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The road ahead to the White House is long for Democrat Barack Obama despite a rock star reception overseas, with polls in key states showing a tight race against Republican John McCain. As the Illinois senator gave a crowd-rousing performance before 200,000 people in Berlin, polls released in the United States showed waning enthusiasm for the man who would become the first African-American US president. Obama maintains a lead over his 71-year-old rival — between one and six points according to pollsters — but his edge is beginning to recede, despite what McCain's camp has described as the media's "love...

Today, the Los Angeles Times ordered its bloggers not to talk about the story. Here, via Kausfiles, is the memo from an editor there: Hey bloggers, There has been a little buzz surrounding John Edwards and his alleged affair. Because the only source has been the National Enquirer we have decided not to cover the rumors or salacious speculations. So I am asking you all not to blog about this topic until further notified. If you have any questions or are ever in need of story ideas that would best fit your blog, please don't hesitate to ask Keep rockin,...

Joe Scarface just asked Mitchell if McCain's rebukes of the fawning press are valid and she said with a straight face that they "..have tried to balance their coverage".

Fresh polls show that he has been unable to convert weeks of extensive media coverage into a widened lead. And some prominent Democrats whose support could boost his campaign are still not enthusiastic about his candidacy. Several new surveys show that Obama is in a tight race or even losing ground to Republican John McCain, both nationally and in two important swing states, Colorado and Minnesota. One new poll offered a possible explanation for his troubles: A minority of voters see Obama as a familiar figure with whom they can identify. Many voters still seem to be puzzling over who...

RUSH: Cookie is working on a couple of audio sound bites and Drive-By Media reaction to the Messiah's speech in Germany. I have an idea what she's going to send. I never know what she's going to send unless I specifically asked for it. But Cookie is so good I seldom have to ask for it. I get what I want anyway. Now, one thing about this speech. I'll wait until we get the bites and see if what I'm expecting in these, citizen of the world stuff. When he started talking about that, that's when the red flags went...

The Drudge Report ran a juicy item about the fact that only one reporter showed up to cover Republican John McCain at a campaign stop in New Hampshire the other day. Just one. The lonely print reporter from the Manchester Union Leader stood on the tarmac, waiting for McCain's plane to land. McCain, obviously upset at being dissed by yet another meager media throng, didn't stop to chat. "Did you ever notice that when John McCain is on TV he's always grumpy?" asked a colleague in the cafeteria who whispered, lest others denounce him for Barackian Thought Crimes. "McCain's always...

BUT WILL THEY RESPECT HIM IN THE MORNING?July 23, 2008 Back before the Republican Party was saddled with John McCain as its nominee, The New York Times called him "the only Republican who promises to end the George Bush style of governing from and on behalf of a small, angry fringe." The paper praised him for "working across the aisle to develop sound bipartisan legislation" and predicted that he would appeal to "a broader range of Americans than the rest of the Republican field." At the same time, the Times denounced "the real" Rudy Giuliani as "a narrow, obsessively secretive,...

As I suggested a few weeks ago, Sen. Barack H. Obama is not going to have an easy time of it. For one thing, Sen. John McCain is a much tougher candidate than has been suspected. Looking over his career, one will note that McCain learned politics before ever entering politics. As a young Navy liaison to the Senate in the 1970s, he worked effectively with Democratic and Republican hawks to reverse the post-Vietnam military decline. He, having managed the largest fighter squadron in the Navy, has management skills of which he can boast, as Sen. Obama cannot -- despite...

At a reception for an emerging artist, a tipsy friend approached me to continue a private chat we had long ago. "So, you still want John McCain for president?" he said, in the neighborhood of 30,000 decibels above a whisper. Jaws dropped. Conversations stopped. I felt every cultural elitist eyeball in the gallery was on me. Awkward!

Cannot post due to copyright issues: http://www.vanityfair.com/online/politics/2008/07/is-the-media-trying-to-elect-obama.html

The blatant bias of the major national news media toward Barack Obama is now so overwhelming that it would not be worth noting, except that the election of a President of the United States is involved. It is a propaganda blitz that would make the Kremlin blush. By election day, we fully expect John McCain to be vilified as a Vietnam-era war criminal and worse. But that is only if the networks and other major media can tear themselves away from their Obama orgy. A recent report found that since June the nightly newscasts of NBC, CBS, and ABC combined...

Dan Rather’s $70 million lawsuit against CBS heated up in a Manhattan court on Wednesday as his lawyers sought to have several key documents in the case made public. Rather’s lead attorney Marty Gold asked Justice Ira Gammerman to release the documents, arguing that they would help refute CBS’s public characterization of Rather’s claims in the suit as a fantasy, the New York Observer reported. Gold said that Rather would like to give the public access to about 10 of the thousands of documents handed over by CBS. But Gammerman rebuffed the effort, saying he considered the request to release...

Sen. John McCain on Thursday renewed his call for a “brief” gas tax holiday — and quickly ran into a political fender-bender with his new Missouri campaign chairman, Sen. Kit Bond. The Republican told an estimated 1,200 people at Union Station that suspending the federal tax on gasoline and diesel fuel would help put millions of dollars into the hands of businesses and lower-income Americans. Such a holiday, he later told The Kansas City Star, could be justified by cutting wasteful spending: “The most pork barrel-laden aspect of everything we do are the highway bills.” One of the most vocal...

Will Katie Couric be as tough with Barack Obama as North Korean television is with Kim Jong Il? The last time Couric (and the other anchors to, for that matter) interviewed Obama the liberal Democrat had no more to fear from her and them than the communist dictator ever has from his state media. Pressed at the TV critics session with the networks in Beverly Hills on Friday as to whether ABC, CBS and NBC sending their anchors along with Barack Obama on his overseas trip is “justified or reflect media infatuation with the presumptive Democratic nominee,” the AP's Lynn...

To watch the contortions over that New Yorker cover cartoon of the Obamas is to understand whom it is impermissible to offend in the America of 2008. The cartoon is a caricature of Michelle as an urban terrorist in an Angela Davis afro with an AK-47 slung over her back and a bandoleer of ammo in the Oval Office doing a fist-bump with a Barack decked out in turban and Muslim garb. On the wall hangs a portrait of Osama bin Laden. Blazing away in the fireplace is the American flag. "President Obama and First Lady -- as Seen From...

NY1 News has launched our "Snap Poll" feature, which allows Time Warner Digital Cable subscribers in New York City to use their remote control to answer poll questions that appear on their TV screen. If you don't have Time Warner Digital Cable - or you just prefer to use the web - cast your vote in today's poll here: The "New Yorker" cover depicting Obama as a Muslim and his wife as a terrorist is: () satirical. () offensive. () somewhere in between.

SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) -- The Chicago Tribune Media Group said Monday that Ann Marie Lipinski would step down as the editor of its flagship newspaper, with the publication preparing to go through another round of layoffs and shrink the number of its printed pages. Lipinski had been editor of the Tribune since 2001 and had been with the paper since 1978. Her resignation will take effect on Thursday. In a statement, Lipinski said that "the position is not the fit it once was." The Tribune said that Gerould Kern, the paper's vice president of editorials since 2003, will serve as...

The world's most listened-to talk radio host, Rush Limbaugh (over 30 million regular listeners) has developed a program known as "Operation Chaos." This program is designed to get conservatives, Republicans and others to register as Democrats and cross over to vote in primary states, to keep the contest going up until the Democratic National Convention in Denver, Colorado. Many feel that "Operation Chaos" has helped to keep Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-NY), the former First Lady and wife of former President William "Bill" Clinton, in the race against the neophyte candidate Senator Barack Hussein Obama (D-IL). With Senator Clinton still...

The court is poised in coming weeks to seal Lawrence's fate, along with that of nine other convicted murderers seeking freedom. The justices are expected to answer some difficult questions: When should a killer be set free? What are the limits, if any, on the governor's power to decide? Are such factors as an inmate's prison record and age ever more significant than a horrendous crime committed decades ago? The state parole board had approved Lawrence's release four times since 1993, but three governors vetoed those decisions. Schwarzenegger blocked Lawrence's release twice before judges on the state Court of Appeal...

At long last, has the Associated Press lost all sense of decency? The AP's story (saved here for future reference in case the wire service is embarrassed into revising it; you might consider saving it too as Exhibit A on how far over the cliff the dinosaur media has driven itself) by Douglass K. Daniel, with Jennifer Loven contributing (I might have known), gets in at least three cheap, fundamentally untrue, and totally uncalled-for shots at Tony Snow, who died earlier this morning.

The New York Times published an article Monday about the anger some Vietnam veterans feel over the vessel they used to serve on, Swift Boat, now being synonymous with "the nastiest of campaign smears." In dredging up this issue, Times' writer Kate Zernike not only misrepresented many of the facts surrounding the claims made by the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, but also completely ignored the mainstream media's role in turning the name of this patrol craft into a political pejorative. In fact, something the Times conveniently chose not to share with its readers was how one of its own...

Rolling Stone is a left-wing magazine which puts liberal politicians on its cover and this year has already featured a cover story on Barack Obama, yet despite the seeming lack of any newsworthiness in a second Obama cover story, this one written by an "unabashed Obama supporter," on Wednesday morning NBC's Today show devoted a full story to how the just-released issue of the magazine illustrated "fascination" with Obama. Co-host Matt Lauer marveled: "On the cover not a musician but a politician, Barack Obama. It's the second time he's been featured there but this time there will be no cover...

MCCAIN: PUMP THIS!by Ann CoulterJuly 2, 2008 Well, I guess we're all pretty relieved we didn't drill in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge back in 2002. What a disaster that would have been. The vote on ANWR was almost entirely along partisan lines, with all Republicans, except a handful of "moderates," voting for drilling, and all Democrats, except a handful of sane Democrats like Zell Miller, voting against drilling. John McCain opposed drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge because he polled soccer moms and found out they were against drilling. They thought it sounded too much like going to...

Defence Minister: Poland not 51st US state Created: 23.06.2008 12:30 Poland’s Defence Minister Bogdan Klich has expressed outrage at an article in The New York Times alleging that “Poland has been the 51st state” of the USA acting as host to a secret CIA prison for terrorists. "That is unacceptable. The sheer fact that we are in tough negotiations with the Americans regarding the anti-missile defence shield suggests that we are indeed an independent state,” Minister Klich said on Radio ZET, Monday morning. The Saturday issue of The New York Times reopened the topic of the secret prison camp for...

The 2008 presidential campaign began with predictions that outside groups would play influential roles. So far, though, none has thrown a roundhouse punch like the one Swift Boat Veterans for Truth delivered when it attacked Democrat John Kerry's war record four years ago. But nonprofit organizations are quietly mobilizing, especially on the left. One network of liberal activist groups, Progress Now and its eight affiliates, is trying to shape the debate with a streamlined operation of small staff, low budgets and the Internet. Michael Huttner, Progress Now's director, says the Colorado-based group is taking advantage of old media and new...

The Washington Post published an article today in the Style section about researcher Danielle Allen's efforts to track down who is behind allegations that presumed Democratic presidential nominee Sen. Barack Hussein Obama (Illinois) is a Muslim. Allen is an Obama supporter who works for the Institute for Advanced Study.The article was written by Matthew Mosk. A curious choice for The Post considering Mosk's involvement in the nefarious MD4Bush scandal in which Mosk claimed to have been given access to a Free Republic poster's account to expose a Maryland GOP government appointee who was alleged to have commented on rumors that...

Sexy CBS siren Lara Logan spent her days covering the heat of the Iraq war - but that was nothing compared to the heat of her nights. The "60 Minutes" reporter and former swimsuit model apparently courted two beaus while she was in Baghdad, and has been labeled a homewrecker for allegedly destroying the marriage of a civilian contractor there, sources said. Passions got so hot in the combat zone that...

On Monday’s CBS "Early Show," correspondent Jeff Glor did a report on "five things you should know about John McCain" and highlighted details such as: "Number four, a maverick even back in high school, John McCain was nicknamed ‘the punk’...A reputation that followed him to the naval academy." During the segment, USA Today columnist Walter Shapiro added: "John McCain graduated five slots from the bottom of the Annapolis class of 1958." Contrast those bits of information with the hard-hitting facts revealed about Barack Obama during a similar segment on last Wednesday’s show: "Number four -- in addition to enjoying basketball...

Is American Jewry finally waking up from its love affair with the Democratic Party? That, at least, is the question that comes to mind when one considers some very interesting polling data that emerged recently. As odd as it may sound, Republican presidential candidate John McCain may just be poised to capture a significant percentage of the Jewish vote. Early last month, you'll recall, headlines blared in the US and Israeli press trumpeting the results of a Gallup survey conducted back in April which found that American Jews preferred Democratic hopeful Barack Obama by a margin of 61 to 32...

In an astonishing stroke of irony, the New York Times has outed the name of the CIA operative who interrogated 9/11 mastermind Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, over the objections of CIA Director Michael V. Hayden and a lawyer representing the operative. Agency officials and legal counsel told the Times that publishing the agent's name would "invade his privacy and put him at risk of retaliation from terrorists or harassment from critics of the agency." In an Editor's Note linked from the story on KSM's interrogation, the Times defended its decision by stating that "other government employees" had been "named publicly in...

When someone starts yammering about transcending partisanship, renouncing “hatred and venom” and “bringing us together” – head for the hills. He’s talking capitulation on the right, with long lines of defeated, dejected conservatives in tattered uniforms being marched away to political POW camps. Former Bush flak Scott McClellan, author of a tell-all book on his White House service, is worse than a rat fink. He’s worse even than a fawning sycophant craving the establishment’s favor. He’s a defeatist who bids his party to stand with him in the middle of a four-lane highway at rush-hour. Can we say “road-kill”? Here’s...

There are thousands of authors that would sell their souls for a positive 500-word New York Times review of their book. No doubt that many of these authors have groundbreaking books on important issues. Putting those aside, last Sunday the Times featured a children’s book that blatantly copies the classic Goodnight Moon. Its purpose is bashing the Bush Administration, natch. The Times’ Joanne Kaufman writes: The cover of Goodnight Bush looks almost exactly like Goodnight Moon — green and orange, with an image of a window and fireplace — and uses a similar rhyme scheme. But there the thematic similarities...

Cannot post due to copyright issues: http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/06/23/080623fa_fact_boyer

WASHINGTON - Liberal Republican presidential candidate John McCain admitted on Saturday it can be difficult at times to be proud of the United States. “I’ll admit to you … that it’s tough in some respects,� McCain said when asked by a questioner at a town hall meeting how to be proud of the country.

So, a liberal reporter shows his true self when a bug flies into his mouth, live on the air. He starts going off on small town American "country." First, watch the original video, then the hilarious remix. STRONG LANGUAGE WARNING.

BUSH'S AMERICA: 100 PERCENT AL-QAIDA FREE SINCE 2001June 11, 2008 In a conversation recently, I mentioned as an aside what a great president George Bush has been and my friend was surprised. I was surprised that he was surprised. I generally don't write columns about the manifestly obvious, but, yes, the man responsible for keeping Americans safe from another terrorist attack on American soil for nearly seven years now will go down in history as one of America's greatest presidents. Produce one person who believed, on Sept. 12, 2001, that there would not be another attack for seven years, and...

I had a good laugh, this morning, as I quickly paged through the usual thin (in reporting, substance, and tangible thickness) hard copy of today's Detroit Newsistan. Here's why--nope, it's not a Photoshop: While I was not surprised (I previously exposed a whole, fabricated story by Newsistan "reporter" David Shepardson--the paper is not interested in accuracy), it was fun to catch the Newsistan in yet another of its many flubs. With drowning circulation, How long until it goes out of business?

Some of the most memorable moments of this primary season came courtesy of the mock Democratic debates on Saturday Night Live that poked fun at the media's treatment of the presidential candidates. There, "Barack Obama" was offered this taxing question from a commentator with a crush: "Are you mad at me?" And a faux Tim Russert referred to Obama's eloquence four times in a question posed to comedian Amy Poehler's version of Hillary Clinton, and then exposed her to grilling from Law & Order's Vincent D'Onofrio on her NAFTA stance. What these skits mocked was the sense that Senator Obama...

Senator Obama came to his senses yesterday and resigned from Trinity United Church of Christ on Chicago’s south side. It doesn’t matter whether Rev. Wright said and did goofy things five times in the last twenty years or one hundred times in the last twenty years. It doesn’t matter that Father Pfleger (whose regular clerical stomping grounds are St. Sabina) was simply a guest of Rev. Moss delivering the guest sermon last Sunday at Trinity. It doesn’t matter if Obama was in the pews all, some or none of the times when Wright and Pfleger were spewing their venomous, hate...

A new study by two of journalism’s leading independent institutions has found that complaints from Hillary Clinton and her campaign that the media treated her unfairly are largely unfounded. According to the Pew Project for Excellence in Journalism and Harvard’s Shorenstein Center, it’s John McCain who should be upset with the coverage. Boston Globe / Political Intelligence: While the narratives about [Barack] Obama’s character were 69 percent positive and those about Clinton’s were 67 percent positive, only 43 percent of them were positive for McCain, according to the analysis by the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism and...

It's amazing what some people will do for 30 pieces of silver. Scott McClellan was given the signal honor of being the spokesman for the president of the United States, a distinction few Americans have ever achieved. Being the spokesman for the world's most powerful political figure is no small thing, and I'm sure that the men and women who have held the post view their service as an honor more given that deserved. It doesn't appear as if McClellan sees it that way. He is not the first press secretary to be forced out of the job, and he...

A Democrat campaigning for the White House must feel like a soldier advancing through a mine field. At any moment, he or she is one step away from being blown out of the contest. And the poor wretch is surrounded by a ravenous mob of media hounds, each of whom is eager to set off the fatal charge. Gotcha! Still worse, almost all the media volleys are fired toward the port side. If a Republican or (so-called) “conservative” makes a gaffe, as they do almost daily, their “misspeak” is usually politely ignored. Or if it is simply too awful to...

The California Supreme Court's historic declaration that same-sex couples can marry will be tested in November when voters face a measure that would enact a constitutional ban on such marriages – and two new polls indicate that it will be a close one. The court set aside a 2000 ballot measure that barred recognition of same-sex marriages but, the new polls indicate, voters have been moving the other way. A Los Angeles Times poll of registered voters, taken on May 20-21, a few days after the Supreme Court decision, found that 51 percent disapproved of the Supreme Court's decree, while...

EAGAN, Minn. — On a laptop at a kitchen table in this cheery Twin Cities suburb, headlines ripping into Al Franken ... are written up day after day for Minnesota Democrats Exposed, a political blog created by a former Republican Party researcher. * * * But Minnesota Democrats Exposed has dealt several blows to Mr. Franken’s campaign lately: revelations that he owed $25,000 to the State of New York for failing to pay workers’ compensation insurance and that his corporation was in forfeiture in California. With only weeks until the state Democratic Party’s convention, where Mr. Franken is expected to...

<p>Hundreds of legal and illegal immigrants in Arizona are being sent back to their home countries, sometimes against their will, for medical treatment because they lack insurance.</p>

Multiple sources in the Media report that between 60,000 and 75,000 attended the Obama rally in Portland, Oregon on Sunday. A simple check of Google Earth, using the "ruler" tool shows that the area of Waterfront Park used for the rally is approximately 172,000 square feet. An person, standing upright, occupies an area of about 4 square feet, so even allowing for no gaps in the crowd , with everyone jammed in shoulder to shoulder, you can't get more than 43,000 people into the area. Clearly, there was space left around the dias, and there was space for people to...

Fox News, or as I prefer to call it, Faux News, fired an intern for revealing the bias we all have toward the GOP. As MSNBC's Don Abrams said, she apparently did not get the memo that said that on Faux News, "you are supposed to pretend you are fair and balanced." The production assistant, identified as Jennifer Locke, was on assignment with a camera crew to cover the Time 100 Party. Locke: "John McCain, Fox News." McCain: "Fox News, I'm always glad to talk to Fox News." Locke: "I voted for you in the primary." McCain: "Thank you very...

When Air America, the left-wing talk radio network, began, I predicted that it would not succeed. One of the main reasons I gave was that liberals already had their views expressed in the mainstream news media -- the major networks, PBS and NPR (National Public Radio), and just about every major city newspaper. Therefore, the need liberals have for liberal talk radio is nowhere near the need conservatives have for conservative talk radio. To its credit, The New York Times -- through its public editor -- has acknowledged that the Times is liberal; and anyone intellectually honest understands this is...

The Press: When it comes to smearing John McCain, the mainstream media don't sleep. Now it's "raising questions" about the disability pension he got for torture injuries as a prisoner of war. Where's the shame? Hard to believe, but true. The industrious beavers who "raise questions" about McCain's fitness for the presidency, citing his $58,000 disability pension, are this time from the Los Angeles Times. First, the Times' April 22 hit piece implied that, since McCain is in good enough shape to walk across the Grand Canyon, there's something dishonest about his tax-free disability pension. Second, it implied that McCain...

Obama supporters and MainStream media (msm) have their heads in the Sand. It is no wonder that he took such a shellacking in Pennsylvania. There are a whole host of reasons why Barack Obama should not be President. How many missteps and gaffes does he get before his supporters, and the main stream media wake up and smell the coffee. This guy is just not capable of winning in the general election. John McCain and the conservative special interest groups will mop the floor with him. I am simply amazed that this guy is still being considered for President. To...