This is the front page of WaTi this morning. See the blaring headline & photo: Not-So-Warm welcome? The actual story is way at the back of the "A" section, where you find out there was a protest against American beef, which is actually an anti-SoKo government protest, and a huge, privately-organized pro-Bush rally.
These are SoKo Christians gathered for a prayer meeting to greet Bush.Read more about it here, from a liveblogger.
Then yesterday the Times ran this pernicious story: McCain, Obama agree on big issues.
On some policy issues, the presidential election just won't matter - both Sen. Barack Obama and Sen. John McCain are prepared to overturn President Bush's policy and expand federal funding for embryonic stem cell research, one of a series of contentious issues pushed out of the presidential debate because those at the top of the tickets agree.
Both men have voted repeatedly against Mr. Bush's stem cell policy, which severely restricts funding to the lines that existed in 2001, and have said on the campaign trail they would expand federal funding if given the chance.
This is true insofar as it goes. But the clear intent of the story is to suggest to social issues voters that there's no real difference between McCain & Obama on the life questions, when Obama is the most radically pro-abortion candidate who has ever run for high office and McCain is 100% pro-life except on this one issue, where science is about to render the matter moot, all signs are the candidate is re-thinking the matter, and even so, McCain's position differs from Obama's. McCain is (currently) willing to allow the use of existing frozen embryos for research, but not to permit creation of new embryos for that purpose, whereas Obama is for federally funded embryonic stem cell research and an anything goes policy. The story does get around to mentioning that eventually. In the last 'graf, which in the print version is on a different page which most readers won't get to.
And there was this.
I feel a budget cut coming on.
