Here's what I thought you'd like to hear about today:

1. Rumsfeld's Love Affair with the Pentagon Press Corps
2. Kerry's Love Affair with the Troop
3. Bias in the Media - They're trying to be unbiased, really. Trust them.

Hear clips from Donald Rumsfeld battling it out at the Pentagon, reporters covering themselves the next day on the Today Show, John Kerry's joke and his attempt to cover himself the next day on Imus, and Hugh Hewitt debate Mark Halperin on media bias.
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Rumsfeld's Love Affair with the Pentagon Press Corps

RedState blog had a great post this week on the shear incredulity of the press corps, especially Jim Miklaszewski , at the Pentagon. At Rumsfeld's recent press conference, the AcademicElephant posted this:

While Mr. Rumsfeld is known for his aggressive handling of the press, this briefing was unusually "combative," as both the AP and the Washington Post put it, in that Mr. Rumsfeld was unwilling to give the press an inch in terms of the questions that were asked, and directly challenged the falsity of the assumptions that informed them. General Casey and General Pace both questioned the premises of specific questions posed to them on Tuesday; on Thursday, Mr. Rumsfeld took this a step further and attacked the slant, if you will, of almost every question asked of him (perhaps the most gentle example is: "The premise of your question is imperfect."). He repeatedly pointed to the agenda of a press the priority of which is to make news in an election cycle--rather than to gather information from the civilian head of the military during wartime. As Mr. Rumsfeld noted, he understands the game and does not blame the press for trying, but he doesn't have to help them or dignify their effort by playing along with them.

Here's a clip from the very first question, where Rumsfeld laid down the hammer. No questions whose premise was false would be allowed this day. Transcript here. Thanks to the Pentagon Channel for the podcast.

Play clip.

Later, Jim Miklaszewski tried his hand at the question with the another false premise, that every time table was missed by the Iraqi's. Watch your words, Jim.

Play clip.

As RedState notes, the next day the NBC correspondent was on the Today Show to eat crow, but did not take advantage of the opportunity. He awarded Rumsfeld a win on a technicality.

Play clip.

On Reliable Sources last Sunday, Howard Kurtz had two guests on from talk radio, including the lefty talker Stephanie Miller. The righty talker had nothing interesting to say, but Stephanie was hilarious. Here's her description of Rumsfeld. There are two parts, which I'll play back to back. Thanks to TiVo for the audio.

Play clip.

Kerry's Love Affair with the Troop

If you as big a political junkie as me, and you have to be to listen this show, you know all about Kerry's "botched joke" affair. He was for the joke before he was against it. Just because it is so precious, I'm going to play his joke, and then a short section from his appearance the next day on Don Imus on MSNBC, where Imus pleads with him to go crawl under a rock until after the election. I don't know if it was Imus's appeal, or that photo of the soldiers in Iraq with their famous sign appealing to be saved by "Jon Carry", but Kerry did apologize and go away the next day. Here's Kerry in Los Angeles, and then phoning in to Imus.

Play clip.

Bias in the Media - They're trying to be unbiased, really. Trust them.

Hugh Hewitt had Mark Halperin, political director of ABC News, author of The Note on ABC.com were on Hugh's radio show this week. The two had a very intelligent debate about the state of bias in the media today. Hugh basically says there is no way to drive it out, so if the media would just acknowledge that they have an axe to grind, and disclose their biases up front, we would all be better off. Halperin feels that we shouldn't give up on the ideal of unbiased coverage, and that in general, they do a good job of being neutral. Here's the section of Hugh's show where they talk about it.

Play clip.

I sympathize with Halperin, but ideals and reality often conflict. The media has been shown to be 80-90% democratic. In some cases, the number is closer to 99%. Just think of the NY Times to confirm the state of affairs. The fact is we all know it. So all we can do is wait for some enterprising media mogul to recognize the value of a conservative network or newspaper to make a killing in the commercial news space. Someone like Rupert Murdoch, for example, whose Fox News is atop the cable news ratings, and NY Post is climbing towards the circulation of the NY Times. I love capitalism.

That's it for now, podcatchers. Charlie Quidnunc reporting from Reagan National Airport in DC on a cool Friday afternoon.