Mainstream Media About to Shift Gears

Congrats to the people of Fort Collins, Colorado that told the ACLU and a local "task force" to go stuff their secular stockings some place else:

"Most of the speakers were critical of the 15-member task force and accused it of deliberately downgrading Christmas."

"John Morris said the task force was only tolerant of its own arguments and had no intention of being tolerant of Christmas."

"The work of the task force has been hijacked by activists," he said, adding that the ultimate intention of many on the panel was to create an atheist state."

"A few speakers defended the task force."

"Christmas should be celebrated in homes and families," said Sam Shelanski. "It's not government's job to put Christ back in Christmas. This is not a Christian nation. It was not founded on Christ."

"Task force member Karen Schwartz praised the panel's work and read from a published opinion piece that decried the perception that the country was specifically Christian. Besides, Schwartz said, "The American Christmas has nothing to do with Jesus," which drew loud laughter." LINK


Happy Birth of Jesus Christ Celebration Holidays to You Too!

Speaking of "Peace on Earth", the day of the Israeli-Palestinian Peace Summit here in the U.S., Hamas in Gaza was busy launching 14 Kassam Rockets into Israel. I would guess that this portion of the Palestinian contingency didn't get the "memo". LINK

Media White-washing Hillary

Brent Bozell III, the president of the Media Research Center (the parent company of CNSNews.com), writes a scathing report on how the mainstream media "White-washes" any thing written about "front-runner" Hillary Clinton:

"How is it that the wife of an impeached president, the policy architect of a 1300-page left-wing health-care fiasco, and the document-shredding stonewaller of a welter of scandals can turn her controversial career and bizarre First Marriage into assets, and not liabilities? How is it that Team Clinton, disgraced and disgraceful, is back for another presidential run?"

"Credit the national "news" media." LINK

Speaking of the "News Media": The New York Times releases a story today about a survey among journalist that admits they don't do a very good job of reporting all the events in Iraq:

"In a newly released survey, American journalists in Iraq give harrowing accounts of their work, with the great majority saying that colleagues have been kidnapped or killed and that most parts of Baghdad are too dangerous for them to visit."

The survey was conducted by the Project for Excellence in Journalism, an arm of the nonpartisan Pew Research Center in Washington. Of the 111 journalists who participated, half had spent at least nine months in Iraq, and three-quarters had experience reporting on other armed conflicts. Most of the journalists were surveyed in October, one of the least deadly months in Baghdad in recent years.

Almost two-thirds of the respondents said that most or all of their street reporting was done by local citizens, yet 87 percent said that it was not safe for their Iraqi reporters to openly carry notebooks, cameras or anything else that identified them as journalists. Two-thirds of respondents said they worried that their reliance on local reporters — including many with little or no background in journalism — could produce inaccurate or incomplete news reports.

The Americans also voiced serious concerns about how effectively they were able to do their own jobs. Most respondents said that the media did not do a good job covering the lives of ordinary Iraqis or reconstruction efforts, simply because those lines of reporting could be deadly. (emphasis mine throughout) LINK

Meanwhile, the Washington Post reports today another story that improvements in Iraq can be measured and "reported":

BAGHDAD -- Haider Abbas, a 36-year-old taxi driver, had only a few moments to answer what is often a life-or-death question in this city: Would he drive a passenger home?

The home, on that scorching afternoon last month, happened to be in Adhamiyah, a notoriously dangerous neighborhood where several cabbies had been gunned down. Abbas hadn't been there in two years. But the fare pleaded that it had become safer, so the cabbie reluctantly agreed to go.

"To tell you the truth, I thought I had just traded my life for 5,000 dinars," or $4, said Abbas, who was shocked when he arrived in the traffic-jammed streets of Adhamiyah to see shops open and people strolling in the road. "Then I suddenly realized that security really is returning to Baghdad."

In a city where few residents believe official statements on declining violence, whether from the U.S. military or the Iraqi government, some of the most reliable figures on security improvements can be found on the odometers of Baghdad's taxi drivers. LINK

Can we say there is much difference between taxi drivers in Baghdad or taxi drivers here in the U.S. that have the same reservations about driving into certain neighborhoods of downtown Detroit, Washington D.C., Philly, or L.A.?

Ed Morrissey at Captains's Quarters has more on this titled "The Cabbie Factor"

Now it's back to the Economy Stupid: Also for the Washington Post:

"The shift has strategists in both parties reevaluating their assumptions about how the final year of the Bush presidency and the election to succeed him will play out. If current trends continue, Iraq may still be a defining issue but perhaps not the only one, as it once seemed, according to partisan strategists and independent analysts, particularly if the economy heads south as some economists fear."

"And yet, at least to an extent, the Washington debate has moved on. Congress made only a faint effort to pass legislation mandating a troop withdrawal as part of a $50 billion war spending bill this month and then quickly shelved it. Not counting the Turkish conflict with Kurdish rebels, Bush at his most recent news conference last month was not asked about the Iraq war until the 10th question. Not a single Iraq question came up at four of White House press secretary Dana Perino's seven full-fledged briefings this month.".....

"Even so, it has changed some political calculations. If the violence remains down, it may enable Petraeus when he returns to Washington in March to recommend pulling out more than the 30,000 troops now scheduled to leave by July. If so, the fall general election could be played out against the backdrop of troops coming home." LINK

I'll bet if we googled up, (or Nexis-lexis) the amount of times the mainstream media mentioned the economic gains this nation has endured over the past three years AND the number of negative stories that have or will be published in the next few months, the "numbers" will be staggering. If the agenda driven radical anti-war left can't put a democrat president in the white house, expect the MSM to drive home the point that a correction in the pace of growth will become a full fledged economic depression. "Recession" is too soft a word for the MSM. Remember, it was not sectarian violence folks, it was a CIVIL WAR!