Media Bias Debate

My dear late father used to say that whenever a person's reaction is disproportionate to the stimulus, something else is at work.  Keith Olbermann's "Worsting" of Ann Coulter on last night's Countdown [video] is a good illustration of the principle.  Olbermann ostensibly awarded Ann his "Worst Person" for what was, after all, a rather mild swipe at Rachel Maddow, a tongue-in-cheek reference to…

Something must be in the water at the Cleveland Plain Dealer.In the past couple of weeks, longtime columnist Connie Schultz, who happens to be married to U.S. Senator Sherrod Brown, has come out in favor of changing copyright law to "save newspapers" (the relevant columns are here and here). Its Readers' Representative has also jumped on board.This hostility towards blogs and bloggers is not a…

On Wednesday, MSNBC anchor David Shuster made a bold prediction about Sarah Palin’s political future: "I've said it before, I'll say it again, Sarah Palin will never recover from this...No matter what people say, no matter what these polls, she has no future." [audio available here] Shuster made the comments in the 4:00PM ET hour, following a debate between Democratic strategist David Goodfriend…

The New York State Senate, it appears, has reached an all-time low.One might possibly overlook the legislative wrangling, the blatant power-playing, the use of thuggery to enforce a particular party’s control over the Senate.  One might also overlook the unbelievable childish behavior of the Senate, in which even New York Governor Patterson, owner of the lowest approval rating of any governor in…

In a July 7 New York Times Magazine article ("The Place of Women on the Court"; HT to an e-mailer) apparently scheduled to appear in its July 12 print edition (based on its URL), Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg told the Times's Emily Bazelon that "at the time Roe was decided, there was concern about population growth and particularly growth in populations that we don't want to have too…

Joe Biden is coming to Cincinnati to tout the stimulus plan. A local TV station is thrilled.If this is considered a good way to use stimulus money, we're in $800 billion worth of big trouble:The entire nation is about to get a look at exactly how federal stimulus money is being spent in the Tri-State. Tomorrow morning, Vice-President Joe Biden will be in Northside to look at how that neighborhood…

(Image found at BuriedPlanet.com)In a wildly meandering report on the status of the POR (Pelosi-Obama-Reid) Alliance's attempt to enact statist health care this year, Associated Press writers David Espo and Erica Werner:Told us that the House wants to slap a surtax on "highly paid" Americans without disclosing the percentage of the proposed surtax or how much it might raise.Forgot to tell us that…

Ah, Twitter.The fast-moving microblogging technology has become a household name.  It is the technology that aided the recent Iranian uprising, that gave the global supporters of freedom and justice a way to communicate with the people on the ground in Iran – those poor, huddled masses, yearning to breathe free.Like much of the Internet, it is also sometimes a hive-mind of absurdity.Case in point…

In this report we get a nice one-two punch. Not only are we seeing Democrats once again refusing even a tiny compromise with Republicans on Obama's takeover of nearly 20% of our economy with his healthcare plans, but we also get to see another example of why Huffington Post is not journalism. I like a nice one-two punch for a Wednesday. For one thing, the HuffPo article hilariously calls Democrat…

On July 6, CNN’s American Morning may have positioned themselves as a fly in the White House’s public health-care ointment.  In a story on Senator Mitch McConnell’s recent comments regarding Canadian national health care, CNN traveled to Canada to investigate whether this vision of long queues in health care was warranted.  In investigating, however, CNN neglected to ask an important question of…

In the later paragraphs of a story today about the latest hurdle bailed-out General Motors has managed to jump to get out of bankruptcy, the Associated Press's Bree Fowler almost totally ignored the impact of Ford's improvement largely at GM's expense during the first half of 2009, acting as if GM's decline has almost solely been the result of defections to foreign competitors.Fowler's only…

Imagine if you will, immersing yourself in the rich tones of Neil Diamond and Barbara Streisand, singing of a romance gone astray:You don't bring me flowers, anymore... Now imagine the same syrupy lamenting of the AP, singing of a tragic breakfast gone astray:You don't bring them bagels, anymore...Such is the song of the AP to one Sarah Palin, in which they accuse the Alaska Governor of being '…

Orlando Sentinel movie reviewer Roger Moore was excited to report on the efforts of some Harry Potter fans that want to "change the world" based on their interpretation of Potter character Dumbledore's philosophy of life. He was happy, you see, because the group is all about "global transformation" and spreading global warming fears, gay marriage and the Employee Free Choice Act. Moore writes…

Oh. So. Predictable -- Both what is happening, and how it is being "covered."Chrysler is barely out of bankruptcy, and there is already concern as to whether the money Uncle Sam, (i.e., U.S. taxpayers) funneled into the company -- while in the process of ripping off and intimidating its secured creditors, capriciously terminating plants and dealers, and running roughshod over long-held notions of…