SCRANTON, Pa. - The news media got a brisk scolding from a supporter of Sen. John McCain at the Republican presidential nominee’s town hall meeting on Tuesday.

A woman in the audience thanked the Arizona senator for choosing Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska as his running mate and accused the media of putting more effort into investigating Palin than  the Democratic presidential candidate, Sen. Barack Obama.

“We want the media to start doing their jobs and stop picking on little children because of their age and their pregnancies,” she said, in reference to Palin’s unwed, pregnant 17-year-old daughter Bristol. “Shame on you. Shame on you.”

McCain waited until the applause died down and replied: “That is a great question.”

“Gov. Palin, she can take it,” he said. “She’s a reformer, and she will bring change, and she will bring reform, and that’s what Americans want very badly today.”

Separately, McCain’s senior advisor Steve Schmidt expressed outrage in a conference call with reporters over coverage of the campaign by The New York Times.

The Times on Monday ran a story saying McCain’s campaign manager worked for several years to help defend mortgage companies Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac against stricter regulations.  The story comes at a time when McCain is criticizing the mortgage giants for avoiding increased regulation.

“Whatever The New York Times once was, it is today not by any standard a journalistic organization. It is a pro-Obama advocacy organization that every day attacks the McCain campaign, attacks Senator McCain, attacks Governor Palin, and excuses Senator Obama,” Schmidt said. “This is an organization that is completely, totally, 150 percent in the tank for the Democratic candidate.”

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Photo credit: Reuters/Mike Segar (McCain shakes hands with Bristol Palin, who is standing next to boyfriend Levi Johnston at the Republican National Convention)

WASHINGTON - John McCain’s campaign insists the Republican presidential candidate’s response to an interviewer’s question about Spain’s Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero was neither a gaffe nor a dodge.
 
McCain knew exactly what he was saying, a campaign spokesman said on Thursday.
 
In the interview this week on Radio Caracol in Miami, McCain was asked about Latin America and South America and then the reporter moved on to Spain and questioned him about meeting with Zapatero.
 
“I would be willing to meet with those leaders who are friends and want to work with us in a cooperative fashion. And, by the way, President Calderon of Mexico is fighting a very very tough fight against the drug cartels. I intend to move forward with relations and invite as many of them as I can, of those leaders, to the White House,” McCain responded.
 
McCain was well aware that the reporter had moved on to another leader in another hemisphere, senior campaign advisor Randy Scheunemann said.
 
“The questioner asked several times about Sen. McCain’s willingness to meet Zapatero, and I-D’d him in the question so there is no doubt Sen. McCain knew exactly to whom the question referred,” Scheunemann said.
 
“Sen. McCain refused to commit to a White House meeting with President Zapatero in this interview,” Scheunemann said.
 
Within weeks of taking office in 2004, Zapatero withdrew Spanish troops serving in Iraq. The move by Spain’s Socialist government put a chill on relations between Washington and Madrid.

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Photo credit: Reuters/Aaron Josefczyk

ST. PAUL - Faith-based community organizers have a message for Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin: they have “actual responsibilities” thank you very much.

In a pointed barb aimed at Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama, John McCain’s running mate on the Republican ticket said her experiences as a small town mayor in Alaska were far more taxing than that of a community organizer.

Obama was a community organizer in Chicago two decades ago.

“A small-town mayor is sort of like a community organizer, except that you have actual responsibilities,” the Alaska governor told the Republican National Convention on Wednesday night in a rousing speech peppered with jabs at Obama.

“Contrary to Palin’s disparaging remarks, organizers have major responsibilities for creating policy changes. Feeding the hungry and housing the homeless are clearly responsibilities of people of faith. We do that by providing food and shelter and more importantly, by organizing to address the causes of injustice and inequity which lead to hunger and homelessness,” said Kim Bobo, Executive Director of Interfaith Worker Justice, a congregation-based community organization in Chicago.

Bobo was quoted in a statement issued by several faith-based community organizations that bristled at the remarks by Palin, who has revved up other people of faith — the conservative Christians who comprise the Republican Party’s key base.  

(Photo credit: REUTERS/Rick Wilking, Sept. 3, 2008, USA)

SCRANTON, Pennsylvania - Democratic vice presidential nominee Joe Biden told his boyhood companions that Barack Obama would have been one of their friends, if he had been around when they were growing up.

“This guy gets it,” Biden, 65, said of his 47-year-old running mate, who could become the first black U.S. president.

Biden made the comments on a campaign visit to his childhood home in Scranton, Pennsylvania, a blue collar city in a state central to his and Obama’s run for the White House. He described his old and predominately white neighborhood, known as Green Ridge, as a patriotic place where a person’s word was his bond and people stood up for what they believed in.

“I promise you. If Barack had been born here, he would have been our friend,” said Biden, a U.S. senator from Delaware since 1973. “He’d cover your back.”

Under blue skies and a bright sun, Biden sat in the shade of a big tree in his old backyard with his mother, Jean, 90, and scores of old friends and neighbors and supporters.  He quoted his late father, Joseph, a former car salesman, as saying, “the measure of success is not whether you get knocked down. It is how quickly you get up.”

Biden and his family moved from Scranton to Wilmington, Delaware, in 1953. He is affectionately referred to as “Pennsylvania’s third senator” for repeatedly helping out the state during 35 years in the U.S. Senate.

Among those who greeted Biden in Scranton was Jimmy Kennedy, 68, a friend since grade school.   “He was a scrappy kid and when he got knocked down he jumped right back up,” recalled Kennedy, who is now a judge.

“He was little and scrawny and people would ask when we played football iin the alley, ‘Why would you pick him?’ I told ‘em,’ You’ll soon find out.’ He was the toughest kid out there.”

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Photo credit: Reuters/Matt Sullivan

U.S. presidential candidate Barack Obama, who had planned an economic  tour through the industrial Midwest, is changing his schedule because of Hurricane Gustav. Instead of staying overnight in the battleground state of Wisconsin on Monday, Obama is flying back to his home in Chicago to monitor the storm.

He also called for a moment of silence at a Labor Day rally in Detroit in the afternoon, saying it was not a time for political speeches.

“I wanted to talk about organized labor as the backbone of our economy and of our country and I wanted to talk about how we sustain that middle class against all the challenges we face today and how we promote policies that honor the dignity of work,” he said.

“But I have to tell you that, as we meet today, I have to change my plans a little bit. Our neighbors and our fellow citizens in Louisiana and across the Gulf Coast are once again under siege from a terrible storm,” he added.

“Although  we are prayerful that this will not be the same kind situation that we saw three years ago, today’s not a day political speeches. I hope you’ll forgive me. I hope you don’t mind.” 

“I want everybody to remember that there is a time for us to argue politics but there’s a time for us to come together as Americans.

“I know John McCain wants what’s best for the people who have been evacuated. I know (President) George Bush wants what’s best for them and so do I. And so I want all of us to come together.”

The Obama campaign sent e-mails and text messages to its network of volunteers and donors, asking them to send donations to the Red Cross in order to help the residents of the Gulf Coast.

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Photo credit: REUTERS/Rebecca Cook. Sen. Barack Obama speaks to a crowd at the annual Labor Day parade in Detroit. Sept. 1, 2008

NEW YORK - One thing seems certain in the race for the White House — the debate that the campaigns have sparked on sexism, racism and ageism in the United States is nowhere near resolved.

The media’s handling of Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and John McCain – each running a groundbreaking campaign — has drawn attention to the way women, blacks and older people are seen in America, according to a panel of experts that met on Tuesday at the Paley Center for Media.

 ”I think it’s time for journalists to stop and look back at what they did and not say, ‘Well, we’re not covering Hillary Clinton any more so gender is no longer an issue,’” said panelist Kathleen Hall Jamieson, director of the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania.

“I’d say to reporters, ‘Let’s think about all of those kinds of questions about gender and then let’s ask the same kinds of questions about race,’” she said. She also added age to the list.

If elected, Obama would be the nation’s first black president and McCain would be the oldest to take office. Clinton would have been the first woman. Discussion about bias and stereotyping has been extensive, especially since Clinton dropped out of the race and her loss disappointed many female supporters.

The panel on “Bias, Punditry and the Press in the 2008 Election,” which also included political columnists Courtney Martin of The American Prospect Online, Patricia Williams of The Nation and Juan Gonzalez of New York’s Daily News, noted what panelists saw as sexism toward Clinton.

Examples included the extensive coverage of her laugh, praise for certain of her speeches as “charming” and criticism that she was “strident” — none of which would have been leveled against a male candidate, they said.  That doesn’t even include rude and insulting remarks that can be found on the Internet, where people are more free to be harsh in their tone thanks to the Web’s anonymity, they said.

“It is so insulting, it is so unacceptable and, to think that in this country which claims to be the bastion of democracy and freedom and tries to take this around the world, that there is no accountablity for dissing a woman, I find that really appalling,” said panelist Christiane Amanpour, CNN’s chief international correspondent. 
      
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Photo credit: Reuters/Rebecca Cook (Obama)

Photo credit: Reuters/Lee Celano (McCain)

Photo credit: Reuters/Ana Martinez (Clinton)

FLATHEAD INDIAN RESERVATION, Montana - Hillary Clinton took her campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination to an Indian reservation where she received applause, thanks – and new footwear.

“You’ve gone a million miles for the Indian people — here are a pair of moccasins to help you on your journey,” Joe McDonald, president of Salish Kootenai College, said on Tuesday in presenting Clinton the gift.

A crowd of several hundred roared approval.

Drawing more applause, Clinton said, “We need a president next January who understands the obligation that the United States government has to the tribes that represent the first people of the United States.” 

As first lady, and now a U.S. senator from New York, Clinton has worked to upgrade health care, education and economic opportunities for native Americans, many of whom live in poverty.

In Montana, there are about 56,000 American Indians among seven tribes, making up  6.2 percent of the state’s population. 

Clinton recalled that when her husband was president, he held a meeting with more than 500 leaders of Indian tribes nationwide, marking the first such talks “in many, many years.”

Clinton vowed to reverse what she said was the rollback in relations between Washington and American Indians since President George W. Bush took office in January 2001. 

“I will stand with you,” she said in asking for their support in Montana’s Democratic presidential primary next week.

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Photo REUTERS/Ana Martinez.  (Clinton, her husband, former President Bill Clinton, and their daughter Chelsea attend a Memorial Day event in San Juan, Puerto Rico, May 26, 2008)

BAYAMON, Puerto Rico - U.S. presidential candidates don’t often make it to Puerto Rico, so the language barrier is not usually a problem.

It was on Saturday, though, for Democratic front-runner Barack Obama, who visited the largely Spanish-speaking U.S. territory ahead of its nominating contest on June 1.

“We have translators because my Spanish is just so-so,” he told veterans, who discussed in both languages their concerns about health care facilities on the island.

Still, Obama did give a shot at a few non-English phrases.

“Your vote is decisive,” he said in Spanish at the end of his remarks in English.

“Together we can change the world.”

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Photo: Reuters/Ana Martinez - Barack Obama shakes hands during a campaign event in Bayamon, Puerto Rico on May 24.

KISSIMMEE, Fla. - Democratic presidential front-runner Barack Obama gave a description of his extended, multiracial family on Wednesday while introducing himself to voters in Florida. 

 Here’s what he said: 

 ”When you get my family together, I mean you’ve got people who look like Margaret Thatcher. You’ve got people who look like Bernie Mac. You’ve got, you know my sister, she looks like Salma Hayek – I don’t know if you’ve seen her … She looks Latin,” he said.

There’s more: 

 ”She’s got a baby, ’cause she married a Chinese Canadian, so she’s got a little, I’ve got a little niece who’s a little Chinese baby,” he said. 

 ”So the point is is that — that’s just how I look at the world is we all have a piece of each other and we can’t get caught up in our differences.”

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Photo credit: Reuters/Scott Audette. Obama delivers a speech during a town hall meeting in Kissimmee, Florida, May 21, 2008.

LOUISVILLE, Kentucky - Democrats are acting more like Republicans by not counting the results of the Florida and Michigan primaries and by not seating those states’ party delegates, former President Bill Clinton said on Tuesday.

“The Republicans are supposed to be the people that don’t count votes in Florida, not Democrats,” said Clinton, campaigning with his wife Sen. Hillary Clinton at Lynn’s Paradise Cafe, where she chatted with voters and he held an impromptu news conference.

The January votes in Michigan and Florida were deemed invalid by the national Democratic Party because both states moved their election dates forward in defiance of party rules.

“The Democrats said, ‘We’re going to decapitate them, smudge them, step on them, act like they never existed, act like they never voted,’” the former president said. “It’s very strange that the Democrats would be more authoritarian and more hostile to the voters.

Many Democrats, like Clinton apparently, believe the 2000 election recount in Florida unfairly favored the Republican Party. The dispute was resolved by the Supreme Court, giving Republican George W. Bush the victory and Democrat Al Gore the loss.

Hillary Clinton won Michigan’s Jan. 15 primary, which did not include Obama’s name on the ballot. She also won Florida and  is seeking to have the votes counted and the more than 350 delegates reinstated. The party’s rules committee meets next week in an effort to resolve the dispute.

Republicans were less harsh toward states that moved their contests early and stripped them of just half their delegates.

“Do the right and decent thing by Florida and Michigan. Don’t let the Republicans look more enlightened than us, which they do today. It’s unbelievable. I  never thought I’d see that,” Bill Clinton said.

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Photo: Reuters/John Sommers II (Hillary and Bill Clinton campaigning in Louisville)