<p>"Shop Sold Guns to Pa., Va. Tech Shooters" blares the headline for an August 7 Associated Press story carried on Time.com.</p><p>But <a href="http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1915308,00.html" target="_blank">Time's headline for the accompanying AP story</a> is woefully inaccurate and worse, deceptive. Pittsburgh fitness center shooter George Sodini, whom police say purchased his firearms legally, did not purchase them from online accessories dealer TGSCOM, Inc. </p><p>The same story <a href="http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5jCr-8hvMxT_o93eW1whvXE... target="_blank">accessed at Google</a> has a more accurate headline, "Pa. gunman used same Web store as Va. Tech shooter." </p><p>Here's the story as carried on Time.com:</p> <blockquote>
New York Daily News
While conservatives like National Review’s Kathryn Lopez were unimpressed by President Obama describing the shooting of student protester Neda Soltan in Iran as merely a "problem" – like having to stand in line for concert tickets? – the New York Daily News supinely painted Obama as emotionally distressed: "DEATH THAT BROKE HIS HEART," screamed their front page headline.
Inside, reporter Helen Kennedy at least acknowledged that Obama had toughened his rhetoric, contrary to his odd insistence at yesterday’s press conference that he’s been absolutely consistent in his Iran rhetoric:
President Obama dramatically toughened his criticism of Iran's crackdown on election protesters Tuesday, paying emotional tribute to slain student Neda Soltan and declaring the U.S. "appalled and outraged" by the violence.
"I strongly condemn these unjust actions, and I join with the American people in mourning each and every innocent life that is lost," he said.
An interesting twist in last week's arrest of four Muslim men charged with plotting to bomb New York synagogues was reported Monday: the younger brother of one had a deadly liver disease that Medicaid wouldn't cover.
Makes you wonder if this revelation will be used by media to advance President Obama's universal healthcare plans.
Consider the following opening paragraphs of a New York Daily News article published Monday entitled "Terror Plotter David Williams Did it For Me, says Sick Brother Lord McWilliams":
The Drudge Report has the latest candidate for the Omission Watch, especially considering how much the networks have displayed their white-hot love for Michelle Obama. The First Lady had the political cluelessness to wear $540 sneakers out on a mission to help the poor!
From Editor & Publisher yesterday (bold is mine):
The Audit Bureau of Circulations released this morning the spring figures for the six months ending March 31, 2009, showing that the largest metros continue to shed daily and Sunday circulation -- now at a record rate.
According to ABC, for 395 newspapers reporting this spring, daily circulation fell 7% to 34,439,713 copies, compared with the same March period in 2008. On Sunday, for 557 newspapers, circulation was down 5.3% to 42,082,707. These averages do not include 84 newspapers with circulations below 50,000 due to a change in publishing frequency.
Below is a chart showing the specifics for the top 25, including percentage losses for the past four years and during the past year (current year source: Editor & Publisher):
During a 6-minute segment on the Saturday Early Show on CBS, co-host Erica Hill spoke with liberal journalists Mort Zuckerman, editor in chief of U.S. News and World Report, and Steven Kornacki of the New York Observer, about the future of the Republican Party. Republican strategist and CNN contributor Leslie Sanchez was also part of the panel discussion, but was only allowed 44 seconds to speak during the segment, frequently being cut off by Hill, Zuckerman, and Kornacki.
Zuckerman described the future of the GOP this way: "Obama's popularity is surging and the support for the Republican Party is declining, in part because if there is any symbol of the Republican Party, it was Bobby Jindal, the Governor of Louisiana, speaking after President Obama, and articulating a philosophy that was so completely discredited under the Bush administration that it's hard to imagine that they think they're going to do anything other than consolidate their support in a very small number of arch-conservative districts in the United States."
Kornacki shared a similar view, suggesting Republicans give up on conservative principles and simply follow Democratic Party ideals: "Republicans in Congress, the Republicans on talk radio, on Fox News, Republicans who are dominating the party and driving the philosophy of their party right now and they are denying reality...2008 was a revolt against the excesses of the Reagan philosophy, and the Republicans right now seem to be saying...'we got to click our shoes together three times, repeat our favorite Reagan catch phrase and poof, we're going to be good again.' It's not going to work. The public is looking for people who want government to take a leading, active, and aggressive role. Republicans aren't even speaking to that."
On Tuesday, President Barack Obama attempted to enter the Oval Office via a panel of windows he mistook for a door.
Will media ridicule him for this innocent mistake much as they did George W. Bush when he tried exiting a meeting with reporters in Beijing back in November 2005?
Before we examine the former president's treatment, the Daily News reported Wednesday (h/t NBer Prester John):
Today on the New York Daily News's Web site appear a picture and story of President Obama having trouble getting back into the White House. The article begins:It looks like President Obama hasn't gotten acquainted to his White House surroundings. On the way back to the Oval Office Tuesday, the President approached a paned window, instead of the actual door -- located a few feet to his right.
Doors didn't open automatically for Obama’s predecessor either. While making a hasty exit from a 2005 press conference in Beijing, former President George W. Bush tugged on the handles of a door, only to find it locked.
Bush laughed off the blunder, but the pictures still live on as part of Bush's lame duck legacy. However, there was little note taken of Obama's rookie mistake.
The New York Daily News has reported on a crazed woman passenger who bit a driver over the unavailability of a hybrid bus. However, if the Daily News had investigated the background of the upset passenger, Shelia Bolar, they would have found out that she was every bit as qualified to deliver an Obama inaugural poem as was Elizabeth Alexander who is credited by many for delivering the worst inauguration poem ever. First the Daily News story about how Shelia Bolar has come to our attention:
Going green was a cause she could really sink her teeth into.The frantic passenger who bit a veteran driver's arm was upset that his bus wasn't a hybrid, he said Thursday.
Shortly before Election Day 2006, the Wall Street Journal reported that the far-left-leaning activist group ACORN gave crack cocaine to one of its Ohio workers in 2004 "in exchange for fraudulent registrations that included underage voters, dead voters and pillars of the community named Mary Poppins, Dick Tracy and Jive Turkey." Years later, when a conservative analyst mentioned it on television, H-I-L-A-R-I-T-Y ensued in the liberal media echo chamber at the conservative's expense.The butt of the jokes this time was my colleague and NewsBusters contributor Matthew Vadum who during his appearance on "The Daily Show with Jon Stewart" last Thursday had the audacity to say (video available here):
But we're nervous. We're Jewish and I spoke to my parents down in Florida today. They're voting for McCain."
"Because he's white," said the wife. "Same with my parents."
"They just won't vote for a black man," the guy said. "And they're Democrats! Never voted Republican before!"
If it were an isolated incident, I wouldn't mind.
But the woman at my table added that the only one of her three sons who was a registered Democrat was voting for McCain because he was white.
And I've been hearing stuff like that for the past few months. What I hear banging around Queens is not, of course, a scientific survey. It's anecdotal. But after a while you feel a disturbing vibe.
"Most of the guys at my law firm are voting for McCain," said a lawyer I know. "Not for any specific issue. Because he's white. No, make that because he's not black. It's scary because these are educated people."
He said his own wife was voting for McCain for the same reason. And she's a teacher.
Other educated white people have told me that "it's too soon" for a black man to be president. Or, "I thought it would happen in my kids' lifetimes, not mine."
And this is in Queens, the most ethnically, racially, and religiously diverse county in America, in "liberal" New York City.
Make it a trio of mindreaders at NBC/MSNBC. As noted here, yesterday Howard Fineman and David Shuster went Carnac on us, emphatically declaring that Barack Obama didn't have Sarah Palin in mind with his lipstick line. On this morning's Today, Andrea Mitchell joined her network stablemates [no pun intended!] in delving into Barack's brain and assuring us he meant no harm.
ANDREA MITCHELL: Barack Obama has been a punching-bag [aww] for a barrage of criticism from the McCain campaign. Charges that he slurred Sarah Palin when he said this about McCain and his change argument [cut to clip of Obama's lipstick line]. He was clearly talking about McCain, not Palin.
Well, guess that wraps it up. But wait. Over at Morning Joe, the group wasn't so forgiving, opining that Obama either did know, or should have known, the implications of what he was saying. Mika Brzezinski herself took the first shot.