The Oregonian: official PR agency of radical environmentalists

That's not an unreasonable interpretation of this news story on the O's website, which leads with the assumption that a Bush administration logging plan is a bad idea and finishes with instructions on how to protest against it:

Salem is bracing for an afternoon rally to halt harmful logging in Western Oregon.

The Stop the Western Oregon Plan Revision & Save Our Forests rally, set for noon on the Capitol Building steps, is aimed at encouraging Governor Kulongoski to protest a Bush administration plan to increase logging on land owned by the Bureau of Land Management.

On Tuesday, a University of Oregon student clambered 50 feet up a pine tree at the Capitol and settled into a tent with a banner that read, "Don't Clear Cut Our Future."

Free buses were leaving at 10 a.m. from Portland's Daily Grind coffeehouse at Southeast 42nd Avenue & Belmont Street, according to organizers.

Got it? That logging plan is "harmful." It says so right in the lead. And Salem is "bracing," so it must be such a terrible plan that the Capitol will be overrun with protestors, right?

No value judgment about the loony-toon hanging out in a tent five stories above the Capitol mall. No value judgment about the rally's legitimacy. It's harmful. End of story.

And if you agree, we'll link to one of the area's most left-wing media sources (a self-described "tool for the creation of radical, accurate, and passionate tellings of truth") to let you learn how to join the rally. After all, you probably don't have a job and might be looking for something to do on a beautiful Autumn afternoon.

Ironically, if this story had first appeared in the Oregonian, it might not have made the pages of Portland indymedia. Their website says they reserve the right to hide posts that "are reposted from corporate media outlets."

Media bias? What media bias?

In 19 months the press has yet to examine the relationship between Bill Ayers (self-admitted American terrorist who bombed the Pentagon) and Barack Obama (the presidential candidate), even though Obama began his political career in Ayers' living room.
In 10 days we discovered that Sarah Palin (the vice presidential candidate) really did not have a baby five months ago. It was her 17-year-old daughter’s (only that was not true, but it still was covered as hard news).

In 19 months we have yet to hear much about how Obama (presidential candidate) got all four of his state senate seat opponents removed from the ballot, nor how that squares with his "change" mantra.
In 10 days, most media have failed to mention that Palin (VP Candidate) defeated the sitting governor in his own primary AND a popular former governor in the general election AND has an 80 percent approval rating from the people of Alaska AND that is the highest approval rating of all 50 governors.

In 19 months there has never been any investigation into the admitted drug use by Obama (presidential candidate) more than two decades ago.
In 10 days we found out that 22 years ago Todd Palin (VP candidate’s husband) got a DUI.

It took 19 months for the Obama (presidential candidate) campaign to be asked about Obama’s “Fourth Trimester Abortion” vote. You know, the one where he refused to recognize a live-born infant as a person if the intent was to abort the baby. (And no one in the mainstream media corrected him when he lied about that vote.)
It took 10 days for the eagle-eyed media to discover that while the Alaska state aircraft was indeed put on E-bay by Palin (VP candidate), it failed to sell there and was in fact sold by a broker.

In 19 months of campaigning we have yet to find out what Obama (presidential candidate) did as a “Community Organizer,” nor why it's relevant to his bid for president.
In 10 days, we have a third-hand report that when Sarah (VP candidate) was a mayor, she went to the library and had a discussion about banned books. No books were banned. No librarian was fired and no titles or subjects were mentioned.

In 19 months of campaigning we have yet to know the true extent of the relationship between Obama (presidential candidate) and Tony Rezko (convicted felon, currently serving time for bribing politicians).
In 10 days we discovered that Palin (VP candidate) went to four different colleges during six different stints AND she got in trouble for pulling the fire alarm as a prank in one of them.

In 19 months the press seems to have forgotten to write about the millions of tax dollars that Obama (presidential candidate) directed to Tony Rezko’s buildings, many of them in Obama’s ward, or to mention that the buildings either remain condemned as uninhabitable or are continually cited for failure to meet the most basic rules.
In 10 days we learned that as a mayor with no influence in the decision, Sarah Palin (VP candidate) was for the Bridge to Nowhere, but when she became governor, and had enormous influence, she was against it AND (this is shocking) she used the funds on other more important Alaska infrastructure just like a governor should!

In 19 months there has been no coverage in the mainstream press about how the teachings of Saul Alinsky (a left-wing radical who wrote “Rules for Radicals”) have shaped the views of Obama (presidential candidate), even though Obama is said to have learned and applied Alinsky's teachings as a community organizer.
In 10 days there have been many articles complaining that Sarah Palin (VP candidate) got her nickname “Barracuda” because she was competitive in high school basketball.

It took 18 months for the Italian press to find Obama's (presidential candidate who is fond of the phrase "I am my brother's keeper") half-brother George, a Kenyan who lives in a tin hut about the size of a modest walk-in closet and lives on $12 a year. The American press has yet to find him.
It took 10 days for the press to put together specials on Palin's (VP candidate) family in Wasilla, Alaska (never pronounced without the "population 7,000" suffix), where they have interviewed about all 7,000 of the inhabitants.

Note: I received this via email and it was listed as authored by someone named Greg Stewart. I couldn't find any indication of who that might be.

If Joe Biden were McCain's VP choice, the election would be over

In favor of Obama.

That's the (I think correct) summation of Victor Davis Hanson regarding gaffe-a-minute Joe Biden, whose ridiculous comments receive a yawn and a pass from the media:

I think in the space of about the last 24 hours, Joe Biden claimed that the AIG bailout was bad, but then said it wasn't bad;

that we did not need to burn coal;

that his apology about the dirty McCain ad was, as they say, inoperative;

that FDR once went on television to address the nation after the stock market crash of '29 (that's a twofer that trumps Obama's Americans liberating Auschwitz);

and all but said that McCain took a $50,000 bribe.

Not a bad day's work — encompassing terrible energy policy, flip-flopping, historical ignorance, and slander. And this comes on top of Palin the "good looking" "Lt. Governor" of Alaska, Hillary as the better VP pick than himself, the patriotism of paying higher taxes, and so on.

And those in turn come on top of the primary remarks about Indians in donut shops, and "bright and clean" blacks. And those in turn come on top of . . . (Well, go back to the pilfered speeches and made-up bios.)

Something is very wrong here. While most forgive the silly slip like "Barack America" or asking the wheel-chair bound to stand up, I think the Obama staff must have gone from amusement to embarrassment and now to serious concern whether Biden is up to the job.

Had this been Palin, the election would now be over.

Or, as Jonah Goldberg said a couple of weeks ago:

Biden could shout on Meet the Press, “Get these squirrels off of me!” and the collective response would be, “There goes Joe again.” But if Palin flubs the name of the deputy agriculture minister of Kyrgyzstan, the media will blow their whistles saying she’s unprepared for the job.

In other words: if Joe Biden were a conservative Republican and McCain's No. 2 pick and he made these same gaffes, the press would be trumpeting them from the rooftops.

The media said it, so it must be true

From a story on the ABC News website today, entitled First Palin Interviews Get Mixed Reaction:

So, how did she do?

Appearing extremely rehearsed and slightly nervous, Gov. Sarah Palin sat down with ABC's Charles Gibson for interviews that aired Thursday on "World News" and "Nightline."

Just what does "extremely rehearsed" look like? And how does such an interpretation by the reporter belong in the lede of a news story? (Hint: it doesn't, unless you have an agenda.)

The Oregonian writes off Rick Dancer

What's wrong with this picture, taken from the Oregonian's website today?
























I'll give you a hint: here's a portion of the Republican primary ballot:














Evidently, The Oregonian is so in love with Kate Brown that it's endorsing her for the general election, too. Don't tell Rick Dancer -- who apparently has the mistaken impression that he's running for Secretary of State on the Republican ticket -- and be sure not to mention it to Vicki Walker or Rick Metsger.

UPDATE: Now that someone has called the O on its, um, omission, what does the paper do? It deletes any mention at all to the Republican candidate. They didn't do that for the essentially-uncontested John McCain and Gordon Smith. They didn't do that for Oregon House District 38. Heck, they didn't even do that for the attorney general's seat, which doesn't have a GOP candidate.

But there was one other person they left out: Third Congressional District candidate Delia Lopez (a hopeless case against Earl Blumenauer, for sure). Is this the O's way of saying they think Rick Dancer is hopeless?

Speaking of media bias...

John Podhoretz, writing in NRO's The Corner, notes a silly bit of media obliviousness:

You may have heard about how the newsroom at the Seattle Times burst into applause when the news came that Karl Rove was resigning. You may also have heard that the paper's editor, David Boardman, came down harshly on his staffers, telling them to keep their politics to themselves especially with an election year coming up (because, you know, if you don't clap, then maybe readers won't be able to gather from the newspaper's own columns that it is wildly biased to the left).

Boardman has now expanded on his original memo in words likely to cause all of us who work at newspapers to burst into hysterical guffaws: "I ask you all to leave your personal politics at the front door for one simple reason: A good newsroom is a sacred and magical place in which we can and should test every assumption, challenge each other's thinking, ask the fundamental questions those in power hope we will overlook."

A sacred and magical place? This guy runs a newsroom. Has he ever even walked through his own newsroom? I've worked in them on and off for 25 years now, and let me tell you, the words "sacred and magical" are about as far from a plausible description of the condition, spirit or nature of a newsroom as the words "conservative and Christian" would be. Newsrooms are messy, sometimes a little smelly, crowded, gossipy, busy, bustle-y, with so many distractions at once that it actually helps if you have Attention Deficit Disorder because otherwise you go crazy from the five simultaneous conversations and phone interviews going on around your head.

These days, most newsrooms are only magical because of the way dozens of staffers mysteriously disappear right after the release of second-quarter advertising numbers and circulation scandals.

Oh, and that stuff about testing our own assumptions and challenging each other's thinking? Boardman was probably giggling while he typed those words.

I know I was giggling.