E

veryone knows it:  The mainstream media has gambled a huge stake in this presidential election.

I recently read that 80 percent of newspaper reporters support Obama; I don’t have a cite for that, so here are a few similar stats, with cites:  WaPo-owned Slate revealed that among its staff Obama was ahead 55-1 over McCain.  Pew found there were nearly twice as many negatively toned McCain stories, and about a third less positively toned McCain stories.  I’ve come up with 102 instances of media bias with one hand tied behind my back; if I were a full time blogger, I have every confidence the tally would have easily passed 400.

And most important, three out of four Americans believe most reporters will not try to offer unbiased coverage during this campaign.

The media figure that if Obama wins, this trashing of their reputation as objective news sources will have been worth it and somehow their actions will be forgiven because they were proved right by the Obama victory. Nothing could be further from the truth.  No matter who is victorious tomorrow, the media will not be the victors; they have willfully turned themselves from the MSM to the MMM:  The Mainly Marginalized Media.

If Obama does win, we would be fools to trust the MSM to report accurately on the actions of the administration, which will only lead to further marginalization of formerly significant news sources.  Faced with continuing and growing frustration with a lack of digging into Obama’s policies and problems, more and more Americans will look elsewhere for their news:  the blogosphere, partisan publications that we can evaluate fairly because they make no bones about their editorial stance, talk radio (as long as the Fairness Doctrine isn’t reinstituted), and whatever big media haven’t marginalized themselves.

If McCain wins, it will be worse for the MMM.  The only thing worse than deliberately trying to manipulate an election is deliberately trying to manipulate an election and losing.  Based our experience with how they responded to Bush’s win in 2000, we cannot expect them to learn new behaviors and repent old ones.  Instead, they’re likely to respond viciously since their egos were caught up with Obama, and subject McCain to even greater levels of negative reporting, which will just suck them further down in public perception, circulation and viewership.

I don’t see NBC/MSNBC, the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, AP and the rest of the yellow blue journalists seeing the light and actively recruiting for political diversity up to the highest levels of their organizations.  As  Bill O’Reilly said, the only thing more important to the media than money is ideology.

Hollyweird apparently learned its lesson this time around.  Sure, most of ‘em are in the tank for Obama and funded him lavishly, but we didn’t see a repeat of the sort of involvement they displayed in 2004.  My guess:  It hurt their earning power, just as it’s hurt the media’s earning power.  But being more practical sorts, Hollyweird dialed it back and largely stayed under the radar.  Cameron Diaz didn’t cry hysterically about rapes in the street if McCain is elected and Alex Baldwin didn’t threaten to move to Canada.

The media exhibited no such restraint, and as a result, only one in four Americans think they’ve been honest and fair in reporting the election.  Three in four don’t trust them.

Faced with this marginalization, media outlets have three choices.  They can stay the course, shrinking until they reach insignificance.  They can recast themselves as partisan players, in the European model.  Or they can recruit for political diversity from bottom to top, honestly recreating themselves as objective sources of news.

Only the latter will keep the media from becoming further marginalized, giving the traditional outlets hope for a future with significance and even profitability.  But I doubt if there are enough qualified conservatives available who would be willing to risk their futures on a profession as risky as journalism, so this option  probably is already foreclosed.

That leaves being stubborn and becoming ever more marginal, or willfully becoming more marginal by declaring sides.  Quite a predicament they’ve gotten themselves into, and for what?  To get a second-rate Democratic candidate for president elected?

They deserve what they get.

Art (both of ‘em:  Okie on the Lam)

I

n this week’s Sunday Scan, I’ve looked at how the news media, which has had an unusually large role in this election, is handling the last big readership day before the election.  You’ll see what The LA Times, the SF Chronicle, the Boston Globe, the Chicago Tribune, the Washington Post and the New York Times chose to feature - or not feature - at the culmination of their reprehensibly pro-Obama election coverage.

New York Times: Living On The Edge Of One Sided Seats

T

he NYT’s pre-election Sunday feature is The Year of Living on the Edge of Our Seats, a title that implies a nail-biting story line of two conflicting sides. But this nail-biter only has one side: Obama.

In the 39-paragraph story, 19 paragraphs are neutral, either mentioning both candidates or neither of them. Twenty mention Obama.

Math experts: How many paragraphs mentioned McCain? Correct. Zero.

The edge of the seat to the NYT is all about how Obama threaded the needle to defeat his Dem primary opponents and position himself against the candidate they describe as, should he win, “the oldest American ever to win a first term,” vs. Obama who is, of course, “the first black-American” who would be president.

Here’s a typical Obama passage:

Think back. When Mr. Obama took the stage in Iowa after his victory in the state’s caucuses last January, he was not yet the favorite for the Democratic nomination, and he was a long way from becoming the general-election frontrunner.

In videotape from that night, you can see and sense an astonishment and exhilaration — in him, around him — that seem almost quaint just 10 months later.

“They said this day would never come,” he tells a euphoric Iowa crowd, and not just his eyes but the whole of him twinkles, gleams. “They said our sights were set too high.”

While he’s talking specifically about himself and his campaign troops, it’s impossible not to hear in his words a statement about all minorities in America, for whom the week-by-week, month-by-month advance of his candidacy would hold an especially powerful message.

Shall we interject a little race into the campaign? And shall we interject a little GOP-bashing?

How will some younger voters react if Mr. McCain prevails? Or some older ones if Mr. Obama does? In recent weeks, the ire and ugly catcalls of some supporters of the McCain-Palin ticket have suggested a division in this election that goes well beyond tax policy or Iraq strategy.

What of the calls of “Rape Palin!” that broke out at an Obama rally without so much as a “Tsk, tsk” from The One? Or what about Palin hanging in effigy, a bit of misogyny that didn’t merit BHO’s attention?

In short, the article is the perfect exclamation point on a political season that showed the NYT and its MMM brethren (that’s”Mainly Marginalized Media”) to become vile house organs for Obama, content to co-opt any journalistic ethics that are clinging to survival in order to influence the election.

I

s Obama’s economic plan going to generate jobs and fix the economy? Let’s ask the people in the companies that create the jobs, the companies that are the economy.

Chief Executive Magazine polled its readers - the men and women who run America’s corporations, and 751 responded:

By a four-to-one margin CEOs support Senator John McCain over his rival, Senator Barack Obama. More to the point, a thundering 74 percent majority say they fear the consequences of an Obama presidency, compared to only 19 percent who fear a McCain presidency.

Or, for the reading-impaired:

The CEOs scored neither of the candidates a single A in any of their policy initiatives, but on the key areas of economic, foreign and defense policy, they barely passed Obama - D+ in all three - while McCain got two B’s and a B+. Obama never scored higher than McCain on policy, but the CEOs gave them tie scores - C+ - on both energy and economic policy.

In general the CEOs feel American business has atrophied with over-regulation and failure to deal with issues like health care, so they sing the Obama mantra about needing change … just not his brand of change:

Many look to John McCain and hope that this self-described political maverick may yet shake up established thinking and not give into the tired policies of the past.

Left unsaid in that quote is the feeling that for all his talk of change, the CEOs see Obama as nothing more but the same old Dem politics of regulation, taxation and kow-towing to labor bosses.

“Joe the Plumber may get his license after all.” - Pollster John Zogby

I

n the final days of the campaign, the numbers are closing, with Zogby - who skewed toward Kerry in 2004 - summarizing his most recent results with the quote above, and:

“Is McCain making a move? The three-day average holds steady, but McCain outpolled Obama today, 48% to 47%. He is beginning to cut into Obama’s lead among independents, is now leading among blue collar voters, has strengthened his lead among investors and among men, and is walloping Obama among NASCAR voters. Joe the Plumber may get his license after all. “Obama’s lead among women declined, and it looks like it is occurring because McCain is solidifying the support of conservative women, which is something we saw last time McCain picked up in the polls. If McCain has a good day tomorrow, we will eliminate Obama’s good day three days ago, and we could really see some tightening in this rolling average. But for now, hold on.”

Independents = the wiggle room in a tight election. They were leaning Obama before, now they’re leaning McCain.

Blue collar voters = the target of Obama’s tax cuts, and they’re not buying it. They are worried about their jobs and are wary of the disruption Obama’s economic plan will cause - and lots of them dream of being rich one day and don’t like Obama’s disincentives.

Investors = McCain’s on the right side of what’s become the critical question of the campaign: Who do you trust to fix the economy.

Men = Is anyone surprised? Anyone? Anyone?

Women = We’ll forgive any conservative women that were leaning towards Obama. Welcome back; we’re sorry for your terrible experience.

If McCain has a good day tomorrow = The media is full of stories on Obama’s aunt’s illegal status, bringing the long dormant immigration issue back. Good for McCain.

Ah! The gut-wrenching angst of an incredibly close and important campaign!

I

t’s a simple, short video with a straightforward message and a powerful close, challenging Obama’s ability to lead our country in this unfriendly world.

What do you suppose it means that over 12 million people have viewed it?

Of Course The LA Times Can Hold Khalidi Tape - WaPo

The editorial writers at the Washington Post have completely dispensed with debate. No longer is there a pretense from them that facts are needed to prove their position; no longer are efforts required to rebut the other side. When it comes to Obama, no debate is needed. He wins, the other guy loses. ‘Nuff said.

This time, it’s today’s editorial, none too subtly named An ‘Idiot Wind’ (how nice of them to put quotes around ‘idiot’). It attacks the McCain campaign for discussing the association between Obama and Rashid Khalidi, and the sequestered LA Times tape. Here’s what WaPo has to say about the latter:

To further argue that the Times, which obtained the tape from a source in exchange for a promise not to publicly release it, is trying to hide something is simply ludicrous, as Mr. McCain surely knows.

That’s it. Certainly, WaPo could rightly argue that breaking a promise to a source is a ludicrous proposition, but to say that the tape contains nothing damning even though they’ve never seen it - now that’s ludicrous! It the sort of thing someone covering their ears and screaming “I can’t hear you! I can’t hear you!” would do.

Hmmm.

And of the questions McCain has raised about Khalidi and Obama?

We did ask Mr. Khalidi whether he wanted to respond to the campaign charges against him. He answered, via e-mail, that “I will stick to my policy of letting this idiot wind blow over.” That’s good advice for anyone still listening to the McCain campaign’s increasingly reckless ad hominem attacks. Sadly, that wind is likely to keep blowing for four more days.

Now shut up. Your concerns have been settled for you by those who know more than you.

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.

P

oor, poor John McCain!  He relied on the federal government for his campaign funds, just like he promised he would, and now he’s suffering through abject poverty, unable to feed his poor, hungry campaign with a stead flow of nice, nutritious campaign ads.

Rich, rich Barack Obama!  Unlike McCain (and counter to his own promise), he shunned the government hand-out (or is that hand-up?) and entrepreneurally set out to raise his money on his own. 

And the money he’s raised!  Thanks to a free internet (remember that please, Barack), an extremely free market approach to credit card approvals and a junk food diet of endless ads asking for more bucks like a televangelist, he’s raised hundreds of millions. Lots of it even legal.

So, Barack, isn’t this a perfect opportunity to show us what you mean by saying that it’s good for everyone to spread the wealth around?  How about giving a quarter of your money - no make that 39.6% of your money - to John?

Lickitysplit, please. Time’s awastin’.

M

y friend Jim usually just gets a hat-tip; this time he gets a post all his own.  Jim, carry on …

In a message dated 10/27/2008 10:43:59 A.M. Pacific Daylight Time, “swingdawg” writes:

I do realize that the colosal [sic] failure of the Bush presidency, in every single area, will be incredibly difficult to fix, but the next 8 years of an Obama administration followed, no doubt, by a Biden or Clinton administration should be enough time to repair all the damage that has been done.

Oh, by the way, it was Bush who just ‘Socialized’ the banking/mortgage industry.

Excuse me, but haven’t the Democrats been in charge of both houses of Congress since the last election? What great things have they to show for their turn at the oars?  (Besides a 12% approval rating, the lowest in history, and considerably lower than President Bush’s.)

“Swingdawg” would like to have everyone forget or ignore history and join the folks over at MoveOn.org and Daily Kos and succumb to BDS, but (thanks to the wonderful Internet that Al Gore invented) we can actually go back in time and see what happened.

It was during the Clinton administration (a Democrat if memory serves) that they enacted policies that set up the collapse of the housing market.  1) On November 12, 1999, President Clinton repealed the Glass-Steagall Act, which for 55 years had prevented banks, the nation’s lenders, to get into the so-called “investment banking” business (stock brokers).     2)  Also in 1999, Clinton appointed Franklin Raines… to become the CEO of the obscure but powerful Fannie Mae giant GSE (Government Sponsored Enterprise), which had been “privatized” and listed on the New York Stock Exchange.

So the pattern becomes clear. Harvard Law School attorneys - noted for their lack of economic knowledge — create an easy-money system which relies on flakey loans provided by fat-cat financial manipulators who are the primary contributors to the re-election campaigns of the legislators - almost exclusively Democrats. (Some more good history here.)

In 2005, we almost fixed the Fannie Mae / Freddie Mac problem, but the bill didn’t become law, for a simple reason: Democrats opposed it on a party-line vote in the committee, signaling that this would be a partisan issue. Republicans, tied in knots by the tight Democratic opposition, couldn’t even get the Senate to vote on the matter. We now know that many of the senators who protected Fannie and Freddie, including Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and Christopher Dodd, have received mind-boggling levels of financial support from them over the years.

(Another bit of historical data here.  [NOTE:  Do not read if you are a "Progressive," it is not healthy to be confused by facts after your mind is made up.])

Since your friend writes. “I do realize that the colosal [sic] failure of the Bush presidency, in every single area…”, I have to ask if he blames the 9/11 attack by radical Muslims, on President Bush’s policies as well?

Referring back to our Internet history sources once again, it seems that our earlier attacks go back to President Carter’s time (I think that he was a Democrat too), and really ramped up under President Clinton, where in 1993 we had our first attack on the World Trade Center; (and allowed our Special Forces to be humiliated by a pissant Warlord in Somalia); followed by (Oklahoma City in 1995?), the bombing of the Khobar Towers in 1996, and the coordinated bombings of our two US Embassies (Tanzania & Kenya) in 1998.  President Clinton then finished out his term with the attack on the USS Cole in 2000.

Please put me in the camp of right thinkers who believe that it was President Clinton’s do-nothingness in response to each of these attacks that emboldened our enemies and brought about the Islamist attack of 9/11.

In my opinion, President Bush’s kick-ass response to that is pretty much what has helped keep us safe for these past years, not the Democrats or Progressives!

Your friend might also want to consider how poorly Democrats do in other areas of government.  In spite of what the Media would like folks to believe, it was Democratic Mayor Nagin and NOT President Bush, who left all the school buses parked during Katrina.

Or how about those crime statistics?

A popular chain email, Chicago War Zone Information, sloshing around Chicago informs the reader, “Body count.  In the last six months 292 killed (murdered) in Chicago, 221 killed in Iraq.”

Sens. Barack Obama & Dick Durbin, Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr., Gov. Rod Blogojevich, House leader Mike Madigan, Atty. Gen. Lisa Madigan, Mayor Richard Daley. . .  . our leadership in Illinois. . . . all Democrats.  Thank you for the combat zone in Chicago (a lot of good gun control does, huh?). Of course they’re all blaming each other.  Can’t blame Republicans; there aren’t any!

The Illinois state pension fund is $44 Billion in debt, the worst in country.  Cook County (Chicago) sales tax is 10.25%, the highest in country.  (Look’em up if you want).  Chicago’s school system one of the worst in country (despite the millions from Ayres/Obama).  This is the political culture that Obama comes from in Illinois.  He’s gonna ‘fix’ Washington politics?  Give me a break!!!

You might ask “Swingdawg” if he can give an example of where a Progressive policy (other than just a hand-out, of course) has actually improved conditions for a minority group?

Oh, and just for the record…

Demographers have shown that since the 1940s, the Democratic Party has segued from the party of the working middle class to the party whose voters look like a double-hump camel: they are either the poor who vote for entitlements or the extremely wealthy millionaires and billionaires who provide the “juice” to buy the allegiance of the first group.

McCain-Palin 2008!

The Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism just completed a comprehensive study of recent campaign coverage which failed to turn up excellence in journalism; rather, it found strongly negative coverage of McCain vs. much more positive coverage of Obama.

Pew researchers analyzed 2,412 campaign stories from 48 news outlets that covered the six weeks from the end of the conventions through the final presidential debate. They focused on 857 stories from 43 outlets that were focused on one of the candidates in order to determine the “tone” of articles.  They found:

In other words, there were nearly twice as many negatively toned McCain stories, and about a third less positively toned McCain stories.  How does this play with the electorate?  I think Pew found the answer in its analysis of the coverage of Sarah Palin, which was triple the amount of coverage Joe Biden received:

As for Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, her coverage had an up and down trajectory, moving from quite positive, to very negative, to more mixed.

Translated:  In the afterglow of the very good speech she gave at the convention, when she was immune from negative media coverage because people had just formed their own opinion of her, she was up.  What could the media do? They had to report on the good speech and the positive reaction of the GOP faithful and others.  They had to report on the boost she gave the ticket.

Then the media focused on the negative: Troopergate, Wasilla whiners and feminist rants, and they fed us a steady drivel of negative stories, as Pew found.  But as she persevered and powered through these negative stories, and her popularity rebounded (among those not suffering from PDS), the tone of the press coverage had nowhere to go but up.

Pew found that in all, 39% of Palin stories carried a negative tone, while 28% were positive and 33% were neutral - which is really unconscionable.  I would love to see a comparison to Geraldine Ferraro’s coverage!

Tone is of course related to the nature of the news item; it’s tough, for example, to put a bubbly tone on a story about the teacher busted for child molesting.  Obama’s lead in the polls and command of fund-raising can be expected to give him a “tone edge” - but not a two-fold or three-fold tone edge.

Pew says it cannot prove bias:

Is there some element in these numbers that reflects a rooting by journalists for Obama and against McCain, unconscious or otherwise? The data do not provide conclusive answers. They do offer a strong suggestion that winning in politics begets winning coverage, thanks in part to the relentless tendency of the press to frame its coverage of national elections as running narratives about the relative position of the candidates in the polls and internal tactical maneuvering to alter those positions.

But here’s the key.  Pew notes that Obama’s positive coverage tracks with polls; down when he was down, up thereafter, in a wholly objective news analysis.  But McCain’s negatives started growing with his reaction to the financial crisis - a subjective news analysis.  It is an easy task, and not a dishonest one, to catergorize McCain’s reaction to the financial crisis as successful, primarily because he was able to work with the House GOP when others couldn’t.  But the press overwhelmingly, and subjectively, saw it as a negative - an anti-McCain bias that drove down his positives.

In short, with a hat-tip to Matt Davies:

hat-tip: The Astute Bloggers

T

he thinking’s a tad convoluted and not too clear on the American system, but a password-protected al-Qaeda-linked Web site gave John McCain an endorsement yesterday, nonetheless. And, even more interesting, the endorsement is predicated on a terror attack on our soil before the election.

AP reports that the al-Hesbah Web site “welcomes” such an attack because it would improve the chances that the “impetuous” McCain would seek revenge, continuing the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq - all part of al-Qaeda’s master plan to exhaust the US militarily and economically. [Insert evil villain laugh here.]

AP provided this quote from the site, translated by the SITE Intelligence Group :

“This [exhausting of our resources] requires presence of an impetuous American leader such as McCain, who pledged to continue the war till the last American soldier. Then, al-Qaida will have to support McCain in the coming elections so that he continues the failing march of his predecessor, Bush.

“If al-Qaida carries out a big operation against American interests, this act will be support of McCain because it will push the Americans deliberately to vote for McCain so that he takes revenge for them against al-Qaida. Al-Qaida then will succeed in exhausting America till its last year in it.”

An interesting, but flawed, proposition. First, McCain has never pledged to fight until the last American soldier; he’s pledged victory. Second, America wouldn’t let him fight that fight. Third, a lot of folks have thought they could out-fight and out-last us, but if America stands by its military, it’s never happened. Vietnam, the Left’s glorious victory in forcing an American defeat, is fueling the dreams of al-Qaeda.

Al-Qaeda would lose fewer fighters and accomplish more with an Obama victory. Iraq would re-open to them without a shot fired, and Obama is certain to tire of a real fight in Afghanistan before long. His position on Afghanistan as the real war is merely window dressing - when he made it, Afghanistan looked like an easy win, and Iraq looked like a long, tough slog. He’s definitely anti-long, tough slog and his supporters know it and like it. They favor a big, money-filled government teat to suck on, and long, hard slogs get in the way of that.

Al-Qaeda is overlooking one other thing, too: Its total victory over ignoble Spain. There a major bombing spree days before the election resulted in a surrender vote, Spain’s withdrawal from the War on Terror, and an al-Qaeda victory.

Would a major terrorist event just before the election rally America for more war? Look at the Teflon popularity of Obama, who’s whole campaign is predicated on the wisdom of his vote against Iraq and whose supporters aren’t likely to stick with him for long if he begins to adopt an LBJ persona.

AP admits that the suspected author of the post, Muhammad (Muhammed?! Knock me over with a feather!) Haafid, would not be privy to al-Qaeda planning and does not speak officially for the group. So it’s pretty much just blog-fodder.

That being the case, here’s an appropriate blog-thought. They plan an attack. McCain gets wind of it and wipes them out single-handedly, Jack Bauer-like, wrapping it up with a gravelly whisper, “C’mon now, you didn’t think you could whip my America, did you?”

Landslide McCain.