Rather than deliver a single revelation, the 24-hour cable news channel coughed up a reheated, overwrought and misleading story that seemed designed to yoke Sarah Palin and her husband to the most extreme secessionists in Alaska.

That’s how Los Angeles Times’s James Rainey characterized an October 14 effort by CNN’s Rick Sanchez to portray Gov. Sarah Palin as a shady secessionist who would like to see Alaska break away from the United States. Sanchez even went as far as to raise the specter of Timothy McVeigh and the Oklahoma City bombing.

Rainey began his October 15 column, "CNN bid to tie Palin to secessionists is a stretch," by noting the Geraldo-like melodrama with which the network’s Rick Sanchez teased the story of overblown political intrigue:

‘Who is Todd Palin? What is his influence?" CNN’s Rick Sanchez asked urgently Tuesday afternoon, just before a commercial break. "What is his tie to AIP, the Alaskan Independence Party?"

The anchorman’s serious tone and dancing eyebrows — not to mention a "The Palins and the Fringe" banner across the bottom of the screen — suggested big surprises. Must-see TV! And all of it coming "right after the break."

But alas, Rainey wrote, "CNN was up to…. no good.":

Yes, Todd Palin once belonged to the Alaskan Independence Party. And his wife, the governor and now Republican vice presidential nominee, has been friendly with some of its members.

But neither CNN nor the other news organizations that have reported on the connection, including The Times, have shown that Sarah Palin embraced the call by some in the party to sever their beloved state from "the Lower 48."

To understand the AIP story, voters need a little background.

In the eccentric world of Alaska politics, the party is not so far out on the fringe. An AIP member won the governorship in 1990.

And party members have been in the thick of the state’s public life for decades.

Members run the gamut from states-rights enthusiasts to radical secessionists who have advocated extreme measures to free Alaska from the United States.

CNN centered Tuesday’s report on an interview with Salon.com reporter David Neiwert, who acknowledged that Sarah Palin never belonged to the party and that her husband joined but "wasn’t active at all."

What’s more, Sanchez went off the deep end, hinting that Palin’s politics may mirror those of executed domestic terrorist Timothy McVeigh:

"Not comparing them to actions [sic] but comparing them in terms of ideology, not actions but ideology, are [members of the Alaskan Independence Party] similar to the group that blew up the [Alfred P.] Murrah building?" Sanchez asked, seemingly apologetic for that stinker, even as he unleashed it.

Even Neiwert, whose reporting makes him no Palin fan, seemed a bit taken aback by that line. "Well, of course, that was an individual lone wolf who was associated with the patriots" movement, Neiwert said of the Oklahoma City attack. "But, yes, they basically come from the same, uh, sort of ideological background. That’s correct."

Not only was Sanchez unfair in his reporting, he evinced at best a cluelessness about the McCain campaign’s criticism of his bias (emphasis mine):

"CNN is furthering a smear with this report, no different than if your network ran a piece questioning Sen. Obama’s religion," said Michael Goldfarb, a McCain-Palin spokesman. "No serious news organization has tried to make this connection, and it is unfortunate that CNN would be the first."

Responding to the reference to Obama’s religion toward the end of the segment, Sanchez either ignored or was too dull to understand that the McCain camp was complaining about unfairness. Instead, he turned to the Salon reporter and asked: "Is this in any way a religious organization, the AIP?"

Huh?

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In his 1999 memoir, “All Too Human,” George Stephanopoulos defined good spin as “a hope dressed up as an observation.” Starting with the 2000 election, however, Stephanopoulos (supposedly) abandoned the role of paid spinner that he filled during Bill Clinton’s 1992 and 1996 presidential campaigns, instead offering his expert opinion as an analyst and anchor for ABC News.

But a review finds Stephanopoulos’s campaign-year “observations” seem a whole lot like the spin he used to peddle when he worked for the Clintons. So far this election year, as my colleague Brent Baker has chronicled, Stephanopoulos the neutral pundit has declared Democrats Barack Obama and Joe Biden the winners of the first three debates.

Does anyone want to bet against him going four-for-four?

He declared Obama the winner after the first debate on September 26:

Bottom line, the winner is Barack Obama. He comes into this race where the country wants change. His number one goal was to show that he belonged on that stage. He was a credible commander-in-chief, that he could hold his own on national security. He did that tonight. He gets the win.

He applauded Biden after the vice presidential debate on October 2:

What was Joe Biden’s strategy? It was clearly, he was going to debate John McCain tonight. He was not going to debate Sarah Palin. And he was going to do everything he could to say that John McCain would be a continuation of George W. Bush’s presidency. That is the fundamental strategy of the Obama campaign, and Joe Biden hit it in every single answer tonight. He was coherent, he was consistent.

And after the second presidential debate on October 7:

Obama is two for two….He definitely won tonight. I think, again, he showed over the course of this debate, over the course of the two debates, he is answering the number one question Americans have about him. Does he have the experience it takes to serve effectively as President? Over the course now of three hours of debates, he is answering that question minute by minute.

A look back at the last two presidential campaigns also finds Stephanopoulos tilting in favor of his former Democratic colleagues. Let’s start with a look back at Campaign 2004:

■ First Presidential Debate, September 30. Stephanopoulos enthusiastically declared John Kerry the winner over George W. Bush:

Tonight was a big opportunity for Senator Kerry. He was up on the stage as an equal to the President. And over 90 minutes, he gave substantive responses to the charge that the President made. But I wonder if stylistically he helped himself even more than substantively, if by appearing calm and confident, for the most part, during this debate. He answered the flip-flopper charge with his demeanor even more than with his words….I think Senator Kerry has momentum coming out of here. He’ll come out of here and say, ‘Listen, the American people agreed with what I had to say last night, they thought I did a good job,’ and he’s got five more weeks to argue his case.

■ Vice Presidential Debate, October 4. The morning after the debate, on Good Morning America, Stephanopoulos tried to downplay an ABC News snap poll that showed Dick Cheney beating John Edwards, suggesting the debate was really a tie:

It showed Cheney winning 43 to 35, but you’ve got to look underneath the poll a little bit, Charlie. It showed that more Republicans watched the debate than Democrats, by 38 to 31 percent. So Cheney wins the debate by eight percent in our poll, but there were seven percent more Republicans than Democrats. That makes up for most of the difference, although Cheney did do a little bit better with Republicans than Edwards did with Democrats, and I think he needed to do that.

Coming off of President Bush’s debate performance Thursday night, he needed to rally those Republicans, I think he did that. On the other hand, Senator Edwards did what he needed to do for himself. He may want to run for President one day. He showed Democrats he could be tough, but without tarnishing his image.

■ Second Presidential Debate, October 8. Stephanopoulos on Nightline following the debate argued that both Bush and Kerry did well, but proposed that really meant that Kerry won:

My gut tells me that President Bush helped himself personally by having an improved performance, but that Senator Kerry’s campaign is helped more overall because the issues are trending in his direction….He’s the challenger and he’s now had two debates where people have seen him as either a tie or a win. A credible alternative at a time when you’ve had job loss, when a majority of the country thinks we’re going in the wrong direction — that’s very good news for the challenger.

■ Third Presidential Debate, October 13. The morning after the final debate, Stephanopoulos on Good Morning America argued that Kerry was three for three, and thus favored to win the White House:

What this shows basically is that John Kerry in three debates had three wins even though last night was narrow. And I think that’s the important point: to look at the debates as a whole. If you look at three presidential elections where the challenger has come in behind going into the debates and left ahead — 1960, 1980, 2000 — that person went on to win the presidency.

Now, a look back at Campaign 2000:

■ First Presidential Debate, October 3. Working his first debate as an ABC analyst, Stephanopoulos was enthusiastic for Al Gore. Talking about the debate that Saturday Night Live would later mock for Gore’s heavy sighing, Stephanopoulos gushed to anchor Peter Jennings:

Gore dominated the debate, Peter. You know, all year long he’s been trailing Governor Bush on the issue of who’s the strongest leader. Well, tonight Gore not only took up most of the time, most of the time was spent on the issues that he has the biggest advantage on, most particularly prescription drugs….It was even the way that he would interrupt Jim Lehrer and say, ‘Listen, I want one more word.’ He looked like he was dominating, and then again, the issues that the time was spent on — prescription drugs, education, Social Security, even the RU-486 and abortion issue. All of those favor Gore.

Later on Nightline, Stephanopoulos kept up the spin:

There wasn’t a single issue, with perhaps the exception of the energy question, where Gore lost on points over the course of the 90 minutes. He was strong, he was detailed, he was specific, and he posed questions to Bush that Bush left on the table. My guess is also on the issue of foreign policy, Bush was quite shaky, particularly when he was talking about military readiness, when he was talking about the situation in Serbia right now. Gore actually corrected him. Yes, Gore was too much of a know-it-all, a little too arrogant, but I think that people in the end were looking at the substance and the specifics, and on that, Gore won.

■ Vice Presidential Debate, October 5. Confronted with a quickie poll showing Cheney beating Joe Lieberman by a 43-24 percent margin, Stephanopoulos gave both sides equal credit:

I think they both have elevated their tickets’ position, which means it’s a wash. I think that, Peter, this debate is going to played in college debate classes for years as a model debate. Both candidates were solid and substantive and funny. Both were what debate coaches call appropriately aggressive on policy, and I think they both shored up — Cheney shored up one of Bush’s weaknesses, a sense of gravitas. Joe Lieberman warmed up Al Gore a little bit.

■ Second Presidential Debate, October 11. Immediately after the debate, Stephonopoulos suggested Bush won: “I thought it was a very strong night for Governor Bush. I mean, Al Gore did do fine; he lowered down the ticks. But the fact that the first 40 minutes of the debate was on foreign policy, I think, really helped Bush.”

But the next morning on Good Morning America, Stephanopoulos revised his assessment, criticizing Bush for a claim he made about Gore’s connection with a corrupt ex-Prime Minister of Russia:

[Bush] did look strong here and this looked like a high point in the debate for Governor Bush, but on second thought, it looks like he also got some of his facts wrong. Prime Minister Chernomyrdin, while he did get wealthy through the state energy concern, there’s no evidence at all that he siphoned money off from the International Monetary Fund. Bush probably brought it up because Gore was chairman of a commission with Chernomyrdin, so he wanted to tie them together, but this looks like an example of what Gore has been criticized of in the past, a case where Governor Bush is stretching the facts to make a political point.

■ Third Presidential Debate, October 17. With the liberal media defensive over Gore’s frequent misstatements of fact, Stephanopoulos leaped to accuse Bush of making an inaccurate charge:

Gore seemed to know some of Bush’s proposals and facts about his record better than Bush did himself, and they’ll point out that many of Bush’s charges against Gore, most specifically on his spending proposals, are inaccurate….I think there’s a chance he may have lost some ground because when Gore was questioned about it, he was able to say quite firmly Bush’s charges are absolutely wrong, and I do believe that Gore will be right, that when the charge that Bush, that Gore spends three times as much as President Clinton is analyzed, it will seem to be more of a partisan analysis than an impartial analysis.

More of a partisan analysis than an impartial analysis? Sounds like our George.

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For a guy that has practically made a career out of regularly accusing the Bush administration of lying to get America into a war, comedian Bill Maher clearly isn’t opposed to telling fibs if it serves his financial interests.

Such was exposed by CNN Monday when Maher and the director of his new film "Religulous" admitted — without the slightest hint of remorse — they had lied to get people — including political and religious figures — to appear in the movie.

In fact, one evangelical pastor said that he thought he was participating in a PBS documentary and never would have agreed to the project if he had been told Maher was involved (video embedded right, full transcript follows):

BROOKE ANDERSON, CNN ENTERTAINMENT CORRESPONDENT: Bill Maher’s film "Religulous" rails on religion and belittles those who believe. Now some in the film claiming they were tricked into participating, a charge Maher doesn’t deny.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

BILL MAHER, COMEDIAN: You’re a senator, it worries me that people are running my country who believe in a talking thing.

Sen. MARK PRYOR (D-Arkansas): You don’t have to pass an I.Q. test to be in the Senate.

ANDERSON (voice-over): Senator Mark Pryor of Arkansas isn’t laughing about his appearance in comedian Bill Maher’s new film "Religulous."

PRYOR: The concern I have is it’s really making fun of all people of faith making them look ridiculous.

ANDERSON: Though Pryor knew Maher was involved he says this e- mail request was misleading.

PRYOR: We really had no idea of what he was up to. We thought that was probably going to be a segment for his show. I don’t think he explicitly said that. But he never told that us that he was working on a documentary.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I’m going in the (INAUDIBLE) and I’m going to come back on a white horse.

ANDERSON: The movie directed by Larry Charles who also made "Borat" mocks all major religion. Steven Waldman is editor in chief of the non-denominational Web site, beliefnet.com.

STEVEN WALDMAN, Beliefnet.com: If he had any hopes that this was going to be a kind of persuasive indictment of religion, I think he kind of blew it by caring more about making it a comedy than about making it a real documentary.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Is this is your only 2000 tour?

ANDERSON: Evangelical pastor Jeremiah Cummings says he was told he was taking part in a PBS documentary and never would have participated had he known Maher was behind the project.

"They never told me that Bill Maher was going to slide in at the last second. I deeply feel sorry for Larry Charles and Bill Maher for this sick movie."

ANDERSON: Cummings says that his career and reputation have suffered.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE (sounds like Maher off-camera): Bless me, father, for I have sinned.

ANDERSON: Maher and Charles admitted deceiving the film’s subjects.

MAHER: We lied.

LARRY CHARLES, Director: Yes, I don’t see an obligation to reveal everything about everything.

ANDERSON: Despite the attacks on faith, Waldman believes something positive can come from the film.

WALDMAN: It kind of makes believers on their toes.

MAHER: Why doesn’t he just obliterate the devil and therefore get rid of evil in the world?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: He will.

MAHER: He will?

(END VIDEOTAPE)

ANDERSON: For his part, Pastor Jeremiah Cummings is considering legal action despite signing a consent form.

In the end, Bill Maher lying really isn’t news, is it?

After all, since leaving "Comedy Central" years ago and become a leftwing shill, he’s been lying virtually every time he’s in front of a camera.

Of course, it is nice to see him admit it, isn’t it?

Readers are encouraged to review Brent Bozell’s "Mighty Maher Strikes Out."

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Tony Dokoupil, who once asked "is journalism ready for a black president" in the Columbia Journalism Review — he also excerpted it in a blog entry at Huffington Post — gave Newsweek readers a look at what the presidential candidates’ neckties say about the men who wear them.

You may scoff now, but Dokoupil sure finds it a knotty problem (emphases mine):

So what does the knot say about today’s presidential candidates? In McCain’s case, it screams old-guard Washington establishment, like a bolo screams cowboy. According to his top adviser, Mark Salter, the Arizona senator wears his tie with either a Windsor or the related half-Windsor knot–a configuration long favored by Beltway elites and, at least judging by the photos, nearly every U.S. president in the 20th century…. McCain’s Windsor might seem like an odd choice for a self-proclaimed maverick, but it reflects the senator’s public struggle to remain true to himself despite the distorting pressure of the presidential campaign. [...]

Obama, on the other hand, still hounded by charges of elitism, takes a less formal, more middle-class tack. Based on an unscientific sampling of recent photos–including the Men’s Vogue cover–he most often wears his necktie with a four-in-hand knot, an awkward and asymmetrical cinch invented by 19th-century carriage drivers (who held four reigns in hand) and popularized by Dilbert-types looking for a no-hassle way to spruce up for work. "It’s a knot for someone who has 30 seconds for his tie in the morning," says Blackman, "a knot for the masses." The Obama campaign didn’t respond to NEWSWEEK’s inquiry about his ties (the nerve!), and the use of varying fabrics–which hold folds differently–make it tough to be certain about the senator’s knot. But this much is at least clear: the Obama knot marks a definite break from the geometric Windsors of Bill Clinton and George W. Bush.

Now that’s sartorial change we can believe in.

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The Nobel committee can stop looking for next year winner of the Nobel prize in economics and hand the thing right now to Harold Myerson.  The WaPo columnist’s effort of today, Gods That Failed, is Krugmanesque, reading like an extended gloat at the expense of believers in free markets. Ha-ha, mocks Myerson, your god of unregulated capitalism is dead.  Just like Communism failed, so has your system. You half expect Myerson to end with a self-satisfied "nah nah nah nah nah!"

From Myerson’s opening paras [emphasis added]:

In 1949, a number of famous writers, among them Arthur Koestler, André Gide, Richard Wright, Stephen Spender and Ignazio Silone, wrote essays explaining why they were no longer communists. The essays were collected in a volume entitled "The God That Failed."

Today, conservative intellectuals might want to consider writing a tome on the failure of their own beloved deity, unregulated capitalism.

There’s just one small problem with Harold’s hypothesis: it’s based on an entirely false premise, one that I’m sure NB readers will quickly spot.  The current mess was caused not by too little government regulation, but too much.

Surely not even Myerson can deny that it was government meddling with Freddie and Fannie–by far the biggest players in the mortgage markets–that is a root cause of the financial crisis.  It was the implicit federal guarantee of Freddie/Fannie’s obligations that permitted them to borrow at lower rates.  And it was government pressure on them to lend to non-creditworthy borrowers that largely underlies the sub-prime mess.  Similarly, it was the mandate of the Community Reinvestment Act, as well as more informal government pressures, that distorted the private credit sector and led to more sub-prime lending.

Asks Myerson, a sneer in his cyber-pen:

What exactly do economic conservatives believe now that their god is dead? What’s become of the glories of privatized Social Security?

Myerson might think he’s making a brilliant rhetorical point. But which would you rather have: a government-guaranteed 1% return on your Social Security contributions, or the right–with attendant risk–to make your own decisions in the market over a lifetime of work?

So what does Myerson propose as an alternative to the dead god of capitalism?  A good inkling comes from this proposal he floats [emphasis added]:

Now liberals must turn their attention to the kind of financial nationalization on which we’re about to embark. Paulson wants to shore up the banks with public funds but also to continue entrusting our banking system to the same bankers who got us into this fix, albeit with more regulation. But why shouldn’t banks that take public money be compelled to seat a public member or two on their boards, as a check against their repeating old follies or committing new ones? Economic Policy Institute founder Jeff Faux says the government should control one major bank to use as a yardstick in the financial sector, just as public utilities constrain the misconduct of private ones.

Sounds like a giant step down the slope to socialism. With a President Obama, strong Dem congressional majorities, and the Myersons of the media to cheer them on, could it become an avalanche?

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On the trail with Sarah Palin in Richmond, Va., New York Times reporter Patrick Healy filed a condescending profile of her stump speech in Tuesday’s "A Riveting Speaker, Waving the Flag."

Healy claimed that Palin’s "partisan zeal" and "with-us-or-against-us message" could "repel some independent voters," and that her speeches have "holes in logic." It was the sort of treatment that gaffe machine Joe Biden never receives from the Times:

Here is the thing about Gov. Sarah Palin: She loves America. Really loves it. She loves the smell of cut grass and hay, as she told Ohio voters Sunday. She loves Navy bases, she said in Virginia Beach on Monday morning. She loves America’s "most beautiful national anthem," she told a crowd here a few hours later.

Apparently there are people who do not feel the same way about America as Ms. Palin does, she said at campaign rallies over the last two days. Those people just do not get it.

"Man, I love small-town U.S.A.," Ms. Palin told several thousand people on a field in Ohio, "and I don’t care what anyone else says about small-town U.S.A. You guys, you just get it."

Ms. Palin did not identify who "anyone else" was. But listening to her campaign speeches three weeks before the presidential election, an informed voter would not need two chances to guess between Senators Barack Obama and John McCain. (The posters reading "Barack Bin Lyin" at the McCain-Palin rally in Virginia Beach might be a hint, too.)

Healy estimated the crowd at the Richmond International Raceway as "more than 10,000 people," but the text box knocked that down: "Gov. Sarah Palin addressed 10,000 people on Monday at a raceway in Richmond, Va." A Washington Post blog entry puts the crowd at 20,000.

More from Healy:

But Ms. Palin’s partisan zeal could repel some independent voters in closely contested states like New Hampshire and Pennsylvania; Democratic polling in both states shows Ms. Palin with high negative ratings among independents. Palin advisers say many of these voters do not know enough about her; Ms. Palin is campaigning in Pennsylvania on Tuesday and New Hampshire on Wednesday.

In some ways, Ms. Palin seems like a 2.0 version of George W. Bush — not the deeply unpopular president, but the plain-spoken and energetic campaigner who rose as a political talent in Texas and solidified his appeal in the 2000 and 2004 presidential campaigns. Hers, like his, is a with-us-or-against-us message, as when Ms. Palin pledges total solidarity with "good, hard-working, patriotic Americans."

The Times questioned why Palin wasn’t attacking her own party, portraying her as an empty suit.

Ms. Palin’s speeches do not acknowledge that looking at past mistakes is one way to avoid making those mistakes again. And her addresses gloss over some uncomfortable details, like that the most recent big spender in the White House is the Republican now there.

….

If there are holes in logic or a lack of specifics in Ms. Palin’s speeches, her audiences tend to fill the absence with gushing affection.

Democratic vice presidential candidate Joe Biden’s campaign trail has been riddled with gaffes, yet he doesn’t get the scrutiny that journalists give every pause or hole in a speech by Palin. The Times has yet to mention Biden’s novel explanation to CBS anchor Katie Couric about how President Franklin Delano Roosevelt got on television to talk to America about the 1929 stock market crash. Only two things wrong with the anecdote: FDR wasn’t elected president until 1932, and TV wouldn’t be introduced to the public until 1939.

Palin called into Rush Limbaugh’s show Tuesday and Limbaugh brought up Healy’s article as an example of what he called "an attempt to get [Palin] to shut up."

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For general discussion and debate. Possible talking point: Round Three!

Any honest assessment of the first two debates would conclude that McCain did okay — at best! — but routinely missed opportunities to knock his Obama down or out. Is this what he needs to do this evening? Is this a do or die for his campaign, and anything less than a clear victory ending with at least a TKO will send McCain back to the Senate to finish his career?

Or is the situation less dire than the typically biased polls are suggesting, and McCain just needs to calmly and methodically make his case to the American people why he is the better choice to steer this nation through the current minefield?

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So far this story about Michelle Obama’s temper tantrum when she called African Press International (API) hasn’t been reported by the mainstream media but it is a very hot topic in the Blogosphere. Your humble correspondent checked on the credentials of API and it has been in existence for a little over two years and has filed numerous stories in that period. Additionally, this story has been posted at World Net Daily. If the MSM wants to verify this story they can contact API directly to investigate its veracity. Perhaps they don’t want to check out this story because Michelle Obama comes off with an extreme case of bad temper. This API article starts out with Michelle article making accusations of disloyalty against that organization in a phone call (emphasis mine):

Accusing API of colluding with American internet bloggers in an effort to bring down her husband, Mrs Obama said she decided to call API because of what she termed, API’s help to spread rumours created by American bloggers and other racist media outlets in their efforts to damage a black man’s name, saying she hopes African Media was mature enough to be in the front to give unwavering support to her husband, a man Africans should identify themselves with.

When API told her that our online news media was only relaying what the American Bloggers and other media outlets had discovered through their investigations, Mrs Obama was angered and she came out loud with the following: “African press International is supposed to support Africans and African-American view,” and she went to state that, “it is strange that API has chosen to support the racists against my husband. There is no shame in being adopted by a step father. All dirt has been thrown onto my husband’s face and yet he loves this country. My husband and I know that there is no law that will stop him from becoming the president, just because some American white racists are bringing up the issue of my husband’s adoption by His step father. The important thing here is where my husband’s heart is at the moment. I can tell the American people that My husband loves this country and his adoption never changed his love for this country. He was born in Hawaii, yes, and that gives him all the right to be an American citizen even though he was adopted by a foreigner; says Michelle Obama on telefon to API.”

Wow! Talk about a red hot temper! But will the MSM even ask Michelle Obama about this? This article is chock full of more shocking information:

This is a very interesting turn of events. The American man Dr Corsi was recently reported to have been arrested in Kenya because there was fear that he might reveal information on Obama when he wanted to hold a press conference in Nairobi.

The question now is why he was arrested and who ordered his arrest. Was Obama’s hand in this in any way? We will never know the truth but what is clear is that Dr Corsi was seen as a threat while in Kenya.

When API asked Mrs Obama to comment on why Dr Corsi was arrested by the Kenyan government and whether she thought Kenya’s Prime Minister Mr Raila Odinga was involved in Dr Corsi’s arrest, she got irritated and and simply told API not to dig that which will support evil people who are out to stop her husband from getting the presidency.

When asked who she was referring to as the evil people, she stated that she was not going to elaborate much on that but that many conservative white people and even some African Americans were against her husband, but that this group of blacks were simply doing so because of envy.

On Farakhan and his ministry, Mrs Obama told API that it was unfortunate that Mr Farakhan came out the way he did supporting her husband openly before the elections was over. That was not wholehearted support but one that was calculated to convince the American people that my husband will support the growth of muslim faith if he became the president, adding “even if my husband was able to prove that he is not a Muslim, he will not be believed by those who have come out strongly to destroy his chances of being the next President. Do real people expect someone to deny a religion when 80 percent of his relatives are Muslims?; Mrs Obama asked.

Mrs Obama asked API to write a good story about her husband and that will earn API an invitation to the innoguration ceremony when, as she put it , her husband will be installed as the next President of the United States of America next year.

Double WOW! As I stated, African Press International has been in existence for over two years and has filed over a thousand stories. So will the MSM investigate this? Meanwhile this story is gaining enormous steam in the Blogosphere. 

UPDATE: Because of the high level of interest in this story, API has just posted a phone number where they can be contacted for verification. Calls must be made between Oct. 16 and 18. Here is the number posted on their site: 004793299739. To call from the USA, the number is: 011-4793299739.

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D’oh! In his haste to condemn Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin last night far-left MSNBC anchor Keith Olbermann made a particularly elementary reading comprehension error.

The mistake, caught by our friends at Olbermann Watch, involved a report of a person at a McCain-Palin shouting out to "kill" Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama.

Rushing to tag the GOP ticket with this as much as possible, Olbermann expressed outrage that "as usual, [Palin] does nothing about it."

Unfortunately, however, Palin wasn’t even on the stage at the time the remark was made as the Pennsylvania newspaper that the MSNBC ranter used as his source for the report stated. The comment was made at 1:25 ET, more than a half-hour before Palin and her husband Todd showed up at the event.

Don’t hold your breath waiting for a correction.

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A Colombian associate of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) is once again linked to FARC terrorists and Marxist Dictator Hugo Chavez with the revelation of damning new messages concerning Colombian Senator Piedad Córdoba that are currently being investigated by Colombian military officials. Once again we have a powerful American politician, this one the Speaker of the House of Representatives, linked to those attempting to institute Marxist regimes to our South. Why does the U.S. media steadily ignore the ties Speaker Pelosi has to Chavez and the terrorist group FARC through her association with Senator Córdoba? Isn’t it awfully big news that the Speaker of the House supports a foreigner that wishes to give more power to one of our biggest enemies in this hemisphere and to further the efforts of a decades old terror outfit?

Córdoba, who has worked closely with Pelosi on Colombian and Venezuelan issues, has been linked to terrorists and Marxists in the past and has been a key player in helping undermine her own government. Senator Córdoba is prominently mentioned in these emails and documents as attempting to create a "friends of Chavez" style movement in Colombia. This movement was also organized with the assistance of leaders of the Bolivarian Movement, a FARC sponsored terror group.

Some may remember that back in July Nancy Pelosi had illicitly stepped outside her role as Speaker and attempted to institute her own foreign policy by communicating with Colombian Senator Córdoba, telling her that she and Representative Jim McGovern (D-MA) were ready to help them arrange swaps of captured terrorists for hostages held by FARC terrorists. (Foreign policy is the exclusive role of the president and not the legislative branch)

Senator Piedad Córdoba has worked closely with various FARC terror leaders, she is pictured here with FARC leader Raul Reyes, later killed in Ecuador.

So, why does Pelosi get a complete pass for aligning herself with this Colombian Senator that aids terrorists and is a chief booster of one of our biggest enemies in Central America? What else but that the U.S. media does not discuss this subject much. But, why doesn’t the U.S. media want to expose Pelosi’s support of a foreign enemy? Perhaps it is for the same reason that the U.S. media doesn’t want to talk much about the true nature of the close ties that Barack Obama has to American terrorist William Ayers? To do so would discredit Pelosi and Obama both and that is the last thing the media wants to do. So, the truth remains unspoken in the press.

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