Blogs

Fans of the highly-respected British publications The Economist and the Financial Times are certainly familiar with Clive Crook, one of the leading economics journalists on the international landscape.

On Thursday, Crook wrote an article entitled "The Steamrollers of Climate Science," in which he took on the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change as being "a seriously flawed enterprise and unworthy of the slavish respect accorded to it by most governments and the media."

In fact, Crook painted a picture of this U.N. outfit possessing the factual integrity of Baghdad Bob (emphasis added throughout):

To be sure, the term "shrinkage" means many things to people, especially fans of the hit television program "Seinfeld."

Yet, to folks at the New York Times, it means facing financial realities, and doing more to save money.

To right-thinking Americans concerned with the ongoing bias problem in the media, this shrinkage means less liberal propaganda.

As reported by the Associated Press Sunday (emphasis added throughout):

The media frames America in anthropogenic global warming articles as the evil Earth Killer, and everything from a sparrow flying into a glass window to Darfur's genocide is America's and George Bush's fault, regardless of facts or science.

In an August 4 article which stated President Bush invited the world's leading economic powers to participate in a "climate change summit” that intends to set "voluntary goals for lowering greenhouse gas emissions while sustaining growth,” the Washington Post upheld this tradition by stating (emphasis mine throughout):

The United States, the world's largest emitter of greenhouse gases, is not a party to the Kyoto agreement, which calls for the 35 participating nations to cut greenhouse gas emissions. Rapidly developing countries including India, China and Brazil are not bound by the deal, despite booming growth and worsening air pollution in those nations, a factor that has caused Bush to call the accord unworkable.

Once again, something important breaks into Old Media, in this case the Orange County Register, only because a "mere" columnist decides it is:

Who funds the mosques and Islamic centers that in the past 30 years have set up shop on just about every Main Street around the planet?

For the answer, let us turn to a fascinating book called "Alms for Jihad: Charity And Terrorism in the Islamic World," by J. Millard Burr, a former USAID relief coordinator, and the scholar Robert O Collins.

..... Unfortunately, (at Amazon) if you then try to buy "Alms for Jihad," you discover that the book is "Currently unavailable. We don't know when or if this item will be back in stock." Hang on, it was only published last year. At Amazon, items are either shipped within 24 hours or, if a little more specialized, within four to six weeks, but not many books from 2006 are entirely unavailable with no restock in sight.

As of the time of this post, the hardback version of the book is not even listed at Amazon. While the eBook can be "purchased," there is nothing available to download after purchase (Grrr).

Put on a sweater, because you'll feel a chill as Steyn explains why (bold is mine):

Manmade global warming alarmism took a disgraceful turn for the worse this weekend when Newsweek published a lengthy cover-story repeatedly calling skeptics "deniers" that are funded by oil companies and other industries with a vested interest in obfuscating the truth.

In fact, the piece several times suggested that publishing articles skeptical of man's role in climate change is akin to misleading Americans about the dangers of smoking.

Despicably titled "Global-Warming Deniers: A Well-Funded Machine," the article painted a picture of an evil cabal whose goal is to thwart science at the detriment of the environment and the benefit of their wallets.

Worse still, the piece's many authors painted every skeptical scientific report they referred to as being part of this cabal while including absolutely no historical temperature data to prove that today's global temperatures are in any way abnormal.

Maybe most disingenuous, there wasn't one word given to how much money corporations and entities with a vested interest in advancing the alarmism are spending, or who they are. Yet, in the very first paragraph, one of the main participants in this evil cabal was identified (emphasis added throughout):

Over at TimesWatch, I've posted a short list of the parts of the recent New York Times front-page story on Chelsea Clinton that aren't completely and transparently flattering -- such as how she's entered her personal "Decade of Greed."

The author of that puffy baked Cheeto of an article, Jodi Kantor, was for a time the Arts and Leisure section editor of the Times, and before that, she was one of several people the Times enticed away from the liberal website Slate.com, the online "magazine" started by Microsoft in 1996 and bought by the Washington Post in 2004.

Your turn...

At the Black Hat computer Hacker's conference held in Las Vegas last week, Neal Krawetz of "Hacker Factor" showed how easily the MSM has been tricked into believing the fake images that al Qaeda has offered to further their propaganda. Krawetz specifically referred to two images, one the July 27, 2006 image of al Qaeda second in command al-Zawahiri supposedly sitting in a modern television studio. It was an image that had the tongues of the MSM and pundits alike wagging. How is it, they clucked, that al-Zawahiri could be sitting in a modern television studio yet still could not be found?

Krawetz demonstrated how the elements of the two images, however, are special effects and not real.

Can a radio station owner submit an obscene set of call letters for his station and have it approved by the Federal Communications Commission? Brent Bozell's culture column passes along that two prospective stations in Hawaii were granted the call letters KUNT (and KWTF), which the station owner quickly apologized for submitting. But the FCC, for its many millions in expenditures, has no living, breathing human checking to make sure that embarrassing call letters aren't included in their usual online submission process. Brent elaborates:

 

Original caption:

A CNN crew, including reporter John Roberts, broadcasts from the top the Holiday Inn early Thursday, Aug. 2, 2007, in Minneapolis, the morning after the Interstate 35W bridge collapsed over the Mississippi River during Wednesday's rush hour.

As Sean Penn gushed over despot Hugo Chavez Thursday, a former Miss Venezuela and previous co-star of the activist actor's was telling the Associated Press she hopes Penn "comes to his senses and he realizes that he's being used."

Movie lovers likely remember Maria Conchita Alonso as Robin Williams' girlfriend in "Moscow on the Hudson," and Arnold Schwarzenegger's in "The Running Man."

With that in mind, the Associated Press reported Thursday (emphasis added throughout):

The decline of the Wall Street Journal, which allowed Rupert Murdoch's purchase of it, can be blamed in part on how advertisers “perhaps weren't enthralled” with the newspaper's “vitriolic right-wing attack editorials,” Washington Post op-ed writer David Ignatius contended in a Thursday column. In “The Path That Led to Murdoch,” Ignatius, a former Wall Street Journal reporter who has held a variety of top positions at the Post since 1986, asserted that during the 1990s “the Journal's editorial page increasingly did its own reporting, with equal portions of journalistic hustle and ideological spin, and it often overshadowed the news side. I suspect that helped undermine the franchise. Advertisers, in the end, perhaps weren't enthralled with a newspaper distinguished by vitriolic right-wing attack editorials.” (Screen shot is from appearance last year on the Chris Matthews Show.)

Ignatius didn't have anything to say about the impact on the New York Times of its vitriolic left-wing attack editorials and I wouldn't count on members of the mainstream media any time soon pointing to that editorial page as the culprit for declining ad revenue at the Gray Lady.

On Wednesday's The Situation Room, CNN host Wolf Blitzer, while interviewing Democratic Congressman Keith Ellison about his recent trip to Iraq, asked the Congressman about his recent controversial remarks comparing President Bush to Hitler, words that could be interpreted as a suggestion that Bush was behind the 9/11 attacks, and comments that have received little media coverage. Blitzer gave Ellison the chance to "explain exactly what you did mean," and asked if the Congressman agreed that the "comparison of Bush and Hitler" was "inappropriate." (Transcript follows)

On Friday's Countdown, MSNBC's Keith Olbermann charged that the "endless war and endless spending" had "crippled our ability to repair or just check our infrastructure," as he hosted Air America's Rachel Maddow in a discussion blaming the Minneapolis bridge collapse on Iraq war spending and unwillingness by conservatives to raise taxes. Olbermann quoted Minnesota Democratic Senator Amy Klobuchar's charge of "messed up priorities" and New York Democratic Congresswoman Louise Slaughter's labeling of bridge collapse victims as "almost victims of war" because "perpetual war depletes the funds available to maintain our infrastructure." Maddow charged that America is "paying this incredible deadly price for a brand of American conservatism that hates and demeans government." (Transcript follows)

Pajamas Media is reporting that some fireworks broke out Friday morning during the YearlyKos convention in Chicago (h/t NBer Saw the Light).

During a breakout session ironically titled "The Military and Progressives: Are They Really That Different," an as of yet unidentified soldier in uniform stood up to address the panel -- which included Wesley Clark -- to discuss how the surge is going.

According to Pajamas Media (video available here):

When a member of the journalism community is murdered, wouldn't you expect most news agencies to report it?

Well, on Thursday morning, Chauncey Bailey, the editor of the Oakland Post, was gunned down by an at that time unknown assailant.

On Friday morning, Oakland police arrested seven people at Your Black Muslim Bakery in connection with Bailey's murder.

Yet, ABC, CBS, and NBC haven't said a word about this shooting, or the connection to Your Black Muslim Bakery. Why?

Kudos go out to CNN for logging three reports on the matter Friday including this one during the 11AM EST "CNN Newsroom":

The high-tech giants of search are attempting to position themselves as successors (or is it heirs?) to Old Media.

Hold the pompoms.

Given the political proclivities and selective indifference to human rights on the part of many of those who run the search giants, it behooves bias-watchers to pay close attention to what these companies are up to, and how they play the news they carry. It appears that The Who's 1970s warning ("Meet the New Boss, Same as the Old Boss") about the results of most "revolutions" applies.

You doubt? Take a look at the disgraceful treatment blogger and syndicated columnist Michelle Malkin received at the hands of Google News in a supposedly "objective, informative" early 2006 report. The sneering condescension is palpable.

Not content to be mere observers, Google's preparation for the 2008 elections has apparently included building an out-of-balance management team in its news division (link requires free registration):

Aren't the MSM and the Dems the "let every vote count" clan? But when the Dems snuff out a GOP win on the House floor in a manner that would send the New York Times into the mother of all snits were the shoe on the other foot, the Gray Lady camouflages the facts, and even manages to place blame on the Republicans.

Take the headline from the Times' story on the way in which the Democrat wielding the gavel somehow transformed a 215-213 Republican win into a 214-214 tie resulting in the motion failing: "Partisan Anger Stalls Congress in Final Push." The Times neatly switches the focus away from the Dems' theft of the vote, and onto those angry old Republicans, who are letting their anger stand in the way of progress. To that end, the article worked in a quote from House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Ca.) [file photo]: “Their party has been hijacked by people who don’t really have an agenda but to stop progress.”

If summer heat and drought were jeopardizing crops in the Midwest, would a climate change obsessed media be having a field day (pun intended) reporting the news whilst connecting it to manmade global warming?

24 hours a day, seven days a week, right? CNN, ABC, CBS, and NBC would likely have correspondents in the cornfields giving daily updates about the gravity of the situation.

Yet, further south in Texas, there's a crop very important to Americans in tremendous danger that has gotten almost no attention.

Why? Because abnormally cold summer temperatures are threatening it, and that just doesn't fit the current media agenda. As reported by the Associated Press Friday (h/t NB reader Phillip A. Smith):

If in the run-up to last year's elections a poll identified a three percent approval rating for the way Congress - which was controlled by Republicans at the time in case you forgot - was handling the war in Iraq, do you think you would have heard about it?

Maybe on every morning and evening news program for days, and on the front pages of every newspaper, correct?

Well, on Wednesday, Zogby International released the results of a stunning new poll that got virtually no attention.

Why?

Because it identified that virtually nobody in America thinks Congress - which is now currently controlled by Democrats in case you forgot - is doing a good job concerning Iraq (emphasis added throughout, h/t Glenn Reynolds):

Grilling Cheney, Gushing For Gore

Larry King, best known recently for his scintillating interviews with thinkers such as Paris Hilton, proved that he can still ask tough questions, to conservatives that is. In an interview with Vice President Cheney about Guantanamo, he wondered, "You have to torture them when they’re there?" Former VP Al Gore, on the other hand, received puff questions about Madonna and penguins.

The French Fries of Enduring Love

Speaking of media coddling, "Good Morning America" anchors Diane Sawyer and Robin Roberts appeared to be infatuated with the story that 2008 Democratic candidate John Edwards and his wife Elizabeth spend their wedding anniversaries at Wendy’s. Roberts even promoted the former senator by referring to him as "Presidential nominee" John Edwards.

Your chance to talk about everything...including maybe the preseason college football rankings.

On Friday night’s "Inside Washington," panelists trashed Ross Buettner’s story in the New York Times playing up a close relationship between Fox News boss Roger Ailes and GOP presidential candidate Rudy Giuliani. Newsweek’s Evan Thomas said "I think this was the New York Times thinking that Ailes is Darth Vader, because they made him out to be this monster who’s given all this time to Giuliani, but the story itself and the graphics supporting it didn’t support the story." Others agreed. "There’s nothing in this story," said columnist Charles Krauthammer. Colby King of the Washington Post scornfully added, "This is exactly why newspapers in trouble," and said they acted like a tabloid. Thomas concluded, "It says more about the paranoia of the New York Times than anything else."

Is it so hard to tell a male human being from a female one? I guess to the AP it is because in a story from the 31st, the tale they told of a male inmate castrating himself with a broken disposable razor blade became the story of a male inmate castrating "herself" with a razor blade. One wonders what the AP Stylebook says about that little gem?

BOISE, Idaho - An inmate who castrated herself with a disposable razor blade after prison officials refused to treat her for gender identity disorder should have female hormone therapy paid for by the state, a federal judge said.

Someone should inform the AP that a female cannot castrate herself. It is a physical impossibility. If'n ya gots something to castrate, you ain't no woman in the first place!

Time magazine veteran Margaret Carlson, now with Bloomberg News and The Week magazine, used the Minnesota bridge collapse tragedy as a fresh excuse to tout how the public really wants a tax hike while she regretted the lack of political “will” to raise taxes and that the government can't find more money for infrastructure but can afford “$4,000 a minute on the Iraq war.” Citing a poll conducted a decade ago when Democrat Ed Rendell was Mayor of Philadelphia, on Friday's Inside Washington aired on the DC PBS station, WETA-TV channel 26, Carlson claimed that “nearly 70 percent of people polled would pay more in taxes to actually know that they could cross the 14th Street bridge safely,” a reference to a bridge between Washington, DC and Virginia. “But,” she fretted, “you can't get the will to do it. I mean, we certainly had the wake-up call in Katrina, everyone knows the situation, but can you really get it done when there's, by the way, very little money left?”

Runner Up

One of the Associated Press's earliest articles following Friday morning's release of the government's Employment Report, which showed July's unemployment ticking up 0.1% to 4.6% and new jobs increasing by 92,000, had this outrageous paragraph (backup link is here in case the article is revised or removed; bolds are mine):

Construction companies slashed 12,000 jobs in July. Manufacturers shed 2,000 and retailers cut a thousand. Some 28,000 government jobs were eliminated. In contrast, education and health care added 39,000. Leisure and hospitality expanded employment by 22,000. Professional and business services added 26,000 new positions.

Note that AP uses violent terminology to describe relatively modest decreases in employment caused by (apparently evil) private-sector employers, while it applies relatively bland verbs to much larger private-sector increases. Meanwhile, the description of the large reduction in government jobs slips into passive voice, with no perpetrator identified. Zheesh -- How obviously biased can you get?

More discussion, this week's winner, and a chart comparing Bush 43 and late Clinton-era economic performance are after the break.

A night after CBS Evening News anchor Katie Couric, without any consideration for cutting other spending, presumed taxes must be hiked to pay for infrastructure repair, CBS reporter Sharyl Attkisson ludicrously described federal and state governments as “cash-starved” as she relayed the expert view of just one person, a Democratic Congressman, whom she said blames the lack of courage to “collect” more taxes. A nice euphemism for raising taxes. On Thursday night, Couric had asked: “Are taxpayers ready to spend the billions, maybe trillions, it would take to fix all the pipelines, tunnels and bridges?” (My NB item)

On Friday night, Attkisson noted that out “of the $2.7 trillion federal budget, it's estimated only around $50 billion a year goes for infrastructure” while “experts say what's needed is $210 billion a year for five years.” After citing a couple of examples of misguided pork barrel spending for road projects when repair work goes wanting, Attkisson pointed out how “Congress only funds about 25 percent of the nation's infrastructure.” She then absurdly asserted that states and local governments which “pick up the rest of the tab” are “cash-starved too.” For her only expert assessment, Attkisson turned to Democratic Congressman Jim Oberstar, Chairman of the very committee which funnels the pork spending, described as “Congress's leading authority on infrastructure” who “says both Congress and the White House have traditionally had trouble making the tough decision to collect and spend more tax dollars on infrastructure.”

Robin Hood would be proud of the Washington Post’s perverted view of capital gains taxation.  If the newspaper has its way, he wouldn’t have to steal from the rich to give to the poor. The government would be doing it for him.

Calling it the “most controversial tax break on Wall Street,” the Post promoted the idea of wrongdoing:

“[It] is not authorized by any law and was never approved by Congress,” wrote the Post.

The saying goes, if you tell a lie often enough, people will begin to believe it.

Such is the case with Valerie Plame. In reporting about Plame's setback in publishing her memoirs (a judge ruled she cannot include the dates of her employment with the CIA as they have not been declassified), Reuters says the following:

The ex-spy whose unmasking led to the conviction of Vice President Dick Cheney's top aide cannot disclose the dates she worked for the CIA because the details were never declassified, a federal judge has ruled.

The decision, made public on Friday by U.S. District Judge Barbara Jones, was a victory for the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency, which sought to block former agent Valerie Plame Wilson from including the dates in her upcoming memoir, "Fair Game."

Are Barbara Walters and Anderson Cooper really objective journalists? Ask them, and they will answer in the affirmative, even though Walters did not bother to find a Republican to fill in for the vacationing token non-liberal Elisabeth Hasselbeck.

With Hasselbeck’s absence, Caroline Rhea and Melissa Claire Egan filled in as guests co-hosts. After the "Hot Topics" segments, CNN anchor Anderson Cooper previewed the upcoming presidential election. Walters noted this observation.

BARBARA WALTERS: It’s very difficult. We don't seem to have a Republican on this panel except that nobody knows your opinion or my opinion Anderson [Cooper]. That’s the only saving-

JOY BEHAR: Maybe Melissa’s a Republican.

MELISSA CLAIRE EGAN: No!