The old and the new

John Nolte, editor-in-chief of Big Hollywood, shares some thoughts on the state of the mainstream media:

Yesterday, Washington Post columnist and former Bush II speechwriter Michael Gerson played a long slow violin solo over the death of the mainstream media. There’s nothing new in his piece. Dazed with panic as the circle of financial ruin closes in, we’ve heard this song many times before from our ink-stained dinosaurs. And true to form, Gerson can’t break the mold. It’s all there, the rose-colored glasses, denial, and a heaping helping of rationalization.

Once again, from that familiar MSM perch where one can look down their nose at the great unwashed who just don’t understand the magnificent tradition of journalism they’re about to lose, Gerson blames We the People for no longer wanting to pay for our news and choosing partisan sources “that reinforce and exaggerate … political predispositions.”

How absurd.

A non-partisan, unbiased news media simply doesn’t exist anymore. All that remains of this once somewhat respectable profession are two kinds of media: those who lie about their agenda and those who don’t – and Mr. Gerson’s employer is one of the liars. Whether it’s Glenn Beck, Arianna Huffington, National Review or MSNBC, tell me your biases upfront and we can at least start a dialogue from an honest foundation. On the other hand, the Washington Post, New York Times, Newsweek, Time, CNN, NBC, ABC, CBS and the like, have spent years making jerks out of us – lying to our faces. We knew this, there just wasn’t any alternative. But now that there is, their time is just about up.

Gerson doesn’t seem to want to face this truth – I don’t mean the truth that Big Media’s dying, that’s undeniable — but the truth that the death of this profession was a suicide. Does Gerson’s waxing of the nostalgic here sound like the MSM we’ve all grown to know and loathe:

I don’t believe that journalistic objectivity is a fraud. I was a journalist for a time, at a once-great, now-diminished newsmagazine. I’ve seen good men and women work according to a set of professional standards I respect — standards that serve the public. Professional journalism is not like the buggy-whip industry, outdated by economic progress, to be mourned but not missed. This profession has a social value that is currently not reflected in its market value.

What profession could he possibly be talking about? Certainly not the same profession who set out to destroy Clarence Thomas, circled the wagons to save President Clinton, summoned all their resources to lose the war in Iraq, told us more about the background of an unemployed plumber than our current President, dragged Sarah Palin’s family through the mud, and on this very day refuse to investigate three of the biggest stories of the year (if not the decade): ACORN, CzarGate and ClimateGate.

And yet in the face of all this, Gerson writes of we bloggers:

And the whole system is based on a kind of intellectual theft. Internet aggregators (who link to news they don’t produce) and bloggers would have little to collect or comment upon without the costly enterprise of newsgathering and investigative reporting. The old-media dinosaurs remain the basis for the entire media food chain.

Foul on the play. That might have been true a few years ago, but since the whole of the MSM put their blinders on and jumped in the tank for President Bows-A –Lot, it’s been the MSM following the lead of the Internet and cable news. Time and again, like Sergeant “I know nothing!” Schultz, they’ve been caught off guard and found guilty of their own kind of “intellectual theft” as they grudgingly report on Dan Rather’s forged documents, Van Jones’ resignation, the Tea Party movement, and the latest ACORN developments.

The shift towards online investigative journalism has only begun and look at the impact already. And maybe, just maybe, had our ink-stained dinosaurs picked up on and owned these stories they might have, I don’t know, sold more ink?

Blaming the death of Big Media on cable news and the Internet is ridiculous. Blaming everyday Americans who have simply grown tired of paying for the privilege of being lied to is insulting.

When there was no competition, hiding behind objectivity while openly playing press agent for leftist causes and politicians was simply the whoring out of credibility. But now that alternatives exist it’s a kamikaze mission – a Big Media suicide.

May they rest in Hell.

And to add a bit of support to his argument here is part of an article from The Telegraph. I find the title of this piece especially amusing:

East Anglia CRU: welcome to the Piltdown Institute of Mann-made Global Warming

Here is the bit that is relevent to our current discussion:

But the startling development is that, slowly, inch by inch, the mainstream media in America are being forced to address Climategate. Even ABC has now run an even-handed debate on the revelations. One of the causes of this new realism, after 12 days, has been the number of senior scientists breaking ranks to denounce the scandal and express reservations about AGW. The comic singers at East Anglia made a fetish of “peer review”: they should see some of the reviews their activities are now receiving from their peers in America.

You see way back in the beginning of this whole "Internet thing" it was true that most of what bloggers and did was locate and link to and/or comment on things published by "Big Media". A lot of that still goes on and it very badly needs to go on. As one blogger observed a few years ago "blogs dissolve bullshit".

Blogs would take what the MSM published and dissolve the bullshit pouring from someplace like the New York Times and show people why it was not to be trusted.

By the way this became so successful in the NYT's case that they tried to protect some of their "star" writers like Paul Krugman and Moreen Dowd by hiding them behind a pay per view firewall. This didn't work.

But in the process bloggers and other Internet news sites began to do original journalism so now it is the 'net (and talk radio, we can't leave that out of the new media mix) which leads and more often than not drags the old media behind it kicking and screaming all the way.

If broadcast news, CNN and most daily newspapers, along with magazines like Time and Newsweek, were still the only source of news for most Americans then we would not know about:

• The scandal surrounding ACORN.
• We would have never heard about Bill Clinton's affair with an intern and his subsequent perjury to cover it up.
• We would not know about Climategate.
• We would not know that Obama's brother lives in a cardboard shack in an African slum and that Obama refuses send him so much as one dime.
• We would have never heard of "pastor" Jeremiah Wright.
• We would not know that Barack Obama's relationship with domestic terrorist Bill Ayres is so close that Ayers ghost wrote at least one of Obama's autobiographies.
• We would not know that Dan Rather attempted to sabotage George W Bush's reelection by using forged documents.
• We would never have heard the truth about Obama "czars", like the one who advised an underage boy to continue having sex with an adult man that he met "in a bus station bathroom" or the one who said that the man she most admired was Chairman Mao.

In all these cases, and many others, the "Old Media" acted like a state controlled propaganda organization and attempted to suppress information which would be harmful to the political left, its politicans or its agenda.

It was only new media, centered on the Internet and AM radio that uncovered and publicized these facts and that is the primary reason that old media is dying. Their failures were not due to incompetence or laziness. Their failure is based entirely on the fact that they have taken the decision to maintain the pretense of objective journalism while in fact becoming partisan players. They are, to put it crudely, pissing in our face and telling us that it's raining.

It isn't that the public prefers biased journalism it's just that when all there is is biased journalism they prefer that one, the bias be for what they already believe (remember twice as many Americans identify themselves as conservative as liberal) and two, the source be honest about his bias.

As long as Rush Limbaugh tells you up front what he stands for and Katie Couric pretends to be "just covering the news" average Americans are going to have more trust in and respect for him than her.

It's just that simple.

Will CBS dump Letterman?

Andrea Peyser in the New York Post:

CBS has got to dump David Letterman. Right now.

If the Tiffany Network continues to coddle the crotchety king of late night, it will rightly be known as the destination of choice for any girl who jiggles, giggles and puts out repeatedly for a man old enough to be her father.

Dave must go. If not, CBS will have lost any remaining shred of credibility, not to mention common decency.

By his own admission, the married Letterman has bedded any number of women working under His Highness. Problem is, he doesn't seem to know precisely how many. And brass has long looked the other way.

Letterman's dream life came crashing to earth when an ex-boyfriend of one of his conquests allegedly attempted to extort him for $2 million to keep the affairs quiet. This development certainly makes Dave a victim -- a victim of his own recklessness.

The very livelihoods of the young women who caught Dave's fancy depend on making Letterman happy. But Letterman, 62, certainly knew what he was doing.

This is a full-grown adult who made a grown-up choice. And he chose to sleep with junior staffers rather than take the standard route and walk to the corner bar to conduct a sad, ordinary affair. Instead, he's working out some twisted Freudian issues on dewy-eyed underlings.

Letterman is guilty of cheating on the woman he eventually married after a 20-year relationship and trashing the trust of their 6-year-old son, Harry. This was not one little slip-up, but a deviant pattern. And when Letterman got lazy, egotistical and sloppy, he became a ticking time bomb -- a walking, breathing, sexual-harassment lawsuit waiting to happen.

The man who has been famously stalked in the past intentionally made himself into stalker-bait. Worse, he became the punch line in one of his own Monica Lewinsky jokes, which Dave told with such glee not so long ago.

A former staffer at "Late Show" described to me a "toxic" atmosphere in the studio. She said women flirt mightily with the man. Sometimes, it works in their favor.

Everyone inside the program knows what it takes to get ahead.

In recent years, Dave's comedic chops have taken on a mean streak, as well. He has shown a wicked hatred of Republicans, which reached a climax when he joked about Sarah Palin's 14-year-old daughter, Willow, getting "knocked up" in the seventh inning of a Yankee game by Alex Rodriguez.

CBS brass could have taken that gag as a sign that Letterman was slipping. Instead, bosses chose to ignore it.

[. . .]

Letterman's contract expires at the end of next year. I count on CBS to pull Letterman off the air, then kick him to the curb.

It couldn't happen to a nicer guy.

Bottom line is that CBS will dump Letterman if the audience turns him off but if he is still pulling in the numbers and making them money he will stay.

This saddens me since I used to be a fan of Letterman. Back when he was following the Tonight Show he was creative and funny. He stayed that way for a while after moving to CBS but then seemed to lose it, becoming bitter and mean - and unfunny.

It could be that he had expectations of beating the Tonight Show in the ratings and sunk into a permanent funk when he never managed to do so.

Whatever the reason for his deterioration I had given up on him before his sharp turn to the political left. This is why I was surprised by the "Palin incident" when I kept hearing callers to talk radio talk about how much he hated Republicans.

Whether CBS cancels Letterman or not each member of the audience has the power to do so just by changing the channel.

Swan song of the loon

NEW YORK (Reuters) – A New York state appeals court on Tuesday dismissed former TV newsman Dan Rather's lawsuit against CBS Corp in which Rather claimed he was made a scapegoat in a scandal over a 2004 report on then-President George W. Bush's military record.

The ruling on Tuesday by a panel of judges of the New York State Supreme Court Appellate Division said Rather's $70 million complaint should be dismissed in its entirety and that a lower court erred in denying CBS's motion to throw out the lawsuit.

Rather says CBS breached his contract by not giving him enough on-air assignments after he was removed as anchor of the "CBS Evening News" in March 2005.

The appeals court ruled he failed to sufficiently support his claim that he lost business opportunities due to CBS's failure to release him to seek other employment.

Rather sued CBS, parent of the CBS television network, Viacom and others in September 2007, claiming he had been made a scapegoat to "pacify the White House." CBS was part of Viacom until the companies split in 2006.

Perhaps Rather will now go quietly into that good night. . .

ACORN fights back

If you've been wondering how ACORN and its mainstream media allies were going to try to rescue the criminal community organization from the avalanche of trouble that two young conservative investigative journalists and their hidden camera have brought upon it here is your answer:

LOS ANGELES (AP) - Much of America discovered James O'Keefe III and Hannah Giles through their hidden-camera, make-believe pimp and prostitute videos of ACORN employees giving advice about establishing a brothel with underage hookers.

But as far back as 2006 - well before the videos became a national sensation and conservative rallying cry - the fresh-faced O'Keefe and Giles connected with a pair of Washington conservative institutions that boast programs training ideological journalists.

Now, due to coordinated promotion of the undercover sting footage by influential players in the conservative media, Giles and O'Keefe have gone from part of the pack to movement superstars.

Giles, a 20-year-old sophomore at Florida International University, spent the summer on a $1,200-a-month internship with the National Journalism Center, a training organization whose alumni include conservative commentator Ann Coulter. Immediately after graduating Rutgers University in 2006, O'Keefe, 25, was paid to set up magazines and newspapers on university campuses for the Leadership Institute, which recruits potential conservative public policy and media stars.

Each has other credentials that place them squarely in the network of activists who believe liberal-leaning mainstream media willfully ignore stories that illustrate the failings of the political left and its leaders.

. . . On Wednesday it [ACORN] sued O'Keefe, Giles and Breitbart over the Baltimore video, saying Maryland law requires consent to create sound recordings.Brian Kettenring, deputy director of national operations for ACORN, contended that conservative media , including Fox, was behind the project.

"O'Keefe and Giles try to make it sound as if they concocted their sordid video scheme on a whim - as if they had no major backers," Kettenring said. "ACORN's lawsuit will smoke out the true motives and conservative money behind these attacks on a community organization that works to better the lives of ordinary Americans every day."

First of all what is so "sordid" about a couple of journalists checking up on an organization which has received millions and is slated to receive billions of dollars of taxpayer money?

Especially when that organization already has a long history of criminal activity?

Those of you who are old enough may remember those days when the CBS television show 60 Minutes sometimes acted as something other than a propaganda tool for the far left. In that vanished bygone age they would do things exactly like this to expose corruption and inform the public.

But back to ACORN's pathetic attempt to deflect attention from the essentially criminal nature of their organization.

ACORN's contention is that if it can be demonstrated that Giles and O'Keefe have ever in their lives spoken to anyone who knows Glenn Beck or anyone else who works at FOX News or if they have in the past ever had any contact with any kind of conservative organization then their project is illegitimate.

First of all the issue is what the video tapes reveal about the mindset and operating principles of ACORN and its employees NOT who originally thought up the sting.

Second, ACORN and its allies have not provided one shred of evidence that the project did not begin exactly as Ms. Giles describes it. The fact that she and Mr. O'Keefe spoke with some members of the media about how to best reveal the results of their investigation means nothing other than the fact that they are intelligent.

Giles and O'Keefe knew that the mainstream media and all of the cable news channels except FOX have become nothing more than the propaganda organs of the far left. They knew that if they released all of the video tapes they shot in various ACORN offices at the same time that while the conservative media would make a big deal of it for a couple of days but the mainstream media would ignore it. The news cycle would move on and the story would be effectively buried.

By rolling out the tapes one after another over a period of days the MSM's willful ignorance became both manifest and embarrassing and the Democrat controlled congress, which would have loved to pretend that this story did not exist, was forced to take action.

Now both the Census Bureau and the IRS have severed their ties to the corrupt organization and congress has stripped them of federal funds (goodbye billions of stimulus dollars).

ACORN as an organization is so far to the political left that from where they are standing Barack Obama looks mainstream. The fact that ACORN believes that its salvation lies in proving that Giles and O'Keefe had some kind of conservative backing is very revealing. It would seem that to them the truth of an accusation has absolutely no relevance. The only thing that matters is who is making the charge, what are their motives and who do they associate with.

It isn't going to work. When ACORN employees didn't bat an eye at the prospect of helping a pimp bring 13-year-old girls into the country to use as sex slaves they removed themselves so far beyond the pale that they will never be able to find their way back.

The masks come off

From Fox News:

The refusal by ABC and NBC to run a national ad critical of President Obama's health care reform plan is raising questions from the group behind the spot -- particularly in light of ABC's health care special aired in prime time last June and hosted at the White House.

The 33-second ad by the League of American Voters, which features a neurosurgeon who warns that a government-run health care system will lead to the rationing of procedures and medicine, began airing two weeks ago on local affiliates of ABC, NBC, FOX and CBS. On a national level, however, ABC and NBC have refused to run the spot in its present form.

"It's a powerful ad," said Bob Adams, executive director of the League of American Voters, a national nonprofit group with 15,000 members who advocate individual liberty and government accountability. "It tells the truth and it really highlights one of the biggest vulnerabilities and problems with this proposed legislation, which is it rations health care and disproportionately will decimate the quality of health care for seniors."

Adams said the advertisement is running on local network affiliates in states like Louisiana, Arkansas, Maine and Pennsylvania. But although CBS has approved the ad for national distribution and talks are ongoing with FOX, NBC has questioned some of the ad's facts while ABC has labeled it "partisan."

"The ABC Television Network has a long-standing policy that we do not sell time for advertising that presents a partisan position on a controversial public issue," spokeswoman Susan Sewell said in a written statement. "Just to be clear, this is a policy for the entire network, not just ABC News."

ABC, the network that aired a prime-time commercial for Obama to shill for his socialized medicine scheme and didn't even allow an opposing voice. They're hardly even pretending to be anything but an arm of the White House Press Office any more.

NBC, meanwhile, said it has not turned down the ad and will reconsider it with some revisions.

Wasn't NBC the network whose news anchor spent a day hanging out with Obama in the White House and then bowed to him as he left? The MSM is to Obama as Goebbles was to Hitler except that Goebbles got a uniform and a paycheck and all the mainstream media gets is the tingle that runs up their collective leg.

"We have not rejected the ad," spokeswoman Liz Fischer told FOXNews.com. "We have communicated with the media agency about some factual claims that require additional substantiation. As always, we are happy to reconsider the ad once these issues are addressed."

Adams objects to ABC's assertion that his group's position is partisan.

"It's a position that we would argue a vast majority of Americans stand behind," he said. "Obviously, it's a message that ABC and the Obama administration haven't received yet."

There we have it. ABC and NBC are demanding the right to censor political speech in a paid advertisement.

Here is the ad that ABC and NBC don't want you to see:

ABC goes further into the Obama tank

From Drudge:

ABC REFUSES OPPOSITION ADS DURING WHITE HOUSE SPECIAL
Wed Jun 17 2009 15:15:00 ET

ABC is refusing to air paid ads during its White House health care presentation, the DRUDGE REPORT has learned, including a paid-for alternative viewpoint!

The development comes a day after the network denied a request by the Republican National Committee to feature a representative of the party's views during the Obama special.

Conservatives for Patients Rights requested the rates to buy a 60-second spot immediately preceding 'Prescription for America'.

Statement from Rick Scott, chairman of Conservatives for Patients Rights:

"It is unfortunate - and unusual - that ABC is refusing to accept paid advertising that would present an alternative viewpoint for the White House health care event. Health care is an issue that touches every American and all potential pieces of legislation have carried a pricetag in excess of $1 trillion of taxpayers' money. The American people deserve a healthy, robust debate on this issue and ABC's decision - as of now - to exclude even paid advertisements that present an alternative view does a disservice to the public. Our organization is more than willing to purchase ad time on ABC to present an alternative viewpoint and our hope is that ABC will reconsider having such viewpoints be part of this crucial debate for the American people. We were surprised to hear that paid advertisements would not be accepted when we inquired and we would certainly be open to purchasing time if ABC would reconsider."

Developing...

ABC's refusal to even air a paid commercial from the opposition is not hard to understand. The god-king has commanded that there be no opposing voice lifted against him while his media shills present his propaganda and his obedient bond servants at the network intend to follow his divine will to the letter.

I'm sorry, so sorry

NEW YORK (AP) - David Letterman said his joke about Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin's daughter was a lousy joke, no matter how you cut it, and he's sorry.

But the late-night host insisted that what's got people really riled is the misconception over which Palin daughter the joke was about.

On Monday's edition of "Late Show," Letterman explained that the risque joke thought by some to have targeted Palin's underage daughter, Willow, was actually referring to 18-year-old daughter Bristol. The name of the daughter wasn't mentioned in the joke, which was part of Letterman's monologue on last Monday's show.

It was "a coarse joke,""a bad joke," Letterman told viewers. "But I never thought it was (about) anybody other than the older daughter, and before the show, I checked to make sure, in fact, that she is of legal age, 18."

"The joke, really, in and of itself, can't be defended," he declared.

Even so, the ongoing outcry, led by Palin and her husband, Todd, has centered on Letterman intending to make a joke about the Palins' 14-year-old daughter having sex with a Yankees baseball player.

Todd Palin issued a statement last week that said "any 'jokes' about raping my 14-year-old are despicable."

And Sarah Palin charged Letterman with "sexually perverted comments made by a 62-year-old male celebrity."

On Monday's show, Letterman said, "I'm wondering, 'Well, what can I do to help people understand that I would never make a joke like this?' I've never made jokes like this, as long as we've been on the air, 30 long years."

There are those who said that Letterman would rather quit than apologize to Sarah Palin. But I suppose that the negative publicity was making the network nervous enough that they lowered the boom.

Of course I'm sure that everyone really believes him when he says that he didn't mean that the daughter who was actually at the baseball game was the one who got "knocked up" - at the baseball game - but was actually talking about the daughter who was on the other side of the country at the time. That is the logical conclusion to draw from the context of Letterman's remarks - isn't it?

The conventional wisdom has always been that it is all over for a politician if the late night comics start heaping ridicule upon them. But this time it was the comic who came away damaged and the politician who was elevated. I think this not only says something about the way that ordinary Americans feel about Sarah Palin (they love her) but also about the fact that we are simply tired of the way the entertainment industry is degrading our culture.

We are also tired of the reflexive leftism of the media, news and entertainment and the way they use their access to our living rooms to push their agenda. An agenda which most of us regard as hostile to our best interests.

If I am right we can expect to see more "push back" coming in the months ahead.

News from inside the temple of the god-king

This was just posted on the Drudge Report:

ABC TURNS PROGRAMMING OVER TO OBAMA; NEWS TO BE ANCHORED FROM INSIDE WHITE HOUSE
Tue Jun 16 2009 08:45:10 ET

On the night of June 24, the media and government become one, when ABC turns its programming over to President Obama and White House officials to push government run health care -- a move that has ignited an ethical firestorm!

Highlights on the agenda:

ABCNEWS anchor Charlie Gibson will deliver WORLD NEWS from the Blue Room of the White House.

The network plans a primetime special -- 'Prescription for America' -- originating from the East Room, exclude opposing voices on the debate.

MORE

Late Monday night, Republican National Committee Chief of Staff Ken McKay fired off a complaint to the head of ABCNEWS:

Dear Mr. Westin:

As the national debate on health care reform intensifies, I am deeply concerned and disappointed with ABC's astonishing decision to exclude opposing voices on this critical issue on June 24, 2009. Next Wednesday, ABC News will air a primetime health care reform “town hall” at the White House with President Barack Obama. In addition, according to an ABC News report, GOOD MORNING AMERICA, WORLD NEWS, NIGHTLINE and ABC’s web news “will all feature special programming on the president’s health care agenda.” This does not include the promotion, over the next 9 days, the president’s health care agenda will receive on ABC News programming.

Today, the Republican National Committee requested an opportunity to add our Party's views to those of the President's to ensure that all sides of the health care reform debate are presented. Our request was rejected. I believe that the President should have the ability to speak directly to the America people. However, I find it outrageous that ABC would prohibit our Party's opposing thoughts and ideas from this national debate, which affects millions of ABC viewers.

In the absence of opposition, I am concerned this event will become a glorified infomercial to promote the Democrat agenda. If that is the case, this primetime infomercial should be paid for out of the DNC coffers. President Obama does not hold a monopoly on health care reform ideas or on free airtime. The President has stated time and time again that he wants a bipartisan debate. Therefore, the Republican Party should be included in this primetime event, or the DNC should pay for your airtime.

Respectfully,
Ken McKay
Republican National Committee
Chief of Staff



Developing...

This has enormous potential to backfire. The general public already sees the media as being outrageously biased in their coverage of Obama. For them to simply turn over the control of their news programming to the White House, as though this were Nazi Germany or Soviet Russia, could very well be the last straw.

I pray that ABC goes through with this. I hope they react to the criticism by getting their backs up and going so over-the-top in their Obama sycophancy that they wind up destroying the ABC news division, the career of Charlie Gibson, the Obama socialized health care scheme and the reputation of the mainstream media in general (what they have left of it).

Off with his head!

From the Politico:

President Obama made a surprise visit to the White House press corps Thursday night, but got agitated when he was faced with a substantive question.

Asked how he could reconcile a strict ban on lobbyists in his administration with a Deputy Defense Secretary nominee who lobbied for Raytheon, Obama interrupted with a knowing smile on his face.

"Ahh, see," he said, "I came down here to visit. See this is what happens. I can't end up visiting with you guys and shaking hands if I'm going to get grilled every time I come down here."

Pressed further by the Politico reporter about his Pentagon nominee, William J. Lynn III, Obama turned more serious, putting his hand on the reporter's shoulder and staring him in the eye.

"Alright, come on" he said, with obvious irritation in his voice. "We will be having a press conference at which time you can feel free to [ask] questions. Right now, I just wanted to say hello and introduce myself to you guys - that's all I was trying to do."

The president was quickly saved by a cameraman in the room who called out: “I’d like to say it one more time: ‘Mr. President.’ ”

And so we see the pattern as it will be played out countless times over the next four years. Obama expects to be worshiped and when he is not he grows frustrated and angry. When someone in the media actually treats him like an elected official should be treated (by asking him real questions and being skeptical about the answers) he is quickly rescued by other members of the media who understand that it is their place to simply grovel before the majesty of His splendid presence, urinating on themselves at the prospect of his divine gaze falling upon them.

In a related story members of the White House Press Corps asked the president to make an exception to his ban on the use of torture so that they might "take necessary and appropriate action against heretical journalists who commit the blasphemous act of questioning the Divine Presence". An unnamed administration official said that the request was being given what he termed "due consideration".

Miss Ann is talking

That means that YOU are listening!

In a front-page article on Jan. 2 of this year, The New York Times took a brief respite from its ongoing canonization of Barack Obama and returned to its series on violent crimes committed by returning GIs, or as I call it: "U.S. Military, Psycho Killers."

The Treason Times' banner series about Iraq and Afghanistan veterans accused of murder began in January last year but was quickly discontinued as readers noticed that the Times doggedly refused to provide any statistics comparing veteran murders with murders in any other group.

So they waited a year, hoping readers wouldn't notice they were still including no relevant comparisons.

What, for example, is the percentage of murderers among veterans compared to the percentage of murderers in the population at large -- or, more germane, in the general population of young males, inasmuch as violent crime is committed almost exclusively by young men?

Any group composed primarily of young men will contain a seemingly mammoth number of murderers.

Consider the harmless fantasy game, Dungeons and Dragons -- which happens to be played almost exclusively by young males. When murders were committed in the '80s by (1) young men, who were (2) Dungeons and Dragons enthusiasts, some people concluded that factor (2), rather than factor (1), led to murderous tendencies.

Similarly, for its series about how America's bravest and finest young men are really a gang of psychopathic cutthroats, the Times triumphantly produced 121 homicides committed by veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars in order to pin the blame for the murders on the U.S. military.

Perhaps the Times' next major expose could be on how a huge percentage of murderers are people who won't ask for directions or share the TV remote.

Let's compare murders by veterans to murders by other 18- to 35-year-olds in the U.S. population at large. From 1976 to 2005, 18- to 24-year-olds -- both male and more gentle females -- committed homicide at a rate of 29.9 per 100,000. Twenty-five- to 35-year-olds committed homicides at a rate of 15.8 per 100,000.

Since 9/11, about 1.6 million troops have served in either Iraq or Afghanistan. That makes the homicide rate among veterans of these wars 7.6 per 100,000 -- or about one-third the homicide rate for their age group (18 to 35) in the general population of both sexes.

But fewer than 200,000 of the 1.6 million troops who served in Iraq and Afghanistan have been women, and the murder rate for the general population includes both males and females. Inasmuch as males commit nearly 90 percent of all murders, the rate for males in those age groups is probably nearly double the male/female combined rates, which translates to about 30 to 55 murderers per 100,000 males aged 18 to 35.

So comparing the veterans' rate of murder to only their male counterparts in the general population, we see that Iraq and Afghanistan veterans are about 10 times less likely to commit a murder than non-veterans of those wars.

But as long as the Times has such a burning interest in the root causes of murder, how about considering the one factor more likely to create a murderer than any other? That is the topic we're not allowed to discuss: single motherhood.

As I describe in my new book, "Guilty: Liberal 'Victims' and Their Assault on America," controlling for socioeconomic status, race and place of residence, the strongest predictor of whether a person will end up in prison is that he was raised by a single parent. (The second strongest factor is owning a Dennis Kucinich bumper sticker.)

By 1996, 70 percent of inmates in state juvenile detention centers serving long-term sentences were raised by single mothers. Seventy percent of teenage births, dropouts, suicides, runaways, juvenile delinquents and child murderers involve children raised by single mothers. Girls raised without fathers are more sexually promiscuous and more likely to end up divorced.

A 1990 study by the left-wing Progressive Policy Institute showed that, after controlling for single motherhood, the difference in black and white crime disappeared.

Various studies come up with slightly different numbers, but all the figures are grim. A study cited in the far left-wing Village Voice found that children brought up in single-mother homes "are five times more likely to commit suicide, nine times more likely to drop out of high school, 10 times more likely to abuse chemical substances, 14 times more likely to commit rape (for the boys), 20 times more likely to end up in prison, and 32 times more likely to run away from home."

With new children being born, running away, dropping out of high school and committing murder every year, it's not a static problem to analyze. But however the numbers are run, single motherhood is a societal nuclear bomb.

Many of these studies, for example, are from the '90s, when the percentage of teenagers raised by single parents was lower than it is today. In 1990, 28 percent of children under 18 were being raised in one-parent homes -- mother or father, divorced or never-married. By 2005, more than one-third of all babies born in the U.S. were illegitimate.

That's a lot of social problems in the pipeline.

Think I'm being cruel? Imagine an America with 60 to 70 percent fewer juvenile delinquents, teenage births, teenage suicides and runaways, and you will appreciate what the sainted "single mothers" have accomplished.

Even in liberals' fevered nightmares, predatory mortgage dealers, oil speculators and Ken Lay could never do as much harm to their fellow human beings as single mothers do to their own children, to say nothing of society at large.

But the Times won't run that series because liberals adore single motherhood and the dissolution of traditional marriage in America. They detest the military, so they cite a few anecdotal examples of veterans who have committed murder and hope that no one asks for details.

The irony is that the Times has a legitimate story, that military service improves young men. That it makes them more mature, more law abiding and responsible. But that doesn't fit the left's preconceptions about the military or the kind of men who volunteer for service so they will not just refuse to tell that story they will not even be able to see that story when the evidence for it is it is staring them in the face.

This is a large part of the reason for the dramatically shrinking readership/viewership of old media like the NYT. Just about the only audience they have left is the extreme hard core left. That pool of listeners/readers is enough to keep the Daily Kos the most visited political site on the Web, but it isn't enough to keep a newspaper or television network's news department in the black.

And before some idiot leavs a comment about how MSNBC more than doubled its rating by going hard left let me address that.

MSNBC went from having ratings that could not be detected to having ratings that can barely be detected. They went from having way less than a million viewers a night to having a bit less than a million viewers a night. Now that MSNBC has more than doubled its ratings it has almost as many people listening in a week as Rush Limbaugh has in any randomly selected 20-minute segment of his radio show.

Way to go MSNBC why not give Maddow and Olbermann a raise!

Change = Conspicuous Consumption?

Barack Obama's inauguration is set to cost more than £100m making it the most expensive swearing-in ceremony in US history.

The President-elect will take less than a minute to recite the oath of office in front of an estimated two million people in the US capital next week.

But by the time the final dance has been held at one of the many inaugural balls the costs for the day will be a staggering £110m.

Auto executives fly to Washington on private jets and they are pilloried for being "tone deaf" in not realising how it will look.

Yet the little messiah's crowd drops around $150,000,000.00 on a giant party and no one asks how many uninsured children could be provided with healthcare for that money.

Of course not. Obama is a leftist and as far as the mainstream media is conserned the only wrong he can do is to move to the right.

Miss Ann is talking

That means that YOU are listening!

After NBC canceled me "for life" on Monday -- until seven or eight hours later when the ban was splashed across the top of The Drudge Report, forcing a red-faced NBC to withdraw the ban -- an NBC insider told The Drudge Report: "We are just not interested in anyone so highly critical of President-elect Obama, right now," explaining that "it's such a downer. It's just not the time, and it's not what our audience wants, either."

In point of fact, I'm not particularly critical of Obama in my new book. I'm critical of the media for behaving like a protection racket for Obama rather than the constitutionally protected guardians of our liberty that they claim to be. So I think what the NBC insider meant to say is that NBC is not interested in anyone so highly critical of NBC right now. It's such a downer, it's just not the time, and it's not what their audience wants right now, either.

In fact, I think my book is the downer America has been waiting for! So herewith, I present an excerpt from the smash new book out this week, "Guilty: Liberal Victims and Their Assault on America":

When the Obama family materialized, the media was seized by a mass psychosis that hadn't been witnessed since Beatlemania. OK! magazine raved that the Obamas "are such an all-American family that they almost make the Brady Bunch look dysfunctional." Yes, who can forget the madcap episode when the Bradys' wacky preacher tells them the government created AIDS to kill blacks!

Still gushing, OK! magazine's crack journalists reported: "Mom goes to bake sales, dad balances the checkbook, and the girls love Harry Potter" -- and then the whole family goes to a racist huckster who shouts, "God damn America!"

Months before network anchors were interrogating vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin on the intricacies of foreign policy, here is how NBC's Brian Williams mercilessly grilled presidential candidate Barack Obama: "What was it like for you last night, the part we couldn't see, the flight to St. Paul with your wife, knowing what was awaiting?"

Twisting the knife he had just plunged into Obama, Williams followed up with what has come to be known as a "gotcha" question: "And you had to be thinking of your mother and your father." Sarah Palin was memorizing the last six kings of Swaziland for her media interviews, but Obama only needed to say something nice about his parents to be considered presidential material.

The media's fawning over Obama knew no bounds, and yet, in the midst of the most incredible media conspiracy to turn this jug-eared clodhopper into some combination of Winston Churchill and a young Elvis, you were being a bore if you mentioned the liberal media. Oh surely we've exploded that old chestnut. ... Look! Look, Obama just lit up another Marlboro! Geez, does smoking make you look cool, or what! Yeah, Obama!.

The claim that there's no such thing as a left wing press is a patent lie said to enrage conservatives. Newspapers read like the press under Kim Jung Il, which, outside of a police state, looks foolish. The prose is straight out of The Daily Worker, full of triumphal rhetoric with implicit exclamation points. Still, their chanted slogans fill your brain, like one of those bad songs you can't stop humming.

There is no other explanation for the embarrassing paeans to Obama's "eloquence." His speeches were a run-on string of embarrassing, sophomoric Hallmark card bromides. It seemed only a matter of time before Obama would slip and tell a crowd what a special Dad it had always been to him.

The major theme of Obama's campaign was the audacity of his running for president. He titled his keynote address at the 2004 Democratic National Convention, "The Audacity of Hope" –- named after a sermon given by his spiritual mentor Jeremiah Wright, whom we were not allowed to mention without being accused of playing dirty tricks. (Rejected speech titles from sermons by Rev. Wright included "God Damn America!," "The U.S. of K.K.A." and "The Racist United States of America.")

What is so audacious about announcing that you're running for president? Every U.S. Senator has run for president or is currently thinking about running for president. Dennis Kucinich ran for president. Lyndon LaRouche used to run for president constantly.

But the media were giddy over their latest crush. Even when Obama broke a pledge and rejected public financing for his campaign -- an issue more dear to The New York Times than even gay marriage -- the Times led the article on Obama's broken pledge with his excuse. "Citing the specter of attacks from independent groups on the right," the Times article began, "Sen. Barack Obama announced Thursday that he would opt out of the public financing system for the general election."

So he had to break his pledge because he was a victim of the Republican Attack Machine. When Obama broke his word and voted for the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act bill (FISA), the Times' editorial began: We are shocked and dismayed by Sen. Obama's vote on ... oh, who are we kidding? We can't stay mad at this guy! Isn't he just adorable? Couldn't you just eat him up with a spoon? Is he looking at me? Ohmigod, I think he's looking at me!!!! Couldn't you just die?

It has ever been thus.

As usual Miss Ann uses humor to tell truth and the truth is scary in this case. The functioning of a democratic society depends upon the free press serving as a watchdog against government abuse of power. When the press voluntarily becomes what it is forced to become in totalitarian societies liberty cannot survive.

It is extremely fortunate for the American people that at just the time that the traditional media (otherwise known as the mainstream media) gleefully abandoned its last tattered vestige of credibility in favor of what is at best a schoolgirl crush and at worst pure pagan idolatry for a done-nothing, knows-nothing corrupt Marxist Chicago machine politician - solely because of the color of his skin - that the new media, centered on talk radio and the Internet finally reached the point where it can begin to carry the weight.

Think about where the nation would be today if the press had turned itself into nothing but a propaganda machine for the hard left back in 1959 when there was no way for an opposing voice to have been heard?

It's official now

Matt Drudge informs us:

NBC BANS COULTER FOR LIFE; CUT FROM 'TODAY' SHOW OVER BOOK'S CLAIMS, NO MORE CABLE
Mon Jan 05 2009 17:50:57 ET

The nation's top selling conservative author has been banned from appearing on NBC, insiders tell the DRUDGE REPORT.

Banned for life!

"We are just not going to have her on any more, it's over," a top network source explains.

NBC's TODAY show abruptly cut Ann Coulter from its planned Tuesday broadcast, claiming the schedule was overbooked.

Coulter was set to unveil her new book, GUILTY.

But one network insider claims it was the book's theme -- a brutal examination of liberal bias in the new era -- that got executives to dis-invite the controversialist.

"We are just not interested in anyone so highly critical of President-elect Obama, right now," a TODAY insider reveals. "It's such a downer. It's just not the time, and it's not what our audience wants, either."

For the book, Coulter reportedly received the most-lucrative advance ever paid to a conservative author.

The TODAY show eagerly invited the author months ago, for her first network interview on GUILTY.

The exclusive was to air during the show's 7 AM hour. The cut came Monday afternoon.

I'm glad that the media has made it explicit, they simply won't allow any criticism of the little messiah. Certainly not when it comes from someone as effective as Miss Ann.

As for who replaced the Blonde One NewsBusters has this:

defense of Presumably a last minute replacement for the possibly NBC banned Ann Coulter, MSNBC host Rachel Maddow appeared on Tuesday's "Today" show to drop invective about the Bush administration's "torture" policies. Instead of the rousing bit of Barack Obama bashing and criticism of the fawning coverage of him by the liberal media that would've surely been delivered by Coulter, "Today" viewers were treated to the following slam of Bush policies via a MaddowObama's choice of Leon Panetta as CIA Director. . .

So if we still hand any doubt NBC quickly moved to dispel it.

Again, I'm glad this happened. For one thing this will be far better publicity for Miss Ann's book than a simple appearance on a vapid network morning show. For another NBC has officially come out and officially announced their bias. This will have an impact on the upcoming debate on bringing back the Orwellian "Fairness Doctrine" since it will no longer be possible to claim that the broadcast networks would not be affected by an "equal time" rule.

Just a word of warning

In a couple of hours the results of exit polling are going to be leaked to the press. The Drudge Report will post them first and then other media will use that as an excuse to run with them as well.

These exit polls are going to show a big win for Obama is in the making.

Do not believe them!

The exit polls are entirely an artifact of the identity of the people doing the survey, the people who are willing to stop and talk with an exit poll taker and the location where the exit polling is being done.

There are going to be two kinds of people taking the polls. One will be female college students who will mainly talk to other young women (this is why the exit polls had Kerry winning big four years ago) and the other will be large black men who look like they just got out of prison. These men will be trained to speak polite words but to use body language and facial expression to radiate an air of extreme menace. They will be told to approach white people, invade their personal space and project the message that "I will beat you to death on this very spot if you don't tell me you voted for Obama".

There are two reasons for cooking the exit polls. One is to depress Republican votes. If you are planning to vote after work or if you live out West and think the election is already over you might not bother to vote. This hurts McCain and it kills Republicans down the ticket.

The other reason is to give the networks cover when they call states for Obama at the earliest possible moment and hold off calling them for McCain until the last possible second. They can say, "yes it is true that the actual vote count shows that 70% of the people in Tennessee voted for McCain but we had exit polls that said that showed an Obama landslide".

This serves to depress Republican turnout on the West coast. Not only does this help Democrats in California it hurts the prospects of the anti-gay marriage amendment to the CA state constitution.

Do not think for one second that the mainstream media and the Democrat party (sorry, redundant) would hesitate to stoop this low. Remember how they called Florida for Gore in 2000? This was done while the polls in the heavily Republican panhandle were still open.

This cost Bush at least 5000 Florida votes and set up Gore's attempt to steal the election.

So remember just keep the faith, ignore the media and do the right thing and vote.

And if Obama does win all that does is guarantee a big Republican landslide in the midterm elections and put Sarah Palin in the White House in 2012.

The gap between the media's version and the actual truth grows wider

PRINCETON, NJ -- Gallup Poll Daily tracking data indicate that about 11% of registered voters who plan to vote have already voted as of Wednesday night, with another 19% saying they plan to vote before Election Day. Roughly equal percentages of Barack Obama supporters and John McCain supporters have taken advantage of the early voting opportunity -- so far.

In addition to the 11% who say they have already voted, another 19% of registered voters who plan to vote say they will vote early, before Election Day. That leaves just about 7 out of 10 voters who intend to go to the polls on Nov. 4 itself.

The percentage of early voters has increased from 7% in Gallup's Friday through Sunday average, when Gallup first began measuring this variable, to the current 11% in the Monday through Wednesday average.

The pace of early voting so far appears to be roughly on par with 2004. At about this time before that year's election -- Oct. 22-24 -- 9% of registered voters said they had already voted. However, in that 2004 poll, only an additional 13% said they intended to vote early, lower than the 19% who say so in the current Oct. 20-22 average. Thus, early voting this year may end up being higher than it was in 2004. (In Gallup's final poll before the election that year, conducted Oct. 29-31, 17% said they had voted early, and another 4% claimed they were still going to vote before Election Day.) As noted above, projections from this year's data are that as many as 30% of voters could end up voting early.

But we've been hearing that the early voting was massively favoring Obama! In fact the mainstream media's attitude has been that the election would be over by election day with the early voters giving Obama a Reagan-style landslide!

NOW we find out that not only is early voting happening at about the same level as past elections where it was available but that the results are split evenly between Obama and McCain.

Could it be that the media have been reporting what they wish the truth to be rather than what it truth actually is?

To ask the question is to answer it. Of course the media is attempting to shape the outcome not just report in the process.

Do you wonder how the polls can be so all over the map with some showing Obama with a 10 point lead and others tied up? The answer is that some polls are massively oversampling Democrats. If you ask 1000 people who they are going to vote for but approached 500 of those people as they were leaving an Obama rally while randomly choosing the other 500 out of the phone book how could you show anything else but an "Obama landslide"?

The real question is why is the media going so all out this year? I mean they ALWAYS slant their coverage to favor the Democrat in a presidential race. They simply can't help themselves. Think of it this way suppose you are a reporter covering a political race. One candidate is someone you think of as a pretty good guy whose policies you mostly agree with and who you think would do well in office. The other is a Grand Dragon in the Ku Klux Klan who campaigns in his Klan robes and features cross burnings at his political rallies and whose platform is that we need to round up all the blacks, Jews and homosexuals and gas them to death to finish the work that the great Hitler started.

On an emotional level that is how the average member of the mainstream media sees any race between any Democrat and any Republican - and I'll give you one guess which part the Republican plays in this fantasy.

Many ordinary Americans were turned off by the ugly and unfair way that Charles Gibson treated Sarah Palin in his interview. Gibson honestly doesn't understand this criticism. In his mind the fact that he didn't beat Sarah Palin to death with his bare hands and then urinate on her corpse means that he treated her far better than she deserved.

When you have that kind of mindset, and the overwhelming majority of people working in the MSM do, the fact that you aren't going on camera every day wearing your "Obama '08" t-shirt means that you are bending over backwards to be fair.

However there is still a palpable difference between how this campaign is being covered and how previous campaigns have been reported on.

This year the media is doing far less to disguise its advocacy than ever before. Some speculate that the reason for this is that the media wishes to be a part of the history making election of the first black president (as long as he is a Democrat). Others believe that they see in Obama the most overt Marxist who has ever run for the office and had a chance to win.

Both of these are right to a degree but neither explains why the media has thrown away even the pretense of journalistic integrity and made themselves so obviously an arm of the Obama campaign.

I believe that there is only one reason why so many people would so openly destroy their own characters in public view. The old or mainstream media is in the grip of a toxic blend of panic and anger over their dwindling numbers of viewers and readers and over their loss of influence with the general public.

Reporters and editors and producers car read and they know what the implications of falling ratings and subscriptions mean for their job security. They know that it took them six years to destroy George W Bush's standing with the public (and Bush had to help them by never fighting back, by signing all kinds of bad legislation, by advocating amnesty for illegal aliens and by trying to appoint Harriet Miers to the Supreme Court) where before they could have done it in two.

Reporters and editors and producers know what it means to their financial future when the largest group of people tuning in to the nightly network news broadcast or buying the daily newspaper are over 70-years-old.

They are scared and angry. Their rice bowl is being overturned and the ones doing are are talk radio and the Internet news sites and the blogs.

It was a blogger who gave CBS News a major black eye and destroyed the reputation of Dan Rather by exposing how Rather attempted to tarnish George W Bush's reputation and cost him reelection by using forged (and badly) documents.

It was talk radio and the blogs which shamed NBC into playing the full Biden video which showed Biden not only promising that electing Obama would bring about an international crisis within the first six months of his presidency but that his response would be so poor and incompetent that it would destroy his standing in the polls.

It was radio talker Sean Hannity who - a year ago - began exposing Barack Obama's close associations with deeply troubling individuals like lunitic racist hate-monger Jeremiah (God Damn America!) Wright and unrepentant violent communist revolutionary and domestic terrorist bomber William Ayers. Associations which are eroding Obama's support and will probably wind up costing him the election.

It is the blogs which expose and mock these deeply disturbing and creepily evil "Obama Youth" videos which show the absolute commonality of mindset between the most fervent Obama supporters and the fanatical followers of Adolf Hitler.

So why does the fear that they might someday have to get real jobs motivate the MSM to further their loss of respect by the general public by coming out so nakedly in support of Obama?

The Fairness Doctrine.

The Democrat party hates talk radio and the Internet just as much as the MSM. Even a Republican president as great and as beloved as Ronald Reagan could not bring about a Republican House of Representatives and could only achieve a Republican Senate for a few years.

This is because the misnamed Fairness Doctrine was in force for all but the last year of his presidency. The Fairness Doctrine was born when commercial radio was in its infancy and large parts of the nation might be served by only one radio station. It was intended to prevent radio stations who carried campaign advertisements from one candidate in a political race from refusing to carry advertisements from his opponent, or from charging that opponent a higher rate for carrying his advertisements.

Over the years as radio and then television grew the Doctrine mutated into a rule that broadcast outlets have to give "equal time to all opposing points of view". This meant that if a radio host spent ten minutes talking about why taxes were too high then the station had to allow someone to come on the air and spend ten minutes talking about how taxes were just right or even too low.

The vast majority of radio and television station owners did not care to expose themselves to the potential trouble of FCC complaints from members of the community who thought that their point of view was being given unfair treatment so most radio stations just played music and the handful of stations that operated on a talk format did straight news, traffic, sports and weather with a few radio psychologists, cooking shows and movie/theater/restaurant reviews thrown in for good measure.

The end of the Fairness Doctrine resulted in an explosion of talk radio stations and talk radio became a multi-billion dollar industry. Market forces ruled this new industry and popular shows/hosts prospered and unpopular ones fell by the wayside. The result was that talk radio became a bastion of conservatism as ordinary Americans flocked to the AM dial to hear their beliefs and ideals upheld and defended rather than relentlessly attacked and mocked, as they were relentlessly by the MSM.

This opening up of a new conduit through which information could be distributed to the public broke the monopoly which the MSM had previously held and allowed the "other side of the story" to finally be told, unfiltered, to the American people.

The result is that it is much harder for Democrats to lie and get away with it and much harder for Democrats to get elected to national office. The arrival of the Internet on the scene has only accelerated this process. What Reagan could not do talk radio and the Internet did - bring about a Republican controlled congress for 12 years (it's not new media's fault that Republicans lost control because they forgot to act like Republicans).

The MSM wishes to destroy their competition and Democrat politicians want to restore the monopoly on information distribution to people they can depend upon to lie for them. Reimposing the Fairness Doctrine on radio and television and extending it to the Internet and satellite radio will accomplish this goal.

This is the reason that the mainstream media has become so over the top in its advocacy of Obama. They realize that their newspapers and network news divisions may not be commercially viable for very much longer and they see in an Obama presidency their best and what may be their last, chance to bring back what the see as the Golden Age when they told the public what to think and no one challenged them.

Panic will cause people to do things which reason would never lead them into. As the old media tries harder and harder to drag Obama over the finish line by sheer brute force they are becoming more and more an object of contempt in the eyes of the general public and they are generating more and more of a backlash against them and their anointed candidate.

Their very efforts to restore their former power and glory are actually hastening their ultimate downfall. There is something of the Greek tragedy in all of this. Perhaps the little messiah was being ironically prophetic in giving his acceptance speech in a mock up of the Parthenon.

Miss Ann is talking

That means that YOU are listening!

With an African-American running for president this year, there has been a lot of chatter about the "Bradley effect," allowing the media to wail about institutional racism in America.

Named after Tom Bradley, who lost his election for California governor in 1982 despite a substantial lead in the polls, the Bradley effect says that black candidates will poll much stronger than the actual election results.

First of all, if true, this is the opposite of racism: It is fear of being accused of racism. For most Americans, there is nothing more terrifying than the prospect of being called a racist. It's scarier than flood or famine, terrorist attacks or flesh-eating bacteria. To some, it's even scarier than "food insecurity."

Political correctness has taught people to lie to pollsters rather than be forced to explain why they're not voting for the African-American.

This is how two typical voters might answer a pollster's question: "Whom do you support for president?"

Average Obama voter: "Obama." (Name of average Obama voter: "Mickey Mouse.")

Average McCain voter: "I'm voting for McCain, but I swear it's just about the issues. It's not because Obama's black. If Barack Obama were a little more moderate -- hey, I'd vote for Colin Powell. But my convictions force me to vote for the candidate who just happens to be white. Say, do you know where I can get Patti LaBelle tickets?"

In addition to the social pressure to constantly prove you're not a racist, apparently there is massive social pressure to prove you're not a Republican. No one is lying about voting for McCain just to sound cool.

Reviewing the polls printed in The New York Times and The Washington Post in the last month of every presidential election since 1976, I found the polls were never wrong in a friendly way to Republicans. When the polls were wrong, which was often, they overestimated support for the Democrat, usually by about 6 to 10 points.

In 1976, Jimmy Carter narrowly beat Gerald Ford 50.1 percent to 48 percent. And yet, on Sept. 1, Carter led Ford by 15 points. Just weeks before the election, on Oct. 16, 1976, Carter led Ford in the Gallup Poll by 6 percentage points -- down from his 33-point Gallup Poll lead in August.

Reading newspaper coverage of presidential elections in 1980 and 1984, I found myself paralyzed by the fear that Reagan was going to lose.

In 1980, Ronald Reagan beat Carter by nearly 10 points, 51 percent to 41 percent. In a Gallup Poll released days before the election on Oct. 27, it was Carter who led Reagan 45 percent to 42 percent.

In 1984, Reagan walloped Walter Mondale 58.8 percent to 40 percent, -- the largest electoral landslide in U.S. history. But on Oct. 15, The New York Daily News published a poll showing Mondale with only a 4-point deficit to Reagan, 45 percent to 41 percent. A Harris Poll about the same time showed Reagan with only a 9-point lead. The Oct. 19 New York Times/CBS News Poll had Mr. Reagan ahead of Mondale by 13 points. All these polls underestimated Reagan's actual margin of victory by 6 to 15 points.

In 1988, George H.W. Bush beat Michael Dukakis by a whopping 53.4 percent to 45.6 percent. A New York Times/CBS News Poll on Oct. 5 had Bush leading the Greek homunculus by a statistically insignificant 2 points -- 45 percent to 43 percent. (For the kids out there: Before it became a clearinghouse for anti-Bush conspiracy theories, CBS News was considered a credible journalistic entity.)

A week later -- or one tank ride later, depending on who's telling the story -- on Oct. 13, Bush was leading Dukakis in The New York Times Poll by a mere 5 points.

Admittedly, a 3- to 6-point error is not as crazily wrong as the 6- to 15-point error in 1984. But it's striking that even small "margin of error" mistakes never seem to benefit Republicans.

In 1992, Bill Clinton beat the first President Bush 43 percent to 37.7 percent. (Ross Perot got 18.9 percent of Bush's voters that year.) On Oct. 18, a Newsweek Poll had Clinton winning 46 percent to 31 percent, and a CBS News Poll showed Clinton winning 47 percent to 35 percent.

So in 1992, the polls had Clinton 12 to 15 points ahead, but he won by only 5.3 points.

In 1996, Bill Clinton beat Bob Dole 49 percent to 40 percent. And yet on Oct. 22, 1996, The New York Times/CBS News Poll showed Clinton leading by a massive 22 points, 55 percent to 33 percent.

In 2000, which I seem to recall as being fairly close, the October polls accurately described the election as a virtual tie, with either Bush or Al Gore 1 or 2 points ahead in various polls. But in one of the latest polls to give either candidate a clear advantage, The New York Times/CBS News Poll on Oct. 3, 2000, showed Gore winning by 45 percent to 39 percent.

In the last presidential election the polls were surprisingly accurate -- not including the massively inaccurate Election Day exit poll. In the end, Bush beat John Kerry 50.7 percent to 48.3 percent in 2004. Most of the October polls showed the candidates in a dead-heat, with Bush 1 to 3 points ahead. So either pollsters got a whole lot better starting in 2004, or Democrats stole more votes in that election than we even realized.

The answer to the question of why even small "margin of error" discrepancies always seem to favor the Democrats is that news organizations are left-liberal and use polls not to simply report of where public opinion is at any given time but as a tool to shape public opinion.

The polls showing Obama with a 10 point lead were never accurate and the polling firms and their MSM partners knew that. They were simply an attempt to give the Obama candidacy the aura of inevitability and depress Republican voters.

The thing is that pride has a tendency to go before a fall and anyone who thinks that being the "inevitable" candidate is a good thing should sit down for a nice long talk with Hillary Clinton.

Miss Ann is talking

That means that YOU are listening!

While Gov. Sarah Palin is being grilled on her position on mark-to-market accounting rules, the press can't bother to ask Joe Biden if he could give us a ballpark estimate on when Franklin D. Roosevelt was president -- or maybe take a stab at guessing the decade when televisions were first available to the public.

Being interviewed by Katie Couric on the "CBS Evening News," Biden said: "When the stock market crashed, Franklin D. Roosevelt got on the television and didn't just talk about the, you know, the princes of greed. He said, 'Look, here's what happened.'"

For those of you who aren't hard-core history buffs, Biden not only named the wrong president during the 1929 stock market crash, he also claimed a president who wasn't president during the stock market crash went on TV before Americans had TVs.

Other than that, the statement holds up pretty well. At least Biden managed to avoid mentioning any "clean" Negroes he had met.

Couric was nearly moved to tears by the brilliance of Biden's brain-damaged remark. She was especially intrigued by Biden's claim that FDR had said the new iPhone was the bomb!

Here is Couric's full response to Biden's bizarre outburst about FDR (a) being president and (b) going on TV in 1929: "Relating to the fears of the average American is one of Biden's strong suits."

But when our beauteous Sarah said that John McCain was a better leader on the economy than Barack Obama, Couric relentlessly badgered her for evidence. "Why do you say that?" Couric demanded. "Why are they waiting for John McCain and not Barack Obama? ... Can you give us any more examples of his leading the charge for more oversight?"

The beauteous Sarah had cited McCain's prescient warnings about Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. But Couric, the crackerjack journalist who didn't know FDR wasn't president in 1929, demanded more examples from Palin.

We are currently in the middle of a massive financial crisis brought on by Fannie Mae. McCain was right on Fannie Mae; Obama was wrong. That's not enough?

Not for the affable Eva Braun of evening TV! "I'm just going to ask you one more time," Couric snipped, "not to belabor the point. Specific examples in his 26 years of pushing for more regulation?"

This would be like responding to someone who predicted the 9/11 attacks by saying: OK, you got one thing right. Not to belabor the point, but what else?

Obama was not merely wrong on Fannie Mae: He is owned by Fannie Mae. Somehow Obama managed to become the second biggest all-time recipient of Fannie Mae political money after only three years in the Senate. The biggest beneficiary, Democratic Sen. Chris Dodd, had a 30-year head start on receiving loot from Fannie Mae -- the government-backed institution behind our current crisis.

How does the Democratic ticket stack up on other major issues facing the nation, say, gas prices?

Shockingly, Sen. Joe Biden was one of only five senators to vote against the first Alaskan pipeline bill in 1973. This is like having been a Nazi sympathizer during World War II. If Sarah Palin does nothing else, she has got to tie that idiotic pipeline vote around Biden's neck.

The Senate passed the 1973 Alaskan pipeline bill by an overwhelming 80-5 vote. Only five senators voted against the pipeline on final passage. Sen. Biden is the only one who is still in the Senate -- the other four having been confined to mental institutions long ago.

The stakes were clear: This was in the midst of the first Arab oil embargo. Liberal Democrats, such as senators Robert Byrd, Mike Mansfield, Frank Church and Hubert Humphrey, all voted for the pipeline.

But Biden cast one of only five votes against the pipeline that has produced more than 15 billion barrels of oil, supplied nearly 20 percent of this nation's oil, created tens of thousands of jobs, added hundreds of billions of dollars to the U.S. economy and reduced money transfers to the nation's enemies by about the same amount.

The only argument against the pipeline was that it would harm the caribou, an argument that was both trivial and wrong. The caribou population near the pipeline increased from 5,000 in the 1970s to 32,000 by 2002.

It would have been bad enough to vote against the pipeline bill even if it had hurt the caribou. A sane person would still say: Our enemies have us in a vice grip. Sorry, caribou, you've got to take one for the team. But when the pipeline goes through and the caribou population sextuples in the next 20 years, you really look like a moron.

We couldn't possibly expect Couric to ask Biden about a vote that is the equivalent of voting against the invention of the wheel. But couldn't she have come up with just one follow-up question for Biden on FDR's magnificent handling of the 1929 stock market crash?

Or here's a question the public is dying to know: "If Obama wanted a historically delusional vice president, why not Lyndon LaRouche?" At least LaRouche didn't vote against the Alaskan pipeline.

It is possible that the mainstream media's hold on the dissemination of information is still great enough to allow them to fool enough of the American people to put the little messiah and his semi-literate sidekick in the White House.

However this situation will not endure. The percentage of the population whose primary source of news is the daily newspaper and the nightly network newscast is aging and dwindling.

Katie Couric can turn the CBS Evening News into a satellite office of the Obama campaign but the number of people who are paying attention to anything she and her MSM colleagues are saying is growing smaller every year.

Just as European demographics are turning Europe into a Muslim continent American demographics are turning the USA into a politically conservative nation.

In addition to the fact that younger people are less likely to bother with the old media as a source of information there is also the abortion factor.

Abortion mills kill around one million children per year. The vast majority of the victims of this medical holocaust are racial minorities and most are the children of single mothers. Half of them are female.

One of the best ways to guarantee that a woman will live below the poverty line is to make her a single mother. One of the best ways to guarantee that a child will never live up to his or her full potential or even wind up with a criminal record is to place him or her in a single parent family which lives below the poverty line.

Which political party are women, minorities, the poor and criminals most likely to vote for?

Educated and affluent liberals tend to have few or no children. Conservatives at all levels of income and education tend to have two or more children.

Conservatives are breeding greater numbers while liberals are aborting themselves to extinction.

There's a conflict of interest? Then turn it around on them

NEW YORK (AP) - PBS journalist Gwen Ifill, moderator of the upcoming vice presidential debate, dismissed conservative questions about her impartiality because she is writing a book that includes material on Barack Obama.

Ifill said Wednesday that she hasn't even written her chapter on Obama for the book "The Breakthrough: Politics and Race in the Age of Obama," which is to be published by Doubleday on Jan. 20, 2009, the day a new president is inaugurated.

"I've got a pretty long track record covering politics and news, so I'm not particularly worried that one-day blog chatter is going to destroy my reputation," Ifill said. "The proof is in the pudding. They can watch the debate tomorrow night and make their own decisions about whether or not I've done my job."

The day before the Joe Biden-Sarah Palin debate, columnist Michelle Malkin wrote in the New York Post about Ifill's book, saying "she's so far in the tank for the Democratic presidential candidate, her oxygen delivery line is running out."

In its online description of the book, Doubleday says that Ifill "surveys the American political landscape, shedding new light on the impact of Barack Obama's stunning presidential campaign and introducing the emerging young African American politicians forging a bold new path to political power."

The McCain campaign found out about Ifill's book in the last day or so, a spokesman said.

Ifill said Obama's story, which she has yet to write, is only a small part of the book, which discusses how politics in the black community have changed since the civil rights era. Among those subjects is Colin Powell, secretary of state in the Bush administration.

The host of PBS'"Washington Week" and senior correspondent on "The NewsHour" said she did not tell the Commission on Presidential Debates about the book. The commission had no immediate comment when contacted by The Associated Press. A spokeswoman for John McCain's campaign did not immediately return phone and e-mail messages.

Here's the thing. If Obama sins Ms. Ifill's book is a best seller and she goes on a big book tour with appearances on Opra, the Sunday shows and the morning news shows all to help promote the book.

If Obama loses she gets an interview on Olbermann and Air America then after a week the book hits the discount bins and it doesn't even earn back her advance.

In other words this stupid woman has a very large financial stake in Obama's election.

Add to this her mocking treatment of Sarah Palin ever since McCain announced her as his running-mate and you have a picture of a woman who has zero chance of coming anywhere within ten light-years of being "fair and balanced".

Despite this I DO NOT call for her to be replaced as the debate moderator.

The fact is that there is NOBODY that PBS would even consider (I mean really consider, not pretend to consider) for the post of debate moderator who would hate Sarah Palin any less than Ifill does or who would be any less biased than Ifill will be.

But with Ifill it is out in the open. Sure she says that she is going to ber even handed but no one believes her. Polls show that over 70% of the American people believe that Ifill will be attempting to help Biden win the debate.

Under these circumstances all Governor Palin will have to do to be seen as the winner is avoid running from the stage in tears. Thanks to talk radio and the blogs everyone watching tonight's debate will know about Ifill's massive conflict of interest. Every tough question she asks Mrs. Palin, even if it is totally legitimate, will be seen as proof of her bias just as will every softball she tosses Biden.

If PBS pulls Ifill and replaces her with another of their left-wing "journalists" the new person will just sit down with Ifill and study her prepared list of "gotcha" questions for the governor than ask them him or herself. Only the left-wing media will spin them as the perfectly appropriate questions of an unbiased reporter and all too many in the general public will swallow the lie.

Let Ifill stay and let her presence taint the debate in the minds of the vast majority of viewers. That way if Mrs. Palin does poorly, and she might if the campaign refuses to let her be herself and instead shackles her to the McCain talking points, most viewers will see it as the product of a corrupt process rather than a deficiency of the candidate.

And if the campaign has gotten the message and freed the Governor to be herself she will wipe the floor with Biden the walking gaffe machine and her victory will be seen as one achieved against almost insurmountable odds.

Once again the blind stupidity of the left is proving to be their own worst enemy.