MEDIA: What You Will and Have Seen...


ABC Leads with Palin Unready, Biden's 'Dilemma' is How to Answer Palin's 'Attacks'

At the top of Thursday's World News, just hours before the vice presidential debate, George Stephanopoulos fretted about “the dilemma for Biden,” which given that “we expect Sarah Palin to have some attack lines on Biden, on Obama. He's got to choose, at some point, not to let those attacks go unanswered.”

So there's the early media line: Biden will be the victim of attacks from Palin and must figure out how to counter those unfair attacks.
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Stephanopoulos Again Declares the Democrat the Debate Winner

Six days after declaring Barack Obama the winner of the first presidential debate, following Thursday's VP debate George Stephanopoulos again decided the liberal Democrat in the debate, this time Joe Biden, was the winner...

But in assigning his “Nightline Report Card” grades he gave both Biden and Sarah Palin the same overall assessments: each got one A, one A-minus and one B.
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Matthews: Palin Looked Into Camera Like a 'Dolt'

After the vice presidential debate Chris Matthews criticized Sarah Palin for, of all things, looking into the camera. When guest panelist Roger Simon noted Palin looked directly into the camera, Matthews observed:

You know what I think of people when they come on "Hardball," and they look at the camera, I think they're dolts.

In addition to the "dolt," remark Matthews repeatedly asked his guests if Sarah Palin's "brain" was up to the task of debating. Matthews even managed to go where a Democratic Congresswoman wouldn't, when he asked Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz: "Is this about her brain power?" To which, even the Florida Democrat balked: "It’s really not nice to suggest that there's something wrong with her brain power."

However Matthews didn't let Schultz's hesitancy stop him from questioning the Republican vice presidential nominee's intelligence as he asked these series of questions about Palin to Schultz:

Well do you think cute will beat brains?

Mp3 Here


'Surprise' Palin 'Did Not Embarrass Herself'

On NBC, Chuck Todd observed

“those that were tuning in looking for some sort of car wreck, probably came away disappointed.”

CBS's Katie Couric proposed, without saying in which camp journalists fall,

“the headline is Governor Sarah Palin did not embarrass herself or her running mate "

Colleague Bob Schieffer asserted that

“I think a lot of people were expecting” Palin “to make some sort of blunder or mistake and she did not do that.”

Jeff Greenfield, also on CBS, decided

“Palin passed the Tina Fey test. Anyone looking for a deer in the headlights experience didn't get one tonight.”

Over on ABC, Diane Sawyer found that Palin,

“after a bruising time in the media, showed up not just with confidence, but cheerful confidence that might surprise a lot of people.”

MP3 audio

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[I thought Ifill's performance was fine. The 'analysis'? well...]

Rolling Stone Throbs With Hate for Palin and The American People

[HT:JB]
It's utterly predictable that the aging-hippie magazine Rolling Stone would publish an article titled "Mad Dog Palin" with a cartoon of Alaska's governor as a female bulldog with spiky teeth.

What may not be predictable in this Year of Obama is their arrogant Bill Maher-esque lack of faith in the idiotic American people. This is their version of Palin and her populace:

She’s a puffed-up dimwit with primitive religious beliefs who had to be educated as to the fact that the Constitution did not exactly envision government executives firing librarians. ...

But Americans like politicians who hate books and see the face of Jesus in every tree stump. They like them stupid and mean and ignorant of the rules. Which is why Palin has only seemed to grow in popularity as more and more of these revelations have come out.

Not only is Sarah Palin a fraud, she’s the tawdriest, most half-assed fraud imaginable, 20 floors below the lowest common denominator, a character too dumb even for daytime TV – and this country is going to eat her up, cheering every step of the way...

So much for the hippies mouthing "all you need is love / love is all you need."

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SOCIAL ACTIVIST POLITICS TO BLAME FOR U.S. MORTGAGE MELTDOWN

While many pundits are pointing to corporate greed and a lack of government regulation as the cause for the American mortgage and financial crisis, Stan Liebowitz, author of "Housing America: Building out of a Crisis," says it wasn't too little government intervention that cased the mortgage meltdown, but too much.

The form of government intervention that Liebowitz focuses on is minority homeownership. In a nutshell, he contends that the federal government over the last 20 years required the mortgage industry to get minority homeownership up, and sacrificed the country's financial foundation to achieve its goal.

To support his idea, he tracked reports and articles back to the 1990s, when the United States experienced a sudden surge in homeownership among minorities:

• An article in the Los Angeles Times from the late 1990s praised the surge, calling it "one of the hidden success stories of the Clinton era."
• But researchers claim that the success came at a great price; the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston even produced a manual warning mortgage lenders to no longer deny urban and lower-income minority applicants on such "outdated" criteria as credit history, down payment or employment income.
• A New York Times article from September 1999 states that Fannie had been under increasing pressure from the Clinton administration to expand mortgage loans among low-income people and that the corporation loosened its lending requirements to comply. [more, snip]

Such data demonstrates that when federal regulators demand parity between racial groups in lending, the only way to achieve the quotas was by making intentionally bad lending decisions.

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[meanwhile, in Washington...

...the cause is ignored.]
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Poll: 41% Say Iraq War Succeeding, 48% Say Will Get Even Better

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...

[what if find more amazing is the other 52% - TV watchers I assume]

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Jihad on the High Seas

After years of battling al-Qaeda on land, Western forces now face a terrorist war at sea. In a recent communiqué, the Islamist organization claimed responsibility for this year’s surge in pirate attacks in the vital Gulf of Aden off the coast of Somalia. Dozens of vessels from different nations have been seized and held for ransom, shaking the world’s shipping industry. Al-Qaeda calls its maritime campaign “a new strategy

[GWOT]

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Skirts 'unsafe' on ladders

Toronto

A human resources manager was concerned for the safety of Muslim women she saw climbing steep ladders while holding their long skirts in one hand to reach their Toronto UPS work stations. ''It was terrifying. I wouldn't want to do what they were doing. It caused me great concern''

The women, who have arrived at the hearing every day in traditional ankle-length skirts, hijabs and neck scarves, have said their religion requires them to dress that way.

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Ingushetia abuses 'may spark war'

Russia's southern republic of Ingushetia is verging on civil war, a human rights group says, accusing officials of state-sponsored terror. The Moscow Helsinki Group (MHG) presented its findings on Tuesday, following a recent visit to Ingushetia by several members of the group.

"What's happening there is unthinkable and shouldn't happen in a country which respects the rule of law," MHG president Lyudmila Alexeyeva said at a news conference in Moscow.

The group directly accused the Kremlin-backed authorities in the tiny republic of engaging in state-sponsored terror.

"In Ingushetia, they arrive at people's homes, some are taken away, others are killed right away, there is torture. These actions by the authorities can never be justified in the name of fighting terrorism," Ms Alexeyeva said.

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High cost of hitting climate panic button

PRIME Minister Kevin Rudd’s handpicked global warming guru Ross Garnaut has issued his third apocalyptic theory unencumbered with any hard scientific evidence. Again, he calls for Australia to take a lead in controlling emissions though he admitted on ABC radio yesterday that any mitigating action taken by Australia to control so-called hothouse gases would have absolutely no effect on global climate change. [snip]

Philip Stott, the emeritus professor of biogeography at the University of London, chided The Economist last month for its assertion that ``global warming is happening faster than expected’’.

He pointed out that the world’s average surface temperatures have exhibited no warming for the past decade, and that temperatures in many countries in fact showed a marked plunge.

Victor Manuel Velasco Herrera of the National Autonomous University of Mexico, has warned that the Earth may be about to enter a new “Little Ice Age’’ for up to 80 years because of decreases in solar activity, further indication of a cooling period [snip]

Garnaut’s prescription would however throw more Australians out of work even as Australia’s economy wilts in the global economic meltdown. Under Professor Garnaut’s plan, emission-intensive industries must opt for radical change _ such as a change of address.

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GREEN ALERT: MSM Ignores Hidden Carbon Tax Provisions in Paulson’s Bailout 2.0

Why is the mainstream media --which keeps lecturing Americans that Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson's Bailout Package Version 2.0 must be passed immediately-- ignoring what might be the most earth-shattering provisions in Paulson's package?

The media needs to start asking hard questions. Here is where they need to start. If you look at page 180 of the 451-page monster bailout bill that easily passed the Senate yesterday (PDF here), you will see that it includes at Section 116 language about the tax treatment of "industrial source carbon dioxide." It also provides, at Section 117, for a "carbon audit of the tax code."

What could a provision about the tax treatment of "industrial source carbon dioxide" and another provision about doing a "carbon audit" of the tax code possibly have to do with restoring confidence in Wall Street's troubled credit markets?

The answer: NOTHING.

This appears to be an attempt by global warming fanatics to lay the foundation for an economy-killing carbon tax just like the "cap-and-tax" system that is now destroying European industry.

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Another reason to drill

Gasoline prices have dropped a little since hitting $4 a gallon, but America's total energy bill will increase as we enter the home heating season. The costly double whammy of still-high pump prices and potentially record-breaking heating bills underscores the need for Washington to make energy as affordable as possible.

[oil and gas are usually found together]

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U.S. schools eye four-day week to cut fuel costs

New York - Facing a crippling increase in fuel costs, some rural U.S. schools are mulling a solution born of the '70s oil crisis: a four-day week. Cutting out one day of school has been the key to preserving educational programs and staff in parts of Kentucky, New Mexico and Minnesota, outweighing some parents' concerns about finding day-care for the day off.

[parents' concerns? they're just the paying customer...]

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A Trojan Horse Made of Charter-School Money

Like a modern day Odysseus, Obama is plotting to smuggle the National Education Association (NEA) into charter schools. Obama has concocted a beguiling vow to double the amount of funding for charter schools. What better way to conceal NEA marauders and meddlesome bureaucrats than to stuff them inside deceptive government handouts? [snip]

In response to Obamas comprehensive scheme for education reform, NEA President Dennis Van Roekel said this about successful charter school:

"The key is to identify what is working that can be sustained and reproduced on a broad scale so that as many students as possible can benefit."

But considering that charter schools operate with much less government funding and far fewer essential assets than traditional schools require, are so-called education reformers and NEA kingpins sincerely interested in identifying how charter schools can still match and surpass traditional school results?

Nevertheless, Obamas announcement about doubling charter-school funding has surely left some charter supporters feeling effervescent. The Trojans apparently felt the same way as they dragged the wooden horse into Troy.

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Virginia Teachers Union Sparks Outrage With 'Obama Blue Day'

New York -Virginia Republicans are in an uproar after the state teacher's union sent an e-mail to its members encouraging them to wear blue-colored shirts to school to show their support for Barack Obama.

The Virginia Education Association sponsored ''Obama Blue Day'' on Tuesday. In an e-mail sent last week, it urged teachers to participate by dressing in blue.

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[again... FLASHBACK: NNBrief 10-2-2008:

Teachers asked to remove Obama buttons in class
California
SOQUEL -- Teachers at Soquel High School have agreed not to wear "Educators for Obama" buttons in the classroom after a parent complained that educators were attempting to politically influence his daughter and other students. John Hadley, an importer of South African goods, called the school to complain Friday after his 16-year daughter Teegan returned home and reported that she had seen several teachers wearing the buttons.

[what has happened to our education system that teachers have to be told it's inappropriate to wear political buttons to class?]
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Report Cites Improvement in Test Scores Since NCLB

State Test Scores in Reading and Mathematics Continue To Increase, Achievement Gaps Narrow Since 2002

A multi-year study designed to report on the effects of the much maligned 2002 No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) has determined that students achieved moderate to large gains on state tests in math and reading. The study also concluded that achievement gaps between white students and minorities narrowed, with significant reduction for the African American community and low income groups.

The study was conducted by the non-partisan Center On Education Policy over a 2 year period. Results of the report were released on June 24th yet few major newspapers bothered to mention the news.

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[NOTE: all Policy Position comparisons can be found by going HERE - or by typing "policy positions" {in quotes!} in the Search Blog box in the upper left corner of page.]

Policy Positions Re: EDUCATION


MCCAIN ON EDUCATION


No Child Left Behind:

• McCain calls the law "a good beginning" and believes that it is adequately funded, although he would funnel more of the money directly to school principals and tutoring services, bypassing state and local officials.
• He would also focus existing federal education dollars on expanded tutoring and school-choice programs for children in low-performing schools, alternative ways to recruit and certify teachers and online education.
• He wants to change the way schools test special-education students and those learning English, and backs tests that measure students' academic progress over time.
• He has not rejected No Child's annual reading and math testing requirement or the law's tough consequences for schools in which children continue to struggle.

School choice:

• McCain promises "school choice for all who want it" and champions charter schools and private-school vouchers, but his plan is limited to expanding the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program to provide vouchers to nearly 3,000 poor students in underperforming District of Columbia schools.
• He has long favored allowing states to operate their own voucher initiatives but opposes the creation of a federal program.

Teacher quality:

• McCain advocates merit pay for teachers based primarily on raising students' test scores and bonuses for those who work in underprivileged schools; wants to open the profession to would-be teachers from other fields.
• He would redirect funds from other NCLB teacher programs and send the money to schools to focus on enhancing teachers' instructional strategies and ability to meet students' academic needs.

http://www.nationaljournal.com/njmagazine/nj_20080830_3632.php



OBAMA ON EDUCATION


No Child Left Behind:

• Obama endorses the law's goals of raising academic standards, holding schools accountable for educating all children and putting a good teacher in every classroom, but he would use more measures than just standardized tests to gauge academic success.
• He would pour $8 billion in additional annual funding into the law, mostly for teacher quality initiatives; he would add after-school, drop-out prevention, and college readiness and summer programs to help poor and minority students.
• He calls on parents to do their part.

School choice:

• Obama supports allowing students in failing schools to transfer to magnet or public charter schools.
• He opposes vouchers for private and religious schools.

Teacher quality:

• Obama supports merit pay for successful teachers based on a range of factors, including test scores.
• He backs incentive pay for teachers in disadvantaged schools, for those who teach hard-to-staff subjects like math and science and for those who mentor novice teachers - as long as differential pay plans are developed cooperatively by local school districts and teachers.

Early childhood education:

• Obama would spend an additional $10 billion a year on Early Head Start, Head Start and block grants to cover child care for low-income families.
• His plan for educating children from birth to age five features matching grants for states to adopt or expand early child care and early-education programs and to offer voluntary universal preschool.

http://www.nationaljournal.com/njmagazine/nj_20080830_3632.php