Free Republic

On Nov. 5, Todd Strandberg was at his desk, fielding E-mails from around the world. As the editor and founder of RaptureReady.com, his job is to track current events and link them to biblical prophecy in hopes of maintaining his status as "the eBay of prophecy," the best source online for predictions and calculations concerning the end of the world. Already Barack Obama had drawn the attention of apocalypse watchers after an anonymous e-mail circulated among conservative Christians in October implying that he was the Antichrist. Former "Saturday Night Live" ingénue Victoria Jackson fueled the fire when, according to news...

The conventional wisdom, which I share, is that Barack Obama will win this election, perhaps by a healthy margin. But Democrats are nervous wrecks; they're having nightmares that defeat will be snatched from the jaws of victory. To add to their misery (and guard against complacency), here's how that horror film could play out: In the end, the problem was the LIVs. That's short for "low-information voters," the three fifths of the electorate that shows up once every four years to vote for president but mostly hates politics. These are the 75 million folks who didn't vote in the primaries....

All day Fox news Radio has been using a poll from Newsweek of REGISTERED VOTERS showing O'Bammer with a 13 point lead, any Ideas?

Newsweek poll: 053, M41 (Newsweak's sample: 36% Dems, 36% Independents, 27% Republicans)

You’re not going to believe this one. Newsweek reporter Michael Hastings, while covering the presidential campaign, entertained fantasies about “taking out” Rudy Giuliani. And now he’s talking openly about it, and about his underhanded dealings with the John McCain campaign, as he pretended to be friendly and sympathetic while looking for every negative angle possible. He doesn’t even seem to be self-conscious about revealing what a dishonest, biased scumbag he is. HACK: CONFESSIONS OF A PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN REPORTER. The reality is: I quickly realized Rudy was a maniac. I had a recurring fantasy in which I took him out during...

A reporter hired by Newsweek to cover the presidential primary has written an article admitting that he was biased.Writing in the latest issue of GQ magazine, Michael Hastings describes his personal feelings about various candidates, including Rudy Giuliani, John McCain and Hillary Clinton, and admits that he could not be objective about the people he covered: If that sounds like I had some trouble being “objective,” I did. Objectivity is a fallacy. In campaign reporting more than any other kind of press coverage, reporters aren’t just covering a story, they’re a part of it—influencing outcomes, setting expectations, framing candidates—and despite...

The test for the next president is whether he can use the powers of government to act on behalf of Americans. That's a liberal idea. John McCain's "Joe the Plumber" would no doubt like to have a beer with Sarah Palin's "Joe Six-Pack." In truth, Joe Wurzelbacher isn't a licensed plumber and Joe Six-Pack is a horrible cliché, but no matter. They're cultural kin to the iconic "Average Joe" who was part of Richard Nixon's "Silent Majority" in the early 1970s and Jerry Falwell's Moral Majority in the 1980s. But conservative majorities come and go. If the polls are to...

In his cover story for the October 13, 2008 issue of Newsweek, managing editor Jon Meacham continues the media’s relentless personal attacks on Governor Palin, characterizing her as the equivalent of the fourth century Roman political hero Cincinnatus without brains, further describing her as “…an odd combination of Chauncey Gardiner from ‘Being There’ and Marge from ‘Fargo.’” In Meacham’s elitist worldview, Governor Palin is mindless because she is a conservative woman. What, you ask, warrants such viciousness from the normally mild-mannered Episcopalian editor of Newsweek? With a mocking tone, Meacham quotes an “unnamed McCain adviser”: “Palin is on the ticket...

The reality is that Sarah is the brightest light for conservatives since Ronald Reagan. Newsweek, however, has portrayed her as the title indicates.What follows is a great article refuting the Newsweek spin in light of what the Founding Fathers really wanted. Newsweek’s Jon Meacham thinks that Governor Sarah Palin is too much a commoner and too stupid to be allowed to become vice president of the United States of America and apparently his employer agrees with him. The October 13 cover of Newsweek features a close up photo of the Governor with the headline “She’s One of the Folks (And...

One of my favorite parts of hitting the campaign trail is chatting with cabdrivers, who always seem especially eager to discuss politics. (Listening to talk radio all day will do that to you.) Take my cabbie this evening out on Long Island. A black man in his mid-40's who arrived in the U.S. from Jamaica in 1990, Steve was something of an enigma. As we motored from the Garden City station to the local Marriott, Steve immediately asked whether I was attending the debate. I told him I was a reporter for Newsweek. "Is that in the city?" he said,...

Published on NewsBusters.org (http://newsbusters.org) Evan Thomas: 'A Disgrace' If McCain Beats Obama with Ayers By Brent Baker Created 2008-10-11 15:08 Newsweek's Evan Thomas and NPR's Nina Totenberg, likely reflecting the attitude of many of their Washington press corps colleagues, declared Barack Obama's connection to unrepentant terrorist William Ayers as an out of bounds subject for the campaign. On Inside Washington [1], a weekly show produced and aired over the weekend by Washington, DC's ABC affiliate, but first broadcast Friday night on the local PBS station, Thomas, Editor at Large with Newsweek, charged: “If he loses the election because of...

Dear friends at Newsweek... Just to clarify... You have McCain winning Republicans, 89 to 7. You have Obama winning Democrats, 91 to 5. (I'm a bit skeptical, but for now, for the sake of argument, I'll accept your assertion that PUMAs are extinct.) You have McCain winning independents by 2 percent, 45 to 43. And this adds up to an 11-percent Obama lead in your latest poll. We are to believe that McCain is losing among women by 9 percent, but losing among men by 14 percent. We are to believe that the Hillary voters are lining up behind Obama,...

For the third time, Newsweek religion reporter Lisa Miller has informed the world that Kirbyjon Caldwell, an African-America pastor from Texas, who formerly supported President George W. Bush, has “given himself heart and soul” to Democratic nominee Barack Obama.  Miller, whose latest Caldwell feature is a three-page spread in the current issue of Newsweek, writes “last summer he aligned himself with a man who he believes better represents the Christian ethics and American values he preaches.” Miller wrote effectively the same story about Caldwell in June and July of this year, following closely on the heels of Obama’s break with his...

http://www.newsweek.com/id/163337 Registered voters; Republican 27%; Democrats 40 %

BASED ON REGISTERED VOTERS Total Obama/Biden Total McCain/Palin Other candidate Undecided CURRENT TOTAL 52 41 1 6 =100

Newsweek's Jon Meacham thinks that Governor Sarah Palin is too much a commoner and too stupid to be allowed to become vice president of the United States of America and apparently his employer agrees with him. The October 13 cover of Newsweek features a close up photo of the Governor with the headline "She's One of the Folks (And that's the problem)," and Meacham writes the accompanying cover story. Be clear about what this means: This is a direct attack on Mr. and Mrs. America. We are all too stupid to be president in the elite opinion of Jon...

This week's Newsweek features an extreme close-up of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin -- a picture so detailed it shows every blemish and wrinkle and even a few wisps of facial hair. Republican media consultant Andrea Tantaros told Fox News the photo is "a clear slap in the face" at Palin. An official with the magazine told the TV show "Access Hollywood" that the picture was cropped to accentuate Palin's smile. The story behind the cover isn't very flattering either. The headline reads: "She's One of The Folks (And that's the problem)."

In the October 13 issue of Newsweek (on newsstands Monday, October 6): 'She's One of the Folks (And that's the problem).' Editor Jon Meacham writes an essay about how Sarah Palin's populist view of high office is risky for the country.

Remember what I wrote last week about the McCain campaign pulling back the curtain and finally allowing the press and the public to interact, however fleetingly, with its long-sequestered vice-presidential nominee? Um, nevermind. Knowing that Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin is currently visiting Manhattan, Father of Stumper a . . . .

Katie Paul at Newsweek alerted me that Newsweek printed a correction to their story claiming that Palin cut funding for teen mothers and the state WIC program. I blogged about it here and had extensive conversations with Alaska officials about the claims. Ms. Paul was also diligent to work with Alaska officials to correct the story once I made her aware of the facts. Here is the correction (at the end of page 2): Clarification (updated Sept. 11, 2008) : A number of readers have challenged the assertion in this story that Gov. Palin “cut by 20 percent the funding...

Around 12:30 this afternoon, I posted an item here on Stumper called "Palin's Favorability Ratings Begin to Falter." It was a relatively straightforward bit of analysis. Taking my numbers from the only poll to track daily favorability ratings for each presidential and vice-presidential candidate--Diageo/Hotline--I pointed out that Palin's approval stats had undergone a net swing of -10 points since peaking last week. "It's the start of an inevitable process," I wrote. "Between now and Nov. 4, voters will stop seeing Palin as a fascinating story and starting taking her measure as an actual candidate for office. Some will approve; some...

To know her is not necessarily to love her. When John McCain picked Sarah Palin as his running mate late last month, the Alaska governor quickly became a media phenomenon. Largely unknown, she existed at first in something of an information vacuum, and due to the shock of her selection--everyone loves a surprise--the press rushed to fill the void with whatever data was easily available. Mostly this consisted of human interest material; Palin had plenty to go around. Mooseburgers. Float planes. Ice Fishing. Beauty pageants. Teen pregnancy. Et cetera. By the end of her first 15 minutes in the spotlight--which...

Final Topline Results (9/12/08) N = 1,038 registered voters, screened from 1,204 adults. 18+ Margin of error: plus or minus 3.8 Interviewing dates: 9/10-11/08 Notes: Data are weighted so that sample demographics match Census Current Population Survey parameters for gender, age, education, race, region, and population density. Results based on smaller subgroups are subject to larger margins of sampling error. Sample size and margins of error for these subgroups are included in a separate methodology statement. An asterisk (*) indicates a value less than 1%.

Happy birthday, Johnny Mac! You're 72 now, a cancer survivor, and a presidential candidate who has said on many occasions that the most important criteria for picking a vice president is whether he or she could immediately step in if something happened to the president. Your campaign against Barack Obama is based on the simple idea that he is unready to be president. So you've picked a running mate who a year and a half ago was the mayor of Wasilla, Alaska, a town of 8,500 people. You've selected a potential leader of the free world who knows little or...

Much of America's political conversation is couched in code. And so it was that recently the McCain campaign accused Barack Obama of playing the "race card," two four-letter words that, taken together, trail a wealth of innuendo like a comet's tail. Using the term "race card" as a pejorative is almost always meant to promulgate the big lie that takes hold everywhere from the workplace to the classroom: that black men and women commonly use race as a bludgeon and an excuse, and that they will always blame failures or disagreements on racism. This is belied by objective reality. To...

Elizabeth Edwards has "bad energy," claimed the woman who had an affair with two-time presidential candidate John Edwards, according to Monday's online edition of Newsweek magazine. Rielle Hunter, the mistress at the center of the political storm around Edwards, held the former North Carolina senator in high regard. However, the party girl-turned-healer-turned-videographer was apparently less generous with her former paramour's wife. "I've only met her once," Hunter told Newsweek reporter Jonathan Darman in late 2006 during a lunch in which she mistakenly cast him as a friend. "She does not give off good energy. She didn't make eye contact with...

Newsweek Paris Bureau Chief Christopher Dickey recently returned to the U.S. South, where his family has roots, and found that George W. Bush and Barack Hussein Obama have unsettled the region deeply: "the first with a reckless war and a weakened economy, the second with the color of his skin, the foreignness of his name, the lofty liberalism of his language." In the August 11 Newsweek cover, "The End of the South" (on newsstands Monday, August 4), Newsweek looks at the race issue head-on in the region that has fought the longest and the hardest, and suffered the most, trying...

...For months, the Democratic nominee has advocated a rough 16-month timetable for withdrawal, and for months, his Republican rival has said such a schedule would amount to "surrender." That was a fertile ground for debate. But last week ...Bush and Maliki agreed on the idea of a "time horizon" for withdrawing American troops, and Maliki said that U.S. troops should leave "as soon as possible, as far as we're concerned." "U.S. presidential candidate Barack Obama talks about sixteen months," he said. "That, we think, would be the right time frame for a withdrawal, with the possibility of slight changes." All...

Gee, how can that be? Just last month, the Newsweek poll showed Barack Obama with a large 15 point lead over John McCain which Newsweek announced as "Barack's Bounce." However, there is now trouble in River City as you can tell by the headline of the latest Newsweek poll story, "Glow Fading?" Yes, poor Obama has taken a big tumble in the latest Newsweek poll: A month after emerging victorious from the bruising Democratic nominating contest, some of Barack Obama's glow may be fading. In the latest NEWSWEEK Poll, the Illinois senator leads Republican nominee John McCain by just 3 percentage...

Newsweek turned heads with a poll two weeks ago touting a massive 15-point lead for Obama. Their newest survey has heads turning in the other direction, showing Obama's lead dwindling to just 3 points over McCain: Obama 44 (-7) McCain 41 (+5) Undecided 15 (+2) In the Newsweek poll, Obama's support among Republicans and Democrats was basically unchanged, but his support among Independents dropped 14 points, to 34% from 48% two weeks ago. McCain increased his support among Republicans by five points (to 83% from 78%) and among Independents by five points (to 41% from 36%).

A month after emerging victorious from the bruising Democratic nominating contest, some of Barack Obama's glow may be fading. In the latest NEWSWEEK Poll, the Illinois senator leads Republican nominee John McCain by just 3 percentage points, 44 percent to 41 percent. The statistical dead heat is a marked change from last month's NEWSWEEK Poll, where Obama led McCain by 15 points, 51 percent to 36 percent.

Barack Obama needs to give a speech about Iraq. Otherwise he will find himself in the unusual position of having being prescient about the war in 2002 and yet being overtaken by events in 2008. The most important reason to do this is not political. Iraq is fading in importance for the public and, to the extent that it matters as an electoral issue, most people agree with Obama's judgment that the war was not worth fighting. The reason to lay out his approach to Iraq is that, were he elected, the war would be his biggest and most immediate...

"It's hard being a member of the mean party," says Bob Borochoff, a lifelong Republican who was on Capitol Hill this week asking legislators to support bills that will benefit disabled people like his son, Bradley, and returning veterans suffering from mental illness. There's no shortage of horror stories when it comes to health insurance, but Borochoff's tale on behalf of his son took him on a political journey, as well, and his disillusionment is emblematic of the uphill climb the Republicans face in November. Borochoff's tidy life as a restauranteur and happily married father of three, including newborn twins,...

Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama has opened up a double-digit lead over Republican John McCain two weeks after he clinched the nomination, a new poll published on Friday showed. The nationwide poll conducted by Newsweek showed Obama leading McCain by a margin of 51-36 percent, indicating that he might have got a bounce from his recent primary victory over Hillary Clinton. Newsweek said the survey of 1,010 adults nationwide on June 18 and 19, 2008 has a margin of error of 4 points.

Obama's current lead also reflects the large party-identification advantage the Democrats now enjoy - 55 percent of all voters call themselves Democrats or say they lean toward the party while just 36 percent call themselves Republicans or lean that way. Obama's personal ratings have improved, as well: 62 percent of voters overall say they have a favorable opinion of him compared to only 26 percent who have an unfavorable opinion. By comparison, McCain's ratings are 49 percent favorable to 37 percent unfavorable, representing a drop from his previous 54 percent favorable rating. Obama is trusted more to handle what may...

Shades of Dukakis, Obama up 15 THE PITTSBURGH TRIBUNE-REVIEW BY: Salena Zito In May of 1988 after all of the Democratic primaries ended presumptive nominee Michael Dukakis enjoyed a 54 to 38 percent lead over then Ronald Reagan wing man George H.W. Bush. H.W. went on to win in that November handily This evening a new Newsweek poll shows Obama having a giant lead, from 51 percent to 36 percent, over McCain among registered voters across the country. Obama got his bounce, Dukakis style.

Barack finally has his bounce. For weeks many political experts and pollsters have been wondering why the race between Democrat Barack Obama and Republican John McCain had stayed so tight, even after the Illinois senator wrested the nomination from Hillary Clinton. With numbers consistently showing rock-bottom approval ratings for President Bush and a large majority of Americans unhappy with the country's direction, the opposing-party candidate should, in the normal course, have attracted more disaffected voters. Now it looks as if Obama is doing just that. A new NEWSWEEK Poll shows that he has a substantial double-digit lead, 51 percent to...

Scream, shout, jump up and down. No matter. The gay-marriage issue is over and done with. The upshot: love won.

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT RUSH: Newsweek magazine, the new cover. The cover is of Obama, and they put another halo on his head! The original picture did not have a halo, but the wife of editor Jon Meacham walked in, saw it, didn't like it. So Newsweek changed the cover photo of Obama with a halo and a bright light behind him because the editor's wife didn't like the original. (playing of Obama Messiah spoof) END TRANSCRIPT

A new Newsweek poll out this weekend shows Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama may face serious obstacles in the upcoming general election. Many Americans aren't even sure of Obama's religion. Asked to identify his religion, 58 percent of respondents correctly said Obama was a Christian. But a surprising 11 percent said he was a Muslim. And 22 percent said they did not know what his religion was. Almost one-fifth of white Democratic voters polled also said they had an unfavorable opinion of Obama because of his name. Apparently, such bias is having an effect on Obama's chances to secure the...

In an attempt to explain how race will impact Democrat presidential candidate Barack Obama's run for the White House, Newsweek has created a "Racial Resentment Index" exclusively for white people without measuring such biases of non-whites.

Eleanor Clift's latest online column for Newsweek assumes that white male "Reagan Democrats" are racist and sexist, or at least they're sickened by appeals by too much focus on the "rights" of blacks and women.

I'll never forget a frigid morning in Springfield: Sen. Barack Obama, elegantly Lincolnesque in a long wool coat, launching his presidential candidacy in the shadow of the old Illinois State Capitol. The echoes of history were almost deafening—not just of Abraham Lincoln, who, like Obama, had been a legislator there, but of the argument over slavery and race that Lincoln had joined there. On that sunny February day in 2007, Obama seemed to radiate uplift and glorious possibility. He was making a statement: that his candidacy would be the exclamation point at the end of our four-century-long argument over the...

By see-dubya • May 9, 2008 01:55 AM For what it’s worth, the New York Times reports that the U.S.’s designated new commander in Pakistan, General James Hood, has not been allowed to take up his new job. He had served as commander of Gitmo, and although he actually did away with some of the roughest forms of interrogation there and won some (grudging) praise from human rights groups, his legacy in the Middle East is tainted by Newsweek’s lie: General Hood, who took command of the detention center at Guantánamo Bay in March 2004, shortly before the Abu Ghraib...

America's Role: Newsweek thinks the U.S. is fading in a "post-American world." We beg to differ. We are still Reagan's shining city on a hill. As in earlier times, reports of our impending demise are greatly exaggerated.It is insulting and ironic for Newsweek's May 12 cover to show the backside if the Statue of Liberty, as if to say our best days are behind us and we are no longer the light that attracts and gives hope to the world. OK, maybe we no longer have the world's largest shopping mall or the world's largest Ferris wheel, but that's not...

In the May 5, 2008 edition of Newsweek, there is an article by science writer Sharon Begley trying to convince us that “global warming isn’t good for crops after all”. Her first example is that a glacier in the Himalayas called the Gangotri glacier. She writes that over the last 25 years the glacier has shrunk about half a mile, “a rate three times the historical norm”. The implication is, of course, that this was caused by increasing atmospheric CO2 produced by human activities. Since this glacier supplies 70% of the flow to India’s Ganges River during the dry...

THE RACE: The presidential race for Democrats nationally ___ THE NUMBERS Barack Obama, 54 percent Hillary Rodham Clinton, 35 percent ___ OF INTEREST: Obama's huge lead in this Newsweek poll marks a big shift from the magazine's last survey in March, when he and Clinton were essentially tied. Besides Obama's usual leads among men, blacks and young people, he leads in this poll among women and older voters and is about even among whites. In a matchup against Republican candidate John McCain, both Democrats are ahead slightly. ___ The Newsweek poll was conducted April 16-17 by Princeton Survey Research Associated...

The staff of Newsweek will shrink dramatically, after 111 staffers on its news and business sides accepted a buyout last week. Among those leaving are some of the magazine's best-known, most-admired and longest-service critics, including David Gates, David Ansen and Cathleen McGuigan. Harold Shain, a former president of the magazine who moved over to sister publication Budget Travel at the beginning of this year, is also departing. 146 staffers were offered the chance to leave the magazine, with as much as two years of their current salary as a departing bonus, depending on their age and length of service. The...

We need to listen," John McCain was saying, "to the views … of our democratic allies." Then, though the words weren't in the script, the Arizona senator repeated himself, as if in self-admonishment: "We need to listen." A lot of meaning was packed into that twice-said line, which was a key theme of McCain's first major foreign-policy speech since becoming the GOP's nominee-apparent. McCain was telling America, and the whole world: if I'm elected there will be, at long last, a return to what Jefferson called "a decent respect to the opinions of mankind." There will be no more ill-justified...

Newsweek Reconstructs Time When Obama Moved from Using 'Barry' to Formal Barack and Impact it Made on Him 'It was when I Made a Conscious Decision: I Want to Grow Up,' Obama Says NEW YORK, March 23 /PRNewswire/ -- When Sen. Barack Obama moved from using the name Barry to Barack, his formal name, it was part of his almost lifelong quest for identity and belonging -- to figure out who he is, and how he fits into the larger American tapestry. Part black, part white, raised in Hawaii and Indonesia, with family of different religious and spiritual backgrounds --...