Palin denounces her critics as cowardly

“I consider it cowardly” that they did not allow their names to be used, she said.

I don't blame them. She might have tried to get them fired.

Alaska Gov Sarah Palin called her critics cowards and jerks Friday for deriding her anonymously

Boy, I never even went that far. Go get em Sarah!

The best dressed pig with lipstick in history. LOL! She couldn't even name one newspaper she read. Didn't know how many members there were in NAFTA. Didn't know Africa is a continent. Couldn't name a Supreme Court decision that she had reservations about. Thought she was talking to the Prime Minister of France on the phone, when all the while she was speaking to a comedian based in Canada. OMG!

Man I am glad that one did not get a seat any where near the President!

Glad to see you enjoyed your looooong ride home Mrs Palin.<G>

She is mad because the Republicans are all pointing fingers and all those fingers are pointing right at her.

Next people will say,"Palin who?" I for one do not wish that. I hope she becomes the poster child of the Far Right wing. Can ya imagine this politician screaming at the press for the next 8 years?LOL

"Next people will say,"Palin who?"

wanna bet on that? she drew crowds 40 and 50 times larger than slow joe biden.

I think the issue on racial discrimination is long over with Obama's victory. It is now leaning towards gender discrimination, with mean spirited Americans bullying a vice-presidential candidate who happens to be a woman. Not to mention the same-sex marriage issue in California! The wheel is rolling on again......................

Hey, give her some credit. She could see all the way to Russia (although probably doesn't know what continent it's in)

Hosefella: That would be continents, Russia straddles more than one. As for Susan Paren, who cares?

Just because she's a bone head ( although south park made her out to be smarter than she really is), she shouldn't be the point for the failure of the campaign. They new ahead of time she was so, I don't think she should be held responsible for the collapse. As far as the money goes I would suggest Cindy pay it off I mean she didn't seem to mind playing second fiddle so why not cover the expense.

There is no I in team they lost, get over it, move on, moose seasons about to open.

Oooo, Yangyong! You're a smartypants today, but for political purposes, Russia is in Europe. I, for one, would love to see her run in 2012 for the comedy, and for the free pass Obama would get on a second term

hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha HAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

"We're not in tatters," they say. The wounds to this Party are long and deep and will take years to heal. This is just the tip of the iceberg, judging by how quickly the GOP is turning on one another after losing this election. This isn't my grandmother's party, that's for damned sure.

Thought she was talking to the Prime Minister of France on the phone, when all the while she was speaking to a comedian based in Canada. OMG!

I think you would be surprised how many state governors have never spoken to any French politician ever and would not know the difference if they were standing right in front of them, much less on the telephone. And I do not think there is a crash course organized to teach potential VPs all those world leaders' voices.

I have to side with Palin about the clothes. Can't beleive anyone is still even thinking about it. Appearance is part of running a successful campaign, and that is because of the shallowness of the voters. Its not Palin's fault.

In fact, just the fact that anyone even paid much attention to it shows just how much the voters have not got one clue what is important.

In a new Rasmussen poll out today, Republicans overwhelmingly say that they want Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin as their presidential nominee in 2012. Sixty-four percent of GOP respondents said that Palin would be their top choice in 2012.

Run Baby Run! If the Republicans pick her, they are destined to end up in the place where the California Republican Party finds itself, namely fielding candidates who are way too far to the right to appeal to the middle of the road.

The only reason Arnold Schwarzenegger, who's more popular with Democrats than Republicans, got in was through the recall process. It's unlikely he could have prevailed in the Republican primary given his liberal social views such as favoring same-sex marriage, pro-choice, etc.

"Thought she was talking to the Prime Minister of France on the phone, when all the while she was speaking to a comedian based in Canada."

says more about france's decline if you ask me.

wow.

where does that leave canada?

for political purposes, Russia is in Europe

No it's not.

It’s unprofessional and those guys are jerks if they came away with it, taking things out of context and then tried to spread something on national news. It’s not fair, and it’s not right.

But taking William Ayers out of context is OK.

I love Sarah Palin. She is a breath of fresh air compared to all these other politicians. She has done a great job as Governor of Alaska as the people of Alaska will attest to.

If the Republicans get it together in 2012 and nominate Palin for president, and if indeed Barack Obama doesn't get impeached ( not likely with a Democrat-controlled Congress even if he screws up royally ) and actually has the, uh, audacity to run for re-election and the Democrats are dumb enough to nominate him, Palin will cream him.

I really, really hope Palin runs in 2012.

I don't know about that Sarge. Its way too early to tell. Assuming Obama doesn't screw things up too badly, as a sitting President, he will be difficult to unseat, particularly with the standard media bias factored in. Of course if he screws things up, as he likely will, even with favorable media coverage, these things do get out. If that happens, then its anyones game, and Palin could very likely have a shot.

Although it really bothers me, these attempts at torpedoing her by smearing her intelligence, and accusing her of throwing money away on clothes and make-up. How much of that did she buy? Can you say... nothing! And the woman is obviously intelligent. And doing a pretty damn good job as Governor too.

Wow, Sarge. Thanks for the lesson on delusionalism. I have learned the error of my ways (moobeams discards brain)

Looks like Palin has become a Scapegoat.

Can the Republicans afford to break off with their "base" in order to pursue there true ideals of the old days?

Does anyone body actually believe that Palin did not know that Africa was a continent?

If Palin were to be nominated, I don't think she has much of a chance of being elected no matter what Obama does. I don't think she'll even be nominated.

Voters this time soundly rejected Palin's brand of evangelical Christianity as wedded to politics and fear. I think they'll be looking for someone much more centrist politically and religiously.

moonbeams,

Apparently there are some people who believe that Obama did not know that we had only 50 states. If not, they wasted a lot of typing time in proclaiming that to be so.

I don't know what Palin knows and what she does not know. However, she did not once impress me as being an intellectual heavyweight and I think there are a lot of people in American (and in Japan, too) that cannot identify Africa as a continent. They may "know" that in some sense, but in another sense Africa is a monolithic mystery.

If the Republicans get it together in 2012 and nominate Palin for president, and if indeed Barack Obama doesn't get impeached ( not likely with a Democrat-controlled Congress even if he screws up royally ) and actually has the, uh, audacity to run for re-election and the Democrats are dumb enough to nominate him, Palin will cream him.

Just how many times did you post on this site confidently predicting a 2008 McCain-Palin victory? I think I'll take your predictions with a pinch of salt, thanks. Anyway, all she managed to do was fire up the social conservative, "God, guns, war and babies" crowd that made up just one part of the Republican base. Once everyone else got over the Stacey's Mom thing she had going on, she was a bit of a joke candidate. You really think the Republicans are going to run with a failed VP candidate in 2012? Get real.

"Wow, Sarge, thanks for the lesson on delusionalism. I have learned the error of my ways ( moobeams discards brain )"

You're right, of course, there's no way Barack's going to run for re-election.

""voters this time soundly rejected Palin's brand of evangelical Christianity as wedded to politics and fear"

Sez, what liberal site did you lift that from? LOL! And here I was told the voters soundly rejected McCain's "negative campaign" in favor of the young, handsome, smooth-talking senator from Chicago who "will change America and change the world."

Tell me, Sez, how come the good people of Alaska haven't soundly rejected Sarah Palin?

Sarah Palin, the honorable Governor from Alaska, is EXACTLY RIGHT about her detractors.

Simon - I posted what I posted because I don't believe it's over until the fat lady sings. Hey, another few percentage points up for McCain and down for Obama and McCain would have won.

"She was a bit of a joke candidate"

Yeah, you might believe that if all you watch is CNN or Saturday Night Live. She was not a joke candidate to the more than 57 million people who voted for the McCain-Palin ticket.

McCain and his "team" of advisors woudl do well to say "Thank You!" to Governor Palin, then get the you-know-where out of her way. When 69% of your voting base says she helped your campaign, and 93% have favorable view of her, it speaks loudly that without her, McCain would have been buried this election without her. Instead of stabbing her in the back, the "leaky 'Top Advisors'" need ot say "Thank yu!" and get ut of her way.

Further, to all you libs who think she was a joke? Ask yourself this question:

Why was it necessary for the MSM and Liberal Left to attack Governor Palin?

If she wasn't the threat to Obama that you all claim she wasn't, why bother?

I am amazed that there are people here still defending Sarah Palin. McCain had a solid chance of becoming the next president of the United States. Just before Obama and Clinton settled their catfights in favour of Obama, I favoured McCain on the grounds that he was a straightforward Republican who recognised the failures of Bush and he was boosted by the Democrats infighting. Palin ruined any chance McCain had of becoming pres and that was a pretty decent chance too. The shortlived media hype of Palin and her 'hockey mom/ moose hunting' lifestyle soon fell apart when the real political issues were being debated. How can anyone defend her ? Her 'spectacle wearing/ tough frontier mom' media spin deflected away from all the very good presidential points that McCain possessed.

The Republican vice presidential candidate attracted criticism for accusing Mr Obama of "palling around with terrorists", citing his association with the sixties radical William Ayers. The attacks provoked a near lynch mob atmosphere at her rallies, with supporters yelling "terrorist" and "kill him" until the McCain campaign ordered her to tone down the rhetoric. But it has now emerged that her demagogic tone may have unintentionally encouraged white supremacists to go even further.-Telegraph, London

I have met Japanese people who couldn't find many different very well known countries on a map, and I believe (correct me if I'm wrong) that there was a survey a few years ago that showed some Americans couldn't find Mexico. So yes, I believe Palin might have believed Africa was a country. Just because you might be a governor doesn't make you intelligent by default (just look at GW).

northlondon - You couldn't be more wrong about the Governor from the great state of Alaska. McCain's campaign was floundering until he picked Palin to be his VP. Right after she got on board, McCain was actually ahead in the polls. Then came the wretched Democrat policies-inspired financial crisis, torpedoing McCain's campaign.

I'd rather have Palin over for dinner than ANY other politician.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHahahahahahahaahahaha!!!

Awwwww.... pooowa sawah pawin! Boohoo! it's SO unfair when some people do to you what you spent your entire campaign doing to others -- the only difference being, of course, that what was said about you was true when what you made up about others was full of lies.

sarge: "I love Sarah Palin. She is a breath of fresh air compared to all these other politicians."

Wow, sarge, aside from the gender of the pronoun you just took the exact opposite to be true, which means you are in direct support of Obama. You see, it's HE that is a breath of fresh air... Palin is something left behind in a Dutch oven.

Imperium: Palin may have drawn slightly larger crowds than Biden but for 1) they were not even a fraction the size of Obama's, nor will they be if she decides to fracture the Republican party and try to run for president (I hope she does, it guarantees another Democratic victory as it did this one!) in 2012. (2) they were also full of protesters who she 'graciously' labelled as more or less socialists and said they could maybe stay if they joined her ticket... hahaha. You guys are sad.

Anyway, it's funny to watch Palin freak out and blame everyone for the idiocy coming back to slap her in the face. She denied flat out that she didn't know Africa was a country and in her retort STILL made a mistake about Africa being a country! What a loser! I'm glad she ran back to hide in her house instead of showing up at work like she was scheduled to.

I ALMOST feel sorry for her now that she's screwed herself so badly she's in trouble in her home state and has lost a lot of support due to the tactics her and McCain tried to pull. ALMOST, but she did it to herself, and her calling others cowardly for the exact same things she did, but the people she's accusing of being cowards doing even LESS, well, that makes the coward... well... the one in the mirror. Sorry palin, but it's no one but you.

Sarge- Great posts as usual, a true patriot. Palin is correct in denouncing her critics. She behaved with dignity and wisdom at all times, the liberal media were envious of her.

Palin made McCain support increase, they only lost because of the financial crisis caused by gredy financiers.

Palin you are a star, and a future president, all true America patriots support you!

sarge: "Yeah, you might believe that if all you watch is CNN or Saturday Night Live. She was not a joke candidate to the more than 57 million people who voted for the McCain-Palin ticket."

Oh... well.. then she was only a joke candidate for... what... the tens of millions that voted against her and McCain? Or should I simply say the majority of Americans?

She's calling people cowards for doing bang on what she did, but she did even more of it. That means, sarge, that she herself is a coward. I know the JT mods don't like it when you throw that word around, but in all honesty she brought it up in reference to libel that she did ten fold on Obama, so I can type it in as such. Thank god she ran back to Alaska and is hiding out at home. She'll NEVER have the chance to run for president... HAHA! She'll be lucky enough to run for her own job after running away from it today and sleeping it off at home.

I can't say is if I blame palin for calling out her critics for hiding behind their anonymity. If I was on a team and then my teammates bashed me soundly in the press, I'd want to know who said what too.

However, none of this infighting really benefits the republican party and further sullies their brand and is indicative to the party's problem, as a whole.

John Cole commented on his blog, Balloon Juice, a very apt description, in my opinion, of the crux of what is wrong with the GOP. He also drew on an article from Jon Henke at "The Next Right." Collectively, they nailed why the republicans are in such dire straits.

http://www.balloon-juice.com/?p=13515

I don't know if mccain chose palin or she was thrust upon him, but, she was a poor choice, in my opinion. Early on in the campaign, mccain always had joe lieberman at his side to tell us what mccain REALLY meant. I don't like lieberman, but, he kept mccain on topic. palin didn't have the smarts or experience to steer mccain in the right direction when he wandered. So, he continued to get further and further off track, until we got nonsense like John Cole mentioned in his post, the tire gauge debacle (I had forgotten about that little gem). Only the neo-cons are capable of saying, "Let's mock Obama for advocating common sense, and spend a lot of money needlessly in the process. That'll fix him."

In summary, yeah, if I were palin, I'd want names too, but, if I were a republican, I'd just want her to quickly and quietly return to Alaska.

Taka

Idgits

Salon speaks

But reform hasn't arisen from partisan competition, as it did in Washington. In a neat symbolic fit, the agent responsible for Alaska's current moment of reform and modernization is a woman, a breed once nearly as rare in far Northwest politics as a Democrat. Sarah Palin, a libertarian and hockey mom from the fast-growing suburbs of Anchorage, began her political career -- as an appointed member of the state's Oil and Gas Commission -- by hacking into the computer of another commissioner, Randy Ruedrich, chairman of the Alaska Republican Party. Palin was seeking the evidence that she would eventually use to charge him with an improper relationship with lobbyists. (Ruedrich would later settle state ethics charges against him by paying a $12,000 fine.)

It is difficult not to see Palin's ascendance not just as a challenge to the state's establishment but also as presenting a crudely cut choice between the state's cronyist, resource-economy past and its future. She beat Frank Murkowski, the incumbent, in the GOP primary; voters began to sour on Murkowski as soon as he picked his daughter to replace him in the Senate, and then grew angrier over his grubbing for a private jet and other perceived ethical lapses. He left office the least popular governor in the country. Since her election as governor last November, Palin has made a public point of cutting down on Alaska's excesses, and challenging the easy habits of its past -- getting the state to put Murkowski's infamous jet up for sale on eBay, canceling pork projects and firing patronage appointees. By early this summer, with the scandals plaguing the rest of the Republican Party, Alaska Democrats had made some headway in the polls. But Palin's approval ratings are over 90 percent. Whether in the long term Alaska's economy can modernize and the state can wean itself from government welfare remains to be seen. But as Stevens hits back at the FBI through press releases, the senator's old legislative aides plead guilty, and his son endures a federal investigation, the moment is beginning to look like a pivotal point in Alaska's history. Perhaps the rough edges are being ushered out and something more modern and nationally acceptable has begun to move in.

What is happening in Alaska is not simply the collapse of one ancient Republican power and the rise of another, in Palin, that is more fragile and conditional. It is the assertion that for all of the country's divisions into red and blue, the national culture does exert a crude centrifugal tug, a tendency to iron out protruding regional discrepancies. The plaintive, humbled sounds coming from Alaska right now are those that always emerge when the exception succumbs

http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2007/08/13/alaska/index1.html

"I'd just want her to quickly and quietly return to Alaska"

How does it feel to want?

Sarge

sailwind: so in other words, by posting the tripe you did above, you agree that Palin has gone against her own party, and is willing to splinter it and form a new one to her own ends. If not, well, I notice the last sentence in the post:

"the plaintive, humbled sounds coming from Alaska right now are those that always emerge when the exception succumbs"

Well, since Palin is the one that clearly sticks out, that would mean it's her that is going to succumb, and there's really no doubt that you're bang on about that sailwind, since she can't even leave her house to go to work for shame of her loss and her own hypocrisy. Good on you, sailwind.

Sarge,

The good people of Alaska are not representative of the United States as a whole.

McCain's campaign was floundering until he picked Palin to be his VP. Right after she got on board, McCain was actually ahead in the polls. Then came the wretched Democrat policies-inspired financial crisis, torpedoing McCain's campaign.

Right. So McCain was floundering so much, that he was an absolute shoe-in for the Republican nomination and breezed that contest. As soon as the unknown moose hunter with the librarian spectacles turns up then everyone stopped talking about McCain's solid policies and started talking about 'a huntin and a fishin' on Saturday night TV chat shows. And as for the comment about the Democratic policy-inspired recession ? Man, I took you for being rather more intelligent than that. You seem to forget one thing. It is Dubya's Republican government that has been in charge throughout the current crisis.

Please, Please, Please, Please nominate Palin for president in 2012, 2016, 2020. 2024, 2028 and any other year you believe and love her in. I know it is too good to be true that she will continue to get national support but one can dream. If Ted Stevens wins I am in full support of Palin for senator. Palin in the public eye will be toxic to the Republicans.

I want to reiterate that I did not hear one news source question her intelligence before I did. I made up my own mind after watching her a very short time. Every thing since has just been reinforcement.

Please explain to me what the motivation for Republicans criticizing Palin is? Well of course I know you will answer some form of "she has become the scapegoat" for these sour grapes Republicans. They are probably all RINOs anyway right? We see the real (conservative) Republicans here defending her honor and dreaming of her place in history.

Blue Tiger,

About Palin and the mainstream media, I don't think that you have established that the mainstream media "attacked" her. They certainly did criticize her, however, and they were not opposed to shining a light on her shortcomings.

They were not alone in that. Powell and others commented on her lack of preparation. And that, I think, was the primary reason for the criticism: she was not ready for national politics. She over-reached.

It also did not help that she was embarrassingly anti-scientific and extremely fundamental. There's no problem with people being fundamentalists. There is a big problem in bringing their religion into politics.

From Salon

Palin has made a public point of cutting down on Alaska's excesses, and challenging the easy habits of its past -- getting the state to put Murkowski's infamous jet up for sale on eBay, canceling pork projects and firing patronage appointees.

GD...Says

I want to reiterate that I did not hear one news source question her intelligence before I did.

Doofus comes to mind in your opinion about Governor Palin.

Sez,

Two words regarding sarah palin being a heart beat from the presidency: peter principle.

Taka

Taka

Two words....Promises Kept

Alaska's governor tops the approval rating charts 89-93 POLL RATINGS: Palin has pleased most voters by sticking to her promises.

By SABRA AYRES Anchorage Daily News

Published: May 30, 2007 Last Modified: May 30, 2007 at 02:29 AM

JUNEAU -- With the latest poll showing her approval rating at 89 percent, Gov. Sarah Palin may now be the most popular governor in the nation.

http://dwb.adn.com/news/politics/story/8931698p-8831940c.html

Sail, It's great that she has done those things, but, when thrust on the national stage, she did not perform.

To me (you may have seen it differently), she looked like a college freshman trying to b.s. her way through an essay exam after not reading the assigned book, in her interviews with Charlie Gibson and Katie Couric. Now, you may think that they were hit pieces, but, I do not. I thought they were rather tame, in fact. We'll have to disagree on that, if that is the case.

The same can be said for her debate with Joe Biden. The majority of Americans thought she had her butt handed to her. She didn't answer the questions and many of us believe that she merely stuck to a script given to her, regardless of what was asked. Again, you may think that she smoked Joe in the debate. I disagree.

I don't think she is ready for the national stage. I thought it was glaringly obvious, as did most voters.

So...I think the Peter principle is very apt, at this time. As Alaska's governor, she's in her comfort zone. On a national stage, not so much.

Again, you may have seen things differently. That's your right.

Taka

sailwind,

All that statistic proves is that Palin is riding that horse in the direction its going. Again, Alaska is not representative of the US. It's good that Palin has the support of Alaskans. She does not have the support of Americans as a whole.

Taka

Nobody looked at her real record, to busy smearing her for being a Republican and from Alaska.

Sez

Alaska is part of the U.S and is a part of our union as California is. I leave it at that.

I really, really hope Palin runs in 2012.

hahahahahaha me too. I really do hahahaha

Further, to all you libs who think she was a joke? Ask yourself this question: Why was it necessary for the MSM and Liberal Left to attack Governor Palin? If she wasn't the threat to Obama that you all claim she wasn't, why bother?

hahahahahahaha, it gets better and better. keep 'em coming eh

Nobody looked at her real record

Conjecture.

smearing

Opinion.

for being a republican and from Alaska.

As you see it. I see it for being inexperienced on the national stage and fumbling the ball every time it really counted. Now...before you start the but...but...Obama's resume etc. etc., I will say that he was and is also very inexperienced on the national stage, but, when it mattered most, he didn't fumble the ball, he scored. He didn't bomb on softball interviews, he walked into the lion's den and handled bill o'reilly. He never got his butt handed to him during a debate, whether it be with Hillary or mccain. All of those things helped convince people he could handle the job he was running for. Not even being able to handle a Charlie Gibson and Katie Couric interview led people to believe palin couldn't handle the job she was running for. That's the way I see it.

Taka

Alaska is part of the U.S and is [as much] a part of our union as California is. I leave it at that.

Very true. And I believe it says a lot about this election that the Democratic candidate won without even needing California and New York's electoral votes to win.

President-elect Obama reached more than just those traditionally liberal strong holds. He reached America. candidate mccain and sarah palin did not. And instead of looking as to why not, now, the GOP has turned on itself, leading to the above story regarding name-calling and nasty infighting within the GOP. That's not the fault of the media, the liberals or President-elect Obama.

Taka

That's right sailwind I called her a doofus and I still think she is a doofus and a dumbass. My point was I did not need to be influence by anyone to come to that conclusion. Care to comment on that. And then by this great coincidence (I think NOT!) a whole slew of people reached the same exact conclusion I did. I recall two Republican pundits that I commented on immediately said she was a disaster (paraphrasing) off mic.

Again my point was I came to the conclusion that she was stupid (new word for you to use) long before I heard it through a news source. They just confirmed my correct evaluation.

sailwind said:

Nobody looked at her real record, to busy smearing her for being a Republican and from Alaska.

Once again you make unfounded statements. I looked at her record and found it severely lacking; you just don't like my conclusion. You can't stand it that you can't convince people that her record is just as strong as Obama's. You, by your own admission, do not know sufficient information about Obama so you say we don't. That is why I grew tired of listening to you. You kept saying untrue things about me and you continue to. Just because the statements are in the collective, once you say nobody that includes me. Again, I knew about Obama since 1996, when I saw him on station WTTW, channel 11, PBS, and I think I checked out Palin just as well as you did. I was raised that it is bad manners to state falsehoods about someone when you don't know the facts. I was raised that lying about someone was worse than calling someone childish names like - doofus, stupid and dumbass.

Smearing would be if it were not true. It's all true. She lacks ethics. She is a DIVA! She said the V.P. is in charge of the U.S. senate and she was wrong. She continued to purchase clothes on other people's credit cards after the Republicans were embarrassed by her previous purchases. I heard her say she only wore the $150,000.00 clothes at the convention; then why did she have to buy more?

Currently the bottom line is that it is not just Democrats and Independents that are criticizing her it is very many Republicans.

I feel sorry for all the conservatives that let their personal affections get in the way of seeing what a large majority of Americans already understand about Sarah Palin. I don't claim that she is going away you guys are way too in love with her for that to happen. But she will continue to make gaffes, faux pas and blunders as long as she is on the national scene.

Speaking of lies, did Sarah Palin ever get back to Katie Couric? She could not answer the question so she said she would get back to her.

sailwind said:

Alaska's governor tops the approval rating charts 89-93 POLL RATINGS: Palin has pleased most voters by sticking to her promises.

Is that the same Alaska electorate that voted for Ted Stevens in a race that is too close to call yet? That would be the Seven Time Felony Convicted, Ted Stevens. Hey, there will be no "personnel board" to dispute Ted Stevens' Seven Felony Convictions of this beloved Alaskan Governor.

Why was it necessary for the MSM and Liberal Left to attack Governor Palin? If she wasn't the threat to Obama that you all claim she wasn't, why bother?

Because it was fun! xD

It is standard practice in ethics to appoint an independent prosecutor to investigate a government official in an executive position when the charges would otherwise be investigated by a subordinate. After a Republican majority panel of the legislature says you violated ethics, subordinates clearing you of those charges has very little credibility. I know, she can claim she was saving the taxpayers money. It cost a lot of money to hire an independent prosecutor. You betcha it does!

Oh-h-h-h-h it's such a bitch when the attack dog gets attacked. I have no problem with Palin being attacked. < :-)

The republicans who critisize Palin are sore losers. < :-)

After Palin declared:I come to Washington to change things ,not listen to your good opininons...I think the media decided to go straight for her throat. The task wasn't that difficult : ignore or minimise anything good about her while amplify 10 fold ,100 fold ,1000 fold any her mistake(even if there isn't any). If she wants to stand for President in 2012, she better find the way to win over the media first and wait for Pre.elect Obama's performances.It all depends ,too early to say.

..aaaand when media loves you, any your mistake will be concealed, or minimise 10 fold ,100 fold..until it disappears.Any your good point will be amplified much stronger than what it is, thus you are elevated to higher and higher status...even saviour of America or whatever.So media can make or break a King.

This 2008 campaign, more than any other, really showed the power of the MSM in determining who's elected president. Even the democrats acknowledge it, it was so blatant.

One thing I think we can conclude from this thread. De-Ni-Al can replace drill baby, drill as the GOP mantra.

mccain staffers made claims about palin. That is the basis for the story. Somewhere along the way, the argument has morphed into, liberals were mean to her and the MSN was biased against her. That the information came from the mccain camp has become superfluous.

Amazing.

Taka

sailwind,

Of course Alaska is part of the United States. That was not my point. My point was that it is not representative of the United States. What Alaskans think they want and need is no more indicative of what Americans want and need than what San Franciscans want and need would be. In fact, Alaskans pride themselves on that point.

mccain staffers made claims about palin. That is the basis for the story. Somewhere along the way, the argument has morphed into, liberals were mean to her and the MSN was biased against her. That the information came from the mccain camp has become superfluous.

This is true. Its just the Dems that are picking up on it, and continuing the smears, well beyond where the staffers went. Now libs like Dumbdonkey are telling outright lies about her. Now shes a moronic, unethical, Diva who should go back to Alaska, and of course shut up. I'll admit it, these outright lies bother me. It bothers me that McCain is nowhere to be heard while these lies are being bandied about. The man would foam at the mouth, if anyone happened to mention Barrack Hussein Obamas middle name. But his VP pick gets trashed, by his own people, and not a whisper. More then anything else, I think this shows what kind of man he really is.

Taka313: "when thrust upon the national stage, she did noy perform"

She most certainly did. Even with all the jokes and slander against her, she maintained her poise.

"The same can be said for debate with Joe Biden. The majority of Americans thought she had her butt handed to her."

Sure, just make up stuff and post it! For cryin' out loud, even the media admitted she at least held her own against the wizened ( I would say wizenheimer ) senator.

"Not even being able to handle a Charlie Gibson or Katie Couric interview..."

Opinion.

"... led people to believe palin ( Palin ) couldn't handle the job she was running for."

Conjecture.

By the way, your not capitalizing the names of people you despise is childish.

sarge,

For one, I claimed that what I was posting was opinion. I didn't try to pass them off as fact.

So, I don't really see what you are driving at there, except, "look at me. I'm bitter and not really good at reading or thinking before hitting the submit button."

Secondly, the overwhelming response to the debate between palin and Biden was that she did better than expected, by NOT screwing the pooch.

If you want to consider that successful, please feel free and knock yourself out, but that's a pretty low bar for success, IN MY OPINION.

Lastly, your opinion of me registers even lower than that aforementioned bar for success. Subterranean leaps to mind.

Taka

“If there are allegations based on questions or comments that I made in debate prep about NAFTA, and about the continent vs the country when we talk about Africa there, then those were taken out of context,” she said.

First, she says the allegations aren't true, but then says she might have said some things that were "taken out of context". Ok, maybe she was joking around and somebody took her seriously. Otherwise, it would be good to know just in what "context" discussing Africa the continent vs. Africa the country makes any sense.

sailwind: "Alaska's governor tops the approval rating charts 89-93 POLL RATINGS: Palin has pleased most voters by sticking to her promises."

She WAS a good governor, but people don't hold the same opinion of her now as they did in the very old reference you pasted in. The fact is, people in her own state are upset and disappointed that the woman they knew and loved as governor hid behind a libel smearing and very negative campaign riddled with lies, etc.

I'm with everyone else on this thread when I say I hope she runs in 2012, too; it guarantees another Democratic term and likely a majority in both houses (again).

“I never asked for anything more than a Diet Dr Pepper once in a while,”

So that's what she meant when she said she supports Chinese Democracy!

It’s unprofessional and those guys are jerks if they came away with it, taking things out of context and then tried to spread something on national news. It’s not fair, and it’s not right.

But taking William Ayers out of context is OK.

Wow. That is a very very good point. Palin "around with terrorists" can now be called Palin "around with hypocrits". --Cirroc

Even with all the jokes and slander against her, she maintained her poise.

Did she? I'll have to check with McCain and get back to you on that.

McCain is quiet as a churchmouse about the whole thing. I'm starting to wonder what would cause the man to open his mouth. Quick, someone ask him whether Obama is Muslim!

It was only through the fair and balanced media that we were able to learn about Palin's words and actions. The response was evident when her initial favorable rating went down quickly. The public thought she performed very poorly with Katie Couric. The independents did not like her negative and false representations during her campaign events. When she said that the V.P. was in charge of the U.S. Senate it was beyond the pale of any gaffe since the Quayle years. As someone correctly stated the attack dog does not like it when she get a taste of her own style of criticism. The facts cannot be denied that the American people overwhelmingly rejected Sarah Palin and many held McCain accountable for choosing her.

Most recently Republicans said that she would not follow McCain's directives that she stick to the messages approved by the campaign. Please tell me once more she is a maverick. Republicans also recently told us that she charged another $30,000.00 on clothes after the Republicans were already publicly humiliated by her $150,000.00 shopping spree. They also revealed that she was not told to spend that amount but was told to get a few things for the campaign. It was also revealed that Todd Palin was dressed up in $40,000.00 worth of new clothes. Lastly, but not least, she had two speeches prepared of which one was to follow McCain's concession speech. There will be many people out there that will conclude that the revelations of these Republicans were not because they were jerks or cowardly but rather because the sooner they got rid of Sarah Palin the better it would be for the Republican Party.

Nessie - "Did she?"

Yes.

"I'll have to check with McCain and get back to you on that."

Why don't you check out what she said and did during the campaign and get back to me on that?

It was only through the fair and balanced media that we were able to learn about Palin's words and actions.

You have about 9 percent support on that view.

Voters overwhelmingly believe that the media wants Barack Obama to win the presidential election. By a margin of 70%-9%, Americans say most journalists want to see Obama, not John McCain, win on Nov. 4. Another 8% say journalists don't favor either candidate, and 13% say they don't know which candidate most reporters support.

http://people-press.org/report/463/media-wants-obama

Non-biased link.

sailwind, nothing you quoted said it was not fair. Nothing you quoted said it was not balanced. You made a false statement regarding what I said. You said only 9% supported my view. You did not show any evidence of people saying "not fair" or "not balanced." Besides you did not report the data correctly. It also said "Another 8% say journalists don't favor either candidate, and 13% say they don't know which candidate most reporters support.." Please try to be honest when trying to refute what I say. How can it be only 9% when 13% (additionally) say they did not know and clearly 8% saying journalists don't favor either candidate would also be added to those who did not say that most journalists favored Obama. Maybe now you can understand why I feel very little guilt for using harsh words to say Palin is not intelligent. I compare that with blatant dishonesty. I saw a Pew representative on The News Hour with Jim Lehrer. They said just because it was negative did not mean it was not true. Of course there was more negative on McCain, they were true, and that is why he lost.

How many more times do I have to ask for examples of false coverage or legitimate stories that were not reported.

You sited a statistic that has very little meaning. It said that most journalist want to see Obama win. That could be 50.00000000000001% of journalists and still be true. It can be true that the same proportion of journalists as the rest of the American electorate wanted Obama; that is why he got elected. Most means at least over half and that is all it means.

Nice try. Thanks for playing. Return soon.

I'll pass that on to Micheal Malone

The traditional media are playing a very, very dangerous game -- with their readers, with the Constitution and with their own fates.

The sheer bias in the print and television coverage of this election campaign is not just bewildering, but appalling. And over the last few months I've found myself slowly moving from shaking my head at the obvious one-sided reporting, to actually shouting at the screen of my television and my laptop computer.

But worst of all, for the last couple weeks, I've begun -- for the first time in my adult life -- to be embarrassed to admit what I do for a living. A few days ago, when asked by a new acquaintance what I did for a living, I replied that I was "a writer," because I couldn't bring myself to admit to a stranger that I'm a journalist.

You need to understand how painful this is for me. I am one of those people who truly bleeds ink when I'm cut. I am a fourth-generation newspaperman. As family history tells it, my great-grandfather was a newspaper editor in Abilene, Kan., during the last of the cowboy days, then moved to Oregon to help start the Oregon Journal (now the Oregonian).

My hard-living -- and when I knew her, scary -- grandmother was one of the first women reporters for the Los Angeles Times. And my father, though profoundly dyslexic, followed a long career in intelligence to finish his life (thanks to word processors and spellcheckers) as a very successful freelance writer. I've spent 30 years in every part of journalism, from beat reporter to magazine editor. And my oldest son, following in the family business, so to speak, earned his first national byline before he earned his drivers license.

So, when I say I'm deeply ashamed right now to be called a "journalist," you can imagine just how deep that cuts into my soul.

I listen to people who should really know.

http://abcnews.go.com/print?id=6099188

Wow, now THERE'S a dead elephant!

Main Stream Media? So 20th Century, a dying out --thank god-- baby boomer feed, the neo-cons lost the election and the majority for the future due to the i.n.t.e.r.n.e.t. and the way it was used to get NEW, YOUTHFUL votes, Palsin was, is, will be of no consequence. She is the snail's trail in a hot sun.

To paraphrase Palin, it's not unfair or biased to call someone out on his (or her) understanding and dissociations.

To prefer one candidate to another is not a proof of bias. To run more positive articles about one candidate and more negative articles about another is not a proof of bias.

Granted, that the press publishes more favorable coverage about Bush than it does about Chavez could be evidence of bias, but it is certainly not proof of it.

sailwind, you already posted that. It is really an opinion piece isn't it? An article stating bias should present some evidence of bias. I want to analyze the evidence I don't need to take his word for it. If what he is saying is true then it should make an excellent investigative journalist piece. What he has presented, however long his career, however long his family history, is still anecdotal evidence. He is telling his readers his experience. If it were rampant then why not give examples. I asked for examples. Still no examples.

There are thousands of articles across the nation every week. If there were but 10 biased articles a day we would have 3000 already for this year alone. I don't need to hear even hundreds just a few would be helpful. I heard immediately that Obama had considerably more ties to Ayres than he claimed in his debate. I am not afraid to admit that my candidate lies or deceives. But then I tend to be honest. I use this as an example of very unfavorable information on Obama that was being reported but as the Republicans repeated the news over and over it was just not very important to the electorate.

In my opinion the conservatives are blaming the media when there real anger is that nobody cares about the dirt they have dug up on Obama. The people sure seem to care about what Palin and McCain have done wrong. Of course I know people care about Obama's mistakes I have heard them whining. So the NeoCons need to post their articles from newsbusters and convince everyone of their solid evidence of media bias.

Good thing posters on JT are not held to the same standard as journalists. Posters on JT present not distorted statistics but false statistics unless 9% = 9% plus 8% plus 13% . Media outlets would be forced to print a retraction.

It's from 2005, after this election I'm sure it got even worse. 70 percent of the voters agreed (that includes Democrats by the way.)

While the editorial page of The Wall Street Journal is conservative, the newspaper's news pages are liberal, even more liberal than The New York Times. The Drudge Report may have a right-wing reputation, but it leans left. Coverage by public television and radio is conservative compared to the rest of the mainstream media. Meanwhile, almost all major media outlets tilt to the left.

These are just a few of the surprising findings from a UCLA-led study, which is believed to be the first successful attempt at objectively quantifying bias in a range of media outlets and ranking them accordingly.

"I suspected that many media outlets would tilt to the left because surveys have shown that reporters tend to vote more Democrat than Republican," said Tim Groseclose, a UCLA political scientist and the study's lead author. "But I was surprised at just how pronounced the distinctions are."

"Overall, the major media outlets are quite moderate compared to members of Congress, but even so, there is a quantifiable and significant bias in that nearly all of them lean to the left," said co‑author Jeffrey Milyo, University of Missouri economist and public policy scholar.

Love this part of the article.

The researchers took numerous steps to safeguard against bias — or the appearance of same — in the work, which took close to three years to complete. They went to great lengths to ensure that as many research assistants supported Democratic candidate Al Gore in the 2000 election as supported President George Bush. They also sought no outside funding, a rarity in scholarly research.

"No matter the results, we feared our findings would've been suspect if we'd received support from any group that could be perceived as right- or left-leaning, so we consciously decided to fund this project only with our own salaries and research funds that our own universities provided," Groseclose said.

The results break new ground.

"Past researchers have been able to say whether an outlet is conservative or liberal, but no one has ever compared media outlets to lawmakers," Groseclose said. "Our work gives a precise characterization of the bias and relates it to known commodity — politicians."

What more do you want from me? Sheesh, I haven't used one rightwing link during this whole conversation. Yet, you still think the Media wasn't in the tank for Obama?????????????

http://newsroom.ucla.edu/portal/ucla/Media-Bias-Is-Real-Finds-UCLA-6664.aspx

Washington Post just a few hours ago made it official for any last minute doubters.

I don't know if the link will work. The first time I tried it sent me to their registration page. Though if you google Deborah Howell ombudsmen for the Washington Post you should be able to find it.

Just in case my link doesn't work for you some this is straight from the Washington Post itself.

By Deborah Howell Sunday, November 9, 2008; Page B06

The Post provided a lot of good campaign coverage, but readers have been consistently critical of the lack of probing issues coverage and what they saw as a tilt toward Democrat Barack Obama. My surveys, which ended on Election Day, show that they are right on both counts.

My assistant, Jean Hwang, and I have been examining Post coverage since Nov. 11 last year on issues, voters, fundraising, the candidates' backgrounds and horse-race stories on tactics, strategy and consultants. We also have looked at photos and Page 1 stories since Obama captured the nomination June 4. Numbers don't tell you everything, but they give you a sense of The Post's priorities.

I rest my case.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/11/07/AR2008110702895.html

People read what they want to read. This is true even more so when they pay for the privilege of reading it. With television the currency is time. With newspapers the currency is time and money.

The media tend to give what people want. Any bias in the media tends to reflect what the population wants. Media tends to follow public opinion and instead of leading it.

Right wing accusations of left wing media bias have been around forever, and not just in the USA. But even if sailwind is correct and the media was "in the tank for Obama", the response is so what. Why don't you look at a country like Russia to see what media bias means. Putin's views are in the media, Kasparov's are not. Not exactly the case in the USA, where Fox News, Rush Limbaugh, and Ann Coulter (to name just three) are all widely distributed and easily accessable. Just because some media outlets have a liberal bias doesn't mean the US media as a whole is biased. All views have an outlet. You also have a chicken and egg problem. Media organizations are profit maximizing companies who respond to what their customers want. Instead of media bias influencing voters, you could also have voter bias influencing the media. And if you look at it like that then of course "almost all major media outlets tilt to the left" - it is a sign that the Republicans are too far to the right of where they need to be to win. Or at least win without having to use risky stategies. Anyways, I don't get why so many Republicans want to see media bias, they should be really hoping that it doesn't actually exist, because they are going to need all the help they can get.

Right wing accusations of left wing media bias have been around forever, and not just in the USA. But even if sailwind is correct and the media was "in the tank for Obama", the response is so what.

Your almost there, so close but not quite.

Be nice if someone finally just says what is obvious to almost anybody. "I'm sure glad Obama had the media on his side, it made the job of getting him elected so much more easier."

Though that does lessen the argument that Obama won fair and square and I can see the how the left would be loathed to admit that. Sorta cheapens the victory. That is what is really important about all this. Did Obama really win on the force of his ideas or did he win because the Media pretty much treated him with kid gloves?

It would have been nice to know what all about the Man we really elected, warts and all Media glossed over his failings and failed in it's primary task in informing the public of a thorough objective look of the man and thats the shame. A little bit more of our freedom was sacrificed in this election by the left for not holding the Media accountable in its reporting. And it happened right in front of all us and not through some executive order authorizing waterboarding.

I'm still awestruck that the left sat passively by and nary a peep when Palin's e-mail got hacked, that was news but instead of being mad that her right to privacy was violated and wanting the schmuck that did it thrown in jail, it was "Alright!!!!, what dirt do we have here."

Also Joe the Plumber owes back taxes by the way. A little out of whack our priorities for covering a Presidential candidate and sad to see it so blatent in this election.

At least at one time journalists as least made the pretense that they were fair in their coverage of political candidates. This time they didn't even bother, they said So What?

Enjoy this comedy always has a way relieving tension on a serious discussion.

Media bias.............From a guy that knows all about it.

http://jp.youtube.com/watch?v=LIerZPgGa6I

I don't think anyone can seriously argue that the media wasn't favoring Obama. It was obvious, and to me, it was scary.

It would be okay if people knew it, but if people don't realize that their favorable impression of Obama was at least in part shaped by media bias, then, we have a world that is easily manipulated.

But I think to be informed, the Limbaugh/Fox News people should listen to the "drive by media" sometimes, and visa versa. Its good to get both sides.

"“I never asked for anything more than a Diet Dr Pepper once in a while".

Oh Sarah, I love ya but.... do you expect anyone to buy that? You just gave some comedians some great material there!

Of course the media favored Obama. However to say that the media favored Obama is not the same thing as to say that there was a media bias in favor of Obama.

yasu - More than likely Palin also asked the McCain campaign to try not to screw things up any more than they already had.

"You just gave some comedians some great material there!"

She's just trying to compete with Obama, who said Nancy Reagan held seances.

Sarge, I hear ya.

See this is where I am middle of the road. I give him the benefit of the doubt. I know he called Nancy after that and apologized. So, I don't think he needs to be jumped on about that -there are more pressing things. BUT, obviously, if Palin said something like that, it would be run over and over again.

But I love parody. I think Palin was unfairly treated - definitely. But I still found the SNL and the youtube parodies funny. There needs to be some more about Obama. The problem with the world is though, that you can absolutely destroy Palin and call her a hillbilly, etc . you name it. But someone says that Obama is tall beautiful and has a nice suntan, and people want him to resign. So, its going to be a brave comedian who parodies Obama.

Sezwho2. I think both are true. The media favored Obama AND there was media bias in favor of him. It's hard for anyone to favor someone and not be biased in favor of them.

See this is where I am middle of the road. I give him the benefit of the doubt. I know he called Nancy after that and apologized.

I also thought that was a pretty class act on Obama's part. From what I understood Nancy Reagan was gracious when he called her and they had a very good conversation.

I was glad he called and was impressed by the gesture myself.

Yasu - I must admit some of the Tina Fey parodies of Palin were funny. Unfortunately they also gave a lot of people the impression that Palin is a "doofus" as some posters here have described her, which, of course, she is not.

yasukuni,

I think you have a point, but in that case I think the issue comes down to "measurable bias". Without measurement there is only feeling and impression and those feelings and impressions are themselves biased.

I presume that there was no media bias in favor of Obama on the part of the WSJ, FOXNews, Rush Limbaugh and others. And this was my point. Namely, that the media as a whole responds to the purchasers of its product as a whole.

I don't think there is much doubt that a lot of the media have favored the liberals of late. This might be because of bias. It might be because it understands the issues better.

For example, there is a certain segment of the population that claims that teaching evolution and not teaching creationism reflects bias on the part of the school system. I would say that what it really reflects is a better understanding of science.

Sailwind,

Your media bias thing is really getting tired and smacks of your personal bias, in my opinion.

Just because people vote a certain way doesn't mean that they cannot do their job fairly.

We know that throughout the '90s, the majority of the military voted republican. Does that mean that in the field, if they knew they had a Democratic comrade in arms, that they did not defend that person as much as they did a republican? Of course it doesn't, but you would have us believe they would.

If the majority of surgeons vote for a certain candidate, you would have us believe that they would do less than their best in performing a surgery on a person from the opposite party.

Obviously there are some journalists who let their beliefs taint their writing. You would have us believe it's the overwhelming majority...based on one quote.

And why is it that you can't even comment on the fact that these journalists are getting this information from people hired by the guy you wanted to be president? You know, the actual topic at hand.

Had these people, hired by the guy you wanted to be president, had more ethics themselves, there would have been no story to write in the first place. Why is that superfluous to you?

You are pointing a finger and screaming, "BIAS, BIAS!" Well...my grand-dad had something to say about the direction of the other three fingers whenever you point one. I think you can figure it out.

Taka

Taka,

I'm holding the media accountable. You seem to be content with giving them a pass.

We both lose in the long run.

Sorry if you don't agree with me and I really don't much care who I make mad or not when it comes to watching a press not do its job properly.

We both lose Taka........Bigtime

Sail,

I'm not mad at you for screaming, "Bias." I'm just witnessing your bias and that makes me sad, not angry.

What does make me a little angry however, is you're so angry at the messenger but give a pass to the people responsible for the message. I would say that is ANOTHER case of your personal bias.

Again (and now, it's a challenge), you have yet to show any criticism toward the mccain camp for saying these things to the press or any criticism of mccain for hiring them in the first place. If you will remember, I was the one who held him accountable for hiring the type of people (i.e. tucker eskew) who would say this kind of stuff and you were upset about it.

Now that those name-calling chickens have come home to roost, you want to shift the blame to the media.

Please, think about that for a bit.

Taka

The biggest loser in this past election was objective journalism.

RR

Actual front page headline from Saturday's "Florida Today" newspaper:

Obama: Don't get hopes up

Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.

RR

as for palin, when her sources lead stories about how mccain people didnt handle her correctly I guess that shows great courage on her part. Typical hypocrite that americans rejected after years of similar bush behavior.

Yet another wingnut wannabe loser dressed up in clothes she did not pay for. Bible Spice as scripted by the RNC Rove propaganda and lie machine.

No matter, the repubs lost so badly this last election they are doomed for many, many years and maybe forever. Palin is symptom of their doom.

Again (and now, it's a challenge), you have yet to show any criticism toward the mccain camp for saying these things to the press or any criticism of mccain for hiring them in the first place.

The press did its job on Palin and McCain, as a matter of fact it over did it. Is there not anything you don't know about them??? Anything??

Any criticism I could level would be redundant the press already has done more than enough criticism than I ever could.

Now let's get down to it. We elected a man President of the United States. A man than even the most leftist of the press admits his greatest weakness is his lack of experience. That is not in dispute.

It is then up to no make that incumbent on the press to provide the detials. This is a man I really know nothing about and the only source of real information that I should be able to rely upon to find out is the mainstream press. They are the ones to fill in the gaps good or bad and let me decide for myself. That is their JOB.

I don't know how Obama got into Harvard. Be nice to find out. I don't know how much Ayers and Reznick or Wright has influenced him or his thinking. May be nothing may be an important part of his core beliefs. I'd like to know. I don't know how much he's been involved with the Daly machine in Chicago. Be nice to find out.

I'm sure more details will emerge AFTER the election.

It's simple Taka the media did it's job on Palin to the point of overkill. What do you know about Obama really? I sure don't know much and It was the Media's job to provide it to mine in a non-partisan manner. I don't travel on FOX news or Rush Limbaugh sites to find out. I KNOW they are biased and I don't trust their opinion. I had to vet Obama myself.

Now I don't trust the MSN either to give me all the facts good or bad.

We both lose Taka................ That is the sad part and when is someone on the left finally going recognize that fact.

At least Micheal Malone did bless the mans heart.

Sail,

I HAVE acknowledged that there are members of the MSM that are biased Sail. Again, YOUR bias is refusing to believe it's not all of them.

And AGAIN, you want to talk about accountability, but when it comes to the rubber meeting the road....you post, "Any criticism I could level would be redundant."

Two words: 1) cop 2) out

I yelled from the rooftops when mccain brought tucker eskew, the guy responsible for smearing mccain in South Carolina in 2000, onboard his campaign. Not a peep from the mccain supporters.

Now, after the election is over, lo and behold, there's a smear campaign originating from the mccain camp against your precious sarah.

Wow. Who ever would have thought that the people who once claimed mccain fathered an illegitimate black baby would turn around and smear sarah palin?

But, let's not focus on that. One reporter wrote one opinion piece saying that he (the one reporter) thinks the MSN is biased. Well...let's latch on to that like a rabid pit bull instead of looking to find out who, exactly it was, that smeared poor sarah within the mccain camp.

I don't care about "the right" or "the left" Sail, when are YOU going to realize that the messenger didn't write this message. The message was conceived by people john mccain hired to run his campaign.

That is the truth. There is ZERO bias in that statement. sarah palin got smeared by people within john mccain's election team.

They squeezed the trigger, now you want to blame the gun.

Taka

Palin is quite right, these critics are cowardly. But then, just what did Palin expect from these people?

Sailwind, Enough already. Spare us the sour grapes please. Your guy lost. To say that the few weeks of media scrutiny Sarah Palin's was subjected to even remotely compares to the months of intense scrutiny Obama was subjected since he announced his candidacy is just ludicrous. To say that Obama is a man you "really know nothing about", well that's just plainly untrue.

sailwind,

You don't know how Obama got into Harvard. How is that even an issue? What does it matter if he got there on a full scholarship, through the offices of a benefactor, from his grandmother's life savings or by his doing janitorial work 7 days a week?

What is it that you suspect and what evidence do you have for your suspicion?

And as for Ayers, Resnick and Wright, what makes you think that the media has not done its job? What evidence do you have that there is more to the story than what the media has already reported?

I think you misunderstand the function of a free press in a capitalistic society. It is not the job of the media to do the investigation that you want to see done. That, possibly, might have been the job of FOXNews and if they did not do it you shouldn't waste your time with them any further--if, in fact, you have been spending time with them.

It is the job of the media to investigate--without government prohibition--the stories which its viewers, listeners and subscribers pay it to investigate. It is the job of the media to report its findings accurately to the extent possible--and to the extent that its audience demands. It is also its job to allocate its resources to maximize its coverage of what its audience desires.

The polls clearly show that Obama and McCain were running neck and neck until after the conventions. It was after the conventions that Obama began to pull away. Any favoritism toward Obama is just as easily explained by the negativity of the McCain campaign and by his abominably poor selection of a vice-presidential candidate who, whatever her potential might be, was unsuited to represent the US.

If McCain had run his campaign as he comported himself in his concession speech and if he had chosen a vice-presidential candidate more wisely, I think he might have won. Unfortunately, the Republicans chose to run on fear and negativity when what the consumers wanted was hope. The real John McCain never ran and the Republicans were hoist on their own petard.

My state voted Democratic for the first time since 1964. It didn't do that because of media bias. It did it because, as the incumbent President says:

There's an old saying in Tennessee -- I know it's in Texas, probably in Tennessee -- that says, fool me once, shame on -- shame on you. Fool me -- you can't get fooled again.

Or, umm, something like that.

It seems that we have the age old problem that everyone likes to say that everyone wants to say that the umpire is biased against them.

To Obama supporters, I would say that if you HONESTLY can't see that overall the mainstream media was biased towards Obama (based on that items they chose to investigate and major on, and which issues they didn't) and the words and pictures used, then I doubt your ability to impartially analyze what you are reading and watching.

To McCain supporters, I say that you should admit that media bias wasn't the only reason Obama won. He ran a good campaign.

Sailwind. Yes, the media didn't spend anywhere near enough time on Obama's relationship with Ayers, Reznick, Wright etc, and they should have, given that Palin's clothes dominated the news instead. But, if you take all that Obama has said, and understand that he DID spend 20 years in Wright's church, it isn't that hard to understand what his thinking is. He is the most liberal President ever elected. As for not going on Fox because its biased, I don't get that. Fox is biased. These days the only way to know what's going on is to watch and read Fox news AND CNN etc, and read up on the totally self-proclaimed partisan news sources on both sides.

My conclusion is that the extreme on both sides are whacky, and that the middle supposedly unbiased, tilts left. But that's life. I don't know anyone pure and unbiased except Mr Yasukuni...

P.S It's not hard to get the impression that the simple reason media favored Obama was not because of a sinister liberal agenda, but just that his election makes their job easier. Lots of great stories to write on election time and from now on. Obama's election is media heaven.

The work of science is to substitute facts for appearances, and demonstrations for impressions.

--Ruskin

It is altogether too easy to "see" what is not there. So to say that the media was biased toward Obama is something that must be measured. And before measurement is possible, terms must be defined.

If "to be biased" means "to favor", then the media was biased. The proof of that would be, for example, that newspapers endorsed Obama 3 to 1. If "to be biased" means "to report unevenly and unfairly in terms of coverage and tone", then it becomes far more difficult to demonstrate bias. The Pew Center for Excellence in Journalism, for one, could not so demonstrate.

The coverage of Obama was certainly uneven. However, whether the unevenness of the coverage was also unfair is not so certain. For, in addition to the political content of the two candidates there is also the the phenomenal content. And I think that there can be no question that it is a story in itself that a non-white can rise to the candidacy for President. And it's another story that a candidate for US president can generate so much excitement around the world.

My conclusion is that the extreme on both sides are whacky, and that the middle supposedly unbiased, tilts left.

I think the important word to keep in mind in that sentence is "my."

I remembered something today that really ties into the media bias argument (since no one seems willing to admit that the actual information used to smear sarah palin came from within the republican candidate for president's camp and not "the left").

About a year ago, I posted a link from Army Times here at JT and my boy, lunchmeat, countered with the comment that Army Times cannot be trusted because they are a liberal publication.

I thought to myself, on a scale of 1 to 10, how conservative do you have to be to believe Army Times is a liberal publication? To me, that meant that everything this side of Soldier of Fortune was considered liberal in lunchmeat's eyes.

The same applies here. If you are looking at things through a conservative biased eye, you're going to see more liberalism because you have skewed your own perspective. I know plenty of hard-core liberals who firmly believe that the MSN is biased against liberals. They could throw out dozens of articles, op-eds and opinion pieces to back up their points, just like Sailwind did.

But...just like conservatives, their perception is skewed because they aren't looking at things objectively, but through their own liberal bias.

And again, none of this really should matter on a thread about people within the mccain camp anonymously smearing sarah palin. But...as we have seen, blaming others for mccain hiring unscrupulous people to run his campaign is much easier than admitting mccain hired unscrupulous people to run his campaign.

Taka

Taka - Yes, McCain hired some incompetent people to run his campaign.

To me that makes me doubt his ability as a President. I disagree with Obama on many issues, but I recognize his great leadership qualities in that he chose clever people to run his campaign.

One of his best quotes which shows his wisdom is when he said "I know what I know, and what I don't know - what I am good at and what I am not good at" (that's not verbatim). That's a great leadership quality.

But I still maintain that there is liberal bias in the media, and most peope do - even journalists. But I've said enough on that.

My last word on this thread is simply that the GOP should learn how to run election campaigns better, and that infighting doesn't serve their interests now.

And to the people in the McCain camp spreading the Palin smears.. Okay, people accused your guy of being dumb for appointing a dumb VP, and now you are saying that Palin is in fact dumb. So you are now saying that you spent months of your lives trying to get people to elect a man who you thought was dumb. And you failed. What does that make you?

And to the people in the McCain camp spreading the Palin smears.. Okay, people accused your guy of being dumb for appointing a dumb VP, and now you are saying that Palin is in fact dumb. So you are now saying that you spent months of your lives trying to get people to elect a man who you thought was dumb. And you failed. What does that make you?

What Palin said........Alaska Gov Sarah Palin called her critics cowards and jerks

Come full circle now haven't we. Finally something Sarah Palin said that we all can agree on.

Yasu - "I disagree with Obama on many issues, but I recognize his great leadership quaities in that he chose very clever people to run his campaign."

Running a political campaign ( which included quite a few lies and distortions ) ( check out factcheck.org ) and steering the United States of America through troubled times is two COMPLETELY different things.

"He said "I know what I know, and what I don't know - what I am good at and what I am not good at."

One of the things he doesn't know is what it takes to be be president of the United States of America and the commander in chief of the Armed Forces, and he's not going to be good at it. Heck, Sarah Palin is more qualified for the job.

Sail,

Yep.

Yasukuni,

What does that make you?

Considering that the people we are talking about are, as sarah palin stated and Sailwind and I have agreed upon, "jerks and cowards," they would answer, that makes them PAID.

Taka

"sarah palin"

That's Sarah Palin, the Governor of the great state of Alaska, with an 80% approval rate.

Sarge,

Nobody knows what it takes to be president and C-in-C--not even those who have had the job.

We as a nation are now muddling through the efforts of the 43rd president to try and understand the job. I really doubt that Obama could be much worse--and, whatever he may or may not have in the gut-level decision making apparatus on which 43 relies, 44 will at least be starting from a higher level of cognitive ability and a popular mandate.

Palin has prior administrative experience. If that is the only criteria for the job, then she is more qualified. However, if the ability to attract a following is important for leadership, Palin is good but Obama is at least her equal and perhaps even her superior. If the ability to win a majority is a qualification, both are good but Obama was better--at least this time. And if the ability to speak intelligently on a wide range of subjects is important or if it is necessary to speak to a broad cross-section of Americans is important, Obama is hands-down more qualified.

Obama should make her Secretary of Foreign Affairs, since she can see Russia from her window.

Obama should make her Secretary of Foreign Affairs, since she can see Russia from her window.

Nah....Though if he choose her as his Secretary of Energy that would be some change even I could believe in.

She's sure got the quals for that one.

Altria - Palin never claimed that she is able to see Russia from her window. She said, in reference to Russia, "They're our next-door neighbors, and you can actually see Russia from land here in Alaska, from an island in Alaska." The comment was blown WAY out of context. Don't you feel at least a little bit guilty now?

Palin and the Republican machine is now at war. She does not want to take the fall for McCain`s defeat. But at the same time she has to take some responsibility for that defeat. When you decide to wallow in the mud your clothes does get dirty. In her case her $150,000 clothes.

She was ill prepared for the post and that blame goes to McCain. But for her to have accepted the role knowing full well that she was not prepared is her fault.

She could have told McCain,"No" but she decided that she was prepared enough to make the leap. Now the Republicans are paying for the missteps of both McCain and Palin.

McCain already took blame for the loss as any leader would. But Palin has been quiet, not taking any of the blame. That is the kind of leader she is, she tries to avoid the mud. But she loves swimming in it.

I myself hold onto hope that the base will force her into the limelight. Because if she does step forward and try to lead the Republicans they will surely fall even further than they have.

When the far right wing of the Republican party loses again this will force the Republicans to re-asses their far right positions. Hopefully this will remove the far right from power within the party.

I hold out for hope but I am pretty sure that this will not happen. The far right will kick and scream for the next 12 years until it dies out. Then and only then will the grand old party return to the center right.

I do hope she runs again.....<EG>

McCain already took blame for the loss as any leader would. But Palin has been quiet, not taking any of the blame. That is the kind of leader she is, she tries to avoid the mud. But she loves swimming in it.

You might want to reconsider that statement. She did what a Vice Presidential candidate is supposed to do, the role of attack dog.

Biden did the same thing but he didn't get the press Palin did.

She did the job assigned to her. That is being a follower the leader was McCain.

Modern vice presidents have also assumed another traditional role during the campaign: attack dog for the head of the ticket. While the electors of a state are compelled to cast separate votes for the president and vice president, the popular vote is by ticket or party. Conventional wisdom states that individual voters generally vote for the head of the ticket. Largely freed from constraints of popular opinion, the vice presidential candidate can serve as a vocal critic of the opposition and launch attacks against it. This allows the presidential candidate to maintain an air of composure and decorum toward the rival candidates, while still attacking the opposition's credibility, experience and policies. This role of surrogate may also continue after inauguration, as some modern vice presidents have continued their role of defender of presidential agendas and lambaster of presidential critics.

http://people.howstuffworks.com/vice-president3.htm

But Palin did not take any of the blame for the loss. That is a clear explanation of her leadership qualities. She attempted to deflect any responsibility for their loss. That is party on her shoulders.

Let us not forget Palin blamed the media for the reason why some female voters didn't like her. She did not blame herself or her style. So it had to be the media.

Again I do hope that she becomes the leader of the Far Right Republican party. With her type of leadership the far right of the party will die out sooner than later.

sailwind,

Biden did attack McCain, but he didn't do the same thing she did. Biden did not seek to cast doubt upon McCain's integrity or patriotism. He did not accuse him of being an ideologue of the type that Americans have been propagandized to fear.

One of the reasons he did not get the press Palin did was precisely because he was doing what vice-presidential candidates are supposed to do. He was attacking McCain's policies or lack of them. Another reason he did not get the press was because he managed to avoid making himself look uninformed about the issues.

Sez,

He didn't get the press because he was known quantity already. The media and the American public know all about him, even the palagirism he did that doomed his first bid for President. And they overlooked it as I did. That was then this is now. Nobody made a big deal about it not even those mean ole Republicans. You argument is a strawman. Palin was brand new on the scene and I think we've pretty much established that it was release the hounds on her by the press. Biden was just as much an attack dog in his speeches as Palin was. His standard stump speech was calling McCain nothing more than George Bush. He did what his handlers told him to. Tie Bush to McCain in every which way you can. He did his job just as McCains people told Palin to do. There was no difference. You admitted yourself awhile back that Palin had a right to bring up questions about Obama's association with Ayres.

Why the change now?

Palin was brand new on the scene and I think we've pretty much established that it was release the hounds on her by the press.

It was more like she shot herself in the foot while swimming, Sail, and the sharks smelled the blood.

Ness,

More like she tossed into the shark tank already slathered up with meat tenderizer.

How dare this outsider from Alaska think she has what it takes to be V.P?

Beltway insider Republicans as witnessed by this very story felt the same way.

Republicans have their share of elite snobs also in the party and they didn't exactly embrace her either. She sure did shake up the race though. Can't deny that one.

Obama should make her Secretary of Foreign Affairs, since she can see Russia from her window.

Is court jester taken? (warning: straight line)

Republicans have their share of elite snobs also in the party and they didn't exactly embrace her either. She sure did shake up the race though. Can't deny that one.

If by "shake up the race" you mean "help lose the election for McCain," then she certainly did shake up the race.

Biden did the same thing but he didn't get the press Palin did.

Now wait a second, Sailwind,

This statement doesn't quite jibe with McCain supporters' incessant complaining that mainstream media wasn't giving them a fair shake.

If, as you say, they were giving a majority of air time to Palin and her numerous accusations against Obama (which the media was doing on a regular basis), rather than Biden, then doesn't that suggest that the media was displaying a little bit of preferential treatment to the McCain campaign?

Yes, water under the bridge, but it's an issue that figured prominently enough in the election when McCain's numbers started dipping to warrant a comment.

If by "shake up the race" you mean "help lose the election for McCain," then she certainly did shake up the race.

He wasn't really even in the race until he picked her.

If, as you say, they were giving a majority of air time to Palin and her numerous accusations against Obama (which the media was doing on a regular basis), rather than Biden, then doesn't that suggest that the media was displaying a little bit of preferential treatment to the McCain campaign?

Just change "preferential" in your sentence above to "negative" and then you will have a true sentence.

sailwind, You don't know how Obama got into Harvard. How is that even an issue? What does it matter if he got there on a full scholarship, through the offices of a benefactor, from his grandmother's life savings or by his doing janitorial work 7 days a week?

The important thing is he got in, which makes him an elitist, especially with his one car and one house. Only elitists need to hide their elitism by having only one car and one house. QED! ;)

Moderator: Back on topic please.

she is a natural politician no matter what people say ,and will gather a lot of support.

only problem for her is people are going to find out eventually about that 5th baby not being hers

"Just change "preferential" in your sentence above to "negative" and then you will have a true sentence."

So, by giving Palin more coverage of her efforts to fulfill the traditional VP roll of attack-dog, the media was being negative?

You aren't making a whole lot of sense here, Sailwind.

You seem to keep missing a key distinction between how the media approached criticisms of Obama versus its approach to criticisms of Palin.

The criticisms of Obama coming out of the GOP camp were based on conjecture, innuendo, and rumors, not on facts.

By suggesting that Obama had a closer relationship with a domestic terrorist, the GOP wanted the electorate to think that Obama, by association, IS a terrorist. He’s not.

By constantly demanding that Obama’s relationship with Rev. Wright be questioned ad nauseum, the GOP wanted the electorate to believe that Obama, by association, HATES AMERICA, as they accuse Rev. Wright of doing (which isn’t strictly true either. Wright criticized American society, but since Neo-Neo-Conservatism rolled into town, they’d love to see any criticism of the nation quashed. Yay, Patriotism!™) Sadly, for the GOP, Obama doesn’t hate the United States and never has.

Don’t get me started on all the other miniscule, small-minded idiocy regarding Obama’s citizenship, college “drug dealer,” et cetera, et cetera.

The media checked into Obama's background, and couldn’t find anything even closely approximating GOP accusations and innuendo. Hell, Hillary Clinton’s staff checked, and she’s about as ruthless a political opponent one could hope for, and they found nothing noteworthy. And THAT’S what the GOP is pouting about. They’re crying because, despite their best efforts at distraction and decoys, the media wouldn’t simply lie to make Republicans happy, contrary to reality.

Criticisms of Palin, however, were based on verifiable, confirmable, documented facts. Palin DID support the Bridge to Nowhere. Palin's husband WAS a member of a secessionist group. Palin DID favor book censorship during her time as mayor. Palin DID bomb the Couric and Williams interviews. Palin DID spend $150,000+ on a new wardrobe.

The Republican Party is mad because the media wouldn't roll over for a snow-job the way they did with the "evidence" supporting White House claims that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction.

Quite honestly, because of that alone, I think the media was more vigilant regarding GOP slight-of-hand and misdirection this election cycle.

There's an old saying among media folk: "Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me." (See? Even I can get that old adage right, and I didn't have to go to Yale to screw it up. :D )

It’s time to put this whole “the media was so unfair to us” myth to bed already, 'cause it's just not true.

LFR, good posts.

"It’s time to put this whole “the media was so unfair to us” myth to bed already, 'cause it's just not true."

It's simply bitterness. I asked many a GOP supporter to show us proof of this aleged media bias. Alas, not one of them was up to the task.

Palin is a crank, although these critics do seem a bit pathetic wanting to remain anonymous.

Don't underestimate Sarah. In four years if Obama hasn't delivered she will probably be around. She has no doubt learned a lot, and has a couple of years to study up.

Oh Sarge, yes political campaigns and running a country are different. But, if Bush was as good at speaking and getting people behind him as Obama, he'd have a totally different approval rating.

"I'd rather have Palin over for dinner than ANY other politician."

Sarge, would that be with your wife present or not...?

I have a question for both sides. Do you think she helped her cause by going on SNL and showing she can take a joke, or do you think she just made it worse?

You can't seriously expect American voters who had been engaged in the most recent marathon presidential election to have objective views about bias in the national media.

That's why it helps to look to Canada. The 31 October 2008 online edition of the Toronto Star found a clear media bias, pro-Obama and mildly anti-McCain.

"Don't underestimate Sarah"

Heh, I thought only sarge was on first name terms with "sarah".

Nope. I like to call her sarah too. You betcha! big wink

And I presume you're watching without sound too ;) wink-wink

Turn up the volume and listen to all that fundie shrieking and she becomes less attractive, believe me.

At least she'll be bogging off back to Alaska and obscurity. By 2012 she'll be sarah Who?

Madverts. How much would you betcha on that?

What is courageous about Palin attacking Obama with racist terms?

Sarah Palin's attacks on Barack Obama's patriotism provoked a spike in death threats against the future president, Secret Service agents revealed during the final weeks of the campaign.

The attacks provoked a near lynch mob atmosphere at her rallies, with supporters yelling "terrorist" and "kill him" until the McCain campaign ordered her to tone down the rhetoric.

But it has now emerged that her demagogic tone may have unintentionally encouraged white supremacists to go even further.

The Secret Service warned the Obama family in mid October that they had seen a dramatic increase in the number of threats against the Democratic candidate, coinciding with Mrs Palin's attacks.

Michelle Obama, the future First Lady, was so upset that she turned to her friend and campaign adviser Valerie Jarrett and said: "Why would they try to make people hate us?"

"What is courageous about Palin attacking Obama with racist terms? "

That's news to me. What racist terms?

sailwind,

I think I've already stipulated that Biden did attack McCain. However, comparing McCain to Bush is hardly in the same class as suggesting that Obama pals around with terrorists and has fallen under the evil spell of a minister who hates the United States.

Yes, I think you're right that another reason that Biden did not get the press was that he was a known quantity in comparison to Palin. Incidentally, that's one of the reasons that Obama got more press than McCain--the phenomenality of his candidacy.

So, yes, Palin got more coverage because she was unknown. And she got negative coverage--and quite deservedly so--because she was personally unprepared for in-depth discussion, relied too much on catch phrases and scripted answers and for far too long refused to deal with the media who was supposed to somehow give her a fair shake.

To piggy-back on LFR's post, it's difficult for a newspaper to run headlines on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday trying to paint Obama as a muslim and then turn around on Thursday, to run a headline about the Christian paster whose church Obama attended for 20 years.

The press ran with what they were given by the GOP until the GOP threatened the credibility of the press.

I also think part of the problem is that with today's 24 hour coverage of news, some stories see print or get aired that wouldn't have seen the light of day in the old days, simply because of the expanded coverage.

Taking this story for example, if I needed filler, I would run the story that people hired by john mccain to run his campaign claimed sarah palin thought Africa was a country and didn't know the members of NAFTA (both of which I personally think are untrue). The next day, I run her rebuttal.

There, I've now filled two stories worth of space on a subject that, back in the olden days, likely would have never even seen print because a little fact checking (the 2nd day story now) would have rendered the entire thing moot.

For all you sore conservatives and republicans, I'll lay that one on the feet of Ted Turner. Happy?

The long and short of it is this: mccain ran as poor of a campaign as could be run. They didn't properly vet sarah palin. They didn't properly prepare her for her major interviews or the debate with Joe Biden. They allowed her to get off message and attack Sen. Obama's patriotism and they relied on gimmicks that were just plain stupid like mocking Obama for recommending people keep their tires properly inflated. When you mock common sense, then, you are likely on the side of stupidity. Another example of the GOP's gimmicks gone bad was Joe, the plumber. In the final stretch, they took a rather unintelligent guy and marketed him to America as speaking for the every day man. They paid for him to be at events and they put him out there without coaching him properly so when he said, "Obama will raise my taxes," it aired. The day 2 story to that was, "no it won't." The day one story was, "Joe - the plumber." The day 2 story was, "not a real plumber." The day one story was "Joe says Obama bad for Israel." Day two, "Joe has no idea what Obama has said about Israel."

They ran what the GOP gave them. It was garbage in and garbage out and that falls squarely on the shoulders of the GOP, john mccain and his campaign staff, not the media.

Taka

Palin denounce her critics as jerks and cowardly because she got exposed. I think she is used to politics where she operates with impunity. I think that is obvious when she claims innocence in an ethics case where a majority, in her favor with respect to party affiliation, legislative board found her guilty of ethics violations and then she touts the partisan board of personnel as clearing her good name. Her team has consistently complained about the press. But Republicans have been using that tired old line for a long time. Please take a look at the credibility of most any conservative media outlet and you will find it to be a farce. The Wall Street Journal, Washington Times and The Weekly Standard are the best for credibility but The Weekly Standard still leaves something to be desired. We have incredible news sources in the U.S. and they have rich reputations for their integrity. Don't fall into the trap of the Republican claims. Palin and the conservative media screamed about ACORN; now we are going to see just what the FBI turns up. Yes, I am a liberal and I brought up ACORN. I am confident that the FBI will conclude that it was only low level employees that were violating the law.

sailwind, your post "sailwind at 05:08 PM JST - 9th November" cited a study A Measure of Media Bias by by Time Groseclose and Jeffery Milyo, UCLA is one that you believed the interpretation. Did you even bother to look at the metrics they used? They believe the Americans for Democratic Action (ADA)'s method of labeling a legislators liberal/conservative bias can be used on the media to determine whether they are bias.

Groseclose and Milyo based their research on a standard gauge of a lawmaker's support for liberal causes. Americans for Democratic Action (ADA) tracks the percentage of times that each lawmaker votes on the liberal side of an issue.

First and foremost is a statement by the study itself. "Before proceeding, it is useful to clarify our definition of bias. Most important, the definition has nothing to do with the honesty or accuracy of the news outlet."

The method used counts the number of times the media source cites a think tank. Whether it may be effective in determining a legislators direction of left or right could be debated itself. I take no interest in that because it is not germane to the issue at hand. If you believe how often a media source cites think tanks of a certain persuasion is a valid means of determining whether a media source is conservative or liberal I want you to say so in a comment. If you do not state that it is a valid method I will assume you don't think it is.

"Most important, the definition has nothing to do with the honesty or accuracy of the news outlet" - quote from the study.

First of all so few stories mention a think tank how could that possibly be the determining factor in a study. They claim validity because it is a method used on legislators. If a legislator cites a think tank it is generally for the purpose of persuasion. If a media source cites a think tank it could be they are reporting a study or it may well be that they are passing on a citation the subject of a news article used. It begs the question of whether articles on think tanks are used to sway public opinion. How many of you out there have felt the pressure of the media because of their articles containing references to think tanks? This was the sole measure of the study. The metrics compared the media's mention of think tanks to the lawmaker's mention of think tanks. Now if one were to propose that citing think tanks directly relates to liberal/conservative bias of other articles then a correlation must be established.

"Most important, the definition has nothing to do with the honesty or accuracy of the news outlet" - quote from the study.

The study mentions the various studies that show journalists preferred Democratic candidates. We just had an election were the people above the stated tax increase line voted for Obama more than McCain. More voters above $250,000.00 voter for Obama even though he said he would raise their taxes.

Let's face it there is a reason the Republicans have targeted the intellectual elites lately. The majority of intellectuals are voting for the Democrats. That leaves them with guns, gays and religion. Only now many people with deep religious values are not accepting the fundies view of the issues and many people of faith voted for Obama. The Republicans may just as well lump journalists in with the other intellectuals they reject. The study acknowledged, "Of course, however, just because a journalist has liberal or conservative views, this does not mean that his or her reporting will be slanted."

"Most important, the definition has nothing to do with the honesty or accuracy of the news outlet" - quote from the study.

The authors have previously received funding from the three premier conservative think tanks in the United States: the American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research (AEI), The Heritage Foundation, and the Hoover Institution on War, Revolution and Peace. Groseclose was a Hoover Institution 2000-2001 national fellow; Milyo, according to his CV (pdf), received a $40,500 grant from AEI; and, according to The Philanthropy Roundtable, Groseclose and Milyo were named by Heritage as Salvatori fellows in 1997. In 1996, Groseclose and Milyo co-authored a piece for the right-wing magazine The American Spectator, titled "Lost Shepherd," criticizing the then-recently defeated member of Congress Karen Shepherd (D-UT) and defending her successor, Enid Greene (R-UT); when the piece was published, Greene was in the midst of a campaign contribution scandal and later agreed to pay a civil penalty after the Federal Election Commission found that she violated campaign finance laws.

Milyo conducts studies that support Conservative ideology.

In the very contentious fight to get every voter in Indiana to present a limited set of acceptable ID's in a case before the Supreme Court Milyo conducted one of is infamous "studies" to support the conservative position. When he was asked to testify before congress one of the questions raised and never answered at the Senate hearing centered on who exactly paid Milyo for the Indiana photo ID study. Milyo, however implausibly, claimed to have forgotten the exact name of the group that gave him the grant for the study. Based on his partial answer, it sounded as though Milyo might have been trying to avoid copping to having been paid by the tainted Center for Ethics and the Free Market.

"Most important, the definition has nothing to do with the honesty or accuracy of the news outlet" - quote from the study.

Whether a correlation between think tanks and legislators exist if for the ADA to determine. This study shows no correlation between media outlet bias and think tank citations. The study states "Our method only measures the degree to which media is liberal or conservative, relative to Congress. Since it is unclear how such a disproportionate sample would affect the relative degree to which the media cite conservative (or liberal) think tanks, there is no a priori reason for this to cause a bias." This is totally untrue. I have taken statistics classes and a correlation must be established separately if two sets of comparison are made. They never show a correlation analysis for think tanks to media bias. They spoke of regression analysis and in regression analysis a coefficient is assigned each variable. That coefficient represents the strength of the correlation between that variable and the subject of the regression analysis. In plain words you must not only show that think tank citations prove media bias you must figure out to what degree they do so and use that number in analysis. They excluded RAND which is the conservative think tank I hear quoted more than any other. ADA has them as liberal and thus the study excluded them.

"Most important, the definition has nothing to do with the honesty or accuracy of the news outlet" - quote from the study.

It is a waste of energy checking out sailwind's sources, studies, etc. when I have found them to be false and irrelevant for too long. I check out my own sources before I use them in a comment. I have refused to use so much information that I have turned up in research because I could not get a good confirmation or the sources were considered too liberal. I would also not falsify facts like sailwind did. Even after it was pointed out he did not make a correction he restated the statistic and left out that it was "most journalists." Like I said "most" is any number of journalists over 50%.

"Most important, the definition has nothing to do with the honesty or accuracy of the news outlet" - quote from the study.

Palin and her supporters have continuously said the press has been unfair but now we have Republican confirmation of her lack of knowledge. How could anyone possible not expect the press to release this news?

She particularly lashed out at the anonymous Republican campaign sources cited in a Fox News report who said she did not know Africa was a continent, not a country, and could not name the three countries in the North American Free Trade Agreement—Canada, the United States and Mexico.

Palin calls the allegations untrue and out of context but she never explains how on earth it could be possible to be taken out of context. Listen Sarah in any context Africa is a continent. In any context the three countries in NAFTA are the U.S., Mexico and Canada.

“If there are allegations based on questions or comments that I made in debate prep about NAFTA, and about the continent vs the country when we talk about Africa there, then those were taken out of context,” she said. “That’s cruel, It’s mean-spirited. It’s immature. It’s unprofessional and those guys are jerks if they came away with it, taking things out of context and then tried to spread something on national news. It’s not fair, and it’s not right.”

I guess there are even Republicans now that find such information worthy of the news but some people would have you believe that is bias.

By the way sailwind I am still waiting for you to come clean on this post: sailwind at 02:24 PM JST - 9th November where you said "You have about 9 percent support on that view." which was false.

Sheesh

All, I did is say the media was bias and felt is wasn't fair.

Kinda like this guy

Hillary in 2012!

"All, I did is say the media was bias and felt is wasn't fair."

What's not fair is team mccain proviing little or no evidence to support their claims but constantly repeating the charge. As the others have already said again and again, the media have simply done what they do - report on the campaigns. The facts in this case are that candidate mccain ran a disasterous campaign coupled with an un-likely running mate that offered nothing more than temporary cheap publicity and poll boost, that in the long run more than likely cost mccain any chance he had of winning.

The only reason I can think these bitter mccain supporters we've seen since Nov 4th keep harping on about this perceived bias, is the simple fact they prefered to deny right up 'till election day that the mccain ticket was coming apart at the seams, largely due to the antics of "sarah".

What's not fair is team mccain proviing little or no evidence to support their claims but constantly repeating the charge

They lost....Get over it

Heh, I'm not the one whinging about a media bias I can't prove...

True...I just whinging about about the obvious you choose to dismiss.

Saying "it's obvious" over and over again hasn't worked to change my mind or anyone else's here. Try another, more convincing tact, or accept that America spoke when rejecting mccain/"sarah" at the urns because of a poor campaign from the GOP, and impressive bad judgement in adding "sarah" to the ticket, rather than a percieved "media bias" that sounds as bitter as raw lemon.

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The Alaska governor is seen as more relatable than her Democratic rival, however. Sixty percent of registered voters, including 64 percent of women, describe Palin as someone they can relate to. That's twenty percentage points higher than the forty percent of registered voters who say they relate to Biden.

Palin's favorable rating now stands at 44 percent, twice what it was immediately after her selection as McCain's nominee. Biden's favorable rating stands at 37 percent, identical to his pre-convention rating. Independents are more likely to have a favorable opinion of Palin (46 percent) than they are of Biden (31 percent).

McCain's move ahead of Obama can be traced in part to movement among previously undecided voters. In this survey, CBS News re-interviewed respondents to a CBS News/New York Times poll taken in mid-August. While many previously undecided voters remain undecided, more of those re-interviewed have moved towards McCain than Obama.

Thanks in large part to the Palin selection, McCain has rallied his white evangelical supporters. The percentage of white evangelical McCain supporters re-interviewed for this survey who are enthusiastic about McCain has doubled to 48 percent from before the convention.

Yeah...Crappy Choice he made. He wasn't even in the race until he choose her.

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/09/08/opinion/polls/main4427157.shtml

Adverts

The Media saw this also and released the hounds to destroy her.

Facts, Sir

Not facts mate.

Palin was un-heard of before selected. She was not properly vetted by the McCain campaign, despite their protestations, but of course she was subjected to being vetted by the media in a two-month-long train wreck, much in line with the whole McCain campaign. Now I know you find this un-fair, and that is the crux of the issue, as it is not.

The media knew relatively little about her at the time. But when the media did what the media does, and looks into her with a fine tooth comb....well, you know, the "facts" got out.

And I think she scared the crap out of a lot of people.

If the shoe was on the other foot you know, and we had President-elect McCain, the hardcore-partisan's on the dems side would be assasinating the press for citing the shrieky preacher and Obama's heh, "ties to domestics terraists" too.

If that makes you feel any better. :)

Madverts,

Well...there are facts here. The fact is Sailwind wants everyone to accept his opinion as gospel.

Beliefs and opinions are not fact. Sail seems to be stuck on that very major point. I think the problem is partly due to his own bias.

I'm not judging either. There's no way I could be a sports referee because there is no way my bias would not come out.

For republicans and conservatives, they are so used to getting their way in the media, going all the way back to the Reagan years, that anything OTHER than blatant bias in their favor is considered, liberal bias.

But...that is my OPINION and I am not going to try to pass it off as fact.

And you are correct. If mccain had won, I would have been pretty pissed about the coverage afforded to lapel pins, whether or not Obama had his hand over his heart and the whole muslim thing. It was also bad journalism and biased against Obama. Winning the election in a landslide simply made that bitter pill a little less hard to swallow and easier for me to move on.

Taka

"Winning the election in a landslide simply made that bitter pill a little less hard to swallow and easier for me to move on."

Hence the bitterness from the "other" side, not that I technicaly belong to either. I'll admit to being biased towards Obama, largely due to the past eight years of slime in the WH, but palin, coupled with McCain's advanced old age scared the hell out of me.

I fail to see, despite Sailwind's efforts, how the media have shown true bias, when the McCain campaign and "sarah's" mouth gave them enough to print without digging it up.

I didn't see her husband sticking up for her. I thought he had more guts.

He's always pretty assertive when he was going round the world in 80 days innit?

Taka313

There has been evidence that liberals see conservative bias and conservatives see liberal bias. Also there may be an inclination by the press to have more positive stories in the frontrunner candidate then the candidate that is behind. This was one of the trends being discussed on The News Hour with Jim Lehrer when I saw Pew Research speaking on data of the media media coverage. Another issue is the usage of the word bias. Consistently the word bias does not mean unfair coverage or dishonest coverage those are separate issues. Studies on negative and positive coverage of the media often includes stories that are perfectly true but that reflect negatively or positively on the candidate.

I must always go back to my questions of examples. I am referring to stories that were not reported or under-reported by the press. I am referring to stories that were reported but not true. That is the true core of the argument of "fair and balanced" media coverage. Those are the words that I originally used, "fair and balanced," and was then criticized. Then bias was substituted and debated. I noted that I was not speaking of bias but I also wanted to evaluate the veracity of the bias media accusations. The journalist's political persuasion is also a different issue. David Brooks is a conservative pundit. Now we are not just talking about journalist but a journalist committed to persuasion. I enjoy listening to Brooks. I don't agree with everything he says. He has been caught in controversies. But a pundit must go beyond the straight news and I don't fault Brooks for any past mistakes or areas I disagree with him on. He appears to be an honest man to me. I regularly watch The Mclaughlin Group and enjoy most of the conservatives on the show.

So there is that distinction between the role of the pundit and the role of the journalist and sometimes it must be blurred but it should only be blurred in that a pundit is reporting facts and not visa vera. Also there has been discussion on JT about opinion pieces. I find nothing wrong with any journalist writing an opinion piece. It must be in an opinion section or otherwise labeled as opinion. I think the news outlets do a fairly good job of this. However the move to infotainment has not handled this well at all. I am just not a fan of infotainment at all. I do believe that they are blurring the line between news and a mix of news, entertainment and opinion.

Instead of the complicated notion of a grand conspiracy to smear Sarah Palin maybe there is a simple explanation. Maybe nobody new anything about her initially. They liked they way she presented herself. The electorate found out more information about her that was true. They did not like the truth about Palin. There is no evidence that is not exactly what happened. The fact that Republicans are now coming out in ever increasing numbers to declare their own disdain for Sarah Palin would seem to support my conclusion.

GoodDonkey,

I really agree about the need for clear distinction between separation between punditry and journalism.

However, I disagree about the idea of a conspiracy to smear sarah palin. I believe there was, and is one. However, I believe it is being perpetrated by people within the GOP and more specifically, inside mccain's campaign team and not the media. As I stated upthread and have mentioned often here at JT, I lost any and all respect for john mccain when he hired tucker eskew to help with his campaign. In 2000, he said there was a special place in hell for people like eskew. In 2008, we find out there is also a special place in mccain's campaign for people like that.

mccain totally jumped the shark at that point. He tossed his values (along with my respect) out the window and bought into the neo-con ideology that it doesn't matter what you do or say, it only matters that you get to sport the big foam "#1 finger at the end of the game.

So, when I read this story about palin calling people within the mccain campaign jerks and cowards because they said she thought Africa was a country and didn't know the nations in NAFTA, I wasn't a bit surprised. The smear merchants and hate mongers within mccain's camp just did what they do best. It's like the story of the scorpion and the frog. It's just in their nature.

If someone in the Obama campaign came forth and anonymously said, "I saw Joe Biden eat a baby with my own eyes," it too, would have made the rounds in the MSM. Obama however, was smart enough and moral enough to NOT hire people whose reputations were earned by tearing others down at the expense of the truth.

Some republicans don't want to admit that there are immoral republicans because they feel that reflects upon THEIR personal reputation, in my opinion, so, they blame the media instead. It salves their own feelings.

Taka

I believe that the media was biased in favor of Obama as a person watching from outside. I am neither republican or democrat, and not even American. I also read of several independant studies showing it. And previously I have read of liberal journalists admitting the bias. To go through examples would take too long. And in the end, I have finally learned that it pointless to even talk about it. It's like arguing that someone doesn't love you anymore. Whether its true or not, its hard to prove. The accused party can always come up with reasons why it isn't so. So, I won't be mentioning the word again.

This thread is about Palin. I saw today that she blamed the failure on Bush and was amazed that they got as far as they did. Note to Sarah (Sarah just sounds better). People blame you for the loss, now you blame Bush. Maybe later you will blame McCain - I don't know. People remember stuff. If you want to run for anything later, you will need all the friends you can get. There is no point in blaming anyone.

Just say, we did our best. Bush is still your president and you probably weren't dissing him before you ran for VP. In fact, no doubt you defended him against the criticisms of the Democrats.

I liked McCain's gracious concession speech. No blaming anyone, and instead taking full responsibility. That's cool.

If you thank everyone involved, don't blame anyone, maybe accept that you could have done better, you will gain more respect down the track. Four years, eight years is a long time.

I see there's a fair bit here about media bias. When I've asked what should be done about it I get no response. Do people want the state to control the press instead of market incentives?

George Will looks at this another way, essentially arguing media bias, in the language of social science, is an "underspecified" explanation. As he wrote in his Sunday column:

[Conservatives] are monomaniacal about media bias, which is real but rarely decisive, and unhinged by their anger about the loathing of Sarah Palin by similarly deranged liberals. These conservatives, confusing pugnacity with a political philosophy, are hot to anoint Palin, an emblem of rural and small-town sensibilities, as the party's presumptive 2012 nominee.

These conservatives preen as especially respectful of regular -- or as Palin says, "real" -- Americans, whose tribune Palin purports to be. But note the argument that the manipulation of Americans by "the mainstream media" explains the fact that the more Palin campaigned, the less Americans thought of her qualifications. This argument portrays Americans as a bovine herd -- or as inert clay in the hands of wily media, which only Palin's conservative celebrators can decipher and resist.

I'll be honest, the woman frightened me. She and her daughter are entitled to make their own choices in situations most of are grateful we avoided. But we don't want her, and she's demonstrated herself to be a card carrying member of the religious right, to dictate other women's choices. It's not just reproductive rights, she holds extreme views on a number of topics.

The other thing I found somewhat unsettling is that men and women reacted differently to her. At least three men I have spoken with since the election prefaced their criticisms by noting, "I'm sure she's a nice woman." Yet I know no woman who opposed her would agree with that.

Later, I realized what these men were really saying was that they were not going to get into the issue of her wardrobe or whether she's a good mother. They simply felt she lacked the requisite qualifications to be VP. And, they added, her looks were a factor in her selection.

Men, of course, are more visually stimulated. Women are well aware of this and long ago made peace with the status quo. We don't want to revisit it by considering what role her appearance might have played. George Will doesn't get into it either but he makes another point:

These conservatives, smitten by a vice presidential choice based on chromosomes, seem eager to compete on the Democrats' terrain of identity politics, entering the "diversity" sweepstakes they have hitherto rightly deplored.

Nobody here distinguished between Democrats attacking the Governor and those within the McCain campaign who were in effect divulging confidences. More than one Democrat has wondered if this is being done with the tacit approval of party elders to sully her image so she won't run in the future. Obviously the RNC has figured out the base isn't enough to win with and that's all she can command.

Many people here hold Harvard in pretty high esteem.

Another survey to tear down by for you.

Even Harvard Finds The Media Biased

Just like so many reports before it, a joint survey by the Project for Excellence in Journalism and Harvard's Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy — hardly a bastion of conservative orthodoxy — found that in covering the current presidential race, the media are sympathetic to Democrats and hostile to Republicans.

http://www.ibdeditorials.com/IBDArticles.aspx?id=278808786575124

Breaking News

This story was a hoax. Media fell for it hook line and sinker. After all it was more dirt on Palin to wallow in without checking out the source (I thought the Media was suppose to do that before than ran a story).

Martin Eisenstadt Tricks News Orgs On Being Source Of Palin Dirt

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/11/10/martin-eisenstadt-non-exi_n_142785.html

The "source" of the story.

http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=M._Thomas_Eisenstadt

sailwind,

That the media has a negative tone toward Republicans and gives them less coverage is not a sign of bias. Again, the media has a negative tone toward Chavez and gives him less coverage than it does Bush. Sometimes negativity is justly earned.

I think the media should check its sources. I think it is supposed to do that. However, that it did not do so here is hardly evidence that it just wants dirt on Palin to wallow in.

Cowardly? More like guilty of picking the easiest of targets....

Back to the obscurity where you belong Sarah, there's a good girl

Sailwind,

The Huffington Post is a liberal site so it sort of undercuts your "media bias" argument to use one its stories outing a non-existent person for claiming Sarah Palin didn't know Africa was a continent. As the writer notes:

To be clear, none of this means the Africa story is false -- just that it didn't come from this source. Huffington Post has been told on background that Martin Eisenstadt was not one of Fox News correspondent Carl Cameron's sources.

It's my gut feeling higher ups in the RNC are orchestrating this campaign to undercut Sarah Palin's future viability as a candidate. What sank her was the Katie Couric interview. Nobody has said those questions were unfair. Now the producer may have lined them up in a sequence in which the viewers' doubts about her qualifications were reinforced. But those are her responses and I think they would have been devastating no matter what order in which they were presented. Furthermore, there was no recognition on her part that her knowledge was insufficient. Very attractive women become accustomed to being accepted and swooned over on their own terms, no adjustments necessary. But the electorate felt differently.

I recall a post two days ago: "sailwind at 06:27 PM JST - 9th November" that stated "I rest my case[.]"

Apparently not.

I recall a recent post in which goodDonkey brought down the level of discussion by calling Palin a doofus. She's the Governor of the great state of Alaska with an 80% approval rate. And you?

O.K. Sail. Fight the good fight.

If only the media would have printed a good story about sarah palin, maybe something with a puppy, instead of writing the story with the information PROVIDED TO THEM BY MEMBERS OF JOHN MCCAIN'S CAMPAIGN.

They are so mean...to sarah and to you.

Damn messengers, delivering the message given to them instead of writing what YOU want. Don't they know who you are?

Taka

Damn messengers, delivering the message given to them

Isn't that called propaganda instead of journalism?

Only when it's not in your favor, Sail.

I'm really sorry that the mccain campaign did a hit job on someone you so respect.

I'm also really sorry that the hit job originated from people hired by john mccain, someone you respect.

I'm also really sorry that your anger over negative reporting didn't manifest itself during the lapel pin debacle and during the not-standing-with-his-hand-over-his-heart debacle and the William Ayers debacle.

Had it done so, it would be a lot easier for me to believe that everything you have typed on this thread was true and not just sour grapes.

As it stands however....sour grapes it is, in my opinion. But you fight the good fight. 8 years from now, Obama will be gone. Then...maybe you will be able to let it go instead of delving into sarge territory, ignoring the majority of a post to pick apart one single part that is of far less importance.

Taka

Sarah Palin delivered for the Republican Party. But it's clear they can't win elections with just the base. The religious right, once a fringe part of the GOP, has come to command center stage. It isn't clear they care about the deficit or limited government. On the contrary, they favor an expanded government to regulate private behavior.

This is not attractive to young voters, even young evangelicals, who tend to prioritize pocket-book issues over both ideology and morality. They will confront a far higher degree of economic uncertainty in their professional lives than previous generations. And they will bear the repayment burden of GWB's spending spree. The GOP has not been the party of fiscal responsibility in the lifetime of 20-somethings, and not surprising they tend to support Democrats.

Taka

This is the most honest thing I can to post to you, Betzee, goodDonkey and even Smith or Zurc or all the rest that have disagreed with me on this thread.

I don't who Obama is, I have to dig through so much to find out how this man we elected President is all about.

That should not be my job. I should be able to google to find out How he got into into Harvard and have 3000 hits. I get nothing.

It was the up to media to fill in those gaps. They did not.

That is scary and should never be allowed to happen in our country that we ALL love so much.

Respect that Taka. It's why I'm posting so hard here.

Sailwind,

I'm not so sure Sarah Palin "is a nice woman" as several men whose political views are close to to my own have asserted. Nor do I think Joe Sixpack wears silk boxers, but hey I don't want to sell anybody short!

I do know, however, the Republican Party's problems lie a lot deeper than media bias. They can't sell their ideas to the new generation of voters because they don't address their concerns.

"How he got into into Harvard"

How Obama got into Harvard? Is that what's bothering you? Are you looking desperately for the "My dad was alumni, so getting in was easier" card? Well, if that's an issue, then it might relieve you to know that no one seemed to hold that against current C-average Yale graduate George W. Bush.

Are you looking for something like a "diversity scholarship" or an example of "affirmative action," robbing white Americans of opportunity? Well, plenty of white Americans graduate from Harvard every year. It seems only Obama chose to run for president this year. It should also be noted that affirmative action may get one into aan ivy league school, but it can't get you a degree, much less the position of editor of the Harvard Law Review. Only hard work can do that.

Interestingly, I can't seem to find out how Sarah Palin got into University of Hawaii-Hilo, Hawaii Pacific University, North Idaho Community College, Matanuska-Susitna Community College, or the University of Idaho. Presumably, she applied. But then, so did Obama to his two schools. Should I presume there is something fishy about her college education - I mean, aside from her bouncing around to five different schools - because I can't uncover precisely how she got in?

What is it specfically you need to know about Obama's Harvard education that's got you tied up in such knots? I'll try my best to see if I can't help fill in the blanks for you.

I don't who Obama is, I have to dig through so much to find out how this man we elected President is all about. That should not be my job. I should be able to google to find out How he got into into Harvard and have 3000 hits. I get nothing.

This isn't an issue of bias, this is an issue of you not getting your way, Sail.

I could type a list of things that I feel should have received media attention that didn't that would choke a horse, it doesn't mean the media is biased against me, or against liberals, it means that the major media outlets didn't think it would draw enough interest to keep them in the black.

This has been something that has vexed liberals for the last 8 years. We couldn't get anyone in the media to seriously look at things like voter caging, like bush's military career, like the bush presidency's failure to comply with subpoenas. Most people weren't interested and they were viewed largely as things only of interest to liberals.

Welcome to our world Sail. As my father would say, "at no time in your life did you sign a contract saying your life would be fair."

Taka

Actually Taka, you're wrong. This is an issue of bias, but even more so, an issue of fairness. While people on the left may state that the media leans right or is impartial, there is an immense amount of raw data that contradicts it. The fact that they scrutinize and publish derogatory stories of Republicans more then they do of Democrats, and repeat dirt, even if untrue adnauseum is established fact. When reporters come out and admit now that the election is over that they don't know Obama, this shows just how biased the coverage really was.

Of course you're also right. Life isn't fair. The people in the media have their own beliefs and opinions, and they cover what they want to cover, and everyone just has to deal with it. Taking that right away from them wouldn't be right either, so conservatives just have to learn to live with the automatic bias. And try to overcome it. Of course it doesn't stop us bitching about it. Just as the media has the right to report things the way they want, we have the right to bitch about it too.

The fact that they scrutinize and publish derogatory stories of Republicans more then they do of Democrats,

Perhaps because more republican politicians have been indicted over the 5 years or so than Democrats.

there is an immense amount of raw data that contradicts

There is an immense amount of raw data that concurs as well. As a man once said, there are 3 types of lies: lies, damn lies and statistics.

is established fact

I believe it to be more, established strong opinion.

As I stated upthread, if you are a factor 5 conservative, then even a factor 3 conservative story is liberal, from your perspective. I don't claim to be totally unbiased myself. I think it's next to impossible. I don't think there is a single person who has posted on this thread that can say they are unbiased. In my opinion, a lack of bias is almost impossible to achieve.

And also, as I have stated on this thread repeatedly, regarding this thread, the idea of media bias is a strawman argument.

palin got smeared. The smear came from mccain's campaign. A lot of people are blaming the media because they cannot and/or will not admit that their candidate, candidate mccain, took the low road and hired people whose political careers were made from smearing others, john mccain for one.

So...instead of admitting, yeah, our candidate really failed us when he hired people to smear Obama, and those people turned out to be the type of people that would smear sarah palin in a heartbeat as well...they blame the media.

Taka

I won't get into the media bias wars any further. Neither of us is going to be convinced. So we'll have to agree to disagree, although of course I'm right. :)

palin got smeared. The smear came from mccain's campaign. A lot of people are blaming the media because they cannot and/or will not admit that their candidate, candidate mccain, took the low road and hired people whose political careers were made from smearing others, john mccain for one.

The media really are to blame for this. Don't get me wrong, the smears came from McCains team, which is just sickening. But whats pathetic, is that these people didn't bother to check the sources. And certainly didn't bother to get confirmation. Instead, they just ran with it. That it came out on FoxNews, which is usually a lot more balanced is even more surprising. Its like Rathergate all over again.

Molenir,

I addressed that upthread. It's not a bias thing, it's a quality thing. Stories that would have never seen the light of day before get printed/aired because of the 24 hour news coverage on cable and the internet. Instead of getting the best 1 hour of news daily, we get 24 hours worth and the quality suffers.

Running the smear was story 1. Running palin's reaction is story 2. Running a story showing that the initial smear was incorrect is story 3.

See, you can get multiple stories to fill up your 24 hour news coverage from a topic that, back in the day, would have not been printed/aired.

And again, you are blaming the gun and not the people who pulled the trigger knowingly.

Taka

Taka. Good point about the 24hr news thing. Whether its CNN or Japanese TV, if you have a TV on anywhere near you, you end up seeing the same thing over and over, whether its Joe the Plumber confronting Obama or Asashoryu kicking a soccer ball in Mongolia. But at least in the US they don't usually use BGM and slow motion.

I wish I could see things as black and white as all of you as it would make life simpler. I think Palin was not as bad as most of you are saying, but not as great as her supporters do.

Being governor of a state (albeit small) with 80% approval rate is not a light thing. If you all think its that easy, go try it. Some of you dislike her because she is a social conservative, and that can't be helped. She would be attacked for that reason alone even if she had 6 PHDs. She also did well at gathering crowds and speaking in front of them -the fact she was just the VP candidate and was better than the Presidential candidate at that was probably a first in politics.

But, the Katie Couric thing was a disaster. I like her in many respects, but viewers could tell the second after she was asked about the supreme court, that she didn't know how to answer. I felt bad for her, and it made me squirm watching! But, she needs to realize, and so do her supporters, that it's not a game of trivial pursuit. If you run for VP, its a tough business, you are supposed to know certain things, and you know what that say about hot kitchens.

The sad thing for her is that the newspaper and the supreme court questions weren't really that cruel! The mystery is that all she had to do was prepare two or even one good one answer about supreme court decisions. In other words, even if you really don't know about something, with even a few hours you can sound reasonably smart or at least get by. As someone said, she came across as a student who didn't read the chapter before the exam and didn't do a good job of faking it.

In all, I think she did a good job for her first time in the national spotlight with such a bad economy, and a brilliant African American running against her. ("against her" in that it did seem to become a Palin vs Obama election)

We know very little about Palin. We really do not know much about McCain. I say that because it is easy to come up with bits and pieces and then say we don't know the details of every area of their life. This notion that the press is responsible for unabridged biographies is ridiculous and one more disparate attempt to frame the press in a poor light. Palin was not revealing herself at all. She only said what she thought was beneficial to her campaign. I watched her dash away from the press when asked about the allegations of ethics violations within 3 days of being selected by McCain. If this theory of knowing all the details about a presidents biography were to hold true then the conservative press has had ample time to provide every detail on President Bush.

What about our current President? How little we actually know. It's a conspiracy I tell you. Why didn't Bush get into St. John's School in Houston, Texas? How did Bush get into Yale? How did he get into Skull and Bones? Bush applied to but was not accepted into the University of Texas School of Law. Why wasn't he accepted at the University of Texas? If he could not get accepted into the U. of Texas how did he get accepted in to the Harvard MBA program? How did he pay for Yale and Harvard? I have Googled these questions and got 999 quadrillion hits but no answers.

Obama graduated magna cum laude in his Harvard Law graduating class and he was president of the prestigious Harvard Law Review is it really that hard to imagine that Barack simply got in on merit? I am not saying that I know the details. I don't care; not when he ended up graduating magna cum laude and he ended up the first black president of the Harvard Law Review. Of course there will always be those out there that think it is more important to know that their president got into a university on his fathers laurels and ended up a 'C' student then knowing that their president is one who attained several great academic achievements but we still don't know how he got in.

Yasukuni, Thank you. Another thing I realized as well is my conservative friends are correct. There ABSOLUTELY HAVE been more negative stories written about republicans than there have been Democrats over the last few years.

However, it has nothing to do with media bias.

It's because george bush (R), dick cheney (R), alberto gonzales (R), ted stevens (R), larry craig (R), bob taft (R), jack abramoff (R), matthew sisk (R), sam currin (R), ernie fletcher (R), tom adams (R), shirley ward (R), bob ney (R), randy, "duke" cunningham (R), i. lewis "scooter" libby (R), newt gingrich (R), david stockman (R), mark foley (R) and tom delay (R) have all done some pretty newsworthy and pretty negative stuff.

So yeah, obviously the media will write more negative stories about republicans. The Democrats just haven't proven themselves capable of giving the media that volume of material.

They've had their stories mind you. cynthia mckinnie and william jefferson garnered a lot of media coverage over their crimes. But...yeah, that's quite a list of misdeed doers and criminals up there.

Taka

Taka313

Wow, I kept trying to say something like that but just didn't get to the point nearly as well.

sailwind

I want to see everything on the list I provided.

Taka

You need to add some more Democrats to your list. The media hasn't been exactly all over it.

http://www.gaypatriot.net/2008/10/18/three-democratic-scandals-minimal-media-coverage/

O.K. Sail,

We'll add those three. Can I add denny hastert's handling of the foley debacle and john mccain (Keating 5) and others to mine as well?

That reduces your extra three to just 1.

Sorry, your bias ship has just sailed.

Taka

Does anyone know the name of the liar who said Palin didn't know that Africa is a continent?

Taka,

I'm convinced. Now you can start working on the rest of country. Gallup, Pew, Rasmussen etc.

http://www.mediaresearch.org/biasbasics/biasbasics4.asp

Taka,

Be sure to scroll down the whole site. They even graph all the results.

Sarge,

Does anyone know the name of the liar who said Palin didn't know that Africa is a continent?

Yes - I believe their name was Anonymous. Wink Wink.

Why did Todd Palin sit in on official meetings in Alaska?

Why didn't Bush get into St. John's School in Houston, Texas?

Why did Todd Palin sit in on official meetings in Alaska?

Stapleton said Todd Palin sat in on the veto meeting but was there only to look after the couple's infant son, Trig, who was resting in a bassinet.

According to CBS news.

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/09/22/politics/washingtonpost/main4467100_page2.shtml

Why didn't Bush get into St. John's School in Houston, Texas?

Not exactly sure and he doesn't remember why either.

According to the New York Times

The specific benefits of his family heritage became clear in 1961, when George was accepted by Andover, one of the country's premier high schools. Then an all-male institution, Andover had a college-level faculty and an amazing $80,000 budget just for mowing the lawns and planting the grounds.

It was also exceptionally difficult to get into, and George had already encountered problems with admissions officers. He had been rejected by St. John's, the best private school in Houston.

Phillips Academy Yearbook George W. Bush as the head cheerleader at Phillips Academy in Andover, Mass., in fall 1963, in a role that some classmates now see as a precursor of his political rise as presidential candidate.

(A family friend vaguely recalled the rejection, but when Governor Bush was interviewed he said he knew nothing of this. Later, after checking with his parents, he went out of his way to confirm, without any apparent embarrassment, that he had indeed been rejected.)

Andover was far more competitive than St. John's. A contemporary magazine article says 80 percent of Andover applicants were then being turned down, and it seems unlikely that George would have been admitted to Andover entirely on his own merits.

But he did not need to be. The Andover admissions process calculated a numeric score for each applicant, ranging from 4 to 20, and then gave a 3-point bonus to any son of an Andover graduate. George's father had been a star graduate, still beloved by teachers there.

This may diminish George's achievement in getting into Andover but it does not erase it. Even among sons of Andover graduates, fewer than half were admitted at that time. Mr. Bush says he has no recollection of his grades at Kinkaid, but a friend from that time says he was an A student, and it was those grades and his activities as a class officer and athlete that, along with his pedigree, put him over the top at Andover.

http://partners.nytimes.com/library/politics/camp/061000wh-bush.html

Boy, the press sure does it's job on the Republicans. Dont'cha think.

Good luck with Todd Palin looking after Trig by the way.

Does anyone know the name of the liar who said Palin didn't know that Africa is a continent

She reported her name as Amanda Huggenkis. They are looking for Amanda Huggenkis right now. (Doh!)

Sailwind,

In the November 11 WaPo there's a letter to the editor which makes a much stronger case for media bias than you have with your reliance on linking the opinions of others. It's worth looking at so I will copy in most of it:

I am proud of my country for electing its first black president, but it is a bittersweet pride. What detract from the moment are media that, in their zeal to get Sen. Barack Obama elected or perhaps their fear of appearing racist, largely exempted Mr. Obama from scrutiny while simultaneously subjecting the McCain-Palin campaign to negative and petty reporting.

Not all media outlets were guilty, of course. But many, including The Post, allowed a pro-Obama bias to affect their coverage.

Much was made of Mr. Obama's ability to run a positive campaign, and for the most part he did. But the media allowed him to take the high road by doing most of the dirty work for him. While Sen. John McCain avoided any mention of race, nearly every criticism he made of Mr. Obama was met with media hints of possible racism. And when Gov. Sarah Palin hit the stage, the attacks were ramped up to full-throttle nastiness. Serious examinations of her record were few and far between; the media evidently found it much easier to demean her looks, wardrobe, hobbies and speech patterns. The Nov. 7 Reliable Source even told us about spray-on tans and fancy underwear. Will we soon read about Michelle Obama's lingerie? Not likely. Nor should we.

Why the double standard? Mr. Obama certainly didn't need the help. Surely he would have won on a level playing field, and the contest would have been more honest and enjoyable had he been allowed to compete on one.

While analytical rather than angry, it is ultimately not compelling. What stories about Obama did the paper not dig into to avoid appearing racist? The fact an Aunt he barely knew was in the country illegally? That information is kept confidential by the court, someone breached that confidentiality by releasing it at the last minute.

Obama ran the type of campaign he needed to first defeat Hillary Clinton and then John McCain. Given that over 70 percent of the American people felt the country was heading in the wrong direction, he had to convince "up for grabs" voters they could trust him with the presidency. They would not have been convinced had he brought up John McCain's past association with Charles Keating or Todd Palin's membership in a party which advocates independence. The financial meltdown gave him a chance to shine, which he did, while McCain flubbed and floundered.

The other thing the letter writer ignores is the liberal media's long standing love affair with John McCain. In the late 1990s in the Boston Globe a writer opined, "For many people, the Senate has 99 bozos and this guy." His issues, campaign finance reform and elimination of earmarks, were ethical ones rather than the stuff of policy wonks. The circumstances of his defeat in SC in 2000 simply confirmed his virtue to independents and many Democrats.

He lost is honor in his subsequent quest for the WH. Rather than resign from the Republican Party, he campaigned heavily for GWB in 2004. For a man who viewed politics as a moral quest, he flip-flopped on the Bush tax cuts, torture, and immigration to appease the Republican base. In the process the media reevaluated him, aided by a former staffer who behaved like a jilted lover. McCain had dumped him to put himself in the hands of Karl Rove protegees who barely knew him.

His relentless attacks on Barack Obama left a former three-term Republican governor of Michigan, who had supported McCain rather than Romney, wondering, "Who is the real John McCain?" In the past he had never used his war hero status to question the patriotism of others. Yet in a manner eerily similar to GHWB, also a war hero, he viewed his young upstart rival with unconcealed contempt. They perhaps felt it was like a lieutenant challenging an admiral. For the electorate, however, McCain's morality had morphed into self-righteousness and that was unattractive.

Were the attacks on Sarah Palin fair? In comparison to the the way John McCain was attacked in 2000? Don't think they come close. She presented herself as a Hockey Mom whose life was light years different from the elite except in the wardrobe department. She was not conversant in the issues that confront an administration. Of course she's going to get more scrutiny than a candidate's wife. After all, the Republicans had already trashed Cindy McCain as a pill popping substance abuser in 2000.

Far from blaming media bias, the Republicans really need to look within to understand the state of their party.

Interesting....... You post a letter to the editor written for the Washington Post and then tear it apart.

Doesn't the Washington Post have its own comment page?

I'll stick with my last link and all the studies and polls done thru the years. I think Americans both Democrat and Republican and Independents came to this same conclusion as I have long time ago. All on their little lonesomes, just by reading the papers.

You need to be working on them not me. Good luck.

The media's bias is a somewhat rational choice. They are seeing their traditional power of shaping public opinion being eroded. Profits are way down. The Democrats talk of bringing back the Fairness Doctrine. It's only natural that they would support the party that seeks to muzzle their competition, even if it is unconstitutional. Likewise, of course they were going to cheer Obama the way they did. We have always had a do-good Puritan streak in America.And now it takes the shape of an aggressive, vapid multiculturalism and a kind of genteel liberalism. What bothers me is liberals and Democrats who insist that the media was fair. They weren't.

Interesting....... You post a letter to the editor written for the Washington Post and then tear it apart.

If anyone here could present their case the way the letter writer does then it wouldn't be necessary (and there's no comments space for letters).

What Republicans fails to acknowledge is changing demographics:

After Ronald Reagan won the [Michigan] county by a 2-to-1 margin in 1984, focus groups revealed that “that these working-class whites interpreted Democratic calls for economic fairness as code for transfer payments to African-Americans.” (Some still do, reflected in posters like Barry OBarmey) So what do we think when Barack Obama, an African-American Democrat, wins Macomb County by eight points?

Macomb has been slow to welcome racial diversity, but almost a quarter of Oakland’s residents are members of various racial minorities. These changes have produced a more tolerant and culturally liberal population, uncomfortable with today’s Republican Party. When we conducted our poll of 600 voters in Oakland County on election night, they were a lot more open than voters in Macomb to gay marriage and affirmative action. We asked those who voted for Mr. Obama why they made that choice. At the top of the list was his promise to withdraw troops from Iraq, followed by his support for tax cuts for the middle class and affordable health care for all, and the idea that he will bring people together, end the old politics and get things done.

As George Will asked, how did media bias play a role in this transformation from red to blue?

If nobody can explain exactly how media bias influenced the election results, then it falls into the realm of conspiracy theory rather than explanation for an outcome.

Doesn't get much more non-biased then this to answer your question.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/06/080625140638.htm

Notice the science daily part.

Sail,

I have to admit, I am totally flummoxed.

You have thrown out a couple of strawmen arguments on this thread and they've all had pretty big holes poked into them.

Yet, you cling to your strawmen for dear life while completely turning your back on the subject of this story. The subject that I have repeatedly tried to get you to face.

You are not well represented in the main stream media because the main stream media is shaped by what sells. Because society has moved to the left, so has the main stream media. Since you have moved to the right, you are further outside the main stream

AND AGAIN, none of this has any bearing on the fact that john mccain knowingly and willfully hired smear agents to take the low road on this campaign and that they turned on the campaign when they saw the writing on the wall.

john mccain made a moral and ethical mistake in hiring these people and it came back and bit him, his running mate and his party in the butt. Big time.

Your pouting about it isn't going to change that one bit.

Taka

Sail, However...I will commend you your extremely effective job at hijacking this thread to keep the focus off john mccain's moral and ethical mistake in hiring smear merchants to work his campaign, after claiming he would run a clean campaign.

americanwoman would be proud.

Taka

Taka

Did it occur to you that your idea that Mccain lost the election was due to him hiring smear merchants to work his campaign is just your opinion?

Others such as myself have a much more different idea why he lost.

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2008/president/us/general_election_mccain_vs_obama-225.html

Go to the second graph and move your curser over where McCain took the lead after his convention and poll bounce. Then stop at Sept 17 when both were almost exactly tied and watch the blue line continue back in Obama's favor after that all the way till election day.

On Sept 17th guess what happened? Lehman Brothers went bankrupt the start of the economic meltdown. He lost the election because as another famous Democrat had put it "It's the economy stupid".

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2008/president/us/general_election_mccain_vs_obama-225.html

McCain blew it with his the that underlying foundations of the economy were still sound. That was the day he lost the election.

As fair as Media Bias. I'm not mad that McCain lost or "pouting". I feel cheated not on the Republican side but as an American. I want to know what Obama is all about. I don't and I don't think that anyone here really does either. I don't want dirt on the man. I want to know what kind of man he is. The Media Cheated me by not doing the same type of reporting that they did on Palin or McCain.

And if you could actually step back for a moment from trying to tear my position down.

They cheated you also.

I fail to find any of this amusing when our new President is pretty much a cypher to all of us and he shouldn't be. This is were bias brings us. To a place that not only I but a few others posters on this thread have noted also. The place that scares them a little as it does me a not so free press after all and just a little more assault on our personal freedom.

Joe the Plumber didn't need to be investigated by the press just for asking Obama a question.

Sailwind,

Obama was ahead for most of the time after he sealed the nomination, a process that yielded a lot of new Democratic voters in places like NC. So it was his election to lose, not McCain's. And that could have happened:

Last June, Joel Benenson, who was Barack Obama’s top pollster during his Presidential run, reported on the state of the campaign....There was good news and bad in Benenson’s presentation. Obama led John McCain, forty-nine per cent to forty-four per cent, among the voters most likely to go to the polls in November, but there was also a large group of what Benenson called “up-for-grabs” voters, or U.F.G.s, who favored McCain, forty-eight per cent to thirty-six per cent. The U.F.G.s were the key to the outcome; if the election had been held then, Obama would have probably lost.

Obama had his base sewn up and was free to court the U.F.Gs. He won them over with his response to the financial meltdown. It wasn't just McCain's erratic reaction, what happened on Wall Street called into question basic tenants of Republican free-market ideology.

McCain was far more constrained in his campaign than Obama. He was viewed with suspicion by the Republican base. By all accounts he wanted to chose Joe Lieberman as his running mate but was told his nomination would be contested on the floor in Minneapolis if he did so. Instead he chose Sarah Palin to placate them. But her appeal beyond the base proved quite limited.

David Brooks, a conservative, is not optimistic about the ability of the Republican Party to come back to the center. He concluded yesterday, "the Republican Party will probably veer right in the years ahead, and suffer more defeats. Then, finally, some new Reformist donors and organizers will emerge. They will build new institutions, new structures and new ideas, and the cycle of conservative ascendance will begin again."

I actually look forward to that. One-party rule means mediocre governance. The Democrats could put up anybody to run for Governor of California and s/he would beat the Republican, who will by necessity be a social conservative. Arnie, a social liberal, only got in through the process process.

I fail to find any of this amusing when our new President is pretty much a cypher to all of us and he shouldn't be.

What you find hard to swallow is that you can’t find anything truly bad about the man to vilify him. In fact, it seems that he might actually just be a fairly good guy. While this may nor fit well into the Far Right's constructed reality in which anyone “Liberal” is Godless, morally bankrupt, and evil, the truth of the matter is Obama’s a decent person.

This incessant drumbeat that Obama is a mystery suggests some sort of vast “Left Wing Conspiracy” to hide information about Obama. By excising it from . . . the Internet. Is that what you're suggesting is at work here? Now that is something I find amusing.

Joe the Plumber didn't need to be investigated by the press just for asking Obama a question.

If I'm going to stand up in front of national media and confront a candidate with something that is factually incorrect (i.e., "Obama will raise my taxes"), then I should be prepared for some increased interest.

Besides, any scrutiny “Joe” received from that point is the fault of the GOP. The GOP had no problem whatsoever with shamelessly parading "Joe the Plummer" around like a good luck charm at public rallies, and even less of a problem every time the media showed him "confronting" Obama in reruns, as if they had finally “got” Obama. The whining from both Joe and the GOP only started when this sudden national good luch charm for the GOP turned out to have a background that wasn't altogether truthful, like not coming close to the income bracket that Obama’s tax plan proposes to raise taxes on, for example. Or not actually being a licensed plumber.

What you find hard to swallow is that you can’t find anything truly bad about the man to vilify him.

Go through my entire posting history and find one time that I tried to "vilify" the man.

One time, just one time.

I've praised him on more occassions than you can count. How many times did you give Palin or McCain the same OBJECTIVE scrutinity, that I have showed through-out this entire campaign.

Your bias is showing as to my "so called" motives.

Sarah Palin: you should be gosh-darn tootin' ashamed of yourself; paying $120K for a DKNY outfit! Anyone who's anyone knows spending less than $200K before leaving Saks Fifth Avenue would look like a pauper!

Incidentally, how much were Biden's eyelifts again?

If I'm going to stand up in front of national media and confront a candidate with something that is factually incorrect (i.e., "Obama will raise my taxes"), then I should be prepared for some increased interest.

And if you may some things in your background that you may not really be made public (messy divorce for example). And you now have the precedent of the Media which at no time that I can recall ever went after a citizen for asking a Presidential Candidate a question....Your not going to ask the question. You know have put yourself under DEFACTO censorship.

Your handle is looking a lot more shaky if you endorse this kind of thing.

That is not letting Freedomring, that is supressing it one papercut at a time.

Next campaign only people with pristine records will be allowed to ask questions of Candidates. That is not good.

Sailwind,

How many times did you give Palin or McCain the same OBJECTIVE scrutinity, that I have showed through-out this entire campaign.

I've been consistent on McCain from the start: I like him. He's intelligent, passionate, honorable, and a very capable statesman. I challenge you as well to find anywhere in my posting history where I've stated otherwise.

And as I've said time and time again, I think he got screwed by his campaign team. Quite honestly, I think an Obama/McCain ticket might have been the perfect magic formula to get this petty partisan bickering to stop and get the country back on the road to being a beacon of hope to others.

I've been consistent with Palin as well. I've only formed opinions about her where the evidence warranted it. She had two national interviews and opportunities to prove that she was Vice-Presidential material, and she blew both of them by being poorly prepared. You know it, I know it, OTHER Conservatives know it, and the entire country knows it. Where, precisely, is my lack of objectivity in scrutinizing her and the GOP for this selection of a running mate for a man who deserved much better?

It’s more than apparent you have some biases yourself if you’re unable or unwilling to see my criticisms as valid.

Go through my entire posting history and find one time that I tried to "vilify" the man.

I never said you tried to vilify Obama. I said that you seem to be profoundly frustrated that you can’t find any dirt on the man with which to vilify him, despite your best efforts. I suspect that you want to dislike the man, but, out of some sense of honor, can’t bring yourself to do so arbitrarily. But the fact is that no matter how deep you dig and, you keep coming up with nothing, and that seems to really bug the hell out of you. I'd like to know why.

You claim he’s an enigma, but what is there that we don’t know about him that we didn’t know about any other presidential candidate in any other campaign over the years. The media did its job: It dug. It searched. It chased leads leaked out by the GOP and found them lacking in substance. Hillary even did her job. She dug. She searched. And the absolute best she could come up with was Reverend Wright. Heck, I was even waiting for the 11th hour strumpet to pop up and claim an extramarital affair with Obama, to sink his bid. But no such scandal appeared.

What else do you want?

We know where he was born. We know where he spent his childhood. We know who his parents were. We know his religion, politics, and military service history. We know his voting habits. We know his family. And thanks to the media, which everyone seems to insist is so biased, we know that he had a working relationship with Ayers and we know that he had business dealings with Tony Rezko - which was ultimately left alone for the same reason McCain avoided career-ending involvement in the Keating scandal – His exercise of poor judgment. We know all of this. You know all of this.

So, what else do you really want?

He wrote two biographies. Why don’t you go pick one up and take a peek if you’re that concerned about how a man who has amply demonstrated his ability to work hard by graduating from Harvard Law among the best of his peers made it to where he is today. Don’t be surprised if you find hard work to be a major component.

You seem obsessed with “How” he got into Harvard Law School, so I’m going to just ask you straight out: Why is this so important?

Your handle is looking a lot more shaky if you endorse this kind of thing.

I'm not endorsing anything. I'm saying that if you put yourself out there, then subsequently allow yourself to be paraded in front of the media as "The American Who Asked Obama a Tough Question," then you've opened yourself up to closer scrutiny, for good or bad. In this, it didn't turn out so well for "Joe."

And if I may be so bold, please have the personal integrity to admit that if everything the media uncovered about "Joe the Plumber" turned out to be rosy, i.e., he indeed made more than $200k a year, making him a target of Obama's tax increases, had a plumbing license, and was a pristine example of the Grand Old Party base stereotype as a God-fearing, rifle-owning, patriotic family man, then you can be damned sure you and the GOP, and "Joe" would have been tickled pink to see the media reveal as much to America, holding in essence the ultimate “Real American” trump card.

The McCain campaign unscrupulously used “Joe the Plumber” and unfortunately, Joe got burned for it. You're not fooling anyone with this faux-outrage, nor are anyone else in the GOP.

So, what else do you really want?

Same thing one of his associates would like to know. A person that wasn't quite friends with the man but wasn't a distant abstract voter either.

One of neighbors and a member of his peer group.

I have pretty good company here in my views.

The Obama I (Don't) Know Richard A. Epstein, 10.21.08, 12:01 AM EDT One Chicago law professor writes about another.

My Obama number is one. I know him through our association at the University of Chicago Law School and through mutual friends in the neighborhood. We have had one or two serious substantive discussions, and when I sent him e-mails from time to time in the early days of his Senate term, he always answered in a sensible and thoughtful fashion. And yet, for assessing the course of his likely presidency, I don't know him at all.

It should come as no surprise that the traditionally liberal Hyde Park community is a veritable hotbed of support for Obama. So my manifest reluctance on his candidacy raises more than a single eyebrow: Loyalty for the home team counts. The odd point is how his many learned and thoughtful supporters couch their endorsement. Almost without exception, they praise the man, not the program. Their claim is that Obama has proved himself to be a consummate politician who understands that the first principle of holding high office is to get reelected. His natural moderation in tone and demeanor, therefore, translate into getting advisers who know their substantive areas, and listening to them before making any rash moves. The dominant trope is that he will be a pragmatic president who will move in small increments toward the center, not in bold steps toward the left.

But is it all true? The short answer is that nobody knows.

http://www.forbes.com/2008/10/20/obama-chicago-election-oped-cx_re_1021epstein.html

As far as Joe the Plumber let me be so bold and admit if Joe was the pristine stereotype Republican you talked about the media wouldn't have printed one thing about his background. Wouldn't make good copy or reading.

sailwind

Question, do you feel you know GWB or Cheny well enough?

Yes I do.....Plenty of critical press on those two.

Sorry not trying to be flippant here but seriously, what more do you want to know about Obama?

His role models while growing up, his real ones for starters. Unless they really are Rev. Wright and Ayres types which should give someone pause.

That wasn't negative by the way. I just don't see any moderating centrists influences in the mans life while he was moving up in the world. Press sure hasn't exposed any or background either to confirm it. If it is true that his core beliefs revolved around Wright and Ayres types and they shaped him when he was a younger padwan so to speak ...Gonna be a rough 4 years for all of us.

This chick needs a reality check