Guess what… You were right.

In the hours after Sen. John McCain announced his choice of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin to be his running mate in the last presidential race, members of an online forum called Journolist struggled to make sense of the pick. Many of them were liberal reporters, and in some cases their comments reflected a journalist’s instinct to figure out the meaning of a story.

But in many other exchanges, the Journolisters clearly had another, more partisan goal in mind: to formulate the most effective talking points in order to defeat Palin and McCain and help elect Barack Obama president. The tone was more campaign headquarters than newsroom.

The conversation began with a debate over how best to attack Sarah Palin. “Honestly, this pick reeks of desperation,” wrote Michael Cohen of the New America Foundation in the minutes after the news became public. “How can anyone logically argue that Sarah Pallin [sic], a one-term governor of Alaska, is qualified to be President of the United States? Train wreck, thy name is Sarah Pallin.”

Not a wise argument, responded Jonathan Stein, a reporter for Mother Jones. If McCain were asked about Palin’s inexperience, he could simply point to then candidate Barack Obama’s similarly thin resume. “Q: Sen. McCain, given Gov. Palin’s paltry experience, how is she qualified to be commander in chief?,” Stein asked hypothetically. “A: Well, she has much experience as the Democratic nominee.”

“What a joke,” added Jeffrey Toobin of the New Yorker. “I always thought that some part of McCain doesn’t want to be president, and this choice proves my point.  Welcome back, Admiral Stockdale.”

Daniel Levy of the Century Foundation noted that Obama’s “non-official campaign” would need to work hard to discredit Palin. “This seems to me like an occasion when the non-official campaign has a big role to play in defining Palin, shaping the terms of the conversation and saying things that the official [Obama] campaign shouldn’t say – very hard-hitting stuff, including some of the things that people have been noting here – scare people about having this woefully inexperienced, no foreign policy/national security/right-wing christia wing-nut a heartbeat away …… bang away at McCain’s age making this unusually significant …. I think people should be replicating some of the not-so-pleasant viral email campaigns that were used against [Obama].”

Ryan Donmoyer, a reporter for Bloomberg News who was covering the campaign, sent a quick thought that Palin’s choice not to have an abortion when she unexpectedly became pregnant at age 44 would likely boost her image because it was a heartwarming story.

“Her decision to keep the Down’s baby is going to be a hugely emotional story that appeals to a vast swath of America, I think,” Donmoyer wrote.

Politico reporter Ben Adler, now an editor at Newsweek, replied, “but doesn’t leaving sad baby without its mother while she campaigns weaken that family values argument? Or will everyone be too afraid to make that point?”

Read it all.

I sincerely hope the “JournoListers” know that an ever growing number of Americans are going to the polls this November with them in mind.

UPDATE: This sums it up pretty well.

Well, Tucker Carlson and the Daily Caller have acquired the archives of Journolist and guess what… You were right.

It was the moment of greatest peril for then-Sen. Barack Obama’s political career. In the heat of the presidential campaign, videos surfaced of Obama’s pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, angrily denouncing whites, the U.S. government and America itself. Obama had once bragged of his closeness to Wright. Now the black nationalist preacher’s rhetoric was threatening to torpedo Obama’s campaign.

The crisis reached a howling pitch in mid-April, 2008, at an ABC News debate moderated by Charlie Gibson and George Stephanopoulos. Gibson asked Obama why it had taken him so long – nearly a year since Wright’s remarks became public – to dissociate himself from them. Stephanopoulos asked, “Do you think Reverend Wright loves America as much as you do?”

Watching this all at home were members of Journolist, a listserv comprised of several hundred liberal journalists, as well as like-minded professors and activists. The tough questioning from the ABC anchors left many of them outraged. “George [Stephanopoulos],” fumed Richard Kim of the Nation, is “being a disgusting little rat snake.”

Others went further. According to records obtained by The Daily Caller, at several points during the 2008 presidential campaign a group of liberal journalists took radical steps to protect their favored candidate. Employees of news organizations including Time, Politico, the Huffington Post, the Baltimore Sun, the Guardian, Salon and the New Republic participated in outpourings of anger over how Obama had been treated in the media, and in some cases plotted to fix the damage.

In one instance, Spencer Ackerman of the Washington Independent urged his colleagues to deflect attention from Obama’s relationship with Wright by changing the subject. Pick one of Obama’s conservative critics, Ackerman wrote, “Fred Barnes, Karl Rove, who cares — and call them racists.”

Ed Morrissey at Hot Air rightly notes:

Gee, doesn’t that sound familiar?

Based on these stunning revelations from The Daily Caller, can we finally put to bed the stupid notion that anyone who disagrees with Obama must be a racist?

Can we also acknowledge something many of us suspected all along… That the useless MSM has a liberal agenda and is officially an extension of the Democrat Party?

Join Governor Howard Dean and help us perform a citizens’ arrest of the insurance companies

We need your help to put the insurance companies and every corporate enemy of change on notice: We will not allow the big corporations and their lobbyists to bully Congress into inaction.

Where: Gather in Dupont Circle in Washington, D.C. to hear Governor Dean, then march to the Ritz-Carlton Hotel where the insurance company conference is being held

When: Tuesday, March 9th, 2010
10:30 AM

Now reconcile their rally against big insurance with this:

Neither mentioned that the Senate health reform bill, which is the basis for Democrats’ last best chance at comprehensive reform, would give the insurance companies millions of new customers required by law to buy health insurance. It would also require insurers to cover everyone, regardless of age, gender or pre-existing condition.

To help pay for the new insurance requirements the government would give to people money to buy insurance – $336 billion over the next ten years. That money, ultimately, would have to go to… drum roll… insurance companies.

It’s all fake. It’s as fake as Obama passing out lab coats at a press conference.

Christopher Booker at The Telegraph calls it “The Worst Scientific Scandal of Our Generation.”

“A week after my colleague James Delingpole, on his Telegraph blog, coined the term “Climategate” to describe the scandal revealed by the leaked emails from the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit, Google was showing that the word now appears across the internet more than nine million times. But in all these acres of electronic coverage, one hugely relevant point about these thousands of documents has largely been missed.”

“The reason why even the Guardian’s George Monbiot has expressed total shock and dismay at the picture revealed by the documents is that their authors are not just any old bunch of academics. Their importance cannot be overestimated, What we are looking at here is the small group of scientists who have for years been more influential in driving the worldwide alarm over global warming than any others, not least through the role they play at the heart of the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).”

Andrea Peyser at the New York Post reveals that her daughter was recruited by the cult of Gore at school…

“When did global warming turn into a forced religion?”

“My daughter came home from school recently with a spring in her step and a song on her lips. With no foreshadowing — or time to call an exorcist — out came this chilling refrain:”

” . . . You can hear the warning — GLOBAL WARMING . . . “

“By the time her father and I removed our jaws from the floor, we had learned that:”

“A) All the kids had been coerced into singing this catchy ditty, which we called “The Warming Song,” at a concert for parents.”

“B) Further song lyrics scolded selfish adults (that would be us) for polluting our planet and causing a warming scourge that would, in no short order, kill all the polar bears and threaten the birds and bees.”

“C) There was no deprogramming session on the menu. And no arguing allowed.”

“The international “Climategate” scandal is now moving into its third week. And reaction from folks on the scientific and political left — or is that redundant? — who treat global warming as a cult in which naysayers must be crushed has been depressing:”

“Total denial.”

You’ve got that right, Andrea. Why else would Obama still be going to Copenhagen to talk climate change? And why won’t he or the media even utter the word Climategate?

ACORN is now reacting by claiming that the documents were stolen. From their trash.

“A tempest in a trash can is brewing in San Diego County, where ACORN is trying to recover tens of thousands of documents taken from its garbage by a Republican activist.”

“It’s the latest skirmish in a war between ACORN, which stands for Community Organizations for Reform Now, and conservative critics who accuse it of corruption.”

“Derrick Roach, a private investigator who unsuccessfully ran for a state Assembly seat last year, said he took more than 20,000 documents from a caged trash area behind ACORN’s office in National City on Oct. 9.”

“Some of the documents later posted on a Web site and displayed at a news conference Monday appeared to show driver’s license and Social Security numbers of ACORN members or job applicants.”

“There also were immigration records, credit reports, tax returns, credit card statements and bank account numbers, Roach said Tuesday.”

“ACORN California Head Organizer Amy Schur said the confidential papers were carelessly included in the trash, and there was no intent to dump rather than shred them.”

“We want to get our property back so that we can properly secure it,” she said.”

Perhaps you should have thought of that before, Amy. One man’s trash is another man’s treasure.

“Shockingly, we now learn that the ACORN office in National City (San Diego County) engaged in a massive document dump on the evening of October 9th, containing thousands upon thousands of sensitive documents, just days prior to the Attorney General’s visit.”

“BigGovernment.com has learned that not only did this document dump occur, but the documents in question were irresponsibly and brazenly dumped in a public dumpster, without considering laws and regulations as to how sensitive information should be treated.”

‘I am a local licensed private investigator. I took it upon myself to keep an eye on what the local ACORN office was up to, in light of the release of the undercover videos. I retrieved these documents from the public dumpster.”

“ACORN’s political agenda is also exposed, with thousands upon thousands of documents revealing the depth of the political machine that is ACORN, and its disturbing ties to not only public employee labor unions but some of the most radical leftist organizations.”

“The laws governing how sensitive, personal information such as social security numbers, driver’s license numbers, immigration records, tax returns, etc. must be treated are very stringent, and thus it seems as if ACORN may have committed serious violations in that department alone, with thousands upon thousands of potential plaintiffs.”

Visit BigGovernment.com to see photos, video and scanned documents.

In related news, an ACORN employee in Nevada who was found guilty of participating in voter fraud last year was sentenced today. The penalty? Three years of probation.

“LAS VEGAS — A former Las Vegas supervisor for the political advocacy group ACORN was sentenced Monday to up to three years’ probation for his role in a plan to pay canvassers to register Nevada voters during last year’s presidential campaign.”

“I just want to say I take responsibility for what I did,” Christopher Edwards told a judge who responded that he was “not pleased to say the least” by allegations that Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now paid bonuses to canvassers who collected 21 or more voter registration cards in August and September 2008.”

“I’m sorry. I truly am,” Edwards said, “and it will never happen again.”

We know it won’t happen again, Mr. Edwards. We’re watching you scumbags now.

Now there’s another one.

Michelle Malkin and Jim Hoft of Gateway Pundit have the story.

Malkin notes:

“Dubious “doctors” keep turning up at congressional town hall meetings to support a government health care takeover plan that sane medical professionals are revolting against in force.”

Gateway Pundit has more including the “doctor’s” weird car…

“Sheila Leavitt is not a real life doctor– but she does play one at town hall meetings… When she’s not filling up her car with grease.”

Left pundits and Democrat leaders keep screeching that the protesters of ObamaCare are fake.

So far, the only verified fakes are the pro-Obama doctors who keep showing up at town halls.

“A community organization breaks into a foreclosed home in what they are calling an act of civil disobedience.”

“This is our house now,” said Louis Beverly, ACORN.”

www.youtube.com/watch?v=WzhFOC0Xu3Q

Hat tip to Michelle Malkin.

The tax fraud currently serving as head of the US Treasury Department has warned that he will probably need to steal up to TWO TRILLION more dollars from American tax payers in the coming year to bail out American banks.

“The main components of the Treasury’s package today are a joint public- and private-sector fund to buy as much as $1 trillion of illiquid assets and a $1 trillion program to supply new credit to consumers and businesses.

“I want to be candid: this strategy will cost money, involve risk, and take time,” Geithner said today.”

Yesterday, Hot Air posted an excellent story by Allahpundit about Obama’s traveling clip joint in Florida. People got healed, a woman got a new house, a woman proclaimed her love for Obama, a man took the microphone and said “Praise God!”

But Allahpundit left out a very pertinent detail. What about the tent revival act Obama put on during the 2008 campaign?

Did you know that women fainted regularly at Obama rallies for months?

It’s all documented in the video below and it follows a distinct pattern. Women faint and Obama saves them.

This is not politics. This is not religion. This is theater.

Watch:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=v1sM6MnRL00