In yet another show of the "balanced" reporting we can expect from the DeMSM this election cycle, the Washington Post describes the Republicans prospects in Congressional elections this way:

Since losing 30 seats and their 12-year stranglehold on power in 2006, House Republicans have kept asking themselves the same question: Can it get any worse?

"12-year stranglehold on power"? Note this is not an op-ed. Of course it's no surprise to see this sort of loaded wording in a "news" item from the mainstream press. We're just making a note. We expect them to work very hard to get their candidates elected in the coming months.

The Washington Post had an article implying some sort of ethical lapse by Senator John McCain because he was involved in negotiating legislation related to a land transaction in Arizona, which also involved practically every other high level politician in that state. This is a pretty high bar for ethical conduct - Congress passed legislation, a constituent benefited = scandal? The Post is really reaching there.

Senator Barack Obama on the other hand openly supports all sorts of new programs and spending that will directly benefit his supporters, and to paraphrase racist Rev. Jeremiah Wright, no one bats an eye.

The AP reports, "...the American Federation of Government Employees announced its support for Obama. The union claims about 600,000 members who work in the federal and Washington, D.C., governments."

The SEIU union has also endorsed Obama. These are folks who will work to get Obama elected, and then he will turn around and increase their budgets, and payrolls. Not quite a quid pro quo, but certainly a direct benefit. These are "special interests" in a way no energy or pharmaceutical company could ever be. But Obama claims to be "against Washington lobbyists and special interests" and the MSM doesn't question it. If any group ought to be restricted in their political activity, government employee unions should be, on the grounds of a conflict of interest. But this is routine - government employee unions work very hard to get liberal advocates of bigger government elected every cycle. Of course Obama has every right to advocate for a more bloated federal budget, but he should end the sanctimony about changing "the old politics" in Washington.

Ok, so the actual AP headline is "Democratic senator calls for GOP to alter energy policy". But if Democratic Senator Debbie Stabenow really believes increasing taxes and regulations on energy producers will lower energy prices to the consumer, then she is either a fool or she thinks voters are fools. Given the polls that suggest a majority of voters may be falling for this nonsense, she may have a point.

Senator Stabenow said, "Republicans want more drilling, more consumption and more tax giveaways for the big oil companies ... Democrats say that those are exactly the policies that got us into this mess to begin with."

This raises several questions -

Which Republican is promoting more energy consumption? Can Stabenow provide an example?

How does drilling for more oil - increasing supply - increases prices? Doesn't her assertion contradict the basic rule of supply and demand?

How does raising costs for energy companies, by raising their taxes and piling on regulations and mandates, lower the consumer price of energy?

But of course her fellow Democrats in the press aren't going to ask any questions.

This is a pretty obtuse column by Peggy Noonan today, in which she expresses some amazement that the Democrats are engaging in their usual race and gender obsessions, and for some reason wants them to be saved from their own campaign tactics.

Noonan quotes Donna Brazile, from a recent exchange with Clinton flack Paul Begala, on CNN:

"...stop the divisions. Stop trying to split us into these groups, Paul, because you and I know ... how Democrats win..."

This is the same Donna Brazile who, as a campaign manager for Al Gore in 2000 said, "we're not going to let the white boys win." Apparently, sowing division among Democrats is wrong, but sowing division among Americans is OK.

Noonan continues:

To play the race card as Mrs. Clinton has, to highlight and encourage a sense that we are crudely divided as a nation, to make your argument a brute and cynical "the black guy can't win but the white girl can" is -- well, so vulgar, so cynical, so cold, that once again a Clinton is making us turn off the television in case the children walk by.

True enough, but that's what the Democrats do, and have done for years. This is like being shocked to see consumption of beer at a college fraternity house.

Remember Al Gore, in a black church just before the 2000 election, "...when my opponent talks about strict-constructionists for the Supreme Court, I often think of the strictly constructed meaning that was applied when the Constitution was written, how some people were considered three-fifths of a human being..."

Remember Congressman Charles Rangel, in response to the Republican Contract with America in 1994, "It's not [anti-Hispanic epithet that rhymes with flick] or [anti-black epithet that rhymes with bigger] any more, they say 'let's cut taxes'."

Remember the anti-Bush ad from 2000, courtesy of the NAACP, featuring the daughter of murder victim James Byrd saying, "...when Governor George W. Bush refused to support hate-crime legislation, it was like my father was killed all over again."

Or the ad from the Democratic Party in Missouri, "When you don't vote, you let another church explode. When you don't vote, you allow another cross to burn. When you don't vote, you let another assault wound a brother or sister ... Vote smart. Vote Democratic for Congress and the U.S. Senate."

But now it's suddenly beyond the pale (no pun intended) for Hillary Clinton to say out loud that she can attract more white voters than Obama can? Please.

What Noonan doesn't explain is why she wants the party of Jim Crow to be saved.

One more quick thought on Senator McCain's (and the NY Times') response to the ad by the North Carolina GOP that used video of Reverend Jeremiah Wright shouting "G - D America", which we wrote about yesterday -

A thought experiment for Senator McCain and the editors of the Times: Imagine a nearly identical ad, but with a single change - what if instead of using the clip of Jeremiah Wright's anti-American rant, they had used a clip of one of William Ayers' anti-American rants. Would Senator McCain, who recently called for Senator Obama to repudiate and apologize for Ayers, call that ad offensive and unacceptable? Would the NY Times editors call that ad bigoted and shameful? Would that ad be racist or divisive? If not, why not? What specifically is the difference? Those who cavalierly play the race card are the ones sowing division, and they should be held accountable.

Manipulative. Shameful. Race-baiting. Those are the only words to describe the NY Times editorial condemning the North Carolina GOP for running an ad calling Senator Barack Obama "too extreme" for North Carolina.

Of course the ad doesn't say anything about race, but that fact isn't enough to stop the Times editors from calling the ad race-baiting. The Times absurdly claims, "The assertion that Mr. Obama is 'just too extreme for North Carolina' is a clear bid to stir bigotry in a Southern state."

But they don't bother to explain how calling someone "extreme" has anything at all to do with race. If calling a black person "extreme" is race-baiting, then any criticism of a black person is race-baiting. Or as Michelle Malkin noted, the equation seems to be:

"Southern + Republican + video featuring radical leftists who happen to be black = RACISTRACISTRACISTRACISTDANGERWILLROBINSON!"

That seems to be it - Republicans are racist, they said something true yet critical of a non-white individual, therefore, the criticism is racist. End of proof.

It's clear the Democrats want to make any criticism of their candidate unacceptable in polite society, and they're going to throw down the race card at every opportunity, just more of their standard MO, to try to make that happen. It's unfortunate and unwise for Senator McCain to try to curry favor with liberals and the DeMSM by playing into this strategy. He isn't going to get more votes by adopting the negative liberal view of his own party.

The race-baiting in this campaign is coming, as usual, from the left, not from the right. Senator McCain will be able to defeat it only by condemning it, not by kowtowing to the race-baiters. It is right and good for Senator McCain to reach out to voters outside his own party, but he doesn't need to trash his own party to do so. That isn't a recipe for victory in the fall.

UPDATE: Here is an excellent column on Obama, Jeremiah Wight, and the NC GOP ad, from Peter Wehner at NRO, "Not Everything Is About Race":

... the ad in question doesn't mention race anywhere; rather, it includes a clip of Reverend Wright's incendiary words. Wright happens to be black - but his race is not the reason he's in the ad. His words are ...

....

These kind of criticisms, un-anchored to any persuasive or substantive argument, are the kind that conservatives find discouraging and disturbing. The senior senator from Arizona could probably find more constructive things to do with his time than to help those on the Left brand conservatives as racists. The deeper damage, of course, will be that when real racism does emerge - and it does exist - the accusations will be largely dismissed.

What Dionne is doing, and what McCain is aiding Dionne in doing, is wrong and reckless. People who are troubled by what the Reverend Jeremiah Wright Jr. said - which is just about everyone who heard what Wright said - are not racists, and calling attention to what Wright said is not racism. To pretend that's the case is an effort at intimidation, and I rather doubt it will work. The Wright issue won't go away, nor should it.

Senator Barack Obama sure does have a low opinion of his fellow citizens, and we don't just mean the ones he thinks are bitter, Bible-thumping gun nuts.

Via Yahoo News:

Democrat Barack Obama on Friday blamed high gasoline prices on Washington and a political establishment, including his rivals for the presidency, that he says hasn't stood up to oil companies. Hillary Rodham Clinton highlighted his vote for an energy bill she opposed and his campaign contributions from oil company executives.

"The candidates with the Washington experience - my opponents - are good people. They mean well, but they've been in Washington for a long time and even with all that experience they talk about, nothing has happened," Obama said at a local gas station. "This country didn't raise fuel efficiency standards for over 30 years."

The result, the Illinois senator said, is that consumers are suffering.

See? Vehicles have been available for all of those 30 years that get high miles per gallon of gasoline, but Senator Obama apparently thinks Americans are too stupid to choose them if the government doesn't step in and force them to. The fact other vehicles are also available that get lower miles per gallon is beside the point. If people want better fuel efficiency, they have the ability to get it right now. When American consumers choose more fuel efficient cars, the average fuel efficiency of cars actually on the roads will go up, without any government intervention whatsoever. It's a sort of direct democracy - people vote for the fuel efficiency they want when they choose to buy a vehicle. But that kind of liberty is not what socialists like Obama want. They want to deny Americans free choice. (Whatever happened to a woman's right to choose - an SUV?)

It tells us a lot about Senator Obama's mindset that he seems to think everything is, or should be, controlled by politicians and bureaucrats in Washington. But then this is they same guy that said in the last debate that he thinks the capital gains tax rate should be raised, even if it will result in lower revenues, in the name of "fairness". So economics is obviously not his strong suit.

In a blatant pander to Hispanic voters, Barack Obama endorsed the idea of a national holiday for farm labor union organizer Cesar Chavez.

"As farmworkers and laborers across America continue to struggle for fair treatment and fair wages, we find strength in what Cesar Chavez accomplished so many years ago,'' Obama said in a statement from his campaign. "And we should honor him for what he's taught us about making America a stronger, more just, and more prosperous nation.

"That's why I support the call to make Cesar Chavez's birthday a national holiday. It's time to recognize the contributions of this American icon to the ongoing efforts to perfect our union."

That's not really why; the real objective is to peel a few Hispanic votes out of Hillary Clinton's column.

But Chavez is not a national icon - a President Lincoln or Washington, or a Martin Luther King, Jr., who changed the social and political landscape - on that level. He may have been influential in the farm labor sector, but outside of that, not so much. The only reason to name a national holiday for Chavez is as a payoff for Hispanic voters, as rank identity politics - blacks have MLK, so Latinos are owed a holiday too. Identity politics based on race or ethnicity is not "a new kind of politics."

However, we can't imagine there would be any opposition to the idea (or very, very little). Latinos are the hot, sought after voter demographic right now, and no politician is going to risk offending them, or risk being pilloried mercilessly in the press and by the Democrats for his racial insensitivity, etc., based on any principle. So look forward to another day off in the next year or two.

In another meaningless symbolic gesture of the sort we expect from the left, people all over the world were encouraged yesterday to turn off their lights for an hour to "inspire people to take action on climate change".

An hour? One measly hour? That's nothing. We turned off all our lights all day yesterday. We plan on doing so all day today as well. Take that, enviro-weenies.

...and by implication accuses Barack Obama of "character assassination" as well. After all, Obama has now also condemned the hateful statements of his pastor, Reverend Jeremiah Wright. Senator Obama called Wright's comments "inflammatory and appalling" (ironically on left-wing hate site The Huffington Post).

From Politico.com:

The Chicago church attended by Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) issued a statement Sunday contending that coverage of his pastor’s inflammatory remarks amounted to character assassination and “an attack on … the history of the African American church.”

....

The statement begins: "Nearly three weeks before the 40th commemorative anniversary of the murder of the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., the Reverend Dr. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr.'s character is being assassinated in the public sphere because he has preached a social gospel on behalf of oppressed women, children and men in America and around the globe."

This statement is sickening, a diversion and a lie. The "African American Church" is not being attacked, no one is being attacked for "preaching the social gospel..." and Rev. Wright's character is certainly not being assassinated. The Rev. Wright's own bigoted and hateful words are being criticized and condemned because they fully deserved to be condemned. And invoking the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. is pretty despicable as well. This sort of defensive outburst from his church certainly won't help Senator Obama either. It also demonstrates that the problem at the church is not limited to one man.

...and the corrupt and/or incompetent DeMSM grossly misrepresent its findings -

The headline from ABC News: "Report Shows No Link Between Saddam and al Qaeda"

From the NY Times: "Oh, By the Way, There Was No Al Qaeda Link"

From CNN: "The U.S. military's first and only study looking into ties between Saddam Hussein's Iraq and al Qaeda showed no connection between the two, according to a military report released by the Pentagon."

But from the actual report from the Pentagon (via The Weekly Standard):

The Iraqi Perspectives Project (IPP) review of captured Iraqi documents
uncovered strong evidence that links the regime of Saddam Hussein to regional
and global terrorism. Despite their incompatible long-term goals, many
terrorist movements and Saddam found a common enemy in the United States. At
times these organizations worked together, trading access for capability. In the
period after the 1991 Gulf War, the regime of Saddam Hussein supported a complex
and increasingly disparate mix of pan-Arab revolutionary causes and emerging
pan-Islamic radical movements. The relationship between Iraq and forces of
pan-Arab socialism was well known and was in fact one of the defining qualities
of the Ba'ath movement.

But the relationships between Iraq and the groups advocating
radical pan-Islamic doctrines are much more complex. This study found no
"smoking gun" (i.e., direct connection) between Saddam's Iraq and al Qaeda.
Saddam's interest in, and support for, non-state actors was spread across a variety
of revolutionary, liberation, nationalist, and Islamic terrorist organizations. Some
in the regime recognized the potential high internal and external costs of maintaining
relationships with radical Islamic groups, yet they concluded that in some
cases, the benefits of association outweighed the risks.

....

When attacking Western interests, the competitive terror cartel
came into play, particularly in the late 1990s. Captured documents reveal that the
regime was willing to co-opt or support organizations it knew to be part of al
Qaeda - as long as that organization's near-term goals supported Saddam's longterm
vision.

....

Saddam's interest in, and support for, non-Iraqi non-state actors was
spread across a wide variety of revolutionary, liberation, nationalist, and Islamic
terrorist organizations. For years, Saddam maintained training camps for foreign
"fighters" drawn from these diverse groups. In some cases, particularly for Palestinians,
Saddam was also a strong financial supporter. Saddam supported groups
that either associated directly with al Qaeda (such as the Egyptian Islamic Jihad,
led at one time by bin Laden's deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri) or that generally
shared al Qaeda's stated goals and objectives.

No unbiased, objective reading of the report justifies the headlines used by ABC News or the NY Times, period.

UPDATE: Stephen F. Hayes has a detailed article on the Pentagon report at The Weekly Standard.

Others:
Hot Air
The Corner

One of the favorite myths of the Left is that President Bush has harmed our reputation in the world, and alienated America from our allies. But the world doesn't hate America, the Left hates America. In believing their myth, the American Left ignores inconvenient truths like the elections of Merkel and Sarkozy in Germany and France respectively, and the adulation that greeted President Bush on his recent trip to Africa. To the extent that some abroad have taken a dimmer view of America, the last seven years of Democrats' lying and bad-mouthing their own country certainly haven't helped.

Now there's evidence that the Democratic presidential hopefuls, contrary to their rhetoric about "restoring our reputation in the world", are already causing friction with other nations themselves. Via Newsweek:

Despite their spirited squabbling, the two Democratic candidates are united in the view that one of the big benefits of electing either of them would be an improvement in America's reputation and relations with the world. Hillary Clinton promises to send special envoys to foreign capitals the day after she's elected. Barack Obama offers to reach out to America's foes as well as friends. Unfortunately none of this will matter if they continue to spout dangerous and ill-informed rhetoric about trade.

For the rest of the world—particularly poorer countries—nice speeches about multilateralism are well and good. But what they really want is for the United States to continue its historic role in opening up the world economy. For a struggling farmer in Kenya, access to world markets is far more important than foreign aid or U.N. programs. If the candidates think they will charm the world while adopting protectionist policies, they are in for a surprise.

Already the mood is shifting abroad. Listening to the Democrats on trade "is enough to send jitters down the spine of most in India," says the Times Now TV channel in New Delhi. The Canadian press has shared in the global swoon for Obama, but is now beginning to ask questions. "What he is actually saying—and how it might affect Canada—may come as a surprise to otherwise devout Barack boosters," writes Greg Weston in the Edmonton Sun. The African press has been reporting on George W. Bush's visit there with affection and, in some cases, by contrasting his views on trade with the Democratic candidates'. The Bangkok Post has compared the Democrats unfavorably with John McCain and his vision of an East Asia bound together, and to the United States, by expanding trade ties.

....