Obama’s A Liar, But AP Won’t Tell You That

AP seems to be dominating this column lately; does it stand for “Associated Press” or “ALL PRO-Obama?”  The latest example of how AP is increasingly not even trying to hide the fact that it’s in the tank for Obama is a little number that goes kind of like this:

Obama entered October with $134 million in hand

By JIM KUHNHENN
Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON (AP) – Starting the month with nearly $134 million in the bank, Democrat Barack Obama enters the final stretch of the presidential election with a robust ad presence in 18 states and the flexibility to expand if the politics move him.

Republican rival John McCain has no wiggle room. His budget a fraction of Obama’s, McCain is looking to stretch his advertising dollar wherever he can.

While Obama buys ads in expensive media markets such as Chicago, Boston and Philadelphia, McCain is trying to extend nine-day advertising commitments to 14 days in places like Green Bay and Madison, in Wisconsin, reducing his spending and the number of spots he airs.

McCain, who began October with $47 million in hand, was taking similar cost-cutting steps in New Hampshire. Democrats said they detected similar moves in Maine, Minnesota and Colorado. Obama leads in polls in all five states.

Get the gist?  Obama is stellar – we learn later that he is (natch) “the most prodigious fundraiser ever in presidential politics.”  What we don’t learn anywhere in the 22-paragraph story is that Obama once promised – cross my heart and hope to die – to accept public financing, limiting his funding to $84 million in the two months before election day, as John McCain has done.

But when Obama discovered that he was the biggest thing in money-grabbing since Jim and Tammy Bakkar, he threw his pledge under the bus quicker than you can say “Jeremiah Wright.”

The reporter, Jim Kuhnhenn, had every opportunity to make this clear.  Heck, he even penned this very paragraph:

McCain is accepting public financing and cannot raise money. He is limited to $84 million for the two months before Election Day.

How hard would it have been to add “Obama made the same promise but subsequently renegged on it?”  And if we’re really talking fairness here (in my dreams!), how hard would it have been to rewrite the lead so it told the truth:

Starting the month with nearly $134 million in the bank because of his decision to break his promise to use only public financing, Democrat Barack Obama enters the final stretch of the presidential election with a robust ad presence in 18 states and the flexibility to expand if the politics move him.

The answer:  Very , very hard if you’re with All Pro-Obama.

Media Bias 2008 covers pro-Obama media bias. Items are listed from most recent to oldest; the numbering reflects this and is not a ranking. Send Media Bias 2008 examples via “comments”‘ below, or to email2laer [@] yahoo [dot] com.

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Obama, America’s #1 Athlete

The latest edition of the French magazine Sport (which covers sports, you know), examines US athletes (Lance Armstrong, Greg LeMond, Carl Lewis, Marion Jones, Bode Miller, you know) and decides the US athlete to grace their cover should be none other than:

My source shares this:

“Between them, Lance Armstrong and Greg LeMond won the world’s most difficult sporting event 10 times.  They shared three pages in this special issue; Obama got six pages.  John McCain, by the way was not covered at all.

“Remember, this is a sports magazine.  You can only begin to imagine what the political newsmags I’m reading now look like….”

Hat-tip: Jim

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He Ain’t Clever, He’s My Brother

AP has a new journalistic skill:  It can look into the eyes of a presidential candidate, like Bush on Putin, and see the true motivation behind his actions.  Skeptical?  Then analyze this:

PALM BEACH, Fla. (AP) – Democrat Barack Obama is bringing several GOP-leaning states he’s aiming to win together in one place. A clever campaign trick? No.

Abracadabra! Ta da! There you have it!  AP in its unbiased wisdom has looked at the ploy charade grandstanding tactic of holding a job summit “in economically precarious Florida, with participation by the governors of several states that went Republican four years ago and for which the Democratic presidential nominee is making a serious play this time around,” and decreed that NO, it is most assuredly NOT a clever campaign trick.

Such gimcrackery is beneath The One.

But in AP’s all-seeing eye, its definitely not beneath that Country First guy.  On Sept. 25, when reporting on whether or not the presidential debate would go forward in light of McCain’s decision to suspend his campaign, the shazam-o-meter at AP was definitely not in favor of the candidate:

As Thursday began, McCain again portrayed his announced halt to campaign events, fundraising and advertising which he said would begin after the Clinton speech as an example of putting the country ahead of politics. But in doing so he also hoped to get political credit for a decisive step on a national crisis as polls show him trailing Obama on the economy and slipping in the presidential race. (emphasis added; via Nexis so no link)

It ain’t bias, folks.  It’s being able to see into the fourth dimension.

Media Bias 2008 covers pro-Obama media bias. Items are listed from most recent to oldest; the numbering reflects this and is not a ranking. Send Media Bias 2008 examples via “comments”‘ below, or to email2laer [@] yahoo [dot] com.

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“I See Dead Republicans,” AP Says

AP reported Sunday on a lobbying effort by Freddie/Fannie directed at Republicans, obscuring throughout the leadership Dem leadership and Dem lobbyists had over protecting Fannie & Freddie from government regulation.

In Mortgage Firm Arranged Stealth Campaign, a $2 million lobbying effort by a GOP lobbying firm, DCI, is detailed, laying out successful efforts to stop the Fannie/Freddie regulation McCain signed onto in 2005. The story paints a picture of GOP culpability in the failure because a majority of GOP Senators were for the bill, and for more controls.

That’s right. AP brushes that off and instead focuses on DCI’s campaign targeting GOP senate leadership, succeeding in keeping the bill from coming to a vote. It barely mentions the Dem reaction to the bill, saying only:

In the end, there was not enough Republican support for Hagel’s bill to warrant bringing it up for a vote because Democrats also opposed it and the votes of some would be needed for passage.

How did the Dems come to oppose the bill so strongly that not even a few could be peeled off? Was there not a similar, even stronger, lobbying effort directed at them? Of course there was; AP just doesn’t bother to tell us.

The article also includes this scurrilous line:

McCain’s campaign manager, Rick Davis, or his lobbying firm has taken more than $2 million from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac dating to 2000.

“Or?!” There’s no “or” to it. Davis’ firm got money, but Davis did not. As structured, this sentence isn’t just namby-pamby non-objective, it’s a flat-out lie.

Media Bias 2008 covers pro-Obama media bias. Items are listed from most recent to oldest; the numbering reflects this and is not a ranking. Send Media Bias 2008 examples via “comments”‘ below, or to email2laer [@] yahoo [dot] com.

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Guilt By Association

In a recent editorial,  “The Politics of Attack,” that paragon of journalistic excellence the New York Times opined:

[McCain and Palin] have gone far beyond the usual fare of quotes taken out of context and distortions of an opponent’s record — into the dark territory of race-baiting and xenophobia. …

Ms. Palin, in particular, revels in the attack. Her campaign rallies have become spectacles of anger and insult. “This is not a man who sees America as you see it and how I see America,” Ms. Palin has taken to saying. …

That line follows passages in Ms. Palin’s new stump speech in which she twists Mr. Obama’s ill-advised but fleeting and long-past association with William Ayers, founder of the Weather Underground and confessed bomber.” …

Her demagoguery has elicited some frightening, intolerable responses. A recent Washington Post report said at a rally in Florida this week a man yelled “kill him!” as Ms. Palin delivered that line and others shouted epithets at an African-American member of a TV crew.

Charles Krauthammer captures my indignation in his column today in RCP:

Let me get this straight. A couple of agitated yahoos in a rally of thousands yell something offensive and incendiary, and John McCain and Sarah Palin are not just guilty by association — with total strangers, mind you — but worse: guilty according to The New York Times of “race-baiting and xenophobia.”

But should you bring up Barack Obama’s real associations — 20 years with Jeremiah Wright, working on two foundations and distributing money with William Ayers, citing the raving Michael Pfleger as one who helps him keep his moral compass (Chicago Sun-Times, April 2004) and the long-standing relationship with the left-wing vote-fraud specialist ACORN — you have crossed the line into illegitimate guilt by association. Moreover, it is tinged with racism.

Media Bias 2008 covers pro-Obama media bias. Items are listed from most recent to oldest; the numbering reflects this and is not a ranking. Send Media Bias 2008 examples via “comments”‘ below, or to email2laer [@] yahoo [dot] com.

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The Audacity Of Inexperience

Eli Saslow of the Washington Post got the most difficult assignment of the campaign season:  Write up something good on Barack Obama’s accomplishments in the Senate.

Lordy, Lordy, Lordy.

Now if the shoe were on the other (non-tap dancing) foot, we would have found a headline like “With No Accomplishments to Stand On, a Run for President.” But this is Barack Obama, the Dems and the Washington Post, so instead Saslow spun a little 5-clicker of a yarn called “A Raising Political Star Adopts a Low-Key Strategy,” complete with this rare photo of Obama in one of his exceedingly rare cross-the-aisle moments where he discussed legislative initiatives with showed off his photogenic family to the Vice President.

His near complete lack of legislative experience?  No sweat! Saslow makes it smart, strategic:

Obama arrived as a celebrity, a best-selling author whose keynote speech was the only moment Democrats wanted to remember from their 2004 convention. He could capitalize on that reputation by speaking out against the Iraq war, scheduling prime-time television interviews and seizing control of high-profile bills. He could, as one Chicago friend suggested, “go in, do your thing and take the place by storm.”

Or, others advised, Obama could assume the typical role of a freshman senator, maneuvering with deference and humility. By endearing himself to Washington’s elite, he could build the foundation for his future.

“I think it’s important to take it slow,” Obama told his advisers. “I want to be liked.”

Take it slow?! I wish Saslow had supplied the date, because we would then have the first lie of his presidential campaign documented.

Despite this lead-in, Saslow continues without an editorial guffaw when approximately 36 seconds later Obama decides to run for president.

The story also worships Michelle Obama for refusing to disrupt her life and accompany her husband to Washington.  Thinking about the howls of indignancy from the liberated women of the left (including liberal women journalists) about Sarah Palin’s choice to work, imagine the nastiness we’d be reading if a GOP candidate’s wife had abandoned her husband to a one-bedroom apartment in DC while she stayed home and worked, even though she had two small children who needed her attention.

Instead, Michelle’s decision is all about her mom and kids:

The more Michelle Obama mulled over the possibility of moving, friends said, the more she wanted to stay in Chicago — to keep her job as an executive at University of Chicago Hospitals, to live within a five-minute drive of her mother, to maintain a steady childhood for her daughters outside what Barack described as the “hothouse environment of Washington.” Her husband agreed it would be best to move to the capital alone, and he resigned himself to a solitary existence in a foreign city.

And as for Obama’s near complete lack of accomplishment in the Senate?  Heroic!

He stuck to a simple routine, flying into town Monday or even Tuesday morning if his schedule allowed. He spent long days in his Senate office and long nights toiling on his book, sometimes e-mailing chapters to friends for fact-checking at 3 or 4 a.m. On Thursday afternoons, with his typical week in Washington nearing its end, Obama instructed staff members to reserve him tickets on multiple United flights — always in coach for image purposes, staffers said — so he could land in Chicago before his daughters went to bed.

Seen through the alternate universe lens of Obama as a GOP candidate, this would be summarized as staying to himself, working on his book so he could get his payday instead of working on legislation, and ditching town at the earliest opportunity and returning at the latest instead of doing his work as Senator.

In a companion shocker, WaPo today endorsed Obama for president.

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The Media’s ‘Kill Him’ Lie

While Obama talked over criticism for not condemning his supporters’ fondess for “Palin is a C***” T-shirts last night, he was quick to conger up “calls directed at me” of “Kill him” as Sarah Palin addressed a campaign rally in Joe Biden’s home town of Scranton PA.

Thanks to the left-wing media, Obama’s lament is based on a complete lie.  Here’s news from a more sane source, the Wilkes-Barre Times Leader:

SCRANTON – The agent in charge of the Secret Service field office in Scranton said allegations that someone yelled “kill him” when presidential hopeful Barack Obama’s name was mentioned during Tuesday’s Sarah Palin rally are unfounded.

The Scranton Times-Tribune first reported the alleged incident on its Web site Tuesday and then again in its print edition Wednesday. The first story, written by reporter David Singleton, appeared with allegations that while congressional candidate Chris Hackett was addressing the crowd and mentioned Obama’s name a man in the audience shouted “kill him.”

News organizations including ABC, The Associated Press, The Washington Monthly and MSNBC’s Countdown with Keith Olbermann reported the claim, with most attributing the allegations to the Times-Tribune story.

Agent Bill Slavoski said he was in the audience, along with an undisclosed number of additional secret service agents and other law enforcement officers and not one heard the comment.

“I was baffled,” he said after reading the report in Wednesday’s Times-Tribune.

He said the agency conducted an investigation Wednesday, after seeing the story, and could not find one person to corroborate the allegation other than Singleton.

Slavoski said more than 20 non-security agents were interviewed Wednesday, from news media to ordinary citizens in attendance at the rally for the Republican vice presidential candidate held at the Riverfront Sports Complex. He said Singleton was the only one to say he heard someone yell “kill him.”

“We have yet to find someone to back up the story,” Slavoski said. “We had people all over and we have yet to find anyone who said they heard it.”

Note first who was speaking at the time:  not Sarah Palin but a congressional candidate, Chris Hackett.  Someone could tell Obama this, but do you really think he’ll change his rhetoric?

And the one guy who heard it, Scranton Times-Trib reporter David Singleton?  He’s not answering questions.  Of course not.  Reporting is never having to say you’re sorry.

Speaking of saying you’re sorry, let’s start the stopwatches right … now.  Any bets on how long it’ll be before we hear an apology from Obama, John Lewis or the harpies of the Left?

hat-tip:  Mike Gallagher

Media Bias 2008 covers pro-Obama media bias. Items are listed from most recent to oldest; the numbering reflects this and is not a ranking. Send Media Bias 2008 examples via “comments”‘ below, or to email2laer [@] yahoo [dot] com.

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The Disappearing Race Card Trick

In today’s Boston Globe, Derrick Z. Jackson takes Rep. John Lewis’ race-baiting bait hook, line and sinker.

Ignoring reality, Jackson’s piece appears under the headline McCain plays the race card. Nowhere in the article does Jackson relay anything McCain has done to bring race into the campaign. Here are the examples he cites to justify his position that “Republican presidential candidate John McCain and vice presidential running mate Sarah Palin are careening into George Wallace territory to destroy the nation’s first African-American nominee, Democrat Barack Obama:”

- Palin attacked Obama’s patriotism at a rally.

- McCain campaign co-chairman Frank Keating said of Obama, “He ought to admit, ‘You know, I’ve got to be honest with you. I was a guy of the street. I was way to the left. I used cocaine.’ ”

That’s it. The other references are to what John McCain’s brother said (the suburbs of DC are Communist) and what one or two people said in the crowd at rallies. Jackson can find nothing – nothing – linking McCain to racism. Keating will ruffle PC feathers by saying “a guy of the street,” but he is addressing Obama’s street politics, not his race. Communism is not a racial epithet, nor is being unpatriotic.

Nor, for that matter, is it racist to say “Sarah Palin is a c***.” It’s misogynistic, but Jackson didn’t feel the need to mention the folks at the Obama rally that had on those t-shirts. Nor did he mention Sandra Bernhard, or the mob hate reaction to her:

Now you got Uncle Women like Sarah Palin who jumps on this s*** and points her finger at other women … turncoat b****! [laughter]

Don’t you f***** reference the Old Testament, b****. Stay with your new Goyish, crappy, shiksa, funky, bulls***! [loud laughter] Don’t you touch my Old Testament, you b****! [laughter, cheering, applause]

It’s ageism, not racism, to accuse a disabled war veteran of not being able to use a computer. Obama never apologized for that, nor did he criticize stuff like this, which appeared in his house organ, The Nation:

Liberal smarties and sophisticates are having fun mocking John McCain , but assuming he gets the nomination, he will a formidable candidate. He may look like a grumpy old man — specifically, as my friend Kathleen Geier joked, the grumpy old man who yells at kids to get off his lawn — or the nutty old uncle who rags on everyone at Thanksgiving before passing out in front of the football game. But that’s another way of saying McCain is a familiar, indeed family, character.

I could go on. And on and on. There are so many examples of hatred coming from the Obama-Americans and only imagined examples of racism from the McCain side, yet Jackson will let none of that dirty his one-sided diatribe. He’s set in his opinion about white people the GOP, and he’s not going to change it no matter what the evidence brings. Sort of like one of those old, set in their ways racists.

Media Bias 2008 covers pro-Obama media bias. Items are listed from most recent to oldest; the numbering reflects this and is not a ranking. Send Media Bias 2008 examples via “comments”‘ below, or to email2laer [@] yahoo [dot] com.

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Resounding (Almost Deafening) Bias

UPDATED

It takes either (a) a lot of guts or (b) a complete loss of all perspective to post a video clip that proves your lead wrong, but that’s exactly what NYTimes hockey columnist Lynn Zinser did last night. Here’s the lead:

When Sarah Palin dropped the ceremonial first puck at the Flyers’ opener on Saturday night at the Wachovia Center, she was greeted by resounding (almost deafening) boos.

And here’s the clip. Note all the clapping you see in the background, and note that fans are most definitely cheering loudly, not booing.

Undaunted, Zinser pounds on:

While Philadelphia fans are known for not being shy about voicing disapproval, the question has been raised — including by me in an earlier version of this post — whether the appearance was appropriate at a sports event like this.

What could possibly be inappropriate about a politician who’s running for office dropping the ceremonial puck – especially one as identified with hockey as Sarah Palin?

Could it be inappropriate, Lynn, because she’s a … gulp … Republican?

UPDATE:  The NYT quickly edited the post, replacing it “with a new one that came a bit closer to reality,” reports NewsBusters.

Media Bias 2008 covers pro-Obama media bias. Items are listed from most recent to oldest; the numbering reflects this and is not a ranking. Send Media Bias 2008 examples via “comments”‘ below, or to email2laer [@] yahoo [dot] com.

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NY Times Rewrites Ayres History

Should we believe anything the NY Times writes about how the McCain campaign uses Obama’s friendship with Ayres? Well …

The name William Ayers is perhaps more widely known today than it was when he helped found the Weather Underground four decades ago. Back then, there were only three television networks and no Internet or cable television to spread the word far and wide and over and over.

But now, you can hardly tune in (to TV) or turn on (your computer) without coming across a reference to Mr. Ayers, the 1960s radical who has said the Weathermen were responsible for a dozen bombings in the early ’70s and had planned attacks on the Capitol and the Pentagon.

“Planned attacks on the Capitol and the Pentagon?” Technically that’s right. He did plan those attacks … but as we all know, he took it a bit further, actually bombing both buildings. He has admitted it, he stood in court charged with it, he wrote about it in his book Fugitive Days. In fact, here’s what he said about the day he bombed the Pentagon:

“Everything was absolutely ideal. … The sky was blue. The birds were singing. And the bastards were finally going to get what was coming to them.”

Keep telling yourself … the NY Times is the pinnacle of journalism … the NY Times is the pinnacle of journalism … the NY Times is the pinnacle of journalism …

Media Bias 2008 covers pro-Obama media bias. Items are listed from most recent to oldest; the numbering reflects this and is not a ranking. Send Media Bias 2008 examples via “comments”‘ below, or to email2laer [@] yahoo [dot] com.

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