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Barring an extraordinary shock, Barack Obama will win more than 270 electoral votes on Tuesday, giving him the White House. Hours before voting starts, John McCain has no clear path to reaching that same goal. In fact, based on interviews with political strategists in both parties, election analysts and advisers to both presidential campaigns - including a detailed look at public and private polling data - an Obama victory with well over 300 electoral votes is a more likely outcome than a McCain victory. Under the Electoral College system, a candidate wins all of a state's electoral votes as long...

As he is wont to do, Mark Halperin graded the performances of each candidate in the debate. His conclusion? McCain got an A- while Messiah Obarky got a B. He based his grading based upon four categories: Substance, Style, Offense and Defense. And McCain won in every category. Let's start with Substance because that is what the American people are really looking for in their next leader. ObamaGrading the Final Presidential Debate Though he conveyed a general sense of his agenda, he did so without bothering to fight ardently for his case. Grade: B I noticed that Obama was flat...

The longtime San Francisco mayor and Democratic genius sounds the alarm over Gov. Palin in a San Francisco Chronicle op-ed: “Sarah Palin has totally changed the dynamics of this campaign… The Republicans are now on offense and Democrats are on defense. And we don’t do well on defense.”

From CNN/Opinion Research Center: Obama 49, McCain 48 Gov. Palin’s approval: 38%, with 21% unfavorable and 41% never heard of her or have no opinion.

Two Republicans who know say McCain has settled on Mitt Romney as his running mate. Developing...

Don't want to take Rush's word for it? How about Mark Halperin's? The editor of Time's "The Page" is of the view that the choice by John McCain of a pro-choice running mate would be nothing short of a "disaster." Halperin expressed his view during an appearance today on CNN's American Morning. KIRAN CHETRY: What about some potential running mates for John McCain? Because there's been a lot of talk all over talk radio. A lot of people are saying if he tries to go with somebody who's pro-choice like a Lieberman, that that would be it for the base:...

Foreign Relations, Judiciary, debater, speechifier. Bo knows…the pick. Developing... 9.02AM

Mark Halperin just updated The Page @ 1:18 am with COULD IT BE HER? Developing… , 1:18 AM Seems like an odd hour for a story, unless it has some legs?

1. She can’t win the nomination without overturning the will of the elected delegates, which will alienate many Democrats. 2. She can’t win the nomination without a bloody convention battle — after which, even if she won, history and many Democrats would cast her as a villain. 3. Catching up in the popular vote is not out of the question — but without re-votes in Florida and Michigan it will be almost as impossible as catching up in elected delegates. 4. Nancy Pelosi and other leading members of Congress don’t think she can win and want her to give up....

Reuters, in its headline for a story reporting the death of Philip Agee, a former CIA agent turned traitor, labeled Agee a "CIA whistle-blower" ("CIA whistle-blower Philip Agee dies in Cuba [1]"). As the blog Little Green Footballs put it [2], Agee was "the traitor who exposed fellow CIA agents to violence and murder by revealing their names" in his 1975 book "Inside the Company: A CIA Diary." Agee, who had worked for the CIA for 12 years both in the United States and in Latin America, resigned from the Agency in 1968 after expressing "disagreement with U.S. support for...

The liberal Center for American Progress (CAP) is off to a roaring start. Headed by John Podesta, President Clinton’s White House chief of staff, and funded by George Soros, the four-year-old think tank aspires to be nothing less than a ‘Heritage Foundation’ for America’s left. CAP sees itself as the intellectual ammunition depot for contemporary liberalism. As liberals become increasingly angry and their rhetoric becomes more and more strident and insulting, CAP, according to an NPR profile, aims “to reinvigorate political thinking and advocacy among Democrats.”...... Given its size and scope...CAP could well be providing personnel and ideas for a...

IS THE ESTABLISHMENT MEDIA BIASED against conservatives? Dan Rather remains in the anchor chair at the CBS Evening News despite his involvement in recent news stories based on dishonest reporting, fabricated documents and even Internet gossip falsely alleging that President George W. Bush secretly intends to begin the military conscription of students. These stories were obviously designed to damage Mr. Bush in the final weeks before a national election. And now ABC News has left in place its Political Director Mark Halperin. ABC has done this despite the network’s acknowledgement that Halperin wrote a memo that to many seems to...

Op-Ed Contributor BILL and Hillary Clinton have been known to cite a quip widely attributed to Einstein: “The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result.” George W. Bush and Karl Rove live by an alternative dictum: Why do things differently when you like the results you have been getting? In the 2002 and 2004 national elections, the president and his top political adviser won by margins provided by conservative voters who shared the White House’s view that the country should continue to move right. Although the president is not on...

ABC News, in their Web column on all things political called The Note, wallowed in the gutter today with their advice to those who view tonight's White House press conference with President Bush and Prime Minister Blair to watch for "sheer homo-eroticism" between the two wartime allies.When one thinks of the great wartime alliances between the United States and Great Britain, "homo-eroticism" is not what one thinks of when Roosevelt and Churchill, and Reagan and Thatcher come to mind. Neither does it come to mind with Bush and Blair, except for the drive-by media.Text of the ABC News report:484 members...

Maybe leaks are going to be more common in the Tony Snow Era. The man has not even started officially yet as White House press secretary, and already the tightness of the Andy Card days seems to be a thing of the past. ABC News has exclusively obtained this undated memo from Snow to his new colleagues. It is not clear when it was written, but from the content, it must have been in the last few days. It was given to ABC News by a Republican who is not pleased with Snow's hiring. At publication time, calls to Snow,...

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: Monday, Dec. 5, 2005 CONTACT: Gary Glenn 989-835-7978 Professor David Halperin 734-647-5884 Family group renews criticism of tax- funded college class "How to be Gay" U-M catalogue calls class "an experiment in the very process of initiation it hopes to understand." ------- ANN ARBOR, Mich. -- A statewide family values group Monday renewed its criticism of a controversial University of Michigan class -- offered this fall for the first time since 2003 -- again calling on state lawmakers to pressure university officials to drop the course altogether. The American Family Association of Michigan, in a letter to...

September 11 was not so much a discrete event as part of a continuum. It was the result of broad strategic failures that, preceding it by decades, continue to this day and are likely to continue on. It is as if the country has lost, as exemplified by the Left now out of power, a great deal of the will to self-preservation, and, as exemplified by the Right now in charge, not a little of its capacity for self-defense. Our politics and policies have somehow been parceled out to opportunists like Michael Moore -- purveyor of conspiracy theories and hatreds,...

Historical perspective The filibuster has been used historically by the minority party, which can't win with a vote count. Democrats have opposed the filibuster before — in the 1960s, they accused Republicans of using it to block civil rights legislation. "According to the Senate Historical Office, the record for the longest individual speech is held by the late Sen. Strom Thurmond of South Carolina, who filibustered for 24 hours and 18 minutes against the Civil Rights Act of 1957. To keep the floor, he read some of his wife's recipes and passages from novels out loud." ABC News' Ed O'Keefe...

NEW YORK - CBS said Wednesday it is cancelling the Wednesday edition of "60 Minutes," insisting the decision was made because of poor ratings and not last fall's ill-fated story about President Bush's military service Dan Rather, the newsmagazine's lead correspondent, will contribute stories to the Sunday edition of "60 Minutes," said CBS Chairman Leslie Moonves. "This was a ratings call, not a content call," Moonves said Wednesday. The newsmagazine spinoff was where Rather reported last September that Bush skirted some duty while in the Texas Air National Guard and a commander felt pressure to sugarcoat an evaluation of him....

Thought fellow Freepers in Maryland-DC-Virginia would find this of interest. PHILANTHROPIST GEORGE SOROS TO MAKE MAJOR ANNOUNCEMENT ABOUT OSI FUNDING Soros to announce challenge grant for Baltimore with Mayor Martin O'Malley When: 11:30 a.m., Thursday, May 12. Where: City Hall, Ceremonial Room, 100 N. Holliday St., Baltimore. Baltimore - Philanthropist George Soros will announce a $10 million challenge grant for the Open Society Institute-Baltimore on Thursday. Soros is asking Baltimore individuals, foundations and corporations to join with him, matching his grant two to one by contributing $20 million so that the Open Society Institute can continue to work on some...

Check out this blind quote from Karen Tumulty's news filled article in Time Magazine. (registration required)'The Presidents team is increasingly frustrated by the majority leaders inability to mount a defense more persuasive than blaming his problems on a liberal conspiracy.'DeLay, says a senior Adminstration offical, 'Is handing this like an idiot.' House Speaker Hastert faces pressure from within the Republican ranks to end the impaase with Democrats over ethics rules changes pushed through on a partisan vote in January, reports David Rodgers in the Wall St. Journal.'Mr. Hastert shows no willingness to reverse himself but compromises are being dicussed. Privately,...

WASHINGTON - It was an intimate political gathering: Sen. John F. Kerry [related, bio] playing host to about 100 of his richest friends. Kerry huddled with his top fund-raisers Monday night in his Georgetown mansion, preparing a massive money push aimed at keeping the defeated presidential nominee's ambitions alive. ``He wants to keep his team together,'' said one member of Kerry's national finance team. ``He's looking ahead. He will be a strong voice in the party.'' Strategists say Kerry will use his new political action committee, Keeping America's Promise, to promote his agenda, help party causes and keep his army...

Democrats ask White House for documents on conservative blogger BY ELANA SCHOR Knight Ridder Newspapers WASHINGTON - (KRT) - U.S. Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., the House's top Democrat for homeland security, has found an unlikely place in need of his protection: the White House press room. Thompson and four colleagues, all senior congressional Democrats, have petitioned Bush administration officials to release classified documents about James D. Guckert, a conservative activist who was a daily fixture at White House press briefings. Calling himself Jeff Gannon, Guckert asked President Bush questions at televised news conferences as a representative of Talon News Service,...

Bump List for George Soros.

Two days ago I posted about ABC's effort to find a military funeral taking place on Inauguration Day for a casualty from Iraq, presumably to "balance" the coverage of George Bush and his speech. Their web site invited anyone who knew of such a funeral to send the information to ABC News -- they even provided a web form for submission (and Doc Weasel has it better here) -- so that they could exploit the death in order to somehow shame Bush on his inauguration. After Power Line and I wrote about this and the blogosphere erupted into protest, the...

Here is another message I strongly urge FReepers to send to the FCC, regarding the Mark Halperin memo.  We need to use this between-election-cycle lull to take out the garbage in the MSM.Please take a few moments to send the following email to the Federal Communications Commission at: Michael.Powell@fcc.gov; fccinfo@fcc.govOr, CLICK HERE to generate a pre-addressed email.  You can cut-and-paste the message below into your email, or you can draft your own: Subject: FCC Violation: Halperin MemoDear Chairman Powell,I am writing to urge the Federal Communications Commission to investigate the circumstances surrounding an official memo drafted and distributed to ABC...

ABC Radio News at the top of the 5:00 EDT hour has basically called it own poll "irrelavent". Saying it is possible that Bush wins the national vote but loses the EV. DREAM ON!

Anti-communist analyst note: [As the presidential candidate John Kerry already twice stated in his "honest" responses during the presidential debates he wants our nuclear research stopped and he wants to send money to Russia to "protect the 'former' Soviet era nuclear weapons" from being 'lost' or 'stolen' by Russian Mafia. Please consider the following article in that light of the fact even though it has been written 10 years ago - it was as important then as it is today.Published with permission given by Inside Story Communications. HM note]. The Plot To Hijack the CIA Is nuclear terrorism about to...

QUICK LINKS: HOME | NEWS | OPINION | MEETUP | C-LOG | ISSUES townhall.comPrinter-friendly versionLiberal media bias: here's the proofPaul Greenberg (back to web version) | Send October 22, 2004Folks know what Liberal Media Bias is. Even those who deny it have to know what the rest of us are talking about. Anybody can read it between the lines, see it on CBS (also ABC and NBC), hear it on NPR, and almost feel it, it's so thick at times. Like an oil slick over the news, L.M.B. permeates American journalism's elite.But defining Liberal Media Bias isn't easy. Because...

"Remember that infamous Oct. 8 memo from ABC News political director Mark Halperin, which instructed ABC correspondents to slant their reportage in John Kerry's favor? " conservative author Richard Poe said on his blog (www.RichardPoe.com). "Well, it turns out that Halperin's father is none other than Morton H. Halperin, head of George Soros' Open Society Policy Center. Lowell Ponte reveals Mark Halperin's Soros connection in [yesterday's] FrontPageMagazine.com, in a stunning expose titled, 'The ABC's of Media Bias.' "

Democrats are in a snit over a conservative-leaning broadcast group's plan to air a documentary critical of John Kerry just before the election.... [The DNC] filed a complaint with the [FEC], arguing that Sinclair is violating the McCain-Feingold campaign-finance law by giving a valuable "in-kind" contribution to the Bush campaign. Kerry adviser Chad Clanton even threatened to abuse the power of the Federal Communications Commission if Kerry is elected, warning that Sinclair "better hope we don't win." ...After all, many news groups surely would fail such a test, their news coverage rendered no more than "in-kind" contributions to their favored...

We all know about the Mark Halperin memo. To refresh, a little while ago, Halperin, ABC News' political director, wrote: It goes without saying that the stakes are getting very high for the country and the campaigns - and our responsibilities become quite grave I do not want to set off (sp?) and endless colloquy that none of us have time for today - nor do I want to stifle one. Please respond if you feel you can advance the discussion. The New York Times (Nagourney/Stevenson) and Howard Fineman on the web both make the same point today: the current...

TO THINK I ONCE RESPECTED THE NOTE... [10/15 12:21 PM] We all know about the Mark Halperin memo. To refresh, a little while ago, Halperin, ABC News' political director, wrote: It goes without saying that the stakes are getting very high for the country and the campaigns - and our responsibilities become quite grave I do not want to set off (sp?) and endless colloquy that none of us have time for today - nor do I want to stifle one. Please respond if you feel you can advance the discussion. The New York Times (Nagourney/Stevenson) and Howard Fineman on...

Today's Neo Pinko's in the media are taking unprecedented liberties with their waning influence. Our newest example is the shameless memo by ABC's Political Director Mark Halperin, Halperin declared that "the current Bush attacks on Kerry involve distortions and taking things out of context in a way that goes beyond what Kerry has done." Halperin told his colleagues: "We have a responsibility to hold both sides accountable to the public interest, but that doesn't mean we reflexively and artificially hold both sides 'equally' accountable when the facts don't warrant that. I'm sure many of you have this week felt the...

Excerpted... Contrast the way J&J handled the Tylenol crisis with the way CBS is handling the Rathergate/Memogate crisis. In case, you’ve been living in a hole, CBS aired a story featuring documents purportedly from the Texas Guard that were damaging to President Bush. It took very little time for the documents to be shown to be obvious forgeries, and sloppy ones at that. It seems pretty clear they were typed using Microsoft Word and printed to Adobe Acrobat, something not exactly available in the early 1970s. As a news organization, CBS found itself in a box. Either they admit to...

Dan Rather produces forged Air Force documents and lies to the American people about a sitting president, but CBS goes about business as usual, refusing to correct the problem. Walter Cronkite calls Internet bloggers "scandalmongers," but obviously biased reporters are "journalists." Tom Brokaw defends Rather and falsified news saying that anyone demanding unbiased and honest news reporting is attempting to "demonize CBS News" with a "kind of demagoguery." Major newspapers regularly begin their liberal political editorials on the front page and call it news rather than opinion. The major networks, most major newspapers, Reuters, and the Associated Press all seem...

"Charitable" Foundations: ATMs for the Left "Charitable" Foundations: ATMs for the Left By Ben Johnson FrontPageMagazine.com | March 2, 2004 One of the unlamented developments of this election year is the Democratic Party’s retreat to the Left. Although the media claim the party's voters have learned their lesson by settling for the “electable” John F. Kerry, a cursory examination of the Democrats shows they remain animated by anti-Bush furor. The party rank-and-file may have decided they prefer the sing-song cadences of John Kerry or the charming drawl of John Edwards to the red-faced shrieks of Howard Dean, but the message...

"Safe At Home"- Sound Familiar?: "Safe at Home, Respected in the World. The Harvard Halperin's , UN advocate, 60's New Leftist and Soros-Kerry Adviser ? And Frank Gaffney letter calling Halperin's views "Extreme" by Morton H. Halperin October 21, 2003 President Bush got one thing right: the greatest threat to American security is a rogue state providing a terrorist group with weapons of mass destruction and the means to deploy them to the United States. Unfortunately, almost everything he has done since Sept. 11 has made this problem worse rather than better. While some progress has been made on cooperation...

The Soros connection "Remember that infamous Oct. 8 memo from ABC News political director Mark Halperin, which instructed ABC correspondents to slant their reportage in John Kerry's favor? " conservative author Richard Poe said on his blog (www.RichardPoe.com). "Well, it turns out that Halperin's father is none other than Morton H. Halperin, head of George Soros' Open Society Policy Center. Lowell Ponte reveals Mark Halperin's Soros connection in [yesterday's] FrontPageMagazine.com, in a stunning expose titled, 'The ABC's of Media Bias.' " Ohio ruling In a victory for the Democrats, a federal judge ruled yesterday that Ohio voters who show up...

Fifteen minutes before the second televised Presidential debate, on the night of Friday, Oct. 8, the stoic voice of anchor Brit Hume came over the Fox News Channel’s control-room intercom. "Do you know about this Mark Halperin memo?" he asked the room full of producers, who were hunched over the dials and standing before a tall bank of flickering TV screens. "Can we talk about it on the air? It’s on Drudge. It’s all over Drudge." In a leaked memo, Mr. Halperin, the ABC News political director, had suggested that the network should be more critical of President Bush than...

IS THE ESTABLISHMENT MEDIA BIASED against conservatives? Dan Rather remains in the anchor chair at the CBS Evening News despite his involvement in recent news stories based on dishonest reporting, fabricated documents and even Internet gossip falsely alleging that President George W. Bush secretly intends to begin the military conscription of students. These stories were obviously designed to damage Mr. Bush in the final weeks before a national election. And now ABC News has left in place its Political Director Mark Halperin. ABC has done this despite the network’s acknowledgement that Halperin wrote a memo that to many seems to...

IS THE ESTABLISHMENT MEDIA BIASEDagainst conservatives? Dan Rather remains in the anchor chair at the CBS Evening News despite his involvement in recent news stories based on dishonest reporting, fabricated documents and even Internet gossip falsely alleging that President George W. Bush secretly intends to begin the military conscription of students. These stories were obviously designed to damage Mr. Bush in the final weeks before a national election. And now ABC News has left in place its Political Director Mark Halperin. ABC has done this despite the network’s acknowledgement that Halperin wrote a memo that to many seems to direct...

Three weeks before the election, ABC News Political Director Mark Halperin apparently doesn't think the campaign season is going too well. He thinks ABC News must help the electorate by sorting out the relevant facts from the spin; holding the liars accountable; and openly campaign for the election of John Kerry — stuff like that. Mr. Halperin issued these instructions to ABC News employees last week in a memo, which was subsequently leaked to Internet news-guru Matt Drudge just before Friday night's second presidential debate. ABC News' Charles Gibson, coincidentally, moderated the debate.

The Shadow Party: Part I By David Horowitz and Richard Poe FrontPageMagazine.com | October 6, 2004 Part 1: Origins "My family is more important to me than my party," declared Senator Zell Miller, a Georgia Democrat, as he spoke from the podium of the Republican National Convention on September 1. "There is but one man to whom I am willing to entrust their future and that man's name is George Bush." [1] Many Democrats howled in outrage at Miller's "betrayal" - former President Jimmy Carter in particular. In an angry personal letter to the Georgia senator, Carter accused Miller of...

It’s been a tough slog for old media of late. CBS NEWS and Dan Rather were nabbed by the new media as they attempted to use fraudulent documents to harm the president’s re-election chances. NBC Nightly News anchor Tom Brokaw blasted the new media for pointing out the CBS smear job saying, “There's a political jihad against Dan Rather and CBS,” and adding “It's an attempt to demonize CBS news. It's a demagoguery unleashed on the Internet.” Dan Rather proved willing to even use fraudulent documents to help John Kerry. ABC NEWS Political Director Mark Halperin recently sent a memo...

The United States is a great danger to the planet, and defeating President George W. Bush rather than the terrorists "is a matter of life and death." That's what billionaire financial speculator and philanthropist George Soros claims, and he's so alarmed at how Bush has waged the war on terrorism that he's pledged more than $15 million to try to keep the president from being re-elected. That's chump change for Soros, who spent an equal amount not long ago just to start a grant-giving organization to promote another life-and-death cause dear to his heart: physician-assisted suicide and euthanasia. Indeed, Soros...

October 10, 2004 -- ST. LOUIS — A top ABC News official yesterday said the network won't discipline its political director, Mark Halperin, for his memo urging ABC staffers to hold President Bush more "accountable" than John Kerry. The high-ranking ABC official said Halperin is a "straight shooter" and "there is no action that is going to be taken" against him for the memo.

I received an email last night from National Review Online writer Michael Graham who told me that on Monday, he would discuss the Mark Halprein memo. I asked him last night if was going to talk about it during the post debate show. He responded "Monday not tonight". The Michael Graham show is from 9am to 11:45am. WMAL is the local abcnews network radio station in the Washington DC area. Listen live on realplayer at http://www.wmal.com/listenlive.asp

BOYCOTT DISNEY and Their Products, their sponsers, and the companys of their BOD, until they deal with Mark Halperin's BIAS; Let them know you won't be spending money at their theme parks, wont be watching ABC, won't be patronizing ABC's sponsers, etc. EMAIL YOUR THOUGHTS TO THESE PEOPLE... THE DISNEY BOARD OF DIRECTORS michael.eisner@disney.com Cc: jean.scanlon@clorox.com, john.chen@sybase.com, monica.lozano@laopinion.com, leo.odonovan@mbna.com, gary.wilson@nwa.com, robert.a.iger@disney.com, george.mitchell@piperrudnick.com, jestrin@packetdesign.com, john.bryson@edisonintl.com

An internal memo written by ABC News director Mark Halperin admonishes his news staff not to "artificially hold both sides 'equally' accountable" in the second Bush-Kerry presidential debate. The memo, dated the morning of the second Bush-Kerry debate, cites two articles critical of the Bush campaign (In New Attacks, Bush Pushes Limit on the Facts, by Adam Nagourney and Richard Stevenson, NYT, and Bush vs. the news, by Howard Fineman at MSNBC.) "The current Bush attacks on Kerry involve distortions and taking things out of context in a way that goes beyond what Kerry has done," Haperin wrote, referring to...