Fox News gets front row seat in White House Briefing Room

Sometimes, I just have to shake my head, and wonder if the Obama administration has a clue on how to play politics. From The Huffington Post:

NEW YORK — Fox News Channel has been granted a much-coveted front-row seat in the White House briefing room.

The White House Correspondents Association said Sunday that The Associated Press' reporter has been moved to the front-row center seat previously occupied by Helen Thomas. Fox's correspondent will take the AP's former front-row seat, and National Public Radio's correspondent will move up one row to Fox's old second-row seat.

The center seat was long held by Thomas, a United Press International and Hearst News Service writer. The 89-year-old columnist resigned abruptly in June amid controversy over videotaped remarks she made calling on Israelis to get "out of Palestine." Fox, Bloomberg News (also seated in the second row) and NPR had lobbied for Thomas' seat.

Fox's upgrade is an acknowledgment of its "length of service and commitment," the association's board said in a statement.

Length of service and commitment??? Fox News is not a news organization. Fox News is a propaganda arm of the Republican Party, masquerading as a news organization. They get their marching orders from Rupert Murdoch on how to slant stories, or to regurgitate lies and propaganda as when conservative blogger Andrew Brietbart gave Fox a cherry-picked video of USDA official Shirley Sherrod supposedly making reverse discrimination remarks against a white farmer's family, resulting in her resignation. The entire Sherrod scandal was a complete lie and falsification, created by Brietbart, and trumpeted by Fox. So now Fox News gets a front-row seat in the White House Briefing Room due to their "length of service and commitment" in spewing their lies and propaganda.

Incredible.

Florida church plans book burning of Quran

I found this story through Americablog, and I'm just amazed. From CNN.Com:

(CNN) -- In protest of what it calls a religion "of the devil," a nondenominational church in Gainesville, Florida, plans to host an "International Burn a Quran Day" on the ninth anniversary of the September 11, 2001, attacks.

The Dove World Outreach Center says it is hosting the event to remember 9/11 victims and take a stand against Islam. With promotions on its website and Facebook page, it invites Christians to burn the Muslim holy book at the church from 6 p.m. to 9 p.m.

"We believe that Islam is of the devil, that it's causing billions of people to go to hell, it is a deceptive religion, it is a violent religion and that is proven many, many times," Pastor Terry Jones told CNN's Rick Sanchez earlier this week.

Jones wrote a book titled "Islam is of the Devil," and the church sells coffee mugs and shirts featuring the phrase.

Muslims and many other Christians -- including some evangelicals -- are fighting the initiative.

The church launched a YouTube channel to disseminate its messages.

"I mean ask yourself, have you ever really seen a really happy Muslim? As they're on the way to Mecca? As they gather together in the mosque on the floor? Does it look like a real religion of joy?" Jones asks in one of his YouTube posts.

"No, to me it looks like a religion of the devil."

I'll be honest, when I think of book burnings, these guys were the real pros:



Does this idiot Pastor Terry Jones really want to walk down this destructive path?