After the coverage they continue the focus on Obama by covering the coverage, asking the question “is there too much coverage? Are we biased?” The beauty of this is that they use these quick segments to justify the previous unnecessary coverage and to give the impression that they might not be overplaying their hand but are actually concerned about viewers.

Asking the question almost always leads nowhere. Most of these segments pit someone who says it is too much coverage against someone who says it isn’t. They fight for a minute or two, no one agrees on anything, the moderator or anchor asks a few questions, the segment ends and the coverage goes on.

It isn’t just about Obama either. The media often picks up on stories, beats them to death despite a lack of new information or the continuation of events, then looks dumb for clinging for too long before moving onto the next thing. They fills the space between or around these bouts with the aforementioned coverage of the coverage to get even more millage out of something that has no momentum. This election has been filled with these moments, Jeremiah Wright, Clinton crying in New Hampshire, Obama’s win in Iowa being seen as the end of the primary, the endorsement of Teddy Kennedy, Obama Girl and so on and so on.

All followed by endless coverage of the coverage asking “did we go too far, was there too much emphasis, will you still like us tomorrow?”

I can make it all easy, yes it is too much coverage and the coverage of the coverage is too much. If Obama brokers a Middle East peace deal while he is on the media tour, great that’s news, if he is just taking a bunch of photo ops and spitting out the same policies he had before the trip, it probably shouldn’t be your lead. History really hasn’t been made on this trip so far and it doesn’t look like it is going to be. Time to calm down!

As Obama landed in Afghanistan only to announce, after his short stay, that the nation needed more troops, the media began its onslaught of hype and I began tuning out. With no clear reflection on how he would secure those NATO forces to maintain the operation in Afghanistan, he simply echoed statements made by Bush and McCain many moons before and gave little in the way of insight or innovation. Still the press swooned.

There is little that is actually newsworthy about Obama’s visit to the Middle East or Europe. All we have is a media moment, finely crafted by a campaign that holds the media so effortlessly in its tight grasp. So far there is little in the news of policy, little insight, little more than tightly controlled press events that are nice theater but have little substance. There is nothing that addresses the reality on the ground in either battlefield and nothing that addresses our problems here at home.

Instead we are treated to the media swooning over a candidate who has purposely done everything he can do to foster the images of Kennedy and Reagan, to tee up the imagery for the press so they can write hyperbole while filling in the miles of blanks that separate history from hype.

I don’t mean to disparage Obama personally. It is the job of a campaign to manipulate the press, to control the image and do everything it can to push its point of view. It is not, however, the job of the media to give in and simply sit back to broadcast the show. It is the job of the fourth estate to ask questions, to demand more of politicians than a few staged shows. It was clear weeks ago that wasn’t going to happen on this trip. Instead we would just get the pretty pictures, the cute stories and the campaign credo.

If and when news breaks on this trip, I will note it here. Increasingly though I have come to the conclusion that it is not the job of this site or any of the media to simply tow the line of either party or campaign or to just sit back and report on the bickering, the soundbytes and the fake outrage. It didn’t work for this nation in getting us into Iraq and it won’t work for us in winning the War. We need to do better, to think harder and to tear down the nice imagery in order to get to the gritty truth.

So, maybe we should get started on that…

Here is the piece originally published by Drudge

In January 2007, when General David Petraeus took command in Iraq, he called the situation “hard” but not “hopeless.” Today, 18 months later, violence has fallen by up to 80% to the lowest levels in four years, and Sunni and Shiite terrorists are reeling from a string of defeats. The situation now is full of hope, but considerable hard work remains to consolidate our fragile gains.

Progress has been due primarily to an increase in the number of troops and a change in their strategy. I was an early advocate of the surge at a time when it had few supporters in Washington. Senator Barack Obama was an equally vocal opponent. “I am not persuaded that 20,000 additional troops in Iraq is going to solve the sectarian violence there,” he said on January 10, 2007. “In fact, I think it will do the reverse.”

Now Senator Obama has been forced to acknowledge that “our troops have performed brilliantly in lowering the level of violence.” But he still denies that any political progress has resulted.

Perhaps he is unaware that the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad has recently certified that, as one news article put it, “Iraq has met all but three of 18 original benchmarks set by Congress last year to measure security, political and economic progress.” Even more heartening has been progress that’s not measured by the benchmarks. More than 90,000 Iraqis, many of them Sunnis who once fought against the government, have signed up as Sons of Iraq to fight against the terrorists. Nor do they measure Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki’s new-found willingness to crack down on Shiite extremists in Basra and Sadr City—actions that have done much to dispel suspicions of sectarianism.

The success of the surge has not changed Senator Obama’s determination to pull out all of our combat troops. All that has changed is his rationale. In a New York Times op-ed and a speech this week, he offered his “plan for Iraq” in advance of his first “fact finding” trip to that country in more than three years. It consisted of the same old proposal to pull all of our troops out within 16 months. In 2007 he wanted to withdraw because he thought the war was lost. If we had taken his advice, it would have been. Now he wants to withdraw because he thinks Iraqis no longer need our assistance.

To make this point, he mangles the evidence. He makes it sound as if Prime Minister Maliki has endorsed the Obama timetable, when all he has said is that he would like a plan for the eventual withdrawal of U.S. troops at some unspecified point in the future.

Senator Obama is also misleading on the Iraqi military’s readiness. The Iraqi Army will be equipped and trained by the middle of next year, but this does not, as Senator Obama suggests, mean that they will then be ready to secure their country without a good deal of help. The Iraqi Air Force, for one, still lags behind, and no modern army can operate without air cover. The Iraqis are also still learning how to conduct planning, logistics, command and control, communications, and other complicated functions needed to support frontline troops.

No one favors a permanent U.S. presence, as Senator Obama charges. A partial withdrawal has already occurred with the departure of five “surge” brigades, and more withdrawals can take place as the security situation improves. As we draw down in Iraq, we can beef up our presence on other battlefields, such as Afghanistan, without fear of leaving a failed state behind. I have said that I expect to welcome home most of our troops from Iraq by the end of my first term in office, in 2013.

But I have also said that any draw-downs must be based on a realistic assessment of conditions on the ground, not on an artificial timetable crafted for domestic political reasons. This is the crux of my disagreement with Senator Obama.

Senator Obama has said that he would consult our commanders on the ground and Iraqi leaders, but he did no such thing before releasing his “plan for Iraq.” Perhaps that’s because he doesn’t want to hear what they have to say. During the course of eight visits to Iraq, I have heard many times from our troops what Major General Jeffrey Hammond, commander of coalition forces in Baghdad, recently said: that leaving based on a timetable would be “very dangerous.”

The danger is that extremists supported by Al Qaeda and Iran could stage a comeback, as they have in the past when we’ve had too few troops in Iraq. Senator Obama seems to have learned nothing from recent history. I find it ironic that he is emulating the worst mistake of the Bush administration by waving the “Mission Accomplished” banner prematurely.

I am also dismayed that he never talks about winning the war—only of ending it. But if we don’t win the war, our enemies will. A triumph for the terrorists would be a disaster for us. That is something I will not allow to happen as president. Instead I will continue implementing a proven counterinsurgency strategy not only in Iraq but also in Afghanistan with the goal of creating stable, secure, self-sustaining democratic allies.

I am not entirely clear on the histoic nature of the Times rejecting the presidential nominee of a Party this close to an election but I would have to believe it is a rather unique occurance. I would imagine any media outlet that was at least attempting to be fair, would welcome an exclusive piece by any high profile news figure reglardless of how it is written.

Ultimately, as often happens with anti-conservative New York Times moves, not publishing the piece will only gain it more attention and give conservatives something to channel their energy toward.

If you must watch polling data here is my advice, simply focus on state-by-state polls. While the sample sizes are still way too small to be representative you are at least looking at a smaller target population to begin with. Beyond the pure numbers though, look to see what people are thinking and saying, what they feel is important because those are the indicators the campaigns will use to shape their policies in the coming months.

Try and hold off until AFTER the conventions. This is going to be an election the media is going to try a billion times over to call but it is unique in many ways. No incumbent, no VP, an aging Senator, a black Senator, two Wars being fought, economic distress, a Congress with a lower approval rating than a very unpopular president, we just don’t know.

In addition the issues discussed over the summer are almost never the issues covered in October. While everyone is declaring “economy, economy, economy, Iraq” it is typically gay marriage, flag burning, Elian Gonzalez, Confederate flag, infidelity charge issues that drive people to polls. So as you watch polling and you watch candidates know that a lot changes.

Most Americans, those in the center and the suburbs and rural parts of this nation, don’t make their minds up until after the conventions, the debates and the bulk of the coverage is over. They decide in the final weeks and days and they do it with a gut feeling of whom they “like” more or which candidate shares their values or their vision for that time and place.

So in short not one bit of the polling matters. All we know is that the president is unpopular, the World is moving rapidly and everything we think we know will change.

Official Statement:

“The New Yorker may think, as one of their staff explained to us, that their cover is a satirical lampoon of the caricature Senator Obama’s right-wing critics have tried to create. But most readers will see it as tasteless and offensive. And we agree.”

McCain spokesman Tucker Bounds said: “We completely agree with the Obama campaign.”

Huffington Post has more on the image by Barry Blitt called ‘the Politics of Fear’

This morning when asked McCain surrogate Carly Fiorina made it pretty clear Phil Gramm would not have a position in the Senator’s White House. Now news from the campaign that Gramm has been releaved of his duties and is no longer a part of the team.

1) Neither candidate is willing to come out on a firm position on almost anything.
2) Neither candidate has an economic plan that adds up to solving our problems.
3) This election looks and sounds almost exactly like every other one for the past few cycles.

Call me a curmudgeon but for over a year I have been skeptical about this tidal wave of “change” and “reform” that has been touted by both of these candidates but especially Obama. Through the sheer for of their wills is how we are told they will change the system. Yet here we are in what is obviously the general election campaign, forget waiting until the conventions, and I see two candidates and their surrogates who look, sound and feel just like any other.

Good morning. I’m John McCain, and this week I’ve been on the road in Colorado, Ohio, Michigan, Minnesota, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. I’ve been holding town hall meetings to talk over the subject on most everyone’s minds these days — our slowing economy.

More than 400,000 Americans have lost their jobs since December, and the rate of new job creation has fallen sharply. Americans are worried about the security of their current job, and they’re worried that they, their kids and their neighbors may not find good jobs and new opportunities in the future. It’s a big problem when gasoline, food, and other necessities of life carry the price tag of luxury goods, and that’s what it feels like to millions of Americans.

I have a plan to grow this economy, and it starts with getting a handle on the cost of gasoline and regaining America’s energy security. I believe we should immediately suspend the federal gas tax for the remainder of the summer driving season. We also have billions of dollars of oil in the United States, and vast reserves of natural gas as well. So we must commit to producing more of both, to send a message to the market and trigger lower prices for oil and gas.

We will develop more clean energy, and especially zero-emission nuclear energy. We will build at least 45 nuclear plants that will create over 700,000 good jobs to construct and operate them. At the same time, we will develop clean coal technology — which alone will create tens of thousands of jobs in some of America’s most hard-pressed areas.

Under my energy plan — the Lexington Project — we will also accelerate the development of wind and solar power and other renewable technologies. And we will help automakers design and sell cars that don’t depend on gasoline. Production of hybrid, flex-fuel, and electric cars will bring America closer to energy independence. And it will bring jobs to auto plants, parts manufacturers, and the communities that support them.

My opponent has an answer to the Lexington Project, and it’s “no”: No to more drilling, no to more nuclear power, no to more use of coal. For a guy whose “official seal” carried the motto, “Yes, we can,” Senator Obama’s agenda sure has a whole lot of “No, we can’t.”

We need to think as well about small businesses and the jobs they create. Small businesses are the job engine of America, and I will make it easier for them to grow and hire more workers.
My opponent would make it harder by imposing a healthcare mandate that will add a crushing $12,000 to the cost of employing anyone with a family. My plan attacks the real problems of health care — cost, availability and portability.

In an economic downturn, the worst of all ideas is to raise taxes. And Senator Obama will do just that. If you are one of the 23 million small business owners who files as an individual rate payer, watch out — because as your business grows, my opponent proposes to raise your taxes. If you have an investment for your child’s education or own a mutual fund or a stock in a retirement plan, watch out — because Senator Obama intends to nearly double the taxes on capital gains. He will raise estate taxes to 45 percent. I propose to cut them to 15 percent. For those of you with children, I will double the child deduction from $3,500 to $7,000 for every dependent, in every family in America.

To promote job creation, we must also get government’s fiscal house in order. Government has grown by 60 percent in the last eight years, because this Congress and this Administration have failed to meet their responsibilities. When I’m president, I will order a stem to stern review of government, and I will veto every single bill with wasteful spending.

For his part, Senator Obama proposes to create sprawling new federal programs that will increase government spending even more. As for earmark spending, I have never asked for a single earmark in my entire career. In his Senate career, Senator Obama has requested some $930 million for earmark projects. That comes to more than a million dollars in pork for every working day since he became a United States Senator.

In America, the most important measure of the economy is the opportunity — the chance for every man and woman to find a better life, and to make one better still for their children. That is all a part of the promise of our country. And if I am elected president, I will see that promise kept.
We’re passing through a very tough time, my fellow Americans. But we’ve been through worse, and beaten longer odds. And very soon, we’re going to get this economy running again at full strength.

According to Bill O’Reilly who aired the tape on his show (via Drudge): ‘We held back some of this conversation… we didn’t feel it had any relevance to the conversation this evening. We are not out to get Jesse Jackson. We are not out to embarrass him and we are not out to make him look bad. If we were, we would have used what we had, which is more damaging than what you have heard’…

Jackson apologized for the comments and there is currently no word from the Obama campaign.