Free Republic

More paranoid fallout from the We-Didn’t-Get-To-Vet-Her whiners in the MSM. Palin is afraid to face us!! Grab some Rolaids, you’ll have to suffer through Olbermann and Howard Fineman to get the initial story.

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."

Now, after the fact, the left is convulsing and gnashing their teeth. How could we have allowed ourselves to so demean Sarah Palin as to turn her home-run speech into a genuine star-making speech by lowering expectations so much through our derision!?! How could you have done that, you ask. That's not the right question. The right question is Is it even possible for you to avoid doing that?, because you do every. Single. God. Damn. Election. Cycle. It works in my favor, and yet I'm still horrified to see you doing it every time. Have you ever done anything...

With Palin, critics stoop to new lows Savages on far left blogs, along with cohorts in some of the mainstream media, have stopped at nothing to invade Sarah Palin's privacy and vilify her family. Unapologetic, overt sexism runs swiftly through the blogosewer. Palin has five children, doesn't like abortion, and her teenage daughter will keep her child and wed the father. Apparently, to an alarming number of antagonists on the left, this makes Palin something less than a woman breaking through the glass ceiling. She should have babies or work. "After the birth of her fifth child, she was back...

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...

Although the Lamestream media seems to avoid the fact that Palin was a state Governor before her place on the GOP ticket, she was in fact a state Governor. And if I recall correctly so was Bill Clinton, Ronald Reagon, Jimmy Carter and George Bush. So since when does being a State Governor NOT qualify you for the Vice Presidency?

Now that Sarah punched the media square between the eyes last night and caught their attention there is the slim possibility that they'll finally do their jobs. Obama will tout what great things he did as "Community Organizer" extrodinaire. When the discussion comes to what he did there in Chicago the public will finally find out who this fool hung out with, all the money they wasted, and where it went. The media are going to look like the utter fools that they are to the American people when it comes to light that THEY WERE THE ONES THAT DIDN'T...

What the media will now do to Palin.By Christopher CookThe disgusting, savage onslaught that the Democrats and the media unleashed against Sarah Palin, her children, and her husband will, as has been said by many, go down as one of the more disgusting episodes in American political history. And until the media, Hollywood, and academia are done revising history so that it never happened—that should take about 15 years or so—it will be remembered, and it will do damage to the press.So how do they recover? How do they accomplish their mission in this environment? They hate Sarah Palin...

ST. PAUL, Minn. - Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin and her Republican supporters held back little Wednesday as they issued dismissive attacks on Barack Obama and flattering praise on her credentials to be vice president. In some cases, the reproach and the praise stretched the truth. Some examples: PALIN: "I have protected the taxpayers by vetoing wasteful spending ... and championed reform to end the abuses of earmark spending by Congress. I told the Congress 'thanks but no thanks' for that Bridge to Nowhere." THE FACTS: As mayor of Wasilla, Palin hired a lobbyist and traveled to Washington annually to support...

..."I've learned quickly these past few days that if you're not a member in good standing of the Washington elite, then some in the media consider a candidate unqualified for that reason alone," she continued. As the crowd rained down boos at the mention of the media, Palin added, "Here's a little news flash for all those reporters and commentators: I'm not going to Washington to seek their good opinion - I'm going to Washington to serve the people of this country."

The story of the day out here in Minneapolis is the McCain campaign's war against the press. This has been building for some time. Those of us who have criticized the candidate--and especially those of us who enjoyed good relations with McCain in the past--have been subject to off-the-record browbeating and attempted bullying all year. But things have gotten much worse in recent days: there was McCain's rude, bizarre interview with Time Magazine last week. Yesterday, McCain refused to an interview with Larry King, for God's sake, because Campbell Brown had been caught in the commission of journalism on CNN...

Watching MSNBC about 6:00 CST with Chris Matthews and Keith Olbermann. In the background and imposssible to miss every time they showed his panel were very VERY large signs reading "MSNBC = DNC TV" and "MSNBC - you vetted Bristol, when will you vet Obama". Wonder what bathtub boy and boy wonder were thinking about that?

Following up on the main stream media's contention that Sarah Palin maybe unable to carry out the duties of the Office of the Vice President of the United States of America due to her children, we need to ask the main stream media companies if the following female executives have children and if so how are they able to carry out their executive duties. This is a question share holders need answered since the inability of these female executive to carry out their duties could have a financial impact on the corporation. Rena Golden senior vice president and executive producer...

Since when did anyone make a campaign issue out of “vetting”? Since the mainstream media needed a sneaky excuse to attack Gov. Sarah Palin’s family without being obvious in doing so, that’s when. The coverage of John McCain’s running mate over the past several days has been some of the most disingenuous, disgusting behavior I have ever seen from the mainstream media. They are engaging in character assassination without having the courage to at least do so honestly. When the news broke on Monday that Palin’s 17-year-old, unmarried daughter is pregnant, the left-wing chatterbox sites went bananas with glee and...

When the story first broke that Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards had cheated on his cancer-stricken wife and sired a baby with a bimbo on his campaign payroll, The New York Times [NYT] refused to run it. But when the news hit that not the president, not the vice president but the daughter of the vice-presidential nominee is pregnant, the Times ran five - count ’em, five - stories about it. In one day. Edwards dragged his sick wife through the Iowa boonies and paid his girlfriend off in campaign dollars, and the Times decides it’s not worth writing about....

What is the one thing that will anger a journalist faster than anything else? Telling him that he is not important. Last night Governor Sarah Palin said, “I am not going to Washington to seek [journalists’] good opinion.” No line could be more calculated to set off a flurry of fluster and flummery among the elite media. This means war. She should have done what the other guy did and coddled reporters, sweet-talked them, gave them the precious gift of “access”. Obama was more savvy. And lo, He gathered them—every major “non-biased” journalist in the country—and brought them on his...

Brent Batten: Gov. Palin fights back against her criticsBy BRENT BATTEN 11:12 p.m., Wednesday, September 3, 2008 ST. PAUL, Minn. — The Florida delegation to the Republican National Convention is less than 30 percent female. You wouldn’t know that, looking at the convention floor Wednesday night. State Party Chairman Jim Greer asked male delegates to give up their floor seats to women alternates and guests during the speech of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, the party’s first female nominee for vice president. “When the convention looks down on Florida, they’re going to see women,” Greer said. That maneuver will quickly be...

Where is it written that only senators are qualified to become President?... Or where is it written that mere representatives aren’t qualified, like Geraldine Ferraro of Queens?... Where is it written that governors and mayors, like Dianne Feinstein of San Francisco, are too local, too provincial?... Presidential candidates have always chosen their running mates for reasons of practical demography, not idealized democracy…. What a splendid system, we say to ourselves, that takes little-known men, tests them in high office and permits them to grow into statesmen.... Why shouldn’t a little-known woman have the same opportunity to grow?... [T]he indispensable credential...

Bristol Palin is accepting the call to motherhood with class and honor. However, the fury of criticism and exploitation leveled against her by the media is despicable. Several pundits have asserted that her pregnancy reflects the hypocrisy of the Christian right. Some have even suggested that her pregnancy is the fault of inattentive parents. Such charges are appalling. Bristol Palin is 17-years-old. She made a mistake. As a private citizen and a minor, the media should butt out of her life. She has enough things to think about; she shouldn't have to worry about the media assaulting her reputation. Being...

OBAMA PANIC The Obama forces then realized the foreboding Revelation that appeared before them..behold, a Palin horse: and she that sat upon him, her name was Death THE LIBERAL NIGHTMAREA real fear has invaded the Democrat political machine, with the introduction of the McCain choice of Sarah Palin, as his running mate, the landscape has abruptly changed.. Her unique persona exploded on the scene, and instantly took the oxygen from their rarefied air.. The pros and con artist, in the Obama camp realized at once, that this single masterful stroke, could hold an omen..  With this bold move, they recognized...

It was revealed today that the publisher of US Weekly is a heavy contributor to the B.O. campaign. Nothing wrong with that. But when you put B.O. on your cover last week in the light they did and then a week later on the cover put Palin on there with the words "lie and scandal", well you deserve to be called out. These people have no scruples at all. Politely let them know how you feel and cancel your subscriptions. letters@usmagazine.com USWcustserv@cdsfulfillment.com

The Democrats and their willing accomplices and devoted leftists in the media have completely lost it and they've gone rabid. They are trashing Palin and McCain throwing anything and everything against the wall hoping to derail the GOP. The level of hatred and viciousness underlies the DemonRATS desperation and the brilliance and wisdom of McCain's decision. Take a look at these headlines (just from Yahoo news this morning): McCain More Likely to Drop Palin, Bookmakers Say http://news.yahoo.com/s/bloomberg/20080902/pl_bloomberg/azjwbcginwsg;_ylt=Aj_FTVrnlWgWORCAZDrB95YDW7oF Palin's pork requests confound reformer image http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080903/ap_on_el_pr/cvn_palin_earmarks;_ylt=At1A015xUqCu1j.7EbpHbREDW7oF McCain campaign angrily defends Sarah Palin http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080903/ap_on_el_pr/cvn_palin;_ylt=AvDsrDMF4HQM0E08EdHmZXQDW7oF Romney readies for White House run if McCain fails...

After seeing the perverted coverage of Sarah Palin, it is time to give the media and their left wing bloggers a taste of their own medicine. We need to establish and fund a web site that compiles information about the personal lives of the major media and the left wing bloggers in a consolidated place. It should be modeled on YouTube so that anyone can submit a video of past predictions, compromising pictures and other embarrassing items in their past. We all remember how Larry Flynt offered to pay a $1,000,000 bonuty for Republican dirt. We don't need to go...

The left during Bush's first term questions his legitimacy and declared him not THEIR President. Well, look at the media coverage so far this election. Obama has been treated to the most adoring biased media coverage in the history of Presidential elections. No tough questions, adoring magazine covers, 5 to 1 coverage. And combine that with the VICIOUS attacks on Palin and her family the last week and the hysterical innuendo hit and run drive by coverage of the entire campaign in favor of Obama and this MUST be atleast worth 10-15 points right there if not more. All the...

After watching debacle after debacle these last few days, I can't help but think that if Russert was still alive none of this crap would still be happening. Tim was a Democrat, but a fairly down the middle Democrat. He would absolute come down hard on this garbage the media is doing now. A real shame his guiding hand is not there right now as it has become the wild west in reporting. Very sad indeed.

    YOU MAY BE A RACISTLiberal, Media, GLOSSARY White = lacks sufficient melanin, pathologically racist, unavoidable funding mechanism Men =  genetically predatory, mean spirited, stupid, clown, stumbling block, intolerable funding mechanism Middle class = unworthy, classless, trapped funding mechanism Lunch pale = actually works, fool who can't figure out how to fleece the government, unhealthy funding mechanism Blue collar = non academic, neck larger than a pencil, bullying funding mechanism Catholic =  bible thumper, moronic moralist, unenlightened, believes bedtime stories, judgmental funding mechanism Ethnic = birth father identified, unavoidable funding mechanism Elderly Women = outlived usefulness, undiagnosed dementia, uniquely disqualified...

As questions have been raised over how thoroughly Sen. John McCain's presidential campaign vetted Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin for the V.P. slot, it seems the McCain campaign was unaware of a video -- available online -- in which Palin talks about God's role in U.S. military action overseas, according to a political operative familiar with the situation.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The blogs are alive with the sound of Sarah. Republican candidate John McCain's staffers may deplore the online rumor mill that forced them to announce the pregnancy of newly minted running mate Sarah Palin's 17-year-old daughter. But experts have some perhaps unwelcome advice: Get used to it. "It used to be that a rumor would float across your desk and you'd say, 'That's just so outrageous we're not even going to respond to it,'" said Republican strategist Todd Harris, a former McCain spokesman. "But nowadays you really have to push back forcefully against almost every single bit...

Fred Thompson will forcefully defend the selection of Sarah Palin tonight in a speech Republicans are characterizing as "red meat." He will argue that the feeding frenzy over Palin's is the result of "panic" from the Democrat-friendly mainstream media. "What a breath of fresh air Governor Sarah Palin is. She is from a small town, with small town values, but that's not good enough for those folks who are attacking her and her family. Let's be clear, the selection of Governor Palin has the other side and their friends in the media in a state of panic. She is a...

Time's Mark Halperin has posted an advance copy of the cover of US Weekly magazine, the tabloid published by Rolling Stone's Jann Wenner. That cover shows a smiling Sarah Palin, holding her youngest son Trig. The screaming headline: "Babies, Lies and Scandal: John McCain's Vice President." Wenner has contributed $5300 to Obama's campaign since 2007. The cover was sent to select news organizations by Mark Neschis, the head of corporate communications for Wenner Media and former director of television in the Clinton White House. An email from Neschis that accompanied the cover read: "Thought I would send over our Us...

An online prediction market weighs in on whether VP candidate Sarah Palin will be dropped from the Republican ticket. NEW YORK (Fortune) -- Now the Democrats aren't the only ones who can try to capitalize on the negative buzz growing around Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, the prospective Republican VP candidate. Intrade, an online prediction market based in Dublin, created a contract Tuesday morning on the likelihood that John McCain will drop Palin as his running mate. After opening at a probability of just 3%, the odds on Palin being cut from the ticket climbed to 18% around 9 a.m. and...

The lead is one of the hardest, yet most essential, elements to a news story. It sets the tone for the article and captures the reader’s interest by using a minimum number of words. And speaking of minimum, the good lead offers, at minimum, the meat of the story: the who, the what, the when, and the where. The why and the how come later. Journalists learn lead writing in Journalism 101 classes. They hone their skill through class assignments. They perfect the art with the help of editors or producers. So what happened at the Houston Chronicle last week?...

Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin's announcement that her 17-year-old daughter is five months pregnant and plans to marry the child's father has sparked impassioned conversation among voters, and "Good Morning America" has decided to host a randomly selected, all-female roundtable to discuss the impact of the revelation. For homemaker and former nurse Maureen Griffin, the news didn't change her view of the Alaskan governor. "It makes me think more highly of her. Not that, I'm sorry — everyone has made mistakes in life. It may not be in that area. And you can look at her and say, 'You...

“If anything were to happen to a President McCain, the destiny of the free world would be placed in the hands of a woman who until the day before Friday was a small-town mayor.” – David Frum, National Post, 29 August 2008 Pundits are pontificating and as usual, they are focusing on Governor Palin’s origins while ignoring her accomplishments, making it all the easier to demean her, openly and outrageously on places like the Daily Kos and the Huffington Post and more subtly in the mainstream press. Even on conservative venues, some of the criticism sounds like it comes from...

Your humble correspondent is thinking of writing a story about Democrat voters who are insulted by vice-presidential nominee, Joe Biden. And I think I know just the place to find such Democrat voters---at a John McCain rally in Ohio. Just to save time and effort, I'm not even going to find out if the people I interview are even Democrats so I won't specifically identify them as such even though the headline for my story will read, "Joe Biden excites, insults swing-state Democrat voters."

Summary: If you think the media has a liberal bias today, wait until you see what the left has in store for America’s future. Extremist billionaires, “netroots” activists, and nonprofit pressure groups are creating a new media network. Through blog journalism, they aim to discredit the media outposts of the right while remaking the Internet in their own image. ... here is no argument that over the last 30 years American journalism has become increasingly powerful and pervasive. There is no escaping the modern media: It functions 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and is constantly updating online....

I'm a sucker for Frank Capra movies, movies like "It's a Wonderful Life" and "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington "which underscore the difference an honest person dedicated to the common weal can make to his community and his country. While today the stories may seem dated and too black and white a depiction of good and evil, they resonate still in American hearts even after decades of public viewing. We are cock-eyed optimists at heart. And we have been forever in love with the common man (or woman) who loves his family, his God and his neighbors enough to work...

Should we be fighting fire with fire? The media and the Kos bloggers seem to be content to dredge up every minor detail from personal lives of Sarah Palin's kids. Since the media is determined to act in a partisan fashion as the enemy I wonder how hard it would be to fight fire with fire. Now that internet use has become so ubiquitous how tough would it be for us to form a conservative group to investigate partisan media figures. Such a group could publish to the world the scandles and family troubles of partisan media figures like Chris...

I also feel sorry for Tom Brokaw and Brian Williams because of NBC's obvious bias in favor of Barack Obama. Tom and Brian will have to suffer a loss of credibility due to this. If they had any courage at all, they would demand Mr. Immelt stop ruining their reputation. NBC is also ruining it's own reputation because of this journalistic impropriety. Contrary to liberal ideology, Americans are not stupid.

While the Democrats had their week of unchallenged propaganda about their party – how perfect it is and how terrible the Republicans are – the latest good news about the economy and the average adjusted gross income went unnoticed. Once again, when Democrats don’t like the facts, they just ignore them with the help of the mainstream media. On August 26, Investor’s Business Daily reported data from the Internal Revenue Service showing that the average U.S. income had increased every year for five straight years through 2006. In fact, the $58,029 average was $739 higher than the peak year of...

There's no cheering in the press box, Jerome Holtzman, the recently deceased dean of Chicago sportswriters, famously, and wisely, decreed in his classic oral history. He needn't have bothered, though. Reporters are hard-wired to sit, arms crossed and poker-faced, while the rest of the room cheers a politician or a pitcher. If we rise with the crowd's standing ovation, it's only to crane around the necks of the people in front for fear of missing something. On those all-too-frequent occasions when we meet to bestow upon each other the parchments and gee-gaws that guarantee no American journalist will ever go...

....So unconventional was McCain’s choice that it left students of the presidency literally “stunned,” in the words of Joel Goldstein, a St. Louis University law professor and scholar of the vice presidency. “Being governor of a small state for less than two years is not consistent with the normal criteria for determining who’s of presidential caliber,” said Goldstein.....

For two years now, we’ve heard Barack Obama’s media allies telling us how he was a somehow Not A Politician, that he was the pragmatic soul of civility who was "uniquely qualified to nudge the country toward the color purple." (So said Newsweek.) If that myth hadn’t died under tons of weight to the contrary by now, it certainly should have expired in Springfield, Illinois when he selected Joe Biden as his running mate. The Democratic hatchet men were unleashed. Obama brought the D-word to the table: the Republicans are a “disaster.” The country could not suffer through “Four more...

Just as my colleague Brent Baker found on Friday night, the big broadcast networks on Saturday morning showed no shyness about labeling Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin a “conservative,” with NBC Today co-host Amy Robach calling her “a staunch conservative,” CBS’s Chip Reid tagging her “reliably conservative,” and ABC’s Kate Snow finding Palin to be “quite conservative.” But seven days earlier, as those same programs reacted to the Obama campaign’s text message heralding Joe Biden as the Democratic vice presidential candidate, none of those broadcast found a moment to call him “liberal,” in spite of Biden’s lengthy record of...

Trucker Shaaban Hafiz Ahmad Ali Shaaban is what trucker/terrorist-wannabe, Mohammed Yousef Mullawala dreamed he could be. Mullawala is facing deportation on various charges, including suspicious activities surrounding his brief attendance at the Nationwide Tractor Trailer School in Rhode Island. Unlike Mullawala, Shaaban was the real deal – a terrorist spy hiding behind the steering wheel of a big truck. The story of Shaaban is as captivating as it is unsettling. The Palestinian-born Russian-educated Shaaban settled in Greenfield, Indiana, with his family and worked as a truck driver for CLM Freight Lines in nearby Indianapolis. According to reports, his commercial driver’s...

"Gustav proves there is a God in heaven."--Michael Moore

How does Keith Olbermann view pre-Obama America? Apparently akin to the Soviet Union, and South Africa under apartheid. Here was his statement from the top of tonight's DNC coverage.

Ministry of Illusion: Nazi Cinema and Its Afterlife From Amazon This massively documented study of Nazi cinema...notably succeeds in analysing how Nazi films created a dreamworld that seemed neither realistic nor fantastic, but agreeable and persuasive--indeed closer to Hollywood than to Stalinist cinema. Above all, [Rentschler] stresses how films belong to a German cultural continuum, reaching into the present. Fifty years after Siegfried Kracauer's landmark book From Caligari to Hitler, this is the study that's long been needed of the movies' most disturbing triumph. (Sight and Sound ) Fifty years after Kracauer's monumental 'From Caligari to Hitler' comes the next...

MUZZLING DISSIDENTS AND THE MEDIA: LIFE UNDER PRESIDENT OBAMA In a stark example of Cold War repression tactics, Vladimir Putin launched new efforts to crush all opposition and dissenting voices. In actions reminiscent of the worst days of the former Soviet Union, Putin mobilized his thugs to pressure WGN-AM radio in Chicago to quash critics who dare to criticize the Politburo leadership. “WGN radio is giving right-wing hatchet man Stanley Kurtz a forum to air his baseless, fear-mongering terrorist smears,” Putin wrote in an e-mail to supporters. “He’s currently scheduled to spend a solid two-hour block from 9:00 to 11:00...

DENVER -- Police in Denver arrested an ABC News producer today as he and a camera crew were attempting to take pictures on a public sidewalk of Democratic senators and VIP donors leaving a private meeting at the Brown Palace Hotel. Police in Denver arrested an ABC News producer today as he was attempting to take pictures of Democratic senators and VIP donors leaving a private meeting at the Brown Palace Hotel. Police on the scene refused to tell ABC lawyers the charges against the producer, Asa Eslocker, who works with the ABC News investigative unit.