The LA Times has ceased to be a serious news outlet and has instead churned out article after article hammering the Republican candidate. Its "journalists" pounce on anything they think they can spin against him as if they were seasoned political operatives.

Mitt Romney can't even make a joke without having the Times all over him. Almost a week after his wife's life was endangered when smoke filled the cabin of her airplane, Romney joked that he didn't know why "the windows don't open."

An initial Times article quoted him but failed to put it in the proper context that he was joking. We'll let that slide.

But a subsequent article, "Romney mocked for comment about jet windows" went for the kill. The Times would have you believe that a man who has successfully ran companies and a state didn't know why airplane windows don't open.

"The candidate cast doubt on the mechanical design of airplane windows, in a general sense," Times reporter Xiaonan Wang wrote, adding, "Romney's idea doesn't work scientifically."

No, the candidate made a joke. But that didn't stop the LA Times from acting as a forum for a quote from left-wing smear site Daily Kos.

"It'd be like the mile-high club for Seamus, with the added benefit of asphyxiation induced by the low oxygen levels at cruising altitude -- assuming that you manage to avoid having the plane rip apart due to the sudden loss of cabin pressure."

Someone trying to act so smart when it really turns out the comment wasn't serious. That's expected from a partisan hatchetmen, but real reporters? The Times continues:

The candidate's complaint about sealed plane windows quickly went viral on social media. Some are making fun of Romney for not knowing about the risks involved with an open window, while others think it might be just a joke.

At least they mentioned "others" who thought it might be a joke. The Times left room to retreat to the position of "hey, we're just reporting on something that went viral". Mmm hmm. And I'm sure they'd take an Obama joke out of context in the same way.

The Times COULD have talked to one of the "others" that was in the room. The Blaze did. But hey, they're not a respected news organization like the Los Angeles Times.

William Everitt, vice president of Investment Real Estate Associates (IREA), told TheBlaze that he was at the Romney fundraiser in Beverly Hills on Saturday. He said Romney was absolutely joking when he said he doesn't know why airplane windows don't open.

"Basically he was retelling the story and when he said 'I don't know why they don't have roll down windows on airplanes,' he looked at the audience and everyone laughed," Everitt told TheBlaze. "It was a clearly delivered joke...There were 1,000 people there that will tell you the same thing."

Tet Offensive. Watergate. Hostage Crisis. Iran/Contra.  Every administration has a major foreign policy crisis. Obama's was the murder of the American ambassador to Libya at the hands of jihadists. I say "was" because, at least for the moment, the mainstream media successfully spun Obama's massive problem into a Romney defeat.

First, the facts. On September 11, Ambassador Chris Stephens was killed along with three embassy "staff" when armed protesters attacked the American embassy in Benghazi.  He was only the sixth American ambassador to be murdered while in office, and the first since 1979.

Because President Obama has been dogged by criticism that, like one-term president Jimmy Carter, he's weak on foreign policy (particularly in the Middle East), the mainstream media leapt to his defense. Almost miraculously, it diverted all the negative attention onto Mitt Romney and Christianity.

The press effectively slammed the door on any high-profile investigations into the incident, even though questions are rife. Why was security at the consulate not beefed up for September 11^th? Why did we ignore the warning of a Libyan official three days before? If the attack spontaneously occurred over outrage over an anti-Islamic video, why did it seem so organized and why were the attackers so well armed? How did they know about Ambassador Stephens' safe house location? Why can't we get a straight story how he died? Isn't it a bit of a coincidence that the attacks happened on September 11^th? Was the attack perpetrated by people armed by the U.S. government during the Libyan civil war?

If this happened under George W. Bush's watch, would the media cut him slack if his administration ignored warnings over the attack? If he went to bed while the attack was ongoing, as President Obama is said to have done, would they offer some criticism? They'd be calling for his impeachment. They'd be digging into the story weeks and months later. After all, the New York Times ran 32 consecutive front page stories on the much less severe incident at Abu Ghraib.

Instead, they turned the story into a criticism on Mitt Romney's handling of the crisis. That's right--Mitt Romney, who isn't even president. He supposedly criticized Obama too early. Furthermore, they ignored radical Islamist violence and placed the blame for the region-wide violent protest on the video. Finally, they attempted to cast the couple of lunatics that made the video as representatives of mainstream Christianity. In one day, the Los Angeles Times published the following stories:

Christian charity, ex-con linked to film on Islam

YouTube's role at issue over video that incited Mideast violence

Mitt Romney's Libyan moment (Google+ hangout)

'Innocence of Muslims': Administration asks YouTube to review video

Beyond religion in the Middle East

None of the stories mention Obama's handling of the situation, and each makes excuses for the Mideast violence, namely the video. The "film", a cheesy low-budget high-school -quality YouTube upload, was made by a Coptic Christian--Egyptian-American Nakoula Basseley Nakoula, hardly the representative of mainstream American Christianity the media would have you believe.  Finally, the only time radical Islamist violence was mentioned by the Times in a headline was the lack of it (Iranians protest film mocking Muhammad; no violence reported).

The LA Times was not alone in covering for President Obama. Remember--the New York Times ran 32 front page stories on Abu Ghraib. The media completely ignored Obama's role in this current crisis even though questions abound. Reporters were even caught coordinating questions to pin down Romney down on his response to the gaffe the manufactured for him.

This week, the Obama campaign diverted attention from the foreign affairs crisis even more by leaking video of Romney saying that 47% of the American public is dependent on the government and is not going to vote for him.

Once again, the liberal media caught the pass and ran downfield with it.  Once again the LA Times to the rescue:

Romney: Obama, supporters 'more European than American' in outlook

Obama responds to Romney remarks in David Letterman interview

We, the parasites

New ad says Romney has 'tough luck' attitude toward middle class

Romney, personal responsibility and the '47%' (Google+ Hangout)

Romney advisor predicts 'victims' remark will blow over

Romney comments echo GOP push to have all Americans pay taxes

Conservatives divided on how Romney should speak to '47%'

White House letting Romney's '47%' comment speak for itself

Obama's unlikely ally in battleground state ad war: Mitt Romney

Romney questions viability of two-state solution in Middle East

Romney defends 'off the cuff' remarks on Obama backers as victims

Romney's common touch?

Romney slams Obama backers as dependent on government, tax dodgers

I think the Times' reporters are too busy covering that story than investigating any of the seriously troubling questions still unanswered in the wake of the ambassador's death.

With a turning point for America less than two months away, we should know as much possible about the unknown in the race--President Barack Obama.

It's ridiculous that we know so little about the radical past and ideology of the man that has 100% name recognition and that's been leading our country for the last four years. That's a failure of the media. But the information is available for those who seek it out. I intend to highlight individual tidbits over a series of posts leading up to the November election. You won't find far-out claims here or any birtherism, just facts that the media failed to report. We know all about Mitt Romney's dog and his hair-cutting days, but do you ever read in the liberal press that Obama thought of his grandfather as the N word? Or that Obama was raised by radical Marxists?  Or what his religion is? (Hint: He's not a Muslim.)

Let's start the series with the explosive claim that Barack Obama called his paternal grandfather the n- word after he found out he admired British civilization. Pretty explosive stuff. Does it make him a bad president? No. But it's a good example of how negligent the media has been--can you imagine them ignoring it if a prominent black conservative like Condoleezza Rice said it about her grandfather?

Obama's grandfather, Hussein Onyango Obama, was a cook for British imperial forces during World War I. He was imprisoned by them for 6 months and tortured. While the experience apparently left him scarred, he had a grudging respect for Western culture.

Dinesh D'Souza, whose 2016 documentary is now the second biggest political documentary of all time, is one person doing the job that the mainstream media should have done four years ago. And it's not like it took a lot of digging--Obama calls his grandfather a "house n__" in Dreams from My Father. It's right there in the open. But we're just hearing about it for the first time, and it's still not talked about in the elite media.

"My image of Onyango, faint as it was, had always been of an autocratic man--a cruel man, perhaps. But I had also imagined him an independent man, a man of his people, opposed to white rule... What Granny had told us scrambled that image completely, causing ugly words to flash across my mind. Uncle Tom. Collaborator. House nigger."

Obama is disappointed that Onyango didn't oppose whites, and furthermore he's enraged that his grandfather held them in high esteem. D'Souza writes:

According to Sarah Obama, Onyango admired three things about the British. The first was their level of knowledge. "To him knowledge was the source of all the white man's power," she said. Onyango also considered the British to be generally fair-minded. "If you do a good job for the white man," he liked to say, "then he will always pay you well."  Finally, Onyango unfavorably contrasted African organization with Western organization.

 Onyango respected Western civilization a bit too much for Obama's taste. Far from being the race healer the media wanted him to be, Obama shows that he's coming from somewhere radically different than where we thought he was.  

You'd think Todd Akin, who nobody heard of until last month, was running on the Romney/Ryan ticket the way Democrats are using him as a cudgel to beat Republicans with. The congressman's face is plastered on attack ads coming from President Obama all the way down to Julia Brownley, to paint Republicans as women h,aters.

Two issues arise from this. First, what are Akin's "rape comments" exactly? Just the phrase sounds horrific.  But are Democrats being truthful about what he said? Second, is it fair to tie all Republicans to his comments?

What did Akin really say? Brownley's attack ad against Tony Strickland states:

We were all shocked when Congressman Todd Akin claimed that women don't become pregnant when they are "legitimately raped," and that women who are not raped "forcibly" should not be allowed to have an abortion when they are pregnant.

Here's what Akin said in the clip heard 'round the world.

"It seems to be, first of all, from what I understand from doctors, it's really rare."

Uh, that's totally different than what Brownley's campaign is telling voters he said. "Seems to be really rare" is not the same as "women don't become pregnant." Obviously he's saying they can become pregnant, it's just rare. So that's dishonest of Brownley.

As for his comment about "legitimate rape." He said:

"If it's a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut the whole thing down."

By "legitimate rape", Akin seems to have meant that if it were a "real rape" the body has ways of shutting "the whole thing down."  That implies that some things we call rape aren't really rape, either because they don't rise to the definition of "real rape" or because they are false accusations of "real rape." The Duke Lacrosse case is an example of a false accusation of rape, but what the heck does Akin mean by acts that don't rise to the definition of "real rape?"

Democrats, at least during this campaign, believe that rape is rape no matter how you slice it. With that, they'd have to believe that a man who has sex with a girl who consumed two beers at a party should get the same prison sentence as the man who holds a girl down at knifepoint in a dark alleyway. I wonder how many Democrats would be serving prison sentences if we held them to that standard.

It seems the Democrats took Akin's remarks out of context, and, in Brownley's case, said he said something he did not.

What about the link to connect Akin and Strickland?

Akin is a Republican...Strickland is a Republican. Mitt Romney is a Republican. That seems to be the only connection that's warranted for Democrats to go ballistic. After all, these are the people that call Romney a felon without any proof, make him out to be an evil guy because a long time ago he traveled with a dog kennel tied to the roof of his car, and when he was in high school he gave a guy a haircut.

Democrats would argue that Tea Party congressmen like Akin and Paul Ryan cosponsored a bill that would prohibit federal funds to pay for abortions except in the case of "forcible rape" (as opposed to just "rape") and therefore Ryan (and therefore Romney) has his own version of a "legitimate rape" comment.  Perhaps that was an attempt to discourage people from claiming a rape occurred when it didn't just so they can procure funds for an abortion.

In the final analysis, Democrats are being disingenuous when it comes to conveying Akin's remarks and are silly when trying to connect the dots from Akin to Strickland and from Akin to Ryan to Romney. Par for the course for election season.

Oh by the way, since very few people are willing to give it the objective analysis you'll find here, the attacks will work, whether they are "legitimate", or not.