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On the eve of the August 29 second anniversary of Hurricane Katrina striking the Mississippi-Louisiana Gulf Coast, as the American news media prepared to do a slew of anniversary-update stories, the non-partisan Political and Economic Research Council released a hefty study of how the region's small-business sector is doing.

The study, Recovery, Renewal, and Resiliency: Gulf Coast Small Businesses Two Years Later, by Michael Turner, Ph.D.; Robin Varghese, Ph.D.; and Patrick Walker, M.A., got very little press notice.

The New Orleans Times-Picayune mentioned it in an August 29 story. So did USA Today. And that's about it.

Here's how USA Today mentioned the study:

On the face of it, this Hartford (Conn.) Courant editorial about Fred Thompson's long-awaited entry into the presidential race seems fair. Or is it?

Initially, the editorial tries to give Thompson the benefit of the doubt when it comes to some of the more popular charges against him:

He has some baggage, too. He carries a reputation, deserved or not, of being a bit lazy. (So did Ronald Reagan, and it didn't hurt him.) And back when Mr. Thompson was minority counsel on the Senate Watergate Committee investigating the Nixon White House, the paranoid occupant of the Oval Office was said to have considered Mr. Thompson none too bright. (Critics said the same thing about Mr. Reagan, but that didn't hurt him either, and besides, it wasn't true.)

CBS Public Eye blogger Matthew Felling has a message for those of us who complain about media bias. Don't expect the media to pursue balance. In fact, it's YOU who should balance your news diet, with slanted reporting from the opposing side of the political spectrum. Insisted Felling, "It’s one thing for an ideologue to cry bias over this story or another, but it’s far more productive to offer a solution or an alternative."

From Felling's September 6 entry "Fairly Balance... Yourself":

If you're a Rush listener, try Ed Schultz. If you like Keith Olbermann’s take, change channels afterwards and see what Sean Hannity has to say. Likewise, if you see something coming down the pipe that looks like the "Censored" list or Goldberg's liberal media smoking gun -- and you initially resist it -- don't dismiss it offhand.

Until we push ourselves out of our media comfort zone, we risk continuing to argue past each other -- us of the by-now-trite 'red' and 'blue' Americas --wearing blinders and not connecting at all. So even if you like your blinders and feel intellectually justified in wearing them, don’t be afraid to swivel your head once in awhile to get a fuller view.

The CBS ombudsblogger --Public Eye purports "to bring transparency to the editorial operations of CBS News"-- offered this advice after he tossed up a liberal and a conservative complaint about media bias, hoping to show that left and right-wing complaints have equal merit and/or that media bias is subjective according to the ideological lens of the beholder.

But what were the examples he cited?

Fugitive Democratic Party donor Norman Hsu was arrested today in Colorado, according to the Associated Press. However, while discussing the fact that many of the politicians to whom Hsu gave money are returning it or giving it to charity, the AP seems strangely reluctant to discuss the mysterious sources of Hsu's contributions. The story talks about several Democrats who are returning Hsu's gifts, and states,

The growing flap over Hsu's contributions prompted Democratic presidential candidate Chris Dodd to release a statement Thursday vowing "to refuse to accept or possess campaign contributions raised, solicited, or delivered by fugitives from justice."

"Growing flap". That's nice. But it would be even nicer if one of the so-called professional media organizations would devote some time to digging into the actual source of Hsu's large contributions.

On Thursday morning I got a phone call from Catherine Donaldson-Evans, a staff writer/reporter for Fox News, about our Newsbusters piece titled "Hollywood: G.I. Joe no Longer American Soldier But an 'International' Operative?"

She saw our report and it struck the interest of Fox News to the point that she wanted some further reaction from me on the subject for a piece she was writing. After a nice half-hour chat, she assured me that her story would soon appear on the Fox News main site.

True to her word, today appeared hers with the headline "G.I. Joe to Become Global Task Force in Movie."

Newsbusters is nicely identified in the 8th paragraph.

"I find it outrageous that they'd want to drop everything American" from the character, said conservative blogger Warner Todd Huston, who wrote about the rumors this week on Newsbusters.org and his own blog. "That's nuts."

Please do go read her story following up on the one featured here on Newsbusters.

On Monday, New York Times Arts writer George Gene Gustines profiled gay novelist Perry Moore, a fervent supporter of gay rights -- for fictional comic book characters.

"Novelist's Superhero Is Out to Right Wrongs" began:

"Perry Moore has the sinewy physique and golden looks of a California surfer, but get him talking about comics, and he can out-geek the biggest fanatic. He also has the fervor of an activist when discussing the dearth -- and occasional shoddy treatment -- of gay superheroes in mainstream comic books."

Now there's a vital cause we can all rally behind!

"It is an issue close to the heart of Mr. Moore, who is gay, and he has funneled his passion into a young-adult novel. 'Hero,' published in hardback last week by Hyperion Teen, tells the story of Thom Creed, coping not only with high school, sexual orientation and a strained home life, but also with his own budding superpowers. In telling Thom's story, Mr. Moore, like some of the costumed champions he admires, hopes to right some wrongs.

Possible discussion point: Who's going to win the U.S. Open Saturday and Sunday?

Reminiscent of the movie Rashomon, liberal talk radio host Ed Schultz had an encounter in a bar which occurred in different ways depending on which witness is recounting what happened. Actually there are Rashomon versions of how this former conservative became a liberal in the first place. According to Schultz, he became converted to liberalism over baloney sandwiches with his future wife at a Salvation Army cafeteria. South Dakota Politics blog in 2004 gave a more monetary reason for Schultz's "conversion":

"Today" newsreader Ann Curry managed to work a snide and not-so-subtle shot at President Bush into her news recap this morning.

ANN CURRY: The U.S. military is reporting that seven U.S. troops were killed on Thursday, four Marines in fighting in Anbar Province, where President Bush hailed gains in security this week, and three soldiers who died in a roadside bombing in northern Iraq. Their deaths bring the U.S. toll to 3,750 since the war began.

Darn it, when will Osama Bin Laden's jack-in-the-box moments start hurting Republicans, as they should? That was the prevailing sentiment on today's "Morning Joe." At 6:40 a.m. EDT, reacting to the news that OBL is planning to release a new video to mark the sixth anniversary of 9-11, Host Joe Scarborough expressed his perplexity to NBC News political director Chuck Todd.

JOE SCARBOROUGH: Hey Chuck, we see Osama Bin Laden is appearing again, coming to a computer somewhere near you soon. Of course Republicans wish he would show up two days before the election cause the guy certainly helped George Bush beat John Kerry back in 2004. But how does the re-emergence of Osama Bin Laden impact this race? Do we assume that it's going to help the Republican party again like it did in 2004?

CHUCK TODD: I don't know. You keep wondering when is the double-edged part of this sword [going to] show up? Does him popping up on TV screens serve as a reminder, you know on Iraq, the public might think that Iraq is a diversion, and hey you Bush took his eye off of the ball. This guy is still out there. But let's see if it is him. I guess he's using Hair Club for Men now, Just for Men [earlier Joe had joked that OBL was using "For Terrorists Only."] . . . Where do you get hair color in the mountains of Pakistan? I didn't realize you could do that. Knee jerk, it seems to still help Republicans, even Hillary Clinton said that. She probably shouldn't have done that, but she did say that. But at some point, the more Osama pops up, it's may end up eventually hurting the Republicans.

View video here.

Many of us here, of course, take it for granted that the news media focuses far more on any scandals or troubles that occur with Republicans while at the same time they try their level best to ignore those that are perpetrated by Democrats. Sometimes that claim is open to interpretation, sometimes it seems too obvious to doubt, but that the media favors the Dems seems beyond doubt. The MRC recently had a much talked about media bias report that went a long way toward proving with statistics that our contention is true (Rise and Shine on Democrats), at least as far as morning TV shows go.

But, it's always helpful to get as many statistics as possible to buttress our case. I have here another small indication of how the GOP is treated unequally with the Democrat Party revealing Media Bias in the form of a Nexis* search of two ongoing, but not equally treated, scandals in the news. Our search parameters covered the last 90 days from September 6th back.

Here are chilling words for any parent to hear: "Hollywood recruits kids to fight climate change." It isn't every day that someone admits that they are basically out to indoctrinate children with an ideological position, but Helen Andrews of Politico.com reports to us just such an admission from the globaloney forces in Hollywood. Not only do they intend to brainwash our children (and already are, for that matter) with their anti-capitalist, anti-growth ideas using fuzzy animals and cartoonish figures, but they are presenting it as a "moral" issue and, just as badly, trying to convince our children that humans aren't any more special than the animals -- because, you see, kids are "an animal," too. Naturally, these globaloney pushers imagine there isn't a thing wrong with their actions despite that they are trying to inculcate political positions on unsuspecting children, undercutting their parent's ideologies, and undermining the American way of life.

You knew it was coming. It was only a matter of time. Al Gore is working on a sequel to his 2006 eco-ganda film "An Inconvenient Truth," which will be called "The Path to Survival" and released on April 22, 2008, otherwise known as Earth Day.

Global warming “deniers” may begin thinking of it as “An Inconvenient Truth 2: Non-Electric Boogaloo.”

Two days before Oprah Winfrey is to host a celebrity-packed fundraiser for Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama, NBC's Andrea Mitchell championed her potential ability to “turn her magic into votes for Barack Obama” and ABC's David Wright marveled: “Imagine the power of Oprah in an Obama campaign ad.” In a soundbite, Democratic strategist Donna Brazile gushed that “O plus O equals opportunity for Barack Obama to win in 2008.”

On Thursday's NBC Nightly News, anchor Brian Williams justified his show's story by asserting that Winfrey's “support for him [Obama] is getting new attention” -- attention NBC decided to give the topic. Mitchell admired how Winfrey “can turn a first-time author into an instant best-seller, single-handedly reviving an industry,” leading her to wonder: “Can the billionaire entertainer, and richest woman in America, turn her magic into votes for Barack Obama?”

Whether or not one agrees with the political views of Markos Moulitsas, there's no getting around the fact his website has become not just a powerful force in the blogosphere, but is also shaping the Democrat Party.

This raises an important question: Why isn't there a conservative website like Daily Kos?

Providing some answers this week were Dean Barnett at the Weekly Standard and David Weigel of Reason.

Barnett accurately frames the issue (emphasis added throughout):

In today's media, anti-male sexism is the rule far more than anti-female sexism. Whether it's calling men "idiots," creating smart mom/stupid dad TV shows, publishing books with titles like "Are Men Necessary," our culture is full of what some scholars are calling the "WAW effect," short for Women are Wonderful. These days, it's tough to catch a break if you're an unapologetic male.

What's interesting about the situation is that it's not really that removed from the way things used to be in Western society in which men were the preferred sex. In a fascinating address provocatively titled "Is There Anything Good About Men?" Florida State University professor Roy Baumeister discusses how we've moved from male superiority to male inferiority as well as the reasons behind that shift (h/t Helen Smith):

I said that today most people hold more favorable stereotypes of women than men. It was not always thus. Up until about the 1960s, psychology (like society) tended to see men as the norm and women as the slightly inferior version. During the 1970s, there was a brief period of saying there were no real differences, just stereotypes. Only since about 1980 has the dominant view been that women are better and men are the inferior version.

The Fairfield County [Conn.] Weekly is one of those papers that is available for free at diners and bus stations, and it's usually very liberal in its views. (A sampling of recent article titles includes one where the author claims Rep. Chris Shays (R-Conn.) was checking out her décolletage at an event, and another calling former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales a "quaint torture-monkey.")

In the first read-through, this article took me by surprise...could one of Fairfield County's most cherished liberal institutions be going "right"? Entitled You're Worth It! For one measure of your worth to society, look back at all you W2s, author Phil Maymin tries to make sense of who is revered in our society and why. He goes through a series of examples (Bill Gates, sports stars, philanthropists and artists whose work gains wealth posthumously), and finally decides:

If part of NewsBusters' mission is keeping the MSM on its toes, it looks like we're succeeding when it comes to the MSNBC show "Morning Joe." For two days running, host Joe Scarborough has mentioned our site, conscious that we're on the prowl for evidence of liberal bias. Yesterday at about 6:30 A.M. EDT, Joe and newsreader Mika Brzezinski were discussing the fact that President Bush had mentioned to Robert Draper, author of the new Bush biography "Dead Certain," that he was expecting to replenish his financial coffers upon leaving office.

Said Scarborough “I hope NewsBusters heard that cause you said [it was only] a little [untoward on Bush's part].’ I say ‘a lot.’ Let them make me the poster boy today.”

Joe had NewsBusters on the noggin again today. At about 7:07 A.M. EDT Mika injected her opinion into the reading of a news item about Fred Thompson's "Tonight Show" appearance.

Video Clip: Real (2 MB) or Windows (2 MB), plus MP3 (381 KB)

MIKA BRZEZINSKI: In true Hollywood fashion, the former actor made his long-awaited announcement on last night's "Tonight Show." It was sort of underwhelming, but . . . it's done.

When Mika made to move along after taking her potshot, Joe stopped her short.

JOE SCARBOROUGH [presumably speaking to producer Chris Licht]: Hey, can you call NewsBusters?

I just viewed this video via Michelle Malkin of failed sportscaster Keith Olberman naming her Worst Person of the Week and pushing a quote by Geraldo Rivera in doing it:

“Michelle Malkin is the most vile, hateful commentator I’ve ever met in my life,” he says. “She actually believes that neighbors should start snitching out neighbors, and we should be deporting people.

“It’s good she’s in D.C. and I’m in New York,” Rivera sneers. “I’d spit on her if I saw her.”

Now it appears Michelle has had a small ad buy which served to call attention to the quote banned by Quigo. So, Rivera's ugliness is okay for broadcast on MSNBC in another sad attempt to further demean the target in this, but it's not okay to point a finger at Rivera with his own words?

Bill Clinton’s appearance on Wednesday’s "Larry King Live" gave new life to the old nickname for CNN as the "Clinton News Network." Host Larry King fawned over Clinton during the 40-minute interview, asking the impeached former president questions on wide range of topics. King asked Clinton if Osama bin Laden was ever going to caught. After Clinton gave the standard Democrat line that not enough resources are being sent to Afghanistan in the hunt for the al Qaeda leader, King added, "You almost got him." Clinton answered affirmatively, and added that he "never had a chance to deploy large numbers of troops to Afghanistan."

For the third time in less than a week, ABC anchor and former Clinton aide George Stephanopoulos appeared on "Good Morning America" to dourly assess Republican Fred Thompson’s 2008 chances. On the Thursday edition of GMA, the host of "This Week" attempted to set an impossible bar for the former senator. "...He can't make a mistake," Stephanopoulos breathlessly claimed.

Earlier in the segment, the ABC host negatively spun Thompson’s standings in the polls. Some might compliment the performance of a candidate who, upon entering the 2008 race, is only narrowly trailing the front-runner. Not Stephanopoulos. After claiming that many thought the former actor would surge into first place early in the summer, he critiqued, "That hasn't happened. Most of the latest polls show that he's in second place behind Rudy Giuliani....He hasn't quite rocketed out the way he expected."

The Canadian Mining Journal is yearning for "impartial journalists" to investigate the organized opposition to a proposed gold mine in the impoverished village of Rosia Montana, Romania - opposition that the CEO of the Canadian gold mining company Gabriel Resources alleges is not local and reflects not the view of the people of the region but, instead, represents the views of radical environmental groups backed by billionaire George Soros.

In a blistering speech at a press conference in Bucharest yesterday, Gabriel CEO Alan Hill outlined the web of connections between Soros and many of the environmental groups and NGOs opposing the project, and also pushed back against the many lies being told by the opposition.

The Canadian Mining Journal reports:

The crew at Power Line has been doing a superb job of following up the case of the Holy Land Foundation, in which the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) was named as an unidicted co-conspirator. The offical indictment can be found in the previous link.

I know, it's a dog-bites-man story, but I thought I'd pass along that longtime White House correspondent and left-wing columnist Helen Thomas addressed the College Democrats at the University of Maryland on Wednesday evening.

I live close to the campus, but unfortunately found out about the event after the fact and hence was unable to drop in and take in my own observations. Fortunately Maryland's student paper The Diamondback covered the event. Unfortunately the reporter covering the assignment failed to press Thomas on her commanding respect as a journalist while forsaking any attempt to objectively report news from her perch at the White House. In fact reporter Chidima Okaparanta labeled Thomas's abrasive technique as a "straight-shooting reporting style, especially regarding the war in Iraq."

Below are some excerpts with portions in bold reflecting my emphasis:

Writing at National Review Online, Kimberly Kagan of the Institute for the Study of War talks about the revitalized Dora Market in Baghdad as a sign of success in Iraq. Kagan attributes the Petraeus strategy significant credit and in doing so takes a swipe at the Washington Post for its slanted reporting on the Dora success (h/t Instapundit):

In Wednesday’s Washington Post, Sudarsan Raghavan, criticized the Dora market in an article called "Weighing the ‘Surge’: The U.S. War in Iraq Hinges on the Counterinsurgency Strategy Of Gen. Petraeus. The Results Have Been Tenuous." The Dora market is a frequent stop for visitors to Iraq assessing the progress of “the surge.” Raghavan criticizes the market, and the frequent visits it receives from distinguished guests of General Petraeus: “[T]he Dora market is a Potemkin village of sorts. The U.S. military hands out $2,500 grants to shop owners to open or improve their businesses. The military has fixed windows and doors and even helped rebuild shops that had burned down, soldiers and others said.”

Yet when one considers the 300 shops reopened in the Dora market in the context of the past year, rather than in pre-2003 terms (more than 800 shops then, according to Raghavan), it is easy to understand why General Petraeus might think it worthwhile for visitors to see the Dora market.

Tennis lovers must watch the following video.

Bill Clinton must love the smell of historical rehabilitation in the morning. His new book is prompting gushy copy from the nation’s largest book-selling chains. I get the E-mails. This week’s E-mail from Borders has a splashy color picture of Clinton shaking hands with colorful natives of Africa under the headline "Our greatest gift." Giving of ourselves is our greatest gift? Or Bill Clinton is? The copy is also syrupy:

From a personality who’s larger than life comes a portrait of actions that speak louder than words. Bill Clinton’s Giving: How Each of Us Can Change the World is an inspired and inspiring look at individuals and organizations making a difference every day through charity work. Clinton may have been a polarizing figure who certainly gave us a lot to talk about, but here he offers portraits of efforts anyone can celebrate while giving us plenty to think about.

This has been happening so much in the past few years that it is reaching the point of redundancy to report on it. A politician is caught up in a major scandal and/or corruption. The media dutifully reports on it but leaves out one key factor. The political party of the fallen politician. And can you guess which political party is ALWAYS missing from these reports whenever such an affliliation is conveniently purged from the news stories?

Honeymoon? Forget about it. The morning after his announcement, "Today" wasted no time in going after Fred Thompson. Like a Las Vegas bride with a bad hangover, Meredith Vieira seemed particularly grumpy. At 7:05 a.m. EDT, the "Today" co-anchor interviewed Tim Russert.

MEREDITH VIEIRA: The other candidates are out debating last night, and he's on Leno, he's yukking it up announcing that he's running for president as if it is a punch line. Was that a smart thing for him to do?

Vieira's vitriolic tone left no doubt that, in her mind, it wasn't. Russert suggested that Thompson needs to establish "real credibility" that he is the consistent conservative in the race, and raise money.

View video here.

Meredith riffed off Russert's "credibility" line to take her next shot.

Was Fox News simply offering solid reporting on the inside baseball of the Fred Thompson campaign, or could there have been an element of payback for the candidate having blown off the Fox-sponsored debate last night in favor of appearing on NBC's "Tonight Show"?

A Fox News article by chief political correspondent Carl Cameron [with AP input], Fred Thompson Campaign Makes Drastic Shift on Eve of Kickoff, paints a decidedly negative portrait of matters inside the Thompson campaign.

Most notable is this line:

Thompson appears to be losing his core of original supporters at a quickening pace.