Roland Martin of CNN took the fight to Sarah Palin in our interview with him at the RNC. As you can tell, he was not playing around:




Young Turks Interviews at RNC

In the video below you will see a face of Anderson Cooper you don't normally see on CNN:





They should let this Anderson Cooper out more often. I like this guy. I am bored to tears with the dull guy they send out to anchor on CNN every night. Let Anderson be Anderson!

Young Turks on You Tube

More accurately, Governor Mark Sanford (R-SC) clowned himself. But he did such a poor job, even Wolf Blitzer had to challenge him and show that his argument made no sense. First, watch how Gov. Sanford mumbles, bumbles and stumbles through this interview:





Now, as to the real point -- there is no difference between John McCain and George Bush on economic issues. John McCain agrees with 98% of the policies that got us into this mess in the first place.

They fundamentally don't believe in government regulation. That is a radical position (a sensible position is that we need some regulation, enough to check the excesses of an unfettered market without over-regulating industry). When it comes to financial institutions taking great risks for short-term pay-offs and then dumping their mess on the American taxpayer if it goes wrong, we need more regulation to make sure they can't do this.

If they want to take all this risk and then when they get burned, we don't bail them out, then fine. But if it's going to be my money that bails them out, I'm not going to sign-off on excessive risk for excessive short-term profits when we have to deal with the long-term pain. This is highway robbery. It's also socialism for the rich.

If you're a middle-class working family, Republicans throw bootstraps at you and say you need to pick yourself up off the ground. They offer no government assistance under the guise of the free market. But if the top banks get in trouble, the free market is out the window and here comes government welfare to save the day for rich folks.

Funny how that works. Unless you're insanely wealthy or directly benefit from these anti-free market practices of the Bush administration (no-bid contracts to favored military suppliers is another example), you'd be crazy to vote for another Republican.

Watch Young Turks on You Tube

You gotta love Jesse Ventura. Look at what he says about George Bush, Dick Cheney and all the rest of the chickenhawks:





Watch The Whole Show Here and Watch Our You Tube Channel Here

I love Charles Barkley. I was a Republican at the same time he was and we both left the party at the same time. We left the GOP when, as Barkley puts it, "they lost their minds."

In the video below you'll see the Charles Barkley interview on CNN where he goes after the hypocritical conservatives. If you keep watching, you'll also see an explanation of why it doesn't make any sense to say you supported both Bush Sr. and Bush Jr.:




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"I confirm (to) you that there is no agents provocateurs in the Surete du Quebec... It doesn't exist in the Surete du Quebec," spokesperson Const. Melanie Larouche told The Canadian Press.

Well, that was the Quebec police position on August 22nd. But with pressure mounting, the Quebec police finally admitted that the three provocateurs were in fact, undercover police.

Authorities initially denied claims from protesters that officers had infiltrated their ranks but later acknowledged the three men were police officers.

Hat Tip to both Eric and Derek for dropping this in my inbox this morning.

It's a sad day for activists everywhere knowing that within protests are police officers, not there to protect you, but with large rocks, possibly trying to incite riots, turning peaceful protests into dangerous ones. If you think this is an isolated event, again I ask you to watch this Bill Moyers documentary entirely about agent provocateurs in America.

Many people who use the internet for news and information can sympathize with Michael Moore's anger towards the mainstream media. The last 10 years it seems television news is more and more difficult to watch, and honest voices believe it's hurting America.

As an outsider looking in, it's bizarre watching American news, it's easy to understand why people are starting to believe it's purposely trying to dumb down viewers. Remember the round the clock footage of the Anna Nicole Smith death, even The Daily Show spent 9 minutes covering it... The best 9 minutes of coverage on the topic, says I. You can understand why people out there agree, the Main Stream Media wasn't doing it's job during the lead up to this war (with exception to Knight Ridder) and they still aren't.

Here is an open letter Moore wrote to CNN on July 14th. He is angry with the state of the media, he is not alone, blogyoulikeahurricane.com has written an open to Michael Moore asking him to create a documentary about mainstream media.

The clip below is an excerpt from the July 15th edition of Reliable Sources with Howard Kurtz. Huffington explains why Moore i mad. You can watch the full video here, but it's simply another example of crummy TV media... Two talking heads spewing out quick talking points, if you want to save yourself the headache you can read the transcript here.

Tony Danza was so appalled by the Situation Room's Paris Hilton coverage, he'll "never watch CNN again," he says. Danza rants: "News has become entertainment. They don't give you what you need, they give you what you want. And entertainment has taken a turn, too. People aren't much interested in virtuosity."

To prove he's serious about integrity, he's off for a stint in Las Vegas.

Yesterday Michael Moore spoke with Wolf Blitzer and got pretty mad with a report the Sanjay Gupta compiled about the film SiCKO. Tonight Micheal Moore and Gupta got together and debated on the Larry King Live program.

Here it is in three parts. As always feel free to visit Michael Moore's website as he is a big fan of citing the sources of what he claims.

Michael Moore gets incredibly upset with Wolf Blitzer and CNN about a report compiled by Sanjay Gupta.
This inspired a blog post by Michael Moore titled: CNN vs The Facts. (Here's an additional article from CNN.)
Below is Moore pumping his fist at main stream media.

Minor Hat tip to Blitzer... for letting Moore rant. Vote up this clip if you enjoyed it.
Possibly the best plea to the Main Stream Media since Jon Stewart went on Crossfire.

*Update: Micheal Moore Debates Sanjay Gupta on Larry King - July 10th. Watch it here.

No one thinks that spelling bees are accurate predictors of future success. Most people agree that they are novelty competitions designed to capitalize on -- exploit? -- a narrow skill that appears in a select group of children and is often correlated with social awkwardness.

This year's National Spelling Bee winner, Evan O'Dorney, is a poster child both for spelling and for, well, the other thing, and while it's poor form to make fun of kids, it's great form to post videos of kids so that people can draw their own conclusions. In this interview with CNN's Kiran Chetry, the home-schooled O'Dorney corrects Chetry's pronunciation of her name (she calls him "particular" in response), refuses to answer a straightforward question about what his mom said after the victory, and generally seems bored. He does everything but walk away from the camera. He's a tougher interview than Barry Bonds, and almost admirable for it. I mean, pinning this kid down is tougher than trying to differentiate between Grammatorcynus bicarinatus and Grammatorcynus bilineatus in a school of scombridae.

[Ben Greenman's acclaimed new book of fiction, A Circle is a Balloon and Compass Both, is now available. Order it here.]

You may have missed this report on the news over the weekend.

Four arrested in Iraq 'honor killing' - CNN

BAGHDAD, IRAQ (CNN) -- Authorities in northern Iraq have arrested four people in connection with the "honor killing" last month of a Kurdish teen -- a startling, morbid pummeling caught on a mobile phone video camera and broadcast around the world.

...Read More

Ok, so they arrested some people, too little too late considering there were cops at the scene, they should have stopped it. For whatever reason this footage reminded me of this clip from "Hotel Rwanda".

Conservative commentators do this all the time. They try to inject a controversy where there is none. Even if they are proven wrong, they don't care. They got a certain percentage of the audience to doubt the subject of the attack.

The classic example was the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth. They didn't care that their allegations against Senator Kerry's Vietnam record weren't true. They just wanted to throw enough dirt on him so people could say, "I don't know, some say he fought bravely in Vietnam and some say he didn't."

The non-news news today is that CNN reporter Michael Ware heckled John McCain during a press conference yesterday. McCain paid a surprise visit to Baghdad in an attempt to show his comments of last week were not as outlandish as some - including Ware - said. In the video below, Ware denies any heckling. It would be great to see the video of the press conference. So, if anyone has that footage, please do send it along. Read more here.

UPDATE: You can watch the video of the press conference here.

The gents over at Power Line pointed out a very interesting exchange between Sen. John McCain and CNN's Iraq correspondent, Michael Ware. Each present very different assessments of the current state of Iraq -- one sunny, one bleak. Check out the video below, then head over to Power Line; they're asking readers in Iraq who they think gets it right.