NB Extra

Newsweek contributing editor and "The McLaughlin Group" panelist Eleanor Clift attacked Bush's Speech at the U.S. Naval Academy as well as other important things, such as the banners at the speech and the photo used by the New York Times:

"It’s hard to know which to admire more, the choreography or the chutzpah. White House spinmeisters put up banners that blared PLAN FOR VICTORY in case anybody missed the message in President Bush’s latest iteration of his Iraq policy in a speech on Wednesday at the U.S. Naval Academy.

The photo the following day on the front page of The New York Times showed Bush bathed in the Navy colors of blue and gold and heroically positioned as though standing on the bridge of a battleship. All he needed were some stripes on his sleeve and he’d be ready for the lead in "H.M.S. Pinafore."

Dan Froomkin writes a White House column weekdays for the Washington Post’s web site. In case you're not familiar with his work, let's just say that in terms of bias and tone, he's sort of an online version of Dana Milbank. (And, in case you're not familiar with Milbank: Lucky you.) 

Here's the lead to Froomkin's Tuesday column: 

Secular liberalism emerges in the funniest places, or pages. There was a Washington Post review yesterday of Carrie Underwood’s new country album. In attacking the entire album as a pre-fabricated mishmash, Dave McKenna had to mock her mention of Jesus Christ in the music: 

We have a contingency of liberal hold outs who believe that surrender and the subsequent slavery to totalitarians is preferable to fighting for freedom.  I wouldn't worry, except that in this case, they are in positions of power called Congress, and backed by another position of power called Main Stream Media.

It is very hard to overcome these groups when you have no power other than logic, reason, and truth. After all, they can’t be expected to waste their time with such nonsense.

We have Bill Clinton who has stated that "the war was the right thing to do" but also claims it "was a mistake." To those of us who think first and feel second, this makes no sense. How can something be right and a mistake? And why the 180 degree change in direction?

Media Matters and the blog Daily Kos are among two liberal mouthpieces who look to be on a slippery campaign to rewrite one of the more ugly episodes in recent memory for Democrats.

It appears they are trying revise the history that Oreo cookies were thrown in the direction of Republican Lt. Gov. Michael Steele at a gubernatorial debate on September 26, 2002 in Baltimore, Maryland. (Steele is a black man, and an "Oreo" is a terribly derogatory term to describe a black person who is perceived as "black on the outside, but white on the inside.") At the time of the debate, Steele was the Republican candidate for lieutenant governor. Steele was in the audience for the debate between Democrat Gov. Kathleen Kennedy Townsend and Republican Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. weeks before he and Ehrlich went on to rack up a triumphant election victory over the incumbent Townsend.

It may not get much play in the MSM, but the Catalogue for Philanthropy's latest National Generosity Index finds a clear majority of the most generous states are in the Bible Belt where evangelical Christianity is strongest and household income is lowest. The least generous states are mostly in areas in which evangelicals are least common, but household incomes are highest.

Here are the Top 10, including six that are the heart of the Bible Belt and two more that are strongly influenced by it. The dollar figure in parenthesis is the U.S. Census Bureau's latest available (2004) household income figure, followed by the state's national ranking for that factor. The B indicates Bush carried in 2004. K indicates Kerry carried in 2004:

1. Mississippi ($31,642)(50)(B)
2. Arkansas ($32,983)(49)(B)
3. South Dakota ($38,472)(42)(B)
4. Oklahoma ($35,357)(45)(B)
5. Tennessee ($38,794)(41)(B)
6. Alabama ($36,709)(43)(B)
7. Louisiana ($35,110)(48)(B)
8. Utah ($47,074)(17)(B)
9. South Carolina ($39,837)(38)(B)
10. West Virginia ($31,504)(51)(B)

Now take a look at the second 10, which includes another six that are either clearly part of the Bible Belt or strongly influenced by it:

11. Idaho ($39,934)(37)(B)
12. Texas ($41,759)(31)(B)
13. Nebraska ($41,657)(32)(B)
14. North Dakota ($39,447)(39)(B)
15. Wyoming ($44,275))(23)(B)
16. North Carolina ($39,428)(40)(B)
17. Kansas ($41,638)(33)(B)
18. Florida ($41,236)(36)
19. Georgia ($43,037)(24)(B)
20. Missouri ($41,473)(34)(B)

Now, scan the Bottom 10 least generous states, which includes eight Yankee states where Southern Baptists are as scarce as common sense at a Michael Moore fan club meeting:

41. Michigan ($44,905)(21)(K)
42. Hawaii ($53,554)(7)(K)
43. Colorado ($48,198)(14)(B)
44. Minnesota ($50,860)(10)(K)
45. Connecticut ($60,528)(2)(K)
46. Wisconsin ($45,315)(20)(K)
47. Rhode Island ($48,722)(13)(K)
48. New Jersey ($61,359)(1)(K)
49. Massachusetts ($55,658)(5)(K)
50. New Hampshire ($55,580)(6)(K)

The states with the lowest household income are in the Bible Belt and that is where people are the most generous givers to charitable causes. Every one of the Top 10 most generous was carried by President Bush in the 2004 presidential election.

The most secular states with the highest household incomes are the least generous. Nine of the 10 least generous were carried by Sen. John Kerry, the Democratic presidential nominee.

The hed isn't snappy, but I'm trying to come up with new slogans for a paper that can't bring itself to accurately describe Rep. John Murtha. There's a slim ray of hope from congressional reporter Shailagh Murray, who in a live chat today acknowledged there was more to his background than what we've been reading in her paper:

Manassas, Va.: Why won't the Post tell its readers about Murtha's mixed record on the Iraq War? For example, he said two years ago that he'd been misled about WMD and joined with Rep. Pelosi in calling for high-level administration resignations; he accused Bush of delaying a major military callup until after the presidential election (a callup that never happened); he joined a small minority in voting against a resolution declaring the world safer for having been rid of Saddam; and voted in favor of Rep. Rangel's (in my view, bogus) resolution to reinstate the draft. He's entitled to these views -- but aren't the Post's readers entitled to know about them, as opposed to the simple "hawkish Democrat" narrative you and your colleagues are presenting?

Last Friday on MSNBC’s “The Abrams Report,” Hoda Kotb made an appearance to plug that evening’s NBC “Dateline” program centering on John Lennon’s murderer, Mark Chapman. Ms. Kotb said that in listening to 100 hours of audiotape she was struck by Chapman’s being “so meticulous. He’s so calm. He’s so measured; all the while he is plotting out one of the most heinous crimes of the century.”

Lennon’s killing was tragic, as most killings are, but categorizing it as “one of the most heinous crimes of the century” is a gross overstatement.

This is, after all, the century in which we saw millions of people killed by Mao. Millions of people killed by Stalin. Millions of people killed by Hitler. And what of the more than 900 who died in 1978 at the hands of Leftist “Reverend” Jim Jones in Guyana? Then there were Leopold and Loeb, Susan Smith, Charles Manson, Andrew Cunanan, Timothy McVeigh, Dennis Rader, Charles Whitman, Richard Speck, John Wayne Gacy, and Charles Starkweather. Moreover, there were Columbine, Heaven’s Gate, the Zebra Killers, the Tylenol murders, the Birmingham church bombing and the Atlanta youth murders. The list could go on and on.

Montgomery Gentry are too blue collar for blue America.

At least that's the impression you would get reading Bill Friskics-Warren's review of the country duo's latest album, a "greatest hits" entitled Something To Be Proud Of.

"Staunch blue-collar populists" like Montgomery Gentry, worries the reviewer, root themselves in nostalgia for a time before "among other cultural advances, the women's and the the civil rights movements."

As proof of sexism and misogyny, Friskics-Warren bemoans the subject of "She Couldn't Change Me" being "put in her place," and is chagrined by the "smugness of the song's macho protagonist."