1. Bush 'Alamo' Grounds for Retirement, 'Terrified' of Bush on Iran
On MSNBC Wednesday night, during coverage of President Bush's speech to the nation, Chris Matthews compared Iraq to the "losing battle" of the "Alamo," calling it a "catastrophe," and contended that, if America were under a parliamentary system, that the President's handling of the war would be grounds for retirement. Matthews was further alarmed at Bush's apparent willingness to confront Iran over its nuclear program, as the MSNBC host contended that "a lot of people are going to go to bed tonight terrified," and even described himself as "worried" because of Bush's continued "neoconservative aggressiveness."

2. ABC and CBS Morning Shows Pound Bush Aide Dan Bartlett
ABC and CBS (not NBC) featured interviews Wednesday morning with White House Communications Director Dan Bartlett. Both networks were fairly harsh in their questioning. ABC's Diane Sawyer read a long list of eminent people who opposed a surge, and pressed, "What don't they get?" She even used soundbites of soldiers saying it was a hopeless civil war and "I don't think we need to be here." CBS's Harry Smith aimed his barbs at Bartlett more from the right, questioning whether 20,000 troops would be enough, and insisting that the Iraqis weren't up to the "blood and guts" job of security. He also hammered on the president's low approval ratings and asked "Why should the American people have faith in the President at this moment?"

3. Former NYT Man's Book: 'American Fascists -- Christian Right'
Christopher Hedges, the former New York Times reporter infamously booed off a college commencement stage in the middle of an anti-war rant in May 2003, has a new book out with the hauntingly ambivalent title, "American Fascists -- The Christian Right and the War on America." Contributor Rick Perlstein reviewed it in the Times' Sunday book section and found it unconvincing (although Perlstein seemed to share some of Hedges' paranoia regarding conservative Christians): "Hedges was a longtime foreign correspondent, for The New York Times and other publications. But he writes on this subject as a neophyte, and pads out his dispatches with ungrounded theorizing, unconvincing speculation and examples that fall far short of bearing out his thesis."

4. After Liberals Whine, NBC Blames Odd Weather on Global Warming
Responding to a handful of liberal complainers, Monday's NBC Nightly News basically repudiated a Friday evening story in which a NOAA meteorologist blamed the recent warmer-than-normal weather in the Northeast on an El Nino, an area of warmer than normal water in the Pacific Ocean that forms every five years or so. After some mean-spirited comments on NBC's "Daily Nightly" blog site, where writers attacked anchor Brian Williams as a tool of big business for not taking the opportunity to blame global warming, Nightly News flip-flopped. Monday's newscast showcased a brand new expert, and he argued the El Nino cycle was being exacerbated "by humans using the atmosphere as a free place to dump our tailpipe wastes." Reporter Robert Bazell suggested that "even the heavy snow in the Rockies this year might be partly caused by global warming."

5. Letterman's "Top Ten Features of Bush's New Iraq Plan"
Letterman's "Top Ten Features of Bush's New Iraq Plan."

Bush 'Alamo' Grounds for Retirement,
'Terrified' of Bush on Iran

     On MSNBC Wednesday night, during coverage of President Bush's speech to the nation, Chris Matthews compared Iraq to the "losing battle" of the "Alamo," calling it a "catastrophe," and contended that, if America were under a parliamentary system, that the President's handling of the war would be grounds for retirement. Matthews was further alarmed at Bush's apparent willingness to confront Iran over its nuclear program, as the MSNBC host contended that "a lot of people are going to go to bed tonight terrified," and even described himself as "worried" because of Bush's continued "neoconservative aggressiveness."

     Matthews asserted: "A lot of people are going to go to bed tonight terrified that the President of the United States admitted to mistakes in terms of implementing his policy over there ... I am worried, well, I shouldn't say I'm worried, I am definitely interested in the fact that the President of the United States maintains that neoconservative aggressiveness, the same attitude that we have the business in this world of going into countries when we don't like their weapons systems and deciding we're in the Middle East, we're going to attack."

     [This item, by Brad Wilmouth, was posted Wednesday night on the MRC's blog, NewsBusters.org: newsbusters.org ]

     Below is a transcript of some notable quotes from MSNBC's Wednesday January 10 speech coverage, co-hosted by Matthews and Keith Olbermann:

     8:57pm, Keith Olbermann: "I know the content will not be the same, not even close. The reality is not the same. But politically, is, to some degree, is the administration's hope here that they will be conveying the same feel, the same gravitas here as the Lyndon Johnson landmark speech to the nation about Vietnam in '68 when he basically threw in the towel and said we have to go back and start this all over again and do it differently from here on in?"
     Chris Matthews: "Well, there's grounds for the President to retire based upon the mistakes made. He will not retire. We know he's much more steadfast than that politically and personally. But there's certainly grounds, if this were a parliamentary-style government, where the parliamentary members, the ministers of the government, the foreign minister, the chancellor, the ex-cheque and the prime minister himself, would say, like they did in the Suez campaign in Britain, this was a catastrophe. We went into a battle thinking it would be quickly won, we would turn over authority to the Iraqi National Congress or someone, and would get out of there. That was the way it was sold to the American people. After, I must say, the dishonest selling of why we went in there, they told us how easy we would get out. The President, I don't think, is going to dwell too much tonight on leaving Iraq ever. I firmly believe he wants permanent bases there. I believe the ideologues behind this war are insistent that the United States never leave in force from the Middle East. They want us there as a permanent constabulary, the big brother in the Middle East. They want us there. You're never going to hear them say we're coming home. And I think that's the difference between this President and Lyndon Johnson. At some level, Lyndon Johnson was humiliated by the war in Vietnam. He was beaten by it. This President still has a star that leads him to a kind of a messianic thinking that somehow he's the essential man right now to keep us in that war. I do not hear in this a victory plan. I hear in this a delay pattern, a fight-it-out, an Alamo. But the Alamo was not a victorious battle for Texas or for the country. It was a losing battle."

     9:20pm, Matthews: "Well, the administration and its people have been accused of cherry-picking the evidence, the intel to get us into the war. Here they are cherry-picking the one hawkish Democrat in the U.S. Senate that they can claim as a bipartisan partner in this working group they're putting together."

     10:04pm, Matthews: "Well, you and I have flagged that issue of Iran. We'll see if the other journalists in the print media have done it as well. I'll tell you, a lot of people are going to go to bed tonight terrified that the President of the United States admitted to mistakes in terms of implementing his policy over there, but after listening to that briefing we just got from Tim and Brian, I am worried, well, I shouldn't say I'm worried, I am definitely interested in the fact that the President of the United States maintains that neoconservative aggressiveness, the same attitude that we have the business in this world of going into countries when we don't like their weapons systems and deciding we're in the Middle East, we're going to attack. If we're going to take the same attitude towards Iran that we took towards Iraq, and wait for them to do something we don't like in the weapons area, the nuclear weapons area, and attack that country, that's serious business. The American people should, by the way, get a hand in debating that sort of policy, with all its ramifications. The idea that we can go in there and knock out the Iranian nuclear facilities, such as they are, and not pay an extraordinary price in terms of our relations with the Islamic world, for someone to think that now after what we've been through for four years now, is to ignore the message here of history, which is it's always more complicated once you're in than it looks on your way in, and I think for the President to espouse, as he apparently did in this briefing today with the anchor people there who were privileged to get in the room with him, that he still thinks like that."
     Olbermann: "Yup."
     Matthews: "He still thinks in terms of a hair trigger -- we're going to go in there and knock it out, we're going to go in there the minute they do something, we're going to look and see if they're interacting in any way with Iraq and then we're going to war with them. That's a serious bit of business we've picked up on tonight. We'll see if the other journalists in the country are as sensitive to what looks to me like another front in the Middle East."

ABC and CBS Morning Shows Pound Bush
Aide Dan Bartlett

     ABC and CBS (not NBC) featured interviews Wednesday morning with White House Communications Director Dan Bartlett. Both networks were fairly harsh in their questioning. ABC's Diane Sawyer read a long list of eminent people who opposed a surge, and pressed, "What don't they get?" She even used soundbites of soldiers saying it was a hopeless civil war and "I don't think we need to be here." CBS's Harry Smith aimed his barbs at Bartlett more from the right, questioning whether 20,000 troops would be enough, and insisting that the Iraqis weren't up to the "blood and guts" job of security. He also hammered on the president's low approval ratings and asked "Why should the American people have faith in the President at this moment?"

     [This item, by Tim Graham, was posted Wednesday night on the MRC's blog, NewsBusters.org: newsbusters.org ]

     The MRC's Justin McCarthy reported that Sawyer opened Good Morning America with the spin that the President was going exactly against public opinion: "Amid calls in this country for a withdrawal of American troops, the president is going to be sending more troops to Iraq."

     Sawyer asked: "It is a big night tonight. And I just want to run through a partial roll call of the number of people we know who have either opposed what the president is going to do or expressed serious reservations. We're talking about top generals, George Casey, John Abizaid, Republican former secretary of state Colin Powell, James Baker, who co-chaired the Iraq Study Group, Senators Olympia Snowe, George Smith [sic: should be Gordon Smith], Chuck Hagel, and I could go on and on and on. What don't they get? What don't they understand?"
     Bartlett: "Well, Diane I take issue with some of those people you announced, the top generals who helped devise this plan do support what President Bush will be announcing tonight...
     Sawyer: "Are you saying that General Casey and General Abizaid, as a recently as a couple of months ago, were not saying that we do not need more boots on the ground? Are you saying they weren't saying that?"
     Bartlett: "Well, I've sat in a lot of meetings where General Casey and General Abizaid have given their advice and have worked this war plan and I will tell you that they understand that more troops and a very specific mission, with an Iraqi partner who steps up makes the type of tough decisions can yield the type of political breathing space that most people believe the Iraqis need in order to force the type of political consensus to move this country forward. They are a part of this plan, they helped devise this plan, and President Bush is grateful for their service to the country."
     Sawyer: "I want to turn to what the troops are going to be doing on the ground. And as we understand it, they're going to be performing kind of human buffers, troop strengths, security strength between, in some cases, Sunnis and Shiites going door to door. And of course, these are troops that do not speak Arabic, who have to make impossible distinctions, it seems, to a lot of people. My question is, we have talked to some U.S. troops who serve in Iraq, and I want to let you respond to them about what they want to say to you."
     Unidentified Soldier #1: "It's either going to be Shiites or Sunnis win. They're going to kill each other and eventually one of them will win."
     Unidentified Soldier #2: "I don't think we need to be here. I don't think we're changing anything or doing anything for, you know, the states that's going benefit us here."
     Sawyer: "Sunnis, Shiites, we're in the middle, and there are a lot of people who say if they don't want to stop fighting, we can't stop them."
     Bartlett: "Well very- that's exactly right, and President Bush will make very clear tonight, Diane, that Iraqis themselves have to solve the sectarian violence. We can't solve it for them. America can't want this more than they want it themselves."
     Sawyer: "But why put more troops?"
     Bartlett: "But on the other hand, but on the other hand, the Iraqi government and the Iraqi security forces at this critical moment in this country's history needs our help. It will be Iraqis that are knocking on doors, it will be Iraqis that are leading these military operations."

     Over on CBS, MRC's Mike Rule found that Harry Smith used his personal experiences in Iraq to argue that Iraq isn't exactly a source of hope:

     Smith: "We saw this with our own eyes; we were on Haifa Street last May, the Iraqi Army had control of the area but they couldn't stop the insurgency from returning. So yesterday, as a result, there was an all-day gun battle, bloodshed everywhere. Is 20,000 really enough to get the job done?"
     Dan Bartlett: "Well, an important point is that the Iraqis are in the lead in that fight. U.S. troops came in and helped. Not one U.S. or Iraqi troop was lost, and they put a lot of damage on the insurgency. But you're right. You point to the very nub of the problem, is that we have to have enough Iraqi forces and U.S. forces either embedded, which Baker/Hamilton Commission recommended and which the President will adopt tonight in his address..."
     Harry Smith: "Isn't this an admission that we have not had enough troops in Iraq in the first place, since day one?"
     Dan Bartlett: "The president will say very clearly tonight that there were mistakes with the earlier operations, that it did not have enough Iraqi troops or U.S. troops...
     Harry Smith: "How are you going to get the Iraqis to do what you just suggested, though? Because even last month, the Iraqis said, 'Well, we're going to look at these benchmarks. We're going to come to play. We're going to do all those things that the White House has suggested.' They haven't been able really to do any of them."
     Dan Bartlett: "They actually made some very good progress, particularly on the oil law. There's been a political agreement-"
     Harry Smith: "But we're talking about, we're talking about the very -- the blood and guts issue of security in Baghdad, they've not been able to really do it."
     Dan Bartlett: "There have been some very frank conversations with the government. What you will hear tonight from the President, he'll make very clearly that America's commitment is not open-ended, that benchmarks have to be met, that milestones have to be reached both on the security side but just as importantly on the political side and the economic side. It'll be unequivocal in President Bush's speech tonight that the Iraqis have to step up."
     Harry Smith: "The President's approval ratings about this issue are really in the 20s. The Democrats have made clear in the last 24 hours they're at least going to propose resolutions to say this is not a good idea. Why should the American people have faith in the president at this moment?"
     Dan Bartlett: "Well a vast majority of the American people are not satisfied with the progress in Iraq. President Bush is in their camp. He's not satisfied. He's going to say the strategy was not working; he's going to tell them specifically how we're going to fix the strategy to yield success. But at the end of the day, Harry, the point that all Americans have to come to and what members of Congress have to come to is that the stakes in Iraq are consequential to the security of the American people. There's no magic formula. The president will say that himself tonight, but this is the best way to succeed. And it's important right now that we give this an opportunity to let this plan succeed because it is the best chance for success."

Former NYT Man's Book: 'American Fascists
-- Christian Right'

     Christopher Hedges, the former New York Times reporter infamously booed off a college commencement stage in the middle of an anti-war rant in May 2003 (www.timeswatch.org ), has a new book out with the hauntingly ambivalent title, "American Fascists -- The Christian Right and the War on America."

     Contributor Rick Perlstein reviewed it in the Times' Sunday book section and found it unconvincing (although Perlstein seemed to share some of Hedges' paranoia regarding conservative Christians):
     "Hedges was a longtime foreign correspondent, for The New York Times and other publications. But he writes on this subject as a neophyte, and pads out his dispatches with ungrounded theorizing, unconvincing speculation and examples that fall far short of bearing out his thesis."

     For the review in full: www.nytimes.com

     [This item, by TimesWatch Editor Clay Waters, was posted Tuesday on the MRC's blog, NewsBusters.org: newsbusters.org ]

     That's as far as the review goes about Hedges' 15-year-history at the Times.

     By not quoting from Hedges' book, Perlstein was kind. The Los Angeles Times assigned its review to professor Jon Wiener, who delved deeper into Hedges' text and unearthed disturbing quotations suggesting the "liberal" Hedges has an authoritarian intolerance for opinions he disagrees with.

     Here's an excerpt from Wiener's unfavorable review of "American Fascists."
     "Nevertheless, Hedges concludes that the Christian right 'should no longer be tolerated,' because it 'would destroy the tolerance that makes an open society possible.' What does he think should be done? He endorses the view that 'any movement preaching intolerance places itself outside the law,' and therefore we should treat 'incitement to intolerance and persecution as criminal.' Thus he rejects the 1st Amendment protections for freedom of speech and religion, and court rulings that permit prosecution for speech only if there is an imminent threat to particular individuals.
     "Hedges advocates passage of federal hate-crimes legislation prohibiting intolerance, but he doesn't really explain how it would work. Many countries do prohibit 'hate speech.' Holocaust denial, for example, is a crime in Germany, Austria and several other European countries. But does this mean that Hedges favors prosecuting Christian fundamentalists for declaring, for example, that abortion providers are murderers or that secular humanists are agents of Satan? He doesn't say."

     For the LA Times review in full: www.calendarlive.com

     For more New York Times bias, visit TimesWatch: www.timeswatch.org

After Liberals Whine, NBC Blames Odd
Weather on Global Warming

     Responding to a handful of liberal complainers, Monday's NBC Nightly News basically repudiated a Friday evening story in which a NOAA meteorologist blamed the recent warmer-than-normal weather in the Northeast on an El Nino, an area of warmer than normal water in the Pacific Ocean that forms every five years or so.

     After some mean-spirited comments on NBC's "Daily Nightly" blog site, where writers attacked anchor Brian Williams as a tool of big business for not taking the opportunity to blame global warming, Nightly News flip-flopped. Monday's newscast showcased a brand new expert, and he argued the El Nino cycle was being exacerbated "by humans using the atmosphere as a free place to dump our tailpipe wastes." Reporter Robert Bazell suggested that "even the heavy snow in the Rockies this year might be partly caused by global warming."

     [This item, by Rich Noyes, was posted Tuesday on the MRC's blog, NewsBusters.org: newsbusters.org ]

     During El Nino years, the West coast usually has more frequent storms with more precipitation, while the northern U.S. has milder temperatures. On Friday's NBC Nightly News, anchor Brian Williams opened his newscast by asking "Why is it such a weird and warm winter?" After a pair of reports from Dawn Fratangelo in New York City and Tom Costello in Washington, D.C. (the latter reporting that it was not true that if you went outside without a hat that you'd catch a cold), Williams began a short interview with meteorologist Dennis Feltgen of the government's National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

     Feltgen, a forecaster for more than 30 years, was there to "explain once and for all" the strange weather, Williams announced. "It's not global warming at all, Brian. It is El Nino, El Nino, El Nino," Feltgen told him.

     Well, that provoked what struck Williams as a particularly strong reaction on his blog, "The Daily Nightly." The thread for Friday's Nightly News topics had 39 comments, 22 of which were critical of his weather report. See: dailynightly.msnbc.com

     And many were not subtle: "Vivienne" from Illinois chastised Williams and called him a corporate tool: "You have lost all credibility in my eyes. You are by no means an expert nor an authority on anything. You just report the news. Who do you think you are to blame the weather on El Nino AND get the most ridiculous expert to say the warm weather is blamed on El Nino?! Man's ramant use of fossil fuels in the private and industrial sector is causing global warming and thus causing these abnormal weather patterns. These weather patterns are only confirming the effects of global warming. Globally, we can stop being part of the problem and be a part of the solution. Brian you are obviously on the side of Corporate America and Big Oil companies. I do not trust you."

     "Dave" from Tennessee suggested: "Brian, looks like you've earned a spot next to President Bush in The Hague as a global warming denier. I wonder if you'll get a letter from Senators Rockefeller & Snow. Have you ever stopped at an Exxon station? Something like that can completely discredit you in some circles."

     Instead of rejecting such mean-spirited idiocy, Williams announced Monday afternoon on his vlog "Early Nightly" that he would try to soothe the ruffled feathers: "On the broadcast tonight we're going to revisit a topic that ignited writers to our blog over the weekend and that is global warming, and dissect further its role in the strange weather so many of us have been experiencing."

     Sure enough, Williams devoted the full "In Depth" segment of Monday's newscast to backpedaling. He began by replaying the comments from NOAA's Feltgen that so infuriated a couple of dozen people on the Internet, and then claimed it was time for "the rest of the story:"

     Brian Williams: "We're back with NBC Nightly News 'In Depth' tonight, taking a look at the strange weather around the country lately and revisiting a topic we covered Friday night that lit up interest and some protests among some of our viewers. Here in New York on Saturday afternoon it was 72 degrees in Central Park on the 6th day of January. While it's a little colder here in the East, not by much. Boston's high today was 52. It's normally 37. That's a full 15 degrees above normal. It was 57 today in Philadelphia, 21 degrees above normal. On Friday, we looked into it. We invited a 30-year veteran weather forecaster on the broadcast and we asked him about it, and here is how Dennis Feltgen of NOAA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, answered the question."
     Dennis Feltgen, NOAA Meteorologist: "It's not global warming at all, Brian. It is El Nino, El Nino, El Nino. This is the same El Nino which developed late last summer and had a huge effect on the 2006 Atlantic season. Now that was in a good way. The phenomenon known as El Nino has been strengthening ever since. It's now a moderate El Nino which is producing all the wild weather that we see in the West with the big storms, all the wet weather and unsettled weather in the South, and locking up the cold air up in Canada so that the eastern half of the country, including the Northeast, has unusually warm temperatures."
     Williams: "That was Dennis Feltgen of NOAA. And now, as they say, for the rest of the story. NBC News Chief Science Correspondent Robert Bazell talks to, talked to experts who say there is a relationship between this strange El Nino winter and global warning, warming, they say, and there will be a lot more where that comes from, according to them. Here is Robert Bazell's report, 'In Depth.'"

     Robert Bazell: "Climate scientists say there is no question that the immediate cause of the unusually warm weather in the Northeast this winter is El Nino, a natural warming of the ocean halfway around the world."
     Dr. Brian Soden, University of Miami: "El Nino is a cyclical change in the ocean temperatures in the Pacific, and it does shift the location and intensity of the jetstreams, and that acts to influence the patterns of temperature and precipitation over the U.S."
     Bazell: "In most years, the upper jetstream brings Arctic air to the Northeast in the winter. In an El Nino year like this one, it does not. But what about global warming, which most scientists believe is caused by carbon dioxide and other gases produced by humans? Many experts say it too plays a part."
     Stephen Schneider, Stanford University: "Whatever the natural causes are they're riding on top of the warming trend that's been induced by humans using the atmosphere as a free place to dump our tailpipe wastes."
     Bazell: "From now on, scientists say, many extreme weather events will result from natural causes enhanced by global warming. That includes heat waves, droughts and hurricanes."
     Schneider: "We all know that humans don't make hurricanes. Katrina was not produced by global warming. Yet Katrina was a little stronger because it went over a ocean that was half a degree warmer than it otherwise would have been."
     Bazell: "So the unusual warmth in the Northeast could partly be the result of global warming. Indeed, even the heavy snow in the Rockies this year might be partly caused by global warming. El Nino brings the storm, but because the air is warmer than usual it holds far more moisture, producing much more snow. Robert Bazell, NBC News, New York."

     All NBC has done, of course, is encourage liberals to keep the complaints coming, since NBC has now shown how easily they will change course. Does anyone out there think a mere 22 conservative comments would trigger NBC to "revisit" their hostile coverage of the Iraq war, or tax cuts, or embryonic stem cells?

     I didn't think so.

Letterman's "Top Ten Features of Bush's
New Iraq Plan"

     From the January 9 Late Show with David Letterman, the "Top Ten Features of Bush's New Iraq Plan." Late Show home page: www.cbs.com

10. Make the war best two-out-of-three

9. Blame it on that crazy New York gas leak

8. Convene blue-ribbon study group; ignore recommendations

7. Consult with Rumsfeld, who's now working as a casino greeter

6. Sit on ass until January 2009; let Hillary figure it out

5. Send Cheney to Baghdad with a shotgun

4. Tax cuts for the rich

3. Put Giants coach Tom Coughlin in charge of enemy, watch them collapse

2. Raise money for escalation by robbing Mick Jagger's apartment

1. Dig up Saddam and execute him again

-- Brent Baker

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