Something to ponder

Guess which countries have the lowest level of anti-Muslim sentiment in the Western world? The UK and the US (in a tie). And guess which countries have the lowest level of anti-Jewish sentiment? The US, closely followed by the UK.
So maybe all those Europeans who harp about how incredibly bigoted the US supposedly is, should take a closer look at their own back yard. And at the same time, maybe it would be helpful if those Americans who wish their country was more closely aligned with European cultural "sensibilities" and are oh-so-worried about America's reputation in the world, should be careful what they wish for.

Astounding

Yowzers! The mainstream media's meltdown over the Sarah Palin candidacy for the Vice Presidency is truly astounding to behold. Have these people no sense of how transparently biased, dishonest and petty they sound?
Jim Lindgren quotes an exhaustive rebuttal of the charge that there was insufficient vetting (from National Review), and says:

To say that the press is doing the Democrats’ work for them would be an understatement.
[...]
I don't get it. Are the New York Times reporters just printing what the Obama people are telling them (as Byron York is explicitly doing for the other side)? Or is one side or the other simply lying? Or both?
I guess we should be happy that there are now alternative sources of information, or too often most of us would hear only one side of the story.

Mitchell Blatt writes:

Hillary Clinton's campaign complained about sexism in the media during his primary battle vs. Barack Obama, and we are seeing now just how right she was about sexism in the media.
Sarah Palin's daughter Bristol has been revealed as being pregnant, and that story has dominated election coverage recently. (Note to networks: Bristol isn’t running for VP; Sarah is.)
Not only are the networks trying to drag this story out, they are also saying Palin is neglecting her children by running for vice president. (Stay at home, women, preferably in the kitchen!)

Do read the whole thing.
And have you heard people saying that she's a rabid evangelical who will impose creationism in the classroom? Little Green Footballs clears a few things up:

One of the smears being circulated against Sarah Palin is that she is in favor of teaching creationism in public school science classes, but as I pointed out last week this simply isn't true. Apparently, she has a rather confused attitude toward evolution (an attitude she shares with about 50% of the US population), but when asked explicitly whether she would support teaching the pseudo-science of "intelligent design," her answer was "No." And today even the Associated Press has to admit that Palin has not pushed creationism as governor.
And by the way, John McCain is also on the right side of this issue.

More at the link.
Confederate Yankee has some more on vetting:

We now know far more about Sarah Palin in just four days than we've learned about Barack Obama in 17 months. That is just sad. It's a pathetic reflection of the mainstream media's unwillingness to do their jobs for fear of finding stories that would hurt the candidate so many of them openly desire to win.
But periodically appearing to read teleprompters isn't vetting, not matter how many months a candidate has done it, and Obama's ability to perform in set-piece debates is both dubious—Hillary once famously took him apart—and irrelevant. Barack Obama really has never been fully vetted. He hasn't even come close.
You want examples?
[...]
To their great dishonor, the media has focused more energy on Sarah Palin's religious background in just the few days since her announcement as the Republican Vice Presidential candidate than they have on Obama's in the entire campaign.

And a few sound words on experience from Newt Gingrich:

And some home truths from Rudy Giuliani:

Nonetheless, if one looks carefully, there are some members of the MSM, such as the managing editor of the FT's US edition, who haven't completely lost their marbles:

During the Democratic primaries, Gloria Steinem, pioneering feminist and Hillary Clinton supporter, argued that the contest had revealed that gender was "probably the most restricting force in American life". She illustrated her point by imagining a female version of Barack Obama and contending that no woman with such a slender biography would be considered seriously for the presidency.
It is now clear that Ms Steinem was right – although proof comes not from the treatment of the Democratic lioness Mrs Clinton but from the responses, particularly on the left, to the Republican newcomer Sarah Palin. Less than 24 hours after the triumphant close of a convention that nominated a 47-year-old first-term senator as its party’s candidate to be president of the United States, Democratic heavyweights were sputtering with horror at the idea of a 44-year-old, first-term governor as Republican vice-presidential nominee.
As the Democrats absorb Senator McCain's truly maverick decision, I suspect we will hear less of this "experience" argument. Governor Palin, who took on her own party's good ole boys and won, has as much of a record of political achievement as does Senator Obama: running a state, no matter how sparsely populated, is a bigger executive job than being a senator. More­over, you do not have to be Karl Rove to point out that the inexperienced candidate on the Republican ticket is running to be vice-president, not commander-in-chief.
What Democrats, and progressives generally, will have a harder time accepting is that Gov Palin's nomination could be a milestone for American women: in many ways she is an even better feminist icon than America’s reigning top gal Hillary Clinton. In contrast with Mrs Clinton, whose most important political decision was whom she married, Mrs Palin is a genuinely self-made woman, who broke into politics without the head start of a powerful husband or father. Moreover, like Sen Clinton, Gov Palin is a working mother role model, giving birth to her fifth child less than five months ago, going back to work three days later.

It will be interesting to see how the truly despicable reaction on most of the mainstream media's part will play out in the next few days, particularly in light of Sarah Palin's speech at the Republican convention tonight. I believe that if they don't pull their act together soon, there will be a serious backlash from large swathes of the voting public, who already hold the coastal-elite dominated media in low regard for its naked bias.