Chicago Tribune

Today's Chicago Tribune carried a New York Times News Service article on the passing of Eugene J. McCarthy. The story notes: "As a senator, Mr. McCarthy was an unabashed liberal unafraid to take on Sen. Joseph McCarthy (R-Wis.) and his alarmist warnings about the communist menace."

No doubt Senator Eugene McCarthy was an unabashed liberal on many issues. And it's very likely that he, at a minimum, questioned Senator Joe McCarthy's anti-Communist crusade. But, as a senator, he most certainly didn't "take on Sen. Joseph McCarthy."

According to the Biographical Directory of the United States Congress, Eugene McCarthy was elected to the U.S. Senate in 1958. This was a year after Senator Joseph McCarthy had died.

Don't miss my latest writing for the Free Market Project: Media claims about a “housing bubble” are nothing new. Since before the 9/11 terror attacks, the media have been calling the housing market a “bubble” while predicting an imminent, devastating decline. Not only have they been wrong in forecasting such a top, they have thoroughly mischaracterized what an investment bubble is. Now that the market for homes has finally slowed a bit, the media are declaring the bubble has burst.

• A Bubble?: Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan has denied the existence of a national housing bubble for several years, but the media have used the term repeatedly.
• Strong Gains: The increase in real estate values the past five years has not resembled the rapid rise typically seen in a bubble. In 2000, the national median existing-home value was $139,000. This grew to $215,900 by the third quarter of 2005 – a 55-percent nominal increase but a 34-percent inflation-adjusted gain.
• Home Sales Still Going Up: New home sales jumped another 13 percent in October. While sales of existing homes were down 2.7 percent from September, the median national price rose to $218,000, a 16.6 percent increase since October 2004.

The American media are giving President Bush low marks and mixed reviews regarding his just ended trip to China. Here are some of today’s headlines:

• Bush’s China Visit Fails To Narrow Differences (Reuters via Boston Globe)
• China Mostly Aloof to U.S. Priorities (Chicago Tribune)
• U.S., China Seem to be Worlds Apart (Newsday)
• Bush Skirts Rights Issue (LA Times)
• CBS’s “Early Show” this morning began its segment on this issue: “The president is getting mixed reviews for his Asia trip after little was accomplished in his meetings with China.”

Yet, the Chinese media were much more positive about Bush’s trip. For example, People’s Daily Online offered the following headline, “Media: Bush's China visit sends "positive signal" to China-US relations.” It conveniently gave a recap of opinions being expressed by other newspapers and websites with links:

Sunday is a day of worship. So today’s Chicago Tribune devoted more than 50 paragraphs to venerating Illinois Senator Barack Obama.

In the front page “Obama's national appeal rallies an army of backers,” correspondent Jeff Zeleny details how popular the junior senator is among the rich and famous. Warren Buffett is a fan and has contributed to Obama’s political action committee, as have Hollywood’s Jeffrey Katzenberg, David Geffen and Steven Spielberg.

The opposition from the religious right faced by the fictional Republican presidential candidate on NBC's The West Wing, symbolizes for Jim Warren, the former Washington Bureau Chief for the Chicago Tribune who is now a Deputy Managing Editor for the paper, how real-life conservatives, upset over the Harriet Miers pick, will never be satisfied. On Tuesday's Hardball on MSNBC, Warren admired how the fictional drama's Alan Alda character “confronts a top Christian Right official who insists on a public pledge that Alan Alda, if elected President, will only pick anti-abortion judges to the federal court. And Alan Alda, seeing the world as much more complicated, declines to do that.” Warren asked and answered his own question: “Why is that relevant? I think it's relevant because just like Bill Clinton could never satisfy his left, it seems that Bush can never satisfy a group for whom he has cut taxes, delivered Saddam Hussein on a platter, done what they want on late term abortion and stem cell research, come out against gay marriage and picked a whole lot of conservative judges.”

Full transcript of his proposition, and the West Wing scene, follows.

Even though the big news event this week was the president’s nomination of Harriet Miers to replace retiring justice Sandra Day O’Connor on the Supreme Court, NBC’s Chris Matthews this morning, on a show that bears his name, chose to lead with Karl Rove’s upcoming testimony in front of a grand jury.  To assist him, Matthews stocked his panel with the likes of Andrea Mitchell, Clarence Page, Judy Woodruff, and a lone “conservative” voice, Howard Fineman. 

Of course, when Howard is the sole “right-wing” member of a panel, you’re certainly not going to get a fair and balanced discussion on any issue.  As a result, what ensued was quite a Rove bash-a-thon, with dire prognostications of what the meaning of this fourth appearance in front of the grand jury could mean for Rove as well as the Bush administration. 

Mark Silva, national correspondent who covers the White House for the Chicago Tribune, essentially wrote a 750-worded epithet titled "Hard Times Wear on Bush," that sounded more in sync with the giving of "last rites" than what a national news correspondent would write. 

Reporting about Bush's first formal news conference since May 31, Silva opens this way: "Stepping out from the Oval Office on an overcast morning, President Bush appeared browbeaten. He sounded wistful about his party's political fortunes and even his own."

"Browbeaten" and "wistful" being not nearly enough for Mr. Silva, he continues to pile-on with more negativity from events that have nothing to do with what the president called this formal news conference for, namely to talk about Supreme Court nominee Harriet Miers: