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Under the corrupt cloak of a "book review," this Sunday's Los Angeles Times (July 30, 2006) continues its underhanded and one-sided assault on the theory of intelligent design (ID). "The language of life," by Robert Lee Hotz*, is a review of three new works that attack intelligent design. The review was promoted on the top of the front page of the "Sunday preview" edition under the heading, "Less than 'intelligent design': Darwin's believers debunk the theory." And rather than providing its readers an honest critique, the Times' "review" is nothing less than a full-on Darwin propaganda piece. Hotz begins his article as follows (emphasis/link mine),

Without a doubt, Americans who have even a rudimentary understanding of the history of the Arab-Israeli conflict and Islamic terrorism must be amazed by the continued ignorance being exhibited by the mainstream media as hostilities between Hezbollah and Israel exploded in the past three weeks. One of the finest examples of this occurred on “The Chris Matthews Show” Sunday when the host concluded the program by actually blaming this flare up on – drum roll please – George W. Bush and the war in Iraq.

(Update: Video link now follows.)

Matthews began his rant:

If private citizens met a few years ago with the ambassador of a hostile country, then top US officials should do the same in the current sensitive context. That was the liberal logic Ellen Ratner of Talk Radio News put on display this morning during 'The Long & the Short of It' segment on Fox & Friends Weekend. The topic was the conflict in the Middle East. Ratner decreed that the time had come for bringing in the "partners" in the area, and that in addition to Lebanon, "that means Syria." Syria? Partner? What-evuh.

Complained Ellen: "We have not even spoken to the Syrian ambassador to the United Nations" adding - as if this clinched the case - "somebody Jim and I met with!" Concluded Ratner: "The United States has not spoken to him in a year-and-a-half, and he's in Washington!"

Social liberalism goes on parade in several articles in the Sunday WashPost. In Metro, religion reporter Michelle Boorstein focuses on plans to "ordain" Catholic "womenpriests" in Pittsburgh, including local woman Bridget Mary Meehan. The headline is "Reclaiming the Female Spirit in the Priesthood." Boorstein's article does offer some balancing comments from conservative Catholic bloggers, but it's sad that Boorstein stoops to publishing Nazi comparisons to end the piece. Patricia Fresen, who will preside over the fake ordinations, said she grew up in apartheid-era South Africa, and "If you think of Nazi times, people said they just did what they were told. If you can't get it changed, you must break it."

So, let’s assume that you’re giving the commencement address to political management graduates of a major university. Would you use this as an opportunity to bash journalists? If you were White House advisor Karl Rove, the answer would definitely be “Yes!”

As reported by the Associated Press Saturday:

"Some decry the professional role of politics, they would like to see it disappear," Rove told graduating students at the George Washington University Graduate School of Political Management. "Some argue political professionals are ruining American politics _ trapping candidates in daily competition for the news cycle instead of long-term strategic thinking in the best interest of the country."

"It's odd to me that most of these critics are journalists and columnists," he said. "Perhaps they don't like sharing the field of play. Perhaps they want to draw attention away from the corrosive role their coverage has played focusing attention on process and not substance."

Rove then seemed to be taking a whack at the liberal media modus operandi:

From the AP:

TEHRAN, Iran -- Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has ordered government and cultural bodies to use modified Persian words to replace foreign words that have crept into the language, such as "pizzas" which will now be known as "elastic loaves," state media reported Saturday.

The presidential decree, issued earlier this week, orders all governmental agencies, newspapers and publications to use words deemed more appropriate by the official language watchdog, the Farhangestan Zaban e Farsi, or Persian Academy, the Irna official news agency reported.

The unborn children of teenage mothers who don't want them are better off dead. I don't see any other way to intepret the Boston Globe's editorial of this morning Pregnant and Frightened. The editorial was prompted by a recently-passed Senate bill prohibiting the transport of minors across state lines for purposes of an abortion in violation of parental consent or notification laws.

In the course of condemning the legislation, the Globe wrote:

"It is hard to see how forcing a frightened 15-year-old to carry an unwanted pregnancy to term will improve the life of the teen or her child."

As reported by NewsBusters, Ann Coulter recently made a rather controversial observation about former President Clinton. The writing crew of CBS’s “Late Night with David Letterman” decided to take issue with Coulter’s views on Thursday.

As this is a bit delicate in nature, the potentially offensive section – along with the video link – will be placed on the “Read More” page.

After joking with sidekick Paul Shaffer about who Coulter was, Letterman said:

On two occasions, here and here, this column has taken Good Morning America's Kate Snow to task. Fairness thus behooves us to recognize that Kate gave Howard Dean a fair-'n-balanced going over on this morning's show.

Snow got things off to a frosty start: "We mentioned the president's approval rating. It's about 38% in our last poll. Not so good. In another recent poll, the Democrats' positive [rating was] just 32%. To be blunt, are you blowing an opportunity here? Are you not capitalizing on the president's weakness?"

Later, Snow dumped on Dean's freezing-cold relationship with Rahm Emanuel, the Illinois congressman who heads up the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, and with whom Dean notoriously clashed over the spending of campaign funds.

After her stunning knockout of Fox News’s resident liberal Juan Williams last Friday night, radio talk show host Laura Ingraham was looking to defend her title this Friday against Medea Benjamin. For those unfamiliar, Benjamin is the co-founder of the anti-war group Code Pink who heckled visiting Iraqi Prime Minister Mouri al-Maliki during his address to Congress Wednesday (hat tip and video courtesy of Ms. Underestimated and Expose the Left).

Ingraham (once again guest-hosting the "O'Reilly Factor") was clearly ready for this one, as she stormed into the ring in the first round looking for a quick knockout. Such an opportunity presented itself when Benjamin actually said that the reason she was heckling the Prime Minister was because he refused to meet with her organization while in America. Ingraham pounced with a fury of rights and lefts:

“Are you kidding me?"

“You actually thought you were going to meet with the prime minister of Iraq?”

“Why should he meet with Code Pink?”

That was just the beginning, for when Benjamin jabbed with a statement that “we represent now, the majority voice in the United States,” Ingraham moved in like an angered Max Baer:

During an appearance on Friday's Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson on CBS, MSNBC's Keith Olbermann acknowledged accusations of liberal bias, but denied they were true, preferring to describe himself politically as "correct" and "neutral," without a "rooting interest" in who wins elections. Ignoring criticism from the MRC that, among other instances of bias during the 1998 Monica Lewinsky scandal, he once compared former Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr to Nazi war criminal Heinrich Himmler, Olbermann claimed that he was never accused of liberal bias while covering the scandal. Olbermann: "I've been accused of being a liberal, which is interesting because the last time I was on doing the news in the late 90s, I did 218 consecutive shows about Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky. And no one accused me of being a liberal then. It's very interesting the way you can be sort of pigeonholed. I like to think of myself politically as 'correct.'" (Transcript follows)

Video clip (1:20): Real (2.3 MB) or Windows Media (2.6 MB), plus MP3 audio (475 KB)

Imagine you're Larry King. You've landed the first interview with Floyd Landis, the winner of the Tour de France with a great feel-good story - until he flunked a drug test.

What would be the first question you'd ask? OK, this is Larry King. Not known as the 'king' of the hardball, so to speak. So grant Larry a few warm-up questions to put Floyd at ease. But eventually, at some point, as painful as it might be, DON'T YOU HAVE TO ASK LANDIS IF HE CHEATED?? I mean, what the heck else is the purpose of the interview?

But along with millions of others [OK, Larry's ratings haven't been that great in recent years. Let's say 'thousands of others'] I waited in vain for a question that never came. Larry King never asked Floyd Landis if he took performance-enhancing drugs that accounted for the high testosterone ratio levels the post-race test detected.

CBS anchor Bob Schieffer on Friday night forwarded the idea that the Israeli situation in Lebanon matches the U.S. miscalculation in Iraq. “Despite this heavy bombing that Hezbollah's been getting from the Israelis,” Schieffer told reporter David Martin, “they continue to attack and some critics are saying the Israelis may have made the same mistake that the United States made in Iraq, and that is underestimated what they were up against.” Martin didn't address Schieffer's comparison of the Israel-Hezbollah war with the Iraq war, but he did confirm that “Pentagon officials say both U.S. and Israeli intelligence have underestimated the strength, capabilities, and resilience of Hezbollah.” (Transcript follows)

A sample of my latest article available at MRC's BusinessandMedia.org. For the full article, click here.:

It’s not every day a politician calls for a 100-percent tax rate on national TV. Even the most liberal-friendly of journalists would be inclined to question such a punitive idea. But when former presidential candidate Dennis Kucinich called for such a tax on the “windfall profits” of oil on the July 28 “Early Show,” CBS’s Hannah Storm didn’t even bat an eyelash.

Opening an interview segment with the liberal Rep. Kucinich (D-Ohio) and the libertarian Cato Institute’s Jerry Taylor on the so-called windfall profits tax, Storm asked Kucinich how such a tax would “translate to consumers and help the people who are paying at the pump.”

Jeffrey Lord writes in the American Spectator that the extreme partisanship of CBS Evening News anchor Walter Cronkite is what created Fox News. For decades, CBS led all the others in being the most actvist network, and the sheer brazenness of that activism is what spawned the Fox News Channel.

Physicist Fritjof Capra, in his bestseller The Tao of Physics, writes that "by the very act of focusing our attention on any one concept we create its opposite." In other words, to use the language of physics, when Mr. Cronkite's very focused liberal world view blinked into the American consciousness, its conservative polar opposite blinked into existence along with it. The problem with Cronkite and his fellow "cultural artists" is that over time there emerged what seemed to many Americans as a very, very conscious decision to shut out the conservative world view altogether or, if forced to give it air time, to misrepresent it.

Thus Barry Goldwater found himself being portrayed on the CBS News as a Nazi sympathizer. A Republican Senate move to broaden the authority of the Senate Watergate Committee to investigate not just the 1972 presidential campaign but reports of Democratic malfeasance in the presidential campaigns of 1968 and 1964 was not simply defeated in the Democratic Senate but uninvestigated completely by Cronkite's CBS.

The following letter was sent on Friday to Rob Owen, President of the Television Critics Association, in reaction to reports that about 100 TV critics walked out of a presentation by Fox News Channel Chairman and CEO Roger Ailes, in protest of Fox’s "conservative spin."

Rob Owen, President
Television Critics Association

Dear Mr. Owen:

I was appalled when I read news accounts about the utter lack of respect that so-called "fair" and "balanced" members of your organization exhibited toward Fox News Channel’s Chairman Roger Ailes Monday night. Such open contempt for Fox speaks volumes about their personal intolerance and disdain for any point of view that doesn’t reflect their liberal ideology.

Blame the U.S. for a lack of diplomacy in its support of Israel is the theme of Friday’s “news analysis” by reporter Helene Cooper, “2 Steps Back: Rice’s Careful Diplomacy Falters Under Renewed Assertiveness by the U.S.”

Along the way, Cooper states as fact the usual misleading clichés about Bush’s “go-it-alone approach” to diplomacy and war.

“For the past year, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has worked assiduously to resurrect the importance of traditional diplomacy and building consensus among world leaders after America’s go-it-alone approach to Iraq.”

After being plugged relentlessly by the New York Times and other "objective" media outlets, the ratings for Air America continue to drop. Brian Maloney has the details:

Like an ice cream cone left in the hot July sun, Air America Radio's ratings are melting in some key (read: liberal) regions of the country.

Based on fresh ratings data released Thursday evening, the "progressive" radio network has lost strength in three cities where it had previously found the most listener support: Portland, Seattle and Denver.

Representing the spring 2006 Arbitron reporting period, these results provide one of the two most important report cards for the entire year.

Already Arabic channel Al Jazeera wants to start an English version to run in the U.S., with a TV studio in Washington. It will be TNN, the Terrorist News Network, competing against CNN.

But now another America hater, Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez, wants to launch a channel in the U.S.

Reports the AP:

CARACAS, Venezuela Telesur has expanded to 17 Latin American countries in its first year on the air. Now officials with the TV network financed by Venezuela and four other nations is eyeing U-S markets.

Telesur today marked its first anniversary.

In the July 31st edition of Newsweek, Senior Editor Jonathan Alter declared Bush's veto of stem cell funding "may well doom thousands to die prematurely," and blamed the decision on Bush's "inflexibility, obsession with his conservative base, religious arrogance and contempt for scientific consensus."

Alter began this week's column, entitled, "It Was A Veto Of A Lifetime," in ominous tones: "July 19, 2006, was a dark day for anyone who, like me, has experienced life-threatening illness. President Bush's veto of a modest bill that would have merely allowed surplus embryos from fertility clinics to be used for pathbreaking research instead of tossed in the garbage is more than a political blunder. And for those with a friend or relative who is sick - in other words, almost everyone—it is more than an abstraction. By slowing cures for several major diseases, this decision may well doom thousands to die prematurely. It contradicts the whole idea of what it means to be 'pro-life.'"

For your viewing pleasure, MSNBC decided to add to the Friday Night Fights series with a special Thursday edition. However, as "Hardball's" producers must have believed the challenger in the left corner, host Chris Matthews, was going to be outmatched by the challenger in the right corner, they decided to film the segment with an audience conveniently stocked with Ann Coulter haters. As a result, the fight turned more into a tag-team wrestling match than traditional mono-a-mono boxing.

It was quite evident from the onset that this was going to be a team effort by Matthews and his audience when he began:

Now, I want to know right off the front -- we`re going to use our audience in a very profane way. Who loves Ann Coulter? (APPLAUSE) Who vomits at the mention of her name? (APPLAUSE)

Nice way to introduce your guest, Chris. It seems impossible to imagine you introducing someone like Al Franken in such a fashion. Yet, Matthews wasn’t done. His next uppercut came only seconds later when he asked Coulter, “Do you have a soul?” This was followed a bit later with a right hook when Matthews said Ann was "All brain, no heart."

With that as pretext, this is a melee that must be watched to be fully appreciated. Here is the video. Pay particular attention to the people standing behind Coulter strategically placed to always be shaking their heads in disgust on virtually every one of her words. And, make sure that you have no drinking vessels around when Matthews asks Coulter to elaborate on the position she recently espoused concerning a former president’s sexual preference. (Transcript follows).

(Update: For those interested, here is a video of the beginning of the interview, as well as another part of this segment.)

I dont' know about you, but when I think petroleum industry expert, I think Comedy Central's Jon Stewart.

Okay, I don't, and The Washington Post's Tomoeh Murakami Tse probably doesn't either. But that didn't stop the Post reporter from tossing the liberal comedian into her story on oil profits:

The big numbers have become a popular target of politicians in an election year and fodder for late-night comedians.

On Wednesday, Jon Stewart told his "Daily Show" audience that BP PLC's $7.27 billion profit meant that the British oil giant made $55,000 a minute during the quarter.

"How did they do it? It's not just unmitigated greed. BP's secret is they drill into banks," Stewart said, as the image of a drill boring through a ceiling into a vault popped up on the screen.

Can you imagine the Today show or other MSM program airing a segment offering advice to men on how to train their wives to display better behavior . . . by treating them like zoo animals? A segment illustrated with footage of hyenas, baboons and other members of the wild kingdom undergoing training? Don't bother to answer.

Yet, incredibly, that's just what the Today show did this morning. Oh, with one small difference. It was a how-to . . . for wives who want to train their husbands.

'Today' introduced the segment this way: "One woman discovered she could train her husband the way they train animals at the zoo. Does your husband act like a sea lion, or a baboon, or a hyena?"

MRC's Brent Baker has noted ABC News' hyper-ventilation over Exxon's 'breathtaking' profits. This morning it was NBC's turn.

As everyone knows, the way to decrease the price of a product is . . . to raise taxes on it? As contradictory as the notion might sound, it appears to be the Today show's preferred solution to $3/gallon gas.

It was the news of Exxon's $10.3 billion second-quarter profit that gave Today an opening to air its n-th iteration of the 'soaring gas prices' story. In an innovative bit of demagoguery, Today even displayed a clock informing us that Exxon racked up profits at the rate of $1,317.66 per second.

The fact that Jason Leopold doesn't have a television show is a significant reason to believe that there is some sanity within the TV news business. However, the fact that Keith Olbermann still has one after years of failure does make one wonder about the mental acuity of the folks at MSNBC.

When you think about it, aside from its host, "Countdown with Keith Olbermann" has a lot of things going for it. It's got nice graphics, some different music to it, and a snappy pace. Far left bloggers routinely urge their readers to watch. It never fails to get good press from liberal journalists whose greatest fantasy is Roger Ailes getting hit by a bus--which may explain why so many of them have been taken by a guy whose bizarre antics, strange demeanor, journalistic ineptitude, and ridiculous pomposity should have gotten him laughed out of the news business in under three months.

It's probably safe to assume that Olbermann is aware of all this. How else could one explain his latest desperate ploy for attention, donning a mask of Bill O'Reilly while doing a Nazi salute? Now, via Olbermann Watch, we learn that NBC and the "Countdown" staff planned the entire thing.

Surprised? I sure was. I mean who ever would have thought that a guy who is afraid to interview anyone to the right of Hugo Chavez for fear of getting embarrassed would ever need to plan such brilliant humor out beforehand?

Of course, Bob Cox and the other OW folks might be lying. After all, it's quite possible Olbermann came up with the joke right after a brief bathroom break with his Bill O'Reilly hand puppet.

If Democrats win big this fall, David Gregory's Thursday story on NBC Nightly News may look prescient, but his effort to show how Republicans are newly in trouble in suburban Philadelphia suffered from several analytical flaws. Of those in four featured soundbites, three complained about Iraq, including one comment from a Democratic congressional candidate who hardly represented any trend among Republicans, and one lamented Bush's lack of “fiscal responsibility.” Unmentioned: Illegal immigration, an issue on which many Republicans disagree with Bush. Gregory served up as emblematical of Republican troubles a “lifelong Republican” and two “Republican voters,” but while they may be frustrated with national Republicans, if they are truly Republicans why would they vote for a candidate from the opposition party? Gregory described the Haverford area as “reliably Republican in the past,” asserting that “this year the mood has changed.” But seconds later, he undermined his premise when he acknowledged that the area “has been trending Democratic in recent years, even narrowly supporting John Kerry for President."

At the top of his piece, viewers saw a zoom-in on a car's bumper sticker with an image of a woman pulling out her hair:
“Haven't You Had It with Republicans?
“Vote for Change!”

ABC's World News with Charles Gibson on Thursday night hyperventilated over “breathtaking profits” for ExxonMobil, how the company made “more in 30 seconds than many families earn in a year" and how “just” $4 billion went to exploration while $6 billion went to “enriching” shareholders. But ABC never cited the company's quarterly profit number -- which at $10 billion matches $4 billion plus $6 billion and means 40 percent went for exploration.

Reporter Betsy Stark asserted: "The earnings reported today are astounding. In three months, Exxon earned $114 million a day, $80,000 a minute. Or, look at it this way: In 30 seconds, the ExxonMobil corporation makes about what an average American family earns in an entire year." (ABC charges more for a prime time ad than many families make in a year, but it's an equally silly comparison. A better one: Charles Gibson earns more in a day than most make in a year.) Stark fretted that “Exxon said just $4 billion went to exploring for new sources of oil. But $6 billion went to buying back its stock, enriching its shareholders.” How awful. But those two expenditures match the total of Exxon's profit, a number Stark conveniently failed to report verbally or on screen. Stark concluded by noting how “Democrats denounced" the profits announced by oil companies. Well, Stark and ABC certainly advanced the Democratic agenda. (Transcript follows)

Former CNN and MSNBC political commentator and long time leftist writer, Bill Press, had to admit he was taken in by an old internet hoax today.

As reported by NewsBusters, Press citied the results of a study by the "Lovenstein Institute" that placed president George W. Bush at the bottom of all the modern presidents in IQ scores. Unfortunately for Mr. Press' commentary, however, there is no such organization as the "Lovenstein Institute". It is an internet hoax that lefties so love to cite.

However, Press's apology sure didn't seem like much of an apology. On the "Parting Shot" section of his Blog for his Sirius Radio show, Press, in essence, said he was wrong but is still right about how dumb Bush is.