Great, Now I Like Him More...

So CNN's front page has exploded over the latest "scandal" to "rock" the Bush administration: Dubya used an expletive! (As CNN still doesn't apparenty "get" this "internet thing", I have linked to Foxnews, who have graciously and immediately provided a linkable article, as opposed to CNN, who have only provided LIVE VIDEO FEED (and thus unlinkable) at the current time. Feh).

The actual usage of the naughty word: "See the irony is that what they need to do is get Syria to get Hezbollah to stop doing this s*** and it's over"

If you listen to the whole segment, he also makes a comment about wanting to call Kofi Annan up and get him to actually do something about the situation, with relation to Syria.

I bet I'm not the first to say this, and I know I won't be the last: I only like him more now. And just when I was getting all disgruntled over immigration reform and government spending... Karl Rove, you magnificent bastard!

New post, old date!

I just finished and posted an entry I had been working on for a couple weeks. I can't figure out how to change the date of a post, so for now, just scroll down to 6/29/2006 if you want to read it.

Update: Now with clicky goodness! Also, please leave the Reticulated Terrestrial Furry Mole out of this, please. He has enough trouble as it is, burrowing through the ground and being endangered and all.

A Real Story

In light of the recent "revelations" by the NYTimes, the LATimes, et alia, the only "defense" mustered seems to by this mythical right of the American people "to know". Hugh Hewitt makes a point (not in regard to the SWIFT program, but to the LATimes front-page "breaking news" about Lance Armstrong allegations, nevermind that they're discredited and weeks-old at this point) that newspapers seem obsessed with spilling secrets:

Proposition: Big MSM has really lost its way, concluding that anything "secret" is in fact wrongfully hidden from public view, and that its function is to act as a conveyer belt to the front page for whatever a party or person doesn't want revealed.

Anywho, this got me thinking, that if they genuinely were about spilling secrets, any secrets, they'd go after a potentially bigger story than the SWIFT program: an expose' on who within the government has been leaking all this classified material! That seems like an awfully big story to me. Somebody has been exposing these (to the best of my knowledge) perfectly legal programs, the net effect of which is to a) smear George W. Bush, our sitting President, and b) hinder the war against Islamic Fascism. Why doesn't some media arm dig out these leakers for all the world to see? I mean, what if they're true-blue, red-blooded American patriots who are genuinely trying to do some good? Or, what if they happen to be individuals with a track-record of Bush-hatred and America-bashing? Or what if, God forbid, it's somebody with awfully suspicious ties to the Middle East, say, with an conspicuously Arab last name? That latter choice, I think, scares me the most.

The point is this: somebody is placed high-enough that they have both the clearance AND the need-to-know about these programs, and either that person of someone intimately connected with them are leaking these classified, government secrets to the media. That's a crime. No one in their right mind would claim that it's not a very serious crime, either. The MSM is therefore saying that some crimes, in their own mind, now matter how egregious, are ok to commit.

As Much Fun as Shooting Monkeys in a Barrel...

Oh no! Another post on media bias! Fun and easy, as my mixed metaphor of a title implies.

Some media bias is temporally based, and transient in nature, only able to be caught by keen observers. For instance: two rulings by state supreme courts, one in New York and the other in Georgia, within hours of eachother today, reaffirmed the democratic will of the people by upholding or reinstating various anti-gay-marriage legislation. On CNN's website, to their credit, they initially put up a big red NEWS ALERT on their front page regarding the initial NY decision. However, within MINUTES, this banner was replaced by another banner alerting us that, after all, North Korea was not going to launch more missiles (stop the presses! Nothing is going on under our very noses! We must report this!). Unlike the usual procedure, a link to an article about the NY court decision did not appear on the main page for hours.

And here's something interesting: for a good long while (at least an hour), the "breaking news" that nothing was going to happen in North Korea stayed up at the top of the screen, without a linking article, and with a blaring typo in the text (referring to "untelligence sources" -- another subtle example of media bias, perhaps unconciously? I'll be gracious and assume it was a simple typo). It has the icky feel of an editor demanding that they put something, anything, up on the main page to distract attention away from the blow to the gay marriage agenda. So they hastily "broke" the news that nothing was happening, without even so much as a spell check.

Of course, by the time the Georgia Supremes announced their decision, it became too much of the 800-pound-gorilla to ignore. SO, CNN finally linked an article to each of the two court case decisions on their front page (without, I might add, a prominent BREAKING NEWS banner for the second one, to the best of my knowledge -- although I might have missed a quickie).

Of course, FOX News had prominent banners about BOTH court decisions, appropriately. Barely a peep about the nothing that was happening over in North Korea though. Blarrrgggh! Faux news! Conservative fascist media bias for Chimpy McFlightSuit Bu$hitlerburton! glarblarhelglharg!