Case study: coverage of Jewish poll

I noticed in the Jerusalem Post that the American Jewish Committee has polled US Jews about issues such as bombing Iran and the Israeli settlements in occupied territory.

Per a Google search, no US media have yet reported on the poll, I guess for fear of somehow offending Jews, even though a Jewish organization took the poll and put out a press release about it.

It's interesting to see that the hawkish Israeli paper, the Post, headlines the story "US Jews back military strike on Iran." Can you imagine the uproar if an American paper ran such an (accurate) headline? The AJC's anodyne press release emphasizes "Rising Concerns Over Iran's Nuclear Program."

As I've said before, the Israeli newspapers do a much better job of reporting on US support of Israel, and activities of American Jews, than our own papers do.

WV Dems Defend ACORN?

Incredibly, for me at least, WV's two Democrat congressmen, Nick Rahall and Alan Mollohan, were among the few votes against cutting off federal money for ACORN. The vote was 345-75. The 75 were basically the Black Caucus (although Detroit's John Conyers voted to defund), left-wingers like Kucinich, a few urban liberals from NY and CA that Acorn has helped, and Rahall and Mollohan.

What on earth were these two thinking of? Their votes make no sense ideologically or politically, as far as I can see.

Has Acorn helped them in their campaigns?

We are talking about a group that has been exposed beyond any doubt (unless you work at CNN or MSNBC) as a sleazy, lawless organization; videos show staffers in five different offices offering help with planned child prostitution activities.

Capito of course voted with the majority, against the ACORN funding.

Rocky backs "animal rights" wacko

Senators Byrd and Rockefeller should be asked about Cass Sunstein, who last Thursday was approved by a small Senate majority to the important position of director of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, or "regulatory czar."

Sunstein is a widely respected lawyer and law professor, but he's a bit wacky when it comes to animals. He thinks animals should have more representation in court, and he thinks hunting should be banned, when it's "just for sport or fun". He's also big on gun control. Not the kind of guy most West Virginians would want in charge of regulation in the Obama White House.

Byrd didn't make it to the Senate for the vote, but Rockefeller voted for Sunstein.

Virginia Democrat Senator Jim Webb -- a proud guntotin' son of Appalachia, per his great book Born Fighting -- voted against Sunstein.

Don't report it unless you have to

There seem to be a lot of cases lately in which the mainstream media (every major network and newspaper except Fox) have almost totally ignored important stories. Not biased reporting, just spiking any story they may have received.

The most striking unreported scandals have been about Acorn (covered for days only on Fox), and Van Jones, unreported (except on Fox) until his forced resignation was front-page news.

Two more examples today of politically correct spiking of stories until the dam bursts:

the memorial service for the murdered anti-abortion protester (did you even hear about the murder itself?)

and the UN report criticizing Israeli "war crimes". Israeli papers have been reporting in detail on the report. The NYTimes finally had the story today, but made it sound like the report is equally critical of Israel and the Palestinians.

There's a good, long column about media malpractice here.

And John Stossel, IMHO the most intelligent and honest newsman at any of the major networks, is moving to Fox.

Addendum, an hour after the above posting: I see that someone named "Cathy Young" has posted a comment, which seems to be an ad for her skin photo (not porn) blogs. My editor says I should delete the comment, but I'm not going to yet, because there happens to be a respected Libertarian writer named Cathy Young, who worked for the Cato Institute and Reason magazine. Presumably that Cathy is not our commenter, but it's possible.

Kennedy on Byrd

After Ted Kennedy's death, Sen. Byrd had himself wheeled onto the senate floor to give a tearful reminiscence about his supposed good friend.

Teddy never got the word about their friendship. Excerpts from Kennedy's memoir, True Compass are available, among other places, at politico.com. The book seems to consist almost entirely of self-serving repetition of the excuses the Kennedy camp has put out for years about Teddy's lifetime of sleaze. But the paragraph about Byrd reveals how surreal things get in Washington, with Bill Clinton lecturing Byrd about biblical morality.

The scene was a White House meeting to discuss gays in the military with Democrat Senators on the Armed Services Committee. Kennedy writes:

"The last senator to speak was Robert Byrd, and he came up with a new one on all of us…..He informed us, with many ornate flourishes, that there had been a terrible problem in ancient Rome with young military boys turned into sex slaves. I don’t remember the exact details, but I think the story involved Tiberius Julius Caesar being captured and abused and used as a sex slave. He escaped and then years later he sought vengeance and killed his captors. Anyway, it was something like that. The room fell silent. The senator continued. Then President Clinton stood up. His response was short and sweet. ‘Well,’ he said. ‘Moses went up to the mountain, and he came back with the tablets and there were ten commandments on those tablets. I’ve read those commandments. I know what they say, just like I know you do. And nowhere in those ten commandments will you find anything about homosexuality. Thank y’all for coming.’ He ended the meeting and walked out of the room.” (Pages 451-452)

Clear days among the airport screeners

An example of the counterproductive incompetence of our airport screeners is here.

One of the few occasions in recent years that our Sen. Rockefeller had significant influence on legislation was when he helped to insure that the TSA screeners would be union members.

(Thanks to Frank Ney of the WV Libertarian Party for the link.)

More McGraw Mischief

WV Attorney-General McGraw, the cynosure of all that has dragged the state's economy down in recent years, is at it again. This time he's making pharmacy chains wish they didn't operate in the Mountain State.