H/T – jaxy89 on Twitter

Priceless!

-Bruce (GayPatriot)

With Sarah Palin all over the news this week, we encounter yet again the power of the media, even in the twilight of their influence to shape popular opinion.  Despite her record of accomplishment as Governor of Alaska, including her regular bucking of the Republican establishment and cooperation with Democratic leaders and legislators, most Americans remain unaware of her executive abilities and bipartisan policy-making.  All too many see her as an ideologue unfit to lead.

Yet, Palin is not the only politician who receives coverage that leaves out considerable aspects of her biography and professional record.  When they find a liberal they want to lionize, they ignore facts about his life which conflict with the image they wish to create of him.  In a recent cover story, Newsweek billed one such liberal as “The Thinking Man’s Thinking Man,” yet neglected the emotional manner in which Al Gore attempts to discredit those who have not reached a conclusion different from his own.

He doesn’t argue with those critics, doesn’t consider the facts they introduce and arguments they have made to challenge his conclusions (as would a thinking man).  Instead, he tells us “the debate in the scientific community is over.”  Hardly.  The debate is far from over.  There is no consensus backing his theories.

Not just that, he “refuses to debate those who say global warming is not a crisis.”  Wouldn’t a thinking man welcome the chance to debate his ideas?

Newsweek may want to portray Al Gore as a “thinking man,” but the very way he has conducted his crusade for climate control legislation suggests not a thinker, but a zealot, one for whom promoting the cause is more important than addressing its critics.  And I mean, isn’t that what thinking men do, address their critics.

Wasn’t the quintessential thinking man famous for dialogues, not his diatribes monologues?

Had President Obama not claimed the Democrats’ “stimulus” would keep unemployment at or below 8%, he would not “own” the jobless rate so early in his term.  But, now it’s his problem in more ways than one.  ABC’s Rick Klein contends: “The administration asked for this — dare we say, literally asked for this — with promises of actual job totals and new accountability and oversight mechanisms, all with Sheriff Joe Biden at the helm.”  (H/t to Jennifer Rubin for Klein quote.)

Not only does the president need address the unemployment rate which has increased despite the enactment of his policies, but he must also live up to his promises of accountability and transparency.  The government website created to show just where federal “stimulus” money was flowing and how many jobs it had created, showed that money going to Congressional districts which didn’t exist.  And exaggerated the number of jobs created.

Even when we eliminate the exaggeration and find out how many jobs were really created (or saved) by the “stimulus,” we need ask what happens when those funds dry up.  If we believe the Democrats that we wouldn’t have seen such job creation in the absence of such spending, then unemployment today would be ever higher in its absence.  Recall that Lawrence Summers, Director of the President’s National Economic Council, said any fiscal stimulus would be “timely, targeted and temporary“.   If it’s temporary, then the funds dry up and there’ll pay no more funds to pay for the jobs (recently saved or created).

No wonder Ed Morrissey claims that all the stimulus did was to kick the can down the road, delaying a real decision on creating permanent jobs:

Most of the jobs in their calculus are bureaucratic jobs at the state level that won’t get funded next year by Washington.  States will still have to make tough decisions on employment levels that should have been made decades ago.  All Porkulus did was delay that needed decision by throwing money at the states, who used it not to improve efficiency but to paper over budget gaps that will recur next year as well.

With our national debt increased, the problems persist.

And now, the President warns that if we “keep on adding to the debt,” that could lead to a double-dip recession.  His very policies will thus make that second recession particularly severe.  He has increased the debt to provide funds for only temporary job creation.  When those temporary funds run out, unemployment will increase, deepening the downturn.

Sarah Palin may seek out the limelight, as some of her critics contend, but unlike most in this town (Hollywood) who see such attention, this much (and usually falsely) maligned Republican woman gets it.  AP tasks 11 Reporters to “fact check” her book.  The DNC churns out press releases at a rapid clip.  He books remains at #1 on numerous bestseller lists, far ahead of the latest tome of a man who gets fawning attention from the MSM (in contrast to the patronizing, negative coverage she receives).

And now that woman is helping an Obama supporter cash in on her popularity, giving Oprah her biggest audience in two years:

Oprah Winfrey’s interview with former vp candidate Sarah Palin scored the talk show host her highest rating in two years.

Monday’s episode of “The Oprah Winfrey Show” drew a 8.7 household rating and 13 share — the best since Winfrey had the entire Osmond family on the show in 2007.

That means Palin also topped Winfrey’s heavily viewed interviews with Whitney Houston at the start of the season.

Hey, aren’t the Osmonds Mormons?   Doesn’t the MSM treat Mormons like they do Palin, maligned them with great glee?

Hmmm. . . . .  Seems that sometimes when the media try to strike people down, they only make their adversaries far more popular than they had ever foreseen.

It’s amusing to watch Democrats and associated leftists get worked up into a lather at there mere mention of Sarah Palin’s name.  We’ve got critics bringing her up in the comment sections of posts which don’t even mention that charismatic and accomplished woman.

And Democratic National Committee (DNC) operatives have gone into overdrive to lambaste the woman who did more to reform her state in her first two years as Governor than Obama did to reform his in twelve years serving in its state senate or as the state’s U.S. Senator.  Guess attacking Sarah Palin is a lot easier than defending Obama’s policies.

DNC Press Secretary Hari Sevugan practically foams at the mouth when discussing the former Republican governor with a record of bipartisan achievement:

This book tour has only reinforced the tabloid aspects of her profile, wasted a platform to add substance, driven deeper the schisms in the Republican party and sucked the oxygen out of the room for anyone else to emerge.

Um, Hari, if your allies in the MSM weren’t so hellbent on reinforcing those tabloid aspects, then we might better see the substance she can add to that platform.  But, when’s the last time you — or any of you allies in the DNC or in the MSM — actually addressed what she accomplished in Alaska (in a more than perfunctory manner)?

You guys are painting a picture black, then faulting it for lacking color.

Don’t you have better things to do you with your time than attack a former Republican Governor  while reducing her record to tabloid gossip?  Given the obsession you show with this woman’s private life, you do help show that yours is not the party of ideas, but instead the one which practices the politics of personal destruction.

And a source of endless amusement to conservatives.  Kind of like watching a spoiled child throw a temper tantrum.  You guys do look ridiculous.

UPDATE:  Considering Hari’s memo, Ann Althouse observes, “The question is whether it makes them look worse and whether local reporters lap up what they’ve been spoonfed.”

I’ve bought the book, it is in the mail, and I watched Sarah on Oprah.

More later… I just figured we could use the bump in traffic with a Palin-related headline.

Crass, I know.  But funny, huh?

-Bruce (GayPatriot)

When accepting her Oscar for Places in the Heart in 1985, Sally Field famously said to her Hollywood audience

I haven’t had an orthodox career.  And I’ve wanted more than anything to have your respect.  The first time I didn’t feel it, but this time I feel it and I can’t deny the fact that you like me, right now, you like me.

Seem the President has taken a cue from Miss Field. He believes polls confirm confirmation America’s standing in the world has improved since his advent.  But, as Dan Riehl notes the Democrat puts “a lot more stock in world polls than he does domestic ones.”   Just as Sally wanted to have the respect of the makers and shakers in Hollywood, Obama wants us to be liked by world leaders.

It might be nice if he could translate that affection into action.  Michael Barone finds that while Obama bowed to “the emperor of Japan last week, the world refuses to bow back“:

The mullahs of Iran have consented to something in the nature of negotiations, but their agreement in principle to allow the enrichment of nuclear fuel in France has, like many agreements in principle, turned out to be no agreement. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and the mullahs have proved no more moveable by Obama’s emollient and respectful tones than by George W. Bush’s Texas twang.

Nor have we made any discernible progress on settling issues between Israel and the Palestinians, the first priority of Obama’s national security adviser. Obama’s insistence on a stop to natural growth of Israeli settlements — no new spare rooms for Grandma or the new baby — seems now to have been abandoned. Israelis are distrustful of the U.S., and the West Bank Palestinian leader is threatening to quit.

Obama’s unilateral concession to the Russians — abandonment of missile defense plans in Poland and the Czech Republic — has evoked statements from Russian President Dmitri Medvedev that sanctions against Iran may someday be necessary. But it’s beginning to look as if Medvedev is Lucy, sanctions are the football and Obama is Charlie Brown.

And just like Sally Field, Charlie Brown wanted to be liked too.

The above is only a partial listing of the president’s failure to achieve concrete results for the feelings he has.  (Just read the whole thing.)  Well, like Miss Field, Obama does have a prize.  She has an Oscar statuette, he’ll soon have a Nobel medal.

Being liked may help you get jobs in Hollywood, but it doesn’t achieve results on the world stage.

The biggest lost opportunity of the Obama Administration came in his first hours, nay, its first minutes.  The then-new President could have departed from the text of his inaugural address to chide those who had booed his predecessor.  He could say that while they may not agree with Bush’s policies, they should honor the office and the Republican’s service as he would hope Bush’s supporters would honor the office now that one of their partisan adversaries had taken the helm.

He could echo comments he had made a few days previously when the Democrat called the Republican “a good man who loves his family and loves his country,” a man who “made the best decisions that he could at times under some very difficult circumstances.”  A simple statement like that would have done much to heal the political wounds from recent partisan battles.

And while the president wasn’t then magnanimous in his first minutes in office, he would show considerable class nine months later when he took liberal Louisianans to task for booing their Republican Governor.  He now has another chance  to shine by denouncing violent attempt to intimidate dissent.

And here, it’s also a  kind of a gimme.  He need criticize leftists like the one below who assault tea party protestors:

(Via Ed Driscoll who has more.)

And while Obama’s at it, he could denounce the union thugs who beat Kenneth Gladney in St. Louis during this summer’s round of protests.

In the campaign, the president claimed he was a post-partisan leader who could bring people together.  As President, he can do just that, by daring to criticize some of his political allies, angry partisans who have intimidated their political adversaries while those adversaries exercise their first amendment rights.

If Matthew Continetti were a liberal journalist writing about a charismatic (or even a colorless) Democratic governor who had suffered the same treatment from the media that Sarah Palin did, his book The Persecution of Sarah Palin: How the Elite Media Tried to Bring Down a Rising Star would make him the toast of the smart set, with this book warmly reviewed in any number of newspapers while he would be featured on talk shows where he would be lionized.

And a conversation he recounted with Gene Therriault would cause editors in newsrooms along the New York to Washington corridor and in Los Angeles to dispatch to investigate a claim that former Alaska state senator made.  For, they would surely want to show just how the Republican National Committee sought to grind business to a halt in that governor’s state in order to destroy the popular Democratic chief executive.

But, Sarah Palin is a Republican not a Democrat.  And while the media may find it newsworthy when Republicans engage in the politics of personal destruction, when Democrats do the same thing, well, it’s a necessary good, er, um, evil.  While Palin had worked with legislators on both sides of the political aisle in her first two years as chief executive of the Last Frontier, after she had become a political celebrity in the 2008 campaign, things changed in Juneau.

According to Therriault, after last fall’s election,

The call went out from the national Democratic Party to take her down.  Some of the Democrats who worked with her previously took their marching orders.

As a result, Continetti writes, “Gridlock ensued.  Bipartisan comity was no more.  Anybody who had the opportunity to score political points against Palin took a shot.”

Now, maybe what Therriault says is not entirely accurate, but, well, if he were a Democrat talking about the Republican party, don’t you think some in the media would investigate? (more…)

With Sarah Palin’s memoir, Going Rogue:  An American Life going gangbusters on amazon, currently their #1 seller (it was released only today, yet has spent 50 days in the online bookseller’s top 100), it’s clear that this accomplished former Governor can both infuriate liberals and sell books.

It seems alas that the media, just as they did in the campaign, are focusing not on this reformer’s record, but her personal life.  After watching Palin on Oprah Winfrey’s show yesterday, Ann Althouse observed that there was no discussion of policy:

For the most part, Oprah pursued the traditional women’s topics: pregnancy, children, marriage. Palin looked vividly alive and spoke quickly and without stumbles or hesitations. I don’t think there was a single word about any serious policy question. It was mostly about how it felt to be Sarah Palin.

Newsweek runs a cover story calling her a problem and focusing on her physique.  As if on cue, CBS Touts yet another “exclusive” interview with the former Alaska Governor’s ex-son-in-law to be.  Do you think they’d pay him Levi Johnston heed if he only had good things to say about his son’s maternal grandmother?

Since publishers know Sarah Palin can sell books, many will jump at the chance to publish just about anything she writes.  So, she needs take a page from the man who won the White House last fall by promising to govern the nation as she governed Alaska.  After writing a memoir, she should followup with a book on policy.  After the holidays, she can start reading classics of political theory and conservative thought while meeting with public policy experts who have crafted conservative an libertarian policies to address contemporary problems.

When this book is released, say maybe next fall, just as the 2010 elections are heating up, various talk show hosts would be tripping over themselves to book Palin, knowing how that appearance would boost ratings.  And with a wonkish book out, some would have to ask her at least a few questions about policy.

(Though they would much rather talk trash with her.)

Still, such a book would given her a chance to promote conservative ideas and burnish her own image, demonstrating her ability to discuss the nation’s problems and her familiarity with solutions which do not bust the federal budget or diminish our freedoms.

Last week, our state’s junior Senator, Ma’am Barbara Boxer, traveled with great fanfare to San Diego to boast about how many jobs the “stimulus” created only to have a news organization debunk her claim.  They found that the $787-billion bill she so energetically supported had created a grand total of one new job in the state’s second largest city.  Well, now other news organizations are examining the Administration claims of jobs created by the Democrats’ budget-busting bill and finding that, well, just like Ma’am, they’ve been inflating their numbers.

They haven’t even done the most rudimentary of fact checks, with their site claiming job creation in non-existent congressional districts.  Can you imagine the media outcry had the Bush Administration talked about its efforts in non-existent jurisdictions?  It would be another sign of W’s stupidity.  The latest figures show 110,185 jobs created in the Golden State (that’s 226,215 fewer jobs created (or saved) that the total number of jobs lost since Ma’am voted for the “stimulus”).

But, let’s look a little more closely at that 110,185 number.  David Freddoso and Mark Hemingway found 75,343 bogus jobs in that listing, including as least (but probably more than) 22,000 in the Golden Setate.

Administration officials claim that federal stimulus dollars let California State University (CSU) ”retain about 26,000 full-time-equivalent positions . . . more than half of CSU’s work force“, but in reality according to CSU spokeswoman Claudia Keith said Friday, “The jobs were retained, not saved,” with the CSU using stimulus money paying “for the jobs for a time, but that many of the jobs wouldn’t have otherwise disappeared.” No wonder the Democrats are using the expression created or saved, it makes it easier to fudge their numbers.

So, let’s say that of those 26,000, 12.2% (current unemployment rate in Golden State) really were saved (’cause they sure weren’t created).  That’s 3,172.  We’ll deduct that number from 26,000 to get 22,828 jobs that don’t belong in the number created by the “stimulus.”

In San Joaquin, “The Regional Rail Commission double-counted 125 jobs it had created with a stimulus grant.”   So, let’s add 125 to the 22,828 above.  That’s 22,953 which we subtract from 110,185, so we get 87,232 jobs created (or saved) in the Golden State.  And we still haven’t examined all the supposedly new (or saved) jobs the Administration claims. (more…)

Those who observed me doing cardio at the gym last night must have thought I was watching something on Comedy Central.  Instead, I was watching a performance by a feminist on Larry King Live that had it been cut and pasted into a Saturday Night Live sketch, it would not have seemed out of place.

Naomi Wolf was going on about some conspiracy theory linking Sarah Palin to Dick Cheney to Karl Rove to D.B. Cooper and the George H.W. Bush aide who wrecked the wedding of Ross Perot’s daughter while Mary Matalin (visible on a split screen) was doing her utmost to contain her amusement.  Her lipstick likely covered up the bites on her lips.

Responding to Larry King’s request that she comment to this statement, “somebody said today that they don’t remember a vice presidential concession speech,” the feminist rambled on:

Yes, I personally have no idea whether it’s traditional or not. I don’t think tradition should matter that much. I think what’s more important is what I keep hearing — the refrain I keep hearing from people is, you know, oh, we should have rolled her out more narrowly, she’s genuine, I like her, she’s got all these kids, she speaks from the heart.

You know, all of those are lovely in a neighbor or in a co- worker. But what people have to remember is do we really want to hand our country over to consultants like — like my colleagues on other side of the aisle on this panel, with all due respect, who seem to want to roll her out like a product.

And let’s look at what she was fronting for. She wasn’t just doing what the McCain team wanted. She was carrying water for policies of Rove and Cheney and Bush, including policies on torture.

(LAUGHTER)

Bear with me.

And it — history has seen plenty of examples of a cabal — a group of people who get into power. And then she is a telegenic, charming, Evita-type front person to kind of lure the masses. . . . while the same old guys remain in power with some very dark and negative policies. . . that our country is still recovering from.

Wow, just wow.  Her words read even stranger than they sounded last night.  She’s fronting for Rove, Cheney and Bush with her (cue sinister music) with her dark and negative policies.  Huh?  Has Wolf read any of Palin’s campaign speeches or even studied her record?

Sarah Palin does seem to bring out the worst in her critics. (more…)

And it’s not just that the mere mention of her name can whip liberals into a frenzy.

It’s that she is a natural politician who can, as few leaders have in recent years, command a stage and capture the popular imagination.  She has a natural charisma and public presence similar to that of the incumbent President of the United States.  But, unlike him, she actually has a record of accomplishment, even of transcending political labels and working in a bipartisan manner to effect real reform.

In short, Sarah Palin is what Barack Obama claimed to be.  Barack Obama’s campaign rhetoric, putting himself forward as a post-partisan reformer, may have described his aspirations at the time, but it also described her record.  She keeps her promises.

In her short time on the national stage, Sarah Palin has shown that she can communicate a conservative message to a broad national audience.  More people might have warmed to that message had the media showed more clips from her speeches and provided fewer details about her family (and offered less speculation about her background).

She matters because of her presence and her record, a record with which most of her critics are both oblivious and in which many are entirely disinterested.  We Republicans need more people like Ronald Reagan, pragmatic legislators and gifted communicators.  She has that in common with the Gipper.  That said, she needs to do something the he did before his rise to power, take a good deal of time to study the ideas undergirding modern conservatism and relate those ideas to the contemporary political situation and to current economic and social issues.

In short, Sarah Palin needs a better education in the freedom agenda.

Not just that, like the Gipper, she needs to learn to rise “above the fray“.  She has his gifts, but needs to develop his substance.  While the latter can be learned, the former cannot be achieved (even with great effort).  Either you got it or you ain’t.  And, boys, she’s got it . . . in spades.  And that’s why she matters.  It’s the learning she has yet to do.  But, she’s already begun the process and is, as many have reported, a “quick study.”

Because she has those gifts, she will continue to get attention.  The time may yet come when she commands the national political stage as did Barack Obama in 2008.  But, I doubt it will be in 2012.

Had President Obama not promised the “stimulus” which passed at the start of his term would keep the unemployment rate down below 8%, with multitudinous new jobs created driving that percentage down even further, he–and his party–would not own the increasing unemployment rate as they now do.

Nationwide, nearly three  million jobs lost nationwide since the “stimulus” passed.  In the Golden State alone, 336,400 more people have lost their jobs since our Senators voted for that $787 billion piece of legislation with our junior Senator promising the bill would put Californians to work.  One in eight Californians are out of work, with the unemployment rate hitting a post-World War II high.

With that junior Senator, Ma’am Barbara Boxer making what we believe to be her first visit to San Diego in over two years to tout the success of that “stimulus,” a local TV station there found it created a grand total of one new job. That’s right, one job created in the largest state’s second largest city.

As the unemployment rate continues to climb, don’t expect the Democrats’ rating here to remain as high as it has been.

Let us hope to see more media outlets report of our hapless junior Senator whose “dishonest representation of NIH grant money for research as ‘stimulus’ funds” KUSI exposed.  To be sure, a Republican has an uphill climb in this Democratic state, but when people start seeing how poor they unemployment situation has been in California under Mrs. Boxer’s watch, they’ll wonder about her effectiveness in Washington.

Recall the unemployment rate has increased by 33% since Mrs. Boxer was first elected to the Senate in 1992 (during a recession, I might add).

Mrs. Boxer and the President can go on all they want about how many jobs the “stimulus” has created or saved, but their claims don’t change the fact that the “stimulus” created a total of one job in the state’s second largest city while nearly 350,000 fewer people in the Golden State have jobs than did when Mrs. Boxer voted to spnd nearly one trillion dollars of our money (and that of our descendants), claiming it would put people back to work.

You know, even if I didn’t appreciate Sarah Palin’s accomplishments in the years leading up to her election as Alaska Governor and in her short time in office nor recognize her gifts to move an audience (more on this anon), I would have the same kind of respect for her as I have for Ann Coulter, Rush Limbaugh and sometimes even Glenn Beck.  The mere mention of her name can work some liberals up into a lather.  Like her, they deserve some credit for getting under left-wingers’ skin.

One of her critics reveals his own obsession in a comment to this blog, “maybe, just maybe, her ability to make news is a function of her own obsessive attempts to thrust herself into the limelight“.  Those of us who live in a town with a few too many self-promoters know all too well that obsessive attempts to thrust oneself into the limelight don’t necessarily mean the light shines upon them.  I mean, how many people outside this town have ever heard of Dennis Woodruff or Angelyne, two people who have made self-promotion their stock-in-trade?

Like them, she can promote herself all she wants.  It’s that people insist on paying attention to Mrs. Palin as they don’t to Mr. Woodruff or Miss Angelyne, save to scoff when his car drives by or to shake their heads when they catch sight of one of her billboards.  And these lefties insist on telling us just how much they hate that Republican woman.

On Larry King Live last night, the Nation’s Katrina vanden Heuvel pitched a fit about Sarah Palin interjecting herself into the health care.  Um, Katrina, she’s a citizen of this great country, that’s what citizens do.  But lots of citizens speak up, just like lots of folks in Hollywood demand attention without anyone paying them any heed.  Why do you let her upset you so?  Did you get upset when Angelyine interjected herself into the California gubernatorial recall election in 2003?

No one forced Newsweek to run a cover story on Palin or compelled a major daily newspaper to run an article about her appearance on Oprah.  No one threatened to incarcerate left-wing bloggers if they didn’t live blog that appearance.  No one requires some of my acquaintances to pitch a fit any time her name is mentioned.  Or to bring up her for the sole purpose of making an adverse comparison.  Or derogatory remark. (more…)

That’s certainly the impression I get from reading the Anchoress’s post on Obama supporter Oprah Winfrey’s interview with former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin:

Palin struck me as too guarded and needlessly defensive. Toward the end, Oprah asked if she had anything else to say, and Palin unwisely blurted out, “you can’t turn off my mic…” which was very revealing. . . .  it seems to me that Palin is showing her scars from the detestable way the press descended on her and her family like a pack of rabid canines and worked to literally destroy Palin when she emerged in ‘08.

But the press tried to destroy Reagan, and they tried to destroy Bush; they could only get so far, because both men were able to shake the rutting mutts off their legs with aplomb, and look forward. It is a quality of character, part of it comes from knowing who you are and -as we see happening- it encourages people to take a second look, or a third, if need be.

I have suspected that Palin does know who she is, but she’s been rattled, and it shows. And so, she is talking about media mistreatment; her charges are not untrue, but tonguing the wounds will not help her with the people she needs to win over. They will see it merely as an unattractive, vindictive quality, rather ala Obama. Who wants more of that?

Like Obama, Palin is at her best when speaking to a supportive crowd.  Both are good speaking from prepared texts, though the Alaskan is better when she lacks a Teleprompter.

Palin needs to learn from the greatest president of the second half of the twentieth century and not the incumbent in dealing with the media.  He faced treatment nearly as bad as what she’s now getting.  She’s made some smart choices during her book tour, by bypassing, for the most part, the mainstream media and seeking out venues where she is likely to get treatment only slightly harsher than that Democrats get from MSM outlets in the Northeast and Southern California.

She needs learn from Dave Townsend of the Alan Parsons Project:

If it’s getting harder to face every day
Don’t let it show, don’t let it show
Though it’s getting harder to take what they say
Just let it go, just let it go

If the subject of media treatment gets to you, Governor, just let it go and say it won’t detract you from speaking out on the issues of concern to you, and if polls are accurate, with a growing majority of Americans.

If Chuck DeVore wants to run against Dede Scozzafava, he should move to New York.  I believe she’s up for reelection next fall to the State Assembly.

But, since he seems determined to run against Carly Fiorina for the Republican Senatorial nomination here in the Golden State, he need address her as she is and not as he would have her be so he can portray himself as the only conservative in the race.

As Eric Ingemenson points out, DeVore is

. . . working hard—maybe too hard—at painting his primary opponent, former Hewlett Packard chief Carly Fiorina, as a liberal “Scozzafava” Republican. Being loose with her record simply to score cheap political points threatens to damage his credibility in the long term.

Exactly.  Ingemenson then proceeds to demolish three claims DeVore makes about Fiorina, including her supposed support for a so-called “tech stimulus” and for an internet tax.

While DeVore may be a shade to the right of Fiorina, the former HP CEO is herself in the mainstream of American conservatism, opposing Barack Obama’s “stimulus,” Nancy Pelosi’s health care plan and Barbara Boxer’s cap and trade bill.  She prefers free market solutions to our nation’s economic woes and has said as much in public statements.

It’s time that DeVore address those statements and not the campaign rhetoric of a one-time Republican nominee with an entirely different background in a state clear across the country.

It appears so.

The nation’s largest publisher of newspapers serving the gay and lesbian community has shut down.

Laura Douglas-Brown, editor of Southern Voice newspaper in Atlanta, said she arrived at work Monday to find the locks changed and a note saying parent company Window Media LLC had closed down.

She said the company’s other publications – including the Washington Blade, Houston Voice and South Florida Blade – were also being closed.

“From my understanding, there was just no more money to keep these companies running,” she said in a telephone interview as she sat with her former employees outside their locked Atlanta office. “We had all been told that the companies would be sold. The fact that we were shut down was a complete shock.”

The company’s financial trouble stemmed from a number of factors. Besides an industrywide drop in advertising revenue amid the economic meltdown, mainstream publications are writing more about gay and lesbian issues, reducing dependency on niche publications such as Window Media’s.

The company had been struggling financially since last year. The company’s majority stockholder, New York City-based Avalon Equity Partners, was taken over by the U.S. Small Business Administration in August 2008, Douglas-Brown said.

Just last month, the Washington Blade celebrated its 40th anniversary. News editor Joshua Lynsen declined comment on the newspaper’s closure.

“Window Media long provided a very special outlet for the gay community to learn about itself way before there were a lot of other places to find that type of thing,” said Michael Musto, an openly gay writer for the Village Voice in New York, which is owned by Village Voice Media Holdings. “This was the gay community writing about itself, and that’s a voice we should never lose.”

This is too bad.  While I probably disagreed editorially 99% of the time with the Window Media publications — their presence as true journalism within the gay community was important.  Their reporters were professional and had a lot of integrity.  For example, only the Washington Blade reported that the murder of African-American teens in Newark was related to their sexual orientation.

I’m not sure I trust the “rest” of the mainstream media to accurately cover gay and lesbian issues the way the Window Media publications did.

Hopefully, the Blades & Southern Voice will be reborn in a new way soon.

UPDATE: Washington Blade editor Kevin Naff has told Politico.com:

“The Blade staff is united and ready to continue the paper’s long-standing mission. The first meeting for our new venture is Tuesday and we welcome the community’s input as we move forward.”

-Bruce (GayPatriot)

Given a weekend cluttered with events, I have not had as much time to blog as I would like, so apologize if I appear to be hitting the same theme in subsequent posts.

One reason I return to the President’s grandiosity is that I was struck by the apparent contradiction in the President’s behavior or perhaps it was a form of compensation.

Here we have a Chief Executive who offers testimonials to his own greatness while bowing before unelected monarchs, being the first president to do so since Nixon (there’s that Nixon comparison again).  He praises himself with his words, while with his body, he offers an image of obeisance to other world leaders.

In Japan, he also claimed to be the “first Pacific President.”  Why can’t he leave it to others to indicate the fields he has pioneered?  And anyway, that claim is not entirely accurate, as Ed Dricoll notes.

One of the Anchoress’s readers e-mailed her to point out something else the President has said in that speech in Tokyo, making up a claim out of whole cloth (or media misinformation) “I know that the United States has been disengaged from these organizations in recent years.”

Um, no.  The media may have made it appear that Mr. Obama’s predecessor was so disengaged from international organizations, including those to which he was then referring, “multilateral organizations” which “advance the security and prosperity of this region”, i.e. Asia.  But, the facts, as the Anchoress reminds us, tell a different story:

Obama is outright lying, there. In myriad ways, Bush was actually very attentive to our Asia and Pacific alliances, was swift and generous in aiding Indonesia after the 2004 tsunami (pdf), and -but it got no press- managed to forge an environmental agreement that went way beyond Kyoto. . . .

Last time I checked, India, in particular, was loving Bush. And Australia has been a strong alliance in our military coalitions, and elsewhere.

Well, maybe Obama wasn’t lying; he’s just willfully ignorant of his predecessor’s efforts and accomplishments.

And the Anchoress in her must-read post, notices something a number of other bloggers (and not just those on the right), including yours truly, have also been noticing:  the incumbent “likes to indiscreetly bash the former president wherever he goes, whether his hammer is weighted with reality or make-believe.” (more…)

Now that I’ve been checking my AOL e-mail more regularly through my browser rather than via its own application, I get to see the latest headlines they feature as I do those on Yahoo!  And just like their sister server, they have a similar liberal bias and intense animus against a certain former Alaska Governor.

Every time I click on a link to an article about that good and accomplished woman, I chance on some screed, usually poorly sourced, attacking her in some form or another.  The latest is AOL’s piece from left-wing columnist Jill Lawrence.  As with much in the MSM about Governor Palin, well, we should just consider this hearsay, something that awaits confirmation by more reliable sources.

Almost all Lawrence’s sources are unnamed.  So, I doubt the accuracy of her headline about John McCain being a “bit disappointed by” his running mate’s book.

Do these journalists even realize how they’re covering her, with no pretense at objectivity?  It’s no wonder Palin is avoiding their ilk when she does her book tour.

As per my last post, Sarah Palin may well be seeking the spotlight, but that doesn’t mean the news media have to shine it upon her nor does it require them to use filters to obscure her accomplishments.

Once again, I ask, why this need to demonize her?  Why don’t they just ignore her?  I mean, heck, she’s no longer a Governor or anything.

Methinks it has much to do with their “need” to dismiss her appeal and discredit her supporters.   These people really do seem compelled to attack those who do not fit their paradigm of a woman who enjoys the adulation of a large segment of the population.  They want all successful women to fit the feminist narrative.

Problem is many, if not most, don’t.