MSM Bias and Mayor Daley's Lousy Approval Rating

...but will the MainStream Media and the Democrats mock Chicago's Mayor Daley for HIS all-time low approval rating of 35 percent? Don't hold your breath. This post is more about widespread liberal media bias than it is about Mayor Daley's horrible approval ratings. The hypocrisy is stunning, as demonstrated by the Chicago Tribune in a Sept. 13 article by Dan Mihalopoulos: For the first time since he became mayor two decades ago, Daley's critics outnumber his fans, a Tribune/WGN poll found. The mayor's approval rating is at an all-time low of 35 percent in Tribune polls, according to the new survey. Mihalopoulos reveals a certain bias with his fourth paragraph (emphasis added): None of this is to suggest that Daley is losing his dominance of the City Council or his luster with the city's business elite. There is no serious challenger on the horizon if Daley, who regularly wins re-election by landslide, chooses to run for a seventh term in 2011. Even more than his legendary father, the 67-year-old Daley is the only game in town. Why does Mihalopoulos feel a need to apologize for his report of Daley's miserable approval rating of 35 percent? From mid-2006 to early 2008, President Bush hovered at or near a 35 percent approval rating. When The Chicago Tribune - or any of the other MSM - reported Bush's low ratings, did any of them quickly qualify those reports with phrases such as "None of this is to suggest that Bush is losing his dominance of the US Congress?" They did not, and yet that was essentially the case. Even after losing the Congress to the Pelosi Gang in 2006, Bush continued to have his way with the Iraq War and other issues. Although not quite the rubber stamp that is the Chicago City Council, the US Congress was more compliant than most average Democrat voters had hoped it would be after they won it two years into Bush's second term. When the MSM reported on Bush's low approval ratings, did they feel it necessary to also note that Bush won "re-election by [a] landslide?" They did not, of course, even though Bush handily defeated the John "Frenchy" Kerry and John "The Adulterer" Edwards in 2004. The MainStream Media have yet to catch up to the ACORN-Prostitution sting of last week. The MSM virtually buried the story of Obama being forced to dismiss Van Jones. Yesterday's March on Washington, a gargantuan Tea Party, is estimated by the US Parks Service and the D.C. police at over 1.5 Million people, yet most of the MSM has either ignored it or downplayed it as "tens of thousands." MSNBC admitted to "hundreds of thousands" of people, but oddly said that police estimated "tens of thousands." MSNBC, one of the MSM, just couldn't bring itself to honestly relate the much larger, actual, official estimates. The MSM, which we on the Right have accused of bias for decades, has bent over backwards in the past weeks to prove just how correct we have been. They've done it unintentionally, of course, just as a drunk who fails a breathalyzer test unintentionally proves himself guilty of having a few too many drinks. They cannot help it. It is they way they behave. Hold on, here's another metaphor: Like a duck, if it quacks like one and walks like one, it is one. The MSM has been quacking very loudly of late. RELATED: Up to two million march to US Capitol to protest against Obama's spending in ‘tea-party’ demonstration - Daily Mail (UK) ABC Denies It Ever Said Yesterday's Protest Rally Had 1 Million People Two Million Man March Size Matters; So Do Lies The 9/12 March on Washington (Wizbang) Media Bias Is Real, Finds UCLA Political Scientist / UCLA Newsroom Media Bias Of The Day Black & Right Your Friendly Media Bias Reminder - Mark Hemingway PROOF: SADDAM HAD URANIUM AFP: Iraqi uranium transferred to Canada Cool Hats & Shirts for Cool Conservatives Leave a Comment... Chicago News Bench RSS Feed We're on Twitter...

Nuclear Iran: IAEA Charges "Total Disrespect"

History repeats itself. Just as Iraq once blocked UN inspectors, Iran continues to do the same. The Interational Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) is now condemning Iran for its complete refusal to allow inspections of its nuclear facilities. Question: If Iran has nothing to hide, why are working so hard to hide it? The situation has become so frustrating that even Russia is calling on Iran to come clean. Meanwhile, Iran's client Syria is using similar tactics of denial. All of this, naturally, has Israel very, very worried. Iran is showing "utter disrespect" for the U.N. nuclear watchdog by ignoring unanswered questions about its atomic programme, European powers said on Thursday....Iran's denial of an IAEA request to check design details at a research reactor under construction and its failure to provide preliminary design data for a nuclear power plant planned at Darkhovin were of particular concern, he said. Full Story from Reuters... MORE: News Center : In Focus : IAEA and Iran IAEA Broadens Probe of Syria Plans To Build Up Its Nuclear Program IAEA, ending meeting, presses Syria to cooperate Syria Accused of Iranian Tactics to Hide Covert Nuclear Activity

No Shit: IAEA Says Iran Plans Secret Nuclear Experiments

From the "When Will We Learn" files, we get this so-called "news" on Thursday, October 30, 2008: "Iran has recently tested ways of recovering highly enriched uranium from waste reactor fuel in a covert bid to expand its nuclear program, according to an intelligence assessment made available to The Associated Press." Uhm, duh. This is "news" only in the strictest sense. It is more akin, however, to a nightmarish, recurrent dream. The only "news" in this story is this: "The intelligence, provided by a member of the 145-nation International Atomic Energy Agency, also says a report will soon be submitted to the Iranian leadership for a decision on whether to go ahead with the project." The dismaying part of the AP story: "The alleged tests loosely replicate Saddam Hussein's attempts to build the bomb nearly two decades ago. But experts question the conclusion by those providing the intelligence that Tehran, too, is trying to reprocess the fuel to make a nuclear weapon. They note that the spent fuel at issue as the source of the enriched uranium is not enough to yield the approximately 30 kilograms (65 pounds) of weapons-grade material needed for a bomb." FULL ARTICLE at AP... (Update, 9/13/2009: This story has mysteriously been removed by AP!!!) Why is that dismaying? Here's why: 1) This all sounds rather familiar, in a deja vu sort of way. The same AP report notes that "If the information is accurate then Iran is 'trying to get their nose in the tent' of reprocessing material potentially suitable for a warhead, said David Albright, whose Washington-based Institute for Science and International Security tracks suspect secret proliferators." Without rehashing history, we heard essentially the same thing from both the Clinton and the Bush administrations about Sadam Hussein and Iraq's desire to resurrect their nuclear materials processing plants. 2) Prior to the 2003 invasion of Iraq, warnings and coinciding reports from a number of our allies' intelligence agencies said that Iraq tried to get "yellow cake," (unprocessed uranium) from Africa. General Powell, the Bush stooge who just endorsed Obama, was roundly ridiculed by Democrats and the Left for being "duped" into presenting that so-called "lie" to the United Nations. News flash: There really was yellow cake in Hussein's hands, and in fact about 500 tons of it was transported for storage in Canada back in June of this year. CNN reported that on July 7, 2008. The fact of the yellow cake is more like history than news by now. Tragically, though, most Americans are still not aware of the 500 tons of uranium, thanks primarily to the intentional downplaying of the story by the mainstream media, which in some cases outright suppressed it. In fact, the Chicago Tribune actually apologized for downplaying the story ("An unforgivable omission" by Nancy Thorner). (Update, 9/13/2009: This story has mysteriously been removed by The Chicago Tribune!!! SEE THORNER'S FULL TEXT HERE: PROOF: SADDAM HAD URANIUM) Jim Garamone of the American Forces Press Service reported, "The Iraqi government asked the United States to help transfer the yellowcake -- as the ore is known -- from Tuwaitha Nuclear Research Center near Baghdad to its buyer in Canada, Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman said today." The AFPS report was also on July 7, 2008. Note that AP reported today that, in the case of Iran, "the spent fuel at issue as the source of the enriched uranium is not enough to yield the approximately 30 kilograms (65 pounds) of weapons-grade material needed for a bomb." So how will the Democrats, who have been speaking against an Iranian nuclear program, avoid being labeled hypocrites in the Iran scenario, when they still mock the Bush Administration for the Iraqi yellow cake, which most Democrats and Liberals still refuse to believe was real? 3) Back in 2002 and 2003, prior to the invasion of Iraq, the US and its allies demanded repeatedly that Saddam Hussein come clean about his intentions to go ahead with nuclear weapons manufacturing (which are, of course, weapons of mass destruction). He ignored us, of course, as well as 17 United Nations resolutions. In 1998, for example, UN Security Council Resolution 1205 demanded that "Iraq must provide 'immediate, complete and unconditional cooperation' with UN and IAEA inspectors." [Source of summary: http://www.state.gov/p/nea/rls/01fs/14906.htm] Then, in late 2002, UNSCR 1441, the last of the pre-invasion resolutions, called for three things: (A) "The immediate and complete disarmament of Iraq and its prohibited weapons." (B) "Iraq must provide UNMOVIC and the IAEA full access to Iraqi facilities, individuals, means of transportation, and documents." and finally, warned Iraq that (C) "it will face serious consequences as a result of its continued violations of its obligations." [Source of summary: http://www.state.gov/p/nea/rls/01fs/14906.htm] 3) How many UN resolutions will be required this time before Iran to backs down? Will Iran back down? What will the UN do if Iran does not back down? How would Obama respond to it if, God forbid, he is our president when the decision time arrives? If Iran ignores UN resolutions and continues to ignore diplomatic pleading and begging by the US and our allies, and if embargos and sanctions continue to be laughed at by Iran, the only option left is military force. Actually, there is another option, and that is the option of sticking our collective heads in the sand and trying to wish the problem away. The problem won't go away, of course, if left to the pleasure of Tehran. We should have learned that after Iraq ignored UN resolutions for a dozen years. We should have that after Hitler assured Chamberlain that Germany had no ill intentions for England. We should have learned that a thousand times over the course of history. Sadly, however, we seem to have missed all of those memos. RELATED: AFP: Iraqi uranium transferred to Canada France 24 Iraq sells uranium to Canada France 24

PROOF: SADDAM HAD URANIUM

Not only is there now undeniable proof that Iraq DID INDEED have the YELLOW CAKE URANIUM that Pres. Bush said they had (and other world leaders and their intelligence services), the mainstream media are finally - slooooowly - coming around to the fact that the Leftists and Democrats were the ones who lied about it. KUDOS to the Chicago Tribune for confessing this, for apologizing for it, and for trying to set the record straight. Read this July 10 column by Nancy J. Thorner (emphasis added): An unforgivable omission July 10, 2008 On July 6th there was an AP exclusive that reported how the last major remnant of Saddam Hussein's nuclear program - a huge stockpile of concentrated natural uranium - reached a Canadian port to complete a secret U.S. operation that included a two-week airlift from Baghdad and a ship voyage crossing two oceans. This removal of 550 metric tons of "yellowcake" from the Tuwaitha nuclear complex 12 miles south of Baghdad was seed material that could have been refined into nuclear weapons. It was first discovered back in 2003 when the U.S. invaded Iraq. This AP report should have been headline news in the Chicago Tribune. After all, much of the early opposition to the war in Iraq involved claims that President Bush had "lied" about weapons of mass destruction and that Saddam posed little if any nuclear threat to our nation. The news that 550 metric tons of yellowcake uranium was removed from Iraq more or less proves that Saddam back in 2003 had his nuclear program on hold for building WMD and that he planned to boot it up again. It is unforgivable that the mainstream media, including the Tribune, has virtually ignored the AP story about the recent uranium removal from Iraq. There is an obvious answer for this purposeful oversight: it doesn't fit the media's neat storyline that Saddam Hussein's Iraq posed no nuclear threat when we invaded in 2003. --Nancy J. Thorner THANKS TO MS. THORNER for writing that. And who are the "opposition to the war in Iraq involved claims that President Bush had "lied" about weapons of mass destruction" that Ms. Thorner referred to? Tens of thousands of useful idiots, including our own Chicago City Council. READ THIS PIECE OF IDIOCY...