Israel May OK Division of Jerusalem

Senior Israeli Officials Support Transfer of Arab Parts of Jerusalem to Palestinian Control

Senior Israeli officials expressed support Monday for the transfer of Arab parts of Jerusalem to Palestinian control, offering a concession on one of the most contentious issues in the Mideast conflict. The offer appeared to fall short of Palestinian calls for a full Israeli withdrawal from key areas of the holy city.

Palestinians launch rocket deeper into Israel

JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Palestinian militants fired a Katyusha rocket deep into southern Israel on Sunday, the army and police said, showing an ability to extend the range of rocket attacks from the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip.

Yeah, that should earn them more land…from which to launch rockets.

‘Journalists’ Tell Howard Kurtz Why Good News from Iraq Shouldn’t Get Reported (updated w/video)As CNN’s Howard Kurtz accurately pointed out on Sunday’s “Reliable Sources,” few media outlets seemed at all interested in giving much attention to the great news out of Iraq last week regarding September’s sharp decline in casualties.

To Kurtz’s obvious frustration, his guests - Robin Wright of the Washington Post and Barbara Starr of CNN - both supported the press burying this extremely positive announcement.

Go read their answers for yourselves.  You probably wouldn’t even believe me if I told you.

…simple fact checking.

From Say Anything:

You Know That Kid Democrats Signed Up To Sell Their SCHIP Expansion?

I posted about him last week.  I pointed out that using a kid to hawk what is in effect a push toward socialized medicine is politics of emotion and not politics or fact.  But, obviously, the media was quite taken with the maneuver.

President Bush, are you smarter than a seventh-grader?

Apparently not. Graeme Frost of Baltimore is 12 years old, a seventh-grader at the Park School, and he understands why children need health care and their parents need help paying for it. He explained it during a rebuttal to the president’s Saturday radio address. Yes, we know, Senate staffers wrote the speech for Graeme. That doesn’t take away from the message. Does anyone really think President Bush writes his own material?

The problem is that Graeme Frost’s family is hardly a “working class” family that should be receiving government-provided health care.  Why?  Because his family lives in a home worth more than $500,000, he and his sibling go to a $20,000/year private school, and his father owns a private design company.  Also, the article linked above says that the family couldn’t find a private health insurance plan that cost less than $1,200/month.  Yet a little poking around shows that there are plans in their area for no more than $640.

A little investigative reporting from the media could have fleshed this out, and put the use of Graeme as a Democrat propaganda public out as a gross falsehood, but they didn’t.  Because the story the Democrats told about Graeme fit the story the media wanted to tell.  So they swallowed it whole.

Hey, I’m all for making sure that medical care is available to poor children.  I’m NOT willing to spend my tax money to pay for medical insurance for people who just don’t put their children’s health far enough up the “I want” list to nudge past the big house and/or remodeled kitchen.  Most of the people I have ever known who didn’t have medical insurance fall into that category.  They just had more fun things to spend their money on.

Blue Crab Boulevard has a great round-up of blogger comments.