Varifrank gives up on John Kerry.

Ouch.

No!!!! Really!?!?!?

Jeff Jacoby lets it all hang out this morning in The Boston Globe:

With the exception of the Fox News Channel, the liberal tilt of the mainstream media - the major newspapers, the networks, National Public Radio, the news magazines - has long been a fact of American life. No one observing the coverage of this year's presidential campaign with both eyes open can have much doubt that the media establishment is pulling heavily for the Democratic ticket.

That explains why, for example, the intense media interest in George W. Bush's National Guard records last February wasn't matched by an equally intense interest in John Kerry's Navy history in May, when the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth first went public with their criticisms. Far from leaping on the charges that Kerry's Vietnam heroism had been greatly exaggerated, the mainstream media's initial reaction was to largely ignore them. And while the press saw no reason to question the credibility of Bush's accusers or to demand that Kerry repudiate them, their attitude toward the Swift Boat vets has been much more hostile.

None of this should come as a surprise. The nation's newsrooms are Democratic strongholds, and that cannot help but affect their coverage of the news. Evan Thomas, the assistant managing editor of Newsweek, put it plainly last month.

"Let's talk a little media bias here,'' he said on the PBS program Inside Washington on July 11. "The media, I think, want Kerry to win. And I think they're going to portray Kerry and Edwards . . . as being young and dynamic and optimistic and all, there's going to be this glow about them that is going to be worth, collectively, the two of them, that's going to be worth maybe 15 points.'' Just how lopsided is the pro-Kerry bias? When New York Times reporter John Tierney surveyed reporters covering the Democratic National Convention last month, the results were striking.

"We got anonymous answers from 153 journalists, about a third of them based in Washington,'' he wrote on Aug. 1. "When asked who would be a better president, the journalists from outside the Beltway picked Mr. Kerry 3 to 1, and the ones from Washington favored him 12 to 1. Those results jibe with previous surveys over the past two decades showing that journalists tend to be Democrats, especially the ones based in Washington. Some surveys have found that more than 80 percent of the Beltway press corps votes Democratic.'' Of course, the proof of the pudding is in the tasting, and for tasting liberal bias in journalism, no one tops the Media Research Center. Founded by conservative activist Brent Bozell in 1987, the MRC has become an indispensable resource for anyone interested in how political attitudes shape news coverage. Its most illuminating technique is the simplest: It monitors journalists' words and quotes them. What it has found time and time again is a skew to the left: a tendency to celebrate, echo, or defend Democrats, liberals, and left-of-center ideas.

The Bloggers Are Coming, Tra-la, Tra-la!

The Belmont Club nails it:

Before the Gutenberg printing press men knew the contents of the Bible solely through the prism of the professional clergy, who could alone afford the expensively hand copied books and who exclusively interpreted it. But when technology made books widely available, men could read the sacred texts for themselves and form their own opinions. And the world was never the same again.

Does anybody remember when the Japanese took over the watchmaking industry from the Swiss?

Does anybody still use a typewriter?

Does anybody light their homes without electricity (excepting for religious reasons)?

The world is changing under the clay feet of the Mainstream Media. The chasm opening beneath them will swallow them like Edward G. Robinson in The Ten Commandments, unless they repent and take off the blinders.

The Worst Straight Man Ever

Saturday night, I was giving my son a bath, and I taught him the old Henway joke.

Next morning, I told him, "S, tell Mommy your new joke."

After a little prompting, he says, "Mom, the other day I saw a henway..."

The wife was right on it. "How much does a henway?"

D'oh!

After we got it all straightened out, it was good. S and my daughter R tried it on everything: "What's a carway? What's a forkway? What's a houseway? What's an elephantway?"

I love my kids. My wife, too.

Nomar out

The ankle we knew about, but the sore wrist is new.

Tell you what - if Mia Hamm went to the Olympics for three weeks and left me alone, I'd have a sore wrist, too.

Batting practice, my ass!

Vote Early, Vote Often

It ain't just for Chicago anymore. This New York Daily News exclusive points out that:

Some 46,000 New Yorkers are registered to vote in both the city and Florida, a shocking finding that exposes both states to potential abuses that could alter the outcome of elections, a Daily News investigation shows.

Registering in two places is illegal in both states, but the massive snowbird scandal goes undetected because election officials don't check rolls across state lines.
...
The News' investigation also found:

Of the 46,000 registered in both states, 68% are Democrats, 12% are Republicans and 16% didn't claim a party.

Folks, that's a 5 to 1 margin.

Now, the article goes on and tracks down some of these snowbirds, and sure enough, they're voting twice.

Let's do some simple math. Start with this: the final margin in Florida was +537 for Bush.

If, conservatively, half of these dual-registered snowbirds from New York voted for president in Florida in 2000, based on the party breakdowns, that's 15640 illegal snowbird votes for Gore and 2760 illegal votes for Bush.

Pull those out, and what's left is a 13,417 vote victory for George Bush.

But only if we're talking about New York state. Says nothing of snowbirds from Illinois, Michigan, Pennsylvania, all of New England and the Eastern seaboard.

As Hugh Hewitt says, If It's Not Close, They Can't Cheat.

New Links Section

Check down left for the links section I just added. I'm going to add lots more links, and probably subdivide by area of interest, but not just now. Dinner's ready.

New Swift Boat Vets Ad

Here. I wonder how the Kerry campaign will see fit to spin this. If they pull the same trigger on the POWs that they did on the Swifties, what is that but a second helping of the betrayal they're talking about?

Update: Tom Maguire at Just One Minute notes that the Kerry campaign gave a backhanded endorsement to the latest SBVFT ad. To wit:

"When somebody's attacking your military record, you reach a boiling point, and he reached a boiling point last night," Ms. Cutter explained. "When you go and fight in a war, when you spill blood for your country, your instinct is to fight back and defend your record."

If that's not exactly what Joe Ponder, Ken Cordier and Paul Galanti are doing, then what?

Hats for Bats...

...keep bats warm.

The Cubs have six dingers and counting tonight. Looks like Sammy Sosa's move down (finally!) is paying dividends.

FADE IN.

Welcome.

I've been cruising the blogosphere long enough. I figure it's time to land and join in. I find myself with thoughts and ideas and no place to put them, no idea if anybody cares or what anybody thinks. And here I am.

This space in the future will be filled with thoughts and opinions on a wide variety of topics. Sports (Cubs, Notre Dame), Movies, Food, Books, Politics (yes, politics...sorry), My Cubicle In Hell, The Family, Special Needs, Zero Tolerance Policies (hate 'em), Celebrity Relationships (did I mention my collection of egg-timers? this seems appropriate now, for some reason).

Who knows what else? My blog, my rules.