We live in a world profoundly confused about how, when and whether to assign blame when terrorists hurt innocent people.

Did the Tsarnaev brothers maim and murder innocent Americans because Islam instructs them to do so?  That goes further than almost anyone is willing to go.

Did the Tsarnaev brothers detonate bombs near the finish line of the Boston Marathon on April 15th because they were indirectly but clearly instructed to do that by a powerful jihadi strategist, and did that man issue those instructions because he, and many others, believe they were told to do it because Islam insists on it?  That may be the case, whether or not U.S. officials want the connection known.

A man who was involved at the very start of the global jihad movement, who was a colleague as well as strategic rival to Osama bin Laden, whose efforts have been linked to the 7/7 bombings in London, the ’04 train bombings in Madrid, possibly to a Paris metro bombing way back in 1995 and even perhaps to the 09/11 bombings, is certainly someone we all should know about.  And while learning about him, it will be useful to consider whether his legacy connects to the Tsarnaev Boston Terror Bombings. Because by all knowledgeable estimates, this is the man who conceived of, trained others for, and wrote the manual on the modern global Islamic jihadi war against the West.  And the most recent battlefield in that war was the finish line in Boston.

WHO IS THE GRAND STRATEGIST OF MODERN GLOBAL JIHAD?

His name is Mustafa Setmariam Nasar, although he’s also known as abu Musab al Suri (the Syrian).  Perhaps his most significant contributions to the cause of global jihad was his insistence that the old-style al Qaeda, with its rigid hierarchical structure, was a disaster for the movement and had to be jettisoned in favor of a different strategy.  In his 1600 page manifesto, al Suri stressed the need for the global jihadi movement to create a new fighting style focused on “individual terrorism.”

This innovation, also known as “leaderless jihad,” is a strategy designed to escape detection. Al Suri advised followers not to have cells or “brigades” larger than ten members, and ideally the cells would be in the single digits.  He also advocated that jihadists use the Internet and other methods to gather their information to conduct attacks. Those unwilling to embrace his strategy before and in the immediate aftermath of 9/11, have now largely become believers, whether by necessity or by revelation.

But perhaps al Suri’s greatest significance to those of us still reeling from the horrors of the Boston Marathon bombings, is advice he offered in this magnum opus, written while on the run between 2001 and 2005, “The Call for Global Islamic Resistance.” It is available online.

In CGIR al Suri urged his followers to select places for terrorist attacks which could produce maximum carnage for minimum cost. For example, he wrote, “sports competitions attract thousands of spectators and television cameras.” He also suggested local sleeper cells focus on oil fields and transportation systems – think of recent events in Algeria and Canada. The CGIR is considered “the textbook of home-grown terrorism”; it has also been referred to as the “Jihadi Mein Kampf.”

The section of CGIR which proposes sports events as a logical, simple, efficient way to pursue jihad against the infidels and bring attention to the cause was reprinted in the Winter 2012 edition of Inspire magazine – a major (and now online) jihadi source for staying current and in touch with the global jihad movement.

On this topic, al Suri’s advice is offered as a discrete article in Issue 9 of Inspire, “The Jihadi Experiences: The Most Important Enemy Targets Aimed at by the Individual Jihad.” He advises that the best way to turn a Western population against their own leaders and towards support for the jihadi cause is through hysteria caused by mass slaughter, amplified by television cameras and other media.

The type of attack, which repels states and topples governments, is mass slaughter of the population. This is done by targeting human crowds in order to inflict maximum human losses. This is very easy since there are numerous such targets such as crowded sports arenas, annual social events, large international exhibitions, crowded marketplaces, sky-scrapers, crowded buildings….

Dr. James Lacey, director of the War Policy and Strategy Program and an instructor at the Marine Corps War College in Quantico, is a former infantry officer and was an embedded journalist.  Lacey’s translation of al Suri’s work, Terrorist’s Call to Global Jihad, was sponsored by the U.S. Joint Forces Command.

“The lights are going out in the enlightenment” Professor Barry Rubin told The Jewish Press in an interview this week.  “Too many reporters have no interest in reporting accurately, too many professors have no interest in speaking accurately, and too many policy makers have no interest in promulgating responsible policy.”

Rubin was talking about the reluctance to name revolutionary Islamism – Rubin calls this the “mysterious motivation,” and he refuses to be cowed into playing that avoidance game.

Rubin wrote a very important article about this after he watched the mainstream media and Western politicos twist themselves into pretzels in an effort to avoid the obvious. Rubin explains that the West seems to believe that if we admit the ideology and movement of  Islamism threatens Western society, that will have radical implications for our worldview.

As a result, Rubin points out, most current policy makers and opinion shapers prefer to avoid any policy that considering Islamism as the motive for terrorism would necessitate.  The fear of short term pain is indulged at the expense of preventing the real danger that will follow.  And we are being lied to – “albeit for virtuous reasons” – by the politicians and the mainstream press.

What is the fear which leads to the conclusion that “doing nothing has become better than doing anything”? The fear is that speaking the truth: that the Tsarnaev brothers acted in accordance with their (or at least the older brother’s) understanding, as well as that of many Muslims, of what Islam requires will lead to disaster.  It will cause widespread hatred of Muslims to be unleashed, the specter of Islamophobia to spread, racism will again become rampant, and all the things that a hoped-for post-racist America tried to put behind it will again spread throughout the land.

But the failure to take Islam into consideration might be the very reason why, despite the warning the U.S. was given by Russia that Tamerlan Tsarnaev was “a radical Muslim and a strong believer” the U.S. nonetheless watched Tsarnaev leave the country for Russia and allowed the case file on him to expire during the time Tsarnaev was in a heavily radicalized Muslim territory of Russia, and why other terrorists have also been able to launch attacks.

In a telephone interview from his home in Tel Aviv, The Jewish Press spoke with Rubin, the director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center and editor of the Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA) Journal.  Rubin is the author of more than two dozen books on topics including terrorism, Syria, Turkey, Iran, Iraq, Egypt, the PLO, Israel, the Middle East and Islam, which have been published by the most esteemed publishing houses including the Oxford, Yale, Harvard and Cambridge University presses.

First Rubin lists off and explains the many ways the Tsarnaev brothers’ “mysterious motive” to maim and murder Americans has been and continues to be aggressively obfuscated. The list includes fingers pointed at a troubled youth; the Chechen code of honor; immigrants’ malaise; and unemployment.  Read his article, it is well worth seeing how he lays out this case.

Rubin then flips to the other side, and explores the justifications used to avoid saying Islamic extremism is a motivating factor in terrorism generally, and was so in the Boston Marathon Bombings specifically.

These reasons fall primarily into two groups; the first, that by linking the act of terrorism with Islam, even the movement of Islamism, it will unleash a wave of Islamophobic violence, and two, that such attacks are really our (that is, that of the U.S. and of the West) fault.

Rubin, an honest-to-goodness liberal (not “progressive”) finds these lists of false motivations and obviously flawed self-blame theories not just foolish, but dangerous.

A variant of the “you can’t link Islam to terrorism” problem is to insist that the only kind of Islamist strategic threat dangerous to the United States is the one that emanates from al Qaeda.

“If it isn’t al Qaeda, it supposedly isn’t our problem,” is how Rubin described to The Jewish Press this refusal to look directly at the problem.  “In Syria, for example, up to three dozen radical Islamist groups, including the Muslim Brotherhood, have received arms due to U.S. supported policies but only one – the direct affiliate to al Qaeda – is barred from this program,” Rubin said.

The connection between Islamism and terrorism has to be dealt with forthrightly – sometimes the motivation for a terrorist act will be Islamist terrorism, and sometimes it won’t be, but when it is and we avoid naming it, we are setting ourselves up for a continuation, a metastases of the problem.

AMERICAN MUSLIMS AREN’T COWED

President Barack Obama remains morally and strategically” committed to Israel, U.S. Vice President Joe Biden told the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) policy conference in Washington Monday.

“Obama has acted swiftly and decisively to make clear that our deep commitment to Israel has not changed,” he said, citing America’s shared interests with Israel that Iran will not be able to produce a nuclear weapons and that Syria will not be able to threaten Israel with chemical weapons.

He also made a cryptic comment on the President Obama’s upcoming visit to Israel. “I am jealous that he is the one who will say, “This year in Jerusalem.” The United States does not recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital.

God bless you all and may God bless our troops,” Biden concluded

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has ordered the suspension of all new construction procedures in Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria until after U.S. President Barack Obama’s visit to Israel, on the eve of Passover, Makor Rishon reports.

According to a directive that was passed from the PM’s office to the appropriate echelons at the defense and housing ministries, in the next few weeks no new construction bids are to be issued in those three areas. Also, plans whose planning phase has been completed will not move on to the deposit phase while all additional bureaucratic steps concerning their public offering are to be delayed as well.

The suspension directive was issued through informal channels. Prime Minister Netanyahu, who conducted the phone calls with the relevant officials personally, emphasized that this is not a freeze—like the 10-month settlement construction freeze Netanyahu declared in November, 2010-—but “merely a temporary suspension in order not to embarrass the visiting president.”

Sources close to the prime minister reiterated that this time the freeze will be restrained and moderate, as befits the circumstances.

A major contributor to the move on the PM’s part was Housing Minister Eli Yishai (Shas) whose office publicized its construction plans for the Ramat Shlomo neighborhood in East Jerusalem on the very week Vice President Joe Biden was visiting Israel, unintentionally causing a serious crisis in Israel’s relationship with the White House.

Following that incident, Netanyahu was forced to block construction in Jerusalem for almost a year, to patch things up with the Americans.

The most effective punches by Republican VP challenger, Congressman Paul Ryan, came in the first few minutes of Thursday night’s debate, over the murder of U.S. Ambassador to Libya Chris Stevens. He was correct on the facts – this was a failure of the American intelligence apparatus, and the Administration was concealing the truth about the attack on our Benghazi consulate (as our own Lori Lowenthal Marcus pointed out last night). Biden was thrown off by Ryan’s aggressive opener, and mumbled something about the White House following whatever information Intelligence was passing over. That was, clearly, a questionable fact.

But, alas, Ryan was unable to hone his quick advantage into a devastating punch that could, possibly, leave his opponent staggering for the remaining 80 minutes or so. Remember, Joe Biden is the former chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, he is Mister Foreign Affairs, particularly about the Middle East. To score on him decisively in his area of expertise would have been a real body blow.

Except that, unlike his colleague, Republican Congressman Darrell Issa, who held no punches in accusing the Obama White House of outright lying when they described an Al Qaeda well synchronized military attack on the consulate as a rowdy demonstration against an offensive You Tube clip. Ryan retreated, leaving the Vice President room to recover and come out of that opening clash a bit scathed but far from punched out.

With a seasoned politician like Joe Biden you don’t get two chances of this magnitude in the same debate. Joe dusted himself off, collected his thoughts and quickly went on the offensive on the economy. He let the Romney camp have it on the 47% of freeloaders (Romney) and the 30% takers (Ryan), on letting Detroit go to the dogs, on turning Medicare and Social Security into a vouchers system.

He had one admittedly devastating line which he did not deliver as well as he could have, asking the viewers at home what would have happened had President Bush II been able to pass his law on letting workers apply their Social Security savings to stocks just before Wall Street took a dive.

His turning to the folks at home with a grandfatherly warning was truly great, no matter how many times he did it. He warned folks about losing their Medicare benefits under a Romeny-Ryan presidency, about the fate of abortions, about the makeup of the Supreme Court. It was clearly just a device, but it was a device Joe owned the whole night.

His toothy smiles bordering on laughter in response to Ryan’s allegations, and the eye rolling – I could do without. I’m sure Joe annoyed the viewers as much as he did me. Only about 45 minutes into the thing did it occur to him that he could express disagreement without all the fake merriment, and from that point on he concealed the dental work better.

Ryan was better at registering his frustration, and clear, even sharp, occasionally even harsh in making his own points. Both candidates lost me when they started throwing the numbers around, without context, often saying billions when they meant millions or trillions – exhibiting how irrelevant those facts and figures really were to anyone not participating in a quiet budget meeting with several laptops humming around the conference table. Outside that context, the verbose accumulation of facts and figures plucked from nowhere is meaningless, if not alienating.

I was hoping that Ryan, who is known as a nice guy, would out-Biden Biden. He didn’t. Instead he offered a deadly sincere approach, smiled very little, and didn’t manage to look convincingly comfortable in his own skin throughout the exchange. Biden was better at feeling like he could go on with that conversation for as long as it took, he was fine.

Ryan was by far more articulate than Biden, who at times couldn’t complete his sentences and used abbreviated references familiar to the political class which had to be lost on many viewers. Whatever plan the Romney-Ryan team has for bringing on economic change, Ryan came across as if he is thoroughly familiar with it and eager to get started. Biden was offering nothing but more of the same, having argued that “the same” has been doing the job.

President Barack Obama attended the wedding of the correspondent who will be the moderator for the only debate between Vice President Joe Biden and vice presidential hopeful Congressman Paul Ryan (R-WI) which takes place tonight.  Martha Raddatz, ABC Foreign Affairs senior correspondent and tonight’s debate moderator, married Julius Genachowski, in 1991.  Genachowski was a few years behind President Barack Obama at Columbia University, and they were both officers of the elite Harvard Law Review.  Both graduated in 1991, the same year Raddatz and Genachowski married.

Genachowski, from Great Neck, New York, was appointed in 2009 by President Obama to be the Chairman of the Federal Communications Commission.  The FCC is an independent agency of the U.S. government, which regulates communications capabilities in North America.  Genachowski’s parents are Holocaust survivors.  His cousin is Rabbi Menachem Genack, CEO of the Orthodox Union Kosher Division, and a well-known scholar and student of Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik.

In what has been described by some as a lame effort to downplay the significance of the connection between Raddatz and Obama, David Ford, spokesperson for Raddatz’s employer, ABC News, sent an official statement to various media including Politico and the Daily Beast, even before the article appeared which questioned the propriety of Raddatz as moderator. Even the liberal Huffington Post questioned the propriety of the pre-emptive statement which claimed that “nearly the entire [Harvard] Law Review” attended the wedding of Raddatz and Genachowski.  When pressed by the Daily Caller, which broke the story, to name additional law review members who attended the marriage, Ford came up with only one other name.

The ABC statement was apparently prompted by calls from the conservative news outlet, seeking confirmation of the connection between Obama and Raddatz.  That release states:

Martha Raddatz is known for her tough, fair reporting, which is why it was no surprise to her colleagues inside and outside ABC News that she was chosen by the Commission on Presidential Debates for this assignment. Barack Obama was a law school classmate of Raddatz’s ex-husband Julius Genachowski at Harvard. At the time Barack Obama was a student and president of the Law Review. He attended their wedding over two decades ago along with nearly the entire Law Review, many of whom went onto successful careers including some in the Bush administration. Raddatz and Mr. Genachowski divorced in 1997 and both are now remarried.

After an initial story dismissing the Daily Caller‘s suggestion that Raddatz may be biased, or that, at the very least, the connection should have been disclosed, Politico‘s Katie Glueck did a follow-up article, headlined “Right defends Raddatz’ debate role.” Glueck went through a litany of conservative pundits who were unmoved by the suggestion that Raddatz might be an inappropriate choice as moderator simply because Obama attended her wedding some twenty-odd years ago.

Among the conservatives whom Glueck catalogues as certifying the issue as not-an-issue, Commentary‘s John Podhoretz had the best line, “I have no memory of who attended my 1997 wedding to my ex-wife and I’d like to keep it that way. I bet Martha Raddatz is the same.”  Others who expressed disinterest included the Washington Post‘s Jennifer Rubin.  Despite the title of the Politico follow-up, at least as many conservatives were mentioned as bothered by the connection and the lack of disclosure, as those who took a pass.

Absent from the Politico articles, and indeed all other commentaries other than that of the Daily Caller, is the failure to call ABC on its clearly from-the-hip, and outright wrong statement that “nearly the entire Law Review” attended the Raddatz-Genachowski marriage.  In fact, out of approximately 70 members of that year’s Harvard Law Review membership, only Barack Obama and one other, thus far unnamed, member was apparently at that wedding.  That doesn’t make the selection of Raddatz wrong, but it does make ABC’s efforts to downplay it, and everyone’s willingness to ignore the the inaccuracy of the statement, raise at least an eyebrow.

Greta Van Sustern of Fox News, reported that the Ryan campaign said “no” when asked the day before the debate about whether they were concerned that Raddatz would be biased because of the long-time connection between Raddatz and Obama.

Instead, when asked what he thinks Biden’s biggest weakness will be at the debate, Ryan said: “Barack Obama’s record.”

Speaking at the annual convention of the Conservative movement’s Rabbinical Assembly in Atlanta on Tuesday, Vice President Joe Biden made the case that Obama’s strategies regarding the Iranian nuclear program have worked, but said the decision to strike must be Israel’s.

“I would not contract out my security to anybody, even a loyal, loyal, loyal friend like the United States,” Biden said.

The Vice President also stressed the effectiveness of the Obama Administration’s diplomatic campaign against Iran, saying that “by going the extra diplomatic mile, presenting Iran with a clear choice, we demonstrated to the region and the world that Iran is the problem, not the United States.”

In Biden’s view, the Obama Administration had to regain the international clout that had been lost by the GW Bush administration, in order to be effective against Iran.

“When we took office, let me remind you, there was virtually no international pressure on Iran,” Biden continued. “We were the problem, we were diplomatically isolated in the world, in the region, in Europe. We were neither fully respected by our friends nor feared by our opponents. Today it is starkly, starkly different.”

GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney’s campaign on Tuesday attacked Biden, calling his  comments “reckless” and criticizing the Obama administration for “all too often” blaming America first, making the case that Biden’s criticisms of Bush were an insult to the country.

“Biden’s reckless statement today blaming America for – of all things – the progress of Iran’s nuclear weapons program, has reached a new low,” said Romney policy director Lanhee Chen. “The problem is not America. It is the ayatollahs who oppress their people.”

Matt Brooks, executive director of the Republican Jewish Coalition, told Fox News that “Iran was the problem then and it is the problem now. It’s foolishly misguided for the vice president to blame anyone or any country other than Iran.”

Vice President Biden said that Israel still has time to strike Iran and it must decide for herself whether to do so.

He added: “The window has not closed in terms of the Israelis if they choose to act on their own militarily.”

Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak has suggested that Israel has until the fall to strike; the Obama Administration has been pressing Israel to give time for sanctions and diplomacy to work.

Biden also said that Israel’s perception of Iran as an existential threat was “justifiable.” He warned Iran that its window was closing for a diplomatic way out of its isolation because of its suspected nuclear weapons program.

The vice president also called efforts to delegitimize Israel “the most significant assault” on Israel since its independence.

On Tuesday, the Iranian ambassador to the International Atomic Energy Agency said that talk of Iran’s intention to develop nuclear weapons is based on “unreliable” and “fake” evidence.

Content from a JTA report was used in this article.

    Based on her interview with Sen. Joe Biden, we may assume that WFTV (Orlando) Anchor Barbara West: 1. Did not graduate from a school of communications, 2. Will never receive an award from the Society of Professional Journalists, 3. Is unlikely to be employed by The New York Times in the foreseeable future, and 4. Will soon be working with Joe the Plumber, installing bathroom fixtures.

  Silly rabbit – didn’t West know that tough questions are reserved for Republicans?

  Yet there she was asking old leaden-tongued Joe how his running mate’s spread-the-wealth platform differed from standard Marxist redistributionism (from each according to his abilities, etc.) The vice-presidential candidate was reduced to sputtering “Are you kidding?” and “I don’t know who’s writing your questions.”

  I’m surprised the Delaware senator didn’t remind West that when a TV reporter posed impertinent queries to President Franklin Delano Roosevelt in 1929, FDR penned an article for People magazine reminding his fellow Americans to “ask not what your country can do for you.”

  As all good journalists knoweth, you’re only supposed to ask embarrassing questions of Republicans. As a media minion, your curiosity should be confined to Sarah Palin’s wardrobe, her daughter’s pregnancy and Cindy McCain’s past addiction to prescription painkillers.

  West’s grilling of Biden (the campaign retaliated by canceling a later interview with his wife) was so extraordinary for the mainstream media as to constitute a freak occurrence – like a snowstorm in July or a British MP plagiarizing one of Biden’s speeches.

  Media bias in past presidential campaigns (going back to 1964) is nothing next to the way the drive-bys managed, manipulated and mangled coverage of the McCain-Obama race.

  The media doesn’t even try to disguise its schoolgirl crush. According to a survey by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, by a margin of 70% to 9%, those polled in mid-October said most journalists wanted Obama to win, over John McCain.

  At that stage of the 2004 campaign, the public said the media favored Kerry over Bush by 50% to 22% (comparable to 2000, when 47% of those surveyed said the press liked Gore, versus 23% who said reporters leaned toward Bush).

  The public’s perception is confirmed by a Project for Excellence in Journalism study, which looked at coverage of McCain and Obama in the six weeks following the nominating conventions. It found that while 57% of stories about the GOP nominee were negative and 14% positive, Obama’s positives/negatives were 36%/35%. In other words, there was four times as much negative coverage of McCain as of Obama.

* * * * *

  If the news media is a criminal conspiracy, The New York Times is its Vito Corleone. The Gray Lady sets the tone for the rest of the press, which sounds a lot like the Dixie Chicks humming the Internationale.

  You probably didn’t know that besides editing the editorial pages of the Times, Andrew Rosenthal is also a stand-up comic. Performing live at the Association of National Advertisers annual conference, Rosenthal observed that The New York Times “aims to ensure opinion and news are kept separate, even as the Internet increasingly blurs the line” (as reported by Advertising Age on October 17).

  For sheer hypocrisy, this is hard to beat. In the real world, The New York Times is to objectivity what Jack the Ripper was to women’s rights.

  After seeing their candidate bludgeoned in its news pages for months, on September 22 the McCain campaign charged that The New York Times is “150%” behind Barack Obama. Said McCain spokesman Steve Schmidt: “Whatever The New York Times once was [in the middle of the 19th century?], it is not today by any standard a journalistic organization. It is a pro-Obama advocacy organization that every day attacks the McCain campaign, attacks Senator McCain, attacks Governor Palin and excuses Obama.”

  This is a revelation on par with: Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has issues with Israel.

  In late July, Rosenthal’s paragon of objectivity ran an opinion piece by Obama (“My Plan for Iraq”), then rejected a similar offering by McCain – the rationale being that McCain’s piece didn’t “mirror” Obama’s. As a top McCain aide explained, the paper simply didn’t agree with McCain’s Iraq policy, and wanted him to change his position, not “re-work the draft.” That’s fair.

  From the moment McCain announced his choice of Alaska Governor Sarah Palin as his running mate, the Times attack machine went into hyper-drive. A division of investigative reporters was deployed to Juneau, literally sifting through garbage to get dirt on Palin.

  Every aspect of the lady’s personal life has been subjected to media scrutiny.

  On September 2, the Times ran a convention story (“Palin’s Daughter’s Pregnancy Interrupts G.O.P. Convention Script”) worthy of The National Enquirer. Her daughter, Bristol, age 17, was five-months pregnant, the family announced. The Times covered the disclosure with glee. Here was a pro-family candidate who was such a lousy mother that she couldn’t keep her teen-aged daughter from getting pregnant – this from a newspaper that believes in giving condoms to 14-year-olds, without parental notification.

  From there, it was a dizzying descent into tabloid hell. The Times breathlessly informed readers that the Palins eloped on Aug. 29, 1988, and that their first child, Track, was born eight months later.

  The article hit rock bottom, when it reported “some claimed that Ms. Palin had not actually given birth to Trig [her youngest son], but that Bristol had, and that the family had covered it up.” As support for this absurdity, the Times cited photos posted on “various websites” supposedly showing that the governor didn’t look pregnant in the months leading up to Trig’s birth.

  In his speech to the Association of National Advertisers, Rosenthal compared the wild rumors and preposterous theories flying around the Internet with impeccable reporting at The New York Times. But the paper is willing to repeat the most outlandish cyber speculation, if it suits its purposes.

  Rosenthal’s rag was also fascinated with Palin’s wardrobe. The Republican National Committee is reported to have spent $150,000 to outfit her in a manner befitting a vice-presidential candidate. An October 23 New York Times story mentioned unnamed Republicans expressing “consternation” at the Palin “shopping spree” and wondering if this would “compromise her standing as Senator McCain’s chief emissary to working-class voters.”

  Naturally, there was no speculation on how Obama could campaign as a middle-class hero attired in $1,500-suits. At least Palin didn’t get her duds compliments of Tony Rezko.

  But most Times coverage of Palin focused on her alleged lack of experience, corny rhetoric and, well, the contention that she just wasn’t vice-presidential material.

  In an October 3 story on the vice-presidential debate, the Times termed Palin’s performance “unusual theater,” while stressing her use of phrases like “a heck of a lot.”

  The governor was said to rely on a “steady grin, folksy manner and carefully scripted talking points.” In other words, she’s a hick, a rube, a Republican Stepford Wife who can’t function without 3×5 cards.

  You may recall another politician whose intelligence the media questioned because of his use of index cards. He was the president who won the Cold War and gave us the longest peacetime prosperity in our history.

  A Times editorial, which ran the same day, charged that after “a series of stumbling interviews that raised serious doubts even among conservatives [again, unnamed] about her ability to serve as vice president,” Palin “never really got beyond talking points in 90 minutes, mostly repeating clich?s and tired attack lines and energetically refusing to answer far too many questions.”

  For The New York Times, anything not heard recently at a Manhattan cocktail party is a clich? or a tired attack line.

  Compare the foregoing to the Times’s carefully crafted coverage of Biden, whose gaffes are either buried with the TV listings or totally ignored.

  Discussing the current financial crisis, Biden reminded us that in 1929, President Roosevelt (who didn’t become president until 1933) went on television (which wasn’t widely used until the late 1940s) to explain the Great Depression to the American people.

  Speaking to Virginia coal miners, Biden revealed “I am a hard coal miner.” The closest anyone in his family came to working in the mines was a great-grandfather who was a mining engineer.

  At a September 9 rally in Columbia, Missouri, Obama’s running mate urged a Democratic state senator in a wheelchair to “stand up” so the crowd could get a better look at him – all of which was studiously ignored by the mainstream media.

  Then there was Biden’s prediction, at a Seattle fundraiser, that six months after he took office, foreign powers would “test” President Obama the way Khrushchev tested JFK in the Cuban missile crisis, thus implying Obama is so green that his inexperienced hand at the helm would invite an international crisis.

  Other than Fox News, the networks refused to air the remarks. The day after the event, the Times mentioned it briefly in the 11th paragraph of a page A-18 story headlined “Obama Briefly Leaving Trail to See Ill Grandmother.”

  If Palin had said McCain is so old and feeble that his election would have our adversaries circling like vultures, it would have appeared in The New York Times above the page-1 fold.

  The Palin Treatment wasn’t confined to coverage of the Alaska governor. Candidate’s spouses are usually off limits. Not this year. Not when the candidate is John McCain.

  In an October 18 profile, the Times just had to mention Cindy McCain’s past addiction to prescription pain-killers – a story that was old news a decade ago.

  The article noted that the McCains are apart much of the time – he in D.C., she in their Arizona home. For Congressional wives, this is hardly unusual, but, along with the revelation that the couple sometimes vacation separately, the story suggested that Mr. and Mrs. McCain aren’t that close and perhaps their marriage is troubled.

  The how-low-can-they-sink moment came when it was revealed that one of the reporters who wrote the piece tried to contact a friend of the McCains’ 16-year-old daughter, through her FaceBook page, to ask what she knew about Cindy as a mother.

  Even Joe The Plumber got the Times once-over with a blowtorch. An October 17 story (“Real Deal on ‘Joe the Plumber’ Reveals New Slant”) sought to debunk the GOP icon.

  Joe doesn’t have a plumber’s license (gasp!), owes back taxes and is a registered Republican, the story disclosed. And his name isn’t even Joe, it’s Samuel J. Wurzelbacher (who, FYI, owes less than $1,200 in back taxes.) For the Times to attack so minor a figure shows that the Democrats don’t have to spin the news; the media do it for them.

  All that was missing was an expose of the McCains’ dog: He benefited from the financial crisis. He voted with George Bush 96% of the time. His name isn’t Fido; it’s Floyd, and he isn’t even an Irish Setter. He’s really a Golden Retriever.

  The only time the paper mentioned Obama’s friendship with 1960s terrorist William Ayers was to rationalize the relationship or to attack the McCain campaign for raising the issue.

  An October 11 story said Ayers “worked with him [Obama] on a school project and a charitable board and gave a house party when Mr. Obama was running for the U.S. Senate.” This is like saying that Monica Lewinsky was a White House intern who shared certain interests with then-President Clinton.

  The Times didn’t think it was relevant to mention that Ayers and his comrades carried out more than 30 bombings, including the Capitol building and the Pentagon; that Ayers’s current goal is to “teach against oppression” embodied in “America’s history of evil and racism, thereby forcing social transformation”; that Ayers chose Obama to serve as chairman of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge – a group they used to fund radical causes like ACORN – and that the duo served together on the board of the Woods Fund of Chicago, another milch cow for the radical left.

  The New York Times used its editorials to blast McCain and Palin for talking about Ayers (“one of the most appalling campaigns we can remember” the paper wailed.) In so doing, the Republican ticket has moved beyond mere “distortions” of Obama’s record “into the dark territory of race-baiting and xenophobia,” the Times screeched.

  Given that Ayers is white and native-born, this isn’t an easy case to make. But the Times doesn’t have to actually prove a charge, just make it.

* * * * *

  A few more things about which The New York Times and the rest of the establishment media displayed a stunning lack of curiosity include:

   Why Obama sat in a pew of Chicago’s Trinity United Church of Christ for 19 years listening to his preacher/mentor the Rev. Jeremiah (“God damn America!”) Wright spew racism and anti-Americanism.

   Obama’s relationship with Louis Farrakhan. Wright and Father Michael Pfleger (another friend of Obama) are tight with America’s most dangerous demagogue. Obama attended Farrakhan’s 1995 Million Man March, and described it in glowing terms in a community newspaper. Farrakhan practically anointed Obama in a January address to the Nation of Islam.

   Obama’s connection to the leftist ACORN (voter-fraud-r-us).

   Michelle Obama’s embrace of “black power” as a student at Princeton.

   The details of Barack’s acknowledged drug usage – what substances, if any, did he use besides cocaine? When did his addiction end? Was he using drugs as an Illinois state senator? Who was his supplier?

   Obama’s foray into Kenyan politics in support of an avowed Marxist who ran for president.

   Why Mr. Compassion hasn’t done anything for his Kenyan half-brother, who’s living in poverty, or his best friend from prep school days, who just got out of prison?

  Of course, the media’s interest in any of the above would presuppose that they actually wanted to report the news, instead of advancing their ideological agenda by pushing the candidate they adore.

  One of the defining moments of the 1964 Republican National Convention, which nominated Barry Goldwater at the Cow Palace in San Francisco, was when a speaker mentioned the media and angry delegates turned around and shook their fists at the press box. As the French say, the more things change, the more they remain the same.

  Don Feder is a former Boston Herald writer who is now a political/communications consultant. He maintains his own website, DonFeder.com. This essay originally appeared at GrassTopsUSA.com.