VP Joe Biden’s mother passed away today at the age of 92.  Thoughts and prayers go out to the Biden family.  May she rest in peace.

Obama’s team obviously thinks it rules the world.  Well, except for FNC and The Drudge Report.  Oh, and the RNC.  And anyone who dares question them is associated with one of these organizations or paid by them. 

Good news: Megyn Kelly was on a roll today!   Bad news: You have to listen to Bill Burton again.  Ugh.  First, she takes on Mr. Burton over the allegation that the new tape of Obama from 2001 that has surfaced is the doing of FNC and Drudge Report and is not pertinent to the current campaign.  He contends it means NOTHING even though Obama speaks of redistribution back then.  Yeah, he says that.

Then, Michael Brown is taken down by both Michelle Malkin and Megyn Kelly.  He does, however, take the opportunity to say that the RNC was writing the Florida reporter’s questions AND that the local stations are being paid by the right.  Wow.

Once again, attack the questioner, a la Joe the Plumber.  I have never heard so much complaining about FNC and Bill O’Reilly and Sean Hannity by a campaign and the candidate itself.  If McCain were to run around the country arguing that MSNBC had caused him to be 5 points down, he’d be called senile (not like he already isn’t).  Palin complains about the MSM in general, but she has opened up more and more, more than the Obama / Biden ticket, who haven’t had a press conference in a month. 

McCain’s campaign wrote one letter to NBC after their bias came to a head with anchor / reporter Andrea Mitchell questioning if McCain cheated during the Saddleback forum.  He didn’t ban them.  He didn’t threaten them.  McCain’s camp cancelled one interview with CNN after Campbell Brown questioned Palin’s judgement of running for VP knowing her daughter was pregnant.  The campaign has been back to CNN since, with little change apparently. 

After the disatrous Couric interview, Palin took her lumps.  She said she thought some of the questions, like the one about what she reads, were meant to put her down.  But, she apologized for her flippant answer and took the chance in an interview with Carl Cameron to fix some things.  She didn’t demean Couric for the questions she asked.  She gave better answers and apologized for the previous ones.  And if you’ve seen her interviews since, it’s like day and night.

It boggles my mind that Obama and Biden have the audacity to think the scope of their power encompasses the media, and they don’t have to answer tough questions.  Can you imagine if a foreign leader had asked Biden a tough question and he answered with, “Are you joking? Is this a joke?”  I can picture Biden telling that to Chavez right now.

Looks like F&F has been combing the blogs today.  They picked up the credit card fraud issue this morning.  They also played the audio from Stop the ACLU where State Senator Obama in 2001 expressed his disappointment that the Warren Supreme Court wasn’t more active in allowing redistribution of wealth, a natural progression of the civil rights movement.

Now, Michelle is on the show talking about the West / Biden interview and the consequences that channel has suffered. 

H/T: Hot Air and Michelle

Update: Ace has a better interpretation of the quote and what it means.  Obama laments that the civil rights movement took the route of the courts, which was limited in what it could do, instead of organizing power bases to effect legislative change which could then be used to redistribute wealth.  To me, it sounded like he wanted the court to be more active and actually tack on redistribution to civil rights challenges.  However, I haven’t heard the WHOLE clip, also linked at Ace. 

By the way, Bob Beckel on “America’s Newsrooom” on FNC this morning tried to say this quote was about redistributing taxes among schools to create equal schooling for lower-income children (as he argued was called for in Plessy v. Ferguson).  Nice try, dude!

Joe Biden knew it in the primaries:

Joe Biden warns us all again:

Don’t let his words fall on deaf ears. Barack Obama is NOT ready to lead.

H/T: Hot Air

ABC ignored the story on air for 24 hours after it was broken by its website.  NBC’s Andrea Mitchell played only the clip where Biden praised Obama instead of the one where he guaranteed an Obama presidency would bring a crisis.  The same clip was played again on MSNBC’s morning show, but the host called them out on it.

Two people DID agree that there was bias on this story.  Dan Rather(!) and CNN’s Drew Griffin, who admits to Sarah Palin that if she had said the same thing, the media would have clobbered her (see the video below with the money quote around 2:30).

You gotta love that Joe!  First, he says Obama is “articulate and bright and clean.”  Then, he says that Obama is not ready to be president and also questioned his policy to talk with Iran without preconditions.  He also questioned Obama’s plan to leave Iraq.  And that’s just before he was named VP.

Afterward, Biden said that Hillary would have been a better choice for VP.  He also called one of his own campaign ads referring to McCain’s e-mail abilities “terrible.” 

Yesterday, Biden told a group in San Francisco Seattle to prepare for Obama to be tested during his first six months.  He warns of an “international crisis” that will require their supporters to stand behind them no matter their decisions, a caution that suggests he’s worried about how The One will handle the situation.

The timing of this statement is curious, seeing as how it was reported over the weekend that intelligence officials began briefing the campaigns, and the FBI has begun vetting aides to help with a smoother transition (many of Bush’s aides had not yet been vetted by 9/11).  I wonder if Joe is letting a cat out of the bag?

Update: I misread the article.  I saw San Francisco instead of Seattle, thinking San Fran just brought out the worst in the O-B team.  It has been corrected above.

Update II: Ralph Peters agrees.  Let us count the ways we’re screwed!

Biden’s tax returns have been brought up again, since Palin released hers yesterday.  Who is really middle class becomes clear when comparing the two.  The Palins meet the classic definition of middle class income, and their charitable giving is on par, maybe slightly below, the average based on IRS returns of all Americans.

The Bidens, however, make much more than middle class and give much, much less than average for their income level.  His campaign explained saying the Bidens give a lot of cash (like offerings at church) and time to their charities of choice.  They also said the Bidens loaded up a car full of supplies and drove down to the coast to help Katrina victims themselves.  I can see this (maybe not the ENTIRE Katrina story), because many Americans only have time to give, and that’s not deductible. 

However, I think the campaign could have come up with a better explanation.  Since Biden thinks paying taxes is patriotic, then deducting for charitable giving lowers his tax burden.  Therefore, he was being more patriotic by not deducting his charitable giving. 

So why deduct ANYTHING?  That $300 deduction lowered his taxes by $100 maybe.  I can’t explain that one, but I’m sure his spinmeisters could. 

Oh wait, they don’t want to remind Joe Six-pack that Joe Biden thinks taxes = patriotism.