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he token Dem was “unsurprised to mildly happy” (which I read as “miffed”) over  Sarah Palin daring to make a joke at the expense of John Kerry’s “long face,” but didn’t seem to be bothered that Kerry’s earlier crack wishing it had been she, not Mark Sanford, who went missing was unprovoked and clumsily tied Palin to dereliction of duty and infidelity.

He says I’ve mischaracterized this position, and for brevity’s sake I’ll just say Wah! Wah! Wah! that I have.  This post isn’t about that.  It’s about media bias and it all started when the Token Dem sent me the CNN news clip below, saying it showed that Palin was “just cementing her ‘mean-girl cheerleader’ image.”

I actually chuckled at the nasty tenor of the crack, even if I didn’t agree with it, but I didn’t much care for the clip:

(CNN) She’s visiting troops on a peacekeeping mission, but Sarah Palin signaled Friday she’s ready to go to battle with John Kerry, who reportedly made a joke earlier this week at her expense.

The Boston Herald reported that on Wednesday, before South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford’s exact whereabouts were widely known, the Massachusetts senator mused to reporters the wrong elected official had dropped out of sight.

“Too bad if a governor had to go missing it couldn’t have been the governor of Alaska,” he said, according to the paper. “You know, Sarah Palin.”

Palin herself, speaking to U.S. troops in Kosovo, responded Friday with a shot aimed straight for the face — literally.

“Then Sen. John Kerry makes this joke, I don’t know if you saw this, but he makes this joke saying, ‘Aw shoot, of all the governors in the nation who disappeared, too bad it couldn’t have been that governor from Alaska…’” she said.

“But the way he said it, he looked quite frustrated, and he looked so sad, and I just wanted to reach out to the TV and say, ‘John Kerry, why the long face?’”

Palin is overseas visiting Alaska National Guard troops on a peacekeeping mission.

What’s missing that keeps this report from being an objective recounting of the Cute Face/Long Face tiff? Why, the troops’ response, of course. Give it a listen:

Would it have been that hard for the reporter to mention that the troops cheered – or even that they cheered wildly – at her joke?  Answer:  While it would have required just typing a few words, yes, it would have been very, very hard for the reporter to do anything that might tilt the advantage towards Palin.

It was not hard, of course, for the reporter writing the Boston Herald recounting of Kerry’s original joke to include the line, “The democratic-centric crowd laughed.”

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s the liberal Boston Globe, which always can be counted on for favors by John Kerry, struggles on the brink of insolvency, the Massachusetts Dem has suddenly become concerned about the nature of news sources, and the peoples’ ability to find the sort of news they like.

A Senate panel is looking at the plight of struggling newspapers in the digital era.

Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., said Wednesday’s hearing on the future of journalism comes as many papers falter and new ways of delivering information multiply by the day.

Kerry said steps must be taken so the news media can stay diverse and independent. (USA Today)

Sen. Ben Cardin of Maryland, D-Natch!, jumped on the bandwagon, saying it would be cool if the feds could ease the liberal news media into a new non-profit sort of entity, to ensure that they could blather at will without having to worry about offending readers.

Isn’t this all interesting?  Here’s John Kerry’s position on diverse and independent media in June 2007:

Senator John Kerry is calling for reimposition of the fairness doctrine.

In a radio interview on WNYC’s The Brian Lehrer Show, excerpted on YouTube, Senator Kerry said he thought the doctrine should return. Calling it one of the “most profound changes in the balance of the media,” he said conservatives have been able to “squeeze down and squeeze out opinion of opposing views. I think it has been a very important transition in the imbalance of our public dialog,” he said. (source)

And here’s Ben Cardin:

The government “has the responsibility” to make sure there are a “variety of opportunities for people to get information,” said Senator Ben Cardin (D-Md.) when asked about the Fairness Doctrine at the Democratic Senatorial Committee election night party on Tuesday. (CNS)

So they want to legislate liberal media in at taxpayer expense (non-profit status would relieve newspapers of tax burdens), while legislating conservative media out (the fairness doctrine would destroy their appeal, driving away advertisers).

Isn’t it funny how the same goal – the desire for multiple voices in the media – can look so different in the eyes of a big-government, anti-free market liberals?  It’s more evidence of the Dems’ refusal to learn lessons from history.

Until a few decades ago, cities in America were served by multiple newspapers: Liberal, conservative, trashy, Catholic, black, suburban, capitalist, socialist, all touting the news in their own voice, appealing to subscribers who liked that voice. There was no call for fairness, because the free market provided enough choice.  And when this model started evolving into the next, there were no calls from Congress save newspapers.

The second model, one prevailing newspaper per city, occurred primarily because the market determined it.  The evening news on TV killed afternoon papers, and the morning news and rising production costs left room for only one print vehicle. Again, Congress sat back and watched it happen.

The third model was the consolidation of these papers into national chains.  Congress saw nothing to complain about; in fact, with each transformation, the conservative voice of print media became more muted, so the big government, interventionalist Dems in Congress sat back and enjoyed the show.

It’s time for the next model, and all indications are that it will be much more difficult to control, and not as favorable to one (liberal) party:  online journalism, citizen journalism (think Michael Yon), the return of small-circulation, single voice print papers, talk radio, live webcasts of government agency meetings, and other options are all in the wings, ready to replace (for better or worse) the big newspapers.

John Kerry, Ben Cardin, Nancy Pelosi and other fans of neutering talk radio could just sit back and let America choose what media it wants without their meddlesome fingers in the mix.  But that’s not why they got themselves elected.  They know what you need better than you do, and they’re out to prove their right … despite what history tells us.

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he fact that John Kerry owns somewhere between $17,000 and $65,000 in AIG stock might send your conflict of interest meters buzzing, were it not for the fact that would-have-been first lady Teresa Heinz Kerry owns over $2 million in AIG stock.

Kerry is on the Finance and the Commerce, Science and Technology committees, both of which have direct responsibilities regarding the AIG bailout.

Heinz also owns up to $4 million in GE stock (Kerry has up to $80,000), a company that has been positioning itself aggressively to benefit greatly from cap and trade legislation … and one that shamelessly promotes Dem causes.

But John is a man of the people, folks.  He pours his ketchup on his fries the same way you do.  His wife just happens to have about $3 million in Heinz stock, so he’d like you to use a lot of ketchup.

The nifty source for this – and the stock info on Kennedy, Obama and  others – is ProCon.org.  None of the others is as juicy as Kerry’s though.  Since he owns individual stocks and the others have their holdings in blind trusts or mutual funds, Kerry opens himself to 57 Varieties of criticisms.

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On the eve of the Petraeus report to Congress, we were shown yet again what an unmitigated disaster a Kerry presidency would have been. Speaking on ABC’s This Week, Kerry said:

“I think the general will present the facts with respect to the statistics and the tactical successes or situations as he sees them,” Kerry said. “But none of us should be fooled — not the American people, not you in the media, not us in Congress — we should not be fooled into this tactical success debate.”

So tactical success is now off the table? When did that happen?

If tactical success is not a valid measure of success in Iraq, then, as predicted here earlier, the Dems have met the Surge with their own retreat, away from a military measuring stick to pegging our success on Iraqi governance milestones, which now appear to be their sole measure of success in the war.

Hence the deliberate and flawed GAO report.

Against this defeatist surge, the forces of light have this, from McCain and Lieberman in today’s WSJ:

We hope that opponents of the war in Congress will listen carefully to the evidence that the U.S. military is at last making real and significant progress in its offensive against al Qaeda in Iraq.

They’re thinking like I’m thinking, adding:

Unfortunately, many more antiwar advocates continue to press for withdrawal. Confronted by undeniable evidence of gains against al Qaeda in Iraq, they acknowledge progress but have seized on the performance of the Iraqi government to justify stripping Gen. Petraeus of troops and derailing his strategy.

They detail many flaws in this Kerryesque approach, the most prominent being the idea that an impending deadline will somehow shock the Iraqi government into getting its act together. There is no evidence supporting the argument. Indeed, every previous U.S. debate about withdrawing has been underscored by increased violence in Iraq, as the forces of chaos try to encourage us to leave so there can be more chaos.

Whatever fantasy land Kerrykind may be living in, it is clear than an impending U.S. departure will serve only to prepare the militant forces for the bloodshed that will follow.

It is also clear that the best chance the Iraqi government has to succeed is to have a strong U.S. cover that is knocking off the terrorists and militants, so the factions that want peace and reconciliation can become the dominant factions. The bonus of taking this approach is that we and our increasingly capable Iraqi allies get to kill as many jihadist terrorists as possible, all in the name of Democracy in the Middle East.

McCain and Lieberman close their piece on an optimistic note:

The Bush administration finally had the courage to change course in Iraq earlier this year. After hearing from Gen. Petraeus today, we hope congressional opponents of the war will do the same.

Unfortunately, there is no evidence to support the contention that Kerry, Schumer (who, interestingly comes up in spell-check as “schemer”), Reid, Pelosi, the Dem Prez Wannabees and all the others will harken to this call to reason. After all, they don’t want to be fooled into a tactical success debate.

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Bush’s message to the Dem-majority Senate: You’d better not leave town!

Just as he took advantage of a Senate holiday to give John Bolton another year as U.N. ambassador, today Bush looked around, saw no lights on in the Senate and appointed Sam Fox as ambassador to Belgium.

Dems had blocked Fox because horror of horrors! he had donated money to Swiftboat Veterans for Truth. Standing by their man John Kerry and his mythical military career, they effectively blocked the nomination, causing State to withdraw it … until today.

Do you think there might have been one, maybe two, Dem ambassadorial appointments who maybe gave some money to get a Dem prez elected? Strange as it seems, there must not have been; otherwise the Dem action would be outrageously hypocritical.

Speaking of outrageously hypocritical, here’s what Mr. Swiftboated himself had to say:

“Our country would be stronger if this Administration spent more time getting body armor for our soldiers in Iraq than it did helping their powerful friends.”

John, is that the opinion you held in Oct. 2003 when you voted against the $83 billion supplemental spending bill for our troops in Iraq and Afghanistan? It seems like $83 billion could buy some serious body armour.

In fact, it did, and the body armour issue is a non-issue today. Kerry would know that, but he’s probably been busy writing his memoirs of Christmas in Cambodia.

Of course, we might worry that the good people of Belgium might be a bit incensed by all this and it won’t do for our relations with them.

C’mon folks! It’s Belgium! It might as well be Kazakhstan; let’s not lose sleep.

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I heard once that the GOP was a political party, but apparently that’s in the past; today’s GOP doesn’t have the will to fight a fight just for the politics of it all.

Bush and Swiftboat Veterans for Truth contributor Sam Fox did not have the votes to be confirmed as ambassador to Belgium, so the Cowardly Elephant simply withdrew the nomination. There’s words for that: Cut and run. Surrender.

But instead of defending Fox and his political contributions, the GOP soapbox had no one on it, leaving John Kerry to say unchallenged:

“Sam Fox had every opportunity to disavow the politics of personal destruction and to embrace the truth. He chose not to. The White House made the right decision to withdraw the nomination. I hope this signals a new day in political discourse.”

I hope it signals a new day, too, a day when someone like Sam Fox would be turned loose on a committee, with the full support of GOP committee members, so that the confirmation hearing could be turned into a hearing on the truth of the Swiftboat allegations.

Even though the Swiftboat claims of Kerry’s mousey war record are well documented, even though Kerry’s version has little support among Swiftboat veterans, even though Kerry could prove his case (supposedly) by simply releasing his military records, which he has steadfastly refused to do, the GOP walked away from this fight.

Dems and Libs who howled that the Dixie Chicks were “‘censored”‘ when people stopped buying their records are strangely silent when Sam Fox’s free political speech is censored by Dem Senators who think it’s perfectly OK to politically lynch an upstanding citizen over his legal campaign contributions.

Is there a Republican in the house? Someone with a spine? Please?

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