All Posts Tagged With: "Democrat"

A mid-July Rasmussen Poll found 49% of voters believe most reporters will try to help Barack Obama with their coverage. Forty-nine of voters believe most reporters will try to help the Democrat with their coverage.

A Newsmax.com story reports The Media Research Center’s says this year saw the closest nomination contest in a generation, with just one-tenth of a percentage point - 41,622 votes out of more than 35 million cast - separating Obama from Hillary Clinton when the Democratic primaries ended in June.

An exhaustive, eight-year Media Research Center study of the Big Three TV networks’ coverage of Barack Obama shows that their favorable spin on the Democrat gave him his margin of victory in the primaries, according to MRC president Brent Bozell.

Among the key findings:

• The three broadcast networks ran 462 positive stories about Obama - 34 percent of the total - compared with only 70 stories (5 percent) that were critical.
• NBC Nightly News was the most lopsided, with 179 pro-Obama reports, more than 10 times the number of anti-Obama stories, 17.
• The CBS Evening News ran 156 stories in favor of Obama, compared to just 21 anti-Obama reports.
• ABC’s World News was the least slanted, but still tilted roughly four-to-one in Obama’s favor - 127 positive stories to 32 negative reports.
• Barack Obama received his best press “when it mattered most, as he debuted on the national scene,” the MRC report observed.
• All three networks lavished him with praise when he was the keynote speaker at the 2004 Democratic Convention, and did not produce a single negative story about Obama prior to the start of his presidential campaign in early 2007.
• Obama’s relationship with convicted influence peddler Tony Rezko was the subject of only two full network reports, one each on ABC and NBC, and was mentioned in just 15 other stories. Also, CBS and NBC initially downplayed controversial statements from Obama’s long-time pastor Jeremiah Wright.
• Obama’s best press of this year came after he won the North Carolina primary on May 6. After that, 43 percent of stories were favorable to Obama, compared to just 1 percent that were critical.
• The networks referred to Obama as a “liberal” only 14 times in four years, while on twice as many occasions reporters referred to him as either a “rock star,” “rising star,” or “superstar” during the same period.
• Of 147 average citizens who expressed an on-camera opinion about Obama, 114 were pro-Obama, compared to just 28 that offered a negative opinion, with the remaining five offering a mixed opinion.

“This study proves emphatically and without question that the Big Three networks had a horse in this year’s Democratic primary race. And that with their wall-to-wall, 24-hour daily assistance, NBC, ABC and CBS provided Sen. Barack Obama’s margin of victory.

“As the liberal media’s ardor with Sen. Hillary Clinton evaporated, so too did the inevitability of her victory. The press fixated their infatuated gazes on Sen. Obama, and afforded him the crucial coverage and support he needed to win.”

The Media Research Center is a conservative watchdog group, and the media named and criticized in its report and other liberal groups will almost certainly try to discredit the MRC study.

Gotcha: Senator John Edwards, whose wife has cancer, has been caught in a sex scandal that ends his vice-presidential hopes.

This is the entire text of the UK TIMESONLINE article published July 27, 2008

SCRATCH John Edwards off the list of potential vice-presidential candidates. The former White House contender, who had been hoping to get the nod from Barack Obama, is in the midst of a full-blown sex scandal.

Every supermarket shopper knows that the preternaturally youthful former senator for North Carolina may have fathered a love child with a film-maker while Elizabeth, his saintly wife, is dying of cancer. There are sensational new details on the National Enquirer website, although most of the media have done their best to ignore them.

The tabloid magazine cornered Edwards, 55, leaving a Los Angeles hotel where Rielle Hunter, his alleged mistress, and her baby were staying, at 2.40am last Tuesday. He ran down a hallway and dived into the men’s bathroom. A hotel security guard confirmed the encounter. “His face just went totally white,” the guard said.

The story has been bubbling away for months, but so far there has been not a word about it in the mainstream newspapers, even though Edwards was John Kerry’s running mate in 2004 and has been tipped for a prominent job in an Obama administration - if not vice-president, then attorney-general or antipoverty tsar.

Edwards volunteered recently: “I’m prepared to consider seriously anything, anything [Obama] asks me to do for our country.”

He can stop waiting by the telephone. News of the “gotcha” rapidly circulated on the internet via the Drudge Report and has been buzzing on the blogs. The Enquirer’s story appears to be well sourced.

According to the magazine, Edwards arrived at the Beverly Hilton on Monday at 9.45pm after attending a meeting on homelessness in Los Angeles and was dropped off at a side entrance. Two rooms were allegedly booked for Hunter in a friend’s name.

Edwards emerged hours later and was confronted by journalists from the Enquirer. His usual spokesmen and defenders have scurried for cover behind a wall of “no comment”, while the details of the story have gone unchallenged.

Even so, Tony Pierce, editor of the Los Angeles Times, issued an edict to the paper’s own bloggers to stay off the subject. “Because the only source has been the National Enquirer, we have decided not to cover the rumours or salacious speculations,” he wrote.

Mickey Kaus, a blogger for Slate magazine, leaked the memo. He noted: “This was a sensational scandal that the Los Angeles Times and other mainstream papers passionately did not want to uncover when Edwards was a formal candidate and now that the Enquirer seems to have done the job for them it looks like they want everyone to shut up while they fail to uncover it again.”

The New York Times has not deigned to touch the story, although it recently ran thousands of words on a relationship between McCain and a female lobbyist, which appeared to be based more on innuendo than fact.

Byron York, a conservative journalist, finally broke the silence in The Hill, a reputable, non-partisan congressional newspaper. “The media looks down on the National Enquirer but you look at the Edwards story and say, ‘Wow! There appears to be a lot of knowledge there’. It is darned fishy,” York said.

Edwards appeared at a press conference on poverty in Houston shortly after the Enquirer story broke. All he would say was: “I don’t talk about these tabloids. They’re tabloid trash and just full of lies.” There was no explicit denial.

York believes sympathy for Edwards’s wife may partly account for the media blackout. “She’s a very high-profile wife and she’s suffering from cancer. But if the story is true, this was going on when he was running for president.”

If Edwards is the father of Hunter’s child, he may also be responsible for an elaborate cover-up which would call into question his political integrity as well as his fidelity. An aide to Edwards had previously claimed via a lawyer that he (the aide) was the father.

Hunter’s existence was first mentioned by Newsweek in 2006, when the magazine claimed that the little-known film-maker had been commissioned by the millionaire candidate to make behind-the-scenes web videos of his presidential campaign after they “met in a New York bar”.

Hunter, a former aspiring actress, was paid $114,000 (£57,000) for her work. Months later, a writer on The Huffington Post website wondered what had happened to the videos, which had vanished from Edwards’s campaign site. The headline read, “Edwards mystery: innocuous videos suddenly shrouded in secrecy”.

As the battle for the Democratic presidential nomination gathered pace in October last year, the Enquirer claimed that Hunter was the candidate’s mistress. “It’s completely untrue. Ridiculous,” Edwards said. “I’ve been in love with the same woman for 30 years.” Two months later the magazine revealed that Hunter, a 43-year-old divorcee, was six months pregnant.

The story took a bizarre turn when she claimed that Andrew Young, a long-time aide to Edwards and a married family man, was the father of her child. Young’s lawyer acknowledged his paternity.

Hunter moved from New York to the same gated community in North Carolina as Young and his wife and young children, raising speculation that he was really her minder. Young has not commented on the latest allegations.

The National Enquirer may publish photographs corroborating Edwards’s presence at the hotel this weekend. A reporter for The Washington Post said yesterday: “To be quite honest, we’re waiting to see the pictures. That said, Edwards is no longer an elected official and he is not running for office now. Don’t expect wall-to-wall coverage.”

The Clinton Connection

Roger Altman, who has a controlling stake in the National Enquirer, is a former official in Bill Clinton’s administration. Some wags believe the magazine poured resources into the love child story to scupper John Edwards’s chances of beating Hillary Clinton for the presidential nomination.

Were the latest revelations timed to finish him off as a potential running mate? Despite the rumours, it is not likely. Few people think Clinton is still on Barack Obama’s shortlist.

David Perel, the Enquirer’s editor-in-chief, said the magazine’s parent company had “nothing to do with the editorial side, which I run”.

“We stayed on the story,” he said. “We did it the old-fashioned way with lots of legwork. We did what the [big] news organisations used to do. We knocked on doors, ran down leads and talked to people.”

-FINI-UK TimesOnline Article

I first learned about Georgia State Senator Regina Thomas when I received a communication from Democrats.com. In their email, they targeted Democratic Congressman John Barrow, of Georgia’s 12^th District (whom they call a ‘Bush Democrat’), for removal and endorsed current State Senator Regina Thomas, an ‘Aggressive Progressive,’ as his replacement. Out of 17 substantive bills, Barrow has voted with his Republican counterparts 12 times, including “yes” votes on continuing to fund the war in Iraq ($163 billion to Bush), the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), which granted retroactive immunity to the telecom companies and significantly broadened George Bush’s spying powers, and habeas corpus. In a district that is 45% black, Barrow votes like a southern right-wing Republican.

Regina Thomas was elected state senator via special election on January 11, 2000. She has served in that capacity since that time and is known as ‘a voice for the voiceless,’ and a tireless champion for those in need. She is committed to moving Georgia forward in education, health care, the environment, energy and security. Prior to serving as state senator, Regina served in the Georgia House of Representatives from 1995 through 1998, where her efforts were focused on education, children’s issues and welfare reform. She also served as assistant majority whip in 1997-1998. I recently caught up with Regina for a quick interview.

D: So, Regina, I know you’ve been busy. It’s nice to finally catch up with you.

R: Nice to finally speak with you also! Well, I’ve been on the road. I’m sorry you couldn’t reach me the other day when we planned to talk , but I was traveling and I guess I didn’t hear the phone!

D: Oh, that’s absolutely no problem. I understand you’re busy. So, tell me about John Barrow’s votes, and why he’s being targeted for removal from office by his own party.

R: Well, you know he voted in favor of continued funding of the Iraq war as well as the new FISA bill, which is an affront to our rights, a violation of the 4^th Amendment to the Constitution. However, it doesn’t end there. Barrow also voted against the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) and taxing the oil companies’ windfall profits. As I travel around the state, what I’m hearing is that the 12^th district has been neglected; he is not in touch with his constituents, 45% of whom are black. He will not be going back to Washington in the fall!

D: How is it that Barack Obama came to support Barrow, even to the point of producing a radio ad with him which, I might add, resulted in some outrage against Obama?

R: It’s called politics. Barrow is a superdelegate who threw his support to Barack Obama early on. That’s the way it works.

D: Can you give me some history of how Barrow even got elected in this district to begin with?

R: Well, in 2004, there really wasn’t a choice. Barrow was involved in a run-off against a Republican. At the time, we really didn’t know much about John Barrow, but he was a Democrat, so we voted for him. In 2006, nobody ran against him on the Democratic side, but the Republicans fielded a candidate, so Barrow was supported by the Democrats and was returned to office.

D: Ah, so now there’s a real choice for Democrats, and her name is Regina Thomas.

R: Exactly. I work for the homeless and disadvantaged children. I’ve campaigned for the environment, for an improved school system, all the things that matter to the people in John Barrow’s district. I’ve been there and I’ve heard their concerns and what they want their Congressional representative to champion, and John Barrow is not paying attention to the needs of his constituents.

D: When I spoke with Shirley Golub, who ran against Nancy Pelosi in San Francisco’s 8^th District primary, she was lamenting the fact that the media coverage was dismal, even the progressive media didn’t cover her campaign. How is it going with you?

R: It’s the exact opposite with me. I’m getting a lot of press down here. I’ve been in the local paper almost every day, I’ve been on the radio and on television. The New York Times even called!

D: What does your day look like today? Is this a typical day in your campaign?

R: Well, Comcast has set up a forum for all the 12^th District candidates, Republican and Democrat. However, I received a message from Comcast saying it was postponed.”

D: Better be careful with Comcast.

R: Well, I called some of the other candidates and they say it’s still on. I might just show up.”

D: I would. You know Comcast has been in hot water lately on many issues.

R: Yeah, well since I cannot confirm this and since I have some material to drop off up that way anyway, I’ll just show up.

D: Well, good luck. The next time I speak with you, I hope to hear how the forum went! And I hope to be speaking with you after your victory on July 15th!

R: Thanks very much. Talk to you soon!

Postscript: I spoke with Regina yesterday about the Comcast forum. She told me that John Barrow chose to pass on the forum. Therefore, her participation was cancelled by Comcast. The Republicans running in Georgia’s 12^th District were allowed to go on. According to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), Comcast must give Thomas equal time because she is running in the same Congressional race as the Republicans who participated in the forum. John Barrow, however, has elected not to participate.