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Newsweek reports that "the day of the third debate, Palin refused to go onstage with New Hampshire GOP Sen. John Sununu and Jeb Bradley, a New Hampshire congressman running for the Senate, because they were pro-choice and because Bradley opposed drilling in Alaska. The McCain campaign ordered her onstage at the next campaign stop, but she refused to acknowledge the two Republican candidates standing behind her." Oh, really? First, John Sununu has a %100 pro-life rating from the National Right to Life Committee. Second, Jeb Bradley was not running for the U.S. Senate, he was running to represent NH's First...

For several years, I've been writing about Bushenfreude, the phenomenon of angry yuppies—who've hugely benefited from President Bush's tax cuts—funding angry, populist Democratic campaigns. I've theorized that people who work in financial services and related fields have become so outraged and alienated by the incompetence, crass social conservatism, and repeated insults to the nation's intelligence, of the Bush-era Republican Party, that they're voting with their hearts and heads instead of their wallets. Last week's election was perhaps Bushenfreude's grandest day. As the campaign entered its final weeks, Barack Obama, who pledged to unite the country, singled out one group of...

For several years, I've been writing about Bushenfreude, the phenomenon of angry yuppies—who've hugely benefited from President Bush's tax cuts—funding angry, populist Democratic campaigns. I've theorized that people who work in financial services and related fields have become so outraged and alienated by the incompetence, crass social conservatism, and repeated insults to the nation's intelligence, of the Bush-era Republican Party, that they're voting with their hearts and heads instead of their wallets. Last week's election was perhaps Bushenfreude's grandest day. As the campaign entered its final weeks, Barack Obama, who pledged to unite the country, singled out one group of...

Creepy alright!

Creepy in an admirable way, though, as evidence of preternatural self-awareness. All that comes from The One is, and can only be, good. With this, Evan Thomas proves that he’s good for one killer soundbite every election cycle. Click the image to watch.

Newsweek and the other “Band of Brats” must be so proud. Journalism is fast becoming a clown act in the halls, or tents, of paper print and television studios. Since when does unsourced gossip pass as a news story?

Via Drudge. According to a study performed by a Fordham University scholar, the least accurate of the 20 presidential polls were those performed by CBS/New York Times and, in dead last, Newsweek. In its final poll, CBS/Times forecast an 11-point Obama margin, 52-41. Newsweek was even more "optimistic", foreseeing a 12-point Obama win, 53-41.

In the last Conventional Wisdom feature before the election, Newsweek magazine assigned a sideways arrow for the Democratic vice presidential contender while giving the thumbs down to Gov. Sarah Palin for "sink[ing]" the campaign with a "lack of gravitas." In doing so, the CW feature dismissed the damaging impact of Sen. Joe Biden's "rhetorical flourishes." Yet among Biden's recent foot-in-mouth moments was one that inadvertently broadcast the Democratic ticket's tax-hiking designs by significantly lowering the $250,000-a-year tax bar the Democratic campaign previously had set.

Seven days before America elects a new leadership team, Newsweek is making a last-ditch attempt to portray GOP vice-presidential nominee Sarah Palin as a religious nut. In her article "Jesus and Witches," Newsweek Religion Editor Lisa Miller suggests Palin believes in witchcraft, thinks the world is coming to a fiery end in her lifetime, and may have a "special sense of destiny" fueled by her "apocalyptic theology" and Alaskan "Last Frontier identity." Miller even hints Palin may be anti-Semitic. The ominous subhead reads: "Video clips of Sarah Palin attending Alaska church services have raised questions about her views on Christianity...

America’s either racist, or it will elect Obama. So writes Newsweek columnist Jonathan Alter, who focuses in his weekly column on imagining the "horror" scenario, titled "Why McCain Won: Snatching defeat from the jaws of victory: how that scenario could (but likely won't) play out." Alter’s theory in a nutshell: If McCain wins, racism is the answer. "Millions of people in the rest of the world assume that Barack Obama cannot be elected because he is black," but Alter hopes "the common sense and decency of the American people will prove the skeptics wrong." It sounds a little like Bryant...

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?

Michael Hastings, formerly of Newsweek, has written a sometimes too truthful but often funny account of his one year on the campaign trail with various presidential candidates during the primary season. Hastings' assignment was to write behind-the-scenes stories for Newsweek about the campaigns which he recounts in GQ magazine in a story titled, "Hack: Confessions of a Presidential Campaign Reporter." So just how truthful was Hasting's account? Well, he admits upfront that "objectivity is just a fallacy" for reporters. And just how unobjective was Hastings? Well, check out this fantasy he had while covering Rudy Guiliani on the campaign trail...

If you believe Newsweek magazine – something that usually requires a serious suspension of disbelief – the Reagan Era is dead. Politico also chimed in, proclaiming the death of the Reagan revolution. Newsweek doesn’t go on to tell you who killed the Reagan Era, so I will. It was the Republican Party that demolished the shining city on the hill my father built. It was the Republican Party that was 100 percent responsible for the end of the Reagan Revolution.

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,...

George Weigel Washington DC, Oct 16, 2008 / 05:49 am (CNA).- Catholic political commentator George Weigel has criticized pro-life Catholics who support the pro-abortion rights Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Barack Obama. Writing for Newsweek magazine, he criticizes pro-life Obama supporters such as Pepperdine University law professor Doug Kmiec and suggests their emergence may portend a “hardening of the battle lines” within the Catholic Church regardless of who wins the presidency this November.According to Weigel, Kmiec argues that Obama sounds more Catholic on issues such as the family wage, health-care costs and the war in Iraq and “comes reasonably close”...

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)."

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...

How did Newsweek convince Gov. Sarah Palin to pose with a rifle for its cover? Simple. It didn't. Instead, it used an archive (fancy speak for old) stock photo of her taken back in June 2002 and used it for the cover without her knowledge. However, to the magazine's credit, it did not try to hide the fact that it's a stock photo, even printing circa 2002 on the cover and again referencing the date in editor Jon Meacham's letter entitled "The Palin Problem." So that makes it OK. Right? Or maybe not? What do you think? Hey, is that...

As your humble correspondent noted earlier today, one needs to have some training in reading liberal tea leaves in order to determine which candidate actually wins presidential debates. However, in the case of this Newsweek article, written by associate editor Andrew Romano, absolutely no such training is needed. The title flat out tells us: "McCain Won." However there is also one highly laughable caveat added on: "But Will It Matter?" First Romano tells us why he thinks McCain won (emphasis mine): Tonight, John McCain was the more effective combatant.

Borrowing from the nickname for a federal earmark that would have built a multi-million dollar bridge for an Alaska town of 50 people, Newsweek's Mark Hosenball offers readers of the September 29 print magazine a look at "[Gov. Sarah] Palin's Pipeline to Nowhere." Hosenball suggests that Palin's $500-million "principal achievement" as governor "might never be built after all." But while the headline evokes images of the "Bridge to Nowhere," this isn't a case of government waste as much as it is of the endless red tape of lawsuits.: Approximately half of the proposed pipeline would run through Canada; native tribes...

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...

Whether or not Sarah Palin helps John McCain win the election, her greatest work may already be behind her. She’s exposed the feminist con job. Don’t take my word for it. Feminists have been screaming like stuck pigs 24/7 since Palin was announced as McCain’s running mate. (Are pig metaphors completely verboten now?) Feminist author Cintra Wilson writes in Salon (a house organ of the Angry Left) that the notion of Palin as vice president is “akin to ideological brain rape.” Presumably just before the nurse upped the dosage on her medication, Wilson continued, “Sarah Palin and her virtual burqa...

An Apostle of Alaska We know the outlines—the moose-hunting mom who juggles BlackBerrys and kids. But what does she believe? The real Sarah Palin. John McCain was not her dream pick. Only a year ago, when the Republican primaries were just beginning, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin told NEWSWEEK that she wasn't enthusiastic about anyone in the GOP field. McCain was languishing at 7 percent in the polls. Mike Huckabee was reduced to playing his electric bass to get attention. Palin, driving with a NEWSWEEK reporter along the highway from Anchorage to Wasilla, said she could understand why the country...

New research shows that voters give female governors significantly higher marks than their male counterparts on such qualities as honesty, cooperation and caring—as well as toughness. And at a time when the national debate has become poisonously partisan, governors like ... Palin, 43, are making their mark with a pragmatic, postpartisan approach to solving problems, a style that works especially well with the large numbers of independent voters in their respective states.In Alaska, Palin is challenging the dominant, sometimes corrupting, role of oil companies in the state's political culture. "The public has put a lot of faith in us," says...

In 1998, voters in a focus group were asked to close their eyes and imagine what a governor should look like. "They automatically pictured a man," says Barbara Lee, whose foundation promoting women's political advancement sponsored the survey. "The kind you see in those portraits hanging in statehouse hallways." They most certainly didn't visualize Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, a former beauty-pageant winner, avid hunter, snowmobiler and mother of four who was elected to her state's highest office last November. In Alaska, Palin is challenging the dominant, sometimes corrupting, role of oil companies in the state's political culture. "The public has...

McCain presidential campaign strategist Steve Schmidt went on the record with the Washington Post's Howard Kurtz today, revealing the depths to which the mainstream media has sunk in their efforts to destroy the family of Republican vice presidential pick Alaska Governor Sarah Palin.Schmidt said that the campaign has been deluged with demands from reporters that the Palin family submit to DNA testing to assuage baseless rumors promulgated by the Democratic party's favorite website, the Daily Kos.Schmidt accused the media of being "on a mission to destroy" Sarah Palin.Kurtz writes that Markos Moulitsas, the founder of the Daily Kos, believes the...

Fred Thompson is a talented actor, but even he couldn't conceal the fact that he thinks John McCain's new running mate, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, is something of a gamble--albeit a gamble that going's to pay off. "No nominee that I've ever heard of has had all the boxes checked," he confessed this afternoon during lunch with NEWSWEEK's convention team here at the Crowne Plaza Hotel in downtown St. Paul, referring to Palin's rather skimpy resume. "Whether she can survive those liabilities depends on things that haven't happened yet. John McCain has lot riding on this. I think she'll do...

A Liberal’s LamentTo win, Obama must convince the country that he is a man of substance, not just style. History suggests this won't be easy.

McCain's admirers, and they are legion, think of him as a man of valor... whose evident obsession with the virtues of honor, courage, faith and duty make him an ideal soldier of freedom to keep the watches of the night against terrorist enemies, and to stand fast in Iraq. His foes, and they, too, are legion, would like to cast him as a relic of a long-ago era whose... time has passed. [snip] Neither caricature, however, has the man who will accept the Republican nomination...exactly right.

Right now, much of the political world is obsessing over a series of new polls indicating that the gap between Barack Obama and John McCain is shrinking.A just-released Quinnipiac survey, for example, shows McCain cutting Obama’s lead from nine points (50%-41%) to five (47%-42%), while the latest LA Times/Bloomberg sounding pegs Obama’s edge at a mere two points (45%-43%)--down from 12 points (49% to 37%) last month. The new numbers from Reuters/Zogby even have McCain ahead by five (46%-41%). But according to Tom Holbrook, professor of political science at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and author of "Do Campaigns Matter?", these...

Greg Osberg, Newsweek’s president and worldwide publisher, is leaving the Washington Post Company, FOLIO: has learned. Osberg told FOLIO: Tuesday that he plans to stay on at Newsweek until early fall. No successor has been named, though Jon Meacham, the magazine’s editor, would figure to be a prime candidate. A Washington Post Company spokesperson said the decision would be made by Newsweek. A spokesperson for Newsweek did not immediately return a request seeking comment. Osberg joined Newsweek in 1990 as associate advertising director, then vice president/associate publisher. He left Newsweek in 1997 to become president of sales and marketing at...

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...

Just because we all sin against the environment doesn't mean we should believe every "green" idea To get a sense of how well-intentioned people can lose their bearings in the sea of green hype, consider the case of Fiji Water. With its bottles featuring images of pristine tropical flowers, the Fiji company started to worry when critics began bashing the environmental impact of water bottles, which will pile up in landfills for thousands of years. It got more worried when it became fashionable for consumers to calculate the carbon footprint of the products they buy—the amount of greenhouse gas emitted...

There's a little gem of Newsweek's embarrasing polling history buried under the perpetual poll sucker Howard Fineman's latest piece. http://www.newsweek.com/id/143258/output/print But nothing like in 1984. That was the most embarrassing example of the latter kind of survey. It predates PSR but remains seared into our institutional memory. The day the Democratic convention ended in San Francisco in 1984, the Newsweek poll showed Walter Mondale 18 points ahead of President Ronald Reagan. Mondale ended up getting clobbered, 49 states to one. This is pretty good, can somebody dig out this poll? I'd love to see.

I caught a bit of "The Factor" on TV. Dick Morris was talking about his new book (don't recall the title). In discussing the book, Morris mentioned the Society of Professional Journalists, which has established explicit guidelines for members - guidelines that affect the manner in which the "news" is presented to a largely unsuspecting public. For example, on this page http://spj.org/blog/blogs/diversity/archive/2008/06/23/20797.aspx the SPJ explains why one should not use the term "illegal immigrant". A sample: Both national and local media regularly refer to undocumented immigrants as illegal immigrants, or the most inflamatory phrase, illegal aliens (as if they came...

The hundreds of drones cruising over Iraq and Afghanistan have changed war forever."The whole art of war consists of getting at what is on the other side of the hill," said the Duke of Wellington, conqueror of Napoleon at Waterloo. In the murky kind of fight that marks modern warfare against terrorists and guerrillas, knowing what's on the other side of the hill—or inside a building—takes on a whole new urgency and meaning. Lt. Col. Scott Williams, who leads a unit of Apache helicopters in Baghdad, is in the business of "servicing" targets, by which he means anything from blowing...

<p>I'm no Brent Bozell or Bernard Goldberg, but I know undisclosed media bias when I see it.</p> <p>After reading Newsweek's hit piece on Attorney General John Ashcroft, it occurred to me that the publication should consider changing its name to Opinionweek. Or is that name taken?</p>

<p>Some of the media elite have found that Karl Rove in his new role as a commentator is, to their apparent astonishment, a pretty good guy. Rove is now a FOX News contributor and also writes for the Wall Street Journal and Newsweek. The New York Times quotes Newsweek editor Jon Meacham as saying the former Bush political strategist is getting positive reviews from the staff.</p>

This is why the Obamarama is so disheartening. When a Black REP comes down the pike he or she is demeaned by the very liberals who scream for equality and equal representation for all. Or worse, they are painted with the sell out or “Uncle Tom” (thanks Spike Lee) brush. I was still in college during the shameless Clarence Thomas hearings but even then (in my more liberal leaning days) I saw them for the “modern day lynching” that they were. People think it funny that Lt. Gov. Michael Steele has to dodge Oreo cookies hurled his way at debates....

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...

NBC's "Today" show invited on "Newsweek International" editor Fareed Zakaria to promote his book "The Post-American World," on Monday's show and during his segment the author depicted the United States as a nation in decline as he declared the "era" of "'American exceptionalism' is over." As examples of America's declining standing in the world the "Newsweek" editor cited such facts as China now having the "Largest ferris wheel in the world," Minneapolis' "Mall of America" no longer being the largest in the world and Macau having surpassed Las Vegas in the size of their casinos.

Americans are glum at the moment. No, I mean really glum. In April, a new poll revealed that 81 percent of the American people believe that the country is on the "wrong track." In the 25 years that pollsters have asked this question, last month's response was by far the most negative. Other polls, asking similar questions, found levels of gloom that were even more alarming, often at 30- and 40-year highs. There are reasons to be pessimistic—a financial panic and looming recession, a seemingly endless war in Iraq, and the ongoing threat of terrorism. But the facts on the...

For any spiritually minded, up-wardly mobile African-American living in Chicago in the mid-1980s, the Trinity United Church of Christ was—and still is—the place to be. That's what drew Oprah Winfrey, a recent Chicago transplant, to the church in 1984. She was eager to bond with the movers and shakers in her new hometown's black community. But she also admired Trinity United's ambitious outreach work with the poor, and she took pride in upholding her Southern grandmother's legacy of involvement with traditional African-American houses of worship. Winfrey was a member of Trinity United from 1984 to 1986, and she continued to...

Want to see how the mainstream media views Fox News? Look no further than Newsweek's Howard Fineman and the way he thinks the Bush administration uses the network. Fineman, who is Newsweek magazine's senior Washington correspondent and a regular on MSNBC, told an audience at the Politics & Prose Bookstore in Washington, D.C. on May 1 that if you want to know what the Bush administration has in store for Iran, keep your eye on Fox News. "Now about Iran," Fineman said. "I think there's no doubt they're [the Bush administration] looking to see what can be done there and...

The Washington Post Co. on Friday reported a 39 percent drop in first quarter profit, hurt by an early retirement program charge at Newsweek and a continued loss of revenue from its newspapers. The Washington-based corporation said earnings fell to $38.8 million, or $4.08 per share, compared with $63.9 million, or $6.70 per share, a year earlier. The company said revenue climbed 8 percent to $1.06 billion from $985.6 million. Quarterly results included a $15.3 million, or $1.60 per share, expense related to Newsweek's early retirement program. Even excluding the costs of the retirement program, earnings fell well below the...

It’s been 10 years since the Monica Lewinsky scandal broke. But the way it broke changed the way the news cycle functioned and has had a profound impact on the business of media. In 1998, Newsweek’s Michael Isikoff leaked the Lewinsky story to Matt Drudge’s Drudge Report. The story took off from there, and the rest is history. But a decade later, Isikoff said he doesn’t think Drudge is the player he once was. “I’d say he is much less of a factor than he was five years ago,” Isikoff said. “I think he has lost a little bit of...

The weekly newsmagazines have been declared dinosaurs as far back as the late 1980s. But now that 111 employees at Washington Post Co.'s Newsweek have taken buyouts, including many longtime editors, it's clear that their cultures are finally being blown up and reinvented. And some say that's not such a bad thing. The employees at Newsweek, making up around 20% of the staff, last week accepted a buyout offer that includes months of salary, years of health insurance, and in some cases, a contract with Newsweek. However generous-sounding, the buyout marks a significant round of bloodletting in the newsmagazine business,...

Some 50 delegates were reportedly poised to unite behind Barack Obama if he had won by even 1 point in Texas. He lost the popular vote by 100,000 ballots, and now we learn that 100,000 Republicans voted for Hillary Clinton, probably not because of some change in party allegiance but because they thought she would be the easier candidate to beat. This kind of strategic voting often backfires (think Ralph Nader). The Texas crossovers are winners. By helping to prolong the Democratic race, they can claim credit for weakening the eventual nominee, whoever it turns out to be. Obama has...