“The Chicago Tribune did something today it had never done before -- it had not endorsed a Democrat for President, not even Illinois Governor Adlai Stevenson in his two runs,” CBS Evening News anchor Katie Couric touted Friday night before heralding the endorsement of the candidate from the paper's circulation area: “But today, the Trib endorsed Illinois Senator Barack Obama. It said he's better suited than John McCain to restore a quote, 'common sense of national purpose.'”

The endorsement editorial posted Friday afternoon, but presumably to appear in Sunday's newspaper, acknowledged the paper's admiration for the hometown Senator is nothing new: “On Dec. 6, 2006, this page encouraged Obama to join the presidential campaign. We wrote that he would celebrate our common values instead of exaggerate our differences. We said he would raise the tone of the campaign. We said his intellectual depth would sharpen the policy debate. In the ensuing 22 months he has done just that.”

Add Bill Maher to the long liberal list of media members and celebrities who have hopped on the bandwagon of smearing Joe the Plumber aka Joe Wurzelbacher. In the case of Maher, this is quite an ironic charge given that Maher admitted he lied to get people to appear in his movie bomb, "Religulous." Maher made his slams against Joe the Plumber while on appearing on the Larry King show last night. Here is the transcript (emphasis mine):

KING: All right. What do you make of this whole "Joe the Plumber?"

            In a recent article I wrote about Obama’s ties to Islam, I attempted to connect several dots that point to him speaking in some type of code, e.g. "campaigning in all 57 Muslim states," “my Muslim faith,” the use of the words “pig” and “fish,” and his background/relationships with relatives in Kenya (http://newswithviews.com/Walker/jill29.htm). However, something gnawed at me that led me to believe all the dots weren’t connected.   

Justin Rood of ABC news came out with a tortured defense of ACORN today with the help of "experts" that claim there is no connection between invalid voter registrations and voter fraud. In order for Rood to make this claim he relies on the testimony of two "experts", namely Civil Rights attorney David Becker and Lorraine Minnite, a political science professor at Barnard College in New York.

A further examination of these two experts however shows that Rood is downright deceitful in presenting this argument. Lorraine Minnite actually donated $250 to the Obama campaign in March of this year while David Becker is anything but the Republican that he is portrayed as in the article. In fact Mr. Becker is a former director at People for the American Way, a liberal activist group that monitors "right wing organizations" and is currently launching a campaign aimed at Fighting Back Against Right-Wing Smears of ACORN.

Just in case you were unconvinced of the objectivity of Becker's former group note that they will be launching a full page ad in the New York Times in defense of ACORN.

I think he said "I wished we had done more."  He never said "bomb more."  I think you have to be careful there. In terms of anti-war activism  . . . Let's get the facts straight . . . He didn't say he wished he had bombed more. -- Chris Matthews to Pat Buchanan, Hardball, October 17, 2008

''I don't regret setting bombs,'' Bill Ayers said. ''I feel we didn't do enough.'' -- from No Regrets for a Love Of Explosives, New York Times, September 11, 2001

Trying to defend Barack Obama's association with Bill Ayers, Chris Matthews has tried to distort Ayers's words that by fate were published in the New York Times on September 11, 2001.  According to the Hardball host, when Ayers told the Times that he "wished we had done more," he meant only anti-war activism, not bombing.  A lot of things were destroyed on 9-11, but unfortunately for Matthews, not the online edition of that New York Times article. It survives and can be seen here and in an image after the jump.

Embarrass Obama, and expect the liberal media to go after you, no matter who you are: That's what National Review journalist Byron York warned early Thursday afternoon.

He was quickly proven right by a story from reporter Larry Rohter in Friday's New York Times, "Real Deal On Plumber Reveals New Slant," in which Rohter took a wrench to Joe Wurzelbacher (aka "Joe the Plumber"), the citizen who dared to question Obama on his tax plan as the Democrat campaigned in his neighborhood in Toledo, Ohio. Obama responded with a classic paleo-liberal cliche: "I think that when you spread the wealth around, it's good for everybody."

That insight into Obama's mindset was politically fascinating, but Rohter buried it in the 11th paragraph of his story, focusing his investigation on such vital matters as "Joe's" actual first name (Samuel) and whether or not he has a plumber's license.

After smearing Joe the Plumber on Friday’s CBS Early Show, co-host Harry Smith turned to a group of his own hand selected ‘average Joes’ to defend Barack Obama’s tax plan: "I'll tell you, we have assembled a panel of 'average Joes.' Joe the plumber, the most famous person in America now. Well, we have five Joes here this morning, from various walks of life, and we're going to put their incomes to the test against the candidates' tax plans and see how it will affect them all." Financial analyst Jennifer Openshaw then proceeded to examine the personal financial situations of each "Joe" and concluded that four of them would save more money under Obama’s tax plan as promoted by his campaign.

Smith did acknowledge these projections were hypothetical: "...according to the Obama tax plan, and this, of course, is subject to passed by Congress...Talk about a pie in the sky." However, he then continued to assume it would be implemented and focused on the first guest, asking Openshaw: "He would do much better with Obama plan?" Openshaw replied: "You bet, he would do a lot better. But under McCain, what's interesting is, you know, he's got that $2,500 health care tax credit...for coverage, you know, you might not be able to cover both you and your son if you have to go find coverage someplace. So that's something to watch out for."

Story after story on the full-year results for the federal budget refers to the size of the full-year deficit for the fiscal year that just ended on September 30 ($455 billion), and how it compares to last year's deficit ($162 billion).

Almost none of them talk about why the deficit ballooned.

I wonder why?

Could it be because the Democrat-controlled Congress of Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid allowed spending to spiral out of control?

Yes it could:

Continuing the mainstream media's dogged pursuit of the truth, Thursday's "Nightline" breathlessly asserted that Joe "the plumber" Wurzelbacher isn't really named Joe. In a segment on the Ohio man who quizzed Senator Barack Obama about his tax plan, co-anchor Martin Bashir derided, "But his name's not Joe and he's not a registered plumber. And those are only half his problems."

Of course, his middle name is Joseph. Continuing to harp on this subject, reporter Jake Tapper alerted, "And it turns out Joe the plumber is not even technically named Joe...His name is Sam, Samuel Joseph Wurzelbacher." Now, although it took the media almost a year to report on Jeremiah Wright, Obama's radical preacher, Bashir announced that in the case of Wurzelbacher, "It wasn't long before the media pounced. But with the spotlight has come some scrutiny." Before launching into an investigation of Joe the plumber, Tapper chided, "The McCain campaign did not necessarily vet Joe, it seems." (Do voters need to be vetted before they're allowed to ask Obama a question?)

Imagine the media maelstrom if a reporter found a swing-state Republican voter who had strong reservations about voting for John McCain, was flirting with the idea of voting for Barack Obama, but ultimately resigned him/herself to voting for McCain out of pressure from his/her evangelical church.

But make that a labor union Democrat from Pennsylvania and it's but a passing reference in a news story.

Reporting on how the presidential candidates were "jostl[ing] for the Scranton vote," Financial Times reporter Andrew Ward found a union worker who backed Hillary Clinton in the primaries and was reluctantly voting for Sen. Obama, in part because of union pressure. From the October 15 paper (emphasis mine):

On Thursday’s Anderson Cooper 360 program, CNN senior political analyst David Gergen followed the liberal talking points about how Joe the Plumber’s real first name is Samuel and how he doesn’t have a plumbing license. When host Anderson Cooper asked if John McCain benefitted from the attention on the Ohio laborer, Gergen replied, "Well, I think he was for a while. But I -- when we found out he was Sam the non-plumber, it changed a little bit." Gergen went on to treat Joe Wurzelbacher, who works with plumbing, as if he worked as a McCain campaign surrogate: "...I don't understand why the McCain team didn't vet the guy before they made such a -- you know, made such a focus on him on national television. I can guarantee you that the George W. Bush campaign, you know, which ran a highly disciplined campaign, would have vetted and would have known before he went out there about... his personal status."

Barack Obama speaks with Joe-the-Plumber Wurzelbacher on October 12, 2008 in Holland, Ohio. (AFP/Getty Images/Joe Raedle)

 

Not many people still ooze over former tyrant Mikhail Gorbachev as a historical giant who liberated the inhabitants of the Soviet Union. But former NBC anchor and current Meet the Press host Tom Brokaw still does. From a chat at the women’s-news site Wow-o-Wow.com:

From Dabney: Who did you find most interesting to interview during your career? Why?

Tom Brokaw: Mikhail Gorbachev. I was the first journalist to interview him and I was deeply impressed by his intelligence and visions as he went about the daunting task of undoing the political and economic oppressions of the Soviet Union. He will be a giant in future history books.

Brokaw has been consistent in his everlasting adoration of the man who undemocratically ruled the USSR from 1985 to 1991. His 1996 interview with Gorbachev on MSNBC -- then a brand-new channel -- was a feast of fawning. This is the beginning and end:

Barack Obama’s supporters are whining about any attempt to link their candidate with former Weather Underground bomber William Ayers as “guilt by association” — even though, as National Review contributor Stanley Kurtz points out, the working relationship between Obama and Ayers can more correctly be described as “guilt by participation.”

But today’s Wall Street Journal treats us to a classic case of guilt by association: a front-page profile of the descendants of slaves owned by John McCain’s great-great grandfather before the Civil War. After documenting the poor treatment that the black families (who share the last name “McCain”) received over the past century, reporter Douglas Blackmon tags Senator McCain — whom he places at the family’s former plantation as a young man in the 1940s and 1950s —  as out of touch:

On Thursday’s The O’Reilly Factor, FNC’s Megyn Kelly filled in viewers on the current voter fraud controversy in Ohio involving ACORN, and Democratic Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner’s refusal to comply with a federal court ruling in spite of clear evidence of fraudulent voter registrations. Kelly: "She's required by federal law to have her state database linked up to the DMV, and to the Social Security Administration, so that she's got two ways of checking people's registration to make sure they're legit. ... And she's required to keep a list of the discrepancies. She has done neither. She admitted she has turned off the link between the state database and the DMV. ... She admits all this stuff. The state of Ohio is embarrassed because the federal government now has to come in and order the state to run a clean election."

Kelly also noted the potential impact of voter fraud given Ohio’s history of close presidential elections: "George Bush won Ohio by less than 200,000 votes, both in 2000 and 2004. She's admitting, admitting that 200,000 out of the 660,000 new voters are potentially problematic. And she won't let people verify whether, in fact, there is a problem."

Below is a complete transcript of Thursday’s "Kelly File" segment from FNC’s The O’Reilly Factor:

This health care plan seems like it has more flaws than the bailout bill.

A news brief on "CNN Newsroom" Oct. 17 said that Hawaii's universal health care program for children would be hit with the "budget ax."

The screen said "Hawaii's Budget Ax" and anchor Heidi Collins reported that, "For the past seven months it's been the only state in the nation to offer universal healthcare for children. Now that program is being dropped."

But the brief didn't go into detail about one of the main reasons why the program was being axed: abuse of the "free" system.

A Hawaii state official said that families were "dropping private coverage so their children would be eligible for the subsidized plan," according to the Associated Press.

They [the RNC] are calling voters, cold calls, and saying to them, what about William Ayers and the close working relationship he