Maybe it will be dismissed as yet another "in the tank" piece by the "librul media." Maybe it will be ignored by "hard-working Americans" because it was written by a black guy. But today's NY Times column, "Getting to Know You", by Bob Herbert feels like a long overdue breath of fresh air from the MSM to me.

But what we’ve learned over the years is that Mr. McCain is one of those guys who never has to pay much of a price for his missteps and foul-ups and bad behavior. Can you imagine the firestorm of outrage and criticism that would have descended on Senator Obama if he had made the kind of factual mistakes that John McCain has repeatedly made in this campaign?

Progresssive columnist Sarah Littman, whose essays are carried in Greenwich Time and Stamford Advocate (both publicatins owned by Hearst Newspapers), was fired by publisher John Dunster on Thursday for having written a column critical of Loony Lee Whitnum while having held a "meet-and-greet" for Jim Himes last year.  According to Littman, Dunster maintains that criticizing Loony Lee while having held a "meet-and-greet" for Jim Himes last year "compromises the integrity of the paper".  

What's the truth?  This is a right-wing rag that has been shilling for Whitnum for months.  In virtually every article about Jim Himes, Greenwich Time's political reporter Neil Vigdor has been boosting Whitnum's candidacy, covering up her whacky utterances and essentially portraying Whitnum as a courageous fighter against the Democratic machine.

But this appears to have been nothing but a pretext.  

Why won’t the media admit that they were wrong in labeling John McCain as a Foreign Policy Expert? For the last few years John McCain has contributed to the largest Foreign Policy debacle this country has committed in possibly a generation. Why haven’t people began to see through the smoke and fog and realize that the label of Foreign Policy Expert, which is the only grounds that John McCain is running on, is totally fictitious? We must give John McCain credit though because he did come out and admit that he is not strong on the economy which is basically why he is clinching the false assertion that he is a Foreign Policy Expert so tightly. The media as well as the GOP and John McCain realize that without this fabricated label John McCain has nothing. He has nothing beneficial to offer as the next President of the United States.

When a mine collapse happens somewhere else in the world, the mention in the mainstream media is incredibly abbreviated - one of the three international events given 20 seconds in "Around The World In A Minute", carefully sandwiched between Panda births in China and a tribal festival you've never heard of in Peru (you know, to provide context).  The segment itself, incidentally, is often preceded by the weather and followed by a commercial/someone cooking something.  'We mustn't try to hold the audience's moment for more than sixty seconds if the event in question occured outside our borders.' This is their attitude.

It's a business - giving a shit doesn't make money on television.  I get that.  But I never thought I'd see the day that the MSM swept an American tragedy under the rug.

I just came across this interesting little article by Saul Friedman at Harvard's Watchdog Blog. Saul notes that the BushCo, having ostensibly broken many, many laws here in the U.S. and abroad merits its own crime reporter. This is a great idea for two reasons.

I know, it seemed to inexplicable, how could a journalist of such stellar talent and unshakable credability do something so rancidly corrupt that it would shake the faith in unbiased reporting that Americans have had for years?!

But there was something we didn't know, a simple explanation that, once heard, clears everything up. It was a promo for CBS Films new Blockbuster film! I managed to get my hands on some promotional material which I scanned and uploaded. Check it out below the fold!

(Update)
I just wanted to say, if you want to steal this image and spread it around, please DO SO! It isn't just early morning people at the great Orange Satan that need a laugh.

We have been listening to stories about a liberal bias in the MSM for years now. All the while we have been witnessing an MSM that has become  so afraid to be labeled as liberal, that they no longer can do their job. The Iraq war itself is the worst consequence of this situation. And I believe the coverage of the McCain campaign is the culmination of this phenomenon. While it is hard to get traction complaining about the MSM giving a pass to McCain on his plethora of gaffes, the recent CBS attempt to cover up one of McCain's more spectacular rewrites of history, rises to a new level. It's time to turn the tables and start doing some very loud intimidating of our own. The evidence now exists and it is incontrovertible. I would like to see KO start a new countdown, number of days since CBS and Katie Couric joined the McCain campaign.

Heirs to Freedom

Obama was trying to unite people together on one of the most divided pieces of ground in western history.  

I'll attempt to set aside my own political bias here (obviously in favor of Obama) and make an objective prediction about the upcoming election: it will be a comfortable win, if not landslide victory, for Obama and the Democrats in Congress. From whence comes this prognostication? I have four reasons.

As you're all well aware, John McCain enjoys repeating over and over and over that:
-he will never surrender in Iraq
-we must achieve victory in Iraq
-Barack Obama advocates defeat in Iraq (Joe LIEberman frequently repeats this statement as well)
-Barack Obama cares more about winning an election than the wellbeing of the American people.

Of course John McCain has never sufficiently defined what victory in Iraq would look like, and even if he has done that to some extent, he certainly has not offered any course we can chart to achieve that victory. It is fairly obvious that McCain wants to stay the course of the last 5-6 years, hoping things will fix themselves.

The real deal about the MSM being pro-Obama is the old strategy of shooting the messenger when all else fails. And failing is the best description of the McCain and GOP. So, shoot the messenger. Evidence is mounting. Take a look at CBS News, headlined "House Republicans Fire Off Letter to New York Times":

http://www.cbsnews.com/...

More below the fold

You can criticize John McCain for a great many things.  Media relations hasn't been one of them -- up until now.

Over the last eight years, McCain has taken pains to cozy up to the media.  It proved to be a devastatingly effective strategy, as a tidal wave of glowing news reports allowed a broke McCain campaign to neutralize and overcome the immense cash warchests of Romney and Giuliani.

This relationship was McCain's most potent weapon against Barack Obama -- and his best chance of victory in November.

This week, John McCain did the unthinkable -- he threw his media allies under the bus for short-term political gain.  Remember this decision well, for it likely marked the end of any hope John McCain had of winning the 2008 election.

Apologies upfront for this being a fairly short diary but I am sick to death of Andrea Mitchell.

last night CBS struck a blow against honesty, integrity, and ethics in journalism.  here's how we hit back.

Listening to the Conservatives whine about how "Liberally biased" the MainStream Media is, you would think they'd know not to give their enemies any ammunition. I've seen so many times they have done just that, either they know it's a big lie or they're masochistically begging to be humiliated.

First up, the Citizens United ad campaign. The NY Times reports today that "Senator Barack Obama" is "an overhyped media darling."

What makes this such a spectacular display of chutzpah is that the commercial features Kenneth Blackwell, former Secretary of State for Ohio and other characters that you wouldn't think the Republicans would want to be linked to by this media.

She is really, really stupid. That is why her stint as CBS has been such a disaster. Her handling or the Obama and McCain interviews highlights her ignorance and lack of intellectual rigor.

Obama provides her with nuanced answers to her repeated (3x) questions about the success of the 'surge' in Iraq. Katie don't do nuance. She needs to have the answers in preferably monosyllabic responses like 'yup' and 'nope'.

Update:  Keith Olbermann just reported that CBS edited out McCain's first response to Katie's questioning in which McCain demonstrated his confusion about the origin and impact of the 'Surge'. McCain claimed that the Sunni Awakening occurred as a result of the Surge, even though it begab two months before anyone had even mentioned the idea of the Surge. McCain goes so far as to accuse Obama of lying, when in fact he is the one who is either lying or extremely confused.

Amazingly CBS edited McCain's gaffe from the video they used on the air! They actually substituted another McCain answer instead of his lie/distortion. This is an egregious violation of every canon of journalistic ethics. Katie and CBS are covering up for McCain's gaffes.

Ok, so by now you've probably heard about the McCaign campaign's ad, "Love Is In The Air", which whines about the MSM's supposed ""love affair" with Obama.

As Jake Trapper from Political Punch puts it,

"This is like Britney Spears complaining that the hype around Miley Cyrus far exceeds her talent."

Dear American Media,

I understand 39 journalists and Andrea Mitchell are currently overseas with Sen. Barack Obama.  But did you know that there's another person also running for president?  

His name is John Sidney McCain, and he is old.  I have also discovered that he was a POW in something called "Vietnam".  While researching McCain, or, as I've come to refer to him: "The other, White Candidate" [TOWC], I've realized that it's difficult to understand what his positions are on a number of important issues.

This is where you come in.  One you remaining non-chosen stateside journalists should do an in-depth interview with John McCain.  On the issues.  Not his bio, not Obama, but the issues. McCain needs to tell us, in detail, what his plans are for this country and its people.  Because I don't think he's done that yet.