One of the joys of this campaign (and for conservatives there have been damn few) is watching all the effort McCain put into courting the press (often at the expense of Republicans and conservatives) go down in flames.

After weeks of on going sniping between the press and the McCain camp over access to Palin and even McCain himself as well as the McCain camp's shots at the press, the media have decided to strike back. They are in effect boycotting PalinÂ’s meetings at the UN.

Reporters are currently being kept away from Palin's meetings tomorrow with world leaders. (Palin is scheduled to meet Afghan President Karzai and Colombia President Alvaro Uribe, among others.)

The campaign is permitting a camera -- with no editorial presence -- inside the meetings. In protest of the McCain camp's edict to refuse to allow an editorial presence in the room, the news networks voted Tuesday to ban use of photographs/video of Palin's meetings.

LetÂ’s get this straight. After three weeks of claiming everything about Palin is news, demanding access to her and pointing out she has little to no foreign policy experience, they are refusing to show images of her meeting with two American allies? Are photos of her at these meetings really not newsworthy? Of course they are. The media are simply skewing their coverage because they donÂ’t like her, and they are mad they arenÂ’t getting to talk to her. Talk about not even pretending any more.

So Senator McCain, was it worth kicking Republicans and conservatives in the balls all those years simply to curry favor with the press?

Sadly, it probably was. McCain is where he wants to be and thanks to the fact the Democrats have nominated an unreconstructed leftist, conservatives will probably stand by McCain.

God I hate the media.

UPDATE: McCain Camp backed down.

The McCain campaign eventually relented after the television networks threatened to ban and not use any footage of Palin meeting with leaders.

...After the television networks strenuously objected to the McCain campaign's effort to block any editorial presence from the room, the McCain campaign finally allowed one CNN pool camera and one pool producer into the meeting room.

As she arrived for her meeting with Karzai, Palin avoided reporters who were camped out at the main front entrance of the hotel, instead pulling up in a motorcade to a side entrance and quickly sneaking inside.

If only conservatives could get that kind of influence over McCain!

Related (well, related enough): Joe Biden rewrites the timeline.

Let's play a game of..."If Palin had Said This". No, there won't be any breathless pieces about how dumb Biden is, it's just Joe being Joe. Oh and remember...he's got a higher IQ than you do.

Posted by: DrewM at 08:20 AM | Comments (126)
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First, 30 points - DaveSObscenelyNamedPicks

Second, 29 points - buzzion

Third, 27 points - JPT, chinpoko-mon, Mongo Like Candy, mesablue, DoucheNozzles, jimmytheleg3, Yeah Right Whatever, moflicky27, Roman Legions, rudytbone

Tenth 14th, 26 points - Hazy Dave, AliceH, Drew W., Greg's Picks, myxlplyx29, Chefclones, The Slicing Hammers, DrZin, Nodakdrunkhobos, Muju, Torque_820, Murph, Dave R

23rd 27th, 25 points - Teke's Prime Picks, gresmi, Dave in Texas, Blitz, Gib, Bmeuppls, JarvisW, Darkkan, Super Karate Monkey Death Car, Physics Geek, Cauldron, gamecockdude

Yeah, I showed the 5th rank cause I'm still there after my rockin 5/16 week. Also, some of you morons have goofy-ass names.

Honestly, what the hell kinda name is "Murph"?

UPDATE: added the splitters from Stashiu3's group. Their names are goofyass too.

Posted by: Dave in Texas at 07:33 AM | Comments (19)
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Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 05:18 AM | Comments (48)
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If you need another reason not to like the Winners, here's a good one. According to the Winner&Madenbach website, they helped defeat California's Proposition 90 that was meant to protect California property owners from the extensive eminent domain Kelo Supreme Court decision.

Here's what they had to say (pg 3): more...

Posted by: Open Blog at 05:33 PM | Comments (25)
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Christopher Hitchens asks: "Why is Obama so vapid, hesitant, and gutless?"

Uh, is that a trick question?

Obama acts like an aimless twit because that's what he is. There is no "deeper Barack." Sure, he does fine on the topics he's rehearsed a hundred times (race, healthcare, race, anti-Bush, race, Iraq, oh and race), but give him something new to to think about and he defaults: "Present."

That's what happened with Georgia. He gives a statement that he probably read on a bumper sticker: "War is bad for humans and other living things." Then revises it after his advisers have a chance to write up a few position papers (cribbing from McCain) and run a few polls.

That's what happened this past weekend with the financial bailouts. First he sounded like a fourth grader aping a tour guide on Capitol Hill: "Congress has an important role to play." Then, after declaring that now is not the time for specific details to fix the problem he was mocked on Leno. And today he has his advisers have a six point plan.

If he seems gutless, it's because he's used to going whichever way the wind is blowing. As he wrote in his book, "I serve as a blank screen on which people of vastly different political stripes project their own views." Sometimes it takes him a few tries to figure out just what message his minders are projecting onto him. And, of course, without these people he has nothing to say at all.

He seems vapid and hesitant because he's never really sure if the answer he's giving is the right one. He's worried that his minders are going to have to turn him around so he can explain away any "inartful" statements. Think of it like this: every time Obama says "uh" on camera, what he's really doing is flinching from the possibility that his campaign manager, David Plouffe, is going to whack him on the nose with a newspaper. Again. Hence the stutter.

Hitch writes that he's getting the feeling that Obama is a little scared of winning this contest. And why wouldn't he be? After two years of dancing to his minders' tune, being reduced to a mouthpiece for smarter, more experienced and more ambitious men and women, he can look forward to at least four more! This is an understandable fear.

But Obama's also feeling what a child feels after he has climbed into Daddy's truck and turned it on, believing that he's seen Daddy do it so many times that he can do it too. The Obama campaign truly has been the campaign of hope: as in, "I hope I can do this." Things are rolling now, but it's just starting to dawn on him that maybe he doesn't know as well as he thought how to control this thing. He's more likely to come to a screeching, crunching, grinding stop than to make a graceful finish.

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 10:32 PM | Comments (123)
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People who are supposed to STFU and fall into line are getting a little chaffed it would seem. They're still on board of course, but they ain't seeing the unicorns and sunshine flying out the Messiah's ass they thought they'd be seeing... more...

Posted by: Purple Avenger at 06:22 PM | Comments (165)
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Sweet plan they had going here. Apparently someone blew the whistle on'em though and now UMass Amherst is back peddling like crazy.

...Higgins added that an unnamed "sponsor" in the university's history department would offer a two-credit independent study for students willing to canvass — identify supporters — or volunteer on behalf of the Democratic nominee.

University officials disavowed the effort after inquiries Monday by The Associated Press...

Posted by: Purple Avenger at 05:51 PM | Comments (83)
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I don't want to say Ethan Winner is a patsy, but on his way to work today he stopped by Dallas and shot the corpse of Officer Tippet.

Posted by: Ace at 04:53 PM | Comments (45)
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I won't name him.

But the fact that "Geekesque," the head of a guerilla-campaigning internet list, just happens to post from an office less than a quarter mile from Winner & Associates, on the very same street, tends to suggest that perhaps the Winners know Geekesque and put him up to posting the video on DKos with the exhortation to send it out to ten people each, because "viral attacks are where it's at in 2008."

Are there people in this office who have likely direct personal/university ties to the Winner clan? Well, there's definitely one.

So, we have a Winner & Associates employee (not Ethan Winner, who claims this was all a personal project) posting it to Democratic Underground, and a cat almost certainly a close friend of the Winners, working six doors down, pushing it on DKos.

And of course he hired a professional voice-over woman, out of his own pocket, for his little experiment in homemade YouTube campaigning.

For a DIY YouTube video, there's a certain amount of professional sophistication behind the production and marketing of it.

Why, these guys are workin' so hard you'd almost imagine they were being paid for their time, or soemthin'.

Oh: Mr. Winner and "Geekesque" were both afforded a chance to comment and/or deny this story and both refused.

Posted by: Ace at 03:35 PM | Comments (100)
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Fresh from the Jawas:

Statement of Ethan Winner

The following is in response to questions I have received regarding the post on the Jawa Report website.

I produced and posted on the Internet the video entitled "Sarah Palin: A Heartbeat Away."

The idea for the video was mine. No one paid me to produce it. The only out-of-pocket cost will be the fee for the voice-over narrator, which I will pay personally when I receive an invoice. Contrary to the allegation in the Jawa Report, the voice-over artist has never done any work for the Obama campaign. I retained her through a talent agency based solely on the quality of her voice.

Neither the Obama campaign nor any independent political action committee has had a connection with the making and/or posting of this video. Just like the thousands of Americans who have posted videos on the Internet regarding the current Presidential campaign, I produced this video as an expression of my right to free speech, which is guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution.

I believe the American people have a right and a need to know information about candidates for political office and their views. I made this video because I think it is important for the public to be aware of the association between Sarah and Todd Palin and the Alaskan Independence Party. The New York Times has reported that the Alaskan Independence Party website describes the party as seeking, in the words of the party, "a range of solutions to the conflicts between federal and local authority," including "advocacy for state's rights, through a return to territorial status, all the way to complete independence and nationhood status for Alaska."

While a number of media outlets have said that reports that Sarah Palin was a member of the Alaskan Independence Party may have been erroneous, her attendance at the party's 1994 convention, her video speech to the 2008 convention and her husband's membership in the Alaskan Independence Party have not been called into question.

Some people have asked why I have pulled the video from the Internet. The reason is simple. Following the posting of personal information about me by the Jawa Report, my family began to receive threatening and abusive phone calls and emails.

Sincerely,

David Axelrod

PS, I mean Ethan Winner. Whoops. I always do that.

I may have added the salutation and postscript. (Idea thanks to a commenter.)

Doubling down.

Note he hasn't paid this mystery woman yet and doesn't say who she is. He claims she's not Obama's voice-over gal-- I guess we'll just have to take his word for that. He's been so honest and forthright with us previously.

Also note: It took them 15 hours to say what I said they'd claim from the start: That this was all their idea and Obama had nothing to do with it.

If that's the case, why did it take 15 hours to say? Seems to me that was fifteen hours that could have been usefully spent getting everyone "on message," IYKWIMAITYD.

If I predicted their spin even before the story was posted, how on earth could it be it took them 15 hours to cobble together this press release?

PROTECT OBAMA

PROTECT AXELROD

As Commenters Point Out... How is it, exactly, that Ethan Winner found out his homemade, handcrafted, completely DIY video had become the center of internet attention a mere ten minutes after My Pet Jawa posted his article?

Is Ethan Winner, dyed in the wool Democrat, claiming he's a My Pet Jawa fan?

Or an Ace of Spades fan?

If so, why won't he return my emails or phone calls? Dude -- if you're a fan, I totally want to hang with you! We can totally drinks some beers and spread some smears.

You pay for the hookers, of course. You're the rich guy who pays actors to fancy-up his DIY YouTube videos.

And Dude... I guess you're just the unluckiest DIY YouTube video free speech enthusiast alive, given that your voice-over woman sounds exactly like David Axelrod's.

unseen writes--

so let me get this straight. His family started to recieve threatening calls and emails 15 minutes after the post? That's record time for the gun carrying bitter americians from Pa. Way to be on the ball folks.

Ummmm... sure, why not.

Posted by: Ace at 02:38 PM | Comments (194)
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