Ho hum, business as usual at our newspapers...

What else is new from the Washington Compost?

If a thundering voice came down from heaven and said, "This is my beloved son in whom I am well pleased" the Bush-haters would still take every possible opportunity to attack, eviscerate, and defame him.

AP was even better. In a 1000-word report (posted at CNN this morning), AP managed to use the following words in the article titled "Bush welcomes Queen Elizabeth at White House": Gaffe (3 times); Slip (of tongue, of speech) (twice); Embarrass; and Mistake.

AP also let us know that there were two real reasons for this reception. 1. "But it wasn't exactly the flawless effort Bush had hoped would erase memories of the "talking hat" episode during the queen's last U.S. visit." And 2. "that the royal visit was a welcome break for a White House burdened by low approval ratings and acrimonious tussles with congressional Democrats over the Iraq war".

Now, before you say that I'm too focused on counting words and such, here's what AP put into the middle of their report: "In just four minutes, he mentioned "freedom" and "liberty" seven times. "

We must not have the President of the United States mention those words (what are they now, the "F" and "L" words???). This is what AP uses as their standard of reporting. And of course, CNN wouldn't question this at all.

I was also watching Fox & Friends this morning, and they played a tape of this episode. Brian Kilmeade made the observation that this was just a minor thing; that this was the first time he actually saw the event, and before he watched it, he was assuming, because of the intensity of the written reports, that this whole thing was a major, major blunder. And he's right -- you have to watch it to realize this is nothing but a made-up MSM story, by people who definitely have an axe to grind. What a pathetic state of affairs we have in this country, IMO. It's stuff like this that drive the President's approval ratings into the ground, and it simply isn't right.

I watched the whole speech, the speech writer might be more at fault. I recall that a few sentences before there were a number of dates referred to, and some of them were in the 1700's. Most people have trouble juggling dates and the speech was awkward in flow. I think the President handled it well. I would have limited the dates.

Dana Milbank was on NPR's Morning Addittion and spouted the same "gaffe" before any reporting on the Queen's visit was made. He of course is a very popular commentator on Keith Olbermann's Countdown show on MSNBC. So the initial Washington Post reporting gets spread across the airwaves by the foot soldiers of the Main Stream Media.

The economy is up, the stock market is at historic highs, unemployment is low, the war is going better and Bush can't catch a break with these liberals. Go figure?

Good thing no one, even a proud American - proud of our modern alliance with British, likened Clinton not dealing with Iraq for eight years, likened such to the Iraqies to early Americans having the French sail to our shores during our Revolution and not coming in to our expected assistance, and, just stayed in plain sight partying on.

President 41 had excuse during his term that going in immediately could be taking coalition into a trap of Saddam's making. 

How should our Presidential historians of note mark such years where the largest world wide coalition was put together and yet not brought to the aid of the majority of Iraqies then known to be desiring relief from Saddam? 

I do recommend a book I finally got around to reading these past few days >> "The Conquerers" by Beschloss.  His book truely speaks in opposites to the current conflicts.   Our times in Iraq seem incomparable to post war Germany and Germans and also Russians.   For all the Democrats and talk of Democrats being better read I am left thinking they just read more if even that story was accurate.   In the opposites I recommend Beschloss's work.  I also recommend ready and/or rereading Homer's " "The Odyssey" as I just found such even better than I remembered while reading it after above.  Now I am on to looking for a copy of "Mutiny on the Bounty."  I feel a need to study Clinton as born a Blythe.  

How do once opponents become such strong allies?