Campaigns & Elections

"Three prominent Republicans declare their support for Obama" insisted the August 13 Financial Times front page headline. But who are these "prominent" GOPers that have gone Obamacan? Staffer Edward Luce pointed to two left-of-center Republicans ousted in the 2006 mid-terms and one Rita Hauser, who is no stranger to supporting Democrats for president:Barack Obama won the endorsement yesterday of…

Did you know that if you have a negative view of Michelle Obama, it's all Fox News's fault?Such seems to be the opinion of Barack Obama who told the magazine Marie Claire, "I think that if you've been watching Fox News then probably she's misunderstood, because I do think there's been a fairly systematic attempt by the conservative press to paint her in a completely false way."Fox News's Greta…

Did Maureen bury the lede? The ostensible subject of Dowd's column of this morning, Yes, She Can, is the way that Hillary, with a big helping hand from Bill, is undercutting Obama and casting a shadow over his upcoming convention.  But tucked down as her 12th paragraph comes this [emphasis added]:The Clintons know that a lot of Democrats are muttering that their solipsistic behavior is “…

Blender Magazine, self billed as "the ultimate guide to music and more," is famous for compiling "lists" of music for one thing or another. This month they've gone politics with the candidate's top ten favorite songs as reported by the campaign offices of John McCain and Barack Obama. To make a mountain out of this mole hill, they also invited as commentators on these lists aging funnyman Randy…

Jill Stanek has done yeoman's work on uncovering the fact that Barack Obama and his surrogates have been outright lying about Obama's constant votes against the Live-Birth abortion bills when he was in office in the State legislature. His claims have been a staple of Old Media reports from the beginning, but now that Stanek has revealed the truth we will have to see if the Old Media corrects the…

On Sunday’s Face the Nation on CBS, host Bob Schieffer talked about John McCain’s latest campaign ads with Republican strategist Karl Rove and quoted previous guest Tim Kaine, the Democratic Governor of Virginia: "But what about John McCain? At this point, as Governor Kaine said, Obama's running positive ads and John McCain is running ads about...Paris Hilton and that sort of thing...What he…

CNN co-anchor Don Lemon, during a brief report on Tuesday’s Newsroom program about a pro-life measure on the ballot in South Dakota that would greatly restrict abortion, gave only the pro-choice side of the debate over the proposed law. He also oversimplified Barack Obama’s stance on the abortion issue.Lemon stated how the Great Plains state "is becoming a new focal point in the abortion debate"…

It's a bit early for politicians to be creating distance between themselves and their party's presidential candidate, is it not? Whether it's because of a (cough, cough) "clerical error" or an exercise in political self-defense, Louisiana Democrat Senator Mary Landrieu has done that. But in a report early this afternoon, Associated Press writer Melinda Deslatte was curiously incurious (saved at…

From a non-Jew, it would smack of anti-Semitism.  From Eric Alterman? You be the judge.The author of the Altercations column at Media Matters has a running complaint:  Rick Klein, editor of The Note at ABC News, pays too much respect to the work of other Jewish pundits. Jennifer Rubin, one of the chief bloggers at Commentary's "Contentions" blog, was Alterman's first target, in his August 1…

Besides a complete withdrawal of American troops, what would have to occur for the media to think the war in Iraq is over?Such seems an important question as hostilities in the embattled nation continue to decline, as do American casualties.In fact, on Tuesday, a former Reagan administration official named Bing West wrote an op-ed for the Wall Street Journal with the compelling headline "The War…

Remember during Bush's run for the White House in 2000 when it was announced that Dick Cheney was his choice for vice president and the media meme became that Cheney added "gravitas" to the ticket? This is a small example of manufactured news. It wasn't the fact that Cheney added much to the ticket, but that the media universally adopted a single word to describe the effect that Cheney had on the…

As the latest episode of Detroit's Kwame Kilpatrick Calamity has played out, we learn that there is a supplemental directive to add to the Associated Press's apparent commandment ("Thou shalt not name a Democrat's party") about politicians in trouble whose party mascot happens to be the donkey. Several previous Kilpatrick-related AP reports, including this one from two weeks ago, have been cited…

Chris Matthews:  Back With an Obamania Vengeance . . . If Barack Obama makes it to the White House, perhaps he should appoint Chris Matthews Commissar of Gosplan, the Commission charged with developing the economy's Five Year Plans.  The Hardball host, back from vacation, displayed the enthusiasm of a dutiful apparatchik in praising an Obama ad that in turn amounted to a pitch for central…

Shocking media honesty alert!!!Here's something you don't see every day: a major American press outlet speaking ill of a campaign proposal from presumptive Democrat presidential nominee Barack Obama.Yet, there it was moments ago in an Associated Press piece amazingly titled "Obama's 'No income Taxes On Seniors' Draws Critics." Maybe even more surprising than the AP actually reporting critical…