With the Treason Media's (as I call them) obscene cheerleading for the Obama Regime manifesting itself in blind stenography of whatever Dear Leader says no matter how false; the fundamental incuriousity about Dear Leader's college years, associations with crooks (e.g. Tony Rezko, Rod Blagovich) and terrorists (e.g. William Ayers, Bernadine Dornan), illegal fundraising; hypocrisy and bias in coverage (e.g. Barney Frank and Chris Dodd were instrumental in pushing our economy into the abyss while reaping sweetheart deals from cronies they supposedly regulate, but, hey, that Republican is having an affair!); and brokering access between Administration honchos and fat cats, that they expect the people to pay to be lied to while they shill for the powerful elites whom they fellow travel with is to laugh.
These latter day Walter Durantys proclaim themselves to be objective reporters of what happens at the circus when they're f***ing the elephants (and donkeys.) Ever notice how many "reporters" are married to government power players, like Andrea Mitchell and Alan Greenspan for two? When they are literally in bed with the other side, what hope do the serfs, er, people have of knowing WTF is actually happening? Fascism - REAL fascism, not the stuff the statist wingnuts were accusing Dubya of doing - is being imposed on America and the watchdogs are lapdogs because they endorse this upending of our culture in favor of something more Soviet in style.
It's ironic that as a commenter on a blog I'm expected to provide links to my citations while the Treason Media presents their product as the Truth to be accepted on faith, no proof required. They say something is so and it is so! How dare anyone question the High Priests of the Temple?!?
I forgot to mention this beatdown of the idea the government can fund their propagandists because I was tired, but you can check it out yourselves.
The father is sick with sniffles, the mother has TB. They have 4 children. The first is blind, the second is dead. The third is deaf and the fourth has TB. The mother finds she is pregnant again. Given the extreme situation, would you recommend abortion?
[Y]ou would have killed Beethoven.
The big irony? Obama supports killing that baby at any time up to and including after birth. You'd think someone from his background would be more understanding and grateful for the choice of life, but liberalism is a mental disease that kills all reason. Maybe we should toss in some research money for a cure in the porkulus package the Dems are ramming thru. Yeah, that'd happen. [snort]
The Bush Derangement Syndrome lemmings on the Internet lit up yesterday over a video that supposedly showed world leaders “snubbing” George Bush and refusing to shake his hand.
CNN moron Rick Sanchez wet his pants over the video, exulting that Bush was being treated like the kid in high school with “cooties.” He then ranted about Bush as a “bully” who deserved rude treatment from the world because “What goes around comes around.” The Daily Show’s Jon Stewart cackled over the clip, too.
It was left to CNN humorist Jeanne Moos to set the dunces straight. Bush had been shaking hands and slapping backs all day long with the world’s heads of state. There was no “snub:”
Bias? What Treason Media bias? Is there any doubt that Obama will receive the exact opposite treatment, no matter how big a gaffe he makes? Duh.
The Treason Media wants nothing more than to get to the coronation of their Anointed Fuhrer and the sooner they can call the election based on exit polls in the East, the faster they can depress turnout in the West. In 2004, the misinformation operation was going full swing by 2 p.m. EST, but here we are nearing the dinner hour and nothing is stirring.
Why not? It's not as if they're concerned with their journalistic integrity given everything they've covered up for the past year, so I'm wondering if the polls are showing a surprising McCain surge that both moots all the pre-game propaganda but could encourage Westerners to rush to/go home from the polls depending on how the results affect them. With garnering even greater majorities for the Dems Job One, perhaps the TM is hedging their bets lest they get caught out so badly that there's no way to spin their culpability.
You've got to respect the naked displays of hunger to stomp their jackboot of fascism down the Democrats are showing in anticipation of having total rule over the nation. Whether it's Barney Frank's desire to slash our military and rob the successful of their earnings or Chuck Schumer's belief that political speech should be treated the same as pornography, it's not as if we didn't have plenty of warning as to what they had in mind for us, their subjects.
Anyone else notice the irony in this comment:
“The very same people who don’t want the Fairness Doctrine want the FCC [Federal Communications Commission] to limit pornography on the air. I am for that… But you can’t say government hands off in one area to a commercial enterprise but you are allowed to intervene in another. That’s not consistent.”
Aren't the libertine liberals the ones who think the bluenoses should STFU and GTFO in criticizing porn? He's using the restrictions of explicit sexual content as an excuse to stifle dissenting speech. If conservatives tried to shut the Left up under this rationale, the Left would have kittens. I don't recall any moralists demanding that Air AmeriKKKa be regulated under porn laws. They just didn't listen. Funny how the supposedly tolerant and diversity-loving liberals can't turn the radio off themselves.
The Obama campaign has decided to heave out three newspapers from its plane for the final days of its blitz across battleground states -- and all three endorsed Sen. John McCain for president!
The NY POST, WASHINGTON TIMES and DALLAS MORNING NEWS have all been told to move out by Sunday to make room for network bigwigs -- and possibly for the inclusion of reporters from two black magazines, ESSENCE and JET, the DRUDGE REPORT has learned.
Despite pleas from top editors of the three newspapers that have covered the campaign for months at extraordinary cost, the Obama campaign says their reporters -- and possibly others -- will have to vacate their coveted seats so more power players can document the final days of Sen. Barack Obama's historic campaign to become the first black American president.
Some told the DRUDGE REPORT that the reporters are being ousted to bring on documentary film-makers to record the final days; others expect to see on board more sympathetic members of the media, including the NY TIMES' Maureen Dowd, who once complained that she was barred from McCain's Straight Talk Express airplane.
Holy cow! Other than the conservative blogosphere - especially Stanley Kurtz's in-depth (and probably in vain) reporting - and Fox News, he has gotten little actual scrutiny compared to say Sarah Palin and Joe the Plumber, but he's being actively protected by outfits like the LA Times (which is hiding the video from that PLO guy's party) and the NY Times, who are being shown as liars by their own archives:
From today's circle-the-wagons smooch:
[Khalidi] taught at universities in Lebanon until the mid-’80s, and some critics accuse him of having been a spokesman for the Palestine Liberation Organization. Mr. Khalidi has denied working for the group, and says he was consulted as an expert by reporters seeking to understand it.
Tom Friedman report for the New York Times, June 9, 1982:
The Israelis are out to "crush the P.L.O.," said Rashid Khalidi, a director of the Palestinian press agency, Wafa. He said they hope that by doing so, they will undermine the international recognition the P.L.O. has gained and eliminate its demands for an independent Palestinian state as a rallying point for Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
Joseph Goebbels would be so proud of Barry. When McCain is mean to the press, they bash him for it. Will those still on the plane wonder what's going on or are they so enamored with The One that as long as they get to bask in the glorious aura of Dear Leader they'll go along with the program? (Duh.)
It wasn't big enough to warrant a CFE post here, but when the Politico wasted three pages of pixels denying that they had any pro-Obama biases - any impression of that was due to a lame McCain campaign according to them - but I tossed in a comment: Headline: POLITICO CHECKS ITSELF FOR BIAS; FINDS NONE. Someone went a little further, as Beldar reported:
It is not our impression that many reporters are rooting for Obama personally. To the contrary, most colleagues on the trail we’ve spoken with seem to find him a distant and undefined figure.
The difference seems clear: Many journalists are not merely observers but participants in the Obama phenomenon.
(Harris only here: As one who has assigned journalists to cover Obama at both Politico and The Washington Post, I have witnessed the phenomenon several times. Some reporters come back and need to go through detox, to cure their swooning over Obama’s political skill. Even VandeHei seemed to have been bitten by the bug after the Iowa caucus.)
(VandeHei only here: There is no doubt reporters are smitten with Obama’s speeches and promises to change politics. I find his speeches, when he’s on, pretty electric myself. It certainly helps his cause that reporters also seem very tired of the Clintons and their paint-by-polls approach to governing.)
All this is hardly the end of the world. Clinton is not behind principally because of media bias; Obama is not ahead principally because of media favoritism. McCain won the GOP nomination mainly through good luck and the infirmities of his opposition. But the fact that lots of reporters personally like the guy — and a few seem to have an open crush — did not hurt.
For a mostly online publication, these guys have not really caught onto that whole “the Internet will fact-check your ass” thing.
I believe the correct term for such a brazen attempt to misreport reality is "chutzpah!"
=================
ADD-ON: I don't want to make a full-blown CFE about this either, but in response to a vacuous article praising Obama's Internet fraud machine fund-raising apparatus which was followed by the same guy pasting poll data that Palin is why McCain's losing - again I ask: why are they trying to help McCain with this supposed advice? (A: They aren't!) - I posted this:
Politico has become indistinguishable from HuffPoo/DailyKos/MSNBC: factually devoid "articles" up top followed by hundreds of copypasta'ed talking points echoing the usual liberal memes - i.e. Palin sucks, McCain sucks, Obama is the Glorious Dear Leader, blah-blah-woof-woof.
The sheer audacity to praise Obama's Internet fundraising operation which has been revealed to be a means for untraceable illegal and foreign contributions to pour in to circumvent the laws shows the Goebbels-like sycophants the Politico has become to Fuhrer Obama. Just as the L.A. Times has sacrificed the last scraps of credibility to cover up the video tape of Obama toasting a Jew-bashing Palestinian terrorist, Politico no longer cares who knows it's biased as long as they get to be stenographers to the power elites of the coming Obama Reich. Pathetic.
Politico really used to be an interesting and varied outfit without glaring biases. No longer. I'd pull them off the blog roll if I'd ever bothered to put them on, but I didn't; so there!
The blogger and Hugh Hewitt fill-in has passed away at age 41 from cystic fibrosis. I'm sure Hugh Hewitt will be paying tribute to him tonight. I'll update with any obits when they come in.
Michael S. Malone is a long-time tech writer - as in, he was there at the beginning of the Silicon Valley boom - and columnist at ABC News.com, so this must be why this column expressing his distress over the atrocious bias of the Treason Media got into virtual print. I wonder how much longer he'll be allowed to work during an Obama Regime?
The traditional media are playing a very, very dangerous game -- with their readers, with the Constitution and with their own fates.
The sheer bias in the print and television coverage of this election campaign is not just bewildering, but appalling. And over the last few months I've found myself slowly moving from shaking my head at the obvious one-sided reporting, to actually shouting at the screen of my television and my laptop computer.
But worst of all, for the last couple weeks, I've begun -- for the first time in my adult life -- to be embarrassed to admit what I do for a living. A few days ago, when asked by a new acquaintance what I did for a living, I replied that I was "a writer," because I couldn't bring myself to admit to a stranger that I'm a journalist.
You need to understand how painful this is for me. I am one of those people who truly bleeds ink when I'm cut. I am a fourth-generation newspaperman...So, when I say I'm deeply ashamed right now to be called a "journalist," you can imagine just how deep that cuts into my soul.
Now, of course, there's always been bias in the media. Human beings are biased, so the work they do, including reporting, is inevitably colored. Hell, I can show you 10 different ways to color variations of the word "said" -- muttered, shouted, announced, reluctantly replied, responded, etc. -- to influence the way a reader will apprehend exactly the same quote. We all learn that in Reporting 101, or at least in the first few weeks working in a newsroom.
But what we are also supposed to learn during that same apprenticeship is to recognize the dangerous power of that technique, and many others, and develop built-in alarms against them.
That means constantly challenging our own prejudices, systematically presenting opposing views and never, ever burying stories that contradict our own world views or challenge people or institutions we admire. If we can't achieve Olympian detachment, than at least we can recognize human frailty -- especially in ourselves.
[snip]
Meanwhile, I watched with disbelief as the nation's leading newspapers, many of whom I'd written for in the past, slowly let opinion pieces creep into the news section, and from there onto the front page. Personal opinions and comments that, had they appeared in my stories in 1979, would have gotten my butt kicked by the nearest copy editor, were now standard operating procedure at the New York Times, the Washington Post, and soon after in almost every small town paper in the U.S.
But what really shattered my faith -- and I know the day and place where it happened -- was the war in Lebanon three summers ago...I sat there, first with my jaw hanging down, then actually shouting at the TV, as one field reporter after another reported the carnage of the Israeli attacks on Beirut, with almost no corresponding coverage of the Hezbollah missiles raining down on northern Israel. The reporting was so utterly and shamelessly biased that I sat there for hours watching, assuming that eventually CNNi would get around to telling the rest of the story & but it never happened.
The Presidential Campaign
But nothing, nothing I've seen has matched the media bias on display in the current presidential campaign.
Republicans are justifiably foaming at the mouth over the sheer one-sidedness of the press coverage of the two candidates and their running mates. But in the last few days, even Democrats, who have been gloating over the pass -- no, make that shameless support -- they've gotten from the press, are starting to get uncomfortable as they realize that no one wins in the long run when we don't have a free and fair press.
I was one of the first people in the traditional media to call for the firing of Dan Rather -- not because of his phony story, but because he refused to admit his mistake -- but, bless him, even Gunga Dan thinks the media is one-sided in this election.
No, what I object to (and I think most other Americans do as well) is the lack of equivalent hardball coverage of the other side -- or worse, actively serving as attack dogs for the presidential ticket of Sens. Barack Obama, D-Ill., and Joe Biden, D-Del.
If the current polls are correct, we are about to elect as president of the United States a man who is essentially a cipher, who has left almost no paper trail, seems to have few friends (that at least will talk) and has entire years missing out of his biography.
That isn't Sen. Obama's fault: His job is to put his best face forward. No, it is the traditional media's fault, for it alone (unlike the alternative media) has had the resources to cover this story properly, and has systematically refused to do so.
Why, for example to quote the lawyer for Republican presidential nominee Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., haven't we seen an interview with Sen. Obama's grad school drug dealer -- when we know all about Mrs. McCain's addiction? Are Bill Ayers and Tony Rezko that hard to interview? All those phony voter registrations that hard to scrutinize? And why are Sen. Biden's endless gaffes almost always covered up, or rationalized, by the traditional media?
Joe the Plumber
The absolute nadir (though I hate to commit to that, as we still have two weeks before the election) came with Joe the Plumber.
Middle America, even when they didn't agree with Joe, looked on in horror as the press took apart the private life of an average person who had the temerity to ask a tough question of a presidential candidate. So much for the standing up for the little man. So much for speaking truth to power. So much for comforting the afflicted and afflicting the comfortable, and all of those other catchphrases we journalists used to believe we lived by.
Go read the rest, because he makes the case for the editors being the bad guys. I disagree partially, because it's not as if there are reporters in the Treason Media looking to delve into Obama's past (or present) very vigorously, only to be squelched by their bosses. If there were, we'd be seeing the stories leaked to Drudge like the the spiked Clinton-Lewinsky affair story originally was. Editors may not be assigning reporters, but the reporters aren't approaching their editors saying, "Hey, Chief, I've got a lead on a tape showing Obama toasting a PLO terrorist and saying the Supreme Court should redistribute wealth. Can I go after it?"
Over the weekend, word came out that the L.A. Times has a tape that shows Obama partying and toasting a PLO spokesman at an event described as a "Jew-bash", but isn't going to release it, presumably because it would be detrimental to their Anointed One. Andrew McCarthy calls out the double-standard:
Let’s try a thought experiment. Say John McCain attended a party at which known racists and terror mongers were in attendance. Say testimonials were given, including a glowing one by McCain for the benefit of the guest of honor ... who happened to be a top apologist for terrorists. Say McCain not only gave a speech but stood by, in tacit approval and solidarity, while other racists and terror mongers gave speeches that reeked of hatred for an American ally and rationalizations of terror attacks.
Now let’s say the Los Angeles Times obtained a videotape of the party.
Question: Is there any chance — any chance — the Times would not release the tape and publish front-page story after story about the gory details, with the usual accompanying chorus of sanctimony from the oped commentariat? Is there any chance, if the Times was the least bit reluctant about publishing (remember, we’re pretending here), that the rest of the mainstream media (y’know, the guys who drove Trent Lott out of his leadership position over a birthday-party toast) would not be screaming for the release of the tape?
Do we really have to ask?
So now, let’s leave thought experiments and return to reality: Why is the Los Angeles Times sitting on a videotape of the 2003 farewell bash in Chicago at which Barack Obama lavished praise on the guest of honor, Rashid Khalidi — former mouthpiece for master terrorist Yasser Arafat?
Go read it all, unless you're one of those people for whom inconvenient truths about The One are too inconvenient.
Media coverage of John McCain has been heavily unfavorable since the political conventions, more than three times as negative as the portrayal of Barack Obama, a new study says.
Fifty-seven percent of the print and broadcast stories about the Republican nominee were decidedly negative, the Project for Excellence in Journalism says in a report out today, while 14 percent were positive. The McCain campaign has repeatedly complained that the mainstream media are biased toward the senator from Illinois.
Obama's coverage was more balanced during the six-week period from Sept. 8 through last Thursday, with 36 percent of the stories clearly positive, 35 percent neutral or mixed and 29 percent negative.
McCain has struggled during this period and slipped in the polls, which is one of the reasons for the more negative assessments by the 48 news outlets studied by the Washington-based group. But the imbalance is striking nonetheless.
They try to attenuate the bias by implying that McCain's slippage in the polls is the driving force - no one's fault if there's bad news to report, right? - but that ignores the deliberate attempts to spin and smear McCain and Palin and the active cover-ups of Obama's myriad alliances with radicals, racists, and terrorists. Why is the media digging into Joe the Plumber's life when all he did was ask a question? Is ANYONE allowed to challenge the Obamessiah? If you think the coverage is slanted now, wait until Fuhrer Obama has the power to shut down any media outlet that criticizes him! Can you say "zero percent negative stories about Obama?" I knew you could!
I'm reading Orson Scott Card's sci-fi classic Ender's Game, so it's an timely coincidence that he has called out the reprehensible bias of the Treason Media.
I remember reading All the President's Men and thinking: That's journalism. You do what it takes to get the truth and you lay it before the public, because the public has a right to know.
This housing crisis didn't come out of nowhere. It was not a vague emanation of the evil Bush administration.
It was a direct result of the political decision, back in the late 1990s, to loosen the rules of lending so that home loans would be more accessible to poor people. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were authorized to approve risky loans.
[snip]
This was completely foreseeable and in fact many people did foresee it. One political party, in Congress and in the executive branch, tried repeatedly to tighten up the rules. The other party blocked every such attempt and tried to loosen them.
Furthermore, Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae were making political contributions to the very members of Congress who were allowing them to make irresponsible loans. (Though why quasi-federal agencies were allowed to do so baffles me. It's as if the Pentagon were allowed to contribute to the political campaigns of Congressmen who support increasing their budget.)
[snip]
I have no doubt that if these facts had pointed to the Republican Party or to John McCain as the guilty parties, you would be treating it as a vast scandal. "Housing-gate," no doubt. Or "Fannie-gate."
Instead, it was Senator Christopher Dodd and Congressman Barney Frank, both Democrats, who denied that there were any problems, who refused Bush administration requests to set up a regulatory agency to watch over Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and who were still pushing for these agencies to go even further in promoting sub-prime mortgage loans almost up to the minute they failed.
As Thomas Sowell points out in a TownHall.com essay entitled "Do Facts Matter?": "Alan Greenspan warned them four years ago. So did the Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers to the President. So did Bush's Secretary of the Treasury."
These are facts. This financial crisis was completely preventable. The party that blocked any attempt to prevent it was ... the Democratic Party. The party that tried to prevent it was ... the Republican Party.
Yet when Nancy Pelosi accused the Bush administration and Republican deregulation of causing the crisis, you in the press did not hold her to account for her lie. Instead, you criticized Republicans who took offense at this lie and refused to vote for the bailout!
What? It's not the liar, but the victims of the lie who are to blame?
[snip]
If you who produce our local daily paper actually had any principles, you would be pounding this story, because the prosperity of all Americans was put at risk by the foolish, short-sighted, politically selfish, and possibly corrupt actions of leading Democrats, including Obama.
If you who produce our local daily paper had any personal honor, you would find it unbearable to let the American people believe that somehow Republicans were to blame for this crisis.
There are precedents. Even though President Bush and his administration never said that Iraq sponsored or was linked to 9/11, you could not stand the fact that Americans had that misapprehension — so you pounded us with the fact that there was no such link. (Along the way, you created the false impression that Bush had lied to them and said that there was a connection.)
If you had any principles, then surely right now, when the American people are set to blame President Bush and John McCain for a crisis they tried to prevent, and are actually shifting to approve of Barack Obama because of a crisis he helped cause, you would be laboring at least as hard to correct that false impression.
Your job, as journalists, is to tell the truth. That's what you claim you do, when you accept people's money to buy or subscribe to your paper.
But right now, you are consenting to or actively promoting a big fat lie — that the housing crisis should somehow be blamed on Bush, McCain, and the Republicans. You have trained the American people to blame everything bad — even bad weather — on Bush, and they are responding as you have taught them to.
If you had any personal honor, each reporter and editor would be insisting on telling the truth — even if it hurts the election chances of your favorite candidate.
Because that's what honorable people do. Honest people tell the truth even when they don't like the probable consequences. That's what honesty means . That's how trust is earned.
[snip]
You will also tell the truth about John McCain: that he tried, as a Senator, to do what it took to prevent this crisis. You will tell the truth about President Bush: that his administration tried more than once to get Congress to regulate lending in a responsible way.
This was a Congress-caused crisis, beginning during the Clinton administration, with Democrats leading the way into the crisis and blocking every effort to get out of it in a timely fashion.
If you at our local daily newspaper continue to let Americans believe — and vote as if — President Bush and the Republicans caused the crisis, then you are joining in that lie.
If you do not tell the truth about the Democrats — including Barack Obama — and do so with the same energy you would use if the miscreants were Republicans — then you are not journalists by any standard.
You're just the public relations machine of the Democratic Party, and it's time you were all fired and real journalists brought in, so that we can actually have a news paper in our city.
Go read the whole thing as I had to chop a ton of stuff to get it to a too-long length here. BTW, Card is a Democrat. (Not for long with that attitude; they'll surely see to that.)
Yesterday on Dennis Miller's radio show, Mike Allen of the Politico made a Freudian slip and used the word "we're" to describe what the press and Democrats have learned and are going to do. When Dennis asked if he wanted to leave the impression that he was a Democrat, Allen got really huffy and promptly bailed off the show. Dennis was far too contrite and felt he had put Allen on the spot, but Allen was bleating that Politico was "middle of the road", a description of where they were a couple of months ago, not the hard-Left Obama cheering section they are now.
The Treason Media's willingness to act as Goebbels to Obama and the fascist Dems is the untold story of this Election, but they'll never tell it. Why should they? The Big Lie is working, isn't it?
Obama lied in the last debate that he launched his career in unrepentant domestic terrorist Bill Ayer's living room. The Treason Media has dutifully performed their Goebbels act and said "nothing to see here, move along."
Too bad for us = "us" meaning all freedom-loving people regardless of political affiliation - that the Treason Media's Big Lies will probably drown out the Truth.
For a guy who supposedly has his coronation locked up, Obama is sure acting frightened. Now that Team McCain seems to be finally mentioning The One's ties to felons, racists and terrorists, he is launching a campaign ad blitz to try and hang the albatross of the Keating Five around McCain's neck.
Since the Treason Media will merely repeat the smears instead of explaining just why McCain was lumped in with the genuinely corrupt Dems on the take, we'll just have to spread the Truth ourselves. In this case, McCain's best defender is an unlikely source: Dem lawyer Bob Bennett (brother of Bill) who defended Bill Clinton during his impeachment trial. From his book, "In The Ring, The Trials Of A Washington Lawyer," comes this quote:
After reviewing my report, the committee voted on October 23, 1990, to hold a public adjudicatory fact-finding hearing in the matter as to all five senators. This was perhaps the first time the recommendation of a special counsel not to charge a senator was rejected. This was pure politics as the Democrats on the committee did not want to cut McCain loose so that only Democrats would remain in the proceedings. If Senator McCain was not going to be cut loose, in retaliation the Republicans were going to keep Senator Glenn in the proceedings. McCain was the victim of politics, and poor Glenn was held captive to the decision on McCain. So much for nonpartisanship.
Got that? McCain didn't do anything wrong but got (and is getting) smeared because the Dems needed a patsy to mitigate their actual criminality.
What I don't understand is that after getting raked over the coals by the Dems, McCain has spent the rest of his career tonguing their sacks and snarling at conservatives. Stockholm Syndrome, perhaps?
MORE! I'd just posted the above when I saw this showing that Obama has no problem with Keating Five members...when it helps Him!
John Glenn? Senator John Glenn got caught in the same Keating 5 scandal that Obama now wants to use as an attack on McCain. The Keating 5 — Senators Alan Cranston, Dennis DeConcini, Donald Riegle, Glenn, and McCain — stood accused of intervening with federal regulators on behalf of Lincoln Savings & Loan, which later went bankrupt and cost taxpayers $2 billion. Glenn and McCain got cleared by the Senate of any wrongdoing, but were scolded for “poor judgment” in their contacts with Charles Keating. Cranston, DeConcini, and Riegle all were found by the Senate Ethics Committee of having “substantially and improperly” interfered with the regulator (FHLBB) when it attempted to investigate Lincoln. Cranston received a formal reprimand, and only Glenn and McCain won re-election after the scandal.
Is the Keating 5 scandal a legitimate political issue in this campaign? Yes. It involves McCain’s judgment and political record, and Obama can certainly raise it as a point for voters to consider. However, McCain has never denied using poor judgment in this case and has repeatedly apologized for it.
Obama, on the other hand, has never fought anyone for reform, and the use of John Glenn as a surrogate makes Team Obama especially hypocritical in raising the Keating scandal. If Glenn is clean, then so is McCain. If McCain is tarnished, then so is Glenn. Obviously, Glenn helps Obama in Ohio, so Obama has no real complaint over the Keating 5 scandal that outweighs his desire to win the election. Like so much of Obama’s reform rhetoric, his faux outrage over the Keating 5 scandal shows him as nothing more than a poseur.
Will the media point out......ah, who am I kidding?
The top one shows 13 people in a CNN focus group who thought the lying Botoxed Joe Biden won the veep debate last week. The bottom shows that 11 thought Moose-Slayer won. 13-11 is just one vote away from being a 50-50 split, right? Now, watch this:
I'd say about half the hands go up. O'Brien then inexplicably says, "So, looks overwhelming." Then she asks who thought Palin won. Again, about half the hands go up and she describes it as "small hands." Then she quickly declares Biden the winner and calls it a day.
Hey, how about a roll call, Soledad? Now to my eye, it looks pretty evenly split. I counted 12 for Biden and 11 for Palin. But take a look for yourself. Call me naive, but this kind of blatant bias still has the power to surprise me a little still. And for some reason when it comes to Sarah Palin, the media has just lost any connection with reality, decency, fairness...etc...
Now, does she forget that we can see her? Or does she think we can't count? Does she not know about TiVo? Or perhaps she can't imagine a universe that would allow the thought of Sarah Palin whooping up on her candidate?
This is how the Treason Media is going to spin it until their Anointed Fuhrer is placed on the throne - tell us, "Who are you going to believe: us or your lying eyes?
Tuesday night is the next McCain-Obama debate and poor John is going in with both hands tied behind his back and no signs of wanting the Truth to will out. Thoroughly cowed by his former constituents in the TM, Malkin reveals:
McCain continues to forbid his campaign from going after Obama for his longtime friendship and ideological partnership with Rev. Jeremiah Wright — and refuses to attack Obama on the Fannie/Freddie/CRA debacles because he fears being perceived as a racist.
Earth to McCain: They will see RAAAACISM in whatever you and Palin will say and do from now until Election Day.
Fight or get rolled.
Wake. Up.
I've been wondering why the Stupid Party and its standard bearers have continuously bumbled about allowing the TM's Big Lie tactics to cow and muzzle them. This commentary at American Thinker may hold the answer as to why: The think the Treason Media is wrongly sympathetic to the fascist Left and can be shown the errors of their biases when the TM is actually a goose-stepping, INSEPERABLE part of the Left's political machine.
I have just about had it with the conservative punditry and their plaintive wailings about the unfairness of the self-proclaimed "mainstream media" (I think the designation "Big Media" would be more appropriate as applied to the information service of the leftist elites, which is anything but mainstream).
"Where is the outrage?" "Why does the mainstream media concentrate exclusively on the failings of the right while completely ignoring the failings of the left?" "Why does the mainstream media worship at the temple of Barack Obama while brutally savaging Sarah Palin?" pitifully lament conservatives.
Will they ever learn? What makes them think that the Big Media would or, for that matter, should behave otherwise? Would any of the conservative journalists perplexed by the "unfair" attitude of the Big Media wax indignant about the German Propaganda Ministry of the 1930's spreading outrageous lies about the opponents of the Nazi regime and extolling the virtues of their beloved Fuehrer. Of course, not. They know that Dr. Goebbels' outfit was part and parcel of Hitler's government and its mission consisted in meeting the propaganda needs of the regime. Naturally, it couldn't behave in any other way; that's what it did.
Why then are they so dumbfounded by the position of the US Big Media? Don't they realize that it is every bit as partisan as the Nazi Propaganda Ministry was in its heyday? Dr. Johnson described a second marriage as the triumph of hope over experience. So too conservatives, in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary, desperately cling to a belief that deep in the bosom of the Big Media there lives an honest broker yearning to break free...just one more fact laid out, just one more liberal smear blown out of the water and the scales will fall off the liberal journalists' eyes. They will see the light and embark upon the path of righteousness and objectivity. This hope is as baseless as it is stupid.
Wishful thinking and willful blindness disarm, disorient and debilitate the fighter who needs to marshal all his resources for the coming battle. If he is to climb into the ring in peak form, clear-eyed appraisal of the strengths and weaknesses of the opponent is paramount. Instead, he lulls himself to sleep with false hope.
Conservatives have to realize one simple truth: the Big Media is not the enemy's ally who can be won over; it is the enemy itself. The U.S. Big Media is every bit the propaganda arm of the Democratic Party's left wing as Dr. Goebbels' organization was the propaganda arm of the Nazi regime.
The Big Media's vitriolic campaign to vilify and destroy Sarah Palin, unprecedented in its sheer viciousness, is not primarily driven by the elite's perception of her as an alien life form (although there is that, too), but by the plain fact that she endangers the prospects of their idol, Obama, and hence has to be removed by any means necessary.
The sooner the conservatives abandon their delusional belief in the innate goodness of the liberal heart and realize that the Big Media is their bitter enemy that has to be fought tooth and nail, the better their chances will be. Enough is enough. It's time for the conservatives to wake up and smell the coffee.
Conservatives have been awake all along; it's John McCain who's asleep because he isn't a conservative and has spent too much time giving reach-arounds to his "good friends" in the Senate while they stab him in the face.
Moose-Slayer is itching for the fight, but first has to get the feckless Team McCain idiots off her back. We're seeing this with McCain's noisy, stupid and clueless announcement of his surrendering Michigan to Obama's orc legions. Why announce you're giving up so loudly when it overshadowed Moose-Slayer's overwhelming smackdown of Dr. Teeth since it allowed the TM to change the subject from her win to McCain's loss. Morons.
Longtime Metro Detroit radio reporter Karen Dinkins has been fired after wearing a pro-Barack Obama T-shirt while covering a rally for the presidential candidate Sunday at the Detroit Public Library.
Dinkins, who has worked at WWJ (950 AM) for 13 years, acknowledged that the radio station fired her Monday, but she did not elaborate.
"I don't want to comment at this time," she said.
Georgeann Herbert, WWJ's director of programming, said in a statement that Dinkins compromised the station's objectivity by wearing the T-shirt.
"(The station) believes that our credibility with our listeners rests on the independence of our newsroom staff," the statement said. "WWJ does not favor any candidate, party or issue.
"While we encourage employees to exercise their rights as citizens, we expect them to be on guard against any actual or perceived conflict of interest when covering news stories," the statement said.
Good for them! I listen to the top-of-hour CBS news and get my traffic/weather reports "on the 8s" from WWJ and have heard plenty of Dinkins' reports. While it's too bad she didn't have the sense to realize that while the audience can't see your shirt on the radio, the people watching you work can and that's a no-no for news outfits that still care about trying to be objective.
As if we needed more proof that the media is totally in the tank for the Obamessiah, here's a Michelle Malkin column detailing the EXTREME conflicts of interest that the moderator of tomorrow's Veep debate between Moose-Slayer and Dr. Teeth, Gwen Ifill of PBS, has with regards to Obama.
First some background: Ifill hosts PBS's "Washington Week in Review" and I've enjoyed the show for quite a while even though it's just Beltway liberals from big Treason Media outlets spewing their liberal biases to each other. (I guess I view it as a comedy about people with either so little self-knowledge or such utter contempt for their viewers, they believe they're actually being objective journalists.) However, as I noted in "The Moose-Slayer Cometh!", after Palin's speech, "The PBS crew sounds depressed that she did so well." Don't just take my word for Ifill's sour demeanor, watch for yourself:
I figured she was just having typical liberal angst*, but as Malkin details, she has more invested than even I was aware of:
In an imaginary world where liberal journalists are held to the same standards as everyone else, Ifill would be required to make a full disclosure at the start of the debate. She would be required to turn to the cameras and tell the national audience that she has a book coming out on January 20, 2009 – a date that just happens to coincide with the inauguration of the next president of the United States.
Ifill’s publisher, Random House, is already busy hyping the book with YouTube clips of Ifill heaping praise on her subjects, including Obama and Obama-endorsing Mass. Governor Deval Patrick.
Ifill and her publisher are banking on an Obama/Biden win to buoy her book sales. The moderator expected to treat both sides fairly has grandiosely declared this the “Age of Obama.” Can you imagine a right-leaning journalist writing a book about the “stunning” McCain campaign and its “bold” path to reform timed for release on Inauguration Day – and then expecting a slot as a moderator for the nation’s sole vice presidential debate?
Despite the protestations of her colleagues that she will be fair, Ifill has appeared on numerous radio and TV talk shows over the past several months to cash in on her access to the Obama campaign. She recently penned a fawning cover story on the Obamas for Essence magazine that earned much buzz. The title? “The Obamas: Portrait of an American Family.”
During the Democratic National Convention, Ifill offered her neutral analysis before Michelle Obama’s speech on NBC News: “A lot of people have never seen anything that looks like a Michelle Obama before. She’s educated, she’s beautiful, she’s tall, she tells you what she thinks and they hope that she can tell a story about Barack Obama and about herself…”
Like Obama, Ifill, who is black, is quick to play the race card at the first sign of criticism. In an interview with the Washington Post a few weeks ago, she carped: “[N]o one’s ever assumed a white reporter can’t cover a white candidate.”
It’s not the color of your skin, sweetie. It’s the color of your politics. Perhaps Ifill will be able to conceal it this week. But if the “stunning” “Breakthrough” she’s rooting for comes to pass on January 20, 2009, nobody will be fooled.
Crikey! Is this for reals? Someone on the Debates Commission thought it would be OK for someone with a vested interest in one of the candidates success to oversee this cage match?!?
The stakes are already pretty high as the conventional wisdom is that Moose-Slayer will do a face plant against the slick plagiarist from Deleware - Palin's been weak in interviews and the idiots at Team McCain HQ have kept her so under wraps that a "Free Sarah!" movement has erupted in the conservative media - and a poor showing will be devastating to McCain's chances for any substantive gaffes will be conflated with the smear campaign they've been running for the past month-plus into a deafening cry of "UNQUALIFIED!!! UNWORTHY!!!"
I've got a post in the works for tomorrow which shows just how frightening Obama's network of terrorists is and that for all the media spin and audience projection, he is the most dangerous and radical person to get near the levers of power and horrible consequences for America are in store if he wins the Election. Given McCain's lack of fire to fight his liberal pals and Palin's wet-behind-the-earsness, the debate was seen as a pretty big deal and with the moderator clearly too invested in the outcome of the race (as in foot, not color), the fix seems ever more in.
• Gwen Ifill is giving Tucker Bounds, McCain's campaign spokesman, the third degree that she didn't give her friends at the DNC last week. How am I not surprised that suddenly their journalistic teeth will are now out? She's asking if Palin's nomination is about to be scrapped since they've slung all the mud Fuhrer Obamessiah demands of them and she's obviously not worthy according to them. Keep it up, Treason Mediaers - the backlash will be stunning if I know the decency of the general public.
• OK, I'm back, it's perhaps 20 minutes later and a dour Gwen Ifill is asking someone else if Sarah Palin is a drag and to be tossed overboard. What media bias?
I had no idea this was coming or I would've said something them. Yeesh...chalk up Gwen Ifill in the Obama Compulsive Disorder positive column.
ADDITIONAL THOUGHTS: The lineup of moderators was known long ago, so why is this just coming out two days before the debate? Why didn't Team McCain move to have Ifill removed for her obvious conflicts? Imagine it this way: If Brit Hume had a book slated to drop on Inauguration Day about John McCain, do you think he'd be allowed to moderate a debate? Exactly!
Ifill's position is untenable. She will almost certainly be accused of (a) being unfair to Palin in order to sell her book, (b) being unfair to Biden in order to prevent accusation "a" or (c) both. Either the first of the second accusation will be quite plausible.
Ifill was selected by the Commission on Presidential Debates. In my view, her selection discredits this body. And Ifill's decision to accept the role of debate moderator during this cycle discredits her. In 2012, neither the Commission on Presidential Debates nor Ms. Ifill should play a role in presidential debates.
In case you think a respectable journalist would take pains to avoid sacrificing their all-important credibility, I've got two words for you: Dan. Rather. Four years ago, he threw away his career in order to smear Dubya with forged documents. The means justifies the ends to the Treason Media and perhaps Ifill anticipates becoming the Press Secretary to the Obamessiah after she's become radioactive as a journalist.
In case you're in denial about the Treason Media - and I didn't slap that moniker on these f*ckers because I was trying to be cute - being wholly committed to covering up Barack Obama's shady and questionable past in order to run out the clock and install this Marxist and his fascist fellow traveler Dems into total control of the government, take a gander at this note cross-posted several places:
A READER AT A MAJOR NEWSROOM EMAILS: “Off the record, every suspicion you have about MSM being in the tank for O is true. We have a team of 4 people going thru dumpsters in Alaska and 4 in arizona. Not a single one looking into Acorn, Ayers or Freddiemae. Editor refuses to publish anything that would jeopardize election for O, and betting you dollars to donuts same is true at NYT, others. People cheer when CNN or NBC run another Palin-mocking but raising any reasonable inquiry into obama is derided or flat out ignored. The fix is in, and its working.”
The Anchoress adds (emphasis and links in original):
I have a couple friends who work in the MSM, too, and one of them tells me the newsroom is (exact words) “unbelievably cavalier” about any complaints viewers register about their reports, what they ignore, their bias or the way they edit Republicans vs. the way the treat Dems. “Cavalier” as in the fix is in and they don’t even have to pretend to care what half the country thinks or wants.
Now, liberals don't care because they want to win and all's fair when power is on the line, but everyone - that's EVERYONE regardless of political orientation - should be distressed that the Treason Media is so openly contemptuous of their charge and trust to the public they used to serve.
We shouldn't have to go to Fox News to get the conservative side of a story that the entire ABC/NBC/CBS/CNN/MSNBC/NY Times/WaPo leviathan buries because it's not in line with their agendas. There shouldn't be a need for separate channels for one point of view or the other. It used to be that we'd get the five Ws from the press, but we just get them trying to get Dubya, the consequences be damned.
I almost fell off the couch to see "Saturday Night Live" actually mention Obama's felon pal Tony Rezko in their debate sketch last weekend.
What does it say when a comedy show will mention Obama's criminal pals but that same network's TWO news operations pretend it doesn't exist? The laughter was muted at the reference, probably because they didn't know what it was a reference to. It's not as if there's been much coverage of the Obama/Rekzo connection. Just like the Obama/Ayers or Obama/Wright teamups. Imagine that.
According to the puzzle database maintained by Cruciverb.com, ever since that game-changing day in 2005, OBAMA has appeared regularly as an answer in New York Times crossword puzzles. With its wonderfully convenient alternating series of commonly used vowels and consonants, OBAMA has been the answer to the clues “Senator who wrote ‘Dreams From My Father,’” “Future senator who delivered the 2004 Democratic convention keynote address” and “Presidential candidate born in Hawaii.”
But what about MCCAIN? Shockingly, not once has MCCAIN been an answer in a crossword in the New York Times, The Washington Post or the Los Angeles Times.
A couple years back there was a really good documentary called "Wordplay" about the Times crossword (review here) and one part discussed the puzzle that ran the day of the the 1996 Election where the clue "Tomorrow's headline" could've been answered with both "CLINTON ELECTED" or 'BOBDOLE ELECTED" because all seven crosswords had clues that could be solved with either letter in those spots. If they could pull that off, why can't they fit McCain's name in someplace? Other than bias, I mean. Exactly.
, so it's an timely coincidence that he has called out the reprehensible bias of the Treason Media.
about the Times crossword (
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