylum hearing, he became violently ill and collapsed...In a day and a half, Reverend Dantica was dead. The medical examiner said it was pancreatitis." Of course Pelley placed blame with U.S. immigration services: "A detention center physician's assistant failed to recognize that Dantica was in serious trouble...It took four hours to get him to an outside hospital."

On Sunday, my colleague Warner Todd Huston apprised readers of a truly disgraceful Newsweek article which continued to demonstrate just how in the tank media are for Democrat presidential candidate Barack Obama.

On Monday, the good folks at National Review Online were similarly outraged, and expressed concern about Newsweek's obvious lack of impartiality.

First up was Jim Geraghty who took issue with Newsweek's reference to the McCain campaign's "letter suggesting Obama was the candidate of Hamas" without explaining what precipitated it:

Christiane Amanpour interviewed former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, famous for her October 2000 meeting with North Korean dictator Kim "He’s Not a Nut" Jong Il, as part of her "Notes from North Korea" program, which aired on Saturday and Sunday evenings. During the segment, the CNN senior international correspondent failed to note how her husband, James Rubin, worked as spokesman and Assistant Secretary for State for Albright from 1997 until May 2000. Albright emphasized how "it's possible to have verifiable agreements" with the North Korean regime and how "negotiations need to be pursued actively." The Clinton administration that she worked for conducted negotiations with the communist dictatorship during the 1990s and signed a nuclear agreement with them, which the North Korean government violated by conducting a secret uranium enrichment program. So much for "verifiable agreements."

Amanpour did call the North Korean regime "a police state" and a "dictatorship" during her special, but she downplayed the communist government’s responsibility for the deaths of millions of North Koreans during a famine in the 1990s. [audio available here]

On Sunday’s CBS "60 Minutes," Steve Kroft suggested that the American-based Chiquita Banana company was in league with Colombian terrorist groups after paying extortion money to such groups to protect its employees: "It made millions growing bananas there, only to emerge with its reputation splattered in blood, after acknowledging that it had paid nearly $2 million in protection money to a murderous paramilitary group that's killed or massacred thousands of people."

Kroft went on to portray the situation with Chiquita as only one example of a larger pattern of U.S. companies funding terrorism: "Now the Colombian government is talking about extraditing Chiquita executives to Colombia, and investigators in Bogota and on Capitol Hill are looking at other US companies that may have done the same thing."

Kroft later highlighted the murder of a 12-year-old boy by the paramilitary group that Chiquita made payments to: "...the paramilitaries arrived and murdered a 12-year-old boy whose only crime had been to announce their presence." Kroft also explained: "As the atrocities piled up all across the country, Chiquita continued to make the payments to the paramilitaries, viewing itself as a victim of the violence, not a facilitator."

Poor teaser headline selection by MSNBC.com? I report, you decide.

At right is a screencap of a teaser headline from the Web site about U.S. humanitarian aid reaching Myanmar Burma. As the AP story linked makes clear, the fault for the delay in the aid's arrival is that of the military dictatorship, not any incompetence or lack of concern by Washington.

Yet the teaser headline reads: "First U.S. aid plane lands in Myanmar; UPDATED: Relief comes more than week after cyclone."

The same headline and subhead are found on the AP article as found when readers follow the link. The AP story itself makes clear the Burmese government has and continues to be an obstacle to reaching devastated Burmese civilians with much needed food and medical relief: