Political Figures

A Democratic presidential contender has hinted that he thinks some form of sex ed is appropriate for the nation's five-year olds.

I'm not exactly holding my breath for media outrage or at least interest in the topic, but I though Good Lt. at the "Jawa Report" has some good observations about how yet again, life seems to be imitating South Park:

Amazing. Simply amazing.

Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., told Planned Parenthood Tuesday that sex education for kindergarteners, as long as it is "age-appropriate," is "the right thing to do."

The left, at the rate of almost several times per month now, is intent on mimicking South Park's proverbial "theater of the absurd" in real life and real time. The episode? Season 5's "Proper Condom Use," in which the school board decides that condom use has to be taught to progressively younger grades to the point that the kindergarteners are learning about it.

Did "Good Morning America" physically remove a man who appeared to be dozing off during Democratic Senator John Edwards's town hall meeting on Monday? Early in the 7am hour, the man (pictured at right) appeared to be sleeping, or at least dozing, while Edwards discussed his plan for Iraq.

Around 7:11, the individual, who was seated to the back and right of Edwards, mysteriously disappeared (see video below). Diane Sawyer even remarked how audience members for the New Orleans-based event had "gotten up early" to join him. Perhaps the network found it unacceptable that someone might perceive the former trial lawyer to be less than enthralling?

Video (0:50): Real (1.34 MB) or Windows (1.53 MB).

Peter Bronson of the Cincinnati Enquirer wrote a Sunday column (HT The Daily Bellwether) that was a withering attack on the blandness, lack of local coverage, and political correctness of chain news.

Bronson, at least for the moment, works at The Enquirer, which is owned by mega-chain operator Gannett Co., Inc. Gannett publishes 85 local newspapers and USA Today.

Here's Bronson on blandness:

I wonder if a steady diet of junk-food news causes high blood pressure, indigestion and poor circulation.

Bronson on local non-coverage:

Wherever the population density can support more than one freeway exit, the chains move in and sterilize any hint of local flavor. ..... Being dropped in the middle of a chain newspaper can be like being taken to a Waffle House blindfolded, then trying to figure out if you're in Iowa or Idaho.

But the Enquirer columnist gets in his best licks criticizing newsroom political correctness, serving up three examples of what surely has driven many NewsBusters readers to distraction over their own local papers:

The Left must be afraid of Fred Thompson. The latest attack on the former Tennessee senator: he's violating the "spirit" of campaign finance laws by toying with his candidacy for too long, even as he builds the framework to hit the campaign trail running. Yet unfortunately for her readers, ABCNews.com's Jennifer Rubin leaves out the liberal leanings of the two major critics of the former senator that she cites in her recent story. Indeed, one group's president even has a link to First Amendment breacher, er, campaign finance reformer John McCain, a GOP candidate, while the other group's executive director previously worked for Democratic 2008 candidate Sen. Joseph Biden (D-Del.) as well as liberal pols such as Rep. John Conyers (D-Mich.) and Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.)

Here are the offending passages, followed by my commentary (portions in bold are my emphasis):

The summer of media love for Al Gore continues in the Washington Post today. An article by Lori Aratani boasts in the sub-heading that “Al Gore’s film has raised awareness of energy conservation, officials say.” The piece is actually on John Morrill, an Arlington County bureaucrat who has, for years, been “touting the cost saving benefits and environmentally friendly nature” of compact fluorescent lamps. He says in the past people ignored him but now, “thanks in part to ‘An Inconvenient Truth’ the issue has a higher profile.” While the article stumbles over itself bestowing platitudes on Al Gore’s “documentary,” it – of course – fails to mention that while Al was busy lecturing America about the evils of carbon emissions, his own house in Tennessee was using over 20 times more energy than the national average.

Time magazine has a lengthy piece on Democrats and religion called, "How the Democrats Got Religion." (HT: Drudge) (Btw, the original title on the web yesterday was "Leveling the Praying Field.") It focuses on efforts by Democrats (most notably, Sens. Obama, Clinton, and Edwards) to attract voters who are religious. There is certainly an attempt at balance in the article, but the folks at the DNC must be pretty happy. The article, penned by Nancy Gibbs and Michael Duffy, claims, "The Democrats are so fired up, you could call them the new Moral Majority."

"The new Moral Majority"? Yikes. The article devotes substantial space to showing how Democrats are trying to muster up a majority to win elections, but what about the "moral" part? Gibbs and Duffy neglect a number of important issues and episodes regarding Democrats and religion. Witness:

1. John Edwards and anti-Catholicism:

How on earth do you compose a piece thousands of words long on Democrats and religion without mentioning John Edwards' gross episode with anti-Catholic bigotry earlier this year? (See this and this.)

Update added at bottom of post.

President Bush is taking questions from the White House press corps about the Iraq report. I'll be live-blogging it. Hit refresh for updates. We may post some video later with highlights (or is it lowlights?). All times below are Eastern.

Helen Thomas, Hearst newspapers columnist, 10:45: Presses Bush on bringing in UN peacekeepers to Iraq. "Don't you understand, you have brought al Qaeda into Iraq," she insisted.

unidentified reporter, 10:48: "Mr. President, you're facing a rebellion from Republican senators" on Iraq.

unidentified female reporter, 10:50 on changing course on the Iraq war: "why are you so resistant to that idea, and how much longer" will the President continue with the surge before changing course.

So there was Elizabeth Edwards, wife of the Blow-Dried One, berating Ann Coulter on the art of civil discourse last week. After her phone-in appearance on the Chris Matthews show, St. Elizabeth was the toast of the media town, making the rounds from one network to the next, with rose pedals strewn in her path to guide her to her seat, denouncing the “hatefulness” and “ugliness” of conservative commentators. “We can't have a debate about issues if you're using this kind of language,” she lectured.

It’s a good thing none of her interviewers pretended to be objective. It’s a good thing she wasn’t asked about hatefulness and ugliness on the left. It would have been painful.

For instance, what if she’d been asked to denounce a quote from a leading liberal who favors rage as a necessary ingredient in fighting for a rapid timetable for withdrawal from Iraq, and who attacked congressional Democrats as weaklings: “We needed uncompromising rage, and we got silence. We needed courage, and we got silence. And that silence was, have no doubt about it, a betrayal: of the soldiers, of the voters in 2006, of humanity and morality.”

One doesn't have to look very far to see opinionated assertions in the supposedly objective Old Media coverage of yesterday's immigration-bill failure in the Senate.

Here's part of what an unbylined AP report said almost immediately after it was clear that the bill would not get the 60 votes needed for cloture: "The carefully crafted compromise was left for dead after a similar vote three weeks ago but was revived by Bush and Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid, who gave opponents more chances to change it."

To say that there is disagreement over whether the bill was "carefully crafted" is quite an understatement.

A report in the Seattle Times "compiled from The Washington Post, Gannett News Service, The Associated Press and McClatchy Newspapers" made this claim about yesterday's vote: "In a mark of lawmakers' ambivalence, however, the outcome was substantially different from a test vote Tuesday, when a 64-35 vote revived the bill."

Was it lawmaker "ambivalence," or constituent persuasiveness? And how do they know?

But the biggest error, as often is the case, was one of omission. Senator Ted Kennedy from Massachusetts lit into opponents on the Senate floor yesterday with this over-the-top riff (video is at Hot Air; bold is mine):

Here's how USA Today's Joan Biskupic started her June 25 article on the Supreme Court's ruling in FEC v. Wisconsin Right to Life, the case in which the Court struck down a televised ad ban in the McCain-Feingold campaign finance law. (emphasis mine)

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court on Monday opened the door to corporate and union financing of broadcast ads subtly attacking candidates for federal office before an election, in a 5-4 decision that is likely to make it harder for Congress to regulate campaign financing in the future.

The decision also could bring about a new flood of corporate and big-money spending on the 2008 elections.

If I didn't know better I'd think she were auditioning for a PR job with the John McCain for President campaign.

Here's how Biskupic colleague Jill Lawrence of the paper's "On Politics" blog tracked McCain's reaction to the ruling (emphasis mine):

Tuesday mornings’s Democratic presidential candidates forum, aired live on MSNBC and moderated by Chris Matthews, had a few, to put it mildly, strange moments. Billed as a forum, the event was little more than a union-sponsored soapbox for the three leading Democratic candidates, Senators Clinton and Obama, and former Senator Edwards.

The left-leaning American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees, or AFSCME, which organized the soapbox, was quick to cheer for the most mundane of liberal catch phrases while descending into boos and hisses at the very mention of former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani.

Coming back from a commercial break that included a plug for "the best reporting, the power of NBC News" on "Super Tuesdays," MSNBC's Chris Matthews was caught uttering an expletive, complaining about the content of the network's programming.

The "Hardball" host complained that "we're all reacting here and putting on shit" with the network's breaking news coverage pertaining to New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg leaving the GOP to become an independent.

Video (0:46): Real (1.94 MB) or Windows Media (1.39 MB), plus MP3 audio (216 kB)

There's nothing biased here, just some industry news. Politico and Media Bistro's fishbowlDC are reporting that it looks like NBC/MSNBC will be giving up their Capitol Hill cubby hole digs and moving most if not all of their DC bureau operation out to Nebraska. Avenue that is.

For those unfamiliar with Washington, the NBC offices on Nebraska are considerably farther from Capitol Hill than the stone's throw from the Senate that NBC now enjoys.

The bottom line: this could make it harder to get congressmen and senators who need to stay close to the Hill for legislative votes to appear on camera on MSNBC.

On Friday's Good Morning America, ABC reporter Dan Harris relayed the news that Bill Clinton and Al Gore are now very rich men. But he couldn't do it without mangling a fact or two. Harris began:

"Think about it, when Bill Clinton and Al Gore both left the White House, they both had some serious financial problems. Now they both have some serious cash. President Clinton left power in 2001 dogged by legal bills. But last year, he made more than $10 million in paid speeches, according to new federal filings released by his wife’s presidential campaign."

When Bill Clinton left the White House, his wife had already agreed to an $8 million book advance. If the Clinton marriage means their assets are held in common, it couldn't accurately be said Clinton "had some serious financial problems" with the legal bills. Harris also ignored the Clintons had a multi-million-dollar legal defense fund to defray costs. Listen to NBC's Andrea Mitchell touting Bill's big $12 million book deal in August 2001:

Updates below. (Close look at whiteboard in video calls Ann Coulter a "whore," etc.)

By now you may have heard about "Obama Girl," an attractive young woman dancing and singing a tune about having a "crush" on the Democratic presidential hopeful. It's all the rage on the cable news nets this afternoon. Doing some digging around the Internet, however, I was unable to find who exactly is behind the viral video phenomenon, but I did find it was registered through GoDaddy.com, the Web site registrar made a household name for its racy TV ads.

At any rate, "Obama Girl" Leah Kauffman (see update) doesn't appear to be a random young woman with a camcorder and Internet savvy. Her video "I Got a Crush on Obama" serves as the inaugural media stunt for BarelyPolitical.com, a Web site created on May 30 that has a skimpy "about us" section:

The May 14 issue of Newsweek proclaimed that some descendants of famous Republicans--Teddy Roosevelt, Dwight D. Eisenhower and Barry Goldwater--are thinking about changing parties and voting Blue. In an article titled, “Generational Tensions: The sons and daughters of some iconic Republicans (Ike! T.R.!) are contemplating crossing the aisle,” reporter Michael Hirsch set up the improbable idea that the logical move by unhappy "fiscally conservative" Republicans is to the Democratic Party. According to Ike's granddaughter Susan Eisenhower, “moderate ‘Eisenhower Republicans’ “ are not content, but Newsweek did not fully explore the illogic of this proposed alternative (emphasis mine throughout):

Increasingly, however, she says that the partisanship and free spending of the Bush presidency—and the takeover of the party by single-issue voters, especially pro-lifers—is driving these pragmatic, fiscally conservative voters out of the GOP.

Debatably, the dissatisfaction of moderate Republicans with the Iraq war and with what the article categorized as religiously influenced issues surrounding topics like Terri Schiavo, abortion and homosexuality can be answered by the Democratic Party, but not the problems of bloated bureaucracies and out of control spending. The article did not state the obvious; a Big Government GOP is still smaller than the modern Democratic Party.

MRC intern Michael Lanza caught a passing reference on the June 6 "Paula Zahn Now" to a June 5 blog entry by NB editor Brent Baker. (See transcript below the fold)

Video (0:35): Real (1.57 MB) or Windows (1.10 MB), plus MP3 (156 kB).

In "NBC's Williams Showcases Obama Blaming Bush for Black Despair Going Back to 1991," Baker noted that NBC's June 5 "Nightly News" ran excerpts of an Obama speech before running a story on the Democratic candidates and religious faith.

Excerpted below is the relevant portion of the blog, with the portion Zahn quoted shown in bold.:

Conservative blogs are abuzz with a controversial remark MSNBC's Joe Scarborough made on his Friday "Morning Joe" program about Jeri Thompson, the wife of former Sen. Fred Thompson (R-Tenn.), who is mulling over a White House bid.

[More Scarborough coverage linked below the fold]

Hot Air has the video.

Here's the relevant transcript:

Sen. Barack Obama's new Web site geared to his presidential bid, faith.barackobama.com, includes official endorsements from notorious clergymen known for making fantastic, racially inflammatory claims---yet the liberal media aren't saying much about these endorsements or the controversial clergymen who Sen. Obama has officially embraced. It is doubtful the liberal media would be as silent if such people were publicly endorsing a Republican or conservative political candidate.

Rev. Jeremiah A Wright Jr. is Sen. Obama's pastor. Concerning 9/11, Rev. Wright, says, "White America got their wake-up call after 9-11. White America and the Western world came to realize people of color had not gone away, faded in the woodwork, or just disappeared as the Great White West kept on its merry way of ignoring black concerns.” Wright also calls America "this racist United States of America." Another Obama-endorser is Rev. J. Alfred Smith Sr., who was honored by the violent Black Panther Party and given a community award by the anti-Semitic Nation of Islam (hat-tip to Catholic League). The liberal media's near-silence about all this actually says a lot about their political agenda.

Update (15:40 EDT): Ana Marie Cox helpfully corrects/excuses Klein's error re: Kucinich.

Well, that didn't take long. Just a few hours after former Rep. Dick Armey's (R-Tex.) first guest blog post to Time's "Swampland," liberal journalist and author Joe Klein slammed Armey for "red-baiting" the audience on the Democrats' stances on issues like health care.

Socialized medicine is a right-wing scare trope. None of the Democrats is proposing that. None of them is even proposing a "single-payer" plan, like Canada, where the government collects the premiums and people get to choose private providers. And now that we're at a point where much of corporate America is hoping for some relief from the burden of providing health insurance, ain't this kind of red-baiting getting a little old?

But Klein is dead wrong. Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio) is precisely pushing a single-payer universal coverage plan that the liberal Center for American Progress labels as "Medicare for All."

From Kucinich.us, the Ohio Democrat's campaign Web site (PDF file):

In an excellent investigative report last Sunday (may require free registration) that is part of a series on how "how businesses and investors seek to profit from the soaring number of older Americans, in ways helpful and harmful," the New York Times' Charles Duhigg exposed the despicable tactics of elder-scam artists and the "information services" companies that supply them the "sucker lists" they need.

He may not have known that he was simultaneously exposing information that could, and arguably should, damage the presidential campaign of Hillary Clinton.

Duhigg led with the truly sad story of 92 year-old Richard Guthrie:

..... He ended up on scam artists’ lists because his name, like millions of others, was sold by large companies to telemarketing criminals, who then turned to major banks to steal his life’s savings.

National Review contributor John Derbyshire has been a favorite whipping boy of snarky left-wing bloggers for a while, but perhaps most noticeably after some controversial postings he made on the heels of the Virginia Tech shooting.

But now a blogger at Wonkette is portraying Derb as a crotchety bigot on the basis of a blog post whereby Derbyshire notes Gov. Bill Richardson (D-N.M.) both insists on voters judging him on the basis of his leadership and agenda, not race, but then goes back to pandering to a crowd on the merits of his Hispanic heritage:

Outraged over Big Bill’s public admission of Mexican-ness during a time when Americans are supposed to be united against the Mexican Menace, Derbyshire bravely decides to use that very Mexican-ness against Richardson:

The same liberal Time writer that applauded Barack Obama's boycott of Fox News debates is now broadcasting his dream ticket in 2008: Obama for POTUS with Iraq war critic/potential Bush impeachment proponent proponent Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-Neb.) as vice. Today at Time magazine's "Swampland" blog, Joe Klein wrote:

I've always had this sneaking suspicion that John Kerry asked the wrong Republican to join his ticket in 2004, that Chuck Hagel would have said yes, that a Kerry-Hagel ticket would have won. Now we have Hagel hinting at a 3rd party run. So, with apologies to, uh, Hegel:

Thesis--That Chuck Hagel is a terrific national resource, a decorated veteran of Vietnam who has taken a courageous path away from his party on Iraq...and who really understands national security and foreign policy.

Antithesis--That Third Party talk is futile, especially if you don't have a fortune like Perot's or Bloomie's, which Hagel doesn't.

Synthesis--An Obama-Hagel ticket. (Or a pick-your-democrat -Hagel ticket)

Update (14:25): Justin McCarthy has more analysis and a full transcript available here.

Update (13:50 EDT): Video (2:07): Real (1.55 MB) or Windows (1.3 MB) plus MP3 (980 kB).

Update (12:42 EDT): We're still working on video and a transcript, but here's the audio (980 kB).

Moments ago "The View" co-host Rosie O'Donnell found a golden opportunity to resurrect her conspiracy theories on the collapse of World Trade Center Tower 7 (WTC 7) as her fellow co-hosts were discussing Rudy Giuliani's presidential campaign. Co-host Joy Behar faulted Giuliani for keeping the NYC emergency command center in the World Trade Center complex. That's when O'Donnell noted that the command center was in WTC 7. This time around, however, token non-liberal Elisabeth Hasselbeck pushed back on Rosie's loopy conspiracy theories.

In 1995, Bill Clinton said this to a Houston fund-raising audience about the 1993 tax increase his administration is infamous for:

Probably there are people in this room who are still mad at me at that budget because you think I raised your taxes too much. It might surprise you to know that I think I raised them too much too.

John Edwards, on the other hand, must think that the Clinton Administration and the congress at the time raised taxes too little, because he said on Sunday that he wants to go beyond what was done in 1993 (link requires registration; HT Colorado Right):

Update at bottom of post: other bloggers reactions.

In a column this afternoon, Politico's Roger Simon took a swipe at Democratic presidential candidate and former Sen. John Edwards (D-N.C.) for giving a public prayer for the victims of the Virginia Tech gunman "in Christ's name.":

Does John Edwards include Jews in his prayers? Or Muslims? Or Hindus? Or any other non-Christians?

He didn’t the other day. The other day, in order to commemorate those killed at Virginia Tech, Edwards led a prayer “in Christ’s name” at Ryman Auditorium, which bills itself as “Nashville’s Premier Performance Hall.”

Edwards has a perfect right to pray publicly or privately any way he wants to. But people who are not Christians often feel left out of prayers like his.

In an April 23 online chat at washingtonpost.com, the paper's chief media critic, Howard Kurtz, was asked his thoughts on the recent dustup between Karl Rove and celebrity enviro-activists Laurie David and Sheryl Crow at the White House Correspondents Dinner. Kurtz declined to give his opinions on who escalated the row, but hinted that he thought David and Crow purposely set out to tweak the presidential advisor.

Arlington, Va.: Okay, what's your take on the Laurie/Karl/Sheryl dust-up? I understand it was somewhat crazy for Laurie to think she was going to change Karl's mind then and there, but I also think that because access to Karl is so limited for "regular" people, I would have taken advantage of the chance to push my agenda on the nation's top advisor had I been there. That's why this concept of "no politics tonight, we're all friends here" for the Dinner seems silly. How often does Karl return any of these reporter's phone calls?

Howard Kurtz: Having not been there, I don't know whether Sheryl Crow and Laurie David confronted Rove aggressively, which got him mad, or tried to engage in a polite discussion of global warming, only to be tongue-lashed by the White House adviser. Given the speed and the glee with which they blogged about the incident, I suspect they were not averse to making a scene.

UPDATE at bottom of post: Tumulty responds.

Lamenting how Democrats have lost their penchant for fierce advocacy of new gun control laws, Time's Karen Tumulty described as "modest" former Vice President Al Gore's stance on gun control in his 2000 campaign in an April 17 post at her magazine's "Swampland" blog.:

...in talking to Democrats on Capitol Hill, I'm picking up no enthusiasm for a cause that many have deemed a political loser. Al Gore's relatively modest proposal in the wake of Columbine for licensing gun owners (as opposed to the more radical one of registering their guns) is still widely believed to have been a factor in costing him the election, losing him votes that he might otherwise have goten from, for instance, gun-owning union members.

UPDATE with video link below jump.

On the April 10 "Tonight Show," host Jay Leno joked about Democrats boycotting the Fox News Channel/Congressional Black Caucus Institute debate. Wondered Leno, "How are you going to stand up to terrorists when you're afraid of Fox News?"

Maybe Jay should ask Time magazine's Joe Klein, who called the Fox News debate a "sordid event" that was a clever ploy to "pander" to a Democratic interest group.

Here's the setup and punchline: