MSM anti-military lies exposed again in Afghanistan

Anti-war, anti-military media leftwingnuts make me ashamed to admit I spent 30+ years as a photojournalist, reporter and editor for newspapers. I guess I should take the AA approach, "I'm John Myers and I'm a reporter. It's been 1,456 days since I wrote a news article."

Cases in point, among many current, is the Associated Press decision to publish a photo of a dying Marine in Afghanistan, despite the wishes of the Marine's parents and even ignoring a plea from Secretary of Defense Robert Gates for "common decency." The AP ain't got none of that.

And then there's the New York Times reporter who rushed to the scene of an attack on the Taliban in Afghanistan where U.S. and German troops allegedly killed "innocent civilians." The Taliban has told that same old lie so many times since the war started, you'd think maybe the clueless media would finally stop believing it, but they believe it because they want to believe it.

And when the Taliban kidnapped the NYT reporter, guess who came to his rescue? British commando troops rescued his sorry carcass, but in the process one of the British troops was killed. But the NYT's rescue story focuses on the reporter's translator who was killed in the rescue instead of the British soldier who gave his life. I refuse to link to the NYT, but here's the gist of the story from The Washington Times.

KABUL -- British commandos freed a New York Times reporter early Wednesday from Taliban captives who kidnapped him over the weekend in northern Afghanistan, but one of the commandos and a Times' translator were killed in the rescue, officials said.

Reporter Stephen Farrell was taken hostage along with his translator in the northern province of Kunduz on Saturday. German commanders had ordered U.S. jets to drop bombs on two hijacked fuel tankers, causing a number of civilian casualties, and reporters traveled to the area to cover the story.

So what about those "civilian casualties" claimed by the Taliban? Same old lie told once again.

Here's the facts about that from The Weekly Standard blog by Ulf Gartzke.

Friday’s deadly air strike on two Taliban-hijacked tanker trucks, which was called in by German Bundeswehr forces and carried out by USAF fighter jets, has prompted a sudden barrage of domestic and international criticism vis-à-vis Berlin’s handling of this particular incident and, by implication, the Afghan mission in general. At a press conference in Berlin Tuesday, German Chancellor Angela Merkel was unusually blunt in hitting back at her critics -– including key NATO allies like the United States and France –- and made it clear that she opposes making premature judgments and jumping to conclusions before all results of the on-going military investigation into potential civilian casualties, etc. are known. Just to recap, the Bundeswehr had called in the night-time air strikes after a source said that the Taliban would use the hijacked tankers in suicide attack on the nearby German military base in northern Afghanistan’s Kunduz region.

In an interesting development, SPIEGEL Online just published an interview with Kunduz governor Mohammed Omar who strongly defended the Bundeswehr’s actions. Governor Omar singled out the German top commander in Kunduz, Col. Georg Klein, by stating that he “made the right decision at the right time and acted in a very level-headed way” when calling in the U.S. airstrike.

Omar visited the German military base in Kunduz on Monday. He said he didn’t know how many civilians were killed in the air strike. “But the Germans have the support of the population. We didn’t receive any of the complaints one usually gets in cases where civilians are killed.”

Eyewitnesses said there were 60 armed Taliban on the scene along with 15 to 20 other people. “But at half past two at night, no normal civilians would dare to go out in this area, which is more than four kilometers from the nearest village,” said Omar.

Anyone in the vicinity of the fuel tankers must have been criminal or a supporter of the Taliban, he said. The US criticism of the attack appeared to be a gut reaction, he added.

Gut reaction? How about a gutless reaction? The entire mainstream media ain't got enough guts among 'em to string a fiddle. And they cause a gut reaction with me. 'Scuse me while I go barf.

Have you seen 'How Obama Got Elected'?

Here's the video 1.4 million people have seen on youtube and is enraging the nutroots. I've heard people talking about how ridiculous it is but I didn't realize it was enraging the lefties so. Fun!

Stay tuned for the full-length documentary, "Media Malpractice... How Obama Got Elected"

Amanda Carpenter at Townhall.com says the video has got the nutroots frothing at the gills. She said the video author had no idea he'd get such a reaction, but he's having loads of fun.

"Ziegler argues that he never intended to make Obama supporters look bad. Rather, they could not answer the questions because the media misinformed them throughout the election. He admits his interviews were not “scientific” but he did commission Zogby to conduct a poll asking the same questions. The Zogby poll found 57.4 percent of Obama supporters could not correctly say which party controls Congress. Only 6.2 percent of those same supporters failed to identify Palin as having a pregnant daughter. See poll results here."

Mainstream media's last gasp of desperation

I left newspapers for the last time in 2004 after a career of some 30-odd years (and some of them were very odd) as a reporter, photojournalist and editor and I was always odd man out -- a Christian conservative amongst a sea of atheist, socialist, leftwing liberals.

So I can sympathize entirely with print journalist Michael S. Malone's admission that he's ashamed of his profession for the overwhelmingly obvious bias being shown by pro-Obama mainstream media in: Editing Their Way to Oblivion: Journalism Sacrificed For Power and Pensions

The sheer bias in the print and television coverage of this election campaign is not just bewildering, but appalling. And over the last few months I’ve found myself slowly moving from shaking my head at the obvious one-sided reporting, to actually shouting at the screen of my television and my laptop computer.

But worst of all, for the last couple weeks, I’ve begun — for the first time in my adult life — to be embarrassed to admit what I do for a living. A few days ago, when asked by a new acquaintance what I did for a living, I replied that I was “a writer”, because I couldn’t bring myself to admit to a stranger that I’m a journalist...

But nothing, nothing I’ve seen has matched the media bias on display in the current Presidential campaign. Republicans are justifiably foaming at the mouth over the sheer one-sidedness of the press coverage of the two candidates and their running mates. But in the last few days, even Democrats, who have been gloating over the pass - no, make that shameless support - they’ve gotten from the press, are starting to get uncomfortable as they realize that no one wins in the long run when we don’t have a free and fair press. I was one of the first people in the traditional media to call for the firing of Dan Rather - not because of his phony story, but because he refused to admit his mistake - but, bless him, even Gunga Dan thinks the media is one-sided in this election.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I’m not one of those people who think the media has been too hard on, say, Gov. Palin, by rushing reportorial SWAT teams to Alaska to rifle through her garbage. This is the Big Leagues, and if she wants to suit up and take the field, then Gov. Palin better be ready to play. The few instances where I think the press has gone too far - such as the Times reporter talking to Cindy McCain’s daughter’s MySpace friends - can easily be solved with a few newsroom smackdowns and temporary repostings to the Omaha Bureau.

No, what I object to (and I think most other Americans do as well) is the lack of equivalent hardball coverage of the other side - or worse, actively serving as attack dogs for Senators Obama and Biden. If the current polls are correct, we are about to elect as President of the United States a man who is essentially a cipher, who has left almost no paper trail, seems to have few friends (that at least will talk) and has entire years missing out of his biography. That isn’t Sen. Obama’s fault: his job is to put his best face forward. No, it is the traditional media’s fault, for it alone (unlike the alternative media) has had the resources to cover this story properly, and has systematically refused to do so.

Why, for example to quote McCain’s lawyer, haven’t we seen an interview with Sen. Obama’s grad school drug dealer - when we know all about Mrs. McCain’s addiction? Are Bill Ayers and Tony Rezko that hard to interview? All those phony voter registrations that hard to scrutinize? And why are Senator Biden’s endless gaffes almost always covered up, or rationalized, by the traditional media?

The absolute nadir (though I hate to commit to that, as we still have two weeks before the election) came with Joe the Plumber. Middle America, even when they didn’t agree with Joe, looked on in horror as the press took apart the private life of an average person who had the temerity to ask a tough question of a Presidential candidate. So much for the Standing Up for the Little Man, so much for Speaking Truth to Power, so much for Comforting the Afflicted and Afflicting the Comfortable, and all of those other catchphrases we journalists used to believe we lived by.

So what happened to "objective journalism"? Malone reveals who the real culprits are, the "wizards" behind the curtain pulling the levers.

Who are the real villains in this story of mainstream media betrayal?

The editors. The men and women you don’t see; the people who not only decide what goes in the paper, but what doesn’t; the managers who give the reporters their assignments and lay-out the editorial pages. They are the real culprits.

Why? I think I know, because had my life taken a different path, I could have been one: Picture yourself in your 50s in a job where you’ve spent 30 years working your way to the top, to the cockpit of power . . . only to discover that you’re presiding over a dying industry. The Internet and alternative media are stealing your readers, your advertisers and your top young talent. Many of your peers shrewdly took golden parachutes and disappeared. Your job doesn’t have anywhere near the power and influence it did when your started your climb. The Newspaper Guild is too weak to protect you any more, and there is a very good chance you’ll lose your job before you cross that finish line, ten years hence, of retirement and a pension.

In other words, you are facing career catastrophe -and desperate times call for desperate measures. Even if you have to risk everything on a single Hail Mary play. Even if you have to compromise the principles that got you here. After all, newspapers and network news are doomed anyway - all that counts is keeping them on life support until you can retire.

And then the opportunity presents itself: an attractive young candidate whose politics likely matches yours, but more important, he offers the prospect of a transformed Washington with the power to fix everything that has gone wrong in your career. With luck, this monolithic, single-party government will crush the alternative media via a revived Fairness Doctrine, re-invigorate unions by getting rid of secret votes, and just maybe, be beholden to people like you in the traditional media for getting it there.

And besides, you tell yourself, it’s all for the good of the country . . .

Been there, done that. Wrote the stories that never saw print because they died on the editor's spike. Laid out the pages and wrote the headlines that got rejected. And shouted "Glory Halleleujah! Free at last, free at last!" when I left that last newspaper job behind forever.

Exhibit 1: Wolf at Blackfive.net has a story about Obama's mistress which he says the media knows but won't report, audio podcast here. And photos of the mistress are here. The prosecution rests.

Biden gets asked tough questions; Obama pulls plug

Joe Biden gets asked a tough question by a Florida TV reporter. Panic! Pull the plug!

The Obama campaign whined about WFTV being "unprofessional" when it dared to dish out some tough questions to Vice President hopeful, Joe Biden.

The Obama spokesperson issued this statement about the interview:

"There's nothing wrong with tough questions, but reporters have the very important job of sharing the truth with the public -- not misleading the American people with false information. Senator Biden handled the interview well; however, the anchor was completely unprofessional. Senator Biden's wife is not running for elected office, and there are many other stations in the Orlando television market that would gladly conduct a respectful and factual interview with her."

"This cancellation is non-negotiable, and further opportunities for your station to interview with this campaign are unlikely, at best for the duration of the remaining days until the election."

How's this for a preview of life under President Barack Obama?

Palin: Yes, of course Muslims are welcome in the party

American News Project explores the MSM's constant refrain that the McCain-Palin campaign is anti-Muslim. Bogus as usual. Worth the 5 minutes to watch as a reminder how slanted the media is pro-Obama and pro-Muslim as well. But we must never question their patriotism, right?

French archive releases footage of McCain POW interview

French media interview POW John McCain in 1968 while he was a resident of the Hanoi Hilton. He's lying on a cot recovering either from the wounds from when he was shot down as a Navy pilot or the torture he endured in the prison. But knowing the video would be broadcast back home, he puts on as brave a face as possible for his wife and family, even lying that he's "being treated well."

Watching the Palin media watchers

Bob Owens of Confederate Yankee blog reports for Pajamas Media on Sarah Palin's rally in Greenville, NC, at the campus of East Carolina University. But though Owens reports Palin gave a rousing speech, his main reason for being there was to watch the media's coverage.

7:27 PM The traveling media stampedes in, laptops fired up and ready to go. Palin’s motorcade must have arrived.

7:32 PM Palin comes out, and the crowd loves her. Warms up with “Sportstown, USA” and ECU’ football’s upsets over West Virginia and Virginia Tech… “you know something about underdogs.” Mentions Biden: Biden gets booed. Good speech so far, steady, and well delivered.

7:38 PM “Despite what Barack Obama says”… Boos, “Nobama!” McCain will give healthcare tax credits to help you pay for coverage. It’s broadly the same speech that she gave this morning in Florida, but she seems to be feeding off the crowd — giving off a lot of energy, considering how long her day has been. I can’t make it out, but several of the traveling journalists have the same screens up on their laptops. I’m guessing that it is a copy of the speech, and they’re making sure she’s not going off script.

7:43 PM Looking down under the camera crew setup, I notice a scowl on the faces of a couple of crew members when Palin thanked the military. I hope that her comments weren’t the cause of the dirty looks. One guy in the traveling crew packs up his laptop and leaves… I guess he’s confident he won’t hear anything new, and perhaps he’s right as far as the speech goes, but what about the crowd? Don’t they care about the crowd reaction? Apparently not.

7:48 PM Lots of press are checking their email and websurfing now, with the The Trail and Bloglines being two sites I can make out immediately. Several others are frantically typing away on Blackberries… When Palin gets to line about Obama starting his career in the living room of a domestic terrorist, crowd loves it. The media looks around briefly, then seems to lose interest in Palin.

7:53 PM Angry-looking, local female journalist in front of me is pounding on her keyboard. I could make out normal notes, plus a comment about Palin: “sounds like a robot, but the crowd loves her.” Hmmm… maybe it’s you, ma’am? A few other media are now websurfing — Yahoo News and the News and Observer’s Under the Dome blog.

7:56 PM MSBNC’s First Read joins the reading list. Somebody else is on a site with a color scheme and layout that looks suspiciously like the Huffington Post. An Asian man — presumably a journalist — looks at the crowd with an arched eyebrow, but I don’t know why. I heard him speak later to his companion, but can’t make out the language.

7:58 PM The speech is now over, and Palin walks down into the crowd to shake hands with folks on the floor. Shania Twain’s “She’s Not Just a Pretty Face” plays her off. Nice touch.

There were no protests or hecklers.

“Watching the watchers” is an interesting game to play. The media is used to being the ones deciding the story, but don’t want to be the story themselves. I expected some of what I saw last night — the taking of phone calls during speeches and the sometimes fevered text messaging during the speech — but I must tell you I was surprised when some of the press simply stopped paying attention shortly after Palin made the Obama-Bill Ayers connection in the speech. They appeared to have been waiting for another “gotcha” moment, hoping for someone in the crowd to threaten Obama or call him a terrorist.

Some of the web surfing during the speech was no doubt legitimate. I suspect both MSNBC’s [6] First Read and and Washington Post’s [7] The Trail were being updated from the press row, and the authors were merely checking to make sure that what they posted came across correctly. The journalist reading Bloglines , a news feed aggregator, may have also been doing precisely what he should. But the Huffington Post?

At least it wasn’t Kos.

But the guy who packed up and left the press row after Palin got past the Obama-Ayers connection when he didn’t hear anything inflammatory from the crowd was a point of concern. So was the fact that so many journalists in front of me — perhaps a third of them, or even a little more — simply began tuning Palin and the crowd out after that point.

I understand the life on the campaign trail must be a grueling marathon of unending travel and 14-hour days. It has to wear everyone down, and people start to cut corners. The press allows themselves this as long as they get the broad strokes correct enough.

It does seem hypocritical, though, that these same frayed journalists then attack politicians on the same schedule, for even the smallest gaffe.

It’s a clear double standard.

But then, we’re getting used to that.

Shotgun stupidity strikes media -- Twice in one day

Those multiple levels of rigorous fact-checking seem to have failed the media once again. This time it's a combination of Sarah Palin and guns, always an explosive mix loved by the MSM.

Newsweek labored long and hard trying to find a photo of Sarah Palin with a gun to use on the cover of their "hit" piece titled The Palin Problem on the VP nominee the MSM just loves to hate.

This is the best they would find, from 2002, and they used it without Sarah's knowledge or permission. But what the hey, it's a good photo and contrary to what the idiots at Newsweek think, linking Sarah to guns helps a lot more than it hurts. The anti-gun crowd ain't going to vote for her in the first place but a photo like that just makes us gun nuts love her even more.

And there are a few armed liberals out there.

But here's where the stupidity kicks in. Elizabeth Snead's L.A. Times newspaper blog is accurately titled "The Dish Rag," and this gun expert used the cover photo with the headline: How did Newsweek get Sarah Palin to pose with a rifle?

They didn't. Mainly because that ain't a rifle. It's a shotgun, as any self-respecting gun nut can see in a flash.

And then the poor gun-ignorant newsblogger makes it even worse by putting the other foot in her mouth.

Hey, is that even the right way to hold a rifle? Can't you shoot your foot off like that?

No, Elizabeth, you can't shoot your foot off with a shotgun with the breech open and obviously unloaded. In fact, the NRA (of which Sarah is a lifetime member, God bless her) teaches that method as the safest possible carry for a shotgun in the field. All around can see the shotgun is open and unloaded and if by some miracle is should accidentally discharge (impossible when it's unloaded and open) the barrels are pointed to the ground where it will do no harm.

Ace reported this little gem of media stupidity and adds:

That's the over-under, break-open, breech-loading 12 gauge sort of rifle.

These are the people who presume to set the gun control policy for this country.

The same press corps which breathlessly invokes "semiautomatic pistol" as words of talismanic import, as if they're describing exotic weaponry on the level of "phased plasma rifle in deh forty watt range."

Thanks to Ace Queen from Free Republic.

Heh: All the comments on the LAT Blog are telling her the same thing. Though one guy claims it's a side-by-side shotgun. I think it's over-under, as most say.

Anyway, this was a funny comment:

The way she is pointing that loaded Machine Gun proves she is racist.

Posted by: Journalism Student | October 08, 2008 at 06:30 PM

Hey Journalism Student! You're Noo Yawk Times material, keep on hitting those books. Or toking on that bong or drinking Obama Kool-Aid or whatever you're doing in school. And that ain't no "loaded Machine Gun" or even any kind of machine gun, you idiot. And while I'm ranting, don't you pukes ever get tired of saying everything a Republican does is racist? Guess not.

I agree with Ace that it's an over-under shotgun, I think that's obvious. It might be a 12 gauge, but I'm not sure about that with these 61-year-old eyes. Ace is a lot younger than me.

In other stupid-media shotgun news, The Peninsula Daily News in Washington state reports a big scoop: Woman shot in leg by her stove

SEKIU — Cory Davis, 56, had just finished stoking her cast-iron stove to heat her home when something inside it exploded.

With a loud bang, she was struck on the inside of her left calf.

"I kept thinking, 'geeze that was one fast hot coal flying at me,'" she said, with a laugh.

"But it wasn't a coal."

It was part of a 22-gauge shotgun shell that had been accidentally placed in the stove along with some newspaper.

Davis said a case of the ammo had spilled in her home, located at Hoko-Ozette Road, about a month ago.

She thinks one shell was in newspaper she had used to light the stove.

Two teeny little errors here. First, the stove didn't shoot her. The shotgun shell did. Second, I'd never heard of a 22 gauge shotgun so I googled it. Only good hit I got, admist some myspace BS about webpage themes and other assorted junk, was for a Hudson Bay 22 Gauge Percussion shotgun, a genuine antique.

Percussion, for you non-gun-nut readers, means a blackpowder muzzle-loader fired with percussion caps, sorta like those cap guns your PC parents would never let you play with.

It most definitely does not fire 22 gauge shotgun "shells" which are modern, breech-loading, self-contained charges of powder and lead pellets. The only other firearm related hit I got on 22 gauge was a QA page at Outdoor Help where a 13-year-old kid asked about using one for turkey hunting. The expert said he'd never heard of 22 gauge and recommended the kid get a 20 gauge.

A little bit of knowledge is dangerous, especially when it comes to media reporting on guns.

The Onion does political reporting at mall shooting

It's a parody by The Onion on media "horserace" political reporting mixed in with a mass murder by a mall shooter, so if you don't like guns, don't watch. But since this is God, Guns & Grits blog, and I like it, here she goes.

Gunman Kills 15 Potential Voters In Crucial Swing State

Sarah's A Fighter! MSM might as well give up

Palin gets a pass from MSM?! Blindness or Idiocy?

Roger Cohen of The Washington Post has gone way beyond Obama Kool-aid. He's been guzzling the genuine Jim Jones Fake Messiah Juice.

The headline of his latest column is a coffee spitter, so if you're reading this with a mouthful, swallow now. Ready? Media Gives Palin a Pass

Seriously. What universe does this blind, deluded idiot live in? Packs of media, wolves and lawyers (same crowd) have been sifting the weeds in Alaska since McCain picked Sarah Palin as his VP lo many weeks ago, breathlessly blabbing any insane dribbling from the leftwing nutroots as if it was exhaustively fact-checked truth and telling us all this successful wife, mother and governor is at least one step below Neanderthal woman. And Cohen has the gobsmacking audacity to claim the MSM is giving her a pass?! I know where he got that audacity.

Cohen begins by noting William Kristol's NY Times column which quoted Palin saying she does not hold the MSM in high regard. You think?

Cohen said he agrees because the MSM is allegedly giving her a pass and then writes several paragraphs of huge whoppers to "prove" it.

But what seems to have gotten Cohen's knickers into the tightest wad is how unfairly poor ol' Hillary was treated by the media. Boo hoo.

Since I began with the Times' conservative columnist of the moment, I will end with its conservative columnist of years past -- the estimable William Safire. Back in 1996, he called Hillary Clinton "a congenital liar." It was a head-snapping characterization that, alas for Clinton, has defined her for the ages and which she stubbornly vindicates from time to time.

Whoa! Just when did Hillary "stubbornly vindicate" herself from her liar's reputation? When she kept repeating the Kosovo sniper tale which the MSM swallowed hook, line and sinker until some right-wing bloggers blew the whistle? Big Bill and his lovely wife Bruno held the world record for whoppers (Political Division) until along came this nobody who never run nothing but his mouth and took the title away from 'em.

But since Cohen knows his spin about Palin lying won't float, he comes up with a worst offense -- she transgressed via a blink of her eye.

But what about Palin? Can you imagine the reaction of the press corps if (Hillary) Clinton had given the audience a hi-ya-sailor wink?

...Ah, but the scorn, approbation and ridicule that would have descended on Clinton -- I can just imagine the Journal editorial -- have been spared Palin. Much of the mainstream media, grading on a curve suitable for a parrot -- "greed and corruption, greed and corruption, greed and corruption " -- gave her a passing grade or better. I agree with Palin. It's the mainstream media that flunked.

Whoda thunk a little bitty wink would get a fella so hot and bothered? Why you'd think Palin had given Cohen that wink. In his dreams.

Sarah destroys Biden and the MSM myth

Bill Dyer understands the significance of Sarah Palin's demolishment of Joe Biden and the myth the mainstream media is still trying to spread about her supposed lack of qualifications.

Almost without exception, every bit of the analysis and punditry you read or hear from mainstream media sources — including even new media outlets like the major cable news channels — will have missed the most important point about Thursday night's vice presidential debate. They all think it was close, and they all think that some of the things Slow Joe Biden said actually mattered.

To non-sophisticates (which isn't an insult, by the way, and most definitely isn't a synonym for "unsophisticated") — to ordinary people of every economic class, occupation, gender, religion, and even political persuasion — from outside the Beltway and the bi-coastal Blue-State media enclaves, the defining moment of the debate was when a young governor from a remote, sparsely populated state strode confidently across the national stage, stuck out her hand for a firm handshake, looked a silver-haired senator of 36 years' tenure squarely in the eye, and said: "Nice to meet you. Hey, can I call you Joe?"

At that moment, the champagne bubble of the elites popped. For millions of viewers (but almost no national pundits), the juxtaposition telegraphed a clear message: "She's not one of them, she's one of us. But she isn't awed by him. She's not afraid."

Read the whole thing.

Sarah Palin vs. MSM, the BS piles higher

Carol Platt Liebau at Townhall.com says it well. The mainstream media is back at again, spinning away and trying to convince the American public that Sarah Palin didn't slobberknock Joe Biden at last night's debate. But this time they couldn't leave all the good stuff Sarah said on the cutting room floor and take a few quotes out of context. This time the people saw Sarah live and she won the day despite the Obama Jr. moderator who came from the so-called mainstream media.

As Carol says, it's like what the lawyer said to the jury after they watched a video of his client committing murder:

Who Do You Believe: Us or Your Lying Eyes?

The MSM is busy today with "experts" and left-leaning commentators trying to convince Americans that Sarah Palin didn't perform as well as all of us know she did last night. Good luck to them. In a real sense, the Palin debate was the moment when the curtain was whisked away from the "Wizard of Media." What was revealed? A group of left-wing, elitist humbugs who have neither regard nor respect for "real Americans" -- regular people who believe in personal responsibility, right and wrong, and worship God rather than government. That's who Sarah Palin is, and with her unpretentious sincerity, her ability to show respect to Joe Biden without knuckling under to him, and her straightforward common sense, she showed that leadership in America needn't be predicated on Ivy League degrees or fancy pontification (contrary to the press bias). Good luck to the media trying to denigrate her again. Americans have seen who she is, and what she's made of. Further attempts to smear her as an ignorant, backwoods hick reveal nothing about Governor Palin -- and the world about those who are so desperate to hold the "regular people" of America at bay.

Amen.

Black preacher prays for Bristol Palin, blasts Obama

Obama's least-favorite preacher, The Honorable James David Manning, offers a prayer for Sarah Palin's pregnant teen daughter Bristol and has more than a few choice words for Obama and the mainstream media who cherish him. Manning is most definitely not like the not-rev. Wright!

Fear, Loathing & Laughter on the Dawson Trail

“On a Christmas day, we were mushing our way over the Dawson Trail…”

So goes “The Cremation of Sam McGee,” one of my favorite poems by one of my favorite poets, Robert Service, an Englishman from the previous century who was lured from civilization to “the land of gold” and joined the famous Klondike Gold Rush as miners flocked to faraway frozen Alaska.

Unless you’ve been hiding under a rock, you’ve been reading about the new Klondike Dirt Rush as the media and Obama’s wolves (same crowd) have mushed up to Alaska to try to find something, anything, that will derail the shooting political star of America’s favorite hockey mom, Gov. Sarah Palin.

Poor Maureen. The red-headed columnist from the Noo Yawk Times is part of the hit team the Obama press sent way up north to Alaska to dig dirt on Sarah. Must be getting crowded on the Klondike with mainstream media from all over the country joining Obama’s team of 30 wolves, lawyers, investigators and bean counters that the Wall Street Journal reports were “air-dropped” into Alaska to join the hunt for the elusive dirt on Sarah.

The results to date bring to mind that stupid symbol somebody in the Obama camp came up with, the two hands forming a big O. So far the score is a big fat zero for the MSM and Obama’s wolfpack and Sarah’s popularity rating is still at 80 percent in her home state, including the Alaskan Democrats. Plus according to the national polls, her numbers keep rising in all the rest of Obama’s “57 states.”

So score it “Sarah 57, Wolves 0.” And poor Maureen is finding less than zero in her search for somebody, anybody, to criticize homegirl Sarah.

I wandered through the Wal-Mart, which seemed almost as large as Wasilla, a town that is a soulless strip mall without sidewalks set beside a soulful mountain and lake.

Wal-Mart has all the doodads that Sarah must need in her career as a sportsman — Remingtons and “torture tested” riflescopes, game bags for caribou, machines that imitate rabbits and young deer and coyotes to draw your quarry in so you can shoot it, and machines to squish cows into beef jerky.

I talked to a Wal-Mart mom, Betty Necas, 39, wearing sweatpants and tattoos on her wrists.

She said she’s never voted, and was a teenage mom “like Bristol.” She likes Sarah because she’s “down home” but said Obama “gives me the creeps. Nothing to do with the fact that he’s black. He just seems snotty, and he looks weaselly.”

Ten Obama supporters in Wasilla braved taunts and drizzle to stand on a corner between McDonald’s and Pizza Hut. They complained that Sarah runs government like a vengeful fiefdom and held up signs. A guy with a bullhorn yelled out of a passing red car: “Go back to the city, you liberal Communists!”

At gatherings in The Last Frontier, pastors pray for reporters, drilling evokes cheers and Todd Palin is hailed as a guy who likes to burn fossil fuels.

I had many “Sarahs,” as her favorite skinny white mocha is now called, at the Mocha Moose. “I’ve seen her at 4 a.m. with no makeup,” said manager Karena Forster, “and she’s just as beautiful.”

Just a guess here, but I bet this was Maureen’s first visit to a Wal-Mart. Big scoop, they sell rifles at Wal-Mart! And the only Wal-Mart mom she finds who will actually talk to the snooty Noo Yawk writer is not only a Sarah supporter, but says Obama’s “creepy,” “snotty” and “looks weaselly.” Couldn’t have said it better myself.

Then she finally finds a lonely band of 10 Obama supporters standing in the rain on a street corner. (Talk about desperate for an interview, when Maureen’s willing to stand in the rain and mess up those lovely red locks, she’s getting really desperate.) But guess what? These Obama supporters ain’t even from Wasilla. They were probably trucked in by Obama’s wolves, just for the press.

The Wasilla “guy with a bullhorn” gives their game away when he yells at the Obamaites “Go back to the city, you liberal Communists!”

And those mean ol’ pastors in Wasilla, praying for reporters! How dare they! And First Dude Todd Palin, how dare he “burn fossil fuels”!

Finally, poor Maureen thinks she’s struck paydirt. The gal at the Mocha shop confides she’s seen Sarah “at 4 a.m. with no makeup.”

I bet Maureen really perked up at that tidbit, but then the Mocha gal spoiled that quote too by adding “and she’s just as beautiful.”

I also bet nobody ever said that about Maureen without makeup at 4 a.m. But I gotta give her credit, she had to write something to keep her job and when all she could find folks to say was good stuff about Sarah, she wrote that, too, along with her catty anti-Palin screech.

Meanwhile, Maureen’s co-worker Kim Severson is getting desperate, too. Pickings on Sarah dirt are so slim, Severson files a story from Alaska about, believe it or else, moose recipes, moose excrement ear rings, moose pizza and appetizers of “moose salami on a cracker.”

The MSM witch hunt on Palin has entered a new phase. It’s gone from ridiculous to despicable and now it’s into Monty Python mode.

I gotta admit I got pretty mad at the start when all the vicious venom started spewing from the left about Palin. But it’s gone past ridiculous to funny.

And I bet lots of other hockey-mom fans like me have started to laugh at the comedy of it all. Dangerous Dan McGrew is a hockey mom named Sarah.

And Sam McGee from Tennessee, who froze up solid and was stuffed into a hole in the glowing coals and cremated? Will that turn out to be Obama?

Well, to tell the truth, that bit of casting would be taking poetic license a step too far, but I’d spoil the punch line to “Sam McGee” if I explained why.

Palinmania worse than a media conspiracy

Wesley Pruden, editor emeritus at The Washington Times, is an old newspaper man like me, which is why I really liked his comment a week ago about the nastiness of the media campaign toward an amazingly ordinary, genuine hockey mom being attacked so savagely.

Barack Obama accuses John McCain of not "getting it." Sarah Palin says it's Sen. Obama who doesn't "get it." They're all wrong. It's the bloggers, the reporters, the pundits and the rest of the far-flung media that doesn't "get it." It's not the media's fault. There is no media conspiracy, vast or otherwise. The average reporter, correspondent, columnist, pundit or editor couldn't conspire with the entire Harvard Law School faculty to change the oil in his wife's car.

It's worse than a conspiracy. It's a consensus. The newsrooms of the agenda-setting newspapers, the television networks and the newsmagazines have become strongholds of the elites that Barack Obama, he of Harvard Law, insists he is not one of. The young men and women in the newsrooms of flyover country emulate the elites and sometimes dream of one day being one of them.

Once upon a time, we were just "newspapermen" - the word included two sexes, back when there were only two - and we were the sons and daughters of plumbers, firemen, shopkeepers, farmers, cops, steelworkers, over-the-road truckers and a lot of other men of toil and trouble. Most of us were veterans. Some of us were college graduates. Some of us were not. A few of us even went to church on Sunday. When we wrote about ordinary people, we didn't write about them as sociology. We were writing about our friends and our families, and there were hundreds of us across America.

Sarah Palin and her beliefs, her faith, her values, her on-the-job trials and household tribulations would not have seemed odd, or different, or strange to us. Nor would we have been surprised that Sarah Palin would touch the hearts of the Americans of flyover country. That's where we lived, too.

Like Pruden, I spent the huge majority of my working career in newspapers as a writer, photographer and editor. And left-wing idiocy is the “normal” there. There was a light sprinkling of conservatives in years gone by, but like Pruden, me and the dinosaurs, they’re gone.

‘God, Guns, Lipstick’ issues spark leftwing frenzy

William Kristol pens an op-ed piece for the New York Times that offers the best bird’s-eye view of this strange election season I’ve read so far. He calls the choices facing voters this year a “God, guns and lipstick” election. You’re either for it or against it, take your choice and vote on it.

The good news is that 2008 has been a thoroughly refreshing year. After two decades of Bush and Clinton and Bush presidencies, we’re getting change.

On the Democratic side, the Clinton machine supposedly couldn’t be beaten. It was. In the first real upset in either party’s nominating process in a long time, first-term senator Barack Obama mobilized new voters, volunteers and donors in a way that hadn’t been thought possible, and defeated Hillary Clinton.

Meanwhile, the Republican Party — which had nominated a Bush for president or vice president in six of the last seven elections — chose as its nominee a troublemaker who was George W. Bush’s main challenger in 2000 and his sharp critic for much of his administration. John McCain wasn’t on particularly good terms with either the G.O.P. establishment or the leaders of the conservative movement — yet he won. He then put on a Republican convention that barely acknowledged the existence of the current Republican administration.

And he chose as his running mate Sarah Palin, one of the least-known outsiders to be picked in modern times, and the first woman on a Republican ticket. This in turn sent other establishments into a frenzy.

Kristol explains why McCain’s Palin pick has created such “frenzies” in not only political establishments but also media, academics and feminists.

Is 2008 just a strange year, or is something big happening? Are we seeing one of America’s periodic political and cultural awakenings, one of our occasional, almost-convulsive democratic reactions to what is felt to be too great a distance between the people and their “establishments”? Such awakenings can be sudden and can come at once from different directions. They often have a theme in common, which is an indignant popular demand: “Stop speaking for us and start listening to us.”

We’re gonna get change, no matter which party wins control of the White House and Congress. Question is, which kind of change will we get?

We’re either going to make a sharp left turn toward socialism and bigger government or a sharp right turn toward “God, guns and lipstick.”

These three yardsticks offer the widest possible differences of viewpoints in the two presidential campaigns. McCain-Palin’s traditional church view of God and country vs. Obama’s 20 years in not-reverend Wright’s Black Liberation Theology church and his “God D---- America!” rants.

McCain-Palin’s long record of support for the 2^nd Amendment’s individual right to keep and bear arms vs. Obama and Biden’s gun-control record.

And the lipstick issue is just as stark between the two camps: women as feminists, career first, family last; or the working mom’s family first.

And believe it or else, Kristol finds agreement on Palin vs. Obama from that flaming red-headed liberal op-ed writer at the NYT, Maureen Dowd!

Sarah has single-handedly ushered out the “Sex and the City” era, and made the sexy new model for America a retro one — the glamorous Pioneer Woman, packing a gun, a baby and a Bible.

Her explosion onto the scene made Obama seem even more like a windy, wispy egghead.

Of course, Maureen really wasn’t trying to approve of anything Palin stands for or oppose anything Obama advocates, she somehow she let that pro-Palin, anti-Obama comment slip into her latest screech about how Sarah Palin threatens to bring about the end of the world as we know it.

But if Charlie Gibson can cherry-pick quotes out of context in his interview with Palin, I reserve the right to do the same with Maureen’s screech.

Maureen’s slip of the pen in her anti-Palin column is the classic definition of a political gaffe: “When a politician accidentally speaks the truth.”

Now if we could only get Maureen to read her column aloud on Youtube. That would make a great 30-second commercial for McCain-Palin.

We could call it “Pioneer Woman packing a gun, a baby and a Bible takes on the Windy, Wispy Egghead from Chicago.” Pioneer 1, Egghead 0.

Mercy, Maureen, well played! With friends like you, Obama doesn’t need any enemies. And with enemies like you, Palin needs no more friends.

But something smells sorta funny about Maureen agreeing with Bill Kristol. Is this another deep, dark plot hatched for a Hillary and Bill comeback?

When you're deep in a hole, stop digging

Some Hollywood star supposedly said, "I don't care what you write about me as long as you spell my name right." Guess the mainstream media and the leftwing nuts (same, same) never heard that pearl of wisdom. They've seen what five days of pit-bull attacks on VP pick Sarah Palin got them, a wave of interest in Palin that has turned her into the biggest political sensation since ... Obama. So what do they do? Get smart and call off the attack dogs? Oh no, they keep on slinging, digging their hole ever deeper, as they seek "dirt" on Palin.

It ain't working, so why do they keep it up? Two reasons are obvious. First, she threatens Obama's coronation, which the press has already reported is "inevitable," sorta like Hillary winning the nomination. And second, the press was totally blindsided when McCain kept his cards close to his vest and surprised the media as well as the rest of the nation with his Palin pick. Unlike Obama, who passes his daily talking points on every topic to the media (and they faithfully report them ver batim) McCain kept them in the dark on his VP selection process. And that is the cardinal crime in the media's eyes, getting scooped.

Jonah Goldberg explains this media insanity in Palin-Bashing Press Keeps Swinging and Missing.

One partial explanation for the feeding frenzy is the bowel-stewing fear among an Obamaphilic press corps that Palin might actually help McCain win.

But another part of the answer is that the press was simply surprised. Cockroaches scatter when shocked by a flipped light switch. Grizzly bears attack when startled. And when caught napping by big news, the press corps floods the zone. Editors scream at underlings who missed the story. Networks fret they'll be scooped. And all of a sudden, the norms and standards become a blur in the race to be first. In the case of Palin, the press vaulted over every principle and standard they'd established about what is and isn't fair game, like O.J. Simpson leaping over luggage in the old Hertz commercials. It required the Jaws of Life to pry news of John Edwards' affair out the mainstream press. But when it came to the personal drama of Palin's 17-year old daughter, the press clawed for morsels like they were golden tickets from Wonka Bars.

I spent 30-odd years as a newspaper writer, photographer and editor (and some of them were very odd) and was always the odd man out, the conservative Christian amongst the heathens. But it's gotten even worse since I left the print media behind and I've never seen anything like this new low the Obama PR press corps has sunk to. But as despicable as it all is, they're accomplishing the exact opposite of what they're attempting to do, kill Palin's candidacy.

They keep on bashing and she keeps on smiling and blowing them away like a dead moose. If they'll just keep this up until November, Sarah and John will waltz into the White House together. Bash on, I say, bash on. Or as they say up in Alaska, "Mush!"

Lunatic politics from angry left in Palin panic

Here's a bio of Sarah "Barracuda" Palin they didn't have time for last night at the GOP convention.

Sarah Palin defended herself quite well when she spoke last night at the GOP Convention, but after listening to a week of unhinged lunacy from the left about her, her infant son, her teen daughter and her husband, as the line goes: “I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take it anymore!”

Obama smugly announced family members are “off limits” to campaign politics, but it certainly appears to be a “Do as I say, not as I do” line because all this lunatic talk is certainly coming from Obama supporters and I strongly suspect it’s being secretly fed by the Obama campaign.

Bill Kristol explained why the angry left is so unhinged on Fox News: Sarah Palin has them in a panic because she threatens Obama.

And the angry left has a very good reason to be in a panic. Palin is a strong woman leader who can appeal to those 18 million Hillary voters that Obama decided would have nowhere to go but to him when he passed on making Hillary his VP choice. Surprise, surprise up steps Sarah Palin.

But what’s chapping my behind is not the criticism of Palin. She’s a candidate and she’s fair game. But since when did it become politics to turn her infant son into a political football? Since when is a teenage daughter’s pregnancy a political football? Since when did a candidate’s husband who is not a politician become a political football? If her husband was named Bill, maybe so. But Todd Palin’s not a politician, he’s just a husband.

This is not politics. This is lunatics. This is McCarthyism, to throw out a favorite blast from the lefties. And the same line that ended the McCarthy era fits well here for the lunatic left, blasting a baby, a pregnant teenage daughter and their father, too: “Do you have no shame? None at all?”

Juan Williams of NPR defended these lunatics on Fox News, citing Sarah Palin’s supposed “hypocrisy.” Just how is it hypocrisy for a mother to love her daughter and support her when she’s pregnant? Mora Liason of NPR, also on the Fox News panel, gently but firmly corrected Williams about Palin and warned Democrats who gang up on her can expect to face a backlash from the voters for their hypocrisy.

Now that the voters have heard from Sarah herself, I say "Let the backlash begin!"

J.R. Dunn at American Thinker sums up this scurrilous media trashing of Palin’s pregnant daughter quite well.

For the past five days we have been witness to the most odious media campaign in the history of the Republic. The entire might of the legacy media -- still considerable, even in its decline -- has been focused on the degradation of a vulnerable seventeen-year-old girl for the purpose of getting at her mother. This exercise outdoes everything turned against Ronald Reagan, George W. Bush, Richard Cheney, Karl Rove, and even Richard Nixon. Only in a political culture hurtling into the abyss would such an effort not be recognized and condemned for what it is.

Patrick J. Casey cites chapter and verse to document exactly how the mainstream media and the leftwingnuts are working together to try to destroy Palin. It's worth a read for the full magilla.

Make no mistake about it; the media and the Dems are out to destroy Palin and her family by any means necessary.

The following quote from Yuval Levin at the Corner that pretty much sums up what conservatives have been thinking this week:

I have always tended to think that conservative complaints about the media are a little exaggerated. There are occasionally obvious instances of bias and clear examples of a double standard, but most reporters don’t want to fall into those and some conservatives are surely too sensitive to them. But this week has changed my view. I have never seen, and I admit that I could never have imagined, such shameful, out-of-control, frenzied, angry, condescending, and pathetic journalistic malpractice. The ignorant assault on Palin’s accomplishments and experience, the breathless careless airing of deranged rumors about her private life, the staggeringly indecent mistreatment of her teenage daughter in a difficult time, the ill-informed piling on about the vetting process, the self-intensifying circle of tisking nodding heads utterly detached from a straightforward political event, have been amazing and eye-opening.

Boycott MSM to defeat Obama

A black minister, The Hon. James David Manning, PhD, calls for a total boycott of the mainstream media as the key to defeating Obama. He specifically names CNN, CBS, ABC, NBC, the New York Times and Oprah and urges everyone to "pull their money strings" with a boycott. This is the "last weapon left" during this last 100 days of the campaign to defeat Obama from "putting his hand on the Koran and becoming the first Muslim President of the United States of America."