(Or the more offensive, homophobic term for Tea Partiers.) Crosshairs! Targets!

The list could go on of the labels attached to groups of people or concepts by the media when they want to discount, demean, belittle, discourage discussion, demonize a group, or frame the issue how they want it to be, rather than how it is.

We saw this just recently with pundits rushing to frame the Tucson shootings as ratcheted up Republican rhetoric – falsely, as the facts later showed – from big time sources like the NY Times (Paul Krugman), Huffington Post (Arianna herself), DailyKos, and on and on. The shooting of Rep. Giffords and the other 18 victims was immediately put in the context of Republican political rhetoric being to blame for the actions of the shooter within a few hours of the event. Now, even though this meme has been proven wrong, pundits continue to say things like, “rightly or wrongly, the issue of civility is now front and center.” Well, it is WRONGLY, but every time they mention it, they continue to perpetuate this false meme. Civility had nothing to do with it at all, but now, whenever this issue comes up, like Pavlov and his dogs, that is what we think.

This ratchet response, ingrained in us by the media, is coming up again this week in terms of Obama’s birth certificate. A couple of articles have surfaced in which the Governor of Hawaii, Neil Abercrombie, in an attempt to dispel once and for all the allegations that Obama is not a natural born citizen, was unable to find his birth certificate. Oops. Apparently, there is a notation of Obama’s birth, but no long form has surfaced.

Additionally, a former Hawaii elections official, Tim Adams, has sworn, under oath, that neither hospital in Honolulu has a record of Obama’s birth. He doesn’t stop there – he goes on to say he was told there was no long form, and also to stop mucking around in this issue.

I am not getting into whether or not Obama is, or is not, a natural born citizen. That is not the point here. Check your response to what I wrote. Even bringing up this issue, no matter how or what has been discovered, is generally discounted as a crazy conspiracy theory, and that it is CRAZY to even mention it.

And that is because that is what we have been told by the media to think (pant, pant, pany, as Pavlov’s dog would do). The mere mention of Obama’s birth certificate brings derision and scorn upon whomever has the temerity to mention it. For the first time, for as long as I can remember, a presidential candidate was not required to present this document, one routinely required for a number of less important jobs. Yet requesting this one piece of paper has created a maelstrom of gigantic proportions.

We all know that by the mere fact of requesting this document, the requester is crazy. The media told us so. So, there.

Just like they told us Hillary was a cold, heartless Iron Bitch.

Just like they told us Sarah Palin was at the root of the Tucson shootings, or is a crazy “Mama Grizzly,” or that she could see Russia from her house (i.e., she’s stupid, got it? C’mon, only a MO-RON would think something like that. Never mind she never said it. Picky, picky.).

Just like they told us Tea Partiers are a bunch of racist yahoos (someone might want to tell Representatives Tim Scott and Col. Allen West that they are racists for belonging to the Tea Party. Ahem.).

I am sure you get the idea. The media is not reporting the news, they are shaping what they want people to believe. Even now, CNN and MSNBC continue to perpetuate this whole civility/Republican rhetoric meme for the Tucson shootings, regardless of the facts. That is not news – that is propaganda.

We learned of the JournoListers coordinating efforts to advance Obama’s candidacy for president, keeping important stories that might impact his chances out of their respective mediums. That was behind closed doors.

But now, media personalities are getting more blatant about it. Just recently, the Washington Post’s Dana Milbank calls out for a “Palin-Free February.” Yes, he has put a call out to his fellow commentators to not write or talk about Sarah Palin at all in the month of February.

Now, what kind of responsible journalist, or commentator, for that matter, would even consider such an action, except to continue to shape opinion about this figure? In his article (which you can read if you really want to give him the traffic), he makes some other (predictable) snide comments about Sarah Palin. That is the meme, after all – she is to be derided, demeaned, and ridiculed at every step, dontcha know, lest anyone start to take her seriously as a potential candidate. We cannot have THAT, after all. Rather than straight reporting, or basing commentary on, oh, I don’t know, let’s say, FACTS, now we just make shit up as if the person said or did it, then attack him/her for it mercilessly until the person become a mere caricature, and should anyone else still actually like them, they are nothing but a bunch of ignorant gun-totin’ hayseeds who likely don’t have a row to hoe anyway, so who cares what they think? Stupid heads.

And that is where our media is today. They set up these ratchet responses to labels, and dare anyone to stray from their definition or their insistence on who/what those labels represent, tearing down anyone who is foolish enough to disagree. They attack, deride, persecute until the person breaks, then respond with a, “see?? We TOLD you they were x, y, z…” They create the meme, then do everything in their power to make it true.

So, I reckon since I mentioned the whole Obama Birth Certificate thing now, no matter what I did or did not say, I will, forever after, be labeled a Birther. So, what the hell – for good measure, the government carried out 9/11!!! They did! There is no evidence of a plane at the Pentagon! Tea Party members are racist America-haters! Sarah Palin is personally responsible for the shooting of Gabrielle Giffords, and should be thrown in jail immediately!!! (Snark, snark, snark – just in case that was not abundantly clear.)

Hey, if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em, right? Wrong. We must stop this insanity with our media. When (formerly) great newspapers like the Washington Post and the New York Times become rumor-mongering rags, we are in serious trouble. Legitimate questions deserve legitimate answers, not derision. Serious investigative journalism must be restored to our media outlets, not regurgitating press releases from this or that party. Rather than allowing loud-mouthed pundits to determine the news, how about having some actual journalists (if you can still find them) to report the news, rather than craft the news? We must stop allowing them to silence us if we do not agree with their manufactured outrage and meme.

Just a thought. But hey, I am just a Birther/Truther/Tea Partier/Mama Grizzly Wannabe/Crosshair Target-er. So what do I know?!

Here is the All Star Panel discussing this very issue, and how the media is continuing to ratchet up antagonism against the right under the guise of moderating our rhetoric:

As Baier highlighted, I have seen a number of reports in which people are doing exactly as he suggested, “There is no evidence of this lunatic being influenced by Palin, the Tea Party, or Republicans at all, BUT let’s blame them anyway, and try to squelch free speech while we are at it.”

I wrote recently about my ignorant representative, Jim Clyburn, blaming the Tea Party/Palin/Republicans, AND wanting to cut back on Freedom of Speech. And all of this is under the guise of wanting to decreasing violence in speech.

Tuesday, Arianna Huffington, she of HuffPo creation, wrote a post, “Arizona Shootings: Our Moment of Silence Needs To Be Followed By More Than Just Lowered Voices.” I suppose I should have warned you in case you were drinking something at the time – my apologies. Anyway, in Ms. Huffington’s post, she writes this:

[snip] And while we don’t know all the facts yet and the story is still unfolding, we know enough to know that we need more than a little soul searching.

The fact that the gunman is clearly mentally unbalanced does not absolve us of the responsibility to consider the atmosphere in which the shootings occurred. “Shootings of political figures are by definition ‘political,’” writes James Fallows. “That’s how the target came to public notice; it is why we say ‘assassination’ rather than plain murder.”

And the atmosphere in which this horrible tragedy was born, nurtured, and carried to its wretched fruition is toxic. Of course, there are always going to be unbalanced people, just as there are always going to be viruses in our environment — but what most determines whether those viruses make us sick is the strength of our immune system. When it is stressed and compromised, infections can easily take hold.

And there is no doubt that our collective immune system is worn down, making us more susceptible to the kind of infection that turned that Arizona parking lot into a killing field. While there has never been a golden age in our democracy’s history, there have been many times in which our national immune system was much stronger. [snip] (Click here if you want to read the rest.)

This is not just scurrilous, it is the height of hypocrisy. Many of us remember all too well how our “immune systems” got weakened by vitriolic speech. A lot of it happened right there at Huffington Post to those of us who had the audacity to support Hillary Clinton over The One. We were bullied, berated, attacked, and essentially banished from the site for our refusal to capitulate on the best choice for president. Sure, there have been a few posts here and there in support of Hillary Clinton since Obama took office (do I really need to explain that one?), but the fact remains, this blog has been at the forefront of vitriolic rhetoric.

Just last month, in December, Huffington Post allowed the once-great Aaron Sorkin to post an almost unintelligible screed against Sarah Palin, laced with profanity, and twisted facts throughout. His attack on her was completely unprovoked. He just couldn’t help himself in his desire to attack, attack, attack, and demean this woman. And Huffington Post allowed him to do so. One month later, Huffington has the nerve to talk about “toxic” rhetoric? Spare me the sanctimony.

MoveOn.org has joined the chorus as well, asking its members to sign a petition to our Congress with this as the petition text: “I call for an end to all overt and implied appeals to violence in American politics. We must debate, not hate.” Are they for real?? The same organization who referred to General Petraeus as “General Betrayus” is now acting as if they are some honest broker in restoring civility to speech? Again, I remember just how they conducted themselves during the 2008, 2010 elections. They have no leg on which to stand in tryin gto claim this moral high ground.

Neither does Obama Sycophant, Jonathan Alter, who, in the spirit of Rahm Emanuel, wants Obama to make sure he makes political hay out of this horrible tragedy. His headline says it all, “Can Obama Turn Tragedy Into Triumph?” Alter writes:

[snip] But silence will not be enough. This horrific event offers the president a chance to show leadership qualities that he’s inexplicably hidden away in some blind trust. The shootings and the resulting debate over the climate of incivility play to his strengths as a calm and rational leader. Just as Bill Clinton’s response to the 1995 Oklahoma City bombings helped him recover from his defeat in the 1994 midterms, so this episode may help Obama change—at least in the short term–the trajectory of American politics. [snip] (Click here to read the rest.)

Perhaps Alter was just mistaken that Obama ever embodied the leadership he is “inexplicably hidden away.” That was Alter’s mistake for making that leap based on little data, just like others have done with this tragedy. But even more disingenuous is this rampant implication by those on the left that they engaged in NONE of this vitriolic rhetoric. It is, again, scurrilous, for someone like Alter, who regularly appeared on Olbermann, trashing Clinton AND Palin, to now act like he and his cohorts were just meek little lambs in their political discourse. The hypocrisy is just staggering.

I cannot possibly go through all of the instances of the Left’s treatment of Hillary Clinton during the 2008 Primary in their blind desire to elect Obama. The unsubstantiated attacks, the theft of votes, the fraud perpetrated in the caucuses by the Obama camp, all with tacit approval by the DNC, along with the most misogynistic shirts, slogans, sayings, and ads put out by the Obama camp. And now they are trying to act like they were harmless in their rhetoric? It would be pathetic if not so infuriating.

And then there was what they did to Palin. This Primer by Michelle Malkin gives you just a quick glimpse into the “moderate” language of the left about this governor.

And now, these same people, who attacked these candidates, and their followers, relentlessly, are now blaming inflammatory rhetoric on the RIGHT as the primary reason this maniac tried to assassinate Rep. Giffords. Moreover, they would seek to limit our speech as a result of this attack.

We cannot, CANNOT, censor ourselves with an eye to not upsetting some deranged lunatic. That essentially allows the crazy people to determine our discourse, which is, in and of itself, crazy. It is over-functioning to a pathological degree to try and tiptoe around our nation in fear that someone somewhere may just lose it. That kind of walking on eggshells is a horrible way to live, and does, by its very nature, make us prisoners of our own making. We cannot stop talking, or writing, or protesting, or arguing, just because it might set some psycho off on a rampage. We cannot know what will be the next trigger, and we cannot live our lives in constant fear of “upsetting” someone so much they will go off the rails. It is a destructive path down which some would have us go.

And it will strip us of our very freedoms. I, for one, am not willing to give up my freedom to appease some nut-job. How about you?

But there is one other “change” that has reared its ugly head since the Obama campaign began, and that is the war on women. You know, the “Bros Before Hoes” (a slogan and t-shirt), “Sarah Palin Is a C…” t-shirts, the Hillary Clinton “nutcrackers,” the “Life’s A Bitch, Don’t Vote For One” (in regard to Hillary Clinton) t-shirt, and on and on. We saw them all too often during 2008, with men (and some women) wearing them with glee.

Add to those displays the “comedienne” Sandra Bernhard threatening Sarah Palin with being gang-raped by black men (racist much, Sandra??) should she dare come to New York. Or Randi Rhodes, at a fundraiser for the Great Uniter, Obama, calling Hillary Clinton a whore. Oh, wait – I mean, “a big fucking whore.” N.O.W., Naral, Planned Parenthood, all supporting the man in the race (and as recently mentioned, the California chapter of N.O.W. endorsing the man in the governor’s race over the pro-choice woman, and supporting one of his aides calling her a whore).

And we cannot forget the blatant misogyny of many in the media since 2008. Three names sum it up: Keith Olbermann, Chris Matthews, and David Shuster. Need I say more? Not only did many in the media routinely make sexist, even misogynistic statements, but they routinely failed to cover the news, like the young men yelling at Hillary Clinton, “Iron My Shirt!” You and I both know damn well had anyone yelled out at Barack Obama, “Shine My Shoes!” we would be hearing about blatant racism in the campaign to this day.

All of which is to say, the misogyny is not limited to displays by men, unfortunately. Too many women are all too ready to throw their lot in with them. I suppose their “logic” is that they should join in lest they be treated the same way by these same men. Perhaps they think if they side against women, too, they will be spared the horrific treatment that is becoming all too acceptable. It is just a bit disturbing when it comes from groups whose sole purpose is to support women.

Taken together, it makes the story below not so surprising, sadly. Not that it isn’t emetic, mind you, but it is not surprising. Not after all we have seen since 2008, the t-shirts, the slogans, the flipping off by Candidate Obama of Hillary Clinton, the “sweetie” remarks toward a reporter, also by Candidate Obama, as well as the hint of PMS when he claimed Clinton might “get down periodically,” or Obama’s claiming that his challenge to the status quo “brings the claws out,” along with the general rage against powerful women, both Democratic and Republican for having the audacity to run against men. The nerve of these women, those who dared to run for president, or governor, or senator, or representative – how freaking dare they?

Those attitudes, both subtle and overt, have an effect. They are, as Obama likes to say, “Teachable moments.” But what these messages are teaching our young people is sickening. And that brings us to this from the Chronicle of Higher Learning, “Yale Fraternity Apologizes For Pledge Chants About Rape” (h/t to Pat Racimora):

The Delta Kappa Epsilon fraternity at Yale University apologized on Thursday for offensive chants against women that were shouted by new recruits on Wednesday evening. The young men, blindfolded, were marched through a part of the campus where female freshmen live while shouting, “No means yes, yes means anal!,” among other inflammatory chants. The pledging ritual sparked an outcry from Yale feminists and the Yale Women’s Center and a commentary in Salon.

Yep. Yale. The Salon article states:

[snip] Now, DKE President Jordan Forney has been forced to apologize for this blatant sexual intimidation by calling it “a serious lapse in judgment by the fraternity and in very poor taste.” But this sort of hateful crap isn’t a “lapse in judgment.” It doesn’t innocently happen that you’re guiding male pledges by young women’s dorms in the dark of night chanting about anal rape. It isn’t a forehead-slapping slip-up, it’s a sign that you need major reprogramming as a human being. [snip]

I’ll say. But not just at Yale. Young men, and women for that matter, need reprogramming in general that treating women like this, whether they are young or old, is simply unacceptable. It is not okay to threaten young women with rape, just as it is not okay to threaten a political figure with gang rape or to attack a candidate based on gender and not on their political stance. The entire country could use some “re-programming,” including Obama. Now THAT is some change I can support, and the sooner, the better.

Women in this country deserve at least that much, don’t we?

With the mid-term elections five weeks away, it’s desperation time. President Obama scolds voters for “apathy,” and for “not being serious in the first place,” VP Biden tells them to “stop whining,” and Senator John Kerry pronounces voters ill-informed on the issues, i.e. stupid. One has to wonder if that is going to be a successful strategy for getting people to the polls on November 2nd. Well, it may get them to vote, but whether they vote FOR your party or AGIN it is another matter.

President Obama had his best professorial, condescending tone on display these last few days both in his campaign appearances and at the end of his interview with Rolling Stone magazine. As Ben Feller of AP reported in his piece, Obama Now Blaming Democratic Voters for Their Apathy:

Admonishing his own party, President Barack Obama says it would be “inexcusable” and “irresponsible” for unenthusiastic Democratic voters to sit out the midterm elections, warning that the consequences could be a squandered agenda for years.

“People need to shake off this lethargy. People need to buck up,” Obama told Rolling Stone in an interview to be published Friday. The president told Democrats that making change happen is hard and “if people now want to take their ball and go home, that tells me folks weren’t serious in the first place.”

Nice.

The president has been telling Democrats to “wake up” and recognize that he and the Democratic-run Congress have delivered on promises, from a new health care law to tougher rules for Wall Street to more aid for college students. Obama wants disenchanted supporters to see that Republican wins in November would undermine the ability of Democrats to get the unfinished business done, from climate change legislation to allowing gays to serve openly in the military.

However when Obama had a supermajority in the Senate and House last year he did not repeal Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, though he could have. Whether one agrees with the repeal or not, there is little doubt he could have done what he campaigned on if he had truly wanted to. The vote on Don’t Ask Don’t Tell was more political tomfoolery. The Dems waited until now so they could say – See, we tried!

CBS news reported on “a stern, lecturing tone from Obama….”

“The idea that we’ve got a lack of enthusiasm in the Democratic base, that people are sitting on their hands complaining, is just irresponsible,” he said in the interview. ”

I find it a tad irritating when a millionaire who throws half million dollar pizza parties on our dime deigns to tells struggling citizens what is irresponsible and inexcusable.

The president said he keeps a checklist of his campaign promises and that he has met, by his account, about 70 percent of them.

However, just checking the “done” box is not enough. Passing legislation is not the same as passing effective legislation. Someone ought to remind Obama, Reid, Pelosi, Biden and Kerry of the same.

And do we need scolding now? The president is pretending that people are apathetic because change has not come quickly enough but perhaps they are apathetic because the type of change they are getting is not what they bargained for – nor is it helping.

Even the opportunistic Arianna Huffington noted in her article, Will Obama Appease Wall Street or Struggling Americans, that Obama is not looking out for Main Street in his choice of a replacement for economic advisor Larry Summers. She writes:

At this late date in the recession and with the midterms shaping up as they are, the president can take in the economic landscape and conclude that what most needs repairing is his administration’s relationship with Wall Street? How about hiring someone who would repair his relationship with the 26 million unemployed or underemployed Americans, and send the message: Help is on the way! After two years of governing a country locked in economic misery, you’d hope that Obama and his economic team would’ve learned that what matters isn’t the economic team’s resume or what “signals are sent” to Wall Street, but the actual state of the actual economy. But apparently not!

Rabbi Michael Lerner penned an opinion piece in the Huffington Post just below Arianna’s where he aptly characterized the reasons for Obama supporter apathy. The President and his team seem to think his supporters are angry and apathetic because they did not get everything on their Christmas list. In his article, Obama and Biden Have No Clue What’s Bothering Their Political Base, Lerner states:

It’s easier to believe that their liberal and progressive base is naïve than to acknowledge that we are not alienated for their failure to pass appropriate legislation, but for their failure to fight for such legislation. …[snip]

It’s one thing to make compromises after you’ve struggled for something you believe in, another to make the compromises without ever trying. Liberals and progressives had already been deeply disillusioned after the Democratic sweep of Congress in 2006, continued to fund the war in Iraq despite overwhelming popular opposition to that war. So when Obama entered the primaries and spent much of his time distinguishing himself from Sen. Clinton on precisely the grounds that he had opposed the war from the beginning, he gave his base the impression that he would be a leader who would challenge the war makers. Similarly, when he challenged the selfishness and materialism that pervaded Wall Street, we felt we had a candidate who would be willing to speak truth to power.

But Rabbi – it was words, just words. Didn’t you know that?

We did.

Just as he reneged on his promise to filibuster on FISA and reneged on his signed statement to take public financing during the campaign, President Obama means what he says – until he doesn’t. How could Rabbi Lerner have chosen Obama over Hillary when he had no record of delivering on his promises? Lerner continues…

Many of us will vote Democratic in November, despite all this. But don’t expect us to be able to rally others when the best we can say is that the Democrats and their national leader are better than the plausible alternatives. That is not a rallying cry likely to produce many votes or move us beyond our deep disappointments.

This is the final nail in the coffin and the most honest assessment of the “apathy” many of us predicted two and half years ago when we wrote about the Obama Change Ring and other cheap novelties…

And many others, feeling humiliated at allowing themselves to have opened to the hope Obama elicited, now find themselves either totally uninterested in politics or wishing to strike back at the Democrats for making fools of those who trusted. Obama and the Democrats remain clueless.

Humiliated. Feeling like fools.

People do not like to be humiliated and then scolded for their trouble. Or as Hillary Clinton pointed out on the campaign trail, “you don’t need a President who looks down at you.”

We knew this was happening – we knew that many in the MSM were protecting Obama, were refusing to vet him, to investigate allegations against him, or those with whom he was very close, like Rev. Jeremiah Wright.

But here’s the thing. A number of these journalists (and academics), including from major news outlets, wrote down their plans to do what they could to protect Obama, both in the Primaries, and in the General Election. And did they ever. Check out this interview with Tucker Carlson (I know, I know – he was horrible to Hillary Clinton, but he does acknowledge that these “journalists” worked against her, too). It is eye opening:

We knew it – we knew they were using the race card to help Obama, and to protect him from scrutiny. And use it they did, over and over, and over again. They STILL are using it, for that matter.

But wait, there’s more. In this report, more of the actual statements by some of the so-called journalists who colluded to help Obama are brought to light:

And finally, and I bet you knew this was coming, these “journalists” are revealed to have coordinated attacks against Sarah Palin:

Daily Caller has much, much more on this topic, with more revelations each day, it seems (I am having some technical issues with my computer, so please forgive the lack of links to the actual stories).

I used to scoff at the charges of the “liberal bias” in the media. I thought they were ridiculous, sour grapes, and all of that. But this isn’t just bias, this is intentionally controlling news about one candidate, protecting a candidate from being properly vetted, and using a despicable tactic to deflect any questions, the race card. Despicable.

These people are not journalists, not by a long shot. Each and every one of them should lose their jobs over this. They shaped an entire election by their collusion, engaging in character assassinations, race baiting, and propaganda, to protect their chosen politician.

And they wonder why people in this country have lost faith in the media. After this revelation, they should wonder no more…

The MSNBC anchor, once so enamored with Barack Obama that he admitted a campaign speech sent a thrill up his leg, has now told Jay Leno that Obama scares him.

“The President scares me,” Matthews said of Obama’s response to the Gulf oil spill disaster. “He’s been acting a little like a Vatican Observer here. When is he actually going to do something? And I worry; I know he doesn’t want to take ownership of it. I know politics. He said the minute he says, ‘I’m in charge,’ he takes the blame, but somebody has to. It’s in our interest.”

Mr. Matthews described the BP oil spill as “the scariest thing I’ve ever seen.” He likewise lambasted Rush Limbaugh and former VP Dick Cheney, as he lamented years of various administrations looking the other way on safety precautions for off shore drilling. But no matter how much he spread the insults around, the fact remains that the bloom is off the rose between him and his Prez.

Matthews was forthright in condemning our backdoor deals with oil companies and no oversight re drilling – but the Dems have been the majority in Congress since 2006 and Obama has been President for 16 months – could safeguards not have been put back in place before the BP disaster? Matthews does not mention that Obama received large campaign contributions from BP.

And while Chris figures out he is scared of a man who leads from the rear, or leads by waiting, that is to say, not at all, we figured this out 2-1/2 years ago. I will admit to being likewise scared of someone who constantly says “I didn’t know” to inconvenient truths about his associates and dances quickly away from responsibility. I am also worried by someone slow to act on this oil spill but quick to jump down the throats of Arizonans, passing immigration law in desperation when the federal government was and is a no show. Our President is quick to race bait and pander to the Hispanic vote for his own benefit. Taking charge on the oil spill… not so much.

Laura Bassett of HuffPo reports that James Carville, a democratic stalwart, finally voices his frustration, too:

“He’s ‘Risking Everything’ With ‘Go Along With BP Strategy’”

Carville, the famously outspoken Louisianian who was a chief political aide to Bill and Hillary Clinton, told CNN’s Anderson Cooper on Thursday that the administration’s response to the spill has been “lackadaisical” and that Obama was “naive” to trust BP to manage the massive clean-up effort.

“I think they actually believe that BP has some kind of a good motivation here,” he said. “They’re naive! BP is trying to save money, save everything they can… They won’t tell us anything, and oddly enough, the government seems to be going along with it! Somebody has got to, like shake them and say, ‘These people don’t wish you well! They’re going to take you down!’”…

“I’m as good a Democrat as most people, and I think this administration has done some good things. They are risking everything by this ‘go along with BP’ strategy they have that seems like, lackadaisical on this, and Doug is right, they seem like they’re inconvenienced by this, this is some giant thing getting in their way and somehow or another, if you let BP handle it, it’ll all go away. It’s not going away. It’s growing out there. It is a disaster of the first magnitude, and they’ve got to go to Plan B.”

Most damning is this little tidbit…

Not until yesterday, critics note, a full 30 days after the oil rig explosion, did federal officials establish a technical team to measure the full extent of the spill.

Until now, the vast bulk of clean-up responsibilities have been left to BP, which isn’t much closer to capping the oil leak now than it was weeks ago. The oil has already affected nearly 50 miles of sensitive marshlands on the Louisiana coastline, according to estimates by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association, and federal authorities have increased the no-fishing zone to 45,728 square miles in the Gulf of Mexico.

BP has consistently downplayed the severity of the spill despite growing evidence that suggests otherwise, and their strategy to clean up the spill has involved the use of a toxic chemical dispersant that EPA officials warn may cause lasting damage to coastal ecosystems.

The EPA has now given BP 24 hours to begin using a less toxic dispersant, but Carville says the government’s primary failure was trusting BP to handle the clean-up in the first place.

“Right now I wouldn’t trust BP to do anything,” he said. “And nobody does”

So much for ready on day one. It would have cost BP all of $5 million dollars to install the safety equipment to prevent this disaster. This Administration had plenty of time these past 16 months to put such safety precautions back in place.

The Administration may have been slow to act, but here’s a bit of news that may surprise you. Guy Adams of The Indpendent/UK reports that BP calls in Costner’s $26m vacuum cleaners to mop up huge oil spill.

[Mr. Costner] has spent 15 years developing device to separate oil from sea water and it is now being put to work.

Desperate times call for desperate measures. So with hundreds of thousands of gallons of oil still spewing into the Gulf of Mexico each day, and its corporate image starting to resemble the tar-covered sea creatures now washing on to Louisiana’s fragile shoreline, BP has called on Kevin Costner to help stave off environmental Armageddon.

The Hollywood star has been bobbing around the Mississippi Delta helping representatives of the British oil firm and US coastguard test-drive a stainless steel device called the Ocean Therapy. In a claim which sounds as unlikely as the plot premise of Waterworld, he says it can quickly and efficiently clean oil from tainted sea water.

Bizarrely, Costner may be on to something. The actor has spent 15 years and roughly $26million of his personal fortune developing the patented machine with the help of his elder brother Dan, a scientist. It works like a giant vacuum cleaner, sucking up dirty liquid and then using a high-speed centrifuge to separate it into oil, and heavier water.

When he allowed the local media to see Ocean Therapy in action – albeit on dry land – it appeared to work as advertised. Yesterday, six of the devices were attached to boats and floated into the Gulf, so the organisers of the clean-up operation could see whether they might also be capable of functioning on the high seas.

“This is a technology that we know works, and has worked for a long time,” Costner said, adding that 26 of the machines are now in Louisiana ready to be put into action. “I’m just really happy that the light of day has come to this, and I’m very sad about why it is. But this is why it was developed, and like anything that we all face, as a group, we face it together.”

Costner, 55, has quietly been developing Ocean Therapy since the mid-1990s when he founded the Costner Industries Nevada Corporation, a company which funded eco-friendly research by his brother and a team of scientists. Aside from the water cleaning device, the firm has also invented a non-chemical battery.

Each of the 26 Heath Robinson-style machines now in Louisiana waiting to be deployed can clean between 5 and 200 gallons of water a minute, depending on its size, said Costner’s lawyer and business partner, John Houghtaling, which means they could in theory mop up oil at the rate it is currently gushing into the Gulf. Polluted sea water which passes through them comes out 97 per cent clean.

“Kevin saw the Exxon Valdez spill, and as a fisherman and an environmentalist, it just stuck in his craw, the fact that we didn’t have separation technology,” said Houghtaling. “Kevin wrote all the checks for this project. This was one man’s vision. Sometimes it takes a star to come in with their money and time to make a difference.”

I appreciate someone who is willing to put their money where their mouth is and hope Mr. Costner’s invention will be of assistance in this horrid situation. Odd however, that we might have to pin our hopes on a private citizen rather than our Government or the oil company that caused this disaster in the first place.

The LA Times also reports on Costner’s invention:

If all goes according to plan, he said, “We could have as many as 26 machines dispatched throughout the gulf. Our largest machine is 112 inches high, weighs 2 ½ tons and cleans 210,000 gallons a day of oily water. We are hoping to have 10 machines that size out there — meaning we could potentially clean 2 million gallons of oil water a day.”

Godspeed.

So, um, what’s the Administration doing?

But wait until you hear one of his more outlandish claims – I about snorted my double cappuccino through my nose when I heard this one:

Did you catch that? He claimed that it is because of the MEDIA that the Tea Party enjoys so much success. Oh, yes, because the MSM has discussed the Tea Party and its members in such GLOWING, positive terms, hasn’t it? Let’s look at a few of the headlines that really embody the support the media has given to the Tea Party.

First up, this headline from The Huffington Post: David Shuster: GOP “Going Nuts” For Teabagging, But “They Need A Dick Armey”

This is really a bonus one since it also includes a hommophobic term AND a sexual innuendo all at the same time! From the very people who try to tell us how GREAT the Democratic Party is for GLBT people. Yeah, right.

How about the Associated Press? Well, they did an “Analysis” of the Tea Party, to see if it was “brewing a revolution.” They decided that it really has “little muscle.” That’s one of the least snarky things the article includes. For example:

This we know: Tea parties know how to produce crowds. In the footsteps of the pamphleteers of the 1770s, organizers use e-mail, social networking and other electronic tools to draw enormous numbers of disaffected Americans together. Some wear revolutionary-era garb and carry signs bearing the language of 18th century patriots — “Don’t tread on me!” is a popular one.

But rally building is no big trick in the era of Twitter and Facebook, when people with cell phones can summon crowds from thin air for events as frivolous as snowball fights and bursts of song.

Wow, what a glowing recommendation for the Tea Party movement! No WONDER Gov. Rendell thinks the media has been helping them so much!! Right.

There are so, so many more – feel free to find your favorite headlines! I do have one last one to share, another point missed by Gov. Rendell: Foes Of Tea Party Movement To Infiltrate Rallies. Oh, yes. And this is what they hope to accomplish:

Opponents of the fiscally conservative tea party movement say they plan to infiltrate and dismantle the political group by trying to make its members appear to be racist, homophobic and moronic.

Isn’t that special? Ironic, isn’t it? The opponents want to portray Tea Partiers as homophobic and moronic when they display those very qualities every single time they use the term “Tea Baggers.” Ahem.

Is there any evidence to support Gov. Rendell’s supposition that it is the glowing references by the media that have helped this non-movement? Not according to this article:

Study: Networks Snub, Malign ‘Tea Party’; Report finds news coverage of movement sparse, cynical

The big three television networks virtually ignored the massive, grass-roots “tea party” surge in 2009, and so far this year have maligned the movement as teeming with racists and violent fringe figures, according to a report by the Media Research Center.

“Rather than objectively document the rise and impact of this important grassroots movement, the ‘news’ networks instead chose to first ignore, and then deplore, the citizen army mobilizing against the unpopular policies of a liberal president and Congress,” wrote MRC Research Director Rich Noyes.

Huh. That sounds like it completely contradicts Rendell’s assertion. So does this:

As a nation-spanning “Tea Party Express” caravan plans to pull into Washington for a “tax day” rally on Thursday, a Rasmussen poll finds that the number of people who say they’re part of the tea party movement nationally has grown to 24 percent, up from 16 percent a month ago.

“The rise in tea party support is perhaps not surprising at a time when more voters than ever (58 percent) favor repeal of the national health care plan just passed by Democrats in Congress and signed into law by President Obama,” the pollster wrote.

The Media Research Center, a watchdog organization founded by conservative L. Brent Bozell III, compiled reams of statistics to support its findings about TV network coverage, among them:

• ABC, CBS and NBC aired 61 stories or segments on the anti-spending movement over a 12-month period, and most of that coverage is recent. “The networks virtually refused to recognize the tea party in 2009 (19 stories), with the level of coverage increasing only after Scott Brown’s election in Massachusetts” in January, the report said, referring to the Republican’s win of the Senate seat long held by Edward M. Kennedy.

• Overall, 44 percent of the networks’ reports on the tea party suggested the movement reflected a fringe movement or a dangerous quality. “Signs and images at last weekend’s big tea party march in Washington and at other recent events have featured racial and other violent themes,” NBC anchorman Brian Williams said in a September report.

Oops – sorry, Governor. Your attempt at claiming up is down, and down is up, is not reflected in the actual facts. Nice try. Now, seriously – put down the Hopium, stop drinking the Kool Aide, and try to bring yourself back to the Reality based community. I promise, we’ll welcome you back.

Please stop with this ridiculous assertion of yours about the media’s warm embrace of the Tea Party movement. Really, it’s just embarrassing.

Case in point: Washington Post “media critic” Howard Kurtz’s article today about FOX News Channel’s “reporters’” growing discomfort with the shenanigans of FNC darling Glenn Beck, he of the mighty chalkboard of insanity, his ludicrous fits of crying, his manic desire to be a political player, the fearmongering, paranoia and Stalin-Mao-Hitler-Marxist-Communist-Racist-Obama-hating cavalcade of madness. The meme that Beck is merely an entertainer and that FOX personalities are worried that the new star on the block could damage its relationship with the White House and the channel’s reputation are laughable at best. After all, Beck organized the infamous “9/12″ rallies, a non-news event enthusiastically covered by FOX, complete with inflated crowd estimates. Beck, in displays of false modesty, claims to be a mere rodeo clown. Nonsense. He’s a liar, an ignoramus and a dangerous Father Coughlinesque demagogue who has done enormous damage to political discourse and the profession of journalism. (Beck would probably decry Coughlin’s loyalties but the technique remains the same).

Beck apologized recently for wasting his audience’s time following a hilariously absurd and demented interview with disgraced tickling enthusiast and former Congressman Eric Massa. But not to worry, he’s back to whatever passes for normal now.

FOX’s “news” operation didn’t show restraint or a desire for fact-checking while helping pump damaging, and false stories about the Clintons into the media churn, with the Vince Foster conspiracy theory still holding a strong showing behind the JFK assassination.

And it’s not as if Beck makes money for the network. He’s a loss leader (here’s a partial list of companies that have pulled their ads, despite Beck’s strong ratings). There are rumblings that Rupert Murdoch’s children are fed up with the drama surrounding FOX News’s foolishness, but you can bet that as long as daddy Rupert is in charge and Roger Ailes continues to draw breath nothing will change.

The Kurtz article follows an absurd piece in the Washington Post by former New York Times Executive Editor Howell Raines. With wide-eyed wonder, he ponders the vexing question of why reputable media organizations don’t call FOX out as a propaganda mill. This from a man who if he had a sense of shame would have the decency to keep quiet about media ethics, considering that reporter Bush/Cheney stenographer Judy Miller’s wildly incorrect WMD/Chalabi articles started being published in the NYT on his watch. The New York Times, which sets the agenda for all other publications in the United States, was thereby complicit in pushing falsehoods that led to an unjust and unnecessary war, costing thousands of American lives and ruining the U.S.’s reputation around the world. Good work, Howell.

But to answer your question, Howell: Cowardice. The American media are sheep. You’re welcome.

American reporters love to express their wonder at the Pakistani media’s love of conspiracy theories and wrinkle their brows over what a terrible impact the dissemination of false and sensationalistic information could have on the U.S.-Pak relationship. Look in the mirror, people.

– Cross Post from: The Pakistan Update

Well, it’s official: Scott Brown won the US Senate seat in Massachusetts, easily one of the most liberal states in the Union. Brown’s win is the first by a Republican in that state since 1972. Holy moley. Time and time again, people claimed the Healthcare Bill the Democrats are trying to ram through as the reason they voted for Scott Brown. If this isn’t a wake up call to the Democrats, I don’t know what is.

And yet, there are people like Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, who seems completely oblivious to the massive alarm bells ringing throughout the country. One would think this would filter into her, but apparently no:

“The reports of its death, as Mark Twain would say, have been exaggerated,” Larson added. “We’re going to move forward, and we’re going to pass health care reform.”

This afternoon, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said much the same. “Whatever happens in Massachusetts, we have to do that,” she said. “And whatever happens in Massachusetts we will have quality affordable health care for all Americans, and it will be soon.”

Oh, boy. Add to that the ramped up call for the “Reconciliation Option,” including by the organization, Credo, which sent out an email immediately following the declaration of Brown’s win asking people to sign this petition:

Your message to President Obama, Speaker Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid:

“The loss of Ted Kennedy’s seat — due to a lack of enthusiasm among Democrats and Independents — sends a clear message to Congress. The Senate health care bill is not the change we were promised in 2008, and it must be improved. The Senate must use ‘reconciliation’ to pass a better bill with a strong public option.”

In case you don’t know what “reconciliation” means, they are suggesting the Democrats use a 51 majority vote to shove through this bill with its payoffs, bribes, and strong-arming. I might add, this tactic was designed for use with BUDGET bills. Clearly, Credo didn’t like the message Massachusetts sent, and believes it is a better idea for the Democrats to inflame passions against this bill even MORE by using a filibuster-proof tactic. Nice.

Make no mistake, the Democrats are trying mighty hard to figure out how to get this bill through regardless of what the people say. I mean, really – it’s not like it’s their JOB or anything to care, right? Ahem.

On the other side, though, one of my favorite Democratic senators (and one I have supported), is Sen. Jim Webb of VA. This was his immediate response to Scott Brown’s win:

Less than 15 minutes after the race was called for Republican Scott Brown, the first of what could be many conservative Democrats asks for leadership to put the brakes on health care reform.

Sen. Jim Webb (D-VA) congratulated Brown on his win and delivered a zinger:

“In many ways the campaign in Massachusetts became a referendum not only on health care reform but also on the openness and integrity of our government process. It is vital that we restore the respect of the American people in our system of government and in our leaders. To that end, I believe it would only be fair and prudent that we suspend further votes on health care legislation until Senator-elect Brown is seated.”

That is more like it. He is hearing the message the people are sending, and wants to take a step back here, and look again at this bill.

But Senator Webb is not the only one. You may be a bit surprised by this, but Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA), of all people, warns against changing horses in mid-stream (of course, my cynical side says he is a bit worried about his seat in the future, too):

“I have two reactions to the election in Massachusetts. One, I am disappointed. Two, I feel strongly that the Democratic majority in Congress must respect the process and make no effort to bypass the electoral results. If Martha Coakley had won, I believe we could have worked out a reasonable compromise between the House and Senate health care bills. But since Scott Brown has won and the Republicans now have 41 votes in the Senate, that approach is no longer appropriate. I am hopeful that some Republican Senators will be willing to discuss a revised version of health care reform because I do not think that the country would be well-served by the health care status quo. But our respect for democratic procedures must rule out any effort to pass a health care bill as if the Massachusetts election had not happened. Going forward, I hope there will be a serious effort to change the Senate rule which means that 59 votes are not enough to pass major legislation, but those are the rules by which the health care bill was considered, and it would be wrong to change them in the middle of the process.”

Gee, ya think?? You know, it is amazing what it takes to actually get through to these people. Maybe if this doesn’t hammer it home, this great piece by Lady Lynn Forester de Rothschild will:

The problem for the Democrats in Massachusetts was not Martha Coakley; it was the Obama agenda. In 2008, voters believed that they were electing a person who would focus on the economy with laser intensity and lead in a bipartisan and principled matter. What they have gotten is a deeply divisive President committed to transforming America into a European-style social democracy. In this first year, he forced a health care bill at the expense of vitally needed focus on job creation. He has scared hard-working American voters with his hard-left rhetoric and his signature policies.

The Obama approach to health care reform is the most egregious example of breaking trust with the American people. He brokered no Republican compromise; he demonized the other side for being captive to vested interests as he made private deals with Democratic special interest groups like the unions, the insurance companies and “hold-out” Senators like Ben Nelson (who was just looking for his pound of flesh at the expense of the rest of the American people); he outsourced the bill to Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid behind closed doors as he focused only on taking the victory lap for pathetic, piecemeal legislation that does not deal with our exorbitant health care costs. Have no doubt, the speech trumpeting “his” historic achievement, where other less talented Presidents than himself have failed, is already loaded on the teleprompter.

These are major negative factors for the independent voters who believed that Barack Obama was a principled and moderate Democrat. This is particularly true in Massachusetts where the nation’s only universal health care plan is bankrupting the state because of politicians’ congenital inability to deal with spiraling costs. In Massachusetts, a full 47% of voters are Independents, with 33% Democrat and only 11% Republican. For many of these voters, Barack Obama is now a busted flush; he was full of promise but has neither delivered on that promise nor exhibited the capability to deliver. He has broken the trust of the people, and voters are taking the only action available to them: Electing a candidate who can stop the Obama agenda and help restore balance to a broken political system. The voters in the Bay State are resorting to the principle that our Founding Fathers made famous: checks and balances. It is unlikely that all voters overwhelmingly support Republican State Senator Scott Brown, but it is certain that they see him as a vital player in forcing Barack Obama to come back to the center.

Preach it, Sister Lynn! Bring it on home:

This is important to keep in mind in reviewing Tuesday’s results. Equally important is to reject the demonization of Coakley that is being perpetrated by the Obama White House and the Pelosi/Reid Congress. Coakley’s troubles were never about her as a candidate; she has won state-wide elections before and few would argue she is more removed than John Kerry. Her problem was simply about the President and the radical course being charted by Democrats in Congress. A year after his inauguration — and three years since Democrats regained Congress — voters were holding Obama accountable. This simple fact makes scapegoating Coakley unconscionable, and yet this week all knives are out from the Obama White House. Coakley was insufficiently charismatic, leading Democrats are saying; she did not have an emotional connection to the voters. She did not work hard enough. She was more a “nun” than a political candidate!

This is all nonsense of course, but not surprising. After all, it’s not the first time the current crop of Democratic party leaders have torn down a talented woman in their midst.

That Hillary Clinton won Massachusetts by a resounding sixteen points in 2008 is not unrelated. While Massachusetts may be bluest of the blue, it’s a state where working class liberalism still runs deep, where an honest day’s work is still held in higher esteem than entitlement handouts. When Hillary ran on these principles, Massachusetts voters embraced her. And for this same reason, on Tuesday they embraced Scott Brown.

Obama’s team may want to make the election about Martha Coakley, but it’s not about her. As rank-and-file Democrats try to make Martha Coakley the issue and engage in her assassination, they miss the fact that they are in a circular firing squad. Their problem is that they are out of touch, and their boosters in the media cannot save them.

Voters this week stood up and said ‘enough is enough.’ It’s high time Obama and the Democrats in Congress got the message.

Amen to that. And if they don’t get it after this, there is always November…

*Updated: Ohmygosh – now Barney Frank has done a COMPLETE 180, saying he could vote for the Senate bill now. WTH is wrong with this guy? And who got to him? Wow, he is a piece of work. Way to stick to your guns there, Barney! Yeah. Right.

Second Update: well, Nancy must have heard an earful from the other representatives. Now she says the House has to make changes to the Senate’s bill:

Pelosi (D-Calif.) has been struggling for days to sell the Senate legislation to reluctant Democrats in order to get a health-care bill to the president’s desk quickly. But House liberals strongly dislike the Senate version, while moderate Democrats in both the House and Senate have raised doubts about forging ahead with the ambitious legislation without bipartisan support.

The only way to keep the Senate bill alive, Pelosi said, would be for senators to initiate a package of fixes that would address House concerns about the bill. In particular, Pelosi described her members as vehemently opposed to a provision that benefits only Nebraska’s Medicaid system. Also problematic are the level of federal subsidies the Senate would offer to uninsured individuals and its new excise tax on high-value policies, which could hit union households.

“There are certain things the members simply cannot support,” Pelosi said.

Like I said, I guess the representatives let her have it. It will sure be interesting to see what happens next.

Holy smokes. Needless to say, there has been a LOT of discussion about this photograph, and why Newsweek would choose to run this particular photo. Taylor Marsh – former Clinton supporter now Obama water carrier – wrote a piece at Huffington Post on this, “What Was Newsweek Thinking?“. Media Matters had a post by Julie Millican, “Newsweek Should Worry More About How To Solve Its Problem With Sexism” (h/t to Bronwyn’s Harbor), though many of the comments would lead one to believe it is find and dandy to be sexist to someone if they are a Republican, and Palin’s an idiot anyway, so what’s the big deal?? (That was SNARK on my part, but sums up the sentiment there.)

Sarah Palin weighed in on the photo, too:

Palin denounced it—and us—to her million-strong Facebook following last night. “The choice of photo for the cover of this week’s Newsweek is unfortunate. When it comes to Sarah Palin, this ‘news’ magazine has relished focusing on the irrelevant rather than the relevant,” she wrote on her fan page, adding, “The out-of-context Newsweek approach is sexist and oh-so-expected by now.” She also told ABC’s Barbara Walters that she found the cover “a wee bit degrading.” Others, like CBN’s David Brody, said our cover was a new low: “biased and sexist at the same time.”

Well, yes. Out of all the photographs available out there, why choose one from RUNNER’S WORLD?? This was the excuse, I mean, reason, given by the editor:

Today, NEWSWEEK’s Editor Jon Meacham has responded to critics. “We chose the most interesting image available to us to illustrate the theme of the cover, which is what we always try to do,” Meacham said. “We apply the same test to photographs of any public figure, male or female: does the image convey what we are saying? That is a gender-neutral standard.”

Well, if what they were trying to say was that they are a bunch of sexist patronizing sanctimonious assholes, they succeeded!

They could have chosen, oh, say, this one:

(September 3, 2008 – Photo by Ethan Miller/Getty Images North America)

Or how about this one:

(October 31, 2008 – Photo by Jeff Swensen/Getty Images North America)

It took me less than a minute to find them. I would think Newsweek could take that long to find another image – if they had wanted to, that is. But they chose that one for a reason, and that reason is SEXISM.

Speaking of the photograph, it seems the photographer who took it, Brian Adams, engaged in a bit of premature, um, opportunism. He had a contract, you see, that did not allow him to sell this image until August of 2010. Oops!! Don’t you just hate when that happens? Anyway, kinda makes you wonder just how Newsweek got it, and it wasn’t from Runner’s World.

And then there’s the HEADLINE: “How Do You Handle a Problem Like Sarah? She’s Bad News For The GOP – And Everyone Else, Too.” Um, well, golly gee – that kind of sets the tone from the get-go, doesn’t it? I don’t even think one needs to read the damned thing to get where they are going with this.

It makes me wonder where they are getting their information. You may know that Governor Palin was on Oprah earlier this week. I don’t know about you, but I was wondering, just out of curiosity, what the ratings were going to be for that show. Care to hazard a guess? If you went by the headline above, you’d guess not very high. And you would be very wrong. Oprah’s show had the highest rating it has had in over TWO YEARS. Dang, that Palin is just TERRIBLE for EVERYBODY!!!! Never mind all of those cheering crowds turning out for her book tour – Palin is just terrible for them! And the GOP! And the WORLD!!!! Ahem.

Again, I disagree with a lot of her policies, but I do appreciate her honest, down to earth bearing – those are characteristics sorely missing among politicians today. Does she possess brilliance on a par with Hillary Clinton? No, I don’t know anyone in politics who is on Clinton’s level. She is heads and shoulders above (which is, no doubt, why they drug her down and stomped all over her). Apparently, though, those of us who consider ourselves to be liberal cannot like Sarah Palin at all in any way for any reason whatsoever without being chastised, criticized, demeaned, and belittled. Because we couldn’t POSSIBLY have been marching for Equal Rights for someone like SARAH PALIN, who, by her own admission on Oprah says her relationship to her husband is one based on EQUALITY. Surely, SHE doesn’t count, which has been the recurring theme about her by so-called liberals and “feminists.” Apparently, only Democrats are worthy of having equal rights according to a lot of these folks – many of whom were not marching, or fighting, or accompanying women to Planned Parenthood for abortions like a number of us did (including myself), but they can, with incredible sexism and elitism, denounce Palin for being an “idiot” and unworthy of respect (“she hasn’t done anything to deserve respect” was one comment I saw at Media Matters), despite all she accomplished for Alaska. Yet, Obama with his paper thin resume, and his throwing women under the bus, backing up, running over them again, and again, and again, somehow does deserve their respect. Wow.

Speaking of Obama, shockingly, in a recent Quinnipiac Poll, though Obama has now dipped below 50% approval, women approve of him by 52 – 37% while men disapprove of Obama by 47 – 44%. Why do women still support him after all of the ways he has dismissed women and our issues?

As for Sarah Palin, I am amazed by the amount of animosity directed at her by men, but women, too. And it amazes me how quickly people are willing to believe whatever rumor or half-truth comes down the pike about her. It is sad, really, but it also undermines their arguments against her, so there’s that.

Taking the two together is a sad, sad commentary on where we are. The bottom line, as we saw so clearly this past election season, is that sexism is most definitely alive and well in the United States, spurred on by our media, and our politicians. There is too little comeuppance for those who engage in sexism on a national level, like the cover of Newsweek above. I am glad that some women are speaking up as noted, but too many people are willing to engage in massive amounts of sexist commentary against Palin simply because she is a Republican and a conservative. Their hypocrisy apparently knows no bounds.

Sexism is sexism. We must be willing to apply the same standard across the board and political spectrum. Until then, we will continue to see national publications like “News”week engage in blatant sexism toward a former governor and former Vice Presidential candidate with too little outcry. And we will continue to see so-called liberals engage in blatant woman-bashing under the guise of “politics.” That is an excuse used by cowards and misogynists, and must not be excused any more by anyone. Call it by name: Sexism.

“News”week, you owe Governor Palin, and all women, an apology. We’re waiting…

Turns out I am not the only one who wonders why Obama continues to get a free pass for actions that, had Bush done them, would be front page news (and again, I have NO love lost for Bush – absolutely zero, but fair is fair). Josh Gerstein of Politico had these same questions, about which he wrote in this article, What If Bush Had Done That?. Indeed:

A four-hour stop in New Orleans, on his way to a $3 million fundraiser.

Snubbing the Dalai Lama.

Signing off on a secret deal with drug makers.

Freezing out a TV network.

Doing more fundraisers than the last president. More golf, too.

President Barack Obama has done all of those things — and more.

What’s remarkable is what hasn’t happened. These episodes haven’t become metaphors for Obama’s personal and political character — or consuming controversies that sidetracked the rest of his agenda.

It’s a sign that the media’s echo chamber can be a funny thing, prone to the vagaries of news judgment, and an illustration that, in politics, context is everything.

Conservatives look on with a mix of indignation and amazement and ask: Imagine the fuss if George W. Bush had done these things?

The media’s “echo chamber”? That is a kind reference for what they are really doing, or rather aren’t doing: their jobs. Conservatives aren’t the only ones questioning why this is happening. Anyone who truly cares about the our democracy and the state of journalism in this country are asking, too. But they do ask a good question:

And quickly add, with a hint of jealousy: How does Obama get away with it?

“We have a joke about it. We’re going to start a website: IfBushHadDoneThat.com,” former Bush counselor Ed Gillespie said. “The watchdogs are curled up around his feet, sleeping soundly. … There are countless examples: some silly, some serious.”

Indeed, Bush got grief for secret meetings with the oil industry, politicizing the White House and spending too much time on his beloved bike. But it’s not just Republicans who notice. Media observers note that the president often gets kid-glove treatment from the press, fellow Democrats and, particularly, interest groups on the left — Bush’s loudest critics, Obama’s biggest backers.

But others say there’s a larger phenomenon at work — in the story line the media wrote about Obama’s presidency. For Bush, the theme was that of a Big Business Republican who rode the family name to the White House, so stories about secret energy meetings and a certain laziness, intellectual and otherwise, fit neatly into the theme, to be replayed over and over again.

Obama’s story line was more positive from the start: historic newcomer coming to shake up Washington. So the negatives that sprung up around Obama — like a sense that he was more flash than substance — track what negative coverage he’s received, captured in a recent “Saturday Night Live” skit that made fun of his lack of accomplishments in office.

“There may well be almost an unconscious effort on the part of the media to give Obama a bit more slack because he is more likable, because he is the first African-American president. That plays into it,” said Sherry Bebitch Jeffe, a political analyst at the University of Southern California.

Democrats find the complaints of Obama “getting a pass” hard to stomach in light of the way the press treated Bush — particularly on the single biggest mistake of his presidency, relying on the faulty intelligence leading up to the war in Iraq. Now, Obama’s aides say, the positive coverage simply reflects the fact that their efforts are succeeding.

“As our administration makes progress on the agenda that Washington has ignored for too long, we expect we’ll get some news coverage of that progress that we like and some tough coverage that we don’t,” White House spokesman Josh Earnest said. “It’s not unlike the New Orleans Saints, who are getting lots of good coverage of their perfect record so far — certainly better coverage than the [2-5] Redskins — but it doesn’t mean the Saints have liked every story that’s been written about them since training camp. It goes with the territory.”

There are signs the friendly tone toward Obama is ebbing. Case in point: a front-page story in The New York Times noting that Obama’s all-male basketball games drew fire from the head of the National Organization for Women, who called the games “troubling.”

I agree that Bush seemed to be treated with kit gloves, way, way too much for my liking. The media does seem to enjoy determining who our next president will be. But even Bush’s treatment pales in comparison to the lovefest the MSM has had for Obama.

So yes, they are now asking why Obama excludes women (though he has now tried to rectify that by asking ONE woman, Melody Barnes, to play golf with him) in his games? We have known for ages that often, it is on the golf course or basketball court that favors are curried or power is amassed, hence the desire for women to achieve membership in numerous country clubs across the country. Oh, and Obama’s response to the NY Time’s articles highlighting that women were excluded? “Bunk, ” he said. Uh, yeah, no. It isn’t, President Obama.

There are too many examples of just how Obama has been allowed to skate free:

But here are other stories in which Obama seems to have gotten a pass:

New Orleans

As a candidate, Obama railed against the Bush administration for abandoning and then neglecting the people of New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina. He made five campaign trips to the city.

But as president, Obama waited almost nine months before visiting the Big Easy, spent less than four hours on the ground there and then jetted to San Francisco for a $3 million Democratic fundraiser.

“Don’t judge anybody on the amount of time that they’ve spent there. Judge only what this administration promised that they would do, what they’ve done every day and what they’re continuing to work on,” press secretary Robert Gibbs said, pointing to positive reviews of the federal government’s efforts under Obama.

For their part, Democrats can’t see how Bush officials can muster much umbrage over anything related to New Orleans, given how the Republican administration handled the initial response to Katrina.

Forget “Bush Officials.” How about us plain ol’ Americans? We’re pretty pissed off about it, too. Just saying. A biggie is this:

Managing The Press

When the Obama administration moved in recent weeks to isolate and disparage Fox News as a wing of the Republican Party, there were few immediate howls of outrage — even from Fox’s fellow journalists in the media.

Press defenders and First Amendment advocates who jumped on the Bush administration for using military analysts to shape war coverage reacted with a yawn to the White House’s announcement that it had deemed Fox to be not a “legitimate news organization.”

“Had I said about MSNBC what the Obama White House said about Fox, the media uproar would still be going on,” said Ari Fleischer, who served as Bush’s press secretary until 2003. “I instinctively would have known … the media would have leapt to their feet to defend them. I’m shocked it’s not happening now.”

One press veteran agreed. “If George Bush had taken on MSNBC, what would have happened?” said Phil Bronstein, editor-at-large of the San Francisco Chronicle. “That’s one place you can point to a real difference in how I’d imagine Bush would be treated.”

No freakin’ kidding. People would be screaming their fool heads off about free speech. But the Obamam crowd? They just jump on the Fox bashing bandwagon. Nice.

And this is a big one, too:

Politicizing the White House

Throughout the Bush administration, liberal critics warned that the hand of Bush political adviser Karl Rove was spreading politics into all corners of government. Reporters were on alert for any sign that politics was infecting the work of federal agencies. One top appointee got in hot water for allegedly asking agency officials to work to “help our candidates” across the country.

So some Bush aides went nearly apoplectic earlier this month when they spotted Gibbs and Obama’s political guru, David Axelrod, in photos of a Situation Room meeting on Afghanistan policy.

“Oh, the howling and screaming that would have happened if Karl Rove was sitting in on even a deputies-level meeting where strategy was being hammered out. People would have just gone ballistic,” said Peter Feaver, a former White House aide for both Bush and Bill Clinton.

Also, in about nine months, Obama has already attended more than two dozen fundraising events, while Bush did only six in his first year in office, according to a tally by CBS’s Mark Knoller.

Gibbs said Obama had to do more to raise a similar amount of money, since the kinds of soft-money fundraisers Bush did early on were banned. “This president … doesn’t accept money from PACs or lobbyists and doesn’t allow lobbyists to give at fundraisers that he’s at, as well,” Gibbs added.

Uh, yeah, sure, okay, Mr. Mealy Mouth Man. We all buy that one, right? Uh, yeah, no.

Then there is this one:

Dealing With Business, In Secret

Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney endured years of criticism and lawsuits that stretched all the way to the Supreme Court over secret meetings Cheney’s Energy Task Force held with oil and gas companies. When the policy emerged, critics said Cheney was carrying water for the industry.

Obama pledged to hash out health care reform live on C-SPAN and excoriated Bush for kowtowing to the drug industry. But aides signed off on the drug industry’s agreement to find $80 billion in savings to support reform. However, Obama aides didn’t disclose that the agreement involved the White House promising that current health legislation wouldn’t include further cuts or give the government the right to negotiate over drug prices.

I admit, this did actually get a rise from a few folks, like Greg Palast. But that moment seems to have passed now. Now, people rarely mention it. Big surprise…

And another issue near and dear to many of us:

Toning Down Human Rights

During the campaign, Obama talked tough on China. While candidate Obama pushed Bush to take a hard line, President Obama hasn’t. Hoping to win China’s help on Iran and North Korea, Obama skipped a meeting with the Dalai Lama and said little when China undertook a violent crackdown in its largely Muslim Xinjiang region. The White House has pledged to meet with the Dalai Lama later.

And while candidate Obama warned Bush against a “reckless and cynical initiative [that] would reward a regime in Khartoum that has a record of failing to live up to its commitments,” President Obama’s envoy to Sudan, Scott Gration, seemed to lay out a similar incentive-driven approach.

“We’ve got to think about giving out cookies,” said Gration. “Kids, countries — they react to gold stars, smiley faces, handshakes, agreements, talk, engagement.” The White House backed away from Gration’s characterization of the strategy but did recently lay out a strategy of engaging with the Sudanese regime.

Obama snubbed the DALAI LAMA. C’mon already – THAT’S not going to get an outcry? He’s the DALAI LAMA, for pete’s sake! No? *Crickets*

Just for, um, fun:

Traveling And Recreating

In his campaign and as president, Bush was mocked for a lack of interest in all things foreign — seven minutes touring the Kremlin, 25 minutes at the Great Wall of China, before declaring, “Let’s go home.”

During a trip to Europe in June, Obama chastised German and French reporters for suggesting that he was snubbing those countries by making only brief stops in each. “There are only 24 hours in the day. And so there’s nothing to any of that speculation beyond us just trying to fit in what we could do on such a short trip,” he told reporters in Germany.

But after taking his wife out for an attention-grabbing date night, Obama promptly jetted back to Washington. Within about 90 minutes of arriving at the White House, the tightly scheduled president was on the move again — headed to Andrews Air Force Base to play nine holes of golf.

How quickly people change. If Bush had done ANY of these things, the HuffPo and Daily Kos crowds would have been going ballistic about it. But now that it’s THEIR guy, it’s peachy keen. Where is the sense of fair play? Where is the concept of right is right? No, all of that gets completely thrown out of the window if it is someone they actually LIKE.

That is just sad. While ethics can be situational, the similarities between Bush and Obama are glaring, as many of us said they were all along. To completely disregard any sense of decency because it’s their guy weakens their arguments about choosing him in the first place. It makes it crystal clear that this is about winning at all costs, and choosing someone with little more than a teleprompter to do so.

It weakens their arguments against Bush, too, though they will most likely never admit that. But it’s true. In this case, what’s god for the gander, is, well, good for the gander.

Maybe if the media actually starts to do its job (for instance, where are all of the photos of Obama playing golf all of the time? Or basketball? They never failed to show Bush playing or riding his bike.), maybe they will start to open their eyes. One can hope, anyway. In the meantime, it continues to be our job to hold Obama’s feet to the fire for decisions he makes, and doesn’t make. It is our job to hold up the glaring similarities between Bush and Obama. And do so we will…

Or this:

And finally (!), this:

I sure as hell know I am. Oh, and all photos came from this Huffington Post site – where else, unless it was MSNBC? Ahem. There are plenty more, if you wish to go see them. I know you’re surprised by that.

I tell you who I would rather see. While the Obamas and their pal, Oprah, you know, the one who anointed Obama as The One, were wasting our tax dollars on a trip no other president has made EVER, there was someone who was hard at work for the country. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, of course, as the photos* below make clear. She was meeting with Dr. Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu, who is the Secretary General of the Organization of the Islamic Conference, to discuss issues related to Muslim relations around the world. Here she is greeting him:

Here is Secretary Clinton in rapt attention as he speaks:

And here, Secretary Clinton indicates it is time to move on:

Look at how he looks at her. We have seen this look of respect from leaders all around the world. They know what so many of us know – this woman is no political lightweight. She is brilliant, she is knowledgeable, and she is capable. She will get the job done, no hemming and hawing around, no sirree.

Sophie B. Hawkins says it all in the video below:

Damn – I wish she was president, too…

* All photos by Photo by Mark Wilson/Getty Images North America

The question is asked, and answered. The answer is a resounding YES. Yes, Obama has sold out. Long before he ever ran for US Senate, too, I might add. But why quibble, right? At least it is finally starting to let a little light of truth filter through the Obama’s followers Kool Aide induced haze. Though attacking Republicans and blaming them for ALL of our woes is still fair game for TYT, with only peripheral acknowledgment that the Democrats are right there with the Republicans. Never mind that the Democrats have been in power for over two years now. Pesky details – who needs them?

I was like that, too, about the Republicans not so long ago, so I reckon I shouldn’t be too judgmental. Perhaps TYT will realize at some point in the near future that the Democrats are acting pretty much like everything many of us said we hated about the Republicans as we listened to Air America. For instance, remember how ballistic we all went when the Republicans threatened the “Nuclear Option”? We were livid that they would dare do something like that. And now look who, in just 6 short months of having a Super Majority, is threatening the very same thing, even if it means running over some of their own members with reckless abandon? Yep. That would be the Democrats. Oh, but only for the most expensive part of the health care plan – nothing to worry about there! Lalalalalala…

You know, it’s a shame these blowhards out there didn’t bother to do their JOBS and vet this guy, maybe taking a little look-see into who his donors were, for instance. Maybe if TYT had BOTHERED to do that, he would have seen that Obama got close to $1.5 MILLION dollars from the HMOs and Health Services. Surely TYT didn’t expect they gave him all that money for nothing, did he?

Nothing, actually, worse than nothing, is what WE will be getting as a result of these faux journalists and commentators not bothering to actually look behind the curtain of Obama’s rhetoric to see if there was any reason on this Green Earth to BELIEVE HIM!!!!!! For cryin’ out loud, already! Sheesh!

Heck, even investigative journalist Greg Palast, whose article I reported on the other day regarding the whopping 2% the Big Pharma MIGHT give up, as TYT reported above, threw all of his training away for Obama. Glad he’s regained some of it, but it is way too late for us/US now. We’re stuck with Obama for 3 1/2 more years, thank you all so very much for that. (That is sarcasm, in case anyone missed it.)

By the way, did you notice that TYT guy above still cannot quite get out the words that HE has been had? That he didn’t bother to look under the surface? Nope. Not one bit – he bought that stupid “Hope!” and “CHANGE!” crap all the way to Obama being in the White House. Thanks shitloads. Sure would have been nice if you had maybe asked some pertinent questions like, “Why does Obama have NO records available from his time in the IL Senate? How can that be?” Or, “Why DOES Obama have close ties to Tony Rezko/Bill Ayers/Jeremiah Wright/Khalid Rashidi (pick one)?” Or how about this one, “Why does everyone say he has made so much of himself from his “humble” beginnings when he went to the most prestigious school in all of Hawaii and his grandmother was the VP of the biggest bank in Hawaii?” Or maybe, “Isn’t it pretty sexist of Obama to say that Hillary Clinton was only going to tea parties whenever she went abroad as First Lady? Especially since we know she helped to foster some amazing programs?” Obviously, I could go on and on and on. Feel free to add your own.

The problem is, people like TYT and Greg Palast and just about EVERYONE at Huffington Post (since TYT mentioned it) DIDN’T ask questions like that. No, their questions were more like, “Gosh, isn’t it hard to tear yourself away from the mirror when you are SO good looking??” Blech. Or, “Just how much time do you spend practicing your three-pointer?” Or any number of insipid questions like the ones Charlie Gibson asked Obama (while hammering Sarah Palin, even using made-up concepts to try and make her look bad). Pathetic for alleged professionals to act that way, if you ask me.

As I mentioned to Kathleen (Wynne, of HCPBNow.org, who was kind enough to send me this video), most of our elected officials, by the time they are bought by special interests have been there a while. Obama was hardly in there for any time at all, which makes me think he CAME this way. Huh – maybe THAT was the “Change!” to which he was referring?

In any event, if TYT is right, and this is already a done deal, it doesn’t just speak to how badly Obama screwed over his followers, and the rest of us, but how screwed DEMOCRACY is. And that is the biggest problem of all…So, yeah, I would be up for a revolution, TYT, since you mentioned it. Anyone else?

There is no shortage of threats to our economy. America’s unemployment rate recently hit its highest mark in more than 25 years and is expected to continue climbing. Worries are widespread that even when the economy finally rebounds, the recovery won’t bring jobs. Our nation’s debt is unsustainable, and the federal government’s reach into the private sector is unprecedented.

Unfortunately, many in the national media would rather focus on the personality-driven political gossip of the day than on the gravity of these challenges. So, at risk of disappointing the chattering class, let me make clear what is foremost on my mind and where my focus will be:
I am deeply concerned about President Obama’s cap-and-trade energy plan, and I believe it is an enormous threat to our economy. It would undermine our recovery over the short term and would inflict permanent damage.

Palin points that “American prosperity has always been driven by the steady supply of abundant, affordable energy”…

There is no denying that as the world becomes more industrialized, we need to reform our energy policy and become less dependent on foreign energy sources. But the answer doesn’t lie in making energy scarcer and more expensive! Those who understand the issue know we can meet our energy needs and environmental challenges without destroying America’s economy.

As with everything the Obama Administration is doing, cap and trade also employs the ram-rod technique of shoving legislation down the gullet before anyone has had a chance to give it a second thought. Palin then makes a point I’m sure Obama would rather she gloss over:

Job losses are so certain under this new cap-and-tax plan that it includes a provision accommodating newly unemployed workers from the resulting dried-up energy sector, to the tune of $4.2 billion over eight years. So much for creating jobs.

In addition to immediately increasing unemployment in the energy sector, even more American jobs will be threatened by the rising cost of doing business under the cap-and-tax plan. For example, the cost of farming will certainly increase, driving down farm incomes while driving up grocery prices. The costs of manufacturing, warehousing and transportation will also increase.

The ironic beauty in this plan? Soon, even the most ardent liberal will understand supply-side economics.

The Americans hit hardest will be those already struggling to make ends meet. As the president eloquently puts it, their electricity bills will “necessarily skyrocket.” So much for not raising taxes on anyone making less than $250,000 a year.

Even Warren Buffett, an ardent Obama supporter, admitted that under the cap-and-tax scheme, “poor people are going to pay a lot more for electricity.”

Governor Palin urges us to move in a new direction and states we can achieve energy independence if we:

…responsibly tap the resources that God created right underfoot on American soil. Just as important, we have more desire and ability to protect the environment than any foreign nation from which we purchase energy today.

In Alaska, we are progressing on the largest private-sector energy project in history. Our 3,000-mile natural gas pipeline will transport hundreds of trillions of cubic feet of our clean natural gas to hungry markets across America. We can safely drill for U.S. oil offshore and in a tiny, 2,000-acre corner of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge if ever given the go-ahead by Washington bureaucrats.

Of course, Alaska is not the sole source of American energy. Many states have abundant coal, whose technology is continuously making it into a cleaner energy source. Westerners literally sit on mountains of oil and gas, and every state can consider the possibility of nuclear energy.

Whether one agrees with her or not, one thing Governor Palin can speak to with authority is energy, given her service at the Oil & Gas Commission:

We have an important choice to make. Do we want to control our energy supply and its environmental impact? Or, do we want to outsource it to China, Russia and Saudi Arabia? Make no mistake: President Obama’s plan will result in the latter.

For so many reasons, we can’t afford to kill responsible domestic energy production or clobber every American consumer with higher prices.

Can America produce more of its own energy through strategic investments that protect the environment, revive our economy and secure our nation?

Yes, we can. Just not with Barack Obama’s energy cap-and-tax plan.

Loved the “Yes, we can” reference. What is your reaction to her position? I do not pretend to know that right answer here, but certainly she raises issues worth discussing.

Everyone else out there is having quite a big reaction. In a few hours, her op-ed in WaPo has attracted over 3,000 comments. All over the blogosphere and on news sites, people are reacting and as usual, Governor Palin is a lightning rod for both love and hate. HuffPo, typically, cannot kill the message, because she does have a point, so they shoot the messenger, claiming she is “too stupid” to have possibly written this piece. I thought the piece was pretty coherent myself, and yeah, I’m sure she wrote it. By the way, did I mention that I despise elitists. You can her article it in its entirety here.

Further, since the surprise announcement of her resignation on July 3rd, Palin has raised over $200,000 for her PAC, in addition to over $700,000 raised in the five months since its formation. CBS just put out a poll saying 65% of those asked think Palin would not make a good president and most pundits left and right are harping about the fact that her political career is effectively over. Wishful thinking, perhaps. I have no idea what Palin’s actions will be or what her political career will look like going forward, but one thing is assured — as long as these ridiculous attacks continue, her following will grow and she will get plenty of free press that she may use to her advantage.

As for the “chattering class,” as Palin calls them, I can only say, gee fellas, that’s an awful lot of copy to devote to someone with nothing to say, no platform to say it, no following and no hope of making a dent. Evah.

Somebody seems awfully scared of this lady.

Just sayin’.

Here is how the AAPOR defines the Bradley effect on page 53 of the report:

the tendency for respondents to report a preference for a black candidate (Obama) but vote instead for a white opponent.

And here is what their extensive and rigorous report found (pages 53-54):

Several compelling pieces of evidence suggest that the New Hampshire estimation errors were probably not caused by the “Bradley effect” – or the tendency for respondents to report a preference for a black candidate (Obama) but vote instead for a white opponent. A meta-analysis by Hopkins (2008) indicates that while the Bradley effect did undermine some state-level polls in previous decades, there is no evidence for such an effect in recent years. In the 2008 general election, the very accurate final poll estimates of Barack Obama’s fairly decisive victory over John McCain dispelled suspicion that the Bradley effect was at play during the final weeks of the fall contest. There is also a conspicuous lack of evidence for a Bradley effect in the primary contests outside of New Hampshire. Of the 81 polls conducted during the final 30 days of the Iowa, South Carolina, California, and Wisconsin contests, the vast majority (86%) over-estimated Clinton’s relative vote share, while just 14% over-estimated Obama’s relative vote share. This finding is based on the signed direction of A for each survey.26 Furthermore, as reported in Table 3, poll estimates of Obama’s vote share in New Hampshire were quite accurate – it was only Clinton’s share that was consistently underestimated.

Here is Table 3 (page 14):

In poll after poll Hillary Cinton’s support was undersampled while Obama’s support was correctly sampled. It was not that her supporters lied to pollsters; they were simply not contacted.

Pollster.com offers this summary of the report:

• Given the compressed caucus and primary calendar, polls conducted before the New Hampshire primary may have ended too early to capture late shifts in the electorate’s preferences there.
• Most commercial polling firms conducted interviews on the first or second call, but respondents who required more effort to contact were more likely to support Senator Clinton. Instead of continuing to call their initial samples to reach these hard‐to‐contact people, pollsters typically added new households to the sample, skewing the results toward the opinions of those who were easy to reach on the phone, and who more typically supported Senator Obama.
• Non‐response patterns, identified by comparing characteristics of the pre‐election samples with the exit poll samples, suggest that some groups who supported Senator Clinton–such as union members and those with less education–were under‐ represented in pre‐election polls, possibly because they were more difficult to reach.
• Variations in likely voter models could explain some of the estimation problems in individual polls. Application of the Gallup likely larger error than was present in the unadjusted data. The influx of first-time voters may have had adverse effects on likely voter models.

Hillary’s base of women, blue collar workers, union members, single mothers and the elderly were simply too difficult to contact, while young Obama supporters were always available by telephone. It was not racism or the Bradley Effect that enabled Hillary to win New Hampshire; it was that the pollsters never spoke to her base.

But the media and the Obama campaign had to accuse New Hampshire Democratic Primary voters of racism in order to minimize Hillary’s victory and racialize the race before the South Carolina primary, where the majority of Democratic voters are African-American.

Here is Mickey Kaus of Slate on January 9, 2008:

1. Bradley Effect: It seemed like a nice wonky little point when Polipundit speculated on the Reverse Bradley Effect–the idea that Iowa’s public caucuses led Dem voters to demonstrate their lack of prejudice by caucusing for Obama. Now this is the CW of the hour. Polipundit wrote:

I suspect that Obama may have scored better than he would have in a secret-ballot election, and benefited from a Reverse Bradley Effect.

New Hampshire, of course, is a secret ballot election. Voters might have told pollsters one thing but done another in private.** New Hampshirites I ran into Tuesday night mentioned that the state was very late ratifying the MLK Holiday.

Here is Andrew Kohut in the New York Times on January 10, 2008:

To my mind all these factors deserve further study. But another possible explanation cannot be ignored — the longstanding pattern of pre-election polls overstating support for black candidates among white voters, particularly white voters who are poor.…

Poorer, less well-educated white people refuse surveys more often than affluent, better-educated whites. Polls generally adjust their samples for this tendency. But here’s the problem: these whites who do not respond to surveys tend to have more unfavorable views of blacks than respondents who do the interviews….

In New Hampshire, the ballots are still warm, so it’s hard to pinpoint the exact cause for the primary poll flop. But given the dearth of obvious explanations, serious consideration has to be given to the difficulties that race and class present to survey methodology.

Here is David Kuo of the Huffington Post as votes were counted during the New Hampshire Primary:

Tonight, despite all the talk of how little race matters in this campaign, it is clear that race is still a big deal in bi-racial campaigns. And it has showed up for the first time, in a measurable way, in the 2008 presidential race.

It means that every poll — from exit polls to tracking polls — are absolutely suspect from here on out.

Here are excerpts from MSNBC on the night of the New Hampshire Primary:

ROBINSON: Well, I‘ll tell you what some people will suspect. Here you have polls, you know, the day before the primary showing Obama way ahead. And he finishes, you know, 15 points lower than that. A lot of people will suspect a “Bradley effect.”

You know, Tom Bradley…

SCARBOROUGH: Oh, Tom Bradley. You‘re…

(CROSSTALK)

ROBINSON: Not the Bill Bradley effect. We were talking about Bill Bradley‘s endorsement being, you know, not necessarily the greatest thing. I‘m talking about Tom Bradley, the mayor—African-American mayor of Los Angeles years ago, ran for governor of California. Polls showed him on election eve that he was going to cruise to victory and he lost. And Doug Wilder of—the first…

SCARBOROUGH: Wait, wait, wait, but are you really saying right now that the people of New Hampshire may have—I won‘t say, be racist, but are you saying that they did not want to go in that booth and vote for a black man? …

BRIAN WILLIAMS, NBC ANCHOR: I was just going to say, I‘ve been listening to the panel. Number one, the “Bradley effect,” whether people are going to decide it was in effect in this case is very real and talked about among people in the political business. Let‘s not forget the Gantt race in North Carolina few years ago.…

CHUCK TODD, NBC NEWS POLITICAL DIRECTOR: Well, look, you can only go back—you know, and I go back in recent history and you try to find races where you had these gigantic poll shifts, where the final pre-election polls differed so dramatically from the actual result.

And the one thing they all have in common is something that Eugene Robinson brought up earlier, and that is race.

It was Tom Bradley in California governor‘s race in 1982. The polls had him ahead—ahead by a fairly healthy margin over George Deukmejian. He ended up losing.

And Virginia governor, 1989, Doug Wilder had a double digit lead going into the final—in the final weekend. He won by a very narrow 1 point margin.

Harvey Gant, the 1990 Senate race with Jesse Helms—one of the most divisive races, frankly, that this country had on race. That was, again, pre-election polls had Gant ahead, Helms wins.

So you can‘t help but look at that—and particularly you‘ve got to wonder what this sends—the message that this could send to African-American Democrats, who may look at this and say, well, of course, that‘s what happened. You know, a lot of times when I‘ve noticed this and when you talk to African-American Democrats, they sat here and they‘ll see this race stuff a lot quicker than us in white America. And I think that this is—it‘s at least, you‘ve got to explore it. You‘ve got to look at it. History has taught us this—recent history—when it‘s come to dealing with African-American candidates.

Here is Carol Costello, Andrew Kohut and Professor Charles Ogletree on CNN’s Situation Room on January 11, 2008:

I’m Wolf Blitzer.

You’re in THE SITUATION ROOM.

Is the U.S. ready for an African-American president?

Senator Barack Obama’s strong showing so far in this campaign has many saying absolutely, yes. Others, though, say it’s too soon to tell.

Carol Costello has been looking into this story for us — you’ve been talking to a lot of people supposedly knowledgeable on this very sensitive subject.

What are they telling you?

COSTELLO: Well, it is a sensitive subject, isn’t it?

You know, most I talked with today say it is too soon to tell.

Obama seems to have transcended race, but can he in the long run?

Already, critics say Obama’s opponents are trying to create this subtle narrative of racial division. They deny it, but it illustrates how hard it is in this country to take race out of the equation.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

COSTELLO (voice-over): The Iowa caucus created all kinds of excitement surrounding Barack Obama. His win in a predominantly white state and a strong showing in another seemingly proves it — Obama can transcend race. It’s something Obama has always believed could happen.

SEN. BARACK OBAMA (D), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: If I have your support, if I have your energy and involvement and commitment and ideas, then I am here to tell you yes, we can in ’08.

COSTELLO: Maybe. But there are those who feel while Iowa and New Hampshire prove Obama can certainly get white votes, it doesn’t mean he can continue the trend — that Obama’s second place finish in New Hampshire, despite polls that had him coming in first, illustrates the undercurrent about race that exists in this country.

Andrew Kohut, in charge of Pew Research, has a theory. He says many of those inclined to vote for Hillary Clinton in New Hampshire were poor, uneducated whites who don’t participate in polls and who often don’t vote for blacks.

ANDREW KOHUT, PRES., PEW RESEARCH CTR.: At least race should be considered because we know that the kinds of people drawn to Mrs. Clinton are always the kinds of people who turn down surveys at pretty high rates. We don’t know much about whether the people who we don’t get are like the people that we do get.

COSTELLO: Polls about race are notoriously difficult to analyze. Take this ABC/Washington Post poll conducted before the Iowa caucus. A whopping 88 percent of Americans said race would not matter in choosing a president. But pollsters say you have to take this result with a grain of salt. Few people are willing to tell a pollster they’re racist. It reflects the Bradley effect, after Tom Bradley, a black man who ran for governor in California in 1982. Most polls showed him leading but he lost to a white male candidate.

PROF. CHARLES OGLETREE, HARVARD LAW SCHOOL: Ask Tom Bradley when he ran for governor in California. Black man, thought he could win, he didn’t. Ask Harvey Gant in North Carolina. Ask Harold Ford, Jr.

COSTELLO: Look at the stats. There is one black governor in the United States. They are nine women governors. They are 16 senators who are women. And one black man, Barack Obama.

Still, Barack Obama got plenty of votes in New Hampshire and in Iowa, which are both 95 percent white.

You could say that trumps the poll, but there are many more people yet to vote and racial under currents that are so hard to predict.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

And here is the Obama campaign as discussed in an article by Ryan Lizza in the January 21, 2008, edition of the New Yorker:

Did Obama experience a similar fate in New Hampshire? The evidence is murky, but his campaign believes the question is important enough to warrant study. When I asked a senior Obama adviser whether the Bradley effect was a possible explanation for the gap between the final poll numbers, which showed Obama leading by an average of eight points, and the ultimate outcome, he replied, “Definitely.” He added, “If so, then the question is: what’s different between Iowa and New Hampshire? It could be that the socially acceptable thing in front of your neighbor at a caucus could be different than what you do in a secret ballot. Obviously, that’s something we’re going to be trying to figure out as we go forward, primarily through polling. I know people are working on ways of asking questions about getting at people’s attitudes about race. We’re working on this.”

In other words, the Obama campaign cited the Bradley Effect in order to explain a loss, and the sycophantic media repeated the notion again and again and again. Apparently they received the memo from David Axelrod as votes were counted in New Hampshire. Too bad real analysis reveals that the Bradley Effect had no impact on the New Hampshire Primary.

Will CNN apologize? Will MSNBC apologize? Will the New York Times apologize? Will Slate apologize? And is it not a coincidence that after the Obama campaign decided race was the reason he lost the NH primary that the Clintons were accused of racism by the Obama campaign during the South Carolina primary? All of it was debunked in the report released today by the AAPOR. Will Obama and Axelrod apologize to Hillary and Bill Clinton?

I doubt anyone will apologize, for no one in the Obama administration or in the Obamamedia cares about facts. But at least all of us know that those of us who voted for Hillary during the New Hampshire primary and during the other primaries are not racist. Will they apologize to us?