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Dontcha love it when liberal media members are confounded by poll results that don’t fit their view of the world? It drives them so batty that they suddenly start espousing all manner of absurd rationalizations they believe explain why so many Americans disagree with them.

Such was the case during the 7PM installment of “The Situation Room” Friday when Jack Cafferty shared with his viewers recent poll statistics showing that half of the country believes that Saddam Hussein had WMD before America invaded Iraq in March 2003. This didn’t sit well with Cafferty, who, true to form, blamed the public’s sentiments on Republicans.

This is really wonderful stuff necessitating the reader to be careful with drinking vessels (video link to follow):

When it comes to toadying up to the Castro regime, it's going to be tough for the Associated Press to top its achievement noted by Clay Waters - Some Cubans Enjoy Comforts of Communism.

Even so, the AP - in the person of writer Andrew Selsky - put in a more-than-respectable effort today with the article No Photos of Castro Since His Surgery.

Here's the key line:

"Most Cubans have insisted that they are sure Castro will recover and that the government will function fine until then. But others have privately expressed worries that their leader may be more sick than the world knows."

Who, exactly, does the AP imagine supports the Vice President? Democrats? Obviously they are amazed anyone does in their report on the Vice President's campaign stops for the 2006 midterms.

They certainly seem amazed that anyone could respect Dick Cheney since, according to them, "Cheney is favorably regarded by only about a third of Americans". This one third statistic is pretty normal for just about anyone who has any well known contention swirling about them. After all, it is well accepted by historians that only one third of the American colonists supported the Revolutionary war, too. People who take strong stands often find that they get the adoration of one third, the outright hatred of one third and no opinion out of the last third.

It seems safe to say that many Republicans are fed up with the propagandist ways of America’s “newspaper of record,” the New York Times. On Friday, majority members of the Senate Committee on Environment & Public Works issued a statement regarding an August 3 op-ed by the Times’ Bob Herbert.

Herbert’s column began, “It may be time to get serious about trying to slow the catastrophic trend of global warming.” As you will see, Republicans on the EPW committee believe it may be time to get serious about trying to slow the catastrophic trend of global warmingism:

The August 3 New York Times op-ed by Bob Herbert titled “Hot Enough Yet,” makes several dubious global warming claims. See: http://select.nytimes.com/2006/08/03/opinion/03herbert.html?hp Herbert promotes the idea that the recent heat wave that has swept across the United States is another example of human caused catastrophic global warming. But the facts do not support this latest example of climate hysteria.

The statement then went point for point with Herbert, basically tearing apart all of his insipid falsehoods. Put your drinking vessels at a safe distance, for this is really delicious stuff:

In a classic example of self-pity, Editor and Publisher writer David S. Hirschman's latest article is so full of whining, moaning, assumption and gnashing of teeth that one would think the world is about to end. All this wringing of hands is over the revamping of the White House Press Room.

As many of you know the press room in the White House, the place where countless spokesmen for the President have held innumerable briefings on issues important and not so important, is being shut down and a new one is being built to better fulfill the needs of a more modern era. The creation of this new press room is Hirschman’s excuse to attack Karl Rove and the Administration who he imagines wishes to "weaken the press corps".

There’s a new poll out from Scripps Howard/Ohio University claiming “Thirty-six percent of respondents overall said it is ‘very likely’ or ‘somewhat likely’ that federal officials either participated in the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon or took no action to stop them ‘because they wanted the United States to go to war in the Middle East.’"

When you watch the following video (with graphic images and language that might be offensive to some), you will understand why (hat tip to Ms Underestimated). This nine-minute clip includes an interview done by Jack Blood, a syndicated radio talk show host with some bizarre ideas about America. His guest was Dylan Avery, the 22-year old director of the 9/11 conspiracy theory schlockumentary “Loose Change.”

As you watch, you will be amazed to hear two Americans mock the

If there is such a thing as a “good liberal,” Peter Beinart of The New Republic is certainly one. Whether or not you agree with his point of view, at least Beinart’s columns are well-reasoned and intelligently presented as opposed to much of the shrill non sequiturs plastered across the opinion pages of most MSM.

With that in mind, Beinart entered the ring Friday night against Ann Coulter, on CNBC’s “Kudlow & Company.” Beinart clearly looked like an able opponent right from the start:

Well, look, if the Democrats take control, you're going to see a lot more aggressive oversight from both houses, and I think as you have said, look, as a nonpartisan matter, we have checks and balances in this country. Our government works when the Congress is aggressively checking the executive branch and vice-versa, and that really hasn't been happening very much as the Republican Congress, particularly in the House, has acted as an arm of the White House rather than an independent branch, and I think it has hurt the congressional Republicans themselves. The ones who looked the best, people like Lindsey Graham, are those who have exercised some independence, and I would gather that if Republicans in Congress had exercised a little more oversight and a little more independence, not only would we be in better shape as a country but they would be in better shape as a party running for re-election this year.

Coulter responded with a few jabs of her own:

Amongst Derrick Z. Jackson's many fulminations in his Boston Globe column of this morning, The Divide Remains, this one leapt out at me: "the great gorge between the working poor and the wasteful rich remains far from being bridged."

Since Jackson never gets around to substantiating his 'wasteful rich' allegation, it's hard to see it as other than a gratuitous slur by a entrenched class warrior. Jackson is the apparent captive of a socialist mindset in which 'the rich' are straight-from-Monopoly caricatures who steal from the poor while not laying about or downing champagne in big-band nightclubs.

Thanks to the media blog at National Review Online for pointing out an Associated Press story from Friday on how Cubans love Fidel Castro and how they find “genuine comfort in the communist system.”

It comes complete with a “no, it’s-not-a-parody” headline, “Some Cubans Enjoy Comforts of Communism.”

It was only a matter of time, perhaps, and here it is: an op-ed in the Washington Post by former WashPost reporter (and current Hollywood screenwriter) Tom Grubisich demanding that Gibson and the U.S. Catholic hierarchy apologize for the anti-Semitism of the movie  "The Passion of the Christ", not just the drunken-driving slurs.

The movie exhumed and restaged some of the ugliest features of the pre-1980, notoriously anti-Semitic Passion play of Oberammergau, Germany. The movie was internationally distributed and continues to be marketed today as a DVD and used as a spiritual teaching tool. Just as in the old Oberammergau play, Gibson's Pilate was a civilized, even sensitive, soul -- in contrast to the moviemaker's stereotyped Jewish priests, among whom a personified Devil comfortably moved with a smile of satisfaction, as if among friends.

At CNN, the moral relativism never ends. In the wake of shootings by a Muslim at a Seattle Jewish center that left one person dead and others injured, CNN somehow managed to equate the fears of American Jews that there could be other such incidents . . . with the fears of American supporters of Hezbollah.

The focus of the 'Safe at Home?' segment narrated by CNN's Kelli Arena on today's Saturday Morning show was indeed the aftermath of that Seattle shooting, and how Jewish groups around the country are expressing fears and taking precautions.

But you could almost hear the CNN producer's gears grinding: "Wait! We can't have a segment that focuses exclusively on Jewish fears. Quick: get me some balance!" What CNN came up with was an interview with Rami Nuseir, an Arab-American activist.

CNN's Arena started the relativistic slide by claiming that the FBI's program of reaching out to Arab-American leaders for help in identifying potential threats has 'backfired': "Arab-Americans feel as though they are constantly under suspicion."

From the blog at Current.org, the insider publication for the public broadcasting industry, we learn that greed can also be a problem in the non-commercial world:

-- KCPW-FM in Salt Lake City ran a $609,366 deficit in fiscal year 2005 while paying its General Manager Blair Feulner $179,815, reports the city's Tribune. The sale of an unused license covered the losses and also paid Feulner and his wife a bonus of $895,000, the paper says.

-- A former underwriting rep for Michigan Radio in Ann Arbor was convicted July 26 of conspiracy to commit embezzlement, the Ann Arbor Times reported. Jeremy Nordquist was one of three former employees tried in the investigation. (Earlier coverage in Current.)

In the very last seconds of the 7pm EDT hour of Friday's The Situation Room on CNN, anchor Wolf Blitzer remarked to Jack Cafferty: "You know, one of the big stories this week, perhaps under-reported, top U.S. Generals now acknowledging, Guess what? The Iraq situation may be on the verge of a civil war." Is Blitzer in a parallel universe? Those comments Thursday, from Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Peter Pace and General John Abizaid, about the "possibility" that Iraq "could" fall into civil war, were all over the cable networks Thursday and Friday, including Blitzer's three hours.

The ABC, CBS and NBC evening newscasts on Thursday all made the civil war talk their lead stories. NBC's Brian Williams, for instance, began: "Tonight, is civil war becoming a reality in Iraq? Two of the Pentagon's most senior Generals now say it looks that way." The broadcast network morning shows on Friday all devoted first half hour time to the warnings. “Is Iraq on the brink of civil war? It was a stunning admission from two top Generals testifying on the escalating violence in Iraq,” CBS Early Show co-host Julie Chen announced. "U.S. General Says Iraq Could Slide Into a Civil War," heralded a Friday New York Times front page story and the Washington Post, Los Angeles Times and USA Today all plastered it on their front pages. (Full rundown follows)

Mega-blogger Markos Moulitsas Zúniga of the Daily Kos talking down the blogs' influence on the Connecticut Dem primary? John Fund of the good old Wall Street Journal talking it up?

The odd couple, guests on this evening's Hardball, engaged in some serious media gender-bending. With Mike Barnicle sitting in for host Chris Matthews, Fund went first, and overflowed with praise for the role the blogs have played in the race.

Fund: "I think [the blogs' impact has] been very significant. I offer a tip of the hat to them. They have taken the former vice-presidential candidate and created a single issue around the war, and this is is a man who opposed George Bush on tax cuts, and many things, and they have turned him into the perception as George Bush's lackey, and they are on the verge of knocking off a senator. That's happened only twice before. It's remarkable."

MRC President Brent Bozell appeared Friday night on MSNBC's Scarborough Country to discuss the media's coverage of Mel Gibson and religion as well as Hollywood's hypocrisy in condemning Gibson while otherwise ridiculing religious believers. Use this thread to post your comments about the show. Bozell's August 4 column, "Mel Gibson and the Politics of Bigotry," which Scarborough and Bozell keyed off of at the start of the interview. For our regular open discussion, see today's thread

Video clip of the opening exchange with Joe Scarborough (2:10): Real (3.7 MB) or Windows Media (4.2 MB), plus MP3 audio (760 KB).

I couldn't help but smile when I read the following Wall Street Journal article that's making its way around lefty blogland. In it, reporters Antonio Regalado and Dionne Searcey look into the mystery of a fun little parody video of Al Gore and his global warming movie, "An Inconvenient Truth," posted at YouTube.

But all is not as it seems, however. According to our dynamic duo, the video was uploaded from a person using the computer owned by the DCI Group, a political lobbying firm that (wait for it) has connections with the nefarious ExxonMobil.

That may or may not be the case. The funny part of the article is how suspicious Regalado and Searcey seem to be that non-liberals may be finally starting to use films to carry political messages:

Assume you were in an upper-management position at one of the many liberally-biased news outlets, and you read the above headline. Would it make you question what your organization was doing wrong, what Fox News is doing right, or what is wrong with America’s television news viewers?

Regardless of the answer, Variety released July viewer totals for the cable news outlets, and, once again, Fox News is completely destroying the competition. In fact, some of the numbers are pretty laughable (ergo, put your drinking vessels away!):

Despite FNC's declines, it still beat CNN handily in primetime, averaging 1.5 million viewers to CNN's 864,000; CNN still has a long way to go before it can be considered a serious ratings challenger.

FNC won every hour of each day over CNN for the 55th straight month. It was the No. 5-rated cable network in June, behind USA, TNT, TBS and Lifetime. CNN came in 24th, MSNBC 36th.

That deserves closer examination, doesn’t it? Fox has beaten CNN every hour of every day for 55 straight months?!? Yikes. And, FNC is the fifth-ranked network on cable? Yet, the chuckles kept coming:

PBS’s left-wing program "Now" with David Brancaccio is interviewing another left-wing expert tonight to make a left-wing argument: that the national media is too soft on warmongers like George W. Bush. The guest is the dean of Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism, Orville Schell, a contributor to Mother Jones and The Nation, among other hard-left publications. From the PBS website preview on Schell:

"The press has been accused of being the lap dog in the run-up to the war ... we gave the government the benefit of the doubt, I think, to the detriment of the nation as it turned out," he says.

Schell, who is the dean of the Graduate School of Journalism at the University of California, Berkeley, describes the dilemma journalists face when reporting the news in wartime.

Almost the weekend...

When the National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration announced on May 22 its forecast of a very active hurricane season for 2006, the press went absolutely gaga reporting it. In fact, an unaudited LexisNexis search of the word “hurricane” on that day yielded more than 1,300 results, with 61 coming from the broadcast networks and cable news outlets alone.

With only three named tropical storms so far this season, and nothing significant hitting the American mainland yet, the NOAA will be revising its prediction on Tuesday, August 8:

If the purpose of Al Gore's movie "An Inconvenient Truth" was to ready himself for another presidential run, it doesn't seem to have helped his poll numbers.

Reports UPI:

A Gallup Poll shows that former U.S. Vice President Al Gore's documentary on global warming has had little effect on his popularity with voters.

The poll was taken between June 23-25, a month after the release of "An Inconvenient Truth," which showed surprising strength at the box office, especially immediately after its release.

Gallup found that 48 percent of those polled had a favorable opinion of Gore, while 45 percent had an unfavorable one. His favorable ratings were about the same as they were in 2002 and 2003 -- and below those during most of the time he was vice president and campaigning for the presidency.

On last night's "Countdown," Keith Olbermann wondered why he still hasn't gotten Bill O'Reilly to mention his name.

Reports TV Newser:

On Thursday's Countdown, Keith Olbermann reacted to Bill O'Reilly's comments about "vampires" Wednesday night. In case you missed it: When O'Reilly said "we should call these people out," referring to "smear merchants" like Olbermann, Geraldo Rivera said he should call them by name. O'Reilly said no, because "then you give them more publicity."

In his latest Factor Fiction segment, Olbermann retorted: "There have been three million articles about this feud. There was one this morning! How much worse could you make it by using my name, Billo? What are they going to do -- build a statue of me? You're so confident in your success that you have to keep my name and show a secret from your viewers, or all of your viewers will all leave you in one night?"

If the Israeli "massacre" at Qana turns out to be yet another fraud, you can count on the media to quietly let the story slip away, a contrast from the media fireworks that were present when the story was announced. A simple "we were wrong" is is much more embarrassing than hoping everyone will forget the original hype.

Pipeline News has a good summary of the latest information.

To recount:

The death count at Kana was wildly inflated and reported as fact without any ability of the media to confirm its figures.

The Israeli Air Force was not responsible for the collapse of the building in question.

Hezbollah had built the now demolished structure directly over an ammunition dump and was firing rockets South into Israel at the time of the IDF air strike.

'Wishin' and hopin' and
'Thinkin' and prayin',
'Plannin' and dreamin'
'Each night of his charms,
'That won't get you into his arms.' - Dusty Springfield, 'Wishing & Hoping'

If E.J. Dionne's wishes were horses, Democrats would ride them to the White House. In his WaPo column of today, The End Of the Right?, the liberal pundit foresees the fall of conservatism. The immediate springboard for his prediction was yesterday's failed vote for an increase in the minimum wage. According to Dionne:

"The most obvious, outrageous and unprincipled [conservative] spasm occurred last night when the Senate voted on a bill that would have simultaneously raised the minimum wage and slashed taxes on inherited wealth.

As the world watches events unfold in the Middle East from the comfort of their living rooms, evidence is mounting that Hezbollah is using the media in a fashion that would make Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels extremely proud. Such an assertion has far reaching implications to be sure, as it points an accusatory finger at the behavior of the American press as well.  

Supporting this contention is a paper written in 1948 by Yale psychology professor Leonard W. Doob entitled “Goebbels’ Principles of Propaganda.” In it, Doob enunciated the famed Nazi’s nineteen-point plan for the effective use of the media to advance Germany’s goals.

Fifty-eight years later, a Haaretz article published Thursday outlined the power of the Hezbollah propaganda machine. So coordinated are these efforts that it is easy to imagine the terrorist organization using Goebbels’ principles as a virtual playbook while it molds events and news reports to impact international opinion. The article began:

Was Matt Lauer showing balance in criticizing Hillary Clinton along with Donald Rumsfeld this morning - or was his skepticism about Hillary simply voicing the view of the Murtha/Lamont wing of the Dem party?

The focus was yesterday's Senate-hearing mano a mano between Hillary and Rumsfeld and her subsequent call for the president to accept the Defense Secretary's resignation.

Interviewing all-purpose commentator Howard Fineman, Lauer seemed insistent that it was time for Rumsfeld to go.

Lauer: "[Clinton] said the president should accept Rumsfeld's resignation. He lost credibility with Congress and the people. It's time for him to step down. This is not the first person to call for his resignation, but at some point, do you think it's a possibility especially in the near term?"

Fineman held his fire: "Well, the Democrats will try to make it that."

That wasn't good enough for Matt:

With its editorial of this morning, Justice After Guantanamo, the Los Angeles Times has raised the bar when it comes to expressing exquisite sensitivity for the rights of accused terrorists. The Times waxes indignant that in trials of Gitmo denizens the Bush administration favors - brace yourself - the admission of hearsay evidence. Send in the smelling salts.

Says the Times:

"New draft legislation to bring the military commissions established by the administration into compliance with a Supreme Court decision borrows heavily from the Uniform Code of Military Justice. That's the good news. The bad news is that on some issues — particularly the use of hearsay and evidence obtained by coercive or inhumane interrogation — the administration still clings to the notion that the end justifies the means."

Washington Post reporter Juliet Eilperin puts the pedal to the metal in her Friday story, "More Frequent Heat Waves Linked to Global Warming." We're told "scientists who have studied decades of weather records and computer models" are connecting the heat to Al Gore's favorite bogeyman.

Eilperin lines up all the studies promoted by global-warming salesmen, and the skeptics aren't granted an appearance until the end, in paragraph 18: "Some climate experts and industry lobbyists, however, question the correlation between global warming and heat waves."

But here's one place where I just start to choke on the panicked claims.

Since July, 179 Americans, most of them Californians, have died in the current heat wave; more than 52,000 died during the 2003 episode in Europe, where air conditioning is less common.

For Fox News fans who like Alan Colmes almost as much as they like Eleanor Clift or Helen Thomas, Wednesday night’s “Hannity and Colmes” was a blessed event (hat tip to Expose the Left with a video link to follow).

In a special Wednesday night edition of our ongoing “Friday Night Fights” series, in the left corner, Alan “I’m only here to disagree with everything my more intelligent partner says” Colmes. In the right corner, Mark “The Great One” Levin. Let’s get ready to rrrrrrrummmmmbbbble.