I guess this is what strikes the English as amusing, but the Guardian Newspaper has decided it would be super neat to place their logo on Mt. Rushmore to advertise their coverage of the United States. This sort of disrespect for one of our most recognizable national monuments is a great idea to get Americans interested in the Guardian's American version, isn't it?

Yes, there's nothing like defacing a national monument in order to sell newspapers!

“The most important reason [Al] Gore should be Vice President is that he's suffered and learned. He has the temperament some of us reach on our death beds,” former Time magazine Deputy Washington Bureau Chief Margaret Carlson trumpeted in a column posted Thursday on Bloomberg.com. In “Gore Has Right Stuff for Second Turn as No. 2,” Carlson effused:

If there's anything we need to rescue us from the last eight years, it's brains, good judgment and experience. Obama has the first two. Gore has all three.

Though on this weekend's Political Capital program on Bloomberg Television she hailed Gore's “presidential timber,” she was more restrained than in her column:

If what Obama needs, and I think it's what he needs, somebody of presidential timber, why not get somebody who won the popular presidential vote and who's done everything? And  who was right about the Middle East, right about this Iraq war, knows where the lights are in the White House, has gravitas?

Freedom ?

Brent Bozell's culture column this week deals with how Showtime keeps pushing envelopes, from the pot-pushing mom in "Weeds" to the sympathetic serial killer "Dexter" to the newest frontier:

This year, the new fascination is prostitution, and Showtime has proudly unveiled a British import called "Secret Diary of a Call Girl." Sadly, and predictably, Showtime’s program glamorizing prostitution is not unique. HBO is also developing a similar series called "Diary of a Manhattan Call Girl" from a "tantalizing" bad-girl novel.

"Secret Diary" follows the tawdry life of "Belle de Jour," who feels no shame and displays no regrets for her career, as long as her parents don’t find out. "Escort, hooker, prostitute, whore, I don't care what you call me," she declares. "They're just semantics."

By LAURIE COPANS, Associated Press Writer Sat Jun 21, 12:33 PM ET

TEL AVIV, Israel - Safety pins and screws are still lodged in
15-year-old Ami Ortiz's body three months after he opened a
booby-trapped gift basket sent to his family. The explosion severed two
toes, damaged his hearing and harmed a promising basketball career.

Police
say they are still searching for the assailants. But to the Ortiz
family the motive of the attackers is clear: The Ortizes are Jews who
believe that Jesus was the Messiah.

Israel's tiny
community of Messianic Jews, a mixed group of 10,000 people who include
the California-based Jews for Jesus, complains of threats, harassment
and police indifference.

Want to know just how in the tank MSNBC's Dan Abrams is for Barack Obama?

On Thursday's "Verdict," the network's former general manager actually tried to deflect criticism from Michelle Obama by bringing up statements John McCain made concerning his experience as a Vietnam POW making him realize how much he loves America.

This is how Abrams began the program: "Tonight: We have uncovered comments from John McCain on camera that could undermine the steady right-wing attacks against Michelle Obama."

Is that Abrams' role as a journalist: to undermine attacks against the wife of a presidential candidate?

Readers are warned that the following transcript is likely to offend them in a fashion that might not be desired on a Saturday (video embedded upper right, use scrollbars to center, h/t Hot Air via NBer Thomas Stewart):

Sen. Barack Obama behind his presidential-like seal during a meeting of Democratic governors, Friday, June 20, 2008, at the Chicago History Museum. The Latin inscription reads "Vero Possumus." (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)

Charlotte Observer columnist Mary C. Curtis is in high dudgeon. She is all twisted up inside over the seeming lack of support that feminists have for Michelle Obama. She has decided to scold all those recalcitrant feminists, too. Yes, she's all upset over this thing wondering in her June 21 Washington Post op-ed, "Where are Obama's feminist defenders?" Curtis is even moaning that black women are second-class citizens, even with feminists. She is all in righteous indignation about the "The Loud Silence Of Feminists."

Curtis is agonizing over the fact that women aren't defending Michelle Obama. She imagines that feminists have failed women, specifically black women. Well, I agree at some point. Feminists have failed women, but the least of which is Michelle Obama. Not that Curtis seemed to notice, but feminists have indeed been silent on the treatment of women in the Muslim world. They have sat silent over forced weddings, beatings, female circumcision of children, rape, stoning and so-called honor killings going on not just in the Middle East, but in every western country that has a sizable Muslim population.

Cam Edwards at NRANews.com shared this story with me about how one Bennington, Vermont teacher demonstrated the state's clash between gun culture and "peace" culture in a fourth-grade classroom. From Dennis Jensen in the Rutland Herald:

[Mother Wendy] Bordwell said that, during snack time, [her son] Jared was discussing the recent spring turkey hunting season with a classmate when [teacher Kathleen] Backus interrupted the conversation, insisting that there be no talk of "killing" in her classroom.

Reached through a relative, Backus declined to comment.

At Monday's board meeting, Bordwell read from a prepared statement.

What truthful item about Obama could cause the most damage to him.  I would like a Dreams of my Father commercial that talked about Obama Sr. 100% taxation wish and his leaving Obama Jr. for other women and families.

Maybe a William Ayers standing on the flag commercial with Obama standing next to him in a seperate photo.

Readers of the Los Angeles Times could not miss the huge headline on the top of the front page on Wednesday (6/18/08): "Hundreds married on historic day" (print edition). In addition to the enormous headline, a whopping nine photos accompanied the Times's coverage of the first full day of legalized gay marriage in California.

One reader saw a clear case of bias by the Times. Here's his letter to the editor in yesterday's paper (6/20/08):

Re "Hundreds married on historic day," June 18

The only thing missing from this headline is the exclamation point. But the real tipoff was the picture of two women kissing on the front page. It was inappropriate for many reasons, but mostly because it demonstrates a case study in advocacy journalism.

Please forgive your humble correspondent if he takes a bit of pride in being the first to recognize the inadvertent comedy genius of Lee Abrams, the Chief Innovation Officer of the Tribune Company. Since I first reported on the hilarious antics of Abrams back in March, more and more people, especially those in the newspaper business, have learned to appreciate the comedy material provided by his many memos consisting of a bizarre mixture of upbeat optimism and New Age psychobabble.

Although the author or authors are anonymous, one suspects the parody memos were written by a journalist in the Tribune organization upon whom the budget axe might soon fall. Here are some Lee Abrams parody memo excerpts from Poynter Forums:

As my colleague Brent Baker previously reported, Wolf Blitzer opened Friday's "CNN Election Center" with Democrat presidential nominee Barack Obama's disgusting warning that the Republicans will play the race card in order to defeat him in November:

We know what kind of campaign they're going to run. They're going to try to make you afraid. They're going to try to make you afraid of me. They're going to say you know what, "He's young and inexperienced and he's got a funny name. Did I mention he's black?"

Blitzer played this soundbite a few hours earlier during the 6PM installment of "The Situation Room," and Jack Cafferty called Obama's comments "very shrewd" and "pretty much on the mark."

I kid you not.

Here's Cafferty's full statement concerning this matter (video embedded upper right):

For general discussion and debate. Possible talking point: Fear of Flying!

United Airlines said Friday it will start requiring minimum stays for nearly all domestic flights beginning in October. It is also raising its cheapest fares by as much as $90 one-way....United and US Airways last week joined American Airlines in charging passengers $15 to check their first piece of luggage.

Minimum stays. Baggage fees. Fuel surcharges. Is all this nickel-and-diming impacting your vacation/business travel plans? Or, with the price of gas, does it still make more sense to fly than drive?

Give Hanna Rosin at The Atlantic Online credit for investigating something most journalists wouldn't even think of touching. Her article is a long read, but an important one.

Rosin's report out of Memphis (HT Instapundit) chronicles how a criminologist husband and his housing-expert wife made a correlation that makes so much sense, you just know it will encounter fierce resistance from media and political elites (bolds are mine):

(Richard) Janikowski might not have managed to pinpoint the cause of this pattern (of spreading crime) if he hadn’t been married to Phyllis Betts, a housing expert at the University of Memphis. ..... Betts had been evaluating the impact of one of the city government’s most ambitious initiatives: the demolition of the city’s public-housing projects, as part of a nationwide experiment to free the poor from the destructive effects of concentrated poverty. Memphis demolished its first project in 1997. The city gave former residents federal “Section 8” rent-subsidy vouchers and encouraged them to move out to new neighborhoods. Two more waves of demolition followed over the next nine years, dispersing tens of thousands of poor people into the wider metro community.

Some folks at Hotair have speculated that Jim Webb's decision to "side" with McCain on drilling means that the chances of an Obama/Webb ticket are slim, or that the Obama/Webb ticket won't happen at all.

But consider this: Perhaps Obama decides to put Webb on the ticket after all, to show "bipartisanship" and thereby reel in votes without having to support drilling himself? If so, talk about manipulation for political gain on behalf of both Obama and Webb!

But then there's this tidbit: "[Webb's] staff insists his proposal pertains only to natural gas, and not oil..."

I post this in the hopes that some folks here won't share the same crippled view that some folks at Hotair apparently do, and that McCain will get on his game, see this for what it is, and expose it. Not that I think he'll do it. Any thoughts?

The Boston Globe published a really weird, yet inadvertently hilarious, editorial in which they claim that because Barack Obama broke his promise to accept public financing of his campaign...that means we need even more campaign finance reform in terms of both more money and legislation. I kid you not. First the obligatory knuckle rap on Obama by the Boston Globe for going back on his word:

SENATOR Barack Obama has presented himself as the candidate of change, but the change he announced yesterday is a throwback to the no-holds-barred rules of campaign finance that prevailed before Watergate. Obama will be the first major party candidate since Watergate to reject public financing in the general election, instead relying on his base of more than 1.5 million donors for a war chest that could easily double or triple the $84.1 he would get in public financing. His decision deals a body blow both to the system of campaign finance and to his own reputation as a reform candidate.

Democrats (including Democrats in the media) are unhappy the presidential race is within five points, so they're eager to find wider polling margins than that. Yahoo! readers saw this headline at the top of the news on Saturday morning: "Obama widens lead over McCain by 15 points in latest poll."

It was Reuters reporting on a Newsweek poll. As the reader should suspect, the poll questioned more Democrats than Republicans: 231 Republicans to 324 Democrats, plus 307 independents. But that wasn't in this web article, which began:

Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama has opened up a double-digit lead over Republican John McCain two weeks after he clinched the nomination, a new poll published on Friday showed.

The nationwide poll conducted by Newsweek showed Obama leading McCain by a margin of 51-36 percent, indicating that he might have got a bounce from his recent primary victory over Hillary Clinton.