More Biased Reporting--UPDATED

Ridiculous:

The Supreme Court on Monday turned down a plea by environmental groups to rein in the Bush administration's power to waive laws and regulations to speed construction of a fence along the U.S.-Mexican border.

Update:

James Lileks sums up the modern press:

It is amusing, really – after sticking people’s heads in the muck every day for years, promoting every faddish scare, fluffing the pillow beneath every yuppie worry, swapping the straight-forward adult approach to news with presenters who emote the copy with the sad face of a day-care worker telling the children that Barney is dead – in short, after decades of presenting the world through the peculiar prism that finds in every day more evidence of our rot and our failures, they wonder why people are depressed. Hang the banner, guys: Mission Accomplished.

McClellan's Book Published By Soros Company

Little Green Footballs has the details. You know, I tried to not be mean about Scott McClellan yesterday and just light-heartedly joke about his opportunism. Today, I'm not feeling so charitable.

When McClellan worked as Press Secretary, he was so dull-witted and slow on the uptake it was painful to watch. The press was clearly frustrated. The bland dullness and lack of articulate answers didn't look feigned. In fact, I thought it was a case of pure evil Rovian genius to have McClellan as Press Secretary. McClellan was so bad he was good.

Below is a clip around the Plame investigation:



So, McClellan now says he knew what was going on and didn't blow the whistle.

Well, McClellan wasn't some Rovian plot. He just stunk that bad and had to be replaced by Tony Snow, who was fantastic. I don't think this book will make McClellan come off as suddenly smart except to liberals who aren't too bright anyway.

Scott McClellan's Loyalty In Doubt

Scott McClellan joins Dick Morris as a disloyal, self-serving former staffer. Who ever likes a "snitch" as Drudge says? He better enjoy his moment in the sun. Wait, what am I saying? The MSM loves a turncoat. He'll probably get his own TV show.

Scott McClellan will get his own TV show in.....
	a month
	before the election
	within a year
	never, he's done
pollcode.com free polls

Cross-posted at Right Wing News

"Bush Lied; People Died"....It's Catchy, Bullshit, But Catchy

Stupid slogans bug me. "Bush lied; People Died" crawled all over me like a thousand roaches. It's cliché. It's unimaginative. And it's just so simpleton simplistic and emotionally stunted. It's like we're in first grade, "I am rubber, you are glue, what you say bounces off me and sticks on you."

Anyway, there are some non-lying reasons we went to Iraq and more will surface:

Today we’re only beginning to learn about what went on behind the scenes in regard to Iraq. One important new source is the recently published War and Decision by Douglas Feith, the No. 3 civilian at the Pentagon from 2001 to 2005. Feith quotes extensively from unpublished documents and contemporary memorandums, just as in the late 1940s Robert Sherwood did in Roosevelt and Hopkins and Winston Churchill did in his World War II histories. The picture Feith paints is at considerable variance from the narratives with which we’ve become familiar.

I just don't want to hear B...L; P....D (I can't even write it out) again.

Aw....Jenna Bush Looked Gorgeous--UPDATE

What a great weekend for her wedding. Pictures here.


UPDATE: What kind of life will Jenna and her new husband have? According to liberals a perfectly charmed one....why they are almost as good at predicting the future as real, live Astrologists who say:

There is a danger that his conservatism will run deeper than hers, and that he will attempt to curtail her freedom (Saturn in his chart, ruling restriction and limitation, forms stressful aspects to Jenna's Moon and Mercury, her emotions and thoughts. Henry has already experienced his Saturn Return, the time at age 28-30 when we are forced to leave childhood behind, but Jenna will not go through her Saturn Return until next year.

Uh oh, could be a rocky road ahead this year. I put as much stock in press predictions as this astrologer's.

A Ray of Sunshine

Today is absolutely magnificent. The sun shines on grass made neon green by a week of spring rain. I'm watching the Memphis UCLA game and listening to Cecilia Bartoli and talking to friends after taking a walk in the breezy day. Perfection.

I was also musing this morning about President Bush. Follow me, people, I'm in a good mood and my mind is all over the place. So, the Prez is in Croatia. And yet again, he's receiving a hero's welcome. They love him there. His speech was incredible. Gateway Pundit is on it, as usual:

President Bush shared these words on liberty and freedom with the people of Croatia today from St. Marko's Square:

The people of this region know what the gift of liberty means. You know the death and destruction that can be caused by the followers of radical ideologies. You know that, in a long run, the only way to defeat a hateful ideology is to promote the hopeful alternative of human freedom. And that is what our nations are doing today in the Middle East. The lack of freedom and opportunity in that region has given aid and comfort to the lies and ambitions of violent extremists. Resentments that began on the streets of the Middle East have resulted in the killing innocent people across the world. A great danger clouds the future of all free men and women, and this danger sits at the doorstep of Europe.

Together the people of this region are helping to confront this danger. Today soldiers from Croatia, Albania, and Macedonia are serving bravely in Afghanistan -- helping the Afghan people defeat the terrorists and secure their future of liberty. Forces from Albania and Macedonia are serving in Iraq -- where they're helping the Iraqi people build a society that rejects terror and lives in freedom. It's only a matter of time before freedom takes root across that troubled region. And when it does, millions will remember the people of your nation stood with them in their hour of need. (Applause.)

Democracy President George W. Bush was among friends in Croatia today.

See, I believe these high-minded sentiments. I believe that every person born deserves a chance to live and to live free. One of the reasons my support for President Bush has not waned is because I believe he is right in principle and that being a force for freedom trumps some of his other ill-advised stances and his inability to adequately communicate his ideals. I've said it before and I'll say it again: We'll miss him when he's gone. History will be kind to this president.

To end, here is a fascinating YouTube clip. This autistic child didn't talk until he was five years old and now, he uses his photographic memory to draw cities. These children are amazing.

BDS Intellectual Style

A friend's rant about Bush:

Bush and his flagitious camarilla have left the country in a lachrymose fettle! Cheney is an absolute agouti in my book. Their brains are obviously dessicated and shriveled from desuetude. Their skulls must be stuffed with kapok!

I kid you not. That came in an email today.

President Bush in Africa

The Anchoress covers President Bush's triumphant African trip. She says:

In places where freedom is taken for granted, our president and our troops are not received with joy. But in places where liberty is still longed for and prized, the story is quite different.

That does seem to be the case, doesn't it?

President Bush: "Cowboy In Space"

It sounds kinda cool even if it's biased pap.

State of the Union

Does anyone think that we'll look back some day and pine for George W. Bush? I think we will. Especially when the next president would be putting in place socialist doctrine.

There's Always Hope For Reconciliation

Always.

Progressive Hypocrisy

The main complaint about Iraq couldn't be uttered in America without inciting the hew and the cry of progressive thinkers and rightfully so, because the main complaint is patently racist. The idea goes like this: the Iraqi people, Muslim people, Arab people, are inherently incapable of living in a free, democratic society. Their tradition, intelligence, culture, history, family structure, and to a less extent, their religion inhibits their evolution as a people. In a sense, they are, like so many inferior cultures, condemned to the bottom of the world's rubbish heap.

Now, imagine these sentiments being used to describe, say, black people or women (remember the outrage at Ann Coulter for her thoughts on American women and voting?) or even Muslim Americans.

The second complaint, like unto the first, is essentially: Why should we care? If the people of the Mideast want to kill each other and be stupid, it's their own damn fault. This argument is easily undone by that little inconvenient truth--the Twin Towers crashing down in Mid-town Manhattan. The burnt out hole gapes there even now, a hollow reminder that what happens there, can affect what happens here.

There was a time, and even now, when progressives fought for the rights of everyone no matter their location or citizenship. There have been many urgent (and to my thinking, valid) pleas to save the Sudanese people--to save the black Christians and Muslims there from genocide imposed by lighter-skinned racist Muslims. So, it's still possible for progressives to claim those ideals, but they don't embody those ideals consistently. They learned from Gandhi's struggle for a free India. They learned by watching their fathers fight WWII to maintain a free West. These experiences planted the seed for the American civil rights movement. This Baby Boomer generation used Flower Power, sit-ins, resistance, etc. and they misused it, too. The valiant struggles of people like Martin Luther King and Mahatma Gandhi became tools for rebellious, amoral, narcissistic, spoiled, privileged young people more enamored with sex and drugs than freedom, man.

The sons and daughters of the Free Love generation didn't leave their hypocrisy behind. In this generation, they've honed their language of oppression but forgotten the truly oppressed. If the victim group doesn't meet their special criteria or if the oppressed is liberated by a perceived enemy (anyone remotely conservative or with the initials G.W.B.) the victims aren't worth saving. A genocide would be preferable to people being freed by someone who doesn't have the proper credentials or, more importantly, language of The Movement.

That George Bush has been one of the most progressive presidents in history galls the so-called progressives. Todays progressives want to conserve the past. Attached to a Ma Sheehan version of the world, they strive to protect and look inwardly. Some even doubt the reasoning to liberate Europe during World War II. Why This perverse reasoning is as narcissistic as it is suicidal.

The only oppressed people worth saving are those who won't matter to America's own self-preservation. Today's progressive would rather America shrivel and die than reach out and spread the seed of democracy. Saving, of course, means using strength and power and fighting and dominating over enemies.

Power over is the language of oppression, but it's also the action of the liberator.

What this means is that the Left will never acknowledge an Iraq success. It will, at the first opportunity, attempt to rob George W. Bush of any success. Genocide is preferable to the President being favorably viewed in history's light.

Who is the true progressive? Who is liberal? It's been a long time since the Left has qualified as either.

Turkeys: Nancy Pelosi and Tom Lantos

Would Turkey be bombing the snot out of Northern Iraq if the Democrats had kept their Machiavellian yappers shut? We'll never know. But now, there's bombing going on on the Northern border and Turkish troops building up there, too.

Just as things settle down down South, Iraq is all stirred up up North. You know, I was hoping that when the Democrats got in power that they would start acting like grown-ups, but that hasn't been the case. They act like they're still the minority party and their words and actions don't matter. But they do matter. It's something Nancy Pelosi needs to remember:

It's certainly not her finest moment," said Michael O'Hanlon, senior fellow in foreign policy studies at the Brookings Institution in Washington.

"There's been no great harm done, but we do have to find some ways to mend the U.S.-Turkish relationship."

I hope not. But it seems like great harm is being done right now.

Paul Krugman: Gore Derangement Syndrome Caused By Bush Derangement Syndrome

Whether it's his zeal to limit a person's choice about rock music or his zeal to limit a person's use of the atmosphere, the impulse within the man that desires to control others is what gives me a visceral response to Al Gore's policies and positions. Mr. Gore seems to have a real need to be the sanctimonious voice of morality. And since he's a Democrat, he certainly can't go back, finish seminary and actually preach in a church. No, in Mr. Gore's case, he created a mega-worldwide church and invokes damnation on anyone who refuses to believe.

And Republicans interested in science or economics who don't buy the gospel are deranged. So says Paul Krugman. Who can rationally disagree with Al Gore? Why would the Right be against his beliefs? Krugman thinks it goes back to the Right's insecurity over the Presidency of George W. Bush. Ultimately, disliking Gore's means and methods and the actual substance of his policies can be pinned on the defense of an illegitimate President Bush:

And now that Mr. Bush has proved himself utterly the wrong man for the job — to be, in fact, the best president Al Qaeda’s recruiters could have hoped for — the symptoms of Gore derangement syndrome have grown even more extreme.

***

Climate change is, however, harder to deal with than acid rain, because the causes are global. The sulfuric acid in America’s lakes mainly comes from coal burned in U.S. power plants, but the carbon dioxide in America’s air comes from coal and oil burned around the planet — and a ton of coal burned in China has the same effect on the future climate as a ton of coal burned here. So dealing with climate change not only requires new taxes or their equivalent; it also requires international negotiations in which the United States will have to give as well as get.

Everything I’ve just said should be uncontroversial — but imagine the reception a Republican candidate for president would receive if he acknowledged these truths at the next debate. Today, being a good Republican means believing that taxes should always be cut, never raised. It also means believing that we should bomb and bully foreigners, not negotiate with them.

Was Mr. Krugman writing about Gore Derangement Syndrome? Because this whole piece certainly feels like B.D.S. President Bush is al Qaeda's best friend. President Bush is a stupid rube. President Bush is an illegitimate President.

And then there's President Bush's policies. It's axiomatic to Democrats that dealing with climate change (and of course, the climate change is a bad thing, it must be, if it exists at all as anything more than the natural order of things) we must raise taxes, give in to foreign governments and "acknowledge these truths".

There's no debate in the Democrat-o-sphere. Human-caused climate change isn't science, it's an inconvenient truth. And Al Gore is the chief evangelist. And the only reason Republicans can't see the truth is that they hate Al Gore and sensible policies like raising taxes. And the Right just can't abide when the greatness of guys like Gore are acknowledged with prizes like the Academy Award and the Nobel Peace Prize.

While the Left has been bereft of zealous sermons for as long as they've been hippies, most Republicans still know a good sermon when they hear one. And they recognize a preacher posing as a politician. For all the Left's projection about George Bush, it's Albert Gore, Jr. who carries himself as the Gaia-ordained apostle of light and "truth". His faith isn't in the science of climate change, his faith is in his own rightness. If he actually believed his sermons, he'd live in a mud hut and restrict his caloric intake so he'd reduce his carbon and methane emissions.

So, Republicans are unreasonable and haters and deranged because they dare to doubt the dubious "truth" and the man who delivers it. Who's deranged again?

President In Iraq

Connecting the bottom-up organization with the top-down organization is the goal going forward in Iraq. (Allah says that's impossible. Video of Bush, here.) That means that the local militias need to be connected to the Iraqi security forces. Once these threads are made, the fabric of Iraqi society strengthens significantly.

It is fashionable to be pessimistic. I think I might the only one in my family who still has hope. But I do have hope for these people. There is always a chance for a new kind of peace.

Gateway Pundit has the round-up. He also writes about the British Press spinning of the Brits leaving Basra.

As an aside:
The press corps are a big bunch of pansy-asses. I read the Pool Report. Give me a break. Here's some of the snark:

POTUS leaned slightly forward, both hands on a makeshift table, as the Marine with a pointer in hand, gave an overview. About 20 troops in fatigues framed POTUS during the briefing, making for better pictures, no doubt.

Are they capable of giving the facts without editorializing? That was a rhetorical question. And now from the Man Up Department:

From there, we left and were back to the file –or what passes for it. Internet connections are slow, and private accounts are tough to access. POTUS is now off to his meeting with Petraeus and Crocker, and co. Next is Maliki, after which they are to make a joint statement. Then it is a session with tribal leaders, remarks to the troops and back to the plane.

I wonder if the tone would have been better if they had access to caviar and T-1 lines.

Oh, and in Iraq right now, it's hot. Really, really hot. And the press doesn't like that either.

American Left Aren't The Only Ones Anticipating New Leadership

Dr. Sanity points to this very interesting article. It's worth reading the whole thing. Here's a tidbit, OK, more like a meal:

Like al-Qaeda in Iraq, and the many other adversaries America and the West must continue to face, the Russians are looking forward to the time after George Bush leaves office. It is assumed that the American electorate has by now tired of playing policeman to the world, and that the next president will be a liberal Democrat, eager to make unilateral concessions, slash military budgets to fund social programs, and cut-and-run from foreign battlefields.

America is demonized as the "cowboy," going it alone; and Western politicians, especially on the left, score easy points by smugly playing to their domestic anti-American galleries. The lethal enemies of the West cannot help but notice this dynamic, and from car bombings in Iraq, to the rhetoric of Russian and Chinese military commanders, they exploit it to drive further wedges between the U.S. and her allies.

We are caught in a trap. The very success of the Bush strategy, in preventing another major terror strike on the U.S., in confronting and arresting the progress of Islamist terrorism in the Middle East and elsewhere, and also in consolidating the post-Cold War European gains of NATO and the European Union, contributes to an illusion of security in a world that has seldom been such a dangerous place. People forget what alliances require.

Forget allies, the American Left seems to forget what their own security requires. It's so much fun to bash Bush, but will any of them grow up in the face of real security concerns should they take the mantel? Or is every world leader from Castro to Assad to Putin to Ahmadinejad betting correctly?

And this one factor may well be why we'll have a Republican again as President in 2008.

Bush's Goal: Ruin Every Diplomatic Relationship

According to this unsigned New York Times editorial this is what Bush was doing the first few weeks in office:

The Bush team was so busy in 2001 trying to upend America’s global relationships according to a neo-conservative agenda that the then national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, did not see any urgency in reports that Al Qaeda was determined to strike in the United States. Mr. Tenet later helped hype the “slam dunk” intelligence that Mr. Bush used to justify diverting the military from the war of necessity against Al Qaeda in Afghanistan to the war of choice in Iraq.

You know, I find it interesting that a report pointing to Bill Clinton's willful ignorance still gets painted as George Bush's problem, but hey, it's The New York Times.

And what do the super secret nameless smarty-pants NYT editorial writers think of all the moderate conservatives being elected in Europe and moving toward the United States? The leaders of Germany, France, Canada and Britain have reaffirmed American ties.

Could it be that these countries, especially those in Europe, see the rationality of addressing radical Islam head-on instead of pretending the problem doesn't exist?

Forgotten Wisdom

Tonight I read one of the best essays from 2007, if not the best. It is by Victor Davis Hanson. He covers all sorts of territory: Bush Derangement Syndrome (BDS), the definition of a Neocon, the housing mess, cheap Chinese goods and the notion of who to trust, media-wise.

Please read it.

Hurricane Dean Exploitation

Unbelievable. There will be looters, there always are looters after disasters. And then there are the metaphorical looters. The people who exploit tragedy, who take glee in people suffering because the people suffering aren't the right kind of people.

Who are these bad people who deserve to die and suffer? Why, they're the people of Texas, of course. They elected George W. Bush Governor, and then helped to elect him president. Some Texans actually still support him. And for that, they deserve a Cat V hurricane's wrath, according to Charles Feldman:

Hurricane Dean, soon to be up graded to a full blown Category 5 hurricane, is taking aim at Texas…the state that gave us George W. Bush. In fact,this could be a second punishing blow to the Tex-assians. Flash flooding from Tropical Storm Erin has already swept away people in the San Antonio area.

Keeping with this religious theme…if it is true that man is created in God’s image, the thought that the almighty might look like George W is enough to convert someone to Satan.

Except for one little thing, the hurricane is currently heading toward Mexico. I suppose the people who live in Cozumel and Cancun deserve God's wrath because.....

H/T Newsbusters who notes that this idiot once was a correspondent for CNN:

Wow. Keep in mind this wasn't just some anonymous loon posting away on a leftwing blog. This far gone BDS post came from a CNN veteran of 21 years. Feldman is currently working as a reporter for KNX Newsradio in Los Angeles and as a contributor to Reuters. I suppose those two organizations are unconcerned about employing a biased moonbat unembarrassed about putting his over the edge BDS on public display.

What is there to be embarrassed about? He's just saying what everyone else thinks.

Rove Loathing Reveals Newsroom Bias--UPDATE, UPDATED AGAIN

Joyous shouts, high-fives and general glee in a Seattle newsroom after the announcement that the Dark Lord Karl Rove retired prompted this giggle-worthy response from the editor:

I ask you all to leave your personal politics at the front door for one simple reason: A good newsroom is a sacred and magical place in which we can and should test every assumption, challenge each other's thinking, ask the fundamental questions those in power hope we will overlook.

If we wore our politics on our sleeves in here, I have no doubt that in this and in most other mainstream newsrooms in America, the majority of those sleeves would be of the same color: blue. Survey after survey over the years have demonstrated that most of the people who go into this business tend to vote Democratic, at least in national elections. That is not particularly surprising, given how people make career decisions and that social service and activism is a primary driver for many journalists.

But if we allowed our news meetings to evolve into a liberal latte klatch, I have no doubt that a pathological case of group-think would soon set in. One of the advances of which I’m most proud over the years is our willingness to question and challenge each other as we work to give our readers the most valuable, meaningful journalism we can.

Written like a true believer. It is sweet how he yearns for a balanced place, but that dog has hunted and there's no going back. He touches on the reason himself. People go into journalism as an extension of their "social service and activism". There aren't too many misanthropic investigative reporters who look for facts, just the facts.

Yellow journalism is back. Not that it ever left. It just got hidden under the veneer of respectability. After Watergate, journalists elevated their opinion of themselves to god-like heights. They were all Superman, doggedly pursuing the truth. Only problem is, most of them hate the American way. You know, Democracy, where people you don't agree with you might get a chance to be in charge for a while, too.

These days, the press sides with the villains.

UPDATE: Victor Davis Hanson has this to say about the Beauchamp affair and the media in general:

The result of keeping these sources anonymous is that the reading public still can’t believe the once-anonymous Beauchamp’s account — or what his New Republic editors are now saying.

Anonymity on rare occasions may have a place in protecting whistleblowers or honest journalistic sources fearful of retaliation. But lately it is being misused in a variety of different contexts to destroy people and institutions — and as a way for authors of all sorts to avoid responsibility for what they write.

The media are blinded by their own ideology and have taken a Machiavellian turn. The end is getting ride of Rove and Bush and every "EVIL" person who disagrees with them. The means can be anything to get the job done. The media takes this on with a religious fervor. There is no such thing as agreeing to disagree. There is no such thing as letting the facts speak for themselves. There is the righteous way, their way, and then there are those who disagree. And those who disagree should be destroyed and if it takes anonymous, unchecked sources to do it, so be it.

UPDATED AGAIN: Newsbusters notes NBC's newsroom booing during the President's State of the Union address. I know, shocking.

And the American Thinker, Randall Hoven, via Glenn Reynolds creates a list of the biased, plagiarizing, lying, confabulating media. Read it all and note the number of reporters from the Gray Lady, herself. Oh, and the intrepid Glenn found this at Slate about uncorrected errors in the media:

The results might shock even the most jaded of newspaper readers. About 69 percent of the 3,600 news sources completed the survey, and they spotted 2,615 factual errors in 1,220 stories. That means that about half of the stories for which a survey was completed contained one or more errors. Just 23 of the flawed stories—less than 2 percent—generated newspaper corrections. No paper corrected more than 4.2 percent of its flawed articles.

I know, shocking.

Oh, and Ann Coulter chimes in, too, about the stooges the Left latches onto for their biased and factually incorrect stories. Stooges beware!