Granted the focus of today's news is overwhelmingly on the bailout and the presidential race, but there is also big news on how Americans are now seeing the war effort. The pendulum has swung from despair to hopeful belief and this is important news that impinges on the elections.

Rasmussen released new data on September 30 that shows that more Americans are now viewing the war as a success and a growing number think that things will get even better in the near future. This is the highest support that Rasmussen has seen since they began to report on this issue. Curiously, news of the war has completely dropped off the radar of the Old Media.

Want to talk about media bias?

Barack Obama now has his own channel on Dish Network running his ads as well as other biological propaganda.

Think I'm kidding? 

It's called "Barack Obama's Plan For America," and is Dish channel 73.

Apparently, this has caught many Dish subscribers -- other than me, that is!!! -- by surprise as just reported by Politico's Ben Smith:

National Public Radio may win the prize as the national media outlet that’s most enthusiastic about a collapse of high finance on Wall Street. On Tuesday night, NPR’s evening newscast All Things Considered publicized the delighted reaction of Venezuelan socialist strongman Hugo Chavez, as reporter Tom Gjelten explained that "free-market fundamentalism" was falling out of favor, and the crisis may mean the "end of Reagan-Thatcherism." It may lead to less "economic preaching" about a "free-market gospel" from Washington. All the story’s experts were critical of "free-market ideologues," with no room for a debate.

Gjelten is married to ABC reporter Martha Raddatz, who also used to work at NPR.

MELISSA BLOCK, host: This is All Things Considered from NPR News. I'm Melissa Block. At least one world leader is taking some pleasure in the turmoil on Wall Street. Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez said today that this week's meltdown shows the free-market approach long promoted by the United States has, in his words, "collapsed." Chavez may be overstating the case, but as NPR's Tom Gjelten reports, the current financial crisis is causing some rethinking of the free-market gospel, especially in Latin America.

Gwen Ifill responded to questions about impartiality in an AP interview with David Bauder by suggesting the critics might be racist: "Do you think they made the same assumptions about Lou Cannon (who is white) when he wrote his book about Reagan?" Asked if there were racial motives at play, she said, "I don't know what it is. I find it curious."

This is a curious complaint, since (a) Cannon was never the sole moderator or even a questioner in a Ronald Reagan debate in 1980 or 1984 and (b) Lou Cannon wrote at least five books about Reagan. Ifill is probably referring to President Reagan: Role of a Lifetime, released in 1991. An Amazon.com search also suggests the titles Ronald Reagan: A Life in Politics (2004), Governor Reagan (2003), Ronald Reagan: The Presidential Portfolio (with Michael Beschloss, 2003), Reagan (1982), and Ronnie & Jesse: A Political Odyssey (1969).

VP debate moderator Gwen Ifill might be banking on an Obama victory to boost her book sales, but Chris Matthews is a more altruistic sort.  He's serving as a volunteer Obama campaign consultant, with no obvious economic motive.  

On this evening's Hardball, Matthews counseled Obama and Biden to make more joint campaign appearances.  "Side by side, boys" was how Chris couched his advice, saying the more they do so in October, the better they'll do in November.

Chris' comment was triggered by decision of the City of Springfield, Illinois to seek to recoup $50,000 in expenses from the campaign event held there to announce Biden's selection as Obama's running mate.

View video here.

Your humble correspondent realizes that a lot of celebrities are in the tank for Barack Obama but he is especially disappointed to learn that Homer Simpson appears to be numbered among them. The November 2 (just two days before the election) episode of the Simpsons will include this clip of Homer casting his vote for John McCain then changing his mind and attempting to vote for Barack Obama numerous times to no avail. Each Obama vote that Homer casts is registered as another vote for McCain. When Homer finally accuses the voting machine of being rigged...well, you'll have to see his fate in the video. The video itself is actually pretty funny as you can see and it might end up helping McCain since it will cause extreme leftwing paranoia should the race be tight by election day. That could be very counterproductive for the Democrats since the voting public could be turned off by their paranoid antics.

Of the three morning shows on Wednesday, only "Good Morning America" highlighted the growing controversy regarding the disclosure that PBS reporter Gwen Ifill, the moderator of Thursday's vice presidential debate, has authored a supportive book about Barack Obama and other African American politicians. CBS's "Early Show" and NBC's "Today" both skipped the subject.

GMA news anchor Chris Cuomo mentioned the book during the 7am hour and actually observed that it "has some conservatives claiming she will be biased tomorrow night." The ABC journalist added, "Ifill has said, though, she's only concerned about getting straight answers from the candidates." And although Cuomo did not repeat the story during the 8am news brief, at least ABC brought the issue up.

[UPDATE, by Brent Baker: Wednesday evening, of the broadcast network evening newscasts, only the NBC Nightly News mentioned Ifill. Andrea Mitchell ended a story by citing an unidentified "one conservative critic" and how colleagues and McCain say she's not biased:

As the stage is set for tomorrow night, one conservative critic challenged the moderator, Gwen Ifill of PBS because Ifill is writing a history of a generation of black politicians titled Breakthrough: Politics and Race in the Age of Obama. Palin said tonight that's motivating her to work harder. Ifill's colleagues and the McCain campaign say she is a respected professional.]

While talking to CBS Evening News anchor Katie Couric about her interview with Sarah Palin, on Wednesday’s Early Show, co-host Harry Smith asked: "...there is a -- I won't say growing -- but there are a number of Republicans and conservatives have started to question whether or not she's good for this ticket. What -- what is the feeling in the McCain camp about that?" Couric actually defended Palin: "Well, you know, she has helped the McCain campaign raise $30 million. Helped them double their get-out-the-vote effort. And as you can see, she's energized the crowds." On Monday, co-host Julie Chen described how "Some conservatives want Sarah Palin off the Republican ticket."

Prior to that question, Smith asked Couric: "What did she have to say about troopergate?" To that, Couric explained: "Well, you know, there is a preliminary report coming out October 10. She didn't tell me that, but she basically said that whole investigation into whether she fired the public safety commissioner because he wouldn't get rid of the trooper who had been married to her sister...had been highly politicized, that it belonged in the hands of the personnel board, rather than the state legislature, despite the fact that 8 out of the 12 who initiated the investigation are Republicans."

Picking up on an AP story, the Chicago Sun-Times posted the now-infamous video of a group of kids singing about Sen. Barack Obama (paragraph breaks removed):

A video featuring children singing a song in tribute to Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama is a hit on YouTube, garnering 596,000-plus views in just one version. Obama's critics have ripped the song, comparing it to a video of North Korean children singing to their dictator. Supporters defend it as just cute children singing. Judge for yourself.

Nowhere in the brief Web site posting did the Sun-Times or the AP note that professional Hollywood expertise went into the production of the video. As blogger Bob Owens noted at Confederate Yankee:

Robert Scheer recently crystallized "progressive" reaction to the financial meltdown in a column for TruthDig.com .

"Any bailout worthy of support should put endangered homeowners first, not the bankers who swindled them."

Amazing!

Who else but a "progressive" ideologue like Robert Scheer could find a way to accuse the American banking industry of something that it isn't guilty of?

Swindling homeowners!

These "swindled" homeowners are apparently the same out-of-control consumers who bought houses they couldn't possibly afford except at temporarily reduced rates of interest, and when those temporary interest rates turned out to be... temporary, all those "swindled" homeowners lost their homes.

Mr. Scheer's one-dimensional spectrum of good and evil shows villians in black hats and handlebar moustaches on the right, and on the left good shepherds like Robert Scheer are herding their eternally innocent sheeple toward a brighter tomorrow.

The Ebert column here ( http://rogerebert.su... ) is even crazier than the column about Sarah Palin, which says a lot.

It was eight years ago this week that France 2 TV introduced the world to Mohammed al-Dura, the Palestinian boy who was allegedly shot and killed during a gunfight between Israeli troops and Palestinian gunmen, in a video whose authenticity has increasingly been called into question years after it inspired anti-Semitic violence around the world. The American news media not only highlighted the story -- as the ABC, CBS and NBC evening and morning newscasts collectively aired the video at least 28 times between September 30, 2000, and June 30, 2003 -- but the networks also showed other clips depicting Palestinians involved in fighting, supposedly with Israelis, that have been challenged by some media analysts, calling into question how many of the scenes shown by American media during times of Israeli-Palestinian conflict may be faked video that were passed off to international media as genuine. ABC's Good Morning American notably seems to have ignored the al-Dura story.

Boston University Professor Richard Landes has been a leader in delving into the practice by some Palestinian cameramen of staging scenes of violence to be used as propaganda against Israel. Landes notably took on CBS’s 60 Minutes in the film Pallywood, the first in a series of short documentaries produced by the Boston University professor. On his Web site, theaugeanstables.com, Landes recounts his unsuccessful attempts to convince the American news media to help expose the Pallywood hoax video phenomenon. While he recounts that American journalists he spoke with did generally agree with him that the deceptive practice likely exists, they were reluctant to be perceived as breaking neutrality by siding with Israel over the Palestinians, as he encountered a  view that it would not be “even-handed” to relay such unflattering activities by one side without finding similar examples from the other side. Professor Landes also cited an unnamed journalist at ABC as contending that there would be little “appetite” for the subject at his network. On his Web site, theaugeanstables.com, Landes recalls these conversations:

Friday’s Washington Post carried an ad from PBS touting their two TV debate moderators: "Objective. Impartial. Independent. The NewsHour’s Jim Lehrer and Washington Week’s Gwen Ifill bring PBS’s tradition of integrity to the most important conversations in America – so you can make up your own mind."

Sadly, that ad is not accurate. Even before addressing whether "independence" is demonstrated by Ifill writing a new book celebrating Barack Obama’s bold "Breakthrough," Ifill’s questions in the vice presidential debate in 2004 displayed an undeniable bias against Vice President Cheney.

On the October 1 edition of "The View" Barbara Walters chastised Elisabeth Hasselbeck for allegedly never conceding a point, but never offered such a criticism for left-wing ideologue Joy Behar or even looney conspiracy theorist Rosie O’Donnell. This occurred just as rumors abound that Elisabeth is clashing with her fellow co-hosts.

Responding to more Sarah Palin bashing and Joy Behar labeling the Alaska governor "dumb" (talk about the pot calling the kettle black) Hasselbeck once again rose up as the lone voice on the panel, and even a hostile studio audience, in defending Governor Palin. Apparently taking issue with disputing some co-hosts’ assertion that Palin lacks the intellectual capacity to be vice president, Barbara Walters exclaimed "every single day you never ever say ‘maybe this is another point.’"

Here's a quote you won't hear repeated in the Downstream Media:

Asked Tuesday by radio host Hugh Hewitt if she agreed that interviews
with ABC's Charles Gibson and CBS' Couric were designed to embarrass
her, Palin replied: "Well, I have a degree in journalism also, so it
surprises me that so much has changed since I received my education in
journalistic ethics all those years ago."

Here's the article, which attempts to jab Governor Palin for supposedly not reading newspapers: http://apnews.myway....

A few days ago, columnist Kathleen Parker outraged many conservatives with a column suggesting Sarah Palin should resign her vice-presidential nomination because she's clearly out of her league: "If BS were currency, Palin could bail out Wall Street herself." Parker's outraged that someone would suggest she's not conservative. But in trying to protest in a new column, she's only digging a deeper hole by comparing herself to the Dixie Chicks and conservatives to Stalinists:

The picture is this: Anyone who dares express an opinion that runs counter to the party line will be silenced. That doesn't sound American to me, but Stalin would approve. Readers have every right to reject my opinion. But when we decide that a person is a traitor and should die for having an opinion different than one's own, then we cross into territory that puts all freedoms at risk. (I hear you, Dixie Chicks.)

In case viewers did not understand the concept of a domino effect caused by the financial crisis, on Wednesday’s CBS Early Show, co-host Julie Chen offered a visual representation as she declared: "What happens on Wall Street affects all of us on Main Street. It's the c