Nevada

It should surprise no one that the Associated Press, aka the Administration's Press, often first learns of stories when other outlets break them. When this occurs with a story about a Democratic Party politician in trouble, we get to see how the self-described "essential global news network" revises (i.e., cleans up) the outlet's original content to make it render as little damage as possible.

Today out of Nevada, there's the story of Steven Brooks, a State Assembly member from North Las Vegas. The Las Vegas Sun's coverage (HT Instapundit) opens with the following sentence: "A Democratic assemblyman is in jail, arrested for threatening Democratic Speaker-elect Marilyn Kirkpatrick, according to North Las Vegas Police and Democratic sources familiar with the situation." Since it concerns an intra-party squabble, tagging those involved as Democrats three times is not at all out of line -- in fact, it's necessary if one wishes to accurately communicate the situation.

Saturday evening, via Emerson Marcus and with the Associated Press contributing, the Reno Gazette-Journal, which I hope doesn't try to describe itself as a family newspaper, published an irony-free a 500-word story (HT to a NewBusters tipster) on an appearance by Sandra Fluke earlier in the day "in front of about 10 people at the Sak ‘N Save in north Reno." You can't make this stuff up.

The story is currently the "Most Popular" at the paper's rgj.com home page. The Gazette-Journal seems to have been determined to hype Fluke's appearance no matter what so it could take shots at Rush Limbaugh and employ the "s-word" ("slut") Rush Limbaugh used (and then apologized for having used) to describe Ms. Fluke. It even employed the word in promoting her upcoming appearance in advance in one of two items dated Friday which were apparently meant for Saturday's print edition.

New York Times reporters Trip Gabriel (pictured right) and Ashley Parker, who follow Newt Gingrich and Mitt Romney, respectively, teamed up for Saturday’s report from Las Vegas, “Republican Candidates Wrangle Over Nevada," rushing to Obama’s aide after a mild attack by Mitt Romney, and accused conservatives of carrying a “caricature” image of lefty donor George Soros.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid finally appeared in a debate on October 14 in Las Vegas with his Republican opponent, Sharron Angle. The appearance might come as a surprise to consumers of the national media. While Angle has been pounded relentlessly by national media outlets as being both dangerously radical and ridiculous, Reid has been left alone, and untouched.

But what about Harry? He’s the Majority Leader after all. Is he, like so many of his colleagues, simply afraid to talk about his legislative “accomplishments”? Nobody’s wondered why he hasn’t been making the rounds of interviews on national television. While reporters rush to report the latest “wacky” quote from Angle, the networks haven’t lifted a finger to cover Reid’s cascade of rhetorical stumbles and outrages, especially since Angle won the GOP primary.

We won’t count Reid’s remarks last year comparing opponents of health reform to supporters of slavery, or his describing those opponents as “evilmongers,” which he delighted in repeating and telling reporters he’d coined a new word.

There’s a list of fresh gaffes, and it just keeps growing.

What a fine group of happy warriors! Right Online 2010 turned out over 1,000 like-minded activists from over 30 states. These passionate folks walked the over-100 degree streets of Las Vegas to educate voters that November Is Coming.

Should the Democrats be worried? No. They should be resigned. The real worry-warts should be Republicans consistently intent on selling out their principles. Be worried. People are mission-focused.

A couple highlights from the conference: Here's my favorite speaker from the group, Emery McClendon:

Here's a slimy journalistic tactic with which most conservatives are all too familiar: note that two people or groups agree on one point, and then suggest that consequently they must agree on all other points. Chris Matthews (among many others) used this tactic to smear Tea Parties as tantamount to militia groups - both share a distaste for big government, therefore they must agree on all other points.

The Las Vegas Sun employed the tactic on Sunday in a front page piece on Nevada GOP Senate candidate Sharron Angle in an attempt to paint her religious views as radical. She believes that "religion has an expansive role to play in government" and that arguments to the contrary misunderstand the First Amendment.

Christian Reconstructionists share this belief (along with millions of Americans), Sun reporter Anjeanette Damon noted. But Damon went on to try to tie Angle to a host of other wacky beliefs that she does not share with the movement.

Meet the "so extreme," "far-right conservative" Sharron Angle, who won the Nevada Senate primary on Tuesday and will face Democrat Harry Reid in the fall. Those quotes aren't from Daily Kos or even a New York Times columnist, but from two of the Times's political reporters, Jennifer Steinhauer and Jackie Calmes.

(This post is based on two items previously posted on Times Watch.)

Reporter Jennifer Steinhauer first took aim at Sharron Angle in Thursday's "Results of Nevada Primary Set Up Senate Race of Sharp Contrasts." Notice a pattern in Steinhauer's labeling?

Further, Ms. Angle -- the Tea Party-blessed candidate who bested her two better-financed competitors in Tuesday's primary -- is an untested statewide candidate whose positions as a lawmaker put her firmly to the right of most mainstream Nevada voters. The hot lights of national exposure can be a liability for new -- and overly loquacious -- candidates, as Rand Paul, the Republican Senate nominee from Kentucky, quickly found.

....

Among her detractors and her supporters she is known as a far-right conservative and a thorn in the side of both parties, routinely voting no on almost everything that came before the Legislature. She is also a tireless campaigner. When a 2002 redistricting forced her to face off with a wildly popular Republican incumbent, Greg Brower, she went door to door nightly, won and ended his political career.

On Saturday’s Huckabee show on FNC, as the show was broadcast from Las Vegas, singer Wayne Newton appeared as a guest to discuss the economic situation in the city, and, when asked by host Mike Huckabee his reaction to President Obama’s remarks from last year attacking businesses for indulging in trips to Las Vegas, Newton did not mince words: "I think that it was the most irresponsible, arrogant thing I have ever heard a President of the United States say."

Fellow guest and Nevada Governor Jim Gibbons related that hundreds of conventions were canceled after the President’s words, costing the city a fortune in lost business: "There's no doubt that the people of Las Vegas, the city of Las Vegas were severely hurt by the President's remarks. About 400 conventions, business meetings, and that were canceled because of his remarks; $100 million was lost by the community at that remark. People lost their jobs. This city took a real blow when the President made that remark. He was wrong then, and then he said it again, and I don't understand why he keeps picking on Las Vegas."

Newton jumped in again and suggested that the President has been hypocritical in holding political fundraisers in Las Vegas: "He was not so incensed with Las Vegas, that he then decided to come here and do two fundraisers."

Below is a transcript of the relevant portion of the Saturday, May 22, Huckabee on FNC:

Harry Reid, perhaps emulating the bullying tactics of an out-of-control Obama administration, has openly wished for the Las Vegas Review-Journal to ‘go out of business' - a newspaper which has held opposing political viewpoints with the Senator. 

But then, is this really shocking coming from a veiled supporter of the Fairness Doctrine?

The comment came when Bob Brown, the Journal's Director of Advertising, met with Reid at a Las Vegas Chamber of Commerce luncheon.  During the simple process of handshaking, an exchange in which most people with an ounce of class can pull off without issue, Reid said to Brown:  "I hope you go out of business."

In retrospect, perhaps Brown should have been relieved that he wasn't classified as a smelly tourist or an evil monger by the esteemed Senate Majority Leader.

To their credit, the Journal did not take this bullying tactic lying down. A quick thought on the LVRJ response after the jump:

In another example of a shameful editorial by a student "journalist" at an American University newspaper, we find the University of Las Vegas publishing -- not once, but twice -- an editorial that makes the claim that Palestinian suicide bombings of Israeli civilians is justified because "'Israelis indiscriminately kill civilians." Excusing terror campaigns by Palestinians isn't the only outrage in this piece as Israelis are also likened to Nazis, and Palestinians are ridiculously called a "race of people" by student writer Sharief Ali.

On March 13th, in the UNLV's paper The Rebel Yell, Ali published a piece titled "Attack shocks, doesn't surprise," that was so outrageous a member of Congress even wrote in scolding the University for publishing such trash.

Writer Ali began by saying that attack on a Jewish seminary in West Jerusalem by a Palestinian gunman on March 6th was "hardly a surprise" and can be blamed on Israel, not the so-called Palestinians. The Israelis seem to deserve the terror campaigns by Hamas and Fatah, according to Ali, because the "Israelis indiscriminately kill civilians" in their attempt to kill "terrorists"... and he did put terrorists in quotes letting us all know he doesn't believe there are any terrorists in Palestinian territories.

A thread and a chat for those wishing to discuss the primary news of the day.

Nevada news has already come in with Clinton and Romney winning the less-contested state. South Carolina still waiting...

Update 22:09. McCain wins it. Or is it just that the anti-McCain vote was divided?

In an article written for the Reno-Gazette Journal, the implication is that hotter temperatures in the city can be laid on the doorstep of man-caused global warming. The basis for the article is a nationwide study by U.S. PIRG, an "environmental advocacy group."

Among its findings:

In 2006, Reno experienced 74 days where the temperature hit at least 90 degrees -- 21 days more than the historical average.

In 2006, the average temperature was 3.3 degrees above normal in Reno.

Between 2000 and 2006, Reno's average temperature was 3.4 degrees above the 30-year average, the second-highest reading in the nation for the period.

Nationally, the average temperature during the summer of 2006 was at least half a degree above the 30-year average at 82 percent of locations studied.

There are a couple of reasons to be skeptical of this article -- the main one being U.S. PIRG. The name sounds really official, right? The kind of group you can trust to be impartial in its analysis? In reality, it's a group with an agenda.

As they did on Thursday, ABC, CBS and NBC again this morning (Friday) omitted any reference to Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid’s evident failure to properly disclose $1.1 million land deal (although all three programs broadcast updates on the two-week old Mark Foley scandal). So far, the only broadcast network coverage has been a benign 30-second mention on Thursday’s NBC Nightly News.

One new development skipped by the networks this morning: an editorial in the liberal Washington Post spanking Reid for showing “a casual disregard” for following the ethics rules, and declaring Reid’s claim that his transactions were “transparent” were “transparently wrong.” The networks usually aren’t shy about telling viewers when a conservative editorial page condemns a conservative leader, but they’re apparently uninterested in the liberal Post’s scolding of Harry Reid.

Today’s Las Vegas Review-Journal pointed out that Reid was actually serving on the Senate Ethics committee at the time of the undisclosed transactions, and that his financial disclosure forms were prepared by Claude Zobell, once Reid’s chief of staff.” Tagged at the end of the news story is the interesting disclaimer that Claude Zobell “is the brother of Charles Zobell, managing editor of the Las Vegas Review-Journal.”