Make it a trio of mindreaders at NBC/MSNBC.  As noted here, yesterday Howard Fineman and David Shuster went Carnac on us, emphatically declaring that Barack Obama didn't have Sarah Palin in mind with his lipstick line.  On this morning's Today, Andrea Mitchell joined her network stablemates [no pun intended!] in delving into Barack's brain and assuring us he meant no harm.

ANDREA MITCHELL: Barack Obama has been a punching-bag [aww] for a barrage of criticism from the McCain campaign.  Charges that he slurred Sarah Palin when he said this about McCain and his change argument [cut to clip of Obama's lipstick line]. He was clearly talking about McCain, not Palin.

Well, guess that wraps it up.  But wait. Over at Morning Joe, the group wasn't so forgiving, opining that Obama either did know, or should have known, the implications  of what he was saying.  Mika Brzezinski herself took the first shot.

It seems like the rumors, innuendo and smears thrown by the left against Governor Sarah Palin and her family will never stop. Apparently, the newest lie being casually thrown about by the DemocraticUnderground and the National Enquirer is that Palin's soldier son Track was involved as an unidentified vandal of Wasilla school buses in 2005. Worse, the rumormongers are denigrating Track's patriotism for joining the military and claiming that he was somehow "forced" to join to avoid prosecution. Naturally, they haven't a shred of proof. Fortunately, the New York Daily News has quickly debunked this lie.

In a DU posting from September 2, it was claimed that a "non-disclosed judicial source" said that Track Palin was an "unidentified minor" involved in tire slashings of a fleet of school buses in Wasilla in December of 2005. A 2005 report says that several teens had been found "deflating tires in 44 First Student buses, breaking mirrors and unplugging 110 buses from their engine-block heaters, which caused the buses not to start in subzero weather on Nov. 29."

Your humble correspondent is thinking of writing a story about Democrat voters who are insulted by vice-presidential nominee, Joe Biden. And I think I know just the place to find such Democrat voters---at a John McCain rally in Ohio. Just to save time and effort, I'm not even going to find out if the people I interview are even Democrats so I won't specifically identify them as such even though the headline for my story will read, "Joe Biden excites, insults swing-state Democrat voters."

Does that sound ridiculous to you? Well, guess what? That is exactly what New York Daily News staff writers, Michael McCauliff and Celeste Katz, did in reverse with their article, "Sarah Palin excites, insults swing-state Republican voters." I guess the crack investigative team of McCauliff and Katz figured that the best place to find Republican voters would be at an Obama rally (emphasis mine):

If only John Edwards had a better sense of humor. Perhaps those pesky sexual trysts would not have ruined his political career.

At least, that’s the advice being given by Elizabeth Benjamin of the New York Daily News.

In the article, Benjamin hails the comedic styling of Governor David Paterson of New York, who made an off color joke about his past affairs with several women. The headline says it all:

Truth has set Gov. David Paterson free - to joke about sins

The implication in this piece is that had Edwards, or even Bill Clinton himself, simply been forthright with their affairs, then they too would be free to make light of them.

Forty-five years ago, the great Martin Luther King graced us with his vision of racial equality, and words that will live on forever as a symbol of his struggles towards unity. In 1963, King delivered his ‘I have a dream' speech from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, a speech that still resonates today as a testament to his will and courage.

Now, forty-five years later, Barack Obama stands on the precipice of accepting his party's nomination for the presidency by delivering an equally unforgettable, charismatic, and courageous speech.

At least, that's what Stanley Crouch of the Daily News says others would like you to believe:

Thursday, Barack Obama, the son of a black man and white woman, will give a speech that many say has the potential to achieve the same level of gravity, ascendant courage and timeless charisma contained in King's speech.

Continuing the theme of this election cycle, Barack Obama, the junior senator from Illinois, took a vacation to Hawaii and .... wait for it .... still generated more stories and headlines than his still-campaigning rival, John McCain. According to the Pew Research Center's latest review of the news, "the Democrat registered as a significant or dominant factor in 63% of the campaign stories studied, compared with 50% for McCain."

But the Obama hype-machine that is the MSM may unwittingly help John McCain. At least, that's what Michael Goodwin suggests in his latest column.

Larry Hunter claims he is a "lifelong conservative." Yet, in his recent New York Daily News article, he also says he is voting for Barack Obama for president. The two simply cannot coexist. One has to be obliterated in favor of the other. And, regardless of the facile reasoning Hunter gives for his apostasy, this article does nothing to support any supposed conservative cause. It does, however, give the media something to crow about.

Larry Hunter begins by assuring us of his conservative credentials. A supply sider from the Reagan White House, Hunter had a 5-year-long stint as chief economist at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, was a member of Bob Dole's economic team for the 1996 presidential race and was chief economist for Jack Kemp's Empower America. All of this does confirm his economic conservatism. But none of it says anything to his ideology otherwise. Still, regardless, we can take at face value his credentials and mark him as generally on the right side of the issues.

Yet, even after telling us his resume, Hunter says, "This November, I'm voting for Barack Obama." Naturally, he says his "colleagues were shocked." So should be anyone who thinks conservatism the best direction for this country.

The Swift Boat Veterans for Truth have formally disbanded and ceased all operations as of May 31, 2008. I repeat. The Swift Boat Veterans for Truth no longer exists. Somebody need to send that message to the New York Daily News because they are creating the false impression that 527 group is still out there as you can see in their completely misleading headline, "Swift Boat Veterans for Truth gear up for 2008 White House race." The strangest thing is that the Daily News article contradicts its own headline (emphasis mine):

The swift boats are coming.

They'll go by different names this year, but the largely unregulated interest groups like Swift Boat Veterans for Truth - which in 2004 torpedoed Democrat John Kerry with allegations he'd inflated his war record - are gearing up for the 2008 White House race like never before.

So far this year, so-called 527 groups - named for a section of the IRS tax code - have raised a staggering $210 million, up from $182 million at this point in 2004.

Old Media business reporters have a definitionally-incorrect habit of labeling single industries or economic sectors as being "in recession," when the term, as defined here, can only describe national economies or the world economy. Two examples of this are New York Times reporter David Leonhardt's description of manufacturing as being in recession in February 2007 (laughably incorrect, in any event), and the Times's employment of the term "housing recession" 25 times since October 2006, as seen in this Times search (with the phrase in quotes).

But if I wanted to be consistent with this routine form of journalistic malpractice, I would characterize the newspaper business -- at least in terms of the top 25 in the industry's food chain -- not as being in recession, but instead as going through a deep, dark, painful, protracted depression.

Imagine for a moment that a Fox News reporter was arrested in Central Park early in the morning with a rope around his neck that was tied to his genitals. Do you think this little nuance would be included in press coverage of this bizarre event?

Probably in the headline and the opening paragraph, right?

Well, for some reason, though news outlets did report the odd happenings in NYC Friday morning when CNN's Richard Quest was officially arrested for loitering and drug possession, from what I can tell, only the New York Post included the "kinky" elements in its article Saturday (emphasis added, h/t NBer Gat New York, picture courtesy CNN):

On Wednesday, Fox News became the first news network to pick up on the contradiction between claims made by Senator Hillary Clinton about her 1996 trip to Bosnia and the reality reported by journalists at the time. In a speech on Monday, Clinton asserted that “I remember landing under sniper fire. There was supposed to be some kind of a greeting ceremony at the airport, but instead we just ran with our heads down to get into the vehicles to get to our base.”

But no news outlet mentioned sniper fire at the time, and TV news footage from the day of Clinton’s visit, which was first posted Tuesday on NewsBusters, shows Clinton and her daughter walking around without helmets, greeting various people including the acting President of Bosnia and a Bosnian child who read a little speech for the then-First Lady.

Isn't the Internet wonderful? It wasn't long before folks in the conservative blogosphere uncovered the fact that the "Iron my Shirt" guys that disrupted yesterday's Hillary campaign stop in Salem, New Hampshire are radio geeks trying to create a radio stunt. Just about every major news outlet reported the stunt as a real political protest. Only one of them bothered to look into the thing to try and track down the real motivation of the disrupters.

The AP reported it straight and their report was typical of most other MSM outlets.

Hillary Rodham Clinton's campaign stop was interrupted Monday when two men stood in the crowd and began screaming, "Iron my shirt!" during one of her final appearances before the New Hampshire primary.

It is understandable, but not forgivable, that business reporters at Old Media newspapers might think that the economy is in bad shape. They first have to get past how poorly most of their employers are doing. The industry as a whole has not been doing well, and it's been that way for quite some time.

This table illustrates that point (September 30, 2007 figures are at this post, which originally came from this Editor & Publisher article, which will soon disappear behind its firewall; March 31, 2005 figures were estimated in reverse using annual percentage changes reported as of March 31, 2006, because older data I thought would remain available no longer is):

There's no media nook safe from liberal bias, not even sports reporting

Ever heard of New York Daily News sports writer Filip Bondy? Neither have I. But browsing through Google News this afternoon I saw a link to a story by Bondy that caught my attention: " Marion Jones drags others into selfish, steroid mess".

The gist is that it was selfish of Jones to elbow her way onto the 2004 4x100-meter Olympic relay team. Since she knew she had been taking steroids, she must also have realized that any medal the team won was in danger of being forfeited. Good point.

But then, from out of left field, this gratuitous shot [emphasis added]:

Candidate Fred Thompson is the butt of media jokes, once again. This time it is due to the reporting by the New York Daily News of Thompson's comments in Sioux City, Iowa over the weekend. Thompson's claim that an al Qaeda enforced smoking ban in Iraq led to many Iraqi citizens joining the U.S. side in the attempt to rid the country of the foreign terror network was reported to the misinformed media's amusement, becoming an excuse to make fun of the candidate. But, as is the case with most "reporting" by the MSM, Thompson turns out to be right in his assertions and the MSM has egg on their faces, once again. It seems more and more that the media has decided to do their level best to destroy Fred Thompson's bid for the White House. I wonder what that says of their fear of him?

The NYDNews reported Thompson's comments on Saturday.

Rival newspapers are not calmly reporting the news that Rupert Murdoch has sealed the deal to buy The Wall Street Journal for a royal sum. The Washington Post front page headline today makes Rupert sound like he came in with tanks, not just cash: "Murdoch Seizes Wall St. Journal In $5 Billion Coup." Liberals must really see this tycoon as some sort of press-baron version of Pinochet.

In New York, competing papers made it sound more like Rupert won another prize, like he bought a new yacht. "Dow Jones Deal Gives Murdoch a Coveted Prize," wrote The New York Times on its front page. "Rupe takes the prize: Wall Street Journal owners selling out to peddler of Post" was a headline in the New York Daily News.

On Saturday, NewsBusters asked two important questions: “Will Media Report Palestinians Fleeing Gaza For Israel,” and will they address the theft of Yasser Arafat’s Nobel Peace Prize by Hamas looters?

At this point, the answer to the latter is a resounding “No.” The answer to the former is “Not much.”

To be more specific, extensive searches of Google News and LexisNexis have identified that no major American media outlet with the exception of the New York Daily News bothered to report the theft of Yasser Arafat’s Noble Peace Prize: