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.

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