"Our increasingly dysfunctional press"

Glenn, in commenting on Johan Goldberg's take on another really stupid story by the AP, wrote the following:

I agree with Ann Althouse that it would be nice to have a national discussion on surveillance laws in light of new technology. The kind of coverage these topics are getting from our increasingly dysfunctional press, however, makes me wonder if such a discussion is even possible.

Distinguished law professor with a well-established record of reasonableness notes in an off-hand manner that the MSM is dysfunctional and likely incapable of carrying on a rational discussion of an important topic.

If this comment was made about most businesses or industries, it would serve as a wake up call for conscientious management. I don't think the news media has any such management.

Bush should call their bluff

Tony Snow says Bush should call the bluff of the Democrats by seeking legislation authorizing him to continue doing what he is doing as far as surveillance in the war on Islamic terror.

I think that is a bad idea. He already has the legal authority from the Constitution. To ask Congress for authorization would weaken the presidency and suggest he was somehow wrong in the past.

I do think he should call their bluff, however. The GOP should make this the essential issue of the Congressional and Senate races in November. And Bush should be the point man making the case. Dems want to fight on this issue. Let's have at it.

Barone on MSM propaganda

Hugh Hewitt had Michael Barone on his radio show with Fred Barnes and Mark Steyn. Barone on the MSM and Bush:

The mainstream media is going to be keeping up an assault on Bush, non-stop, as they've been doing for five years. That's their mission in life, is to try to destroy his presidency, and he's finally woken up to the fact in November that he's got to make his own case, because they're certainly not going to provide any information on which people can make it for him.

He sure doesn't beat around the bush. I wish someone would ask media apologists such as Jay Rosen how they can say the media isn't biased against Bush in the face of what Barone says.

Everything MSM Reported on Katrina was Wrong

Betsy had this roundup on the story.

10 worst Americans -- a rough draft

The Captain and the Big Lizard have posted their responses to this challenge to list the 10 worst Americans.

In thinking of names, I found that I was not interested in naming people such as Al Capone who were clearly evil. I found myself thinking of those who, regardless of whether motivated by good intentions, caused the most harm to the most people.

The names that I am considering at present include (in no particular order):

- Justice Blackmun - for Roe v. Wade

- FDR - we would have eventually prevailed in WWII no matter who was president. But his policies extended and exacerbated the misery of the Great Depression for years and years. His social programs created the impetus for the welfare trap which ensared so many and degraded their lives. His power grab in massively expanding government continues to harm all of us to this day.

- Arthur Sulzberger -- CEO (his family owns the largest stake) of the NY Times. The corruption of the news infects the entire MSM.

- John Wilkes Booth -- reconstruction was far more destructive to the nation than it would have been had Lincoln lived.

- LBJ -- his mismanagment of Vietnam killed tens of thousands, polarized the country in ways that still divide us, and harmed our foreign policy to this day. His war on poverty degraded and impoverished the lives of millions. His corruption helped steal a presidential election.

- Ted Kennedy -- degrading America's ability to bring freedom to the world for four decades. How many people around the world have died, suffered torture, poverty and repression because the US was hamstrung in its ability to stand up to the totalitarian menace of communism, et al?

- Rachel Carson -- the lies in her book led to the banning of DDT and have resulted in the deaths of millions and millions of poor people around the world every year.

Other possibilities -- anyone in particular in Hollywood who was particularly responsible for glorifying drug use? Timothy Leary perhaps? Anyone in particular who was to blame for the idea that a perfect soul mate is out there for each of us? This has led to divorces and the destruction of the homelives of millions of children.

Other suggestions welcome.

Read A J Strata's series of posts

A J has a whole bunch of good posts this week on topics such as the FISA court's efforts to keep the Gorelick wall in place, Able Danger, and the war on the US being waged by the MSM. He highlights an Investor's Business Daily piece calling out the Times, et al for helping our enemies during wartime.

Read all of them.

LA Times "fact" checkers

Hugh had this. Reporter uses internet hoax as fact in front page story. Doesn't bother to check fake quote of Wyoming governor because she had talked with him in the past it sounded to her like the way he talks. Layers and layers of editors were satisfied.

It is always a close question whether the MSM is decaying faster from the incompetence or the corrupt propaganda. Chalk up another in the gross incompetence column.

Working with the Enemy

The NY Post lays out the evidence against the Times.

Saddam's WMD Supplier Convicted

The Captain has the details. The now convicted supplier of Saddam's nerve gas was in hiding and protected by the dictator in Baghdad until we invaded.

Will Democrats object to Iraqis using their election tactics?

Glenn refers to several reports of possible election fraud in Iraq. If liberals should claim that Iraqi election fraud shows that democracy is impossible there, I guess we'll have a hard choice -- disband the Democratic party or disband the USA.

US Military -- Good Samaritans to the World

Tom Bevan on the greatest humanitarian organization in the world, ever.

Idiot's Guide to Victimhood

Dr. Sanity has a long post explaining how to reap the benefits of eternal victimhood.

Funny. Go read.

Has Times matched Rather?

American Thinker raises a good question. Is the screw up by the NY Times on the NSA story as bad as Rather and Mapes on the bogus memos?

Remind the nation-- show the tower attacks on your blog!

John McIntyre notes that we are backsliding to September 10th. We know that the MSM and the Democrats do not want to acknowledge that 9/11 even happened.

I propose, therefore, that all bloggers who are concerned that our nation is forgetting why we fight provide a daily reminder. Let's all put up and keep up a picture or pictures of the WTC attacks on our blogs while we are at war.

I'll even get someone to show me how.

A Catalog of the dimming light

Once we might have said that their coverage was getting curiouser and curiouser. Sadly, life moves on and the evidence of incompetence and corruption piles higher and higher. The MSM's effort to make the Keystone Cops and the Three Stooges look efficient and effective by comparison reached new lows in 2005. A short list of the year's various media feeding frenzies is here.

"Feeding frenzy" doesn't quite capture it, does it? Perhaps when dealing with the MSM it would be more accurate to call it a "vomit frenzy" or a "diahhrea frenzy". Certainly more distasteful, but alas, more accurate.

Prosecute the leakers

Jackl Kelly calls for the Times' reporters to be subpoenaed and held in jail for contempt if they fail to reveal the leakers who supplied them with the eavesdropping story.

I agree.

The Appalling Corruption of Clinton's Judges

Power Line has a post on the extraordinary corruption of the Clinton appointments to the federal district court in DC.

The journalists writing the first draft of history may have succeeded in the efforts to keep most of the voters in the dark about corruption like this. However, history has more than one draft. Historians of the future will study the criminality and corruption which permeates the Democratic Party now (and has for over a half-century) and render the final verdict on Bill Clinton and his friends.

It won't be pretty. Their enablers, defenders and co-conspirators in the news media will end up looking as bad as Dan Rather and Mary Mapes, if not worse.

Tony Dungy's son found dead

ESPN is reporting that Tony Dungy's 18 year-old son was found dead in his apartment this morning. How horrible.

Dungy is as classy a man as I have ever observed in coaching. He seems like a genuinely nice person and the kind of man you would want your child to play for.

The Colts are not anywhere near the most talented team in the NFL. They have been winning with a lot of players that couldn't even make most other teams. He deserves a lot of the credit for the way they started the season 13-0.

How tragic. Prayers for him and his family.

Why did Judge resign?

People are speculating as to why Judge Robertson resigned from the FISA court. some think he is protesting the president, which makes very little sense to me.

In my opinion, his resignation would make a lot more sense if he had been the source for the NY Times. As Musil points out in the link above, he has a record of slimy partisanship for Democrats.

NY Times -- synonym for dumbass

For a good start on understanding the legality of the administration's actions, go to Power line and read all the different posts. That the program is legal (and considered legal by the very Democrats carping now) seems beyond any real question.

The most interesting question in all this is how incompetent the NY Times comes off. Remember that they had this story for over a year. That gave them an extraordinary amount of time to get a solid legal analysis. Obviously, they didn't. The Times has gone off making rash accusations of wrongdoing which it cannot back up. What a bunch of fools!

Worse, they have been a party to treasonous or near-treasonous behavior. They have provided tremendous help to the enemy with the disclosure. And all because they failed to get any legal research.

The NY Times is increasingly becoming a synonym for "dumbass".

Blatant propaganda at CNBC

Watching for financial news at 1:10 this afternoon. Before going to a commercial break, CNBC has a teaser on news from Congress -- big dispute over drilling in ANWR. You wouldn't believe the pictures they showed. We saw caribou splashing in beautiful streams and beautiful flowers waving gently in the breeze. Of course, no one is advocating drilling in these areas. The drilling would take place in one of the world's most barren, god-foresaken hellholes.

I know this is SOP for the news media.

But it still pisses me off. Because it is a blatant fraud. The "producers" of the news are knowingly, purposefully, deliberately displaying images knowing that viewers will assume that they are pertinent to the discussion. But the images are no more accurate than if they were of downtown Paris. They are a lie, plain and simple, for the purpose of trying to influence voting.

Steyn on Dems' Iraqi Quagmire

Steyn has a bunch of great lines. Read it all. Best part:

If you're a Democratic patriot and you're outraged by my linking your party to the "insurgents," take it up with your leaders: They're the ones who've over-invested the party in American failure. And instead of being angry at me you should be ashamed of them.

Michael Barone on the lessons of 25 years

Barone explains all that we have learned from the last quarter-century. It might as well be a commercial for voting Republican and why we should never listen to liberals. All the more powerful coming from someone who once committed his life to electing Democrats.

Concern over Civil Liberties

A number of prominent Democrats have expressed grave concern of the state of our civil liberties. The idea that we might have to balance civil libertiws while fighting a war against people who want to destroy us doesn;t seemed to have occurred to them.

However, as Tony Snow recently reminded us, there is presently an extremely important report bottled up by Dems in DC which discusses a most horrible series of assaults on freedom and civil liberties by a president who used the power of his office to exact terrible revenge upon his political opponents. And these assaults had nothing to do with defending our country.

Where are all those folks who want us to know how concerned they are about our liberty? Why won't they stand up for civil liberties and let us see the Barrett Report?

Learning the wrong lessons from the past

I like the Captain, but he makes a large mistake in this post about Harry Reid and his efforts as the Dems leader in the Senate to shut down business over ANWR drilling. He says that Reid won't succeed because of the past failure of Newt Gingrich. "If Reid thinks he can win long-term gains by shutting down the Senate and blocking a bunch of executive nominations, he should remember Newt Gingrich and think again."

Some of you may recall that pundits made the same mistake when talking about Bill Clinton's efforts to cover up all of his corruption. They pointed out how the failure to immediately come clean by GOP presidents was used by the media to pound them relentlessly. Apparently, this was supposed to establish a "truth" applicable to presidents of either party. Yeah, right.

The Captain needs to remember, the news media does not treat the GOP and the Dems the same way. If a dispute between the parties results in some kind of government shutdown or slowdown, it is ALWAYS the fault of the GOP. Always. And cover-ups work fine for Democrats. Just not for Republicans.

Liberal Insanity compiled

Dr. Sanity outlines all the sickness we have seen from Democrats and their media cheerleaders in the last few days. Both of the remaining sane liberals in the US must be dying of embarassment.

What the -----?

Watching ESPN Sports Center with my five year-old son in my lap after dinner I should not have to see stories about lesbians, sexual orientation, and lawsuits.

Why can't we just watch sports and sports channels without having our small kids exposed to all this garbage?

UCLA study confirms my earlier observations

Long time readers know that I have pointed out in several posts that the Wall Street Journal news pages are liberal (only the op-ed page is conservative as it has a completely different staff). Mark Tapscott points out a study by profs at UCLA and Missouri which shows how liberally biased the MSM is. The most biased outfit -- the news pages of the Wall Street Journal. CBS News, NY Times and LA Times came in 2d, 3d, and 4th.

Light gets dimmer

The increasingly dark age of journalism continues. Mark Steyn interviewed on Hugh Hewitt's show said:

the front page of today's Washington Post, which says nothing about the Iraq election. The mainstream media is more excited about this gay cowboy movie than the Iraq election.

Tom Brady as Paris Hilton

I often disagree with this writer, but he hit the nail on the head with this one. In Self-Parody and Sports Illustrated, he does a good job. Best lines:

Last week’s edition of Sports Illustrated featured the inevitable selection of Tom Brady, who appears on the front cover monthly at this time of year, as its Sportsman of the Year.

and

over the past several years it has moved further into the traps of cultish sports celebrity worship (Brady has become the magazine’s version of Paris Hilton)

.

Green on the outside, red on the inside

George Will on the socialist goals of environmentalists.

I second that emotion

Via Lorie:

Quote Of The Week (Quite Possibly The Year)


“Anybody who doesn’t appreciate what America has done, and President Bush, let them go to hell!” – Betty Dawisha, Iraqi voter

Doesn’t that pretty much include the entire American left and 99.999 percent of the MSM?

Bush Approval jumps

In this poll.

AP finally admits gross incompetence

Re: Massey

Jane Fonda - "US trains soldiers to commit atrocities"

Michelle has more.

Iraqis surprisingly positive about future

Here is a report on the media obsession with all things negative. Got to love the intro to the Iraq elections:

According to an ABC News/Time magazine survey of 1,700 Iraqi citizens, released in advance of historic parliamentary elections on Thursday, “surprising levels of optimism prevail in Iraq,” according to ABC’s polling director, Gary Langer. “Despite the daily violence there, most living conditions are rated positively, seven in 10 Iraqis say their own lives are going well, and nearly two-thirds expect things to improve in the year ahead.”

As MRC comments, "Of course, those optimistic Iraqis don’t watch ABC, CBS and NBC every night."

Ignorance and your tax money at work

here.

Cover-up

Tony Snow has details that will make you want to vomit.

More corruption from Bill Clinton

Econopundit notes that Bill Clinton's activities and advocacy advance the agenda of certain businesses in the US.

The conference is over. Wm. Clinton's last-minute suprise appearance and his renewed insistence "climate change is real" was not altruistic; it was to push the agenda of a certain branch of the US business community.

Why isn't this promotion of certain businesses and certain kinds of business activity as corrupt as alleged Republical promotion of Halliburton, big oil, big pharmaceuticals, and so on? What am I missing?

The dark ages of journalism keep getting darker.

NAACP attacks McNabb

Donavon McNabb is the QB of the Eagles and he happens to be black. The head of the local NAACP attacked him for not being black enough. McNabb responded.

Stupid, Ignorant or Liar?

David Ignatius of the Washington Post was on PBS news show last evening (I only saw this my daughter had watched Barney earlier in the day and the TV was on that channel when I turned it on). In the few moments I watched, he repeatedly said that Iraq was a complete mess. In fact, he said that the mess keeps getting worse every month. Finally, regarding the elections, he said that the newly elected government might be able to garner the support of the Iraqi people at the end of four years if it could be viewed as having liberated Iraq from occupation by the US.

In the future, the early part of the 21st century will be regarded by historians and journalism scholars as the dark ages where corruption and incompetence dominated the news media. And helped create the impetus for the revolution in news which saw the old news media dinosaurs destroyed.

Crumbling Credibility

The process by which the establishment news media is losing credibility is slow, but relentless. It happens every day. As we watch the long slow train wreck, however, there are moments when the extent of the ongoing damage seems to be particularly noteworthy.

The US economy recently set a record for consecutive quarters with growth exceeding 3%. Yet, a recent poll showed that 43% of the people think we are in a rescession! Could anything be a greater indictment of the news media? This would be conclusive proof of the incompetence of the news media, if we didn't know that it was due to efforts to provide partisan propaganda.

More and more, lately, we read pundits who ordinarily strive to avoid making partisan charges refer to the news media as propagandists. Even Michael Barone has become more comfortable pointing out the partisanship of political journalists. Dr. Sanity's post on Norman Podhoretz coming article is a good starting point on how bad things have gotten.

Yesterday, Glenn had a post on the good news in Afghanistan. Here's how he wrapped it up:

As I've said before, if you read the news coverage and it leaves you dispirited, demoralized, and depressed, that's not an accident. That's the goal.

Yes, he has said it before. What struck me was that the news media has gotten so bad, so often, that we read this kind of damning evaluation and we don't even notice anymore. A respected law professor impugns not only the competence, but the honesty and integrity of the news media, and we don't even find it noteworthy.

Because we know that it is true.

If the MSM covered the Colts like they cover Iraq

Jon Ham imagines the write up of last Monday's victory by the Colts over the Steelers if the MSM wrote it up they way they cover Iraq. It starts like this:

INDIANAPOLIS — The Indianapolis Colts, seeking to silence critics who say they are overrated, fell short of that mark on Monday night by outscoring the Pittsburgh Steelers by a mere 3-point margin in the first quarter.

Despite the unspectacular first-quarter margin, Colts head coach Tony Dungy insisted that his team was winning the battle. “Hey, we’re up three,” said Dungy. “In my book that’s a lead.” But critics pointed out that the Colts gained their lead only as a result of a desperation 80-yard pass by quarterback Peyton Manning to Marvin Harrison on their first play of the game.