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Dana Milbank of the Washington Post often writes with a good deal of attitude, and his Tuesday column was no exception. In his report on Sarah Palin’s campaign speech in Clearwater, Florida, laced with mocking Palinisms (“darn right,” “betcha”), he wrote that “the self-identified pit bull has been unleashed, if not unhinged.” The “unhinging,” in Milbank’s assessment, came when Palin charged that Obama still has some explaining to do about his relationship with 1960s Weatherman bomber William Ayers. Milbank also wrote that Palin blamed Katie Couric for her “less-than-successful” CBS interview. Other newspapers reported a more light-hearted Palin response to...

WASHINGTON -- If you're a Democrat who needs help getting the votes of rural white folks, the go-to guy is David "Mudcat" Saunders, a central-casting political consultant recently made famous by a parade of magazine writers led by The Weekly Standard's Matt Labash. But sometimes you can learn more about a people and their place through literature than by hiring consultants. So I called Ron Rash, poet, author and purebred Appalachian whose newest novel, "Serena," should be at the top of Barack Obama's reading list. Sarah Palin might enjoy it as well. Described by one blurber as "an Appalachian retelling...

The US Secret Service has investigated an alleged death threat against Democrat Barack Obama that was yelled out on Monday at a rally for his Republican rival John McCain and running mate Sarah Palin. The probe by the service that protects US presidents, past and present, visiting world leaders and US presidential candidates, stems from a report by The Washington Post about a shout, “kill him,” heard during the rally when Obama’s name came up. The alleged threat was made when Palin was speaking of Obama’s relations with former 1960s radical Bill Ayers, whose group “The Weathermen” carried out a...

WASHINGTON -- How is it that an attractive woman who has been involved in state and local government since the early 1990s without much controversy is passed off in the media now as an airhead? Yet her opponent -- long known as an airhead, a braggart and even a plagiarist -- now is passed off as a statesman? I have in mind Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska and Sen. Joe Biden of Delaware or Scranton, Pa., or wherever he now claims to hail from. In September, Gov. Palin sat before ABC's Charlie Gibson and CBS' Katie Couric and was asked...

I was lied to by a person representing himself as an AP reporter. And I don't like it one bit. Saturday night, I was sitting in my den at Mullings Central and I got a phone call from a guy named Doug Daniel who said he wrote for the AP. He asked if I had a few minutes to talk about Gov. Sarah Palin's comments earlier that day that Barack Obama "is palling around with terrorists." I told him what I thought, and he quoted me correctly as saying "There appears to be a newfound sense of confidence in Sarah...

Reading William Kristol's column in The New York Times, I discover that Sarah Palin and I have something in common. Kristol, who was once Dan Quayle's chief of staff and therefore, shall we say, has a Mister Rogers approach to certain politicians, got Palin on the phone and reported Monday that she does not "have a very high opinion of the mainstream media." This is where we are in agreement. On account of Palin, neither do I. In the debate, she mischaracterized Barack Obama's tax plan and his offer to meet with foreign adversaries. She found whole new powers for...

“One-hundred-and-sixty-six academic economists signed a letter opposing the government bailout. In a commentary, one of those economists said the talk of Armageddon was scaremongering,” NBC “Today” host Matt Lauer said Oct. 1. Cramer said the experts didn’t know what they were talking about. “Today” host Matt Lauer had cited a commentary authored by Jeffrey Miron, the director of undergraduate studies for the Harvard University Department of Economics. “‘The current credit freeze is likely due to Wall Street’s hope of a bailout; bankers will – don’t laugh yet – bankers will not sell their lousy assets for 20 cents on the...

The media elites of both the Left and the Right are trying so hard to define what Palin should say and do, and frankly it's insulting to the average voter. Joe and Jane America couldn't care less about what Palin reads, what Supremes ruling she dislikes the most or whether she's familiar with all eight permutations of the Bush Doctrine. What the average American wants to know from Sarah is what would she and John McCain do to make their lives better. What would they do about high gasoline prices? What would they do to make sure there's a supply...

The Obamas: Portrait of an American Family Gwen Ifill Soon we will vote for our next president, and for the first time in history, one of the two candidates is a Black man. For a year, Essence pursued an interview with the entire Obama family to no avail. Finally, this summer ESSENCE became the only Black media outlet allowed a glimpse into the lives of Barack, Michelle and their two girls, Malia and Sasha, when we were invited to their South Side Chicago home. Weeks later, veteran political journalist Gwen Ifill was with the family as they campaigned in a...

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WASHINGTON - If John McCain is elected and goes on to win a second term, there's as much as a one-in-four chance America could see its first woman president — Sarah Palin. It's actuarial math.

From Glenn Reynolds at Instapundit, an email from a reader who works in a mainstream media newsroom: “Off the record, every suspicion you have about MSM being in the tank for O is true. We have a team of 4 people going thru dumpsters in Alaska and 4 in arizona. Not a single one looking into Acorn, Ayers or Freddiemae. Editor refuses to publish anything that would jeopardize election for O, and betting you dollars to donuts same is true at NYT, others. People cheer when CNN or NBC run another Palin-mocking but raising any reasonable inquiry into obama is...

The honeymoon is over for Sarah Palin. After a third major TV interview during which her performance was uneven at best, even fellow Republicans are having trouble enthusiastically backing their vice presidential nominee. The first-term Alaska governor had been a phenomenon, bringing delegates to their feet with her speech at the Republican National Convention early this month and helping John McCain draw the biggest crowds of his campaign afterward. But voters are now apparently having doubts. A CNN/Opinion Research Corp. survey released yesterday found that while 47 percent of likely voters believed that Palin had the personality and leadership qualities...

When Senator McCain chose Governor Palin to serve as his running mate, he unleashed from the left the most incredible torrent of sewerage we have ever seen heaped upon a Vice Presidential candidate. Alan Colmes said she caused the Downes Syndrome of her baby. Obama operatives said Trig was actually her grandchild. Al Franken helped write a skit for Saturday Night Live that suggested that Sarah’s husband had sex with his daughters. The head of South Carolina’s Democratic Party said that Governor Palin’s only credential was that she had never had an abortion. And so on and so on. To...

Remember what I wrote last week about the McCain campaign pulling back the curtain and finally allowing the press and the public to interact, however fleetingly, with its long-sequestered vice-presidential nominee? Um, nevermind. Knowing that Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin is currently visiting Manhattan, Father of Stumper a . . . .

Let me confess that I was genuinely unnerved by Sarah Palin's performance at the Republican convention. Given her audience and the needs of the moment, I believe Governor Palin's speech was the most effective political communication I have ever witnessed. Here, finally, was a performer who—being maternal, wounded, righteous and sexy—could stride past the frontal cortex of every American and plant a three-inch heel directly on that limbic circuit that ceaselessly intones "God and country." If anyone could make Christian theocracy smell like apple pie, Sarah Palin could. Then came Palin's first television interview with Charles Gibson. I was relieved...

Election 2008 is the gift that keeps on giving to American identity politics. First Hillary swept in the hoary 1960s "debate" about feminism. Then Barack reminded Americans that we remain illiterate on the subject of race. And now - just when I thought I was safe - Sarah Palin has somehow turned Republicans into feminists and the rest of us into sexists. Fine, I'll take the bait. As a young woman who did not support Hillary Clinton, and is quite convinced, unlike Mrs. Schlafly, that "victimology" can be a philosophy that knows no bounds of gender, race, class or creed,...

An internal government document obtained by ABC News appears to contradict Sarah Palin's most recent explanation for why she fired her public safety chief, the move which prompted the now-contested state probe into "Troopergate."

Exclusive: New Doubts Over Palin's Troopergate Claims Internal Government Document Contradicts Sarah Palin, Campaign By JUSTIN ROOD September 19, 2008— An internal government document obtained by ABC News appears to contradict Sarah Palin's most recent explanation for why she fired her public safety chief, the move which prompted the now-contested state probe into "Troopergate." Fighting back against allegations she may have fired her then-Public Safety Commissioner, Walt Monegan, for refusing to go along with a personal vendetta, Palin on Monday argued in a legal filing that she fired Monegan because he had a "rogue mentality" and was bucking her administration's...

It was a beautiful sight to behold. The obviously pro-Obama Campbell Brown snarling throughout an interview at the heels of former Hillary Clinton fundraiser and now McCain supporter, Lynn Forester de Rothschild, for "daring" to switch sides. After several minutes of accusing de Rothschild of everything from being an elitist to acting as a traitor to the Democrats, Campbell Brown set herself up for the grand slam dunk by Ms Rothschild using the very words of the Lightworker to turn the tables on the CNN interviewer. First we see in the transcript how Campbell Brown begins with an elitism charge...

McCain 'laughed' at BlackBerry comment MIAMI, Sept. 16 (UPI) -- John McCain's presidential campaign has quickly backed away from an adviser's statement that seemed to indicate the Republican helped "create" the BlackBerry. Douglas Holtz-Eakin, one of the Arizona lawmaker's top economic advisers, cited McCain's tenure as chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee during a briefing with reporters on the GOP candidate's plans for the Wall Street crisis, The New York Times (NYSE:NYT) reported Tuesday. "He didn't have jurisdiction over financial markets, first and foremost,'' Holtz-Eakin said of McCain's experience on the committee. Excerpt. ______________________________________________________ See related stories: "some in the...

Palin-mania continued to dominate the conversation on the Sunday morning talk shows, as Democrats slammed Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin for distorting her record in ads and on the campaign trail. The attacks came in the midst of a difficult weekend for John McCain, the Arizona senator and GOP presidential nominee. After a week of putting Democratic rival Barack Obama on the defensive, McCain’s supporters found themselves defending the veracity of claims made by the campaign about the new addition to the ticket. Several scathing media reports accused the McCain campaign of routinely stretching the truth, particularly when it...

THE MONEY QUOTES: "I think here the media is on very dangerous ground. I think that when you see them going through every single expense report that Governor Palin ever filed, if they don't do that for all four of the candidates, they're on very dangerous ground. I think the media so far has been the biggest loser in this race. And they continue to have growing credibility problems. And I think that that's a real problem growing out of this election. The media now, all of the media — not just Fox News, that was perceived as highly partisan...

Howard Kurtz's column in the Washington Post is surprisingly blunt and surprisingly revealing. The mainstream media, Kurtz says, are mad. Their anger, though, is oddly unidirectional: "The media are getting mad. Whether it's the latest back-and-forth over attack ads, the silly lipstick flap or the continuing debate over Sarah and sexism, you can just feel the tension level rising several notches. Maybe it's a sense that this is crunch time, that the election is on the line, that the press is being manipulated (not that there's anything new about that)." There certainly isn't. Barack Obama has been manipulating the press...

In Governor Sarah Palin's first media interview since her nomination, Charles Gibson has insisted on forcing Sarah Palin to defend something she did not say: GIBSON: You said recently, in your old church, "Our national leaders are sending U.S. soldiers on a task that is from God." Are we fighting a holy war? PALIN: You know, I don't know if that was my exact quote. GIBSON: Exact words. The problem is that her full statement simply asked people to pray for soldiers to do the right thing and for US leaders to do God's will in general when sending...

A CNN reporter this week didn’t seem to know or care that a fake photo showing a bikini-clad, rifle-toting Sarah Palin had been widely debunked days earlier as a fraud, the latest in series of incidents involving apparent misstatements or inaccurate reporting by the news network. “(John) McCain has been really good about painting (Barack) Obama as this lightweight … They don’t want that to come back on Sarah Palin, and people say, yes, she looks good in a bikini clutching an AK-47, but is she equipped to run the country?” CNN’s Lola Ogunnaike said in response to a question...

Gov. Sarah Palin is dividing the country. The airwaves are filled with those who can see past McCain's cheap ploy to get his campaign moving. McCain put his desire to be President above the best interests of our country. He deserves to lose. Aside from all the reasons Palin is a danger to the country because of her lack of qualifications remotely relevant to any high national office, from foreign policy to education to the economy to social security to health care, there's her record, her lack of a record, her ties to the radical right, her position on issues,...

Former GOP presidential candidate Fred Thompson is pushing back hard against a CBS reporter’s editorial assessment of his remarks at a rally for John McCain and Sarah Palin earlier today. “Seems as if, all of a sudden, some of my old buddies over at CBS have become very sensitive to what they consider to be hyperbole on the presidential campaign trail. Imagine that,” Thompson told Townhall. Listen to Senator Thompson's full statement here. CBS Reporter John Bentley, who covered Thompson’s presidential campaign as an embed reporter, wrote a very negative analysis of the speech Thompson gave to introduce GOP vice...

Readers who complain to the McClatchy Company’s Raleigh News & Observer about the paper’s blatant liberal/leftist Anything for Obama bias usually get a quick dismissal. The staff's default response to criticism is "The N&O's fair and accurate.” (That’s also the promotional slogans the N&O uses when drumming up advertising contracts.) Sometimes an editor or reporter will go so far as to tell readers, “It’s you who have the bias.” I know that first hand. With that as background, let’s turn to G. D. Gearino’s eponymous blog. Gearino’s a career journalists and prize-winning author who some years back worked at the...

Ever since she was selected as McCain’s vice presidential nominee, Governor Sarah Palin has been subjected to a relentless barrage of negative comments and jokes by supposedly objective news journalists. In addition, Palin has been fodder for the late night comics. For example, last night at the MTV Video Music Awards, idiot British comedian Russell Brand joked about Palin’s 17-year old pregnant daughter and her boyfriend. Brand also implored Americans to vote for Obama and called President Bush a “retard.” The steady stream of anti-Republican and pro-Obama commentary in the media has been overwhelming. The American people clearly know that...

Attention fellow feminists our national media just set us back 100 years. In the most disgusting example of biased, anti-feminist questions, our media has proclaimed: "Women can't and shouldn't ever have it all." Women as a species should stay home with the babies and never aspire to public office. OK I'm a tad disgusted. As soon as Sarah Palin shocked the nation by being named the vice presidential running mate with Republican presidential candidate John McCain members of the press started questioning her ability to be both a mom and member of the executive branch - thus firmly installing the...

Rachel Maddow is so Keith Olbermann's protege, she's supposedly trying to get people fired. Just like her mentor! "Maddow tried to replace all the staffers who work on the 9 p.m. time slot, which she takes over on Monday, but management refused," claims the indefatigable Page Six. This would be, of course, Dan Abrams' former team at Verdict. And ya know who Olbermann can't stand? A one Dan Abrams, who for a time played MSNBC general manager, and thus, Olbermann's boss, but the two never clicked, and neither wanted to pay mind to the other. You'd expect, then, that the...

The day before McCain surprised the nation with his pick of Sarah Palin as his running mate, I had a ‘discussion’ with a woman I have known for many years. Although well into the “gifted” range (so called “genius“ ) she has a penchant for choosing political losers! She is a walking talking example that IQ and common sense do not necessarily follow the same ark. I had once argued, that if I were President, I would put her on my staff as a reverse barometer; I would do the opposite of whatever course of action she would suggest I...

Sarah Palin's first year as mayor of Wasilla, Alaska, could easily have been her last as she became embroiled in personnel challenges, a thwarted attempt to pack the City Council and a bitter standoff with her local newspaper.

So powerful are the media that they have been referred to as the fourth branch of government. Indeed, they can make or break reputations. Example: when former Vice President Dan Quayle misspelled “potato” by adding an “e,” the press magnified and harped on the incident so much that Quayle never escaped the general perception that he was a light-weight. By contrast, when Barack Obama stated earlier this year that he had visited 57 states, the media glossed over the gaffe, sparing Obama the Quayle treatment. Double standard, anyone? At times, the media’s power goes to their head. When Sarah Palin...

NEW YORK -- News executives Thursday tried to shake off the excoriations of the media emanating from the Republican National Convention, defending their coverage of GOP vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin as responsible and evenhanded. ______ "I really do take exception to it," NBC News President Steve Capus said. "These terms get thrown around in an awfully cavalier way, and they're incredibly damaging. We're in the business where words matter, and those are awfully, awfully strong accusations."

H/t Kimberly M. Did the Code Pink members who interrupted John McCain's speech last night use MSNBC press badges to get into the hall? Not according to Code Pink itself, which claims the two women "obtained passes to the convention from disaffected Republicans." Right. There is another much more intriguing explanation out there. According to Shay at Booker Rising, which describes itself a newsite for black moderates and black conservatives [emphasis added]: "I took the shuttle bus back to Minneapolis, and I overheard a convention organizer named Phil telling a convention delegate that the protesters on Wednesday night got through...

HOWDY FREEPERS;You know folks, Shawn Hannity is right. Journalism as we once knew it is dead.I don't think it could have been anymore evident than the disgusting treatment that Sarah Palin and her family have been getting at the hands of the establishment media.When you contrast all that to the gussing favorable treatment that Michelle Obama has been receiving, it's understandable why more and more people are throwing bricks at their TV sets and hanging picutres of TV news anchors on dart boards and throwing darts at those pictures and so on.I think it's quite obvious why all this is...

If only Brian Ross, ABC News and the rest of the mainstream media would spend as many news minutes on Obama's dealings with Wright, Rezko, Ayers, et.al. Sigh..........

Ordinarily, I would never recommend MSNBC viewing to anyone. After all, when I'm not hosting my radio show or writing for Townhall.com, I work at Fox News Channel as a contributor. But if you happened to be Tivo'ing MSNBC last night after Sarah Palin's home run speech, you MUST check out poor Keith Olbermann. After fawning and gushing and salivating over the Democrats during their convention in Denver, Keith looked and acted last night like he had swallowed a fish bone. I mean, this guy was mad. Pathetically trying to use words like "condescending" and "saracastic", he did his best...

Get ready folks, in just a few hours we are about to watch heads exploding from the hate filled moonbat left. Leading that charge might just be Portland's own Jack Bogdanski. Remember he is the creepy guy who bought, hook line and sinker, the story about Governor Palin faking her pregnancy (Que Twilight Zone music now). I checked out some of Jack's comments from his hate filled anti-Palin thread and found a few of these morsels that were posted on Sunday, August 31st. Check them out and get yourself a little chuckle. Doris, don't worry. By this time Tuesday, she...

I have always tended to think that conservative complaints about the media are a little exaggerated. There are occasionally obvious instances of bias and clear examples of a double standard, but most reporters don’t want to fall into those and some conservatives are surely too sensitive to them. But this week has changed my view. I have never seen, and I admit that I could never have imagined, such shameful, out-of-control, frenzied, angry, condescending, and pathetic journalistic malpractice. The ignorant assault on Palin’s accomplishments and experience, the breathless careless airing of deranged rumors about her private life, the staggeringly indecent...

WASILLA -- It was Day 5 of the new order, the one where former mayor and current Gov. Sarah Palin is running for vice president of the U.S. and every media outlet in the country has set its GPS coordinates for the Mat-Su Borough. Mayor Dianne Keller, swamped with requests for interviews and information, called a press conference in self defense Tuesday to establish some ground rules. She didn't bother to invite locals. (snip) CBS and ABC news were there. The L.A. Times, Politico, the Washington Independent and at least four Japanese outlets. The rules? If you want to ask...

McCain presidential campaign strategist Steve Schmidt went on the record with the Washington Post's Howard Kurtz today, revealing the depths to which the mainstream media has sunk in their efforts to destroy the family of Republican vice presidential pick Alaska Governor Sarah Palin.Schmidt said that the campaign has been deluged with demands from reporters that the Palin family submit to DNA testing to assuage baseless rumors promulgated by the Democratic party's favorite website, the Daily Kos.Schmidt accused the media of being "on a mission to destroy" Sarah Palin.Kurtz writes that Markos Moulitsas, the founder of the Daily Kos, believes the...

....Let's see if they apply all of the platitudes to Sarah Palin that they have applied to Hillary Clinton. We know damn well they're not. Right now the Drive-Bys -- and they're not going to be able to help themselves -- are scouring. They're looking as hard as they can, they're conducting opposition research. The Drive-Bys are trying to come up with talking points for Obama. They are! You may laugh about that. The Drive-Bys are trying to come up with anything negative on her they can that they can pass to the Obama campaign. You doubt me? Do you...

In 72 hours, the media has subjected Bristol Palin to more scrutiny than they've given to Barack Obama in two years. Perhaps that's a mild exaggeration. But pretty darn mild. UPDATE: Howard Kurtz notes, "Liberal radio host Ed Schultz was telling listeners Monday that Palin was an 'empty pantsuit' who had set off a 'bimbo alert.'"

The Corporate Mainstream Media has just received word that they have ANOTHER gang-rape to attend. Just when they thought that they could take a break from their rampant bias, sexism and utter contempt for the concept of journalistic integrity, John McCain has given them another woman to deal with: Sarah Palin. Yesterday, the ‘New Democrats’ didn’t even know what to do with themselves. They were utterly stunned at the fact that they had just been outplayed and outmaneuvered by the Republicans (AGAIN!) by placing the only candidate with Executive experience on both tickets, and who “just happens” to be a...

Palin has stood up to the major oil companies, and has made utterly transparent the State of Alaska's dealings with them, but she is neither in their pocket nor a rabble-rouser who unfairly demonizes them. She's dealt with them like a responsible public servant, not a class warrior. Stephen Spruiell was generous and self-critical enough to link today on The Corner a comment I wrote to one of my own Palin posts in which I took issue with a post by my excellent friend Ed Morrissey (formerly of Captain's Quarters) at Hot Air. Basically, I thought Ed (and, inferentially, Mr....

DENVER, en route to BLOOMINGTON -- On Friday late, as the sparkle and glow from Thursday night's Obama-rama spectacular at Invesco Field was receding slightly, to something like mortal dimensions, a group of Democratic stragglers from Tennessee were hanging in the downstairs lounge of the Marriott Tech Center Hotel. They fell to talking about Republican nominee-to-be John McCain's surprise choice of Alaska governor Sarah Palin as his vice-presidential running mate. Two members of this tight little group were Will Cheek of Nashville, a former state party chairman and a Democrat's Democrat, and his equally committed wife Joan. Amid what was...