Okay... I am bored and without an original thought....but, vrwc13 had a great idea, after reading a link which I posted today (to the most excellent milblogger, Chuck Z!....check him out, he is totally awesome!).

Why should anyone vote for Obama?

PROPER FORMAT IS:

Q. Why will ______ vote for Barack Obama?

A. Because_________________.

Examples:

Q. Why will Jimmy Carter vote for Barack Obama?
A. Because Jimmy doesn't want to be the worst President in history.

Q. Why will Senator Hillary Clinton vote for Barack Obama?
A. Because he stole the primary election fair and square.

Q. Why will Jane Fonda vote for Barack Obama?
A. Because Ho Chi Minh is dead.

Okay.....I'll start.

Chris Matthews came aboard the shortened Countdown after MSNBC, unlike FNC and CNN, aired the Obama campaign's half-hour infomercial on Wednesday night, and oozed over how “it was romance. It was realism” and “most important, the connection with the average person in the economic turmoil we face right now I thought was fabulous.” Plus, the setting reminiscent of the Oval Office demonstrated “he's comfortable and we should be comfortable and will be with him in such a setting.” Bottom line for Matthews: “I thought everything was just right.”

The initial reaction from Matthews when prompted by Keith Olbermann:

Suggesting Brian Williams and the producers of NBC Nightly News assume a significant portion of their viewership is pretty dumb, the newscast began a story about how, as Williams fretted, “number of rumors and myths and threats that might keep some people away from the polls this year,” by highlighting a flyer, riddled with glaring misspellings and non-words, which made a false announcement about the date to vote. Rehema Ellis, who asserted voter “anxiety is valid,” intoned: “In Virginia, an official-looking flier is on the Internet saying, 'Republicans vote on November 4th and Democrats on November 5th.'” Ellis then decided she had to explain the obvious: “Not true. Tuesday, November 4th, is election day for everyone.”

For expert comment, Ellis turned to Jonah Goldman of Election Protection, a group partnered with a who's who of left-wing groups, including NBC News and MSNBC. (After her story, Williams plugged Election Protection to answer view concerns about “voting problems or problems at the polls.”) Goldman worried: “New voters aren't as familiar with the way that elections run, and because of that, they're more vulnerable to these types of misinformation.” Amongst the “rumors and outright misinformation aimed at holding down voter turnout” which Ellis proceeded to fact check: “Outstanding parking tickets make you ineligible to vote” and: “Can voters dealing with home foreclosure lose the right to vote?”

O beautiful for spacious skies,
For amber waves of grain,
For purple mountain majesties
Above the fruited plain!
America! America!
God shed his grace on thee.

Has Chris Matthews heard America the Beautiful lately?  What could be more broadly acceptable than to suggest that God has blessed America with many riches?   But when Sarah Palin expressed that sentiment in a speech today, Chris Matthews mocked her.

Seven days before America elects a new leadership team, Newsweek is making a last-ditch attempt to portray GOP vice-presidential nominee Sarah Palin as a religious nut.

In her article "Jesus and Witches," Newsweek Religion Editor Lisa Miller suggests Palin believes in witchcraft, thinks the world is coming to a fiery end in her lifetime, and may have a "special sense of destiny" fueled by her "apocalyptic theology" and Alaskan "Last Frontier identity." Miller even hints Palin may be anti-Semitic.

CNN practiced a more subtle form of bias during two reports in October by using its on-screen graphics. On October 14th's Newsroom program, a graphic accompanying a segment on Sarah and Todd Palin's connections to the Alaskan Independence Party proclaimed “The Palins and the Fringe.” On the other hand, a chyron from a report on Tuesday's Situation Room about Barack Obama making campaign stops in bad weather raved, “Braving Rain & Attacks: Obama in PA. and Virginia.”

The Situation Room led its 4 pm Eastern hour on Tuesday with reports on the day's campaign stops by John McCain, Sarah Palin, and Barack Obama. Host Wolf Blitzer introduced these reports by highlighting how “[a]ll three began the day in Pennsylvania, braving some pretty nasty weather and some bitter attacks.” Correspondent Dana Bash then detailed the Republican candidates' push in Pennsylvania, including how McCain had to cancel a rally due to rain. The graphic which accompanied Bash's report made no mention of the weather, but focused instead on the McCain campaign's emphasis on the tax issue: “McCain-Palin One-Two Punch: Hitting Obama On Taxes.”

The liberal website Slate.com has once again done the admirable deed of announcing who its contributors will be voting for. (The count was 55 for Obama, four non-voting non-citizens, the house contrarian Rachel Larimore for McCain, and iconoclastic Jack Shafer for Bob Barr.) What I find interesting is the voting rationales of the Slate writers with mainstream-media pasts (or presents). In this camp, the wildest paragraph came from Dahlia Lithwick, who is now a columnist for Newsweek, who apparently is somehow linking Sarah Palin to Bernadine Dohrn, or at least your average neighborhood fire-bomber:

Dahlia Lithwick, Supreme Court Correspondent: Not Voting

I will not vote. I am still Canadian. If I could, I would vote for Barack Obama because I am raggedy from the politics of division. I can't really blame John McCain for dipping into it in recent weeks, but I wish Sarah Palin would have relished it a bit less. We can't fight global terror, repair the economy, or do much of anything in America if we're too busy plotting how to firebomb the neighbors.

AP Reporter Lara Jakes Jordan wrote about a letter that had "been sent" but not yet delivered to Attorney General Mike Mukasey. The reporter had a significant number of facts, including that the signers of the letter were Obama donors, that she did not disclose. Part of the story:

Six former Justice Department lawyers want Attorney General Michael Mukasey to make sure voter registration investigations don't keep eligible minority voters from the polls on Election Day.

The six attorneys formerly worked in the department's Civil Rights Division, which oversees ballot access issues as part of the Voting Rights Act.

The core of the letter concerned a policy at the DoJ that the Wall Street Journal has noticed is not being followed:

In a letter Friday to Mukasey, the attorneys noted that Justice Department policies generally discourage voter-related investigations until after elections to make sure the inquiries don't interfere with legitimate voters at the polls.

There are several problems with this story however. First, as noted above, the letter hadn't yet been delivered and no names were mentioned. Once I actually asked her for a copy of the letter, it turned out that 3 of the 6 signers of the letters were Obama donors. And she did not disclose that she herself is married to John Kerry's campaign manager Jim Jordan. And that's not the only problem.

Though members of the mainstream media seem to have noticed in recent days that the radical, thoroughly corrupt left-wing group ACORN exists, the MSM are still accepting ACORN's word that it is strictly nonpartisan.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

While the MSM continue to churn out stories about alleged "voter suppression" (yes, it exists, but it is a pretty minor thing, especially when compared to ACORN's widespread electoral fraud), ACORN's interim organizer in chief Bertha Lewis has removed any remaining doubt about which political party ACORN supports.

Lewis is featured in a video posted on YouTube by an ACORN affiliate,Working Families Party. Says Lewis:

Across Italy, students are taking over high schools and universities, protesting planned cuts by the government. In some cases, lessons have continued outside school walls on steps and in plazas.

http://www.webcastr....

On the first hour of his nationally syndicated radio show Tuesday night, Mark Levin interviewed Republican veep selection Gov. Sarah Palin. She scorned Barack Obama's ideological commitment to higher taxes and noted that the 2001 tapes of Barack Obama radio shows demonstrate that "he had thought even back then that government should redistribute others people's hard earned money according to a politician's priorities." She said it was scary and would "squash the entrepreurial spirit." 

Below is a partial transcript. There's more at Mark's website, marklevinshow.com.

Although it goes without saying that Time magazine is one of the nation's leading Obama-loving media outlets, national political correspondent Karen Tumulty published an article Wednesday which surprisingly addressed how the junior senator from Illinois' campaign is doing everything in its power to hide the gaffe-prone Joe Biden from reporters.

In fact, Tumulty's candor concerning the Democrat vice presidential candidate being even "less accessible than even Sarah Palin" was rather startling.

But, there it was for all to see (emphasis added):

This is pretty funny. A $175,000 reward/bribe is now being offered for a Los Angeles Times reporter to actually report the news, namely to release the Khalidi video that the Times refuses to let the public see. It started out with a mere $25,000 offer made by Ace of Spades (emphasis  mine):

Well, I don't know if one will step forward. I can guarantee, though, that if the goods are delivered the blogosphere can contribute $20,000. In a matter of hours.

Maybe more. More would depend on the tape.

This offer includes is particularly directed towards Los Angeles Times employees. Maybe ones that just got fired. Or will get fired in the next couple of weeks.

Guaranteed.

Anonymous.

That's how we roll.

Pretty pathetic that we have to try to bribe "newsmen" to release newsworthy tapes.

If your conscience is troubled, They should have released it anyway.

Plus that $25,000. You know what helps an aching conscience? Rubbing it with crisp hundred dollar bills, that's what.

Yeah it just went up five g's. If I can get $5 grand in a donation drive, I'm pretty damn sure I can get $25,000 for the tape.

And no, not a stunt. One little blog gets $5 k in a donation drive. Something like this, with every blogger linking the donation button, would easily get in excess of $25,000.

I may have found the real reason Sen. Barack Obama was hesitant to appear on "The O'Reilly Factor." Fear of flunking the "Great American Culture Quiz."

From an October 29 blog post by Chicago Sun-Times Washington bureau chief Lynn Sweet:

RALEIGH, N.C.--Barack Obama seemed to mix up black television sitcoms "Sanford and Son" and "The Jeffersons" in a speech Wednesday, where he was making the point that if Social Security had ever been privatized--as Republicans tried to do a few years ago, folks invested in the stock market would have been whacked with giant losses because of the economic meltdown.

"Can you imagine if you had your Social Security invested in the stock market these last two weeks, these last two months.

You wouldn't need Social Security. You'd be having a, ya know like Sanford and Sons, 'I'm coming Weezy."

Former NBA star Charles Barkley followed up Monday's idiotic assertion that John McCain can only win the White House if he uses the race card by offering a rather vulgar opinion of Fox News Channel.

According to Broadcasting & Cable, Barkley said, “I watch CNN, they’re not f***ed up like Fox.”

A Fox spokesman shot back, "Charles is a shill for a Turner owned network."

Honestly, folks, you can't make this stuff up (emphasis added, h/t TVNewser):

The Media Research Center's Director of Communications and NewsBusters.org Contributing Editor Seton Motley appeared on the Fox News Channel's America's Election HQ with Megyn Kelley to discuss the Los Angeles Times refusing to release a video of Illinois Democratic Senator and Presidential nominee Barack Obama attending the apparently anti-Israel going-away party for anti-Israel professor Rashid Khalidi in April 2003.

The Times did write a story about it at the time, but recently knowledge of the tape's existence came to light and they have steadfastly refused to release it.

Motley pointed out that this is but the latest in a long list of things potentially damaging to Sen. Obama that the media has obfuscated or outright ignored in their coverage of the Presidential race, including his relationships with Khalidi, remorseless domestic terrorist William Ayers, his anti-American pastor and self-described "mentor" and "spiritual advisor" of two decades Jeremiah Wright and convicted felon Tony Rezko.

I'm surprised there hasn't been an entry on this already on the blog, but maybe you guys can't be bothered to track every asinine thing Olbermann says: There's an interview floating around out there in which Obama says that "the Constitution reflected an enormous blind spot" and "reflected the fundamental flaw of this country." Olbermann decides that of course he must be talking about blacks and slavery, despite Obama saying nothing remotely related to either - because he couldn't possibly be saying that, say, the Constitution itself is the "fundamental flaw of this country" - and therefore, since Rush Limbaugh criticized those remarks, why, he must be a gibbering racist! Runner-up: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21134540/vp/27427104#27427104

It's obvious The Washington Post's "Style" section is broadening it horizons beyond fashion, music, books and other fluff, plus of course - Howard Kurtz's media column and the comics. The editors of that section are tackling important events that changed history by commemorating them as milestones.

The Post's Oct. 29 "Style" section allotted two-thirds of the front page to observing