McCain Fights Back, Angers Reporters

Howie Kurtz at WaPo warns that the media is really getting mad at the McCain-Palin campaign. Indignant reporters accuse them of playing politics and spinning. How dare they! No campaign has ever done that before.

I read this and thought, this is news? Of course the press is upset; McCain-Palin threatens to bring down their chosen candidate. Here's a breathless excerpt from Howie's article:

News outlets are increasingly challenging false or questionable claims by the McCain campaign, whether it's the ad accusing Obama of supporting sex-ed for kindergartners (the Illinois legislation clearly describes "age-appropriate" programs) or Palin's repeated boast that she stopped the Bridge to Nowhere (after she had supported it, and after Congress had effectively killed the specific earmark).

Wow. He reports news and defends his hero Obama all in one breath. What talent.

Meanwhile, no one calls the Obama campaign on it when they take an obvious McCain joke about being rich and turn it into a dishonest attack ad.

We heard nothing from these Guardians of Truth about Obama praising China's infrastructure, saying it is "vastly superior to ours." It was an ignorant and provably untrue statement, but the Obama-infatuated press said nothing. You can find Mr. Obama's statement on YouTube, but not by searching on-line news articles.

Mac's not their buddy anymore because he's no longer the inoffensive moderate they can praise as he goes down in noble defeat to The Messiah.

So Howie, Joe, and the rest of the ink-stained liberals disguised as the press... Get mad! Get outraged!

Get bent. Take your haughty, impotent anger and stuff it!

Your credibility is shot. Nobody believes you anymore...

To paraphrase Bob Dylan "we're beyond your command, the times they are a changin'!"

Peggy Noonan Raw, MSNBC Style

I've grown to like Peggy Noonan over the years. She has a soft, feminine veneer that disguises a hard-edged thinking that sometimes sneaks out in her writing.

Her open open mic comments where she seems to declare the the McCain-Palin campaign "over" are all over the internet. And they've given the lefties an excited case of the giddy red-hots: Lying Repugs revealed! One of their own has slipped up!

Here's what was reported:

After a segment with NBC's Chuck Todd ended today, Republican consultant Mike Murphy and Wall Street Journal columnist Peggy Noonan were caught on a live mike ridiculing the choice of Sarah Palin.

"It's over," said Noonan, who then responded to a question of whether Palin is the most qualified Republican woman McCain could have chosen.

"The most qualified? No. I think they went for this — excuse me — political bullshit about narratives," she said. "Every time the Republicans do that, because that's not where they live and it's not what they're good at, they blow it."

Well, it seems someone (could it be an MSNBC employee?) selectively edited the tape before blasting it to the world. Why do arguments from the left so often involve some deceit or distortion, like the John McCain joke about what he considers rich?

Anyway, Peggy issued a clarification today. She is still critical of the Republican ticket, but she credibly maintains that her "it's over" comment was snipped and taken out of context. I believe her. She's a conservative, but she's no knee-jerk party cheerleader. She says what she thinks, upsetting the party faithful in the process. If she really thought it was "over" she would have said so in one of her columns. Her criticism of President Bush recently is a good example.

You can read her full response Here. Here's an excerpt:

In our off-air conversation, I got on the subject of the leaders of the Republican party assuming, now, that whatever the base of the Republican party thinks is what America thinks. But, I argued, that's over, those assumptions are yesterday, the party can no longer assume that its base is utterly in line with the thinking of the American people. And when I said, "It's over!" -- and I said it more than once -- that is what I was referring to.

In the truncated version of the conversation, on the Web, it appears I am saying the McCain campaign is over. I did not say it, and do not think it. That is, McCain may well win. I do not think the campaign is over, I do not think this is settled, and did not suggest, back to the Todd-Murphy conversation, that "It's over."

Now, on to the next press-manufactured scandal...