Sharon Hughes's blog

Today is the beginning of Hanukkah, so can't let this one pass just in case you missed it...

Just when you think you’ve heard it all—FOX News reports: “An artist who was forced to remove his Nazi gingerbread men from the window of a hardware store has set up the display in an empty storefront in another town. “The Secret Lives of Gingerbread Men” depicts a small gathering at a Nazi rally. Keith McGuckin set up the display in this northeastern Ohio city Thursday night, a day before the Jewish holiday of Hanukkah begins at sundown…

The New York Times has proven itself to be selective in its reporting the details about the war in Iraq, but it seems to have no problem running all-out attack ads on President Bush in regards to the same. As Bill O'Reilly reported on FOX News tonight, World Can't Wait's "next phase of the battle to drive out the Bush regime by placing a full page ad in the NY Times" ran on page A17 in the Times today The ad, along with coordinated fliers, make many radical claims including the following:

"Your government, on the basis of outrageous lies, is waging a murderous and utterly illegitimate war in Iraq...

Why would failing to report on an anti-war group's openly displayed 'Letter from God' be a case for media bias? Because every time President Bush makes reference to his belief in God the mainstream media is all over it, like fleas on a dog. And not only his faith, but that of his appointees, as in Maureen Dowd's article, on former Supreme Court nominee, Harriet Miers.  You probably read how after calling into question the qualifications of Condoleeza Rice, Karen Hughes and other women on his staff, referring to them as office wives "who steadfastly devote their entire lives to doting on him", Dowd goes into some detail about Miers' faith:  "Bushie and Harriet share the same born-again Christian faith, which they came to in midlife, deciding to adopt Jesus Christ as their saviors. The Washington Post reported that she tithes to the Valley View Christian Church in Dallas, "where antiabortion literature is sometimes distributed and tapes from the conservative group Focus on the Family are sometimes screened," and where, when she returns, Ms. Miers asks well-wishers to pray for her and the president....W. is asking for a triple leap of faith. He has faith in Ms. Miers as his lawyer and as a woman who shares his faith. And we're expected to have faith in his faith and her faith, and her opinions that derive from her faith that could change the balance of the court and affect women's rights for the next generation. That's a little bit too much faith, isn't it?"  There are numerous other examples of media bias regarding the President's faith, such as during the 2004 election debates, as David Limbaugh pointed out, "President Bush gets so much flak for his faith and John Kerry is applauded for his professions of faith -- by the very same people? As I recall, while President Bush made no secret during the debates of his reliance on God, it was not him, but John Kerry who was citing Scripture -- or trying to. And it was Kerry who said, "My faith affects everything that I do, in truth."

So, I guess we shouldn't be surprised to find zero mention by the media, even with tongue in cheek, of CODEPINK's "Letter from God" delivered by Lea Arellano , applauding the group for their efforts. Which, by the way, I ran across while researching for a piece on CODEPINK's upcoming anti-military recruitment invasion on school campuses and recruitment offices this week, with their "Not Your Soldier" & "National Stand Down" student days on November 17th & 18th.

The new ruling by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals stating, "There is no fundamental right of parents to be the exclusive provider of information regarding sexual matters to their children...Parents have no due process or privacy right to override the determinations of public schools as to the information to which their children will be exposed while enrolled as students," has Californians in an uproar, and rightfully so!

The liberal ninth district court known for it's legislating from the bench, such as in the recent case where the court ruled the Pledge of Allegiance unconstitutional because it contains the words 'under God', dismissed a lawsuit by California parents on November 3, 2005 who were sued the school district because a sex survey with inappropriate, nosey questions was given to children in the first, third and fifth grades.

The former movie star, now Governor of California, Arnold Schwarzenegger, told the Sacramento Bee that he would "kill" anyone who took one of his minor daughters for an abortion without telling him.

"I have a daughter. I wouldn't want to have someone take my daughter to a hospital for an abortion or something and not tell me. I would kill him if they do that."

He later clarified his comments saying that he would not literally "kill" someone who took his daughter for an abortion.

"It will be the ultimate of being outraged about it and angry about it," Schwarzenegger said. "They call me when my daughter falls off the jungle gym in the school and they say, 'What do you want us to use? Can we put a Band-Aid on it? Do you want to come in? She's crying a little bit.'They call us about everything. I don't want them in that particular incident not to call us."

The 'Governator's' comments were in response to questions concerning one of the initiatives on California's upcoming November ballot that would require parents or guardians of minors to be notified of their intentions to have abortions 48 hours prior to the act.

Elisabeth Bumiller's at it again...

As Brit Hume pointed out in his FOX News broadcast today,  the NY Times reported that the President said protesters like Cindy Sheehan were weakening the United States and emboldening terrorists. Here's NY Times writer, Elisabeth Bumiller's, direct quote:

"Mr. Bush has been careful not to go on a direct attack against a publicly grieving mother like Ms. Sheehan, and has pointed out that he met with her once already, in 2004, and that he has sympathy for her and her right to protest. Still, he said last week that protesters like her were weakening the United States and emboldening terrorists, and vowed that he would not immediately withdraw all American troops from Iraq, as she has demanded."

Frank Rich of the New York Times wrote a scathing criticism of President Bush regarding the war in his op-ed on Sunday, "Someone Tell the President the War is Over."I know it's an opinion piece, but his comments are so blatantly biased they shouldn't get a pass. Here's just a sample of what Rice wrote, but the whole article is telling:"Like the Japanese soldier marooned on an island for years after V-J Day, President Bush may be the last person in the country to learn that for Americans, if not Iraqis, the war in Iraq is over.

With all the attention on Cindy Sheehan's camp-out at Crawford it looks like President Bush's comments about her and what she's doing got lost in the dust. Even though reported by the AP and Reuters, they're no where to be found online by the MSM (CNN, ABC, et al) yet. Here's what the President said to reporters:

"I sympathize with her. She feels strongly about her, about her position, and I am -- she has every right in the world to say what she believes. This is America. She has a right to her position. And I've thought long and hard about her position. I've heard her position from others, which is, 'Get out of Iraq now.'  And it would be -- it would be a mistake for the security of this country and the ability to lay the foundations for peace in the long run, if we were to do so. I grieve for every death," Bush said. "It breaks my heart to think about a family weeping over the loss of a loved one. I understand the anguish that some feel about the death that takes place."

Today's NY Times' editorial covering Cindy Sheehan's "Impeachment Tour" from California to Crawford, Texas, where she hopes to meet again with President Bush for "a more substantive discussion" on the war in Iraq, described Ms. Sheehan's grievances:

"Ms. Sheehan's 24-year-old son, Casey, was killed in Baghdad. She says she and her family met privately with Mr. Bush two months later, and she is sharply critical of how the president acted. He did not know her son's name, she says, acted as if the meeting was a party and called her "Mom" throughout, which she considered disrespectful."

John Nichols, The Nation's Washington correspondent, who has had his articles appear in The New York Times, criticized Vice President Dick Cheney this week on The Nation's blog site, for comments he made on CNN's Larry King Live back in June." Nichols wrote, "Vice President Dick Cheney, who predicted on the eve of the U.S.

John Nichols, The Nation's Washington correspondent, who has also covered elections for The Progressive and has had his articles appear in The New York Times, criticized Vice President Dick Cheney yesterday on The Nation's blog sight, for comments he made on CNN's Larry King Live back in June."

Nichols wrote, "Vice President Dick Cheney, who predicted on the eve of the U.S. invasion of Iraq, that Americans would be "greeted as liberators," has in recent weeks been peddling a new line of spin. If Cheney was not in charge of U.S. foreign policy, he could be dismissed as a ranting lunatic."

What's the 'spin' Cheney is guilty of according to Nichols? For saying he thinks there's been major progress in Iraq and that, "I think they're in the last throes, if you will, of the insurgency.'"

Nichols then contrasts Dick Cheney's 'spin' to John Kerry's words before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in 1971, "Any attempt to address Cheney's rhetorical excesses brings to mind the words of a young veteran from another misguided and unnecessary war. 'How do you ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake?' For Cheney, that's simple: Just keep telling the young men and women who are marching to their deaths that they will be greeted as liberators and that the enemy is so weak that it is in its 'last throes.' In other words, just keep spinning a slurry of fantasy and lies into U.S. policy."

I'm one of those people who believes a picture is worth a thousand words, and the one above certainly is powerful enough to make the point that there are Iraqis who are grateful for the liberation that has come to their country. (See picture here) And there are accounts of Iraqis who supported the War in Iraq early on. For instance, when I interviewed Steven Vincent on his book, In the Red Zone, on my show he shared of Iraqis who told him while he was embedded three times there, that they wanted the Americans to take Baghdad, but that they also knew Saddam Hussein had WMDs and "would kill them" (the Iraqis) in the battle, but nevertheless they wanted America to do it anyway.

But these kinds of accounts are seldom reported by the MSM. That's why we have to do it.