I just took the bookmarks to the NY Times, LA Times, Boston Globe, and Washington Post out of my web browser and will no longer regularly visit those sites.  I can’t support them with web traffic given their unbelievably biased coverage this election season.  The latest example is this non story over Sarah Palin’s wardrobe.  Sarah wasn’t given 2 phony baloney book contracts by her liberal friends in the media, so the Republican Party spent $150K on a campaign wardrobe.

I know.  I too was horrified!  A politician bought nice suits for a campaign—news flash at 11!  Of course, we don’t know how much Barack Obama and Joe Biden spend on their suits.  I’m sure they buy their shirts at the Burlington Coat Factory and their jackets and pants off the rack at the Men’s Warehouse, right?  And the media doesn’t seem real interested in Michele Obama’s lobster and Iranian caviar lunch at the Waldorf Astoria.  Do you think the Obamas paid for that with their own money?

Meanwhile, the media fastidiously ignores the real money scandal of this Presidential Election—Barack Obama’s broken promise to accept public financing and the $600 million he’s attempting to buy the presidency with.  Think the media might touch on that subject had McCain broken his promise?  Don’t hold your breath waiting for them to demand answers from Obama on that lie.  But the story gets even better now that we find out the Obama campaign isn’t policing its Internet donations.

That’s right!  ACORN can register Mickey Mouse to vote and foreign nationals can donate in Mickey’s name at the Obama web site.  Obama turned off the standard credit card protection and name verification apparatus used by any somewhat credible online merchant.  Remember all the hype about the small donations and brand new contributors to the Obama campaign?  I’m guessing a lot of them are not real people, foreign nationals, or terrorists living in a cave between Afghanistan and Pakistan.  That might be an interesting and important story.  If only the media wasn’t so busy looking for price tags on Sarah Palin’s clothes, maybe they could devote some time to it.

There is one ray of “sunshine” in this whole sordid tale.  As Michele Malkin notes, the mainstream media is dying.  Moody’s announced today that it might cut the NY Times debt to junk status given its latest horrific quarter, and the Times isn’t the only MSM outlet struggling to keep its head above water.  It’s a shame that it has to come to this.  A strong, unbiased, media with an investigative bent would add such value to our democracy, but when you shift from journalist to liberal propagandist, you deserve to sink.

Update:  Over at the Corner, they make the point that someone would have to knowingly disable the automatic checks to reach the level of fraud Obama’s donation site is capable of producing.

The latest meme being pushed by the media elite is that Republicans are angry and that this is somehow unheard of in presidential campaigns.

There were shouts of “Nobama” and “Socialist” at the mention of the Democratic presidential nominee. There were boos, middle fingers turned up and thumbs turned down as a media caravan moved through the crowd Thursday for a midday town hall gathering featuring John McCain and Sarah Palin.

[snip]

In recent days, a campaign that embraced the mantra of “Country First” but is flagging in the polls and scrambling for a way to close the gap as the nation’s economy slides into shambles has found itself at the center of an outpouring of raw emotion rare in a presidential race.

I’m shocked, absolutely shocked!

Who would have thought that McCain/Palin supporters think Obama is a socialist and that the biased mainstream media is for all intents and purposes the enemy.

Isn’t it funny how you never see media reports about all the moonbats comparing Bush to Hitler or spouting their insane September 11th conspiracies. Since the media ignores them, I’ll just repost one picture from a protest during the 2004 election.

I’ll take our angry republicans over their moonbats any day.

Right Wing Nut House has more here, including this:

I can’t tell you how much contempt I have for the Post and other media outlets who have been pushing this meme – that it is somehow dangerous, or racist, or indicative of something horribly ugly in the mindset of GOP supporters to show strong emotion at the mention of Obama. Not when similiar outbursts happen at Democratic rallies. Not when Democratic party partisans on the internet and elsewhere have whipped up a frenzy of hate against John McCain.

Has there ever been someone who screamed out about McCain “Kill him!” at an Obama rally? We don’t know because the idea that the press would report what one, lone, idiot shouts out at a rally of thousands is ludicrous – except if it is a McCain rally and then it becomes front page news.

Update: Stephen Hayes finds “unhinged democrats”. At least that is how the media would describe them if they were republicans.

“America, this is what a feminist looks like”

Who said that about Sarah Palin? Would you believe the president of LA’s National Organization for Women, Shelly Mandel? Amazing![snip]

The endorsement of the president of one of the largest chapters of NOW is huge, which explains why the MSM isn’t reporting it. (emphasis mine)

Is this about right!

 [snip]
Our wonderful gathering took an abrupt and horrid turn when one of Sarah Palin’s minions loosed that lipstick wearing Cujo into our midst and, look…

Is anything better than seeing the left in full freak out mode?  Sarah Palin is driving them absolutely nuts, and it’s just so satisfying to watch.  For example, just take a look at all these “nefarious” things Governor Palin supports according to Deepak Chopra at the Huffington Post:

• Small town values — a denial of America’s global role, a return to petty, small-minded parochialism.
• Ignorance of world affairs — a repudiation of the need to repair America’s image abroad.
• Family values — a code for walling out anybody who makes a claim for social justice. Such strangers, being outside the family, don’t need to be heeded.
• Rigid stands on guns and abortion — a scornful repudiation that these issues can be negotiated with those who disagree.
• Patriotism — the usual fallback in a failed war.
• “Reform” — an italicized term, since in addition to cleaning out corruption and excessive spending, one also throws out anyone who doesn’t fit your ideology. 

What?  No mocking references to religion?  Can’t say I blame them though.  If my candidate had a skeleton like Reverend Wright, I’d avoid any mention of the subject too.  But overall, it’s a pretty good synopsis of why the extreme left-wing Barack Obama is sinking in the polls.  These guys just don’t get that we’re a center-right country, and this is a national election, not a Cambridge City Council run.

Barack Obama has said he considered joining the United States military when he left school but decided not to because the Vietnam war was over and “we weren’t engaged in an active military conflict at that point”.

Mr Obama was asked by George Stephanopoulos of ABC’s “This Week” programme whether he’d ever thought about military service and replied: “You know, I actually did. [snip]

“And I actually always thought of the military as an ennobling and, you know, honourable option. But keep in mind that I graduated in 1979. The Vietnam War had come to an end. We weren’t engaged in an active military conflict at that point. And so, it’s not an option that I ever decided to pursue.”

Phew!

All male American citizens are legally required to register for Selective Service within 30 days of their 18th birthday.

Mrs Palin’s eldest son Track, 19, is due to leave for Iraq on Thursday, the seventh anniversary of the September 11^th attacks on America and exactly a year after he joined the US Army as an infantryman.

John McCain’s youngest son Jimmy, also 19, is a lance-corporal in the US marine corps who served in Ramadi, deep in Iraq’s Sunni triangle, last year. His other son Jack, 21, is currently training to be an officer at the US Naval Academy in Annapolis.

Beau Biden, 39, elder son of Senator Joe Biden, Mr Obama’s running mate, is scheduled to go to Iraq early next year. Beau Biden is attorney general of Delaware and a captain in the legal corps of the US Army’s National Guard. [snip]

Biden’s job is to prosecute any trooper that locks and loads before coming under automatic weapons fire.

Voters often fault Democratic candidates on issues of patriotism and support for the military. Bill Clinton was vilified by Republicans as a Vietnam draft dodger, though he defeated two Second World War veterans, President George H.W. Bush in 1992 and Senator Bob Dole in 1996.

But Al Gore, a US Army journalist in Vietnam, (Gore served in the Conex Corp) and John Kerry, a decorated Vietnam veteran who won a Silver Star while serving in patrol craft on Vietnam’s Mekong Delta, both lost to George W. Bush, who avoided active service in Vietnam by joining the Texas Air National Guard.

Mr Obama is more vulnerable than most Democrats on the patriotism issue because of his exotic life story, his past radical associations, his previous refusal to wear an American flag pin - though he has since relented and is now seldom seen without one - and inaccurate smears that he is a Muslim. [snip]

(Obama speaking to Stephanopoulos) “Let’s not play games,” he said. “What I was suggesting — you’re absolutely right that John McCain has not talked about my Muslim faith. And you’re absolutely right that that has not come.”

The Illinois senator’s maternal grandfather Stanley Dunham served in the US Army in Europe during the Second World War.

His maternal great uncle Charlie Payne helped liberate Ohrdruf, a part of the Buchenwald concentration camp network - though he was criticised for misstating this on the campaign trail as an uncle who liberated Auschwitz. [snip]

Note to Obama, this stuff doesn’t rub off, you got to do it yourself.

But these military connections pale in comparison with Mr McCain’s fabled biography as the son and grandson of admirals who spent more than five years in the Hanoi Hilton prison after his jet was shot down over Vietnam.

Mr McCain took as his Republican convention theme the slogan “Country First” and both Mrs Palin and Rudy Giuliani, the former Republican mayor of New York, mocked Mr Obama’s time as a “community organiser” in Chicago when he was in his twenties.

Hillary Clinton, who Mr Obama defeated in the Democratic primaries, was ridiculed in 1994 for stating that she tried to join the US marines in 1975, the year she married, but was rejected because she was too old and had poor eyesight. Her husband Bill said this year that she had tried to join the US Army.[snip]

Probably she did, in what country?

 ”Understand what I did as a community organiser. When I got out of a college as a young person, 24, 25 years old, I moved to Chicago and worked with churches, who were dealing with steel plants that had closed in their neighbourhoods, to set up job training programmes for the unemployed and after-school programmes for youth.”

He also tried to “deal with asbestos in homes with poor people - community service work - which John McCain has been talking about, putting country first and extolling the virtues of national service”.

According to Obama, he had to make a steep dive in, level out and zig-zag to the buildings while receiving fire from asbestos junkies in an armed ‘hood. “They had everything but tanks.” “This is why I believe in the 2^nd Amendment but only if no one has guns.”
The only salvation for these people is Elijah Muhammad in the guise of BLT.

All make sense doesn’t it? Reading the entire article just roils the mud.

Oprah has seriously damaged her brand.  After years of preaching empowerment to women, lots of them are wondering why Oprah wouldn’t want a guest like Sarah Palin. However, according to Oprah, nobody even thought about inviting Sarah.  And if you buy that whooper, Oprah says:

At the beginning of this presidential campaign when I decided that I was going to take my first public stance in support of a candidate, I made the decision not to use my show as a platform for any of the candidates.     

Come on, Oprah, you know very well that your brand is YOU.  When you endorsed Barack Obama, you threw the entire franchise behind it.  The idea that the show is somehow separated from you and your personal decisions is laughable. And judging by the comments on your web site, the majority of your fans aren’t buying it either. Hat tip: InstapunditUpdate:  The Oprah discussion is up to 180 pages.  Guess this touched a nerve. 

The Palin pick is interesting on a number of levels.  Tactically, it was a brilliant stroke.  McCain undercut any Obama bounce from the DNC quite nicely.  He took advantage of the media’s natural love of “buzz” and gave them a fresh target to work on for a couple of news cycles.

Strategically, although it blunts arguments about Obama’s lack of experience, it was absolutely necessary.  Don’t get me wrong, Palin has more executive experience than Obama and Biden put together, but my guess is the general public won’t view it that way.

But how much does experience matter in this election?  The inexperience charge has been floating around Obama since he first started running.  Hillary Clinton couldn’t make it stick.  And McCain wasn’t making much headway either considering that Obama leads most polls and is competitive in some unusual states.  So, why can’t anyone make this point stick?

In Clinton’s case, I don’t think anyone really gave her presidential credit for Bill’s Oval Office tenure.  That left only 2 Senate years difference between the two and a much weaker argument for her. 

Personal experience isn’t the problem for McCain.  The American people’s experience with the compassionate conservative, AKA George Bush, and a badly damaged GOP brand is.  If your perception is that the GOP experience hasn’t been good, you’re much more likely to give a fresh, inexperienced guy a shot.

And that’s why McCain had to shake up the race.  Status quo picks like Romney or Pawlenty weren’t going move the needle.  When you’re ahead, you have the luxury of picking a Biden to run out the clock.  Picking Palin (or something similar) and seizing a reform agenda was smart and necessary when you’re playing catch-up.

Palin’s hubby and son not Republicans

Democrats may be blasting Sarah Palin as a doctrinaire conservative, and Republicans may be embracing her for the same reason, but her husband and oldest son are independents.

Or more precisely, their party affiliation is listed as ”undeclared” on voter registration records reteieved from the Alaska Division of Elections. [snip]

Leave it to the media to ask the wrong question, probably on purpose. Donk or GOP really have no meaning anymore. The question is, “Are they Conservatives or Liberals?” “Guess!”
Registering undeclared means you don’t get batches of garbage mail and solicitations for funds.

Here’s a photo of Palin welcoming PETA to Alaska.

Gotta love it!