Campaigns & Elections

Somebody call the Epidemiology Branch at the NIH.  It's looking as if we're on the verge of a full-fledged epidemic of Obamania.  As we noted here, NYT columnist Bob Herbert suffered an acute bout of the malady on live national TV yesterday, seeing visions of the Leaning Tower of Pisa and the Washington Monument where none existed in the McCain  Obama/Spears/Hilton ad. By yesterday evening, Keith…

The L.A.Times's Andrew Malcolm is so over come by Obamamania that he sees connections to his messiah everywhere, even in hospitals separated by hundreds of miles, from patients admitted days apart, with maladies and injuries that are completely dissimilar. And not just with ordinary everyday patients in those hospitals, but with two star studded actors who ended up in hospitals, one in Chicago…

On Monday’s "Early Show," co-host Harry Smith highlighted Barack Obama’s birthday, but wondered: "So is he feeling older faster as a result of the campaign trail?" Correspondent Bianca Solorzano later reported on Obama turing 47 and having endured a long campaign: "Barack Obama has been campaigning for president for 18 months...It was just four years ago that the relatively unknown Illinois…

The Obama campaign appears to have come up with a neat way to deflect criticism of the presumptive Democrat presidential nominee's failure to visit wounded American troops while visiting Germany last month: have wife Michelle sponsor a meeting with military families.As CNN.com reported Monday (emphasis added): "Days after a television spot from John McCain’s campaign suggested Barack Obama did…

Warning: excessive adulation of Barack Obama is harmful to the vision and can in extreme cases cause hallucinations. We're all familiar with how an Obamania overdose produced strange tingling sensations in Chris Matthews.  A new, virulent strain of the affliction has now emerged, claiming its first victim in the person of Bob Herbert, who on live national TV saw visions of the Leaning Tower of…

Deborah Solomon, reporter for the New York Times Magazine, conducted her weekly Q&A this Sunday with Texas oilman T. Boone Pickens, ostensibly discussing his plan to reduce U.S. dependence on foreign oil by harnessing wind power. But Solomon, who admitted voting for Al Gore in the 2000 election, also posed hostile questions about Pickens's involvement in the 2004 campaign against Democrat…

On Monday's "Good Morning America," weekend host Kate Snow interviewed Bill Clinton in Rwanda and at one point told him he didn't have to answer a quasi-tough question. Towards the end of her interview, she prefaced this query by almost apologizing: "Pretty simple question. And maybe you don't want to answer it right now and I respect that fully. But, if you want to answer it, do you personally…

In her August 4 blog post -- "Energy fueling Monday's agenda. Obama, 47 today, acts, McCain reacts" -- Chicago Sun-Times Washington bureau chief Lynn Sweet glossed over a ludicrous statement by Sen. Barack Obama wherein the presumptive Democratic nominee suggested that properly inflating tires would eliminate the need to drill for more domestic oil.Sweet noted that Republicans are : [P]laying…

On Monday’s CBS "Early Show," co-host Harry Smith actually reported on the latest Gallup poll numbers showing a virtual tie between Barack Obama and John McCain: "Neck and neck. Polls show John McCain and Barack Obama statistically tied. Is McCain winning the ad war?" Smith later declared: "McCain has erased much of Obama's earlier lead on the Gallup poll" and asked "Face the Nation" host Bob…

Warning: Unbelievable Bias Alert!Something happened on Sunday's "The Chris Matthews Show" that was one of the strongest examples of liberal media bias I've seen since the press blamed Hurricane Katrina on President Bush.In back to back segments, the twelve regulars on the program -- what the host refers to as "The Matthews Meter" -- almost unanimously agreed that if Barack Obama became President…

Is reporter Michael Powell at the New York Times auditioning for Comic Relief? At next year's event, Powell's headline at his August 2 story (HT Weapons of Mass Discussion) about Obama's repeated hypocritical invocations and charges relating to race (of course, that's not how he sees it), along with his report's first 10 words, would bring the house down: With Genie Out of Bottle, Obama Is…

Talk about a puff piece, this Associated Press short is a story with absolutely no substance. Not only that but after seeing the headline and then reading the story, one is hard pressed to believe they belong together. This Amy Forliti puffery is incongruously headlined "Protesters expected to transform the streets outside GOP convention into marketplace of ideas," yet there isn't any discussion…

You'd think a guy who has demonstrated such flexibility on everything from campaign finance to NAFTA to the Second Amendment to the surge could find a way to wangle some townhall meetings with John McCain into his schedule. But gosh darn it, that would just be too tough for Barack Obama, explains George Stephanopoulos.  The "This Week" host made his excuses for the Dem candidate on today's Good…

What's going on at the Associated Press?First, it publishes an article about how the McCain campaign feels the New York Times editors are like a blogger "sitting at home in his mother's basement and ranting into the ether between games of Dungeons & Dragons."Then, a few hours later, it publishes a piece about presumptive Democrat presidential nominee Barack Obama being afraid to debate McCain…