9/10/2008

McCain-Palin Scandals Are Brewing

I have a feeling that the Republicans made a lot of very powerful enemies when they attacked the media during their convention. A number of speakers made it a point to call out the mainstream media, or MSM as they like call them, for bias and distortions. That plays well to the base, but the presidents of NBC, CBS, ABC, and CNN's news divisions, as well as the Washington Post, New York Times, and just about all the other big city newspapers don't really like being called distorters and liars.

Now they may be getting their revenge while driving up viewership and readership. They don't have much time before the election but now the investigations have begun. This from yesterday's Washington Post is a fine example:
ANCHORAGE, Sept. 8 -- Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin has billed taxpayers for 312 nights spent in her own home during her first 19 months in office, charging a "per diem" allowance intended to cover meals and incidental expenses while traveling on state business.
Here's a snippet from E.J Dionne Jr.--
John McCain campaign acknowledged this weekend that Sarah Palin is unprepared to be vice president or president of the United States. McCain\'s advisers clearly don't trust Palin to answer questions about policy and don't want her to answer many of the questions that have been raised about her tenure as governor of Alaska.
How about some CNN love on McCain's connections to high-powered Washington lobbyists?
"John McCain says that he is going to tell all those lobbyists in Washington that their days of running Washington are over, which sounds pretty good until you discover that seven of his top campaign managers and officials are -- guess what? -- former corporate lobbyists," Obama said recently in Flint, Michigan.
It's true: Seven top McCain officials were lobbyists, though the campaign stresses that none is currently registered to lobby Congress:...And here is the New York Times with  Palin's sad story of the bridge to nowhere (but I'll keep the money, thank you!).

This morning she was still talking about her opposition to “The Bridge to Nowhere,’’ even though there has been widespread reporting that Ms. Palin supported federal funding for the bridge from Ketchikan to Gravina, an Alaskan island of few inhabitants, before she opposed it.

I saw Michael Isikoff of Newsweek on TV last night in Alaska. I'm sure there are a number of reporters digging into these and other scandals like Palin's "Troopergate". It won't take long before something sticks and the McCain campaign will finally get a taste of a truly "biased" mainstream media.