Morning buzz

In The Star:

• Matt Stearns looks at how the early primary stampede in 2008 could affect Missouri's primary. Will it be an afterthought or the site of a showdown?
• Scott Canon interviews Ronen Sen, India's ambassador to the United States.
• Mara Rose Williams reports on the controversy over a Missouri Senate committee axing six projects from a higher-ed bill because they may have something to do with stem-cell research.
• Lynn Horsley has a full report on the proposed KC budget.
• Kit Wagar reports that the Missouri House passed the Medicaid fraud bill.
• Wagar also reports that brushing aside concerns about cost, a Senate panel on Wednesday discussed a huge expansion of a subsidy program that rewards businesses for creating jobs.
• In his column, Mike Hendricks takes a poke at KC mayoral candidate Stan Glazer's plan for a giant Ferris wheel on the bank of the Missouri River.

Elsewhere: Selections from The Hotline's "Wake-Up Call," ABC's The Note and others.

• Sen. Barack Obama will announce his presidential run tomorrow. In a USA Today interview, Obama says, "I am absolutely convinced that . . . We've got a message that I think will appeal to the American people." 
• Hotsoup's Ron Fournier thinks that Congress' failure to make progress on Iraq this week is a "Katrina moment" which could remind Americans about Washington's "failure to lead." Newt Gingrich tells Fournier that "legislative fights over slavery and the Vietnam War were messy, but those debates 'weren't as childish or trivial' as what we saw this week."  More Gingrich: "What is particularly sad is that the public has a correct understanding that none of the maneuvers matter because it's all so petty and, basically, public relations."
• Here's a couple of stories about Sen. John Edwards' decision to keep a couple of chastised bloggers on the payroll. Before they joined his campaign, they had personal Web logs on which they posted highly critical and profane thoughts about topics including the Roman Catholic Church, The Washington Post reports. The Politico notes the Edwards is taking heat from the religious left over his bloggers.
• Sen. Sam Brownback is in Michigan today as he begins weekend meetings with Republican activists, donors, and elected officials at the annual Michigan GOP state convention in Grand Rapids.
• On his Political Punch blog, Jake Tapper tests your political smarts with an Air Pelosi Quiz.

Posted by Keith Chrostowski

Comments

Ah, John Edwards always seems to want it BOTH ways. "Bad girls! But can you go ahead on that campaign stuff I asked you to do?"

[MeL]

Why won't the Buzz Blog just say that the Pelosi story is false?
"One of things that's seriously puzzling about the big news orgs, and the political media in particular, is that it's crowded with self-regarding professionals who presumably went into this racket because they had some sort of sense of themselves as wanting to become truth-seekers. Yet here they are in the grip of self-imposed conventions which dictate that you should be reluctant to say flat out that a story's false when it is in fact just that." http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/horsesmouth/2007/02/post_43.php

[tsquare]

"Why won't the Buzz Blog just say that the Pelosi story is false?"

Because it isn't.

The story IS TRUE...

It is also overblown, and of little or no real consequence…

…and being played for everything it’s worth by…well by almost everyone.

Let this stand, once again, as a lesion for all about the media in general…first they set you up, higher than you deserve, then delight in tearing you down, lower than you (likely) deserve.

[Old Drum]

Tsquare, what aspect of the Pelosi story is true?

The Pelosi flap is as true as Al Gore saying he invented the internet.

Both of these stories are the result of a mainstream media that is too lazy and/or too scared to print: the right wing press LIES! The MSM is afraid of the calls from the dittoheads and Fox News watchers telling them they are too liberal. Reporting a story like this shows the MSM can criticize Democrats.

This story demonstrates how badly the mainstream media is in this country. Remember we went to war based on a set of lies. How few in the MSM reported that? How many in the MSM gushed at the speech Powell gave in the UN? Yet, even here in Missouri, it was obvious to me that Powell's speech lacked substance.

Now, pay attention to the Libby trial and what we are learning about the big names in our media.

Remember Molly Ivins got Iraq right even before the war began and she was not exactly on roledex in the Bush Administration.

[jenniferm]

Its true that the plane that Haslert used could not fly non-stop to California.

That's about it.