All Your Bucks is Belong to US

The Associated Press reported yesterday that Governor Palin had committed this astonishing gaffe caused, no doubt, by her ignorance and lack of experience:

Republican Sarah Palin told a rally of several thousand people Monday that Barack Obama would not only raise their taxes as president but also spend the money in a way that could hurt the economy. "What that means is government taking your money and spreading it out wherever politicians see fit. That's not good for the economy," she said.

For readers who might have skipped out on basic high school civics, the AP provided this reminder:

The government's job is to collect taxpayer dollars and decide how to spend them.

I know, I know -- you think we made that one up. But we didn't have to.

Further on, the piece has this nugget:

"It's really going to be a fight," said Ronda Ellis, 34, a registered nurse who noted many of her fellow nurses are bothered by Palin's opposition to abortion rights. "A lot of them feel like, as a woman, how could she oppose this?"

Indeed. The maternal instinct to eat one's young runs strong.

Not The New York Times

If you think the election reporting provided by the New York Times or the Associated Press is biased, here's how al Jazeera is covering the race:

Fair & Balanced

The Editorial Staff at Glib & Superficial have done little to hide their enthusiasm for Governor Sarah Palin. We relish the prospect of a pit-bull in lipstick unleashed on the federal bureaucracy. But it is also our goal that our readers be well-informed, and hear all sides of the important issues of our time.

Herewith, then, a piece by from San Francisco Chronicle columnist Mark Morford, that appeared in Friday's edition in the City by the Bay:

Every white woman I know is positively horrified.

Wait, that's not exactly true. It's more accurate to say that every thoughtful or liberal or intuitive or open-minded white woman I know worth her vagina monologue and her self-determination and two centuries of nonstop striving for equal rights and sexual freedom and exhaustive patriarchal unshackling is right now openly horrified, appalled at what the addition of shrill PTA hockey-mom Sarah Palin seems to have done for the soggy, comatose McCain campaign -- that is, make it not merely remotely interesting and melodramatic, but aggressively hostile to, well, to all intelligent women everywhere.

Truly, among women in the know and especially among those who fought so hard to bring Hillary Clinton to the brink of history, nausea and a general recoiling appear to be the universal reactions to Palin's sudden presence on the national stage, stemming straight from the idea that there's even a slight chance in hell such an antagonistic, anti-female politico could be within a 72-year-old heartbeat of becoming the most powerful and iconic woman of all time.

They say: You've got to be kidding me. They say: This is what we get? This could be our historic role model? Two hundred years (OK, more like 2000) of struggle, only to have this nasty caricature of femininity try to hijack and mock and undermine it all?

It cannot be true, they say. The universe must be joking, would not dare dump such a homophobic, Creationist evangelical nutball on us, this anti-choice, God-pandering woman who's the inverse of Hillary, this woman of deep inexperience who abhors birth control and supports abstinence education and shoots exhausted wolves from helicopters and hates polar bears and actually stands for everything progressive women have resented since the first pope Swift-Boated Eve.

[snip]

Let us analyze. Let me, being a straight white male and therefore only capable of gazing in awe at the spectacle that is the indecipherable female intuitive response, foolishly attempt to decipher some of it anyway, and explain why in hell some women might jump to Palin, despite the fact that she essentially hates them. Shall we begin?

[snip]

Is this all it is? Does "one of us" merely mean white women really believe Palin could, if McCain didn't survive his first term, effectively lead the most powerful, flawed, complicated nation on the planet merely because she's a hard-workin' mom with moxie, that she's managed to raise a gaggle of strangely named kids who hunt and don't believe in evolution and get pregnant before they're old enough to buy a pack of Marlboros?

Or does it mean they agree with Palin about not giving a damn for equal pay, or honest sex education, or separation of church and state, or alternative energy, or a woman's right to choose, or their own daughters' rights if they get knocked up after being raped or incested? Nah, that can't be it.

[snip]

Maybe this is our simple summary, the blaring headline we should be reading in the wake of recent events. "Easily duped Palin supporters prove: Some white women are just as dumb as men." Is that all it is? Maybe so.

A potent backlash is coming fast.

Goodness. We confess that we are unfamiliar with what "God-pandering" might be, nor can we quite sort out what could be meant by the Pope "Swift-boating Eve." "Incested" is also new to us and, even after consultation with our staff grammarian, we can't quite figure out what part of speech it is. We've learned a lot, and hope you have too.

Times Does Solid Reporting on Governor Palin

Finally the New York Times -- reviving the sort of hard-hitting reportage and investigative journalism for which America's newspaper-of-record has long been famous -- has released some of the original material gathered by its army of veteran newshounds air-dropped into Alaska.

Story HERE.

We would ask when a similar report on B. Hussein Obama's stylist will appear, but that would be racist.

Our Media Masters

Seems like ABC News and Charlie Gibson, unable to actually make Governor Palin look like an idiot, decided to edit her responses to questions in order to make her seem more like, well, what they all know she is.

One of the most inflammatory teases used by Chuckles was:

EXCLUSIVE: GOV. SARAH PALIN WARNS WAR MAY BE
NECESSARY IF RUSSIA INVADES ANOTHER COUNTRY.

Of course even as aired she said nothing of the kind. She said Ukraine and Georgia (the other one) should be members of NATO -- but so do Joe Biden and B. Hussein Obama. And she said that were such a NATO member attacked by Russia, the United States should defend them. Actually, the NATO treaty (for better or worse) says that an attack on any member is an attack on all members. Thus, an attack on NATO-member Georgia by the Russians would be treated just as if it were an attack on Atlanta. One may think this is a good thing or a bad thing, but it's a thing agreed by all four national candidates.

But to get their tease, ABC did a little creative editing. More HERE.

The printing press was a problem for 16th and 17th century despots. The mimeograph and xerox machines were problems for 20th century despots. And now the internet is quite a problem for our 21st century media masters, in the tank for Barry.

An interesting question is how they expect to get away with things like this. Here's how: out of the millions who watched the clumsily edited interview, how many will read the full transcript, or surf the net to find out what really happened? Just so.

It Doesn't Get Better Than This

Maybe it's Sarah Palin. Maybe it's the bottled water on the campaign airplane. But the Democrats appear to be Hell-bent on doing themselves in. The McCain camp has been quick to capitalize on Sarah's star-power, but that will pass. They've been quick to seek to collect former Hillary supporters drawn to Senator Clinton by identity and pride, rather than policy, but that won't win the election.

What may win the election for Sarah and the old guy is Obama's campaign, which is increasingly inept, clumsy, and incoherent.

You can almost see the childish glee with which some bright young fellow (I refuse to believe a woman could be so dumb) decided that now was the time to go after John McCain's age: he's out of touch! he's old! he's not one of us post-modern with-it sort of guys! Hence this new advertisement:

"It's extraordinary that someone who wants to be our president and our commander in chief doesn't know how to send an e-mail."

Except for one small point. As the Boston Globe reported eight years ago: "McCain's severe war injuries prevent him from combing his hair, typing on a keyboard, or tying his shoes."

More HERE and HERE.

Way to go, Barry. Keep it up. Keep it up. Remember: you're on a mission from God.