The New York Times tells of how the National Enquirer put together the John Edwards story.

Pulling together reporters to dig into the rumor, Mr. Levine began something that once seemed unthinkable: not only the downfall of a presidential candidate with a meticulous image, but, for the sensational tabloid, something resembling respectability.

By being the first and, largely, the only publication pursuing the Edwards story through his denials of the affair and of fathering a child out of wedlock, The Enquirer is under consideration for a Pulitzer Prize, and it has strong support for its bid from other journalists. The success has Mr. Levine considering opening a Washington bureau to look for more dirt among politicians.

But if reporting something that the MSM ignored – seemingly in order to protect a favored politician – what does that say about the respectability of the MSM? Or at least about their credibility?

Did the MSM learn their lesson?

“There’s no worse crime in journalism these days than simply deciding something’s a story because Drudge links to it,” according to NBC’s chief White House correspondent, Chuck Todd. Really? No worse crime? Not Dan Rather’s use of forged documents in a one-sided 60 Minutes hit piece intended to cost President Bush re-election? Not the plagiarism and fabrications of former New York Times reporter Jayson Blair and the New Republic’s Stephen Glass?

No. They wouldn’t want to use Drudge. But wait. Didn’t he break another story about a politician favored and protected by the media? Just asking.

This week’s winners touch on many topics while converging on the simple fact that the mainstream media has been illegitimate in its coverage of Barack Obama. Whether the topic is Barack Obama’s character, misleading polls or the perceived racism of anyone that doesn’t support The One you can be assured that the facts contradict the narrative.

While Joe the Plumber went on tour to frequent McCain\Palin rallies (lucky guy) Tito the Builder took the stage and brought the house down!

Please read and pass along these winning entries that expose the weasel of the world and help stop them in their tracks. Enjoy!

Winning Council Submissions

• First place with 2  votes votes! – Joshuapundit – A Spectator At The Orgy
• Second place with 1 1/3 votes – Hillbilly White Trash – The gap between the media’s version and the actual truth grows wider
• Third place with 1 vote – (T*) – Cheat-Seeking Missiles – Is a Barack Victory Predestined?
• Third place with 1 vote – (T*) – The Colossus of Rhodey – We’re tired of it already
• Fourth place with 2/3 votes – The Razor – The Good Daughter
• Fifth place with 1/3 votes – Soccer Dad – The campaign and israel: take 3029

Winning Non-Council Submissions

• First place with 2 votes votes! – Iowahawk – Balls and Urns
• Second place with 1 2/3 votes – Winds of Change – The Newspaper Crash of 2009… And How You Can Help
• Third place with 1 vote – American Thinker – Time for a Gut Check, America
• Fourth place with 2/3 votes – Doug Ross @ Journal – The Manifesto of the Silenced Majority
• Fourth place with 2/3 votes – Pajamas Media – Syria-Iraq: Bloody Border, Messy Politics
• Fourth place with 2/3 votes – Philly.com – Palin Deserves Our Respect
• Fifth place with 1/3 votes – The New York Review of Books – Hugo Chávez Versus Human Rights

T* – Denotes Tie

Watch Tito the Hero as he joins a procession of guests that have undressed Alan Colmes with ease.

There is less than one week left before the nation elects a new President and the race is still to close to call according to some polls.

The gap between Barack Obama and John McCain in Gallup Poll Daily tracking from Saturday through Monday has narrowed slightly, and Obama is now at 49% of the vote to 47% for McCain among likely voters using Gallup’s traditional model, and at 51% to 44% using Gallup’s expanded model.

The ever tightening gap underscores points that pundits made in the weeks leading up to this point: the credibility of the pollsters is on the line so expect the wide gaps in favor of Obama to disappear because the pollsters can’t allow their reputations to suffer from their own biases.

The following submissions have been submitted by the Watchers Council in recognition of the last weasely gasp before the election.

Following the submissions I continued discussing the recap of the week in review.

Council Submissions

• Bookworm Room – Obama wants the government to redistribute wealth
• Joshuapundit – A Spectator At The Orgy
• Hillbilly White Trash – The gap between the media’s version and the actual truth grows wider
• Cheat-Seeking Missiles – Is a Barack Victory Predestined?
• The Colossus of Rhodey – We’re tired of it already
• Soccer Dad – The campaign and israel: take 3029
• The Razor – The Good Daughter
• The Glittering Eye – Both Candidates Suck

Non-Council Submissions

• Submitted By: Bookworm Room – Iowahawk – Balls and Urns
• Submitted By: Joshuapundit – Phillipe Karsenty/Hudson Foundation – Obama Is Already The Elected President…. In France!
• Submitted By: Hillbilly White Trash – American Thinker – Time for a Gut Check, America
• Submitted By: Cheat-Seeking Missiles – Doug Ross @ Journal – The Manifesto of the Silenced Majority
• Submitted By: The Colossus of Rhodey – The New York Review of Books – Hugo Chávez Versus Human Rights
• Submitted By: Soccer Dad – Pajamas Media – Syria-Iraq: Bloody Border, Messy Politics
• Submitted By: The Razor – Philly.com – Palin Deserves Our Respect
• Submitted By: The Glittering Eye – Winds of Change – The Newspaper Crash of 2009… And How You Can Help

Much like the pollsters the rest of the mainstream media is bracing themselves for the fallout from their obvious bias in favor of Barack Obama. The American public is not oblivious to the journalistic malfeasance that has just been witnessed and some insiders are starting to speak out.

Time Magazine’s editor Mark Halperin  appeared on television and bemoaned the institutional bias that undercut the credibility of the entire profession.

MARK HALPERIN (Editor at large, Time) : History and the story is just- it’s great for us. It’s been great for us. He’s a great story. But I think, I think mistakes have been made and people- and people will regret it.

ABC News columnist Michael Malone is embarrassed to call himself a journalist.

The traditional media are playing a very, very dangerous game — with their readers, with the Constitution and with their own fates.

The sheer bias in the print and television coverage of this election campaign is not just bewildering, but appalling. And over the last few months I’ve found myself slowly moving from shaking my head at the obvious one-sided reporting, to actually shouting at the screen of my television and my laptop computer.

But worst of all, for the last couple weeks, I’ve begun — for the first time in my adult life — to be embarrassed to admit what I do for a living. A few days ago, when asked by a new acquaintance what I did for a living, I replied that I was “a writer,” because I couldn’t bring myself to admit to a stranger that I’m a journalist

The fallout is already taking shape. Time Inc. announced it will eliminate 600 jobs starting next week, a 6% reduction in their workforce. At the same time NY Times Inc. is being reduced to junk bond status, Radar magazine’s print edition folded and newspapers across the country are taking massive hits.

Perhaps this is why so many in the media seem opposed opposed to the idea of free markets. It is obvious that market forces may bring about the change that shame could not.

This weeks winning entries pit the mainstream media’s pro-Obama narrative against Barack Obama’s actual record of accomplishment and personal identity.

The media has shed what little credibility they had by coming to the defense of Barack Obama’s “share the wealth” statement. Once again those that oppose Barack Obama on substantive matters are being labeled as racist. Attacked by the very people that should protect the rights of those that speak candidly about their political leaders.

The winning entries in both categories touch on these topics. The top entries in each category explore these topics in depth with a focus on the corrupt media and their attempts to rewrite history in real time with the skilled expertise of antagonistic propagandists.

When viewed as a retrospective I doubt that any of today’s so called journalists will publicly admit to their intellectually bankrupt behavior but these entries note it as a public record.

Winning Council Submissions

• First place with 2 1/3 votes votes! – Bookworm Room – Why Obama’s “share the wealth” argument should hurt him
• Second place with 1 2/3 votes – Soccer Dad – The Washington Post chooses hope ahead of substance
• Third place with 1 vote – (T*) – The Razor – If Obama Wins… Part 2
• Third place with 1 vote – (T*) – Cheat-Seeking Missiles – Media Bias #89 – The Audacity Of Inexperience
• Third place with 1 vote – (T*) – The Glittering Eye – Unforeseen Secondary Effects
• Fourth place with 2/3 votes – (T*) – The Colossus of Rhodey – Don’t know much about history? The media sure doesn’t
• Fourth place with 2/3 votes – (T*) – Rhymes With Right – Some Sense From The Pentagon

Winning Non-Council Submissions

• First place with 2 1/3 votes votes! – Hot Air – The Comprehensive Argument Against Barack Obama
• Second place with 1 1/3 votes – Daled Amos – o so far… Saturday, October 18, 2008 “In what kind of nation, do the media investigate critics more than candidates?”
• Third place with 1 vote – (T*) – Nolan Finley – America Should Follow The Little Red Hen
• Third place with 1 vote – (T*) – The Paragraph Farmer – An Open Letter To My Friend Art
• Third place with 1 vote – (T*) – Patterico’s Pontifications – Evidence of Obama-Ayers Tie Sent Down the Memory Hole . . . Almost!
• Fourth place with 2/3 votes – Gateway Pundit – Media Refuses to Release Video of Obama Toasting & Praising Close Friend Rashid Khalidi– A Former PLO Operative, Jew-Hater & Friend of Bill Ayers
• Fifth place with 1/3 votes – (T*) – American Thinker – Obama’s campaign built on lies
• Fifth place with 1/3 votes (T*) – NewsBusters – Enraged Leftwing Blogosphere Hurls Attacks Against Joe the Plumber

T* – Denotes Tie

Last night political observers geared up for a townhall style presidential debate between Barack Obama and John McCain. It was clear as the debate wore on that it would turn out to be horribly boring and uneventful, and it was.

The issues of Barack Obama’s character still linger. Meanwhile John McCain announced his plan to rescue both his campaign and the faltering financial system by advocating more government intervention.

The election is 4 weeks away and the media continues to cover for Barack Obama.

Investors Business Daily noted how the media is covering up the Ayers-Obama relationship:

Still more evidence of how the media are in the tank for Obama was evident in Tom Brokaw’s description of Ayers on Sunday’s “Meet The Press.”

“School reformer” is how Brokaw identified the co-founder of the Weather Underground, the radical organization that, among other activities, bombed government buildings, banks, police departments and military bases in the early 1970s.

Yeah, right: Ayers is a school reformer in the same sense, as City Journal’s Sol Stern put it, as Joe Stalin was an agricultural reformer.

Keep this in mind as you peruse this weeks submissions and read how bloggers are battling the Weasles of the World:

Council Submissions

• Bookworm Room – Keeping the Faith
• Joshuapundit – How The Democrats Created the Financial Crisis
• The Colossus of Rhodey – The downside of being a teacher
• Cheat-Seeking Missiles – The Palin-Haters Find Their Own Rev. Wright
• Wolf Howling – Hurricane Subprime – Part I (1977-2000)
• The Glittering Eye – Issues 2008
• The Razor – If Obama Wins
• Hillbilly White Trash – Taking the Gloves Off
• Soccer Dad – No runs, no hits, plenty of errors

Non-Council Submissions

• Submitted By: Bookworm Room – Pajamas Media – Obama and the Attempt to Destroy the Second Amendment
• Submitted By: Joshuapundit – Michelle Malkin – How ACORN got a piece of the bailout pie
• Submitted By: The Colossus of Rhodey – Oliver Kamm – Free speech and offence
• Submitted By: Cheat-Seeking Missiles – American Thinker – How Allies of George Soros Helped Bring Down Wachovia Bank
• Submitted By: Wolf Howling – Q&O – Watch As Democrats Try To Blame Financial Mess On “Deregulation”
• Submitted By: The Glittering Eye – Heretical Ideas – Obama v. McCain: Foreign Policy
• Submitted By: The Razor – Bizzyblog – Bailout Saga Proves That Elites Don’t Care What We Think
• Submitted By: Hillbilly White Trash – The Brussels Journal – Empire of Yin – Part 1: The Great Unbalancing
• Submitted By: Soccer Dad – Baseball Crank – The Integrity Gap, Part I of III: Gov. Sarah Palin

The media continues to attack Sarah Palin for a second straight week but it appears that those efforts may have actually backfired. The medias’ attempts to smear Sarah Palin has rallied the conservative base and sparked interest in her message, especially in the important white women demographic.

Adding insult to injury is the comments this evening by Barack Obama where he stuck foot in mouth with a very bad swipe at Palin. Obama appeared  in a televised campaign event and said “You Can Put Lipstick on a Pig, But It’s Still a Pig”. This is responsible for not one, not two, but three individual Memeorandum discussion topics. One for the event, a second for the defense by the left, and a third counter argument to defenders of Obama’s “slip”.

The week has been quite remarkable indeed. A fact that leads the Watchers Council to nominate the following articles for this weeks competition:

Council

1. The Glittering Eye – Waiting for the Takeover (Updated)

2. Soccer Dad – An exceptional choice

3. Bookworm Room – Beneath the Gobbledy-gook, an implied concession about taxes

4. The Razor – Dems Proving the GOP is really…

5. Joshua Pundit – The Game Changer – Duty, Honor, Country

6. Wolf Howling – Standing At The Crossroads – Identity Politics, Multiculturalism & The Melting Pot

7. The Colossus of Rhodey – Is the Philly Daily News Literally Going Nuts?”

8. Rhymes With Right – A Bad Political Dad From History?

9. Cheat-Seeking Missiles – Fight, Fight, Fight

10. Hillbilly White Trash – The new Reagan

Non-Council

1. Submitted by Cheat-Seeking Missiles – Beldar Blog – Don’t Confuse Republicans’ thrill over the Palin nomination with the Dems’ worship of Obama: A reply to Paul Mirengoff

2. Submitted by Bookworm – The QandO Blog: QandO’s Stupid Journalist Tricks

3. Submitted by Hillbilly White Trash – City Journal: Organizer in Chief

4. Submitted by The Colossus of Rhodey – La Shawn Barber: Americans Doing Jobs Illegal Aliens CAN’T Do”

5. Submitted by Rhymes With Right – The Anchoress: Over Palin; not “hypocrisy,” you never knew us

6. Submitted by Soccer Dad – Somewhere on AIA: Bad News for the Press… We’re going to see more of this.

7. Submitted by The Glittering Eye – Real Clear Politics: The Media’s ‘Due Dilligence’

8. Submitted by Joshua Pundit - Front Page Magazine: Interview with Alec Rawls at Frontpage

9. Submitted by Wolf Howling – EU Referendum: The Awkwardness Of Truth

10. Submitted by The Razor – The Truth According to Mark: A Convention Roundup