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Hours after her first appearance on CNN’s "American Morning," Kansas Governor Kathleen Sebelius (D) made a second network appearance on Monday’s "The Situation Room," where she repeated her Iraq-ruined-tornado-recovery line, that "what really is hampering our reactions like this and our opportunity to clean up quickly is the equipment shortage."

Prior to her interview, CNN correspondent Brian Todd gave a report that was meant to reenforce Sebelius's claims. The report featured sound bytes from the governor and from the National Guard officials, who all claimed that the equipment shortages have had a detrimental effect. However, Todd also reported that "Kansas National Guard officials tell us they can manage this disaster with the equipment they have, and the shortage has had not effect on deaths or injuries in Greensburg."

As already noted on NewsBusters, Diane Sawyer made an absurd comparison on Tuesday’s "Good Morning America" when she linked the current rising stock markets with the period of time before the historic 1929 market crash. The GMA host, talking to ABC analyst Mellody Hobson, fearfully wondered, "Did you know that the stock market has hit a milestone reminiscent of what happened before the big crash?"

Except, it’s not at all reminiscent of the "big crash." From 2000, through 2007, the Dow rose from 10, 577 to 13, 312. That’s an average annual increase of 3.7 percent. In the seven years prior to the 1929 crash, the market spiked from 100 to 381, growing over 40 percent yearly. The rate of increase is over 10 times more than the current levels. So, when Sawyer concluded that "1929 was the big crash and this is reminiscent of what happened before that," her comparison isn't just wrong, it's also nonsensical.

Following the election of conservative candidate Nicolas Sarkozy to France's presidency, there have been a series of riots from angry protesters upset at his victory. Unfortunately, it's a little hard to know much about the rioters due to the French government's passing a law that makes it a crime to report on riots unless you are a professional journalist:

The French Constitutional Council has approved a law that criminalizes the filming or broadcasting of acts of violence by people other than professional journalists. The law could lead to the imprisonment of eyewitnesses who film acts of police violence, or operators of Web sites publishing the images, one French civil liberties group warned on Tuesday.

The council chose an unfortunate anniversary to publish its decision approving the law, which came exactly 16 years after Los Angeles police officers beating Rodney King were filmed by amateur videographer George Holliday on the night of March 3, 1991. The officers’ acquittal at the end on April 29, 1992 sparked riots in Los Angeles.

If Democrats had accused former House Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-Illinois) last year of earmarking funds that could help real estate investments owned by his wife, would the media have reported it?

Probably on the front pages of every newspaper, and as the lead story of all of the evening news programs, right?

Well, the Associated Press published a story Monday about current House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-California) possibly earmarking funds that would benefit her husband's investments around the San Francisco Bay. Yet, the media showed virtually no interest (emphasis added):

When it comes to the subject of global warming, is science being sacrificed on the altar of political activism? Yes, says the German magazine Der Spiegel (h/t Glenn) in a report that sounds strangely familiar. It's funny how many on the left are now complaining that we "rushed to war" in Iraq are now rushing to implement far more expensive and economy-destroying programs on the subject of global warming--with far less certitude of success. The irony is further compounded when you consider that the main person leading this rush is the guy who would have been president had George Bush not won in 2000.

Here's Der Spiegel:

No United Nations organization currently dominates the headlines as much -- or is as controversial -- as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Critics call the panel politically one-sided and its reports alarmist. Its defenders say the opposite is true. The IPCC will publish its third report on Friday. [...]

There is hardly a newspaper article and hardly a TV or radio program that doesn't conjure up images of "climate catastrophe," prophesy floods of gigantic proportions, droughts and hunger. Indeed, the media have developed something akin to a complete apocalyptic program.

It's the fault of the media, of course, but not exclusively. It's also the fault of a new hero, an environmental activist who likes to introduce himself by saying: "Hello, I was once the next President of the United States of America."

What's the big story this morning? Both FoxNews.com and CNN.com are still going with the Fort Dix terror suspect arrests as the top story. But as the screencap below (taken at 11:15 EDT) shows, MSNBC.com has "Major Flood: Rising Midwest rivers spark comparison to deadly '93 deluge" as the top story. (screencap included after the jump)

Granted, disaster stories are big news, particularly so close on the heels of the Greensburg, Kansas, tornado. But six immigrants, all of whom are suspected radical Muslims and three of whom are here in the United States illegally, is certainly a more compelling story for a top story.

I wouldn't call this the ideal outcome but it's definitely progress. Michael McGee, the racist liberal talk show host who said he wished a local conservative talker had burned to death along with his mother has been suspended "indefinitely" from his program:

Radio station owner Jerrel Jones said Saturday that he's indefinitely suspending Mike McGee from his radio show on WNOV-AM (860) for remarks he made about the death of Katherine Sykes, the mother of radio talker Charlie Sykes.

Jones would not say how long "indefinitely" might be.

"Forever is a long time, and I don't want to say something that I may not be able to deal with," he said Saturday. "But I do want to make it clear that he won't be on anytime soon."

For general discussion and comment...

With gasoline prices going up, Diane Sawyer worries they will continue to rise. With stock prices going up, the same Sawyer worries they will experience a crash of historic proportions.

Sawyer's guest on Good Morning America today at 7:15 AM EDT was Mellody Hobson, a GMA financial contributor. Here's how Sawyer kicked things off.

GMA CO-HOST DIANE SAWYER: Will runaway gas prices keep soaring, and did you know that the stock market has hit a milestone reminiscent of what happened before the big Crash? Let's start with gasoline prices. On Monday the average price of gasoline hit $3.05 per gallon, just two cents less than the record. . . Is this going to keep happening, keep going up?

It's Nitpicking Tuesday. In the Washington Post Style section, the weekday ad for the "Live Online" chats at washingtonpost.com caught my eye. Today's 1 pm session with a black Post columnist is promoted with this language:

Opinion: Columnist Eugene Robinson discusses the diversity of the Democratic presidential candidates -- and the Country Club look of the first GOP debate.

Is that their best way to say "all white, all male"? As if the Post found any "diversity" worth mentioning when the candidates were female (Elizabeth Dole) or minorities (Alan Keyes)?

UPDATE: It turns out the loaded promotional language comes from Eugene's loaded column.

Updated below with link to video (10:30 EDT).

Washington Post writers Tamara Jones and Roxanne Roberts (who co-writes the paper's "Reliable Source" gossip column) took just four paragraphs into their page A1 story on Queen Elizabeth's state visit to snark about a gaffe of President Bush's during the welcome ceremony.

The President was noting that the Queen had visited the United States for the bicentennial in 1976, but he started to say 1776 before catching himself.

Noting that the Queen "did not appear amused," Jones and Roberts described Bush's reaction as "sheepish" and that the Queen's disapproving glare was not his only "comeuppance of the day."

Sometimes the blog entries just write themselves. Mark Ellingham, a man who helped increase travel as a form of leisure is now telling people they should stop taking flights. It gets more ridiculous, however:

Mark Ellingham, founder of the Rough Guides and the man who encouraged a generation of travellers to pack a rucksack and explore the world, has compared the damage done by tourism to the impact of the tobacco industry.

Ellingham now says travelling is so environmentally destructive that there is no such thing as a genuinely ethical holiday. He wants the industry to educate travellers about the damage their holidays do to the environment. The development he regrets most is the public's appetite for what he calls 'binge-flying'. [...]

'It is hard to say the positive impact travelling has can ever outweigh the damage done by simply travelling to the destination,' he said. 'Balancing all the positives and negatives, I'm not convinced there is such a thing as a "responsible" or "ethical" holiday.'

Apparently, it doesn't take much to flummox Brian Williams. He wrapped up Monday's NBC Nightly News with a whole story devoted to a “paralyzing question” which “can make otherwise competent adults quake with fear.” The dilemma? “Paper or plastic” at the grocery store. “The grocery store dilemma,” he teased, “'paper or plastic?' What is the right answer to that paralyzing question in the checkout line?” Williams repeated his terminology in plugging the story before an ad break: “What is the right answer to that often-paralyzing question at the checkout, 'paper or plastic?'”

Williams introduced the eventual May 7 story by fretting about how people “are made to feel like the fate of the planet hinges on our decision.” Maybe if you're a self-obsessed environmental extremist with too much free time, but I doubt most people feel such pressure and are able to easily make the choice without liberal guilt. Williams asserted: “Tonight, as part of our ongoing series of reports on the environment, 'America Goes Green,' we take on the question that can make otherwise competent adults quake with fear. We've all been there. You come to the end of the checkout line and then comes that question, 'paper or plastic?' For that one brief moment, we grocery buyers are made to feel like the fate of the planet hinges on our decision. Is there a correct answer?”

Reporter Anne Thompson turned to a left-wing activist group, naturally unlabeled, for the answer:

“To find out what to do in the grocery store, we turned to Alan Hershkowitz of the Natural Resources Defense Council. Plastic bags threaten wildlife along the coast. So if that's where you call home, Hershkowitz says the choice should be paper. In the heartland, he says, it's plastic.”

She elaborated:

“To make all the bags we use a year it takes 14 million trees for paper, 12 million barrels of oil for plastic. The production of paper bags create 70 percent more air pollution than plastic. But plastic bags create four times the solid waist, enough to fill the Empire State Building two and a half times. And they can last up to a thousand years.”

The bottom line: Avoid both, as she concluded:

“Re-use and recycle is the environmentalist mantra for plastic and paper. But the best choice, they say, is cloth or canvas and B.Y.O.B. -- Bring your own bags.”

Former CBS Evening News anchor Bob Schieffer told Columbus Dispatch writer Tim Feran that the gossip was untrue that he was trashing Katie Couric in the press. "I was not the source for that story, period. I had nothing to do with it...and I don't know who did." Schieffer also took exception to the Bill Moyers theory that the national media were enablers to President Bush's runup to war in Iraq.

Q: In his recent PBS report about the run-up to the Iraq war, Bill Moyers said: "The press has yet to come to terms with its role in enabling the Bush administration to go to war on false pretenses." Do you agree?

A: I don't think we enabled them to go to war, although there's no question we should have asked harder questions. But I think the Democrats should have asked harder questions, the CIA should have asked harder questions, the people within the administration should have asked harder questions. Somewhere along the way, the decision to go into Iraq somehow became the fault of the press.

How many times in the past year as global warming has become a headline issue have you heard a liberal media member or Hollywood elite talk about a consensus of peer reviewed scientists?

So much so that you can’t swing a dead cat without hitting one, correct?

As an example, pop singer Sheryl Crow during her recent Stop Global Warming College tour would toss the term "peer-reviewed science" around to her audience like a frisbee, as if she had any idea what it actually meant.

With that in mind, a Senior Fellow in Political Economy for the Independent Institute, Dr. Robert Higgs, published an article Monday that should be required reading for folks like soon-to-be-Dr. Al Gore and his followers (emphasis added throughout):

Set your TiVo to CNN Headline News at 9 p.m. EDT tonight. NewsBusters senior editor/MRC director of media analysis Tim Graham will be on the "Glenn Beck" program to discuss how PBS is politicizing a documentary about World War II.

The controversy centers around how documentary producer Ken Burns and PBS have dealt with pressure from activist groups to include more footage on Hispanic Americans' contributions to the war effort.

For more background, click here. Video: Real (3 MB) or Windows (2.6 MB), plus MP3 (1.2 MB)

On Friday's Today show, MSNBC's Chris Matthews defended his ludicrous decision to ask the GOP candidates if it would "be good for America to have Bill Clinton back living in the White House?" Matthews explained the sociological insight: "They all sort of guffawed. Well, that's a particularly Republican response. If I offered that same question up to Democrats...they would be cheering like mad." So Matthews proved that the ten Republican debaters are not Democrats — was there any doubt? The weird Clinton question was symptomatic of how MSNBC and debate co-sponsor ThePolitico.com spent valuable time asking the GOP candidates questions that reflected the agenda of far-left bloggers, not the concerns of GOP primary voters. A week earlier, while moderator Brian Williams did pose a few right-leaning questions to the Democratic field, most of that debate reflected issues that rate high with Democratic voters. In other words, both debates were dominated by liberal agenda questions.

Rupert Murdoch, founder of the Fox network and Fox News Channel and CEO of media giant News Corp has the ability to make grown journalists cry. A quick survey of liberal media blogger Jim Romenesko's Media News page shows an industry in a panic over Murdoch's $5 billion offer to purchase Wall Street Journal parent company Dow Jones.

Why all the fear and loathing?

To put it simply, Rupert Murdoch is one of the few powerful individuals on the right who realizes the importance of the mainstream. Over the years, the right has had success building up an alternative infrastructure of think tanks, magazines, and web sites. Murdoch, however, has been one of the very few to understand that there is no need to "ghettoize" the libertarian and conservative viewpoints. That is why he is feared even though his committment to the right politically is often quite tenuous (he's hosted fund-raisers for Hillary Clinton and is uncompromising in his desire to do business with the Chinese commies).

A May 7 article by Los Angeles Times reporter Jordan Rau tiptoed around selfish motivations that a big business coalition may have for pushing more government involvement in healthcare. Indeed, Rau presented the political manuever as a break from business reticence to "healthcare reform."

What's more, nowhere in his article did the Times reporter label the government mandate-heavy plan a "liberal" policy nor did he seek experts to quantify the direct cost to taxpayers nor the indirect cost to consumers (in increased prices for goods and services).

"Abandoning the business lobby's traditional resistance to healthcare reform, a new coalition of 36 major companies plans to launch a political campaign today calling for medical insurance to be expanded to everyone along lines Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger is proposing for California," Rau began his article, referring to a coalition led by Safeway grocery chain chairman Steve Burd.

Update below (May 8, 12:52 EDT)

Late Sunday evening, the AP reported Governor Kathleen Sebelius' (D-Kan.) opinion that recovery efforts from the devastating tornado that struck the town of Greensburg, Kansas "will be hampered because some much-needed equipment is in Iraq."

This morning, co-host John Roberts interviewed Sebelius on "American Morning." In one of his questions, Roberts gave the governor an opportunity to repeat her opinion on the National Guard equipment from Kansas that was sent to Iraq. "You have illuminated a problem that you've got here, in terms of the National Guard's ability to be able to react to this crisis because of the Iraq war. What's going on?"

Has the king of Bush Derangement Syndrome, Keith Olbermann, created a new liberal malady characterized by an almost incomprehensible inability to tolerate any criticism of the MSNBC host?

After reading Joan Walsh and Glenn Greenwald’s articles at Salon Monday, one could certainly come to the conclusion that such an affliction exists, and that the two are suffering from this little known psychological impairment “Olbermann Derangement Syndrome."

For instance, Walsh began her “A Hit Job on Keith Olbermann” (emphasis added throughout):

Outgoing "View" co-host Rosie O’Donnell announced on the May 7 edition that she has "given up fighting" and that people already know her views. Co-host Joy Behar joked "that is such a lie. You know you’ll never give up." Rosie stated she does not want to yell at Elisabeth because she’s pregnant and that may not be healthy for her unborn child.

After Barbara alluded to her self-admitted "love letter" of Rosie O’Donnell in Time’s 100 most influential people in the world, Rosie announced that she does not "really love to fight" and implied her fringe views speak for women.

"I don't really love to fight. I just -- you know, I think a woman's voice needed to be heard on network TV so I came and said my piece."

The other co-hosts seemed offended as Joy Behar joked: "What are we, transvestites?" Barbara Walters noted the nine seasons of "The View" and exclaimed: "We’ve had nine years on the air when women’s voices were heard."

Did you know that the Palestinian Authority believes Al Qaeda-linked groups are trying to assassinate Palestinian political leaders and are responsible for Sunday's deadly attack on a co-ed children's festival at a UN-run elementary school in Gaza? What about the attackers using sharia law as the reason? No? Well, if you weren't reading a handful of the foreign press, you wouldn't know. What little US reporting there was, as is often the case,  was based on the AP. Unfortunately, the AP omitted any Al Qaeda references, the rise of Salafism [which the article explained is a branch of Islam that is often referred to as Wahhabism—"a derogatory term...” to many adherents] as well as the “other al-Qaida-linked groups” terrorizing Gaza and the resulting violent enforcement of sharia:

The Jerusalem Post's Khaled Abu Toameh led with what should be the most important parts of this story, especially to US readers (emphasis mine throughout):

Palestinian Authority security officials accused supporters of al-Qaida in the Gaza Strip of carrying out Sunday's attack on a UNRWA-run school [U.N. Relief and Works Agency] in Rafah in which one person was killed and six others were wounded.

"There is no doubt that al-Qaida is operating in the Gaza Strip," a senior PA security official said. "Today's attack carries the fingerprints of al-Qaida." (...)

Paris-based New York Times reporter Elaine Sciolino continued to nurse her long-standing grudge against Nicolas Sarkozy, the tough-on-crime presidential candidate of France, in two stories, one before and one after Sarkozy routed Socialist candidate Segolene Royal to win the presidency.

Sciolino wrote in Saturday's "France to Vote After Presidential Race's Scorching Finale":

"He has gambled  --  apparently successfully -- during the campaign that by turning hard right he would win over supporters of Jean-Marie Le Pen, the head of the extreme right National Front who made it into the second round of the 2002 election but made it into only fourth place this time.

Here is the kind of debate that's common on taxpayer-subsidized PBS: two liberals arguing over the right degree of rage over President Bush on Iraq. Should it be white hot? Or just hot enough that you don't burn your mouth on it? On Thursday night's edition of his eponymous show, Tavis Smiley interviewed Washington Post columnist David Ignatius.

Ignatius worried out loud about finding some degree of national unity in the Iraq end game, and suggested Bush hatred is running contrary to the national interest: "People are so angry in Washington. The debate is so intense that I just worry that we're just slipping a gear as a country. People are almost so angry at George Bush that they want to see this thing fail to spite him, and that should be. That's wrong." Smiley tried to suggest he was asking "devil's advocate" questions, but his angry tone and finger-pointing body language gave his personal opinion away:

SMILEY: Far be it for me to argue with you, but let me just take the devil's advocate position on this, just to press you a little bit more on this. Why shouldn't we be outraged? Why shouldn't we be angry with George Bush?

IGNATIUS: We should be...

SMILEY: Why shouldn't this be the issue around which we will throw down a gauntlet and be angry? We're losing lives every day, why not this, if any issue, to be just outraged about?

"Women voters shun Segolene Royal" reads one Reuters headline. Writes reporter Kerstin Gehmlich:

The weak female support is a bitter personal blow for Royal, who had played up her feminist credentials throughout the campaign, frequently defending policies she would want "as a mother" and accusing critics of male chauvinism.

Yet Gehmlich noted that the Sarkozy-Royal split among women voters in general was 52-48, according to an Ipsos exit poll. That closely tracks the 53-47 split among voters generally and is not far afield from 54 percent of men who voted for Sarkozy.

Indeed, younger female voters were about evenly split while elderly female voters broke heavily against the Socialist Royal, suggesting that generation, not gender, may have been a stronger determinant in the election outcome.

Royal's support among older voters was particularly poor, with 64 percent of women above the age of 60 supporting Sarkozy, and only 36 percent voting for Royal, according to the Ipsos survey. Women under 35 were split between her and Sarkozy.

Those numbers come from an Ipsos exit poll. Meg Bortin of the New York Times gave more data in her May 7 article that points to age differences in voting for the candidates. (Emphasis mine):

Over the weekend, Al Gore caused somewhat of a stir down in San Antonio for refusing to allow the media to cover a speech he was giving to architects who are also adherents to his global warming gospel.

Thankfully for open dialogue, a reporter for the San Antonio Express-News crashed the party. Unfortunately for reasoned dialogue, the reporter, Anton Caputo, failed to report the event with any sort of skepticism, almost falling over himself to praise the veep-turned-envirovangelist.

Playing equal parts visionary, cheerleader and comedian, Al Gore brought his message of how to fight global warming to a capacity crowd of receptive architects Saturday in San Antonio.

The former vice president referred continually to a "new way of thinking" that is emerging in the country and offered hope in the battle to control the effects global warming will have on the planet.

For general discussion and comment...

CBS's Lesley Stahl, in a 60 Minutes profile of CNN's Lou Dobbs aired Sunday night, expressed indignation over how Dobbs violates the supposed “fair and balanced” rule of journalism by revealing his disdain for President Bush, but Stahl has a long history of announcing her personal political views, including scorn for President Reagan and adulation of Hillary Clinton.

When Dobbs confirmed he's “not a fan” of Bush -- “No, I'm not. Whether it’s outsourcing, the war in Iraq, just disregard for our middle class” -- Stahl jumped in: “I'm sitting here saying to myself, 'This man runs a news show?' And you can just tell me you don’t like the President. Woo.” Yes, she really said “woo.” Dobbs explained: “I, matter of fact, insist that the audience know where I come from.” To which Stahl, an advocacy journalist long before Dobbs (see this 1991 MediaWatch critique), wondered: “What about fair and balanced?”

Back in January of 1989, when Reagan was still in office, Stahl told NBC's Bob Costas: “I predict historians are going to be totally baffled by how the American people fell in love with this man [Ronald Reagan] and followed him the way we did.” Five years later, on the old America's Talking cable channel, in an interview with Roger Ailes, she was appalled by how people were fooled by Reagan: “Here's a guy who fooled most of the people most of the time....He was a person who didn't understand the issues at all, and we know that for a fact....It's scary, because he led us off in the wrong direction.”

Days after Reagan died in 2004, on CNN'sLarry King Live, her 60 Minutes colleague Mike Wallace was curious about “when was the last time we had a President Americans loved?” Stahl doused the admiration of Reagan: “And of course, not all Americans loved him, Mike.”

In 2005, Bush Derangement Syndrome -- the as of yet inexplicable malady effecting much of the left whereby anything bad that happens on the planet can be tied to the White House -- peaked with continuous press accusations that Hurricane Katrina was the President’s fault.

Almost two years later, and just hours after tornadoes devastated the Midwest, the President is being indirectly blamed for potentially hampering rebuilding efforts in the hardest hit area.

I kid you not.

As reported by the Associated Press late Sunday evening with the headline “Iraq War Hampers Kansas Cleanup” (emphasis added):