CNN

What a pathetic joke for a news organization… CNN has plumbed the depths of falsification again by telling viewers throughout the day, Saturday, March 27th, that there were ‘dozens’ of people, maybe hundreds at the Searchlight, Nevada Tea Party rally. It can only be described as a pathetic attempt at misinformation. They must have the pizza guy doing news editorial programming, which shouldn’t really surprise anyone given their perpetual low market ratings… it’s embarrassing to get beat by MSNBC.

The Tea Party Express Bus, Searchlight, Nevada.

If you are in the business of news prevarication, you could at least be a bit creative about it. But then that would take talent and that appears to be something that there is a severe dearth of at CNN. That could be the reason that they hired RedState’s Erick Erickson… goodness knows their stable could use the help.

The latest figures I have on the rally held in Senator ‘Dingy’ Harry Reid’s backyard at Searchlight, Nevada, is that right around 20,000 people showed up to hear keynote speaker Sarah Palin. Palin, as usual, is taking massive amounts of abuse from the left. That’s to be expected and is a direct gauge of the fear they have for her. Obama can’t get more than a few thousand people to his bought-and-paid-for teleprompter extravaganzas. Sarah Palin gets more than that to a book signing.

Sarah Palin In Searchlight, Nevada.

Since announcing her support for John McCain, Sarah has taken an awful lot of heat from our side as well. I’ve made no secret of my dislike for John McCain. He comes with more baggage than the cargo hold of a 747. Sarah Palin cannot be unaware of his liabilities, both to the State of Arizona and her own future political aspirations. For myself, JD Hayworth is a far better choice. He is as solid a conservative as John McCain is a RINO, a Conservative when it suits his purpose, and is many times injurious to his party and the country.

He is just plain wrong-headed on some critical issues, especially wrong on interrogation and amnesty for illegals. Sarah Palin is exhibiting loyalty to the man who launched her into national political prominence. Had she not, I would have had questions about her integrity. I have no doubt she would have made it on her own but it may have taken her several more years, and the way things look the country needs her now.

I believe that many times things happen for a reason. I believe that the Sarah Palin phenomenon is one of those times. So to the giants of the now largely marginal left wing media… keep it up. You’re the best promotional advertising we can get.

Semper Vigilans, Semper Fidelis

© Skip MacLure 2010

In last nights CNN broadcast Cambell Brown, Jeffery Toobin, and others called the McCain campaign’s ad about Senator Obama’s support for a bill for ‘comprehensive sex education for kindergarteners’ a lie.  One problem, they’re wrong.  The text of the bill states,

“Each class or course in comprehensive sex education in any of grades K through 12 shall include instruction on the prevention of sexually transmitted infections, including the prevention, transmission and spread of HIV.”

They repeated the Obama campaign’s explanation that the bill was about ‘inappropriate touching’.  Second problem, there is no reference to ‘inappropriate touching’ in the bill.  Byron York of National Review researched this bill and provides and an explantion along with the text of the bill in his article On Sex-Ed Ad, McCain is Right.  However, when this article was brought up during last night’s CNN broadcast it was dismissed. 

CNN didn’t do their homework and they should appologize and retract their statement that the McCain campaign lied.

Contact CNN and demand a retraction.

Cambell Brown/Election Center Feedback Form

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The Washington Post's front pager about Sarah Palin's per diem expenditure for her upkeep as Governor of Alaska demonstrates one of the Left-Wing news media's (especially print media) most disingenuous and corrupt practices - the use of newspaper headlines (and often, ledes) as a sort of push-poll mechanism against political foes.

If any set of people should know the power of words to convey deeper meanings than the mere literal, it is headline writers and the editors that sign off on them. More than anyone else, these people know that the bulk of the public does not do more than glance at the headlines on the front page and if time permits, read the lede paragraph of what they find interesting and shuffle on to the counter, leaving the newspaper still on the rack.

I believe it is with this knowledge that everyone involved with the production of this rather unremarkable article (except for the fact that Palin's expenditures are 20% that of her predecessor's) about a public official's entirely reasonable, legal, above-board and quite frankly frugal public expenditures somehow managed to get it on the Washington Post's front page under this particular headline:
"Palin Billed State for Nights Spent at Home"

One of Jonah Goldberg's readers asks; why wasn't the headline the far less eyebrow raising "Sarah Palin Followed Alaska's Per Diem Policy"?

Simple. Because the former allows the WaPo to strongly imply a breach of ethics on the part of Sarah Palin - the only reason such an article detailing absolutely no such breach or questionable act would earn a spot on the front page. The headline and its placement has no other purpose than to capitalize on the ignorance of the average American voter seeing the headline at the supermarket in favor of the Obama/Biden ticket.

Of course, every single editor and newsroom writer at the WaPo would argue that the headline is entirely accurate and point to the content of the article itself (fair enough in itself) as proof that they had no intention of suggesting that Sarah Palin was collecting money she should not have. They would, of course, claim that they can see no way in which any casual headline browser would see the headline and not automatically assume Sarah Palin was bilking Alaskan taxpayers of the nightly cost of a suite at the Ritz while she was sleeping at her own home.

They would also be lying. It's an old, dirty and malicious trick, they know it and when it comes to politicians they like (or worship - as they certainly do Obama) they're very careful to craft headlines and ledes that don't lead the casual headline skimmer to take away something negative about their subject.

Imagine a newspaper printing a story about a politician with a headline saying "Congressman Slept With Seventeen Year Old High School Student" and right there above the fold, on the front page, is a picture of the 41 year old Congressman side by side with the year book picture of a pretty high school sophomore smiling innocently at the camera.

Imagine, upon reading the article, you discover that the year book photo was from 23 years ago ... meaning that the congressman slept with the 17 year old school girl when he was 18. Would you believe any editor or writer at that newspaper who tries to convince you that there was no malice involved in choosing that particular headline and placing it on the front page - on account of the fact that the headline is literally true?

The scenario may be a bit too stark, but it is the exact same deal here. The only difference is in degree.

John McCain looks like he's closing the gap, or even taking the lead, in some national polls. RealClearPolitics now gives him a 274 to 264 edge in the electoral college without toss-up states. There are plenty of explanations for this, and they all might be valid: McCain starting to hit Obama hard, Obama's failure to come up with a coherent strategy in the midst of great tactics (something Soren points out), etc.

One of the new theories is Obama's failure to sell his economic message to voters. David Leonhardt of the New York Times Magazine released his Sunday story today on Obama's academic battle on economic policy:

"With Obama, there is vast disagreement about just how liberal he is, especially on the economy. My favorite example came in mid-June, shortly after Obama named Jason Furman, a protégé of Robert Rubin, the centrist former Treasury secretary, as his lead economic adviser. Labor leaders recoiled, and John Sweeney, the head of the A.F.L.-C.I.O., worried aloud about “corporate influence on the Democratic Party.” Then, the following week, Kimberley Strassel, a member of The Wall Street Journal editorial board, wrote a column titled, 'Farewell, New Democrats,' concluding that Obama’s economic policies amounted to the end of Clintonian centrism and a reversion to old liberal ways."

"Some of the confusion stems from Obama’s own strategy of presenting himself as a postpartisan figure. A few weeks ago, I joined him on a flight from Orlando to Chicago and began our conversation by asking about his economic approach. He started to answer, but then interrupted himself. 'My core economic theory is pragmatism,' he said, 'figuring out what works.'"

Pragmatism? Figuring out what works? Really? Fantastic! Not only is there a fight between the netroots and grassroots of the Left, there's a fundamental fight within the academic wing of the Left on the principles of free markets vs. the principles of European social democracies. They're obviously trying to merge the two in some sort of coherent fashion, but have failed miserably. So how can McCain take advantage of this and continue his surge in the polls?

Here are my first impressions from Rick Warren's Saddleback Civil Forum on the Presidency. (I admit I was switching back and forth between that and the Olympics. Fortunately, I only missed some track and the women's marathon and just saw Phelps win his 8th gold medal.)

Speaking of marathons, Barack Obama fared about as well as he did in some of the marathon-like primary debates he had with Hillary Clinton. To put it best, I'll leave it to John Kerry's former online fundraising guy who has become an evangelical since then:

"OK - I take back some of my initial over-enthusiasm for Obama’s performance. I think he did not meet the high expectations of evangelical leaders who are secretly plugging for him. Too many of his answers were vague. He just didn’t seem fully prepared. On a lot of those questions, he had wide open doors. He could have nailed them. But he just kind of went around in circles. A little John Kerryesque, I fear to say."

What exactly is Obama's problem when it comes to forums, town halls, debates vs. rallies and speeches? I take it back to a point I've made earlier about the junior senator from Illinois being, at his heart of hearts, an academic. On the abortion issue, Obama didn't come out strong on being pro-choice while supporting other issues related to "life." Instead, he bloviated on a line that Democrats (and moderate Republicans) have been saying since 2006: "let's find a way to reduce the amount of abortions in America" by encouraging adoptions, etc. It's a good point, but one that many Americans really don't care about.