On their show this Sunday morning, their discussion about race, they had two guests on.  The first, a woman named Patricia Harris (from Panama originally) complained how blacks themselves discriminate on the basis of color and then said:

I was very disappointed to see Mr. (Barack) Obama play the race card. He started it with his ad about his funny name and the pictures on our paper bills.

Later, she said the following:

I feel it's important for him to acknowledge both sides of his heritage. After all, he has a black father and a white mother. Why play to those of us who just want him to just acknowledge being black when he's not just a black man. I want him to say, "This is who I am. I'm not going to deny my black father, and I'm not going to deny my white mother."

Neither the host, Robert Smith, nor for that matter the other guest, challenged Ms. Harris's statements.

Howard Dean was on NPR friday and called the Republican party the "white" party oops. He immediately corrected the comment.
http://www.breitbart.tv/...

Freudian slip with a hint of truth maybe. But....could the Republican party be the "white party" by default?  Minorities do tend to vote Democrat.

So I was up this morning and had the misfortune of listening to the Nice Polite Repulicans' Morning Edition. Lynn was doing the particularly lame media reporting on the media's reaction to a "best seller" story on Jerome Corsi's widely debunked piece of shit Obama Nation. So I called her up. more after the jump.

A critical Republican campaign strategy is working when it comes to framing for the November election. Despite actual facts, media reporting increasingly reports that there is no difference of import between John McSame McCain and Barack Obama when it comes to the arenas of energy and Global Warming. Take David Kesterbaum's NPR report yesterday.

If you are trying to figure out whom to vote for in the upcoming presidential race, the issue of climate change may not be much help. This is one area where both leading candidates for president do not have a lot to disagree about.

Shallow, misinformed, and misleading reporting is about the most polite way to describe Kestenbaum's report which focuses solely on selected sound-bytes rather than the substance of the two candidates' positions.

There are fundamental differences between McSame's and Obama's positions and fundamental differences about the prospects for the future between President McSame and President Obama.  Differences that Kesterbaum reporting will leave you ignorant about.

    China and the Olympics are generating lots of news stories; but one on Marketplace at American Public Media caught my ear this morning. Commentator Will Wilkinson of the Cato Institute was talking up  a recent working paper (warning - pdf file) by University of Chicago economists Christian Broda and John Romalis.

    With the headline Trade With China Gets The Gold, Wilkinson summarized their findings as showing that trade with China has been a net benefit for the poor and not so good for the rich.

  Follow me below the fold to find out why it sucks to be rich - and look at some signs that the GOP Class War on America is heating up.

Media Matters

On the August 7 broadcast of NPR's Morning Edition, national political correspondent Mara Liasson asserted there was "irony" in "a liberal Democrat showcasing his faith," stating during a report about the presidential candidates' efforts to "court white evangelical voters": "The irony of a liberal Democrat showcasing his faith is not lost on [former Republican presidential candidate] Gary Bauer, a leading conservative religious activist." Liasson did not explain what she thought was "ironic" about such an action.

Jeebus help me I can hardly think where to start with this.  Does is bother me more that can't seem to used to being betrayed every time NPR behaves like a right wing water boy?  Or is it the fact that the right wing and traditional media make a bigger mockery of Christianity than they do of Islam?  

On Monday, I sent the following note to NPR's Morning Edition.

Might I suggest that an analyst who thinks that it's weird to take a vacation in the place that someone grew up, and where his grandmother still lives, is not likely to provide anything useful in the campaign coverage besides comic relief?

Yesterday, I got an answer.

Comcast has eliminated MSNBC from my viewing.
Under the guise of jiggling HD programming Comcast is unable to allow me to see MSNBC. This "factoid" in spite of their ability to introduce many (Discovery Science, History Channel, etc) without addition effort.

Somehow, MSNBC is just "difficult".

One of the brief news teasers on NPR this morning was a bit of a surprise: McCain is cutting down on media exposure.

I paraphrase, after having heard the teaser before the 7AM and 8AM newscasts (but not before the 9AM): "John McCain is changing his campaign strategy by limiting the opportunities that the public and the media will have to ask him questions." Will update if I find a link, but I hope that this should be all over the news outlets soon, assuming NPR had something behind the story.

Update 9:45 AM Found the story (with audio) on NPR.org:

McCain's Freewheeling Days With Media Curtailed

Reporters traveling with Sen. John McCain haven't gotten a chance to ask the Republican presidential hopeful a lot of questions this week. Instead of open-ended news conferences, McCain has been offering up carefully scripted statements.

It's part of a deliberate strategy by the campaign to keep the press corps — and the candidate — on a shorter leash between now and Election Day.

Sometimes, one must rant about the current state of media, journalism and news coverage in America. Now is one of those moments.

I will get back to my research and Diaries about the Jack Abramoff and his fellow Conservative Corruptionist Creeps destroying our Nation on another day.

I have been on a slow burn since Wednesday and I’ve got to spend a Diary on race-based bias, racism, media bias, the AP and NPR.

Last Sunday was the final day of the UNITY Conference—a gathering of Journalists of Color—in Chicago. McCain and Obama were both invited to speak. McCain blew off the journalists and Barack Obama did not. When he was introduced, Obama was greeted by loud applause and a few cheers. Then he settled in for almost forty minutes of tough questioning from the group.

Naturally, NPR had to use the event to highlight the dangers of a media bias and steam came out of my ears as I listened to Talk of the Nation last week.

To the jump...

I drive a fuel-efficient car. I walk or ride my bike whenever I can. I recycle or compost almost everything possible. I try and be a responsible citizen of our nation and our planet. That is why a year ago I changed my mind about off shore oil exploration in United States waters. How did I come to this decision? One radio report:
http://www.npr.org/...

I don't know what made me angrier - stewing my way through another thinly-veiled propaganda piece on NPR, or stewing my way through another thinly-veiled propaganda piece on NPR during a pledge drive.  At this point, NPR has virtually guaranteed that they will never see a dime of my money.  They will, however, see their "news" dissected by yours truly.

Hold on kids, here we go again!

Today on NPR's Fresh Air, Terry Gross interviewed Douglas Holtz-Eakin, McCain's senior economic advisor.  Terry asked about McCain's economic knowledge and Holtz-Eakin gave a very interesting answer:

Terry Gross - John McCain has said that the economy is not his strong point.  That he doesn't know that much about the economy. Is that a fatal flaw for a president?  Does it matter?

Douglas Holtz-Eakin: He has a phenominal grasp of the economy and the remark he made is self-depricating.  That's John McCain in his truest form.  But he is comparing himself to a standard of excellence on international affairs and national security that no one could meet.  He's the preminent expert in those areas.  He's been the chair of the commerce committee.  He's a superb policy maker on economics and the US economy is in good hands with John McCain.

It's one thing for NPR's Scott Simon wrongly to scold Senator Barack Obama for supposedly accusing Senator John McCain of planning to inject race into the Presidential campaign (Obama actually said the "Republicans" would do so - the whole thing was ably diaried here and here).

But apparently Mr. Simon wasn't willing to give equal time - or any time - to those who took issue with his characterization.

The comparison of Ronald Reagan's speech in West Berlin with John Kennedy's speech 25 years earlier is ahistorical and completely bogus.  It's a complete rightwing fabrication that's swallowed whole by the MSM.

NPR Host, Melissa Block brings up the myth in this evening's 'All Things Considered' only to be swathed down by SUNY Buffalo Prof. Andreas Daum who actually knows something about the two events.

I understand conviction.  I understand sticking to your principles.  I understand grit and determination.  I don’t understand some hard headed people that ignore the opinion of others.  I don’t understand the rationale behind these ‘so called’ conservatives who think that they know what is best for everyone or that their heavy handedness is some kind of tough love.

In a new survey, Health Care and the Economy in Two Swing States: A Look at Ohio and Florida, National Public Radio, the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation, and the Harvard School of Public Health found that the economy, health care and the occupation of Iraq are the top items on people's minds, with seven out of ten saying the economy will have a significant influence on how they will vote for President in November.

Asked to name the most and second most important issues "when you decide how to vote for president," respondents replied:

In Florida, half of those polled say they're struggling not just with one, but with multiple economic problems.

There's the collapse of the housing market and the decline in home values. Also, a credit crunch is making it hard for consumers to borrow their way out of trouble. Then there's triple or quadruple whammy: spiraling fuel and food prices.

In the new poll, more than three-quarters of people in Florida said they were facing at least one serious economic problem; half said they were struggling with three or more. The big ones? It's jobs, gas prices, housing and health care.

Floridians List Serious Problems with the Economy
Percent who say or their family experienced serious problems on account of recent changes in the economy

People in lower- and middle-income groups are suffering most, of course, but the economic problems are affecting higher-income groups as well, according to a spokeswoman for the Kaiser Family Foundation.

The poll found broad similarity in how Ohioans and Floridians rate their economic problems. Both say their inability to get a good job or a raise in pay is a top concern. But in Florida, the collapse in home values ranks higher as an economic problem than in Ohio. And for people in the real estate, banking and construction industries, it's also a jobs issue. ...

More than four in 10 Floridians polled believe that expanding health coverage to all Americans would do a great deal to help fix the country's economic problems. A similar number say the same thing about reducing health care costs.

But according to the poll, the top two things people in Florida say would help the most are stopping American jobs from going overseas and pulling U.S. troops out of Iraq.

For [Dee Moskona, a 47-year-old attorney and mother in Miami], Iraq is an economic issue.

"Absolutely," she says. "Iraq is draining everything. It's a demoralizing, horrible thing that we're stuck with, that we have to live with."

Retail prices last month took their biggest annual leap since May 1991, when gasoline prices skewed the figure upward because of the Gulf War.

Meanwhile, some 2 million Americans face home foreclosures, millions of industrial workers have lost well-paying jobs to cheap labor in the Pacific Rim, consumer confidence is near its all-time low, and pessimism about the economy is at a 27-year low.

Thirty-seven million Americans are living in poverty, 100,000 of them military veterans. By October, 28 million Americans will be receiving Food Stamps, a new record. The stamps, however, don't buy as much as they used to because of soaring food prices. In 2007, 54 million Americans had no health insurance at least part of the year. One in four adults aged 18-34 had no health insurance, and 9% of children under 18 had none.

But, according to PhD economist and supply-side shill Phil Gramm, all we've got going is a "mental recession" on the part of "whiners."

Somebody's mental all right.

As we wait for the many coming books, I'm sure more will be surfacing, as many try to cleanse their souls, of these last eight years plus, in seeking their higher kingdom, we might have the time to take this seemingly telling descriptive tale into the fold of good reading. We could even make the copies a collective item reminding us, in a comfortable way, of what we've been put through, us and the rest of the world. Comfortable because it might not enrage as we read and study the pictures, like the hard reality of the history will.