Campaigns & Elections

We now know the official Obama talking point on Lipstick-gate.  In the course of her Morning Joe appearance today, Obama spokeswoman Linda Douglass used the word "ridiculous" no fewer than six times to dismiss the controversy that has arisen since Obama said yesterday that you can put lipstick on a pig but it's still a pig.Click on the image at the right to view the edited video clip.Douglass was…

An Obama campaign spokeswoman opened today's Morning Joe with an aggressive defense of his lipstick line, arguing that Obama was being criticized "for saying something that John McCain has said before, that Barack Obama frequently says about 'you can dress something up.' He was talking about the Republican change argument."  A bit later, bolstering her argument, the spokeswoman described the…

The folks at FreeRepublic have found an interesting... uh, shall we say coincidence... concerning Barack Obama's widely panned September 9 comments made at a rally in Virginia where he seemed to be saying that Governor Palin was a "pig" by referencing the "lipstick" quote from her acceptance speech at the GOP convention. It is looking like Obama's comments were not off the cuff, but scripted. And…

Mario Cattabiani of the Philadelphia Inquirer wants you to know that Governor Sarah Palin's selling of her state's plane is no big deal. Why? Well, because Democrat Governor Ed "Fast Eddie" Rendell sold his state's plane, too, and he got a better deal. So, Palin's plane purveying pales next to Rendell's according to Cattabiani. Only, there are quite a few facts that Cattabiani seems to have…

Last week at the Republican National Convention, former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich told NewsBusters that if Sarah Palin becomes vice president, she will have "delegitimized the entire left's ability to define what a successful, competent, professional woman is." On Wednesday, feminist author and social critic Camille Paglia published an article at Salon wherein she not only seemed to…

On September 3, an Asian Times writer known only as "Spengler" described a radically different scene at Invesco Field during the final night of the Democratic Convention from that conveyed by the networks and pundits. If Spengler's take is accurate, it reveals a media elite more in the tank than even its harshest critics have imagined. Rush Limbaugh mentioned Spengler's column during his show…

As everyone knows, conservatives are a distinctly disagreeable bunch. Mean-spirited knuckle-draggers, pretty much.  It's therefore a shock to come across one who's actually likeable.  At least if you're Chris Matthews.Ryan Lizza of the New Yorker, a guest on this evening's Hardball, observed that the Obama campaign hasn't quite decided how to go after Sarah Palin.  The first line of attack was on…

As NewsBusters reported on September 5, the celebrity gossip magazine "Us Weekly" got inundated by angry subscribers demanding their subscriptions be cancelled after the slick published an issue bashing McCain VP pick Governor Sarah Palin, her family and litle baby Trig. Well, now it looks like "Us Weekly" is desperate to stem the tide of angry cancellations by offering free issues to anyone…

Gov. Sarah Palin's pick as John McCain's running mate was a risky, but potentially rewarding way to restart the culture war and fire up social conservative voters, according to U.S. News & World Report's Jay Tolson. But couldn't the same be said in reverse for Obama's pick of Sen. Joe Biden?Here's how Tolson treated the Arizona senator's pick of Palin in a September 9 article (emphasis mine…

ABC reporter Lisa Fletcher interviewed friends of Sarah Palin for a segment on Monday's "Nightline" and grilled them on whether a "small town mom" will be able to "sit down with Putin and deal with foreign issues?" Fletcher, who herself was a small town reporter before joining ABC in December of 2007, mostly avoided friendly queries and instead grilled the Alaskan friends of the Republican vice…

The indefatigable Charles Johnson at Little Green Footballs has the news: Alaska Democratic Party Deletes Page Crediting Sarah Palin with Killing 'Bridge to Nowhere' A web site paid for by the Alaska Democratic Party says unequivocally that the state of Alaska officially abandoned the Bridge to Nowhere project, and credits Governor Sarah Palin. Or ... it used to say that, before the page…

On Sunday, NewsBusters informed readers about how lies published by liberal bloggers are actually driving some of the mainstream media attacks against Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin. On Tuesday, Newsweek not only published a Factcheck.org debunking of many of the falsehoods being spread by the Palin-haters, but also featured a link to the piece on the front-page of its website.…

"The idea to make these guys [Keith Olbermann and Chris Matthews] news anchors, I don't know who came up with this idea. It's sort of like people who believe if you add water you get sea monkeys. It just doesn't make any sense that you can add water and make an objective news anchor," NewsBusters Senior Editor Tim Graham quipped on the September 9 "Fox & Friends" program. [audio version here…

On Tuesday’s CBS Early Show, co-host Harry Smith talked to Face the Nation host Bob Schieffer about John McCain taking the lead in recent polls following the Republican convention and the selection of Sarah Palin as his running mate: "Sarah Palin is his Geritol...That's – I mean it really has -- because I wrote in my notes this morning, she not only energized the base, she seems to have energized…