Stuart James's blog

You may have never thought you could get this political insight from a sports commentator, but former NBA Detroit Pistons star-turned-host of "The Best Damn Sports Show Period" on Fox Sports Network John Salley has defied expectations.

Salley recently appeared on September 23 edition of "The Adam Carolla" podcast and asked Carolla a very pointed and insightful question.

"I have a question - do you hate Obama?" Salley asked. "Why are so many people who now hate him after just 266 days they loved him? All of white America. Not all of ‘em but the majority."

You may have heard of "Hentish," the dog in The New York Times that was shot and killed by a Blackwater security guard earlier this week. However in the media's over zealous attempt to crucify Blackwater USA they left out a surprisingly telling piece about some of the dogs that were harbored at the Times compound in Baghdad.

The New York Post reported yesterday that these dogs had already attacked people before, including Eason Jordan who runs the blog IraqSlogger.com, and is a former CNN chief news executive.

"Eason's encounter, revealed on his blog yesterday, involved a dog named Scratch and left him with ‘three deep gashes in my right hand, sending blood spewing in all directions,'" the Post story said.

Eason's blog post also revealed other canine nightmares:

No it's not a new brand of cologne, but it sure sounds like it.

Today, November 30, Dan Gainor, BMI's Director appeared on Fox Business to discuss the media's hype of an oncoming recession. Host David Asman began the segment asking, "Has the media emphasized the good along with the bad?"

Gainor responded, "Of course not, we haven't seen a lot of good news...and in fact if you watch the networks they skipped what even the New York Times put on their front page, that the Fed said a recession isn't likely."

The Business and Media Institute has convered the media obsession with recession in the November 28 edition of the Balance Sheet.

Just in time for Thanksgiving, BMI Director Dan Gainor stopped by ‘Fox and Friends' to remind everyone that the economy is not as bad as people think, and that despite what the media said about your Thanksgiving dinner, it wasn't that bad.

"If you look at the inflation-adjusted number, it [Thanksgiving dinner] is actually 9 percent cheaper over the last 20 years," Gainor said.

BMI has focused recently on the media's doom and gloom predictions of the economy and released a study on the way debt is portrayed by the mainstream media.

What could be more timely than a study about debt? With all the networks crying about oil prices and threats to the economy, consumers are feeling squeezed. Director of the Business & Media Institute, Dan Gainor appeared on the Fox Business Channel today to talk about the Culture & Media Institute and Business & Media Institute joint study, "DEBT Who'$ responsible?" That found the broadcast networks blame businesses, not borrowers for spendthrift ways.

"When you look at how the networks cover [debt] what you find is they ignore personal responsibility and flip it around and blame business for debt. Six times more they blame business than borrowers and almost two-thirds of the time they ignore the whole concept of personal responsibility," Gainor told viewers.

YouTube video after the break.

It's difficult to forget the image of Hillary cackling away on the morning shows a few months back - talking about health care. After we finished laughing ourselves, we here at BMI took the time to put together a video of the best (or worst) of Hillary's chortles. This video was posted on YouTube and was subsequently picked up by a few others. Like the Newsbusted video, this is another example of how so-called "new media" can spread like wildfire. It received more than 24,000 views on one of these pages alone.

Clearly, Hillary's view of how to handle health care is not going away. In case you haven't seen it you can check it out right below the fold:

Yesterday during the 7 p.m. hour of FBN’s “America’s Nightly Scoreboard” the Business and Media Institute’s Director Dan Gainor went head to head with John Coifman of the Natural Resources Defense Council. The topic of discussion was “business going green” and whether or not it can put businesses in the red. The first part of the video can be seen below.

David Asman asked Gainor, “What’s wrong with going green?”

Monica Guzman, an online reporter with the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, told readers in an October 22 blog post that global warming could be causing the number of stray cats in Seattle to increase. In an interview with shelter director (and amateur climatologist) Don Jordan, he said:

"A decade ago or two decades ago, when there were cold spells in the winter, a certain part of the cat population died off. But if we're not having those real cold spells, a lot more animals stay alive through the breeding season."

But then Guzman wrote this argument-defeating statement: "He hasn't seen any data to back that up, but it's ‘certainly been discussed' among directors of other shelters, he said."

Why this is even mentioned as something that could be feasible is lost on me.

Last night on the Colbert Report, Stephen Colbert took CNN's marketing team to task, pointing out the hypocrisy of putting a "six foot square poster in each of the 2.3 million copies of today's the USA Today. That's 13.8 million square feet of ‘Planetary Peril.'" Planet in Peril a program airing next week on CNN. Colbert who could barely keep himself from laughing went on to say,

"Now the paper is recycled but hopefully that glossy ink isn't going to biodegrade anytime soon, so awareness of this threat is going to be around for centuries. Brilliant marketing CNN, you have strategically insured the planet will still be in peril by the time your special airs next week."

Video (1:17): Real (2.10 MB) and Windows (4.60 MB), plus MP3 audio (598 kB).

Are you sitting back sipping your wine, watching baseball and thinking global warming probably won’t affect you? Think again, says the liberal think tank Center For American Progress. CAP put out a list of “The Top 100 Effects of Global Warming.” I’ve done the job of pulling a few highlights from this list:

“Say Goodbye to Baseball
The ash tree – from which all baseball bats are made – is in danger of disappearing, thanks to a combination of killer beetles and global warming.”

“Say Hello to Bulgarian Hooker Shortages
‘Brothel owners in Bulgaria are blaming global warming for staff shortages. They claim their best girls are working in ski resorts because a lack of snow has forced tourists to seek other pleasures.’”

Front and center of USA Today’s homepage right now are two stories that are quite frightening. The first titled, “Home Prices: Steepest Drop in 20 Years; No Recovery Soon.” Then just below that a story dubbed, “Business May Keep Their Wallets Closed.” While these two doomsday stories on the economy are front and center, full with color pictures, off to the side is a very different article entitled “U.S. Poverty Rate Down.” (see update below)

This should come as no surprise to anyone that follows the media. Good news is rarely is ever front and center, while the doom and gloom is almost certainly above the fold. Here are a few highlights from the article in case you missed it:

Much like tasty snacks, the networks can never stop their addiction to “food police” groups like the Center for Science in the Public Interest.Yesterday morning it was Good Morning America that was shilling for them, saying, “Did you realize you were paying more for less food?”

What was the target this time? The 100 calorie “snack packs,” that CSPI themselves have fought for. CSPI is upset about the cost, even though companies have gone out of their way to create less fattening snacks, (in smaller portions, and with some new recipes).

GMA reporter Elisabeth Leamy starts off the segment like this:

In a recent blog post CBS’s Wyatt Andrews gushes about Massachusetts new health care plan that requires people to purchase health care. Can’t afford it? Well naturally the state will pick up the tab.

Andrews begins by discussing his trip to Fenway Park, home of the Boston Red Sox, and how “sitting directly behind one of the dozens of beer stands” was a kiosk promoting the new plan. Andrews explains it like this:

Left-wing author and media darling Barbara Ehrenreich’s August 29 article, entitled “Smashing Capitalism,” proves yet again what’s been obvious for quite some time. Her view of economics is crazy. Ehrenreich is the author of numerous books, her most famous being “Nickel and Dimed,” and her most recent “Dancing in the Streets”

Ehrenreich claims the poor are single-handedly “smashing the global financial system.” She even describes their actions as a “revolution.”

Here is an excerpt to help explain:

In a recent blog post by CBS Evening News correspondent Cynthia Bowers we find that she has had some problems with the housing market herself. Bowers apparently didn’t grasp the fact that her Adjustable Rate Mortgage (ARM) can actually adjust:

“For a while we were okay. Then that Fed rate started going up, and so did our ARM. Over a five-month period it increased the cost of our monthly mortgage by nearly 40%!” Bowers wrote.

But Bowers shouldn’t have been surprised about her rate adjustment. According to Nexis, Cynthia Bowers has been reporting on the mortgage and housing market since at least 1997. With a decade of industry reporting under her belt, you’d think she’d be able to anticipate the fact that rates shift and payments adjust.

Matt Damon dressed as gas pump? Ben Affleck as an ear of corn? No, it’s not “Good Will Hunting,” the sequel. It’s a new set of videos promoting ethanol mandates on the Web site cleanmyride.org.

The Clean My Ride site is run by the Center for American Progress Action Fund, an arm of the liberal think tank Center for American Progress. The purpose of Clean My Ride is to urge Congress to mandate ethanol as a fuel.

Earlier this week, NBC’s Lee Cowan admitted it was ethanol’s fault milk prices were “skyrocketing.” So which is it? Do environmentalists want better gas mileage or cheaper milk?

One of the other main points of the Web site is to try and get people to stop “running scared from Big Oil.” The first video, which features Affleck in a corn costume – it’s better than “Gigli” – even shows a sequence where “Big Oil” executives are chasing down an ear of corn and then bludgeoning it to death.

“Do you fly to San Francisco by any chance?...OK, I have to go out there, are you going to promise me, guarantee me, that if I buy a ticket at the end of August you won’t cancel that flight?”

That was NBC “Today” show host Meredith Vieira’s final question in an interview with Northwest Airlines CEO Douglas Steenland. Vieira phrased the question as though it was Steenland’s fault that a high number of flights had been cancelled earlier in the summer. To Vieira weather, mechanical problems, and Air Traffic Control apparently played no part in it.

Vieira spent almost the entire five-and-a-half-minute interview berating Steenland.

Gas prices have been going down, nearly 24 cents since this time last year and 29 cents since last month. So NBC had to find another liquid to condemn. Meredith Vieira said on the August 14 “Today” show that “your wallet is getting sucked dry” by milk prices.

She lamented that “The average price for a gallon of milk is at its highest nationwide average ever, it will set you back $3.80.”

Reporter Lee Cowan explained that dairy cows are getting squeezed: “Dairy cows these days are being pushed to the limit, demand for their milk has never been higher, and neither has its price.”