In a pointed news release, the White House has punched back at the tendentious “White House Memo” by Sheryl Gay Stolberg that appeared on the front page of Thursday’s News York Times. Headlined “Setting the Record Straight: The New York Times Mistakes Its Own Blindness for Presidential ‘Invisibility’,” the White House press office notes even more factual flaws and omissions than reported yesterday by the NewsBusters contributing editor Clay Waters in his own lengthy TimesWatch critique of the same piece, which portrayed President Bush as detached from the government’s reaction to the current economic slowdown.

Stolberg’s snarky third paragraph cast the President as a neglectful globetrotter while Senators have their sleeves rolled up working on solutions:

The New York Times front-page "News Analysis" by Sheryl Gay Stolberg and Jim Rutenberg delved into President Bush's dissatisfaction with Iraq's Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki and his failure to bring Sunnis and Shiites together politically -- and strangely finds Bush "already facing skepticism" about the troop surge in Iraq (um, didn't that surge start some months ago?)

"It was not quite the vote of no confidence delivered by Senator Carl Levin of Michigan, the Democratic chairman of the Armed Services Committee, who on Monday said Mr. Maliki should quit. But it was a striking attempt by the White House to distance itself from the Maliki government before September, when the president’s troop buildup faces an intense review on Capitol Hill.

Are White House reporters taking cue from liberal bloggers? A bit near the end of the New York Times "White House Memo" by reporter Sheryl Gay Stolberg, "An Ebbing of Coverage With '08 on the Horizon," certainly puts the idea out there.

White House correspondent Stolberg again indulged herself in portraying Bush as a fallen and failed president.

"Back when he was riding high in the polls, when his every utterance made headlines and the press planes trailing him around the country were still full, President Bush had little need to indulge reporters with ceremonial pleasantries.

That's quite an ominous headline over Sheryl Gay Stolberg's story in today's New York Times about the conviction on perjury and obstruction of justice charges of Lewis Libby, former chief of staff for Vice President Dick Cheney -- "A Judgment on Cheney Is Still to Come."

"In legal terms, the jury has spoken in the Libby case. In political terms, Dick Cheney is still awaiting a judgment. "For weeks, Washington watched, mesmerized, as the trial of I. Lewis Libby Jr. cast Vice President Cheney, his former boss, in the role of puppeteer, pulling the strings in a covert public relations campaign to defend the Bush administration’s case for war in Iraq and discredit a critic.

Bush stubbornly refuses to give up on the Iraq war, despite what New York Times reporters insists was the message delivered by the voters in November, and they're peeved at him. Congressional correspondent Sheryl Gay Stolberg reacts to Bush's Iraq speech last night outlining his plan for more troops in Iraq in her Thursday "news analysis," "Bush's Strategy for Iraq Risks Confrontations on Many Fronts."

"By stepping up the American military presence in Iraq, President Bush is not only inviting an epic clash with the Democrats who run Capitol Hill. He is ignoring the results of the November elections, rejecting the central thrust of the bipartisan Iraq Study Group and flouting the advice of some of his own generals, as well as Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki of Iraq."

The inevitable comparison to Vietnam comes up halfway in.

President Bush's Rose Garden press conference on Friday morning began with the president making a forceful statement about the need to keep the country safe, and how new legislation to curtail interrogations and surveillance programs could make that job harder. But the goofiest question of the day had to be the one from CNN White House correspondent Suzanne Malveaux:

Malveaux: "Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the Iranian President, will actually be in the same building as you next week, in Manhattan for the United Nations General Assembly. You say that you want to give the message to the Iranian people that you respect them. Is this not an opportunity, perhaps, to show that you also respect their leader? Would you be willing to, perhaps, meet face-to-face with Ahmadinejad, and would this possibly be a breakthrough, some sort of opportunity for a breakthrough on a personal level?"

Bush: "No, I'm not going to meet with him. I have made it clear to the Iranian regime that we will sit down with the Iranians once they verifiably suspend their enrichment program. I meant what I said."

It may have been Bush's shortest answer of the day. He didn't get into how he was supposed to show respect for the Iranian president's Israel-threatening or anti-Semitism or Holocaust denial.

Perhaps Bush's best quip of the day came in his exchange with Sheryl Gay Stolberg of the New York Times who described her paper as "friendly." To laughter, Bush retorted: "I'd hate to see unfriendly." Plus, NBC's David Gregory was again the Man Who Wouldn't Shut Up in an antagonistic exchange with Bush. (More on both below.)

Video clip #1, of Gregory/Bush (4:30): Windows Media (2.9 MB)

Video clip #2, of NY Times as "friendly" paper (32 secs): Real (1 MB) or Windows Media (1.2 MB), plus MP3 audio (200 KB)

Here they come: The anniversary stories of Hurricane Katrina, giving the New York Times and other media outlets a precious opportunity for extraneous Bush-bashing.

Monday's front-page story by Sheryl Gay Stolberg, "Year After Katrina, Bush Still Fights for 9/11 Image," questions Bush's compassion based on the federal government's response to Hurricane Katrina.

The Senate prepares to take up a bill to allow federal financing of research on stem cell lines that are derived from embryos now in cold storage at fertility clinics and slated for destruction. And New York Times reporter Sheryl Gay Stolberg lies in wait, ready to pounce on the vote as yet another imminent Republican crackup, in Sunday’s “Senate Appears Poised for a Showdown With the President Over Stem Cell Research.”

“The president’s mind has not changed; his chief political adviser, Karl Rove, reiterated the veto threat this week. That keeps Mr. Bush in good stead with the religious conservatives who make up an important part of his base, but at odds with other leading Republicans, including Senator Bill Frist, the majority leader, who is a heart-lung surgeon and has pushed to bring the measure to a vote.”