Campaigns & Elections

The Associated Press's Charles Babington, the journalist Keith Olbermann attacked in August for having the nerve to criticize Barack Obama's speech at the Democratic National Convention, wrote a McCain-bashing article Thursday evening that should get a standing ovation from the "Countdown" host.The piece entitled "Dems, Some in GOP Question McCain's Intervention" probably evoked so much applause…

Have we had it all wrong about Mika Brzezinski?  All this time we've pigeon-holed her as part of the Eastern liberal media elite, was she in fact secretly part of the Sarah Palin demographic?  It's not quite field-dressing a moose, but Mika let it be known today that she knows how to hunt and . . . has "gutted a deer."The revelation came as Mika and Joe Scarborough were saying goodbye to Sen.…

Bush told the country that we are in an economic crisis and his Treasury Secretary, Henry Paulson, came up with an idea that would, it is claimed, end up actually making money for the U.S. Treasury in the long run. That's all well and good, but the Democrats already have a plan to siphon off any repayment of the people's money back to the treasury by adding one little line to the agreement that…

The AP is suddenly alarmed that no one is "running Alaska" while Palin is out on the stump with John McCain, so much so that they've published a piece wondering if Alaska is about to sink into the icy grip of the Alaskan tundra, or something, because Palin isn't there. One wonders if the AP is all upset that no one is in Congress representing certain districts of Illinois or Delaware with Obama…

Even the crossword puzzles in The New York Times are biased in favor of Obama and Biden finds David Levinson Wilk in Politico. Wilk did a little research to see how many times McCain has been an answer in the NYT puzzle since 2005. He came up with zero entries. When he looked for Obama he found the name "regularly appeared" in the puzzle. Does this prove that the Times is "150 percent in the tank…

This post updates primary work done by the Chicago Sun-Times in July (accompanying video is here), this September 7 post at NewsBusters, and two related posts (here and here) at BizzyBlog. Graphics are mostly courtesy of NewsBusters commenter "tnculp." Hat tips go to all who tipped me to the news. In a Thursday story by Chris Fusco and Dave McKinney that has been linked by Drudge, the Chicago Sun…

If you don't give me money, I won't bail you out! Conservative opposition to a federal bailout of financial institutions is over campaign donations, not a desire to uphold sound market principles, according to CNBC. CNBC's chief Washington correspondent John Harwood said Sept. 25 on "Squawk Box" that he had a conversation with "a top Republican member of congress last night" who told him…

When I was a kid there was a song we sang in Sunday School called, "Everybody Ought to Go to Sunday School." If I could find something to rhyme with "Associated Press reporters," I could probably write a new verse. Reporting yet another story involving Gov. Sarah Palin's former church, the AP continued its attempts to paint Palin as a closet Pentecostal, as well as to hint that Pentecostals are…

**Video Below the Fold** In the Words-Mean-Things category, yesterday we got both the Associated Press and CNN distorting the words Laura Bush used to describe Sarah Palin on foreign policy. Worse, the video interview of the First Lady was right on CNN yet on its own Political Ticker blog, CNN still distorted what Laura Bush said about Palin. It makes you wonder if the folks at CNN even watch…

Going very much against the media meme that the current financial crisis is all George W. Bush and the Republicans' fault, Bill Clinton on Thursday told ABC's Chris Cuomo that Democrats for years have been "resisting any efforts by Republicans in the Congress or by me when I was President to put some standards and tighten up a little on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac" (video available here, relevant…

So much for a "stunt."John McCain got involved in the bailout negotiations after Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson told Sen. Lindsey Graham yesterday that the bailout plan would fail unless McCain came in and brought balky Republicans aboard.  That's what Bob Schieffer reported on this morning's Early Show.  Schieffer's account stands in stark contrast with the allegation by Dems like Barney Frank…

On September 20, Noel Sheppard of NewsBusters posted on a misleading Associated Press/Yahoo poll on racism. The poll asserted that if Barack Obama loses, it will be because of "[d]eep-seated racial misgivings" held by "one-third of white Democrats." Later that day, NB's Michael Bates criticized the AP's report on the poll for its historically inaccurate claim that the US "enshrined slavery into…

Andrea Mitchell is mad at John McCain and Sarah Palin because the McCain camp excluded the press from Palin's meetings with foreign officials this week. She is so upset that she as much as charged that John McCain's treatment of the press is as bad as that of the dictatorial ruler in North Korea, Kim Jong Il. On Tuesday's Rachel Maddow show (MSNBC), Mitchell said that excluding the press when…

As a Jewish American, you can imagine how moved I was to learn that, as he explained to Larry King, Bill Clinton will not be out campaigning for Barack Obama until after October 9th, out of respect for the Jewish High Holy Days.But by the same token, we know that the former president celebrates diversity and is deeply multi-cultural in his beliefs. America is a great mosaic, after all. And so,…