Barbara West, whose interview with Joe Biden prompted a meltdown and hissy fit from Biden and the rest of Camp Barry, had this to say to the Orlando Sentinel

In a call to me Friday evening, West (pictured) said of Biden: “I have a great deal of respect for him. I have a great deal of respect for Sen. Obama. We are given four minutes of a satellite window for these interviews. Four precious minutes. I got right down to it and, yes, I think I asked him some pointed questions. These are questions that are rolling about right now and questions that need to be asked. I don’t think I was rude or inconsiderate to him. I think I was probing and maybe tough. I can’t believe that in all of his years in politics, and all of his campaigning and such, that he hasn’t run into some tough questions before. He’s certainly up to it in giving good answers.”

In other words, suck it it, Team Lightweight. You’d think someone who has been in Congress since 1972, and That One, who wants to be president, could take some hardball politics. Those who want to take on America around the world must be LTAO.

Video below the fold, since I never got around to posting it Saturday

Barbara West with WFTV in Orlando decided that, unlike the majority of the Credentialed Media, she would, you know, be a journalist and ask the tough questions, and Joe Biden and the Obama campaign were not amused

West wondered about Sen. Barack Obama’s comment, to Joe the Plumber, about spreading the wealth. She quoted Karl Marx and asked how Obama isn’t being a Marxist with the “spreading the wealth” comment.

“Are you joking?” said Biden, who is Obama’s running mate. “No,” West said.

West later asked Biden about his comments that Obama could be tested early on as president. She wondered if the Delaware senator was saying America’s days as the world’s leading power were over.

“I don’t know who’s writing your questions,” Biden shot back.

Biden so disliked West’s line of questioning that the Obama campaign canceled a WFTV interview with Jill Biden, the candidate’s wife.

Meltdown ensued. God forbid the Obama camp allow tough questions. And God help Ms. West if Obama wins. $100 says she loses her job, and WFTV has lots of FCC issues.

WFTV news director Bob Jordan said, “When you get a shot to ask these candidates, you want to make the most of it. They usually give you five minutes.”

Jordan said political campaigns in general pick and choose the stations they like. And stations often pose softball questions during the satellite interviews.

“Mr. Biden didn’t like the questions,” Jordan said. “We choose not to ask softball questions.”

You can watch the video of the exchange here. It’s a bit slow on buffering, because it is getting hit hard by the DUmmies, who are not happy that anyone would question The One and his Left Hand Guy. Thug Thizzle.

In the comments, Dave points out that the crisis that Joe Biden was referring to will probably be Iran and an attack on Israel, and the “unpopular response” will be Barry ignoring the situation and doing nothing, except, perhaps, some strong words and a complaint to the the United Nations, which has been oh so sympathetic to Israel over the past 30 years, eh? He could well be right

Top officials in Iran are proposing a preemptive strike against Israel to avoid an assault on its nuclear reactors, Israel’s Haaretz newspaper reported Wednesday.

Senior Tehran official Dr. Seyed G. Safavi said at a recent briefing in London that the proposal followed threats by Israeli authorities, but a possible preemptive strike against Israel has not yet been incorporated into Iranian policy.

Israeli Transportation Minister Shaul Mofaz said in June that Israel would be forced to strike Iran’s nuclear reactor if Tehran continues to pursue its controversial uranium enrichment program, Haaretz reported.

The question is, are these “just words?” So often within the Western World, we tend to think of these types of ultimatums and threats as school yard taunts, to be ignored, right up to the point that an actual physical attack occurs, then the media and Congress tries to fix blame after the fact, usually after saying, “they are just words, so don’t worry ’bout it.”

It’s like the whole August 6th PDB “Bin Laden determined to strike the US” issue. If Bush had tried to institute measures to search people at the airports, because the time was non-specific, he would have been skewered, and we would have been told the threats were mostly empty. What happened afterwards were typical blame games. When Arabs and Muslims and others in the Middle East make these types of threats, they should be take seriously.

And when you are dealing with paranoid nutjobs, you should be even more worried

Are America and Israel using specially-trained pigeons to spy on Iran?

That’s the question being raised by new reports out of Iran that its security services have arrested two suspected “spy pigeons” near its well-guarded Nantaz nuclear site.

One of the pigeons, security officials said, had a black-coated metal ring and invisible strings.

Ah-ha!

Clearly a spy pigeon.

This isn’t the first time, either. And they arrested spy squirrels last year. Paranoia and nuclear weapons are not the greatest of mixtures.

Of course, we have all heard the Obamazombies talking points: bad voter registrations are not voter fraud, because they haven’t voted yet. It’s not disenfranchisement, because no one is being stopped from voting. So, they see nothing wrong with all the fraud going on through ACORN. Perhaps we should just call it election fraud, to satisfy the Left’s sense of proper naming

A federal appeals court on Tuesday ordered Ohio’s top elections official to set up a system by the end of the week to verify new voters’ eligibility and make it available to Ohio’s 88 county election boards.

The full 6th Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati upheld a lower court’s ruling that Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner must use other government records to check the thousands of new voters for registration fraud.

A three-judge panel of the 6th Circuit had disagreed last week, but the full court’s ruling trumped the panel’s decision.

Finally, some sanity. Of course, you know the Left will not like this very much, despite their constant calls for election reform since they lost in 2000.

Allahpundit has it covered, and has some video showing how the ACORN narrative has finally broken through to the regular MSM.

Related, Barry brings up the “D” word

“But this isn’t a situation where there’s actually people who are going to try to vote ’cause these are phony names,” Obama said. “And, it’s doubtful (Dallas Cowboys quarterback) Tony Romo (whose name has been fraudulently submitted) is gonna show up in Ohio to vote. So this is another one of these distractions that gets stirred up in the course of a campaign.

Uh huh. And, if this was a non-partisan group that happened to be registering primarily Republicans, would you be so blase’ about it, Barry? As Powerline points out, Barack is completely indifferent to the election fraud. And, sure, someone who registers as Mickey Mouse is not going to show up. But, the very fact that ACORN dupes are going there shows the lengths they will go to perpetrate other election fraud, such as registering people who aren’t legally eligible to vote, registering dead people, registering people in multiple states and voting precincts, and then the people do go and vote.

Joe Biden goes down the wacky distraction avenue, as well.

I guess it is all a distraction when out of state Obama activists are registered in Ohio in violation of the law, ie, they do not reside in Ohio. Who wants to bet that they have absentee ballots in for their home states, too?

Maybe there are actually some journalists with ethics out there, though, they still try to whitewash the issue a bit

The moment when Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr. looked Serbian leader Slobodan Milosevic in the eye and called him a “damned war criminal” has become the stuff of campaign legend.

The Democratic vice presidential nominee brings up the 1993 confrontation on the campaign trial to whoops of delight from supporters. Sen. Barack Obama(Ill.) mentioned it when he announced he had chosen Biden as his running mate.

During last week’s debate with his counterpart on the Republican ticket, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, Biden twice gave himself credit for shifting U.S. policy on Bosnia. The senator from Delaware declared that he “was the catalyst to change the circumstance in Bosnia led by President Clinton.” At another point he noted: “My recommendations on Bosnia — I admit I was the first one to recommend it. They saved tens of thousands of lives.”

But, despite the bravado, Biden was not a key player in the legislation that ultimately forced Bill Clinton to lift an arms embargo imposed by the United Nationson Bosnian Muslims fighting the Serbs, according to congressional officials involved in the issue and a review of Biden’s speeches and voting record.

In other words, he was making it up as he went along, exaggerating his role, much like Obama does on actually having a record to stand on.

Surrendie didn’t know if he should be sad because Saracuda did so well last night, or happy because so many in the Liberal media were so flumoxed by her performance that they were forced to surrender and say “She done good!” But, Surrendie loves how they have done it. Consider an Internet front page story at the Washington Post

Sarah Palin looked as though she had prepared for her appearance at the vice presidential debate last night by studying Tina Fey’s impressions of her on “Saturday Night Live.” She twinkled and winked and piled on the perkiness, a “darn right” here and an “I’ll betcha” there.

At the same time, Palin seemed determined to banish thoughts of her as airheaded and inexperienced; she was really debating her own public image rather than Sen. Joe Biden. She subverted the whole purpose of the exercise by merely repeating the key points of her running mate, Sen. John McCain, and ignoring questions that called for more specific answers.

No mention from Tom Shales about the lies of Joe Biden. Who is Tom Shales? He is a Style writer for the Washington Post. Nice to know the Post apparently has no political writers sober enough after Palin’s performance (and, to be honest, let’s not forget that Biden did do very well himself, certainly better then either McCain or Obama) to write a decent article. Shales’ article is considered “top news,” if you look at that link.

Despite the even toned article at the LA Times, one which tends to avoid the zingers by Palin, their headline says it all for those searching for some medical mary jane in the newsroom

Palin and Biden spar in VP debate but neither deals a knockout

And, how can we ignore the Grey Lady?

Gov. Sarah Palin made it through the vice-presidential debate on Thursday without doing any obvious damage to the Republican presidential ticket. By surviving her encounter with Senator Joseph R. Biden Jr. and quelling some of the talk about her basic qualifications for high office, she may even have done Senator John McCain a bit of good, freeing him to focus on the other troubles shadowing his campaign.

It was not a tipping point for the embattled Republican presidential ticket, the bad night that many Republicans had feared. But neither did it constitute the turning point the McCain campaign was looking for after a stretch of several weeks in which Senator Barack Obama seemed to be gaining the upper hand in the race. Even if he no longer has to be on the defensive about Ms. Palin, Mr. McCain still faces a tough environment with barely a month until the election, as he acknowledged hours before the debate by effectively pulling his campaign out of Michigan, a Democratic state where Mr. McCain’s advisers had once been optimistic of victory.

So, she did fantastic, but, it don’t mean nuttin’.

Exit question: other then perhaps at Fox News, the Washington Times, and a few other media outlets, are there any in the Credentialed Media who do not have hangovers like Cuba just won the World Cup?

Head on over to Stop The ACLU for my quick thoughts and a post debate roundup from around the Interwebz. Easier then trying to update on three sites.

Ask yourself if you have ever seen an article this nice about Sarah Palin by the Grey Lady. Ask yourself why this artice just happens to come out the day of the VP debates. A bit of Biden Luv from the New York Times: An Everyman on the Trail, With Perks at Home

For the millions of voters getting to know him, Senator Joseph R. Biden Jr., the Democratic vice-presidential nominee, portrays himself at times as an average guy who takes the train to work, frets about money and basically has led a middle-class life.

“Ladies and gentlemen, your kitchen table is like mine,” Mr. Biden said when Senator Barack Obama introduced him as his running mate. “You sit there at night after you put the kids to bed and you talk, you talk about what you need. You talk about how much you are worried about being able to pay the bills.”

He’s a swell guy, eh?

Although he is among the least wealthy members of the millionaires club that is the United States Senate — he and his wife, Jill, a college professor, earn about $250,000 a year — Mr. Biden maintains a lifestyle that is more comfortable than the impression he may have given on the campaign trail. A review of his finances found that when it comes to some of his largest expenses, like the purchase and upkeep of his home and his use of Amtrak trains to get around, he has benefited from resources and relationships not available to average Americans.

As a secure incumbent who has rarely faced serious competition during 35 years in the Senate, Mr. Biden has been able to dip into his campaign treasury to spend thousands of dollars on home landscaping and some of his Amtrak travel between Wilmington, Del., where he lives, and Washington. And the acquisition of his waterfront property a decade ago involved wealthy businessmen and campaign supporters, some of them bankers with an interest in legislation before the Senate, who bought his old house for top dollar, sold him four acres at cost and lent him $500,000 to build his new home.

Hmm, that would seem to be problematic. Is yardwork the reason people donate to his campaigns? As for the waterfront property, that seems to be exactly the kind of issue that Obama rails about (though we know he doesn’t mean it.) I bet the Times has something to say on this obvious lapse in ethics

There is nothing to suggest Mr. Biden bent any rules in the sale, purchase and financing of his homes. Rather, he appears to have benefited at times from the simple fact of who he is: a United States senator, not just “Amtrak Joe,” the train-riding everyman that the Obama-Biden campaign has deployed to rally middle-class voters.

Ah. It’s OK, then. Sarah Palin fires a guy who refused to fire a trooper - who happened to be her ex-brother in law - who tazed a 10 year old, drank before and during shifts, illegally shot animals, etc, but, according to all the Liberal media, there is a problem with that.

Interestingly, throught the who article, which is about telling us what an average Joe Joe is, we get a look at Joe’s finances, and realize that this guy just isn’t very good with money. Good thing he is just running for the job of VP, eh?

So, where is the article on Palin? That post is up next.

The headlines of both articles gives a good idea of where the Times wants to push the reader. We’ll start with Sarah Palin, then get to the Gaffe Master after the jump

Past Debates Show a Confident Palin, at Times Fluent but Often Vague

Not since Dan Quayle took the stage in 1988 have debate expectations for a major party candidate been as low as they will be on Thursday for Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska.

Setting the stage for calling Palin a lightweight

A newcomer to the national scene, Ms. Palin has given little indication that she has been engaged in a serious way in the pressing national and international issues of the day.

Sorry she couldn’t have been in the Senate since 1972 like Biden, and having failed 3 attempts for the Democrat nomination, or having been chosen as a VP with more experience then the top of the ticket. I doubt Clinton was real concerned with national or international issues while governor of Arkansas, either.

But a review of a handful of her debate performances in the race for governor in 2006 shows a somewhat different persona from the one that has emerged since Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona, named Ms. Palin as the vice-presidential nominee a month ago.

Ms. Palin, a former mayor who had become a whistle-blower about ethical misconduct in state government, held her own in those debates. (There were almost two dozen in the general election alone; she skipped some, and not all were recorded.)

Some pleasantries thrown in to give an appearance of journalism, rather then opinionation

Her debating style was rarely confrontational, and she appeared confident. In contrast to today, when she seems unversed on several important issues, she demonstrated fluency on certain subjects, particularly oil and gas development.

But just as she does now, Ms. Palin often spoke in generalities and showed scant aptitude for developing arguments beyond a talking point or two. Her sentences were distinguished by their repetition of words, by the use of the phrase “here in Alaska” and for gaps. On paper, her sentences would have been difficult to diagram.

John Bitney, the policy director for her campaign for governor and the main person who helped prepare her for debates, said her repetition of words was “her way of running down the clock as her mind searches for where she wants to go.”

These tendencies could fuzz her meaning and lead her into linguistic cul-de-sacs. She often used less than her allotted time and ended her answers abruptly.

Um, uh, um, well, you see, Jim, ah, what I mean is.  No mention of The Messiah’s constant and consistent speaking manner when his friend Mr. Teleprompter is off having a drink after a hard days work from the Times, or any other Credentialed Media outlet.

But, you can tell what the Grey Lady wants to do: paint Palin as a bubble headed lightweight. Period.

And on to Biden