More News, Les Kinsolving

Rittenhouse has a snippet of a Fleischer press conference where an unidentified "Lester" gets all foamy about the Washington Times "bug chaser" story.

Lester also had this for Ari:

Q Ari, the Episcopal Church's presiding bishop, Frank Griswold, said -- and this is a quote -- "The United States is rightly hated and loathed for its reprehensible rhetoric and blind eye toward poverty and suffering. I'd like to be able to go somewhere in the world and not have to apologize for being from the United States." My question is, does the President take this at all seriously, or does he categorize it with Senator Patty Murray, who is now becoming known as Osama Mama?

So I googled... Can I just say "yick" and introduce you to my candidate, Lester Kinsolving?

Les Kinsolving is the nation's un-labeled talk show host! Just when you think he's conservative, he's liberal. And just when you think he's liberal, he's in the center! From proud, vociferous patriot to opinionated social commentary to winsome, mischievous devil's advocate, LES keeps audiences on their listening toes!

Les was also a Nationally syndicated (250 papers), Pulitzer-Prize nominated columnist and Talkers Magazine picked him as one of the top 100 the last four years among 4,300 US radio talk show hosts! Les has also appeared on national television as a result of being Baltimore radio's only White House correspondent. He brings knowledge, scoops, foibles, hard-facts to an involved, rapt audience Monday-through-Friday!

Here, you will be able to find out more about this provacative [sic] and ingenious White House correspondent, night time talk show host, and nationally syndicated columnist.

How Les sees his role in the process:

Les is best known among the Washington press corps as one of the few who has the guts to ask probing questions and even providing comic relief.

Even with the Bush Administration in the White House, Les continues to ask probing questions.

Emphasis, as usual, mine.

From Lester's latest commentary on WorldNet Daily:

In this free society, where all citizens are allowed to participate in choosing the nation's leadership, the propagation of public opinion by the media is so important that in the First Amendment of our Constitution's Bill of Rights, there is a guarantee of freedom of the press — which now includes electronic media as well.

But shouldn't the propounders of public opinion in all U.S. media be accessible to the public?

Talk-radio hosts are accessible to many millions of callers everyday. So is that only one other part of media not controlled by liberal Democrats — the Internet.

...

The editorial writers at the Washington Post are kept as inaccessible and as protected from criticism as the Roman empire's vestal virgins.

For example, the Post editorial department decided to address national news which their own news department had back paged and buried, as an item in a political column.

This news as reported nationally by the AP and Fox News is now widely known as "The whitewash of Sen. Patty Murray." In high schools all over Washington state, she gave adulations to Osama bin Laden along with criticism of the U.S.

...

The Post editorial, commending Sen. Murray for these far-worse-than-Trent-Lott statements, confused "Vancouver, Wash." with what they noted was "Vancouver, Canada."

When I telephoned the Post to inquire about this 280-mile error, a young female voice, who would identify herself only as "an assistant to the editors," refused to allow me to talk with any of the editorial writers. She even contended that the error was "a typo."

The following day's correction, published on the Post editorial page, made no such typographical claim. Few typos in the history of journalism have ever matched this alleged confusion of the word "Washington" with the word "Canada" — both of which have a city called "Vancouver."

This 280-mile error was obviously the negligence of a Washington Post editorial writer who failed to check the facts. But he or she is one of the Post's vestal virgins, who is protected from any public inquiry.

While there may be an occasional talk-radio host whose screeners protect him or her from any harsh or intelligent critics who phone, almost all of us neither receive — nor have any desire for — any such protective screening.


Yeah, yeah. Tell it to Randi Rhodes, asshole.

ahem.

In addition to discovering that the editorial department at the Washington Post needs a better proofreader (although not as desperately as the news department needs a passably non-partisan managing editor), challenges to the liberal hegemony by Mr. Kinsolving include these searching thrusts at non-partisan knowledge:

Q Both The Washington Post and The New York Times reported at length that a schizophrenic woman, still under medications, claims that she may have been molested 32 years ago by Father Roger Mahoney, who is now the Cardinal Archbishop of Los Angeles, but, she added, she's not clear on the details.

And in the event that schizophrenic women in New York and Washington claim that they think they may have been molested by Punch Sulzberger and Donny Graham, can you imagine, Ari, that this would ever be reported by the New York Times or the Washington Post?

-----

Q: Ari, you remember that when a 28-year veteran CBS reporter, Bernard Goldberg, wrote his book, "Bias," the President was so impressed that he carried a copy with the title exposed past several alert photographers. Now, the National Press Club has just given its Press Criticism Award to William McGowan for his book, "Coloring the News," which is one of the most extensive and accurate journalistic indictments of the New York Times ever written. And my question is, surely if the President is so interested in the book, "Bias," you as his faithful Press Secretary have told him about "Covering the News" or have even gotten him a copy, haven't you, Ari?


Oh, I could go on, but, you know, yick.

Anyway, ladies and gentlemen, your liberal press.

Congratulations, pragmatists. I give you George Pataki, national Republican figure, running against

Facing a deep deficit in the state budget, Gov. George E. Pataki today hitched New York's financial recovery to the Bush administration's plans for healing the national recession: a swift new round of tax cuts.

Specifically, the governor singled out for praise a proposal to eliminate taxes on corporate dividends paid to taxpayers, the centerpiece of the plan President Bush announced on Jan. 7 for kick-starting the stalled economy.

"The president's new economic stimulus plan will help New Yorkers, specifically his proposal to eliminate the double taxation of dividends," Mr. Pataki said in his first public statements since the Bush announcement. "This element of his stimulus package will help a financial industry in New York that is hurting."

But Mr. Pataki was noticeably silent on the question of whether New York, whose income tax laws are tied to the federal laws, would enact changes to keep it from automatically following the federal government's lead.

Some state officials, mostly Democrats, have said that the Bush proposal will hurt New York at a time when it faces a cumulative deficit of $12 billion and needs every source of revenue it possesses.

Alan G. Hevesi, the state comptroller, said that if the state piggybacks on the federal plan and decides it will also stop collecting a dividend tax, it could lose $551 million in revenues in the fiscal year that begins April 1, and $2.5 billion over four years.

He is, they say, going to gut Medicaid for New Yorkers to balance the budget.

What a guy.

All you folks who thought this guy was a fair trade for what he promised you during the election?

Thanks a lot, suckers.

In other news, from the New York Times, which surely has not yet found reason to regret their endorsement of the "fiscally responsible" governor over his opponent, the state comptroller who fought off his repeated attempts to tank the budget:

It is well known that the clock ticks at a different speed in Albany, where New York State's business always takes longer than is necessary. That habitual torpor, however, does not excuse Gov. George Pataki's failure to apply in a timely manner for federal funds designed to help make New York City more secure after Sept. 11. The governor has missed two deadlines and caused anxiety among city and state officials who are concerned that Washington may sense a lack of urgency, when there is much to be urgent about.

Mr. Pataki's spokeswoman has defended the delays, arguing that such complicated matters are "too important to rush." They are also too important to languish so far down on the governor's priority list. After all, a full 16 months has elapsed since the disastrous event that made them necessary in the first place.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency promised more than $400 million after the World Trade Center attack in order to harden the city's defenses against a future terrorist assault. Mr. Pataki's representatives have said that because this was not a normal disaster, the request for funding necessitated a different approach. That is true up to a point. But Mr. Pataki's offices have yet to submit a single project for FEMA to review under its "hazard mitigation" program, which is aimed at minimizing the damage from any similar disasters in the future. In the same period his administration has received dozens of proposals from state, city and private concerns asking for its help getting FEMA funds to harden infrastructure or strengthen bioterrorism defenses at hospitals.

Under the latest deadline, Mr. Pataki has until March 11 to come up with a priority list focusing on ways to enhance the city's security. His office has promised that the requests will be confined to needs in the New York City area. That is a wise move, given the widespread criticism of the governor's earlier pitch for federal funds that included upstate projects as well.

I bet Mitch Daniels is all broke up about that. See, the Bush administration doesn't want to pay that money, and Pataki really wants the Bush administration to love him. Wave the money byebye, New York.

Did I mention that sometime Republican Mayor Bloomberg of the approval ratings in freefall was one of the prime suckers? Congratulations, Mike. You've been had.

Sadly, you took us with you.

Gotta love the Saturday news.

the invisible Secretary ponders the invisible affirmative action program

Yo. Soccer moms. Is your little competitor a girl?

Well, hold on to your college funds.

A short history of what may be the short history of Title IX, if the evanescent Secretary Pierce (remember him? Education?) does what they expect him to.

edit: woops. Dr. Freud, call your office. It's Secretary Paige this time. Secretary Pierce, as one of my commentors points out, was the invisible african-american Secretary in the Reagan administration.

Sen. "Dr. Schweitzer" Frist's first big win

Working to avoid his first defeat in the Senate, Majority Leader Bill Frist lobbied fellow Republican Sen. Pete Domenici to switch his vote and oppose a Democratic plan for more famine relief for sub-Saharan Africa.

Domenici, R-N.M., agreed, helping send the Democratic proposal to a two-vote defeat. It was a modest victory at best for the new GOP majority, so much so that Frist and the Republicans agreed to add extra famine relief the next day rather than risk losing a follow-up vote.

Times says

...Opponents and supporters of affirmative action actually tend to agree that there is something bad, generally called quotas, and something good, generally called something like diversity. Their argument is about where you draw the line. Bush calls the Michigan 20-point bonus a quota, and his critics insist that it is not. But both sides are wrong. If your sole measure of the success of any arrangement is whether it increases the representation of certain minorities, then it doesn't really matter what procedure you use to achieve that result: some people are getting something desirable because of their race, and an equal number of people are not getting it for the same reason.

Of course a series of somebodies didn't get into Andover, Yale and Harvard Business School because their blood wasn't as blue as Bush's, and other somebodies didn't get a chance to own the Texas Rangers or to use the capital Bush borrowed to buy his share of the team because these somebodies were nobodies. Life is unfair. A legitimate criticism of affirmative action is that it politicizes life chances and focuses blame on race. If you get turned down by Yale to make room for a George W., you're not even aware of it. But if you get turned down by the University of Michigan, you're likely to blame affirmative action (if you're white), even though the numbers say you probably would have been turned down anyway.

So ask yourself: Would you rather have a gift of 20 points out of 150 to use at the college of your choice? Or would you rather have the more amorphous advantages President Bush has enjoyed at every stage of his life? If the answer to that isn't obvious to you, even 20 extra points are probably not enough to get you into the University of Michigan.