September 29, 2006
News Roundup this week:

Guests:
Steve Roberts, syndicated columnist and journalism professor at George Washington University; Michael Duffy, assistant managing editor, TIME magazine; Caroline Daniel, White House correspondent for the Financial Times.

Due to other more pressing matters -- I do have a life -- the "Gang-up" had to wait. Anyway, you didn't miss much.

One interesting thing did happen around the middle of the week. There was a show about "the religious right" which we know is the root of all evils and conspiracies in this country. Of course, there is no "religious left" in this country so therefore it wasn't even brought up.

What was brought up, even though lightly, was the Clinton meltdown with Chris Wallace on Fox News. Spinned by the Democratic politburo as the thing that Democrats need to do to win the elections, it was in reality an unnecesary display of the real Clinton, according to Dick Morris and others that know him.

But perhaps the person best commenting about former President Clinton's need for an exorcist was former Mayor Rudolph Giuliani. He said that it is wrong to place all the blame for 9/11 on Clinton. I agree. But regardless of how it is spinned by the Clintonistas the best historical perspective of the whole thing was offered by Clinton himself. When he said that he "tried" for eight years and the Bush administration did not even try for eight months he really placed things in context; the kind of context that won't be missed in history. And that is what has Clinton and the Clintonistas in a huffy.

Considering the fact that the first 4 to 6 months of any new administration are transitional, the time to catch up and do something for the Bush administration was even less than Clinton so generously attributes. Take away also the months lost by Gore placing the process even in more limbo with his useless attempt to win, and the time is even less. Regardless of all that, there is more than enough blame to go around. However, history will show, no matter how irrascible the attempts to save a legacy may become, what Clinton himself inadvertently admitted: you cannot compare 8 years with 8 months no matter how you stretch it. You have better chances trying to remove an old stain from a dress.

September 15, 2006

After listening to one hour of American self-flagelation last Monday, the anniversary of 9/11, and on the side hear the BBC's feature story about Muslim persecution in post-9/11 America Friday's News roundup was actually...refreshing.

This week's panel? Guest host: Susan Page, USA Today
with guests Jeanne Cummings, of The Wall Street Journal, Trudy Rubin, foreign affairs columnist and editorial board member at the Philadelphia Inquirer and the token conservative Tony Blankley, editorial page editor of "The Washington Times."

However, this week you did not hear:

Anything about former President Jimmy Carter complaining about how Joe Lieberman was "one of the originators" of the rationale for President Bush to go to Iraq. But old Jimmy didn't mention any of the long list of Democrats that said the same things Joe said from 1998 to weeks before the action against Saddam.

Anything about the "women in white," the women who protest the jailing of political dissidents in Cuba, including 75 of the panelist colleagues, at the beginning of the obsolete gathering of the Nonaligned nations (more like the gathering of the mobster scene in Havana in The Godfather).

Anything about the two confiscations, one about 30 days ago, and one yesterday of loads of cocaine coming from Venezuela in regular freight ships. One from Cuba also.

That is why this week was refreshing. At least the media bias was not so pro active this week. They must be tired watching how nothing they try sticks.

September 8, 2006

In the News Gang-up this week, besides the always gracious Diane were: Tod Lindberg, editor of "Policy Review" and a research fellow at the Hoover Institution; E.J. Dionne, senior fellow at The Brookings Institution, Washington Post columnist, and author of "Stand Up Fight Back."; David Ignatius, Washington Post columnist and co-moderator (with Fareed Zakaria) of an online forum on international affairs at washingtonpost.com called "PostGlobal."


What you did not hear today:


Well, in the usual introduction before the show, sort of like an agenda of what will be discussed, there was no mention again of the Valerie Plame non-scandal or "Plame-out". I guess the topic will be filed by the liberal media in the "Oops! Who, me?" archives. Sorry, Mr. Rove, Mr. Libby no apologies for you. After all we in the media only meant well..you know the guardians of democracy.

But there was another non-topic: the real scandal of the media nomenklatura and Hollywoodgentsia's silence before the onslaught of censorship by the Democratic Party machinery against a little docudrama about 9/11 by ABC. Apparently it threatens the already obviously flimsy Clinton legacy. No one in the media or in the artistic community has come out in the defense of the writer, or ABC or freedom of speech. No one in the media has come out in defense of one of their colleagues. A political party uses the power of Congress to ask a network to "pull out" as Sen. Reid has said "a work of fiction" and nobody in the liberal writer's community says anything?

Acting like someone he admires, President Clinton, has unleashed the full force of his stormtroopers or better yet "turbas divinas" (divine mobs as in the Sandinistas) against ABC. Thus, we have renamed him Fidel Clinton. No serious mention whatsoever today of this real scandal of suppression of speech on the Diane Rehm Show.

Under marching orders of Fidel Clinton, The Democratic Party Ministry of Culture and Propaganda, headed by Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid and assisted by Assistant Democratic Leader Dick Durbin, Senator Debbie Stabenow, Senator Charles Schumer and Senator Byron Dorgan, has sent a threatening letter to ABC which intimates that their license could be in jeopardy once their hope for and almost guaranteed return to power takes place.

Just about every apparatchik of the Stalinist Clinton establishment have come out en masse after receiving their marching orders from the Democrat Caudillo. Of course, it is right to defame and destroy the reputation of Scooter Libby and Karl Rove, President Bush and Vicepresident Chenney but you portray Fidel Clinton as he is and whoaaaah!, the towers of his flimsy legacy are in instant danger of being brought down.

A caller tells Diane that he is outraged not by all this but by the fact the media is not hard enough on Bush! According to this "caller" reporters are not doing their job, then as an example that some are, Diane asked the caller if he heard her interview the day before of David Corn and Michael Isikoff.

Veeeery interesting as they would say in the KGB, that the thrust of that appearance was Mr. Bush's intelligence failure during 9 months in office and not the previous two terms of Mr. Clinton during which the same intelligence was developed.

But these two exemplars of reporting are unique. Mr. Isikoff alone is responsible for the deaths of many people in riots provoked due to his false claim about the abuse of the Koran by US troops. And Mr. Corn is the Ann Coulter of the left. I'm waiting for the book "The Lies of David Corn". Shouldn't they be there apologizing and eating crow for their defamation of innocent people in the Valerie Plame non-scandal? What were these gentlemen really doing there, trying to preempt ABC's damaging upcoming series?

Regime change in Iraq was the policy of the Clinton administration. Really, Mr. Corn isn't "the central point" of your campaign that the only thing you have is a matter of proving intentions and motives? You are bent to prove something you can't, that President Bush had all along the evil intention of war with Iraq. Isn't that the case? "There seem to be something particular about Saddam Hussein that got under the president's skin", said David Corn.

When Mr. Isikoff says, "the reason is Saddam's attempt to kill his father" DianeRehm responded, "you don't go to war because of a personal thing?"

The only thing certain that Mr. Corn said all morning is that "this book is a narrative" as such not one "about what went on." And this is what passes today for journalism?

Somewhat caught in the embarrassing slip of Mr. Corn, Mr. Isikoff then allows room for the fact that people around the President may have "pulled" the intelligence to bolster their conclusions, but not David Corn, he insists that the president lied even though he has nothing to prove it with. Either way, they have shown that they are both members of the "Clinton legacy damage control crew". And they wonder why people mistrust the media.

September 1, 2006

Well, besides the normally expected and usual liberal vs. conservative ratio of 3 to 1 in this week's News Roundup made up of:

guest host Laura Knoy of New Hampshire Public Radio, Katty Kay, Washington correspondent, BBC, Doyle McManus, Washington bureau chief, Los Angeles Times and Andrea Mitchell, of NBC (it was hard to detect who was the conservative voice), you heard a lot about Iraq and Iran, the usual gloom and doom, followed in the next hour by "Blood Money" by T. Christian Miller, investigative reporter for the "Los Angeles Times" on more gloom and doom about Iraq. But you didn't hear anything (until the very last minute of the show and only because a caller sent an email):

• about the colapse of the Valerie Plame "outing"/CIA/"White House" scandal.

Remember that case? Yes, the one that was dragged, and frankly fabricated by the media to prove that "Bush lied and people died" and was discussed ad nauseum in this show.

The liberal media used the scandal as proof that the Bush administration acted in revenge against Joe Wilson for having gone against the grain of the President's case against Iraq. But more than anything the non-scandal was used to reinforce the argument that Bush lied about the reasons for going to Iraq.

But David Corn, the Ann Coulter of the liberal side, and a frequent member of the News Roundup, in his book amusingly titled Hubris, admits now that it was not Karl Rove, nor Scooter Lybby, nor VP Cheney who told Bob Novak about Wilson's wife identity as a CIA "operative" but Richard Armitage, an opponent of the White House in the State Department.

As we all now know, not only there was a small and disloyal cabal in State headed by Powell and in CIA which opposed the President, but that Joe Wilson and wife were sympathetic to John Kerry and ended up working in his campaign. Clinton appointed CIA Director George "is a slam dunk, Mr. President" Tenet headed the CIA cabal.

This non-scandal is very important because it was driven by the media to discredit the President during a time of war only for partisan purposes, credibility now needed as we face Iran.

Amazing! The last minute of the show dedicated to the media created "scandal" that was dragged on this show for two years? Don't expect this weekend, or for weeks to come, coverage of this, yet another egg in the face of the liberal media's own latest scandal. Yes, as Doyle McManus said, the revelation that there was no plot coming from the White House has made "no splash" on the media. The question is: why? The answer: it's obvious!

(Anyway, is Labor Day Weekend and am off to enjoy the last weekend of summer. For more information read: http://www.opinionjournal.com/editorial/feature.html?id=110008872 , http://www.slate.com/id/2148555/ , and http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/08/31/AR2006083101460.html)