A man who was a special education aide for the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) "already accused of videotaping himself molesting teenage girls in his private basketball program," was charged October 17 with "having sexual contact with four more, including one who says he took her to a local hotel room for a weekend of sex" (LA Daily News). "In all, seven girls, most about 15, [have] told police [the man] had talked dirty, fondled or performed sexual acts on them ... [T]he former Birmingham High assistant football coach faces 14 felony and three misdemeanor charges, and more than 30 years in prison if he's convicted, said Los Angeles County Deputy District Attorney Alisanne Scolnik."

Yet one place you won't read about this story is in the Los Angeles Times. Do you think if this man were a Catholic priest, the Times would fail to report these new awful allegations against this guy? Of course not.

Elisabeth Hasselbeck, the one, outnumbered Republican-sympathetic co-host of ABC's The View, introduced Gov. Sarah Palin at a rally in Tampa, Florida today, and let the media have it. Reports the New York Times:

"Instead of the issues, they are focused, fixated on her wardrobe," Ms. Hasselbeck said of the news media, drawing loud cheers from the crowd. "Now, with everything going on in the world, seems a bit odd. But let me tell you, this is deliberately sexist. I know you know that."

After taking the microphone, Ms. Palin hinted that she agreed with Ms. Hasselbeck. "The double standard here," she said. "Gosh, we don’t even want to waste our time."

Hasselbeck added: “I’m most impressed by her accessories, you know, like the flag pin she wears in honor of her son and our military — men and women — fighting abroad.  And they fight for our every right to be here today.”

http://www.mlive.com/elections/index.ssf/2008/10/vote_absentee_its_ok.html

In an otherwise pretty friendly 60 Minutes profile of T. Boone Pickens and his “Pickens Plan” to reduce dependence on foreign oil, Charlie Rose, on loan from PBS, couldn't resist repeating the usual derogatory media descriptions and canards about the 2004 “Swift Boat Veterans for Truth” ads against John Kerry, which Pickens helped fund, as “infamous,” “widely criticized” and “representative of dirty politics, smear politics, character assassination.” After video of Pickens taking his case to Democrats at their convention in Denver, Rose highlighted:

It didn't take long for the new non-partisan Boone Pickens to have a visibly uncomfortable encounter with his partisan past: Senator John Kerry, whose presidential campaign Pickens helped destroy four years ago when he gave money for the infamous and widely criticized “Swift Boat” ads that attacked the Senator's service in Vietnam and his later testimony before Congress.

Rose pressed Pickens about any regrets: “You spent $3 million funding an advertising campaign that, in some people’s mind, was representative of dirty politics, smear politics, character assassination, all of that. At this stage, do you have any reservations, do you have any-?” Pickens jumped in with an emphatic “none” and told Rose he'd do it over again.

NBC's Brian Williams surely made the abortion lobby smile this week when he asked Sarah Palin in an interview, "Is an abortion clinic bomber a terrorist?" There's few things that abortion defenders love more than painting pro-lifers as violent bombers, arsonists, and assassins. But reality paints a different picture. The facts (pdf):

• There have been zero murders of abortionists and abortion clinic workers in the United States and Canada this decade. The last "attempted murder" was eight years ago, in 2000.
• There were zero such murders in the United States and Canada between 1973 and 1992.
• There has been one bombing of an abortion clinic so far this decade.

This is a story of hope and reality. First the hope from Bloomberg News 10 days ago with the very hopeful title of Oliver Stones' W May End Political Films' Drought:

``W.'' distributor Lions Gate Entertainment Corp. is betting the movie can break a box-office drought for political films. None of the five released in the weeks ahead of the Nov. 4 election has brought in more than half of the $55.3 million in sales generated by Walt Disney Co.'s ``Beverly Hills Chihuahua,'' the current box-office champ, since Oct. 3.

``A lot of eyes are on `W.,''' said Gitesh Pandya, editor of New York-based Box Office Guru LLC. ``There's certainly a lot of interest in it from the right and the left.'' The film ``has a shot at finding box-office success,'' he said.

The movie, which opens tomorrow, may take in about $34 million in its first four weeks in U.S. and Canadian theaters, according to Los Angeles-based Cantor Fitzgerald LP's HSX Research, which tracks film performance.

One of the finest examples of media bias this campaign season occurred last Sunday when Democrat vice presidential candidate Joe Biden guaranteed an international crisis would befall our nation in six months if Obama is in the White House, and the American press almost completely ignored his warning.

To give you an idea of just how absurd the lack of coverage concerning this event was, the entire panel on Saturday's "Fox News Watch" agreed that this shows just how in the tank the press are for the junior senator from Illinois.

Even the left-leaning Kirsten Powers said "if there's any doubt there was a double standard in this race, it is completely laid to rest by this because there is no way that this can be ignored."

I couldn't agree more (h/t Johnny Dollar):

The Obama-loving media has found a new narrative for the last full week of the campaign: Sarah Palin's not only a drag on the ticket, she's a runaway "rogue." CNN.com's Political Ticker is quoting anonymous McCain aides getting nasty:

"She is a diva. She takes no advice from anyone," said this McCain adviser. "She does not have any relationships of trust with any of us, her family or anyone else.

"Also, she is playing for her own future and sees herself as the next leader of the party. Remember: Divas trust only unto themselves, as they see themselves as the beginning and end of all wisdom."

Obviously, if this aide were named in the story, he or she would have to be responsible for these quotes, instead of hiding behind a mask. But it feeds a media voraciously in search of a storyline of how people who know they have lost behave: demoralized and pointing fingers.

The husband-wife team of John King and Dana Bash, along with Peter Hamby, are developing the internal-feuding story with relish:  

The election must be close. The Sunday Comics section (at least of The Washington Post) is loaded with liberal themes today. Doonesbury, of course, is mocking Joe the Plumber. Non Sequitur is mocking Sarah Palin and Rupert Murdoch/Fox News. Candorville has a bizarre vote-suppressing spokesman at the door telling a black man he shouldn’t vote because "millions of minorities, elderly, poor and injured veterans have been accidentally electocuted by voting machines."

Non Sequitur (by Wiley Miller) begins with a newscaster announcing that Sarah Palin has dropped out of the race, and has been replaced with Captain Coastal Eddie. The interview with a child interviewer mocks Palin’s interviews.

INTERVIEWER: Can you tell us your qualifications in foreign policy, Capt. Eddie?

EDDIE: Well...When I’m haulin’ in my lobstah traps on a cleah day, I can see Nova Scotia.

INTERVIEWER: Excellent! And being a captain, I presume you have military experience.

EDDIE: Ah-yeh...Every summah I lead a brigade of Union soldiers in civil wah re-enactments.

In a Fox News Sunday panel segment on the media's pro-Obama and anti-McCain bias, Juan Williams revealed journalists were in such a swoon for Barack Obama that during the primaries “what you saw was that the executive editors and the top people at the networks were all rushing to Obama events, bringing their children, celebrating it, saying they were, there's this part of history.” Though Williams, a former Washington Post reporter who is now a NPR news analyst and regular analyst for Fox News, maintained “there's no question in my mind the media has been more supportive of Senator Obama,” he contended it does not explain why McCain is losing.

Williams on the Sunday, October 26 Fox News Sunday:

If you needed any more evidence that the media meme regarding Sarah Palin not being qualified for vice president is nothing but liberal propaganda from America's Obama-loving press you got it on Sunday's "The Chris Matthews Show."

After the panel of New York magazine's John Heilemann, the Washington Post's Anne Kornblut, NBC's Andrea Mitchell, and the Chicago Tribune's Clarence Page unanimously concluded that Palin was a horrible choice as John McCain's runningmate due to her lack of qualifications, they all agreed that she will be a serious candidate for president in 2012 if Obama wins this November.

Interesting hypocrisy, wouldn't you agree?

Readers are strongly encouraged to strap themselves in before proceeding to the following partial transcript of this astonishingly revealing segment (video embedded upper-right):

Are we really at midseason? I guess so.

Here's Joe Concha's views of week eight:

In what could turn out to be a classic "Dewey Defeats Truman" moment, New York magazine's most recent edition crowned Barack Obama nine days before Election Day:

The sub-headline for this forward-looking cover-story reads:

For general discussion and debate. Possible talking point: The Obama Temptation.

I sense what's occurring in this election is a recklessness and abandonment of rationality that has preceded the voluntary surrender of liberty and security in other places. I can't help but observe that even some conservatives are caught in the moment as their attempts at explaining their support for Barack Obama are unpersuasive and even illogical...There is a cult-like atmosphere around Barack Obama, which his campaign has carefully and successfully fabricated, which concerns me. The messiah complex. Fainting audience members at rallies. Special Obama flags and an Obama presidential seal. A graphic with the portrayal of the globe and Obama's name on it, which adorns everything from Obama's plane to his street literature. Young school children singing songs praising Obama. Teenagers wearing camouflage outfits and marching in military order chanting Obama's name and the professions he is going to open to them. An Obama world tour, culminating in a speech in Berlin where Obama proclaims we are all citizens of the world. I dare say, this is ominous stuff.

Is Mark Levin right? Is this ominous stuff?

Well, last week we discovered that saying Obama is a socialist is racist code. For quite a while we've been told that saying his middle name is racist. Saying he pals around with terrorists is racist. Not voting for him is racist. Wanna know what else is racist? Dressing as Obama for Halloween.... but only if you're a white kid. So says the Columbus Dispatch (Ohio), anyway.

This'll break the hearts of little Obamatons and their sycophantic parents all across the nation for this Halloween season, sadly enough. But, if you don't want to be considered a low-down, four-flushing racist, you little Obamites better not do it. Just say nO, kids. The Dispatch's Kathy Lynn Gray has saved the day, though. She's warned us ahead of time that Dressing like The One is racist as all get out.

The leftwing blogosphere went into full panic mode Saturday as a result of a tough interview Democratic vice presidential candidate Joe Biden had with a Florida anchorwoman two days ago (video embedded right).

As my colleague P. J. Gladnick previously reported, Barbara West of the ABC TV affiliate WFTV in Orlando gave Biden quite a grilling Thursday.

Yet, despite the obviously favorable and well-documented treatment Barack Obama and his running mate have received from the press during this campaign, Netroots members were shocked and appalled with how Biden was questioned.

Katharine Zaleski, the Senior News Editor at the Huffington Post, published the following Saturday (emphasis added):