P.J. Gladnick's blog

(UPDATE: This story has been discussed by Rush Limbaugh.)

Hypocrisy alert!

A heretofore "unknown" 2004 interview with Barack Obama by leftwing radio host Randi Rhodes has just emerged. And basically, as you shall hear, Obama is saying do as I say, not as I do. In this case he was referring to quickly forcing legislation through congress. As you can hear in this  interview, uncovered by Naked Emporer News,  the hypocrisy seems so massive that it is destined to go viral on the Web. It features Randi Rhodes back during her Air America days interviewing then senator-elect Barack Obama on November 22, 2004.  And despite the fact that Randi is currently pretty well hidden from public view, you can be sure she will soon be talked about again because of her inadvertent exposure of incredible hypocrisy on the part of Obama. And what was the hypocrisy? His complaint that the Bush administration was rushing legislation through congress without giving the legislators time to read the bills or allowing for much debate.

To get the full flavor of the Obama hypocrisy, be sure to listen to the YouTube clip which also includes a video of MSNBC's Chuck Todd discussing why Rahm Emanuel felt the need to Rahm, I mean ram, legislation through congress. Here is the transcript which picks up at the 55 second mark:

BARACK OBAMA: ...When you rush these budgets that are a foot high and nobody has any idea what's in them and nobody has read them. 

RANDI RHODES: 14 pounds it was!

BARACK OBAMA:  Yeah. And it gets rushed through without any clear deliberation or debate then these kinds of things happen.  And I think that this is in some ways what happened to the Patriot Act. I mean you remember that there was no real debate about that. It was so quick after 9/11 that it was introduced that people felt very intimidated by the administration.

One of the favorite shows of your humble correspondent is the "Deadliest Catch." No, I have no fantasies about working on a crab boat in Alaska. I am too much of a warm weather guy to make it through even a day in the frigid conditions on the Bering Sea. However, I do enjoy watching the show quite a bit to the extent of visiting their website yesterday during a commercial break in  the "Deadliest Catch" television marathon on the Discovery Channel.

On the "Deadliest Catch" home page is this link: SEA ICE SCIENCE...New! Is global warming changing the Bering Sea? Get the answers now. Curious for the answers, I clicked the link which brought me to Bering Sea Ice: Science Q&A by Helen Fields. The Q&A presents overwhelming evidence that the Bering Sea has been getting colder lately. The conclusion: global warming.

Amazing. 

Let us first read the evidence that Fields presents demonstrating the lowering temperatures in the Bering Sea area:

The Bering Sea, where the boats of Deadliest Catch do their work, is not known for toasty warm weather. But still, some years are colder than others. The last two winters have been particularly chilly -- and they've been huge years for ice. The last time the ice came this far south was in the early 1970s, when scientists first used satellites to monitor the ice.

Almost every week at the New York Times, house "conservative" David Brooks and liberal columnist Gail Collins have a public conversation. This week Brooks made a startling admission in The Conversation which really wasn't so surprising when one actually reads his columns. Here is the money quote:

At the moment, I feel politically closer to Barack Obama than to House Minority Leader John Boehner (and that’s even while being greatly exercised about the current health care bills). 

(UPDATE: The Boston Globe has now posted what it calls a redacted revised docket although it is described as a "police report" at the left side link on its site. And redacted it certainly is since it has redacted out almost the entire narrative section of the original report. To read the full highly revealing narrative, check out the original police report.)

A little tip for anyone who gets stopped by a police officer for a possible traffic violation. Be polite. Very polite. Even if you think you were wrongly stopped, do not under any circumstances start yelling at the police officer. Follow this advice and your chances of being given a traffic ticket, instead of just a warning, go way down. The same applies for any encounter with a police officer because the surest way to get yourself arrested is to act arrogantly and aggressively when questioned. Whatever you do, do not act like the arrestee in the Henry Louis Gates police report.

That Cambridge, MA police report presents such a damning picture of Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates when he was arrested that an embarrassed Boston Globe felt it had to scrub it from its website after initially posting the report. The Globe published an article about the Gates arrest written by Tracy Jan which does refer to the police report but, unfortunately, you can no longer read the full report on the Boston Globe site since it has been removed by that newspaper. Here are a couple of Boston Globe excerpts that do refer to the deleted police report:

It is well known that Ed Schultz, host of MSNBC's The Ed Show, has become quite unhinged lately due in large part to the low ratings of both his TV and radio shows. The result has been quite a bit of Psycho Talk volcanic anger from Big Ed. However, last Wednesday he outdid even himself in the "Psycho Talk" department on his low rated radio show on the subject of Rush Limbaugh to the extent that he was even mocking Rush's deafness. Here is the transcript and audio of that show provided by The Radio Equalizer. Before reading or listening further I must warn the folks out there that you are about to enter a very disturbing level of dementia rarely heard from someone in the public eye so proceed at your own risk:

Apparently the drug-ridden loser Rush Limbaugh, he thinks because he's got a lot of money and a lot of stations that he's a success in life, the guy that can't hear because he did so many drugs and had no self-discipline and character has now taken his first shot at me on "The Ed Show" on MSNBC. I love it!

Stories reported almost exclusively by the Blogosphere which are mostly ignored by the mainstream media have become such a recurring theme recently that it deserves to be filed under the category of  "Blogosphere Roars, MSM Snores." And the latest entry in this category is the report from the Catalan Europa Press in Spain relayed via the Babalu Blog about an attempt by former Honduran president Manuel (Mel) Zelaya to fix the results of a planned referendum via programmed computers on the very day he was ousted. Here is the translation of the story which has yet to appear in the English language press here in North America:

Several computers containing the results of the referendum Zelaya wanted to conduct are seized at the Presidential Palace

It is one thing for conservatives to criticize President Obama's QAHCAA (Quality, Affordable Health Coverage for All Americans) health care plan but now even a number of liberals are attacking it as unworkable. We recently saw skepticism emanating from Morning Joe's Mika Brzezinski and now fellow liberal Susan Estrich is expressing deep doubt that any such plan is economically feasable. Estrich kicks off her column with a sarcastic look at the "success" of Obama's stimulus plan:

The stimulus program must really be succeeding in Washington, D.C. Government is hiring; people are working. In fact, if news reports are to be believed, they're working night and day. So maybe there's some sleep deprivation thrown in for good measure. And don't forget the legendary heat and humidity that made service in the nation's Capitol hazardous before the advent of air conditioning.

What other explanation could there be for my friends in Congress and the administration thinking that what the country wants them to do right now is raise taxes and spend a trillion dollars to overhaul health care, much less to push it through in a month in a 1,000-page bill being rewritten every day?

Is there a Democrat senator or staffer secretly opposed to the new health care bill introduced by the Senate? One has to wonder because the new Senate health bill is named, "Quality, Affordable Health Coverage for All Americans." The acronym for this bill is the absolutely hilarious QAHCAA. Yes, say it out loud and it is pronounced exactly the way you suspect as in "This health bill is a bunch of QAHCAA."

Perhaps this bill was so named with complete cluelessness as to how it would sound when spoken out loud. In any event, this has to be the absolute worst, but funniest, acronym ever given to a proposed government program. Yes, NewsBusters is the first to point out the hilariousness of QAHCAA but it is inevitable that this acronym will be widely mocked in the blogosphere at large even if the MSM tries to ignore the embarrassment. 

Now Congressman John Boehner can again call this health bill a "Pile of sh...." Oops! I mean, "QAHCAA."

The Washington Post has published a glowing article about likely incoming AFL-CIO president, Richard Trumka (photo), titled "Trumka Hopes to Mend the AFL-CIO." Writer Chris Cillizza asks in the very first sentence of his Monday Fix story, "Can Richard Trumka reunite the labor movement?"

Cillizza portrays Trumka as genuinely puzzled over the reason for the big split in the labor movement:

With Trumka's election virtually ensured, the central question is whether he can heal the rift that occurred four years ago when the Service Employees International Union and the Teamsters (among others) left the AFL-CIO to form a new labor coalition known as Change to Win.

Trumka, in a recent interview with the Fix, was puzzled over the reasons behind the fracture. "First they said it was because we did too much political action [and] that obviously wasn't the case since everyone spent a lot of time on political action," he said. "Then they said we didn't spent enough time on organizing."

Regardless of the reasons for the split, Trumka says his background prepares him well for the task of reunification. Elected as the head of the United Mine Workers in the early 1980s, Trumka helped unite warring factions within the group and bring it under the AFL-CIO umbrella. "Over the years, I've had a fairly successful record of bringing people together," he said.

Your humble correspondent has frequently pointed out how incredibly dull his hometown newspaper, the Fort Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel, has become. Well, it appears that the online Sun-Sentinel is now desperately trying to counteract its dull and stuffy image by going overboard in publishing cheesecake photos. Specifically cheesecake photos of Hollywood actress Megan Fox. In the current Sun-Sentinel edition, Megan Fox photos are featured not just once, but twice on the front page. Just click on the picture links of Megan Fox on the front page and you are presented with a grand total of 72 photos of the heavily tattooed actress. 

The first Megan Fox photo link is titled,  Beauty Fades? Megan Fox's worst pictures. Click on the cheesecake link and it leads to a Megan Fox photo gallery with this penetrating commentary by Elizabeth Snead:

It looks like we might finally have to put a picture of Randi Rhodes on milk cartons. Last April, your humble correspondent declared that such milk carton photos of Randi would be unnecessary because, despite being MIA since February when she left Nova M Radio, Premiere Radio Networks would begin broadcasting her show again in May. Well, a couple of months have gone by and, oddly, Randi seems to be even more hidden from public view than when she wasn't on the air. Even Google searches have proved fruitless. Yes, I know Randi is on the air (or so it is rumored) but her impact is somewhere between nil and none. If Randi has a publicity director, he/she must be doing worst job imaginable.

Therefore it seems like it is up to me to once again bring a little public notice to Randi. Why am I being so charitable to that leftwing talk show host? As I explained in April, it is because I feel something of a proprietary interest in Randi since Yours Truly played a part in launching her onto the national stage by prominently mentioning her in a movie review of "The Italian Job"  in 2003 when she was still stuck on a local radio station in West Palm Beach.

The good news for Randi Rhodes is that she is about to be thrust back into the news for her highly critical on-air comments about Al Franken who was an Air Amierica colleague of hers.  Ironically, those comments were made back in January before she left Nova M radio and fell into almost total obscurity followed by her even greater obscurity on Premiere Radio Networks. As relayed by the Radio Equalizer, here is what Randi said about Al Franken in January while the Minnesota senatorial vote was still being contested:

When last we left CNN co-founder, Reese Schonfeld, he was in a deep funk over the horrible ratings of the network he helped create. He had hoped that the election of Barack Obama as president would help that ailing network's ratings but, as reported by Schonfeld, a harsh reality quickly set in:

Now, seven months after Barack Obama's victory, CNN's ratings have gone down the drain. From May of last year to May of this year, CNN lost 22% of its total primetime audience. MSNBC was down 2%, while FoxNews was up 24%. In the key advertising demographic (25-54), Fox was up 31%, CNN was down 37% and MSNBC was down 26%. In hard numbers, Fox had 109,000 more viewers than last year while CNN lost 113,000. CNN averaged fewer than 200,000 25-54 viewers in primetime. Even MSNBC averaged more viewers than that. 

The mainstream media loves to tell the public about how "unreliable" the blogosphere is as an information source. However, there is a huge story out there that is only being covered by the blogosphere, in particular at Watts Up With That?, which is currently being completely ignored by the MSM.

It is about a significant disagreement between the Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lisa Jackson and Energy Secretary Steven Chu over the amount of worldwide CO2 emissions if the United States acts alone should a climate bill pass in both Houses of Congress. Basically EPA's Jackson says that such a bill, if passed, would have very little effect on global CO2 emissions while Chu disagrees with that assessment.

You can see the EPA chart below the fold followed by the transcript of a video of both these Obama administration officials responding at complete odds with each other under questioning from Oklahoma Senator Jim Inhofe at the Senate hearing yesterday on a climate bill:

The way the Associated Press is fawning over Michelle Obama and her supposed sense of fashion, you would almost think they were talking about Carla Bruni who really does dress quite elegantly and oozes glamor. To add to this absurdity, the AP also went out of its way to paint the Russian First Lady as frumpy. Um, advice to AP personnel; don't expect the Russians to go out of their way to help you in your stories in that country after that gratuitous slam on the wife of their president. First let us watch the AP's Catrina Stewart act dazzled over the "superstar glamor" of Michelle Obama:

MOSCOW (AP) - Michelle Obama brings her superstar glamor to Moscow this weekend as she accompanies her husband on his summit with the Russian president.

But the American first lady, who has wowed publics in the U.S. and Europe with her easy elegance and charm, will perhaps face a bigger challenge in winning over a Russian public that has scant respect for women who grab the limelight from their powerful husbands.

Your humble correspondent always checks out NeverPayRetailAgain very carefully every morning. That site often provides information about sales bargains that sometimes defy belief. In fact, yesterday at Publix I was able to purchase 2 packages of Ball Park Franks plus a large seedless watermelon for a total cost of just $4.98. $3.99 BOGO (Buy One Get One free) on the hot dogs minus a $1.00 Ball Park coupon so my cost was just $2.99. The watermelon was $4.99 but there was a $3.00 discount coupon if you bought two packages of Ball Park Franks so the watermelon only cost me $1.99. Total cost of everything was $4.98 rather than the regular full price of $12.97.  A savings of over 60%.

However, according to Ellen Ruppel Shell,  I was guilty of not only bargain shopping but also aiding and abetting in despoiling the environment and taking advantage of cheap labor. Here is Ruppel Shell's assertion in her book, Cheap:  The High Cost of Discount Culture, as covered in the New York Times:

Ms. Ruppel Shell, a contributing editor for The Atlantic Monthly and a journalism professor at Boston University, is disgusted with retailers who she says have abandoned their principles in pursuit of rock-bottom prices. And she is angry with the rest of us for supporting them.

Ms. Ruppel Shell argues that our national obsession with bargains has lowered our standard of living and hurt the environment and the quality of American products.

Doesn't the title of this story from CNNMoney.Com make you feel all warm and fuzzy inside? "White House Staff Safe From Obama Tax Hike." I bet you were biting your fingernails in worry about whether White House staffers would be hit with the higher taxes that President Obama promised would only happen to those making over $250,000 per year. Here is the "reassurance" from CNNMoney that the White House staffers won't be burdened by higher taxes due to Obama's sacred pledge:

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- President Barack Obama's White House staff appears to be safe from a tax increase, for now.

The White House on Wednesday issued its annual report to Congress listing the salaries of all staff, revealing that everyone gets paid less than $200,000.

During the election campaign, Obama promised no income tax increase for anyone making under $250,000.

"Hi, Billy Mays here!"

Unfortunately we won't be able to hear Billy Mays say that again in person but that recorded line is destined to live on for as long as there are people.  The untimely death of Billy Mays inspired numerous accolades from around the country including this tribute video, one of many that you can find on YouTube. However, in contrast to the almost universal admiration of Mays, there was one discordant note sounded on the opinion page of the Christian Science Monitor in the form of this sneering column written by one Darryl Campbell. You can almost hear the elitist condescension dripping as Campbell looks down his haughty nose at Billy Mays:

It's almost impossible to go a full day without hearing the words "Hi, Billy Mays here" at least once. For over a decade, Billy Mays pitched everything from laundry detergents to Mighty Putty, Hercules Hooks to health insurance, to the television-viewing public. He was neither an inventor-salesman like Ron Popeil nor a celebrity endorser like Suzanne Somers; instead, he used his talent for working a crowd and an infinite capacity for shouting (he insisted that it was "projecting") in order to become the best-known and by far the loudest practitioner of the old-school hard sell.

The left can try to brush off articles in the Wall Street Journal or the National Review about the "coup" in Honduras as "rightwing propaganda." However, they will have a much harder time applying such a label to an article about the ouster of Honduran president, Manuel Zelaya (in photo with Hugo Chavez), which appeared in the very liberal New Republic.

President Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton should have read Festishizing the Presidency by Francisco Toro before being so quick in joining Chavez in denouncing the removal of Honduran strong man Zelaya who was acting unconstitutionally:

Sunday's coup in Honduras has been portrayed as a throwback to the bad old days when Latin American armies got drafted in as the ultimate umpires of political conflict. But in arresting president Manuel Zelaya in his pajamas and putting him on the first plane out of the country, Honduras's generals were acting out of fear of a genuine and growing threat to Latin Democracy: the looming prospect of unchecked, hyper-empowered executive power held for life by a single, charismatic individual. 

Seen in context, Sunday's military powerplay was different in important ways from the traditional Latin American putsch. The generals move came at the unanimous--yes unanimous--behest of a congress outraged by Zelaya's not-particularly-subtle attempts to extend his hold on power indefinitely. It followed a series of clearly unconstitutional moves on Zelaya's part, including his attempt to unilaterally remove the chief of the army, which, according to Honduras's Constitution, can only be done by a congressional super-majority.

Few things drive the denizens of the Democratic Underground into a frenzy like the mere mention of Fox News. Therefore, as you can expect, a story in the Hollywood Reporter, Fox News set for best year yet, sent the members of what they call the "reality-based community" into some very unreal yet highly entertaining reactions to that unwelcome news. But before we allow the DUers to take the comedy stage, let us take a look at the Hollywood Reporter story by James Hibberd that sent them into a divorced-from-reality frenzy:

Fox News is on track to have its most-watched year ever, showing significant ratings growth despite having just come off a highflying election year. 

With the second quarter coming to a close, Fox News averaged about the same number of viewers as the top three other cable news networks combined. And while rivals including CNN (-22%) and MSNBC (-18%) took hits following last quarter's inauguration-fueled boost, Fox News (-3%) remained nearly steady.

As the U.S. Senate now prepares to consider the cap-and-trade climate bill recently passed by the House, they will want to consider all the facts related to this landmark spending program. So far we have learned that the Environmental Protection Agency has suppressed an internal report skeptical about the wild global warming claims and now, from across the pond, we find out that a polar bear expert has been forbidden by global warming alarmists from reporting that most of those animals have actually been increasing in population during the past few years or are at optimum levels.

Although you won't find this story anywhere in the American media, Christopher Booker of the UK Telegraph has delivered an excellent report on this inconvenient truth suppression:

Over the coming days a curiously revealing event will be taking place in Copenhagen. Top of the agenda at a meeting of the Polar Bear Specialist Group (set up under the International Union for the Conservation of Nature/Species Survival Commission) will be the need to produce a suitably scary report on how polar bears are being threatened with extinction by man-made global warming.

This is one of a steady drizzle of events planned to stoke up alarm in the run-up to the UN's major conference on climate change in Copenhagen next December. But one of the world's leading experts on polar bears has been told to stay away from this week's meeting, specifically because his views on global warming do not accord with those of the rest of the group.

Admit it. Didn't your eyes start to glaze over last night after the first couple of hours of continuous coverage of Michael Jackson's death on the cable news channels? Gone were stories about today's vote on the Global Warming bill or the upcoming vote on a health care plan, whatever that may be. Even the Mark Sanford affair, much to the dismay of many in the leftwing blogosphere, was knocked off the airwaves.

After several hours of this non-stop coverage, even your intrepid reporter started to doze off...aided by copious quantities of wine. However, in the midst of this media buzz, there was one item that would make even the most jaded among you sit up and take notice. The oddly disturbing, yet strangely hilarious, confession by Anderson Cooper that he went to Studio 54 with Michael Jackson when he was only ten years old. Here is the transcript from Anderson Cooper 360 Degrees of the conversation between Cooper and CNN anchor, Erica Hill:

It seems that congressional criticism about the fairness of the ABC News Obamacare show tonight has struck a nerve in the president of that organization, David Westin to such an extent that he has responded via letter in a less than pleased manner. What sparked this testy reaction was a letter signed by 40 members of Congress that was sent yesterday by the Congressional Media Fairness Caucus to ABC News president, David Westin, criticizing the fairness of the health care special:

Dear Mr. Westin,

Health care reform is an extemely complex issue involving one of the largest sectors of the economy. Directly or indirectly, it will touch the lives of all Americans. The decision by ABC News officials to devote an entire day, June 24, to the "President's health care agenda" culminating with a primetime healthcare "town hall" gives the American people a slanted view of an important subject. 

The manner in which the news programming is being presented – at the White House with the president and first lady and without opposition – is unprofessional and contrary to the journalistic code of ethics to present the news fairly and independently. This is not a presidential news conference open to all news outlets. This is an exclusive arrangement from which the president and his viewpoint stand to gain. It's as if ABC News is providing in-kind free advertising for President Obama. 

Media types often have a habit of masking their true beliefs in their online blogs in attempt to maintain the fiction that they are "unbiased." One such blog that comes to mind is the Daily Nightly blog of Brian Williams in which he attempts (not always successfully) to hide his liberal bias to an extent that it comes off as quite inane. In fact, your humble correspondent has labeled the Williams blog as the Daily Dully.

In stark contrast to the Williams ennui is the new John Stossel blog of ABC News,  John Stossel's Take, which began less than two weeks ago. And in that short time, Stossel has already made waves with his amazingly candid views which frequently run counter to the liberal conventional wisdom. An example is Stossel's blog edition posted last Friday titled, Arrogance:

As I read about the President’s new econ regulatory plans, I marvel at the arrogance.  I doubt whether any president, with all his advisers and cabinet officials, is capable of overseeing something as complex as the financial system of a great economy.

Updated below.

Your humble correspondent feels obligated to warn you about the article you are about to see. It is a harsh but brutally honest review written by Brian Maloney of The Radio Equalizer about Joe Scarborough's new book, The Last Best Hope: Restoring Conservatism and America's Promise. Certain members of the reading audience may experience a strange tingling sensation while reading the review. Should you require require medical assistance while looking at the review, a registered nurse is standing by in the lobby:

Over the past several weeks, this site has been tracking the attempt by MSNBC's Joe Scarborough to make money bashing his former friends in any and every available public venue. With a new book to peddle, could attacking onetime colleagues from his conservative days fuel sales? New data from the publishing world, as well as radio and TV, provide the answer.

To promote the release, the former GOP congressman turned radio and TV host appeared on left-leaning television shows such as The View and did interviews with the New York Times and Newsweek. Each time, he was quick to bash Rush Limbaugh, Karl Rove, Newt Gingrich, and other key conservative figures.

Julian E. Zelizer, a professor of history and public affairs at Princeton University, wrote an incredibly bizarre article for Politico. He accurately declares that the biggest problem for the Obama administration's health care plan probably wouldn't be Republicans but the assessment by the Congressional Budget Office warning of a trillion dollar cost of the proposal. Zelizer's solution? Just ignore the CBO. Zelizer starts off firmly planted in the realm of reality:

The most potent threat to the Obama administration’s fledgling health may come not from the insurance industry or skeptical doctors but from the Congressional Budget Office.

Okay, good beginning, Julian. Just stay on track and try not to come to any sanity-challenged conclusions.

Rising sea levels!

Sweltering temperatures!

Deeper droughts, and heavier downpours!

Hey, that looks like fun! Let me try. Here goes:

Saudi spring snowfall!

Plunging temperatures!

Frozen Australians!

One big difference in the two warnings, besides my reluctance to call for a massive government spending program, is that mine have actually been happening on a big scale recently as I reported in NewsBusters. The prior group of warnings have been issued by Seth Borenstein who is quickly earning the well-deserved reputation as the Global Warming Baghdad Bob of the Associate Press. No matter what the actual climate conditions the world is experiencing, Borenstein will continue to engage in Global Warming alarmism to the extreme. Here is Baghdad Borenstein performing his latest act in which he uses the White House climate change report as his prop:

"Ahmadinejad won. Get Over It."

That was both the headline and the theme of an astounding story written for Politico by the former foreign policy husband and wife team of Flynt Leverett and Hillary Mann Leverett.  Their shtick while at the Bush White House was that we needed to "engage" Iran and left their jobs  "with a growing sense of alarm" that we were headed towards war with that Islamic regime which, of course, never happened. And now they are continuing to run cover for the mullahs with their Politico story about how the Iranian presidential election was fair and square:

Without any evidence, many U.S. politicians and “Iran experts” have dismissed Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s reelection Friday, with 62.6 percent of the vote, as fraud.

They ignore the fact that Ahmadinejad’s 62.6 percent of the vote in this year’s election is essentially the same as the 61.69 percent he received in the final count of the 2005 presidential election, when he trounced former President Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani. The shock of the “Iran experts” over Friday’s results is entirely self-generated, based on their preferred assumptions and wishful thinking.

It is "an inconvenient truth" for Al Gore that the world is currently experiencing some of the coldest weather in decades. Just how cold? How about snow in Saudi Arabia in May according to this report?

According to a story in the Saudi Gazette and sourced to the American News Agency, the Associated Press, snow fell in Al-Baha city, to the south-west of Riyadh, on Tuesday.

Torrential rain poured down on Al-Baha accompanied by gusty winds.

The nearby mountains received some snow too.

It covered the valley areas and the forests of Al-Zaraeb and Khayrah, according to the report.

If this were the only such  report, it could be written off as just an isolated incident of freak weather. Unfortunately for Al Gore's credibility there have been widespread reports of unseasonably cold weather from many sources including a story yesterday in the Minneapolis Star Tribune about a "year without summer."

If you are following the amazing events currently unfolding in Iran in the wake of their turbulent election, then YouTube will give you a much better sense of what is happening than the mainstream media. Yesterday, while the dramatic protests were unfolding, CNN held an extended forum on healthcare. The other cable news channels weren't much more enlightening in their coverage of events from Iran.

Where does a web surfer go to find out about the turbulence taking place there? For me, and a lot of other people, the natural gathering place for a video view from Iran is YouTube where many Iranian bloggers have been uploading their highly interesting videos some which you can see, along with a sampling of the accompanying commentary, below the fold. So turn away from those cable news networks which are only giving relatively shallow coverage of the turbulence in Iran and welcome to the Brave New World of Web video reporting from bloggers on the scene of the action.

What do you do when your TV show is flopping in the ratings department? If you're Ed Schultz, you desperately attempt to draw attention to yourself by engaging in "Psycho Talk" which, ironically is a segment of MSNBC's The Ed Show that Schultz uses to supposedly demonstrate "Psycho Talk" from conservatives. However, take a look at the crazed Schultz in this video slamming Hugh Hewitt for stating that he would refuse to buy cars from companies taken over by the government. It far exceeds in looniness any "Psycho Talk" that Schultz features in his segment. Here is how TV Squad, no friend of conservatives, describe's Schultz's Psycho Talk:

Whether you agree or disagree with Schultz, is too much to ask that he not succumb to clownish apoplexy to make his point? He even throws in an Elvis karate kick at the midway point of this rant.

The odd thing is Schultz was never quite this militant on his radio program. Opinionated? Sure. Ready to confront? He was paid to do that. But he wasn't wont to physically abuse bits of surrounding furniture.