What media bias?
Ubiquitous
that John McCain "has wholeheartedly adopted [Karl] Rove's low-minded
and uncivil playbook." Sample:
In recent weeks, Mr. McCain has been waving the flag of
fear (Senator Barack Obama wants to "lose" in Iraq), and
issuing attacks that are sophomoric (suggesting that Mr.
Obama is a socialist) and false (the presumptive Democratic
nominee turned his back on wounded soldiers).
Mr. McCain used to pride himself on being above this ugly
brand of politics, which killed his own 2000 presidential
bid. But he clearly tossed his inhibitions aside earlier
this month . . .
This is the same New York Times that in February published an
unsubstantiated story suggesting that McCain had had an affair with a
lobbyist. The difference is that whereas McCain is engaging in partisan
politics, the Times was doing journalism. It seems the paper's standard
for the latter is considerably lower than for the former.
--
It is simply breathtaking to watch the glee and abandon with which
the liberal media and the Angry Left have been attempting to turn
our military victory in Iraq into a second Vietnam quagmire. Too bad
for them, it's failing.
Ubiquitous
Iraq and the U.S. have reached preliminary agreement
to withdraw American forces from Iraqi cities by next
June, six years into the increasingly unpopular war,
Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari said Thursday
after meeting with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.
Is Iraq still an "increasingly unpopular war"? We had been under the
impression that public opinion had turned at least a bit in a pro-war
direction. But we're beginning to suspect that "increasingly unpopular
war" is just AP boilerplate, the objective reporter's equivalent of "the
haughty, French-looking Massachusetts Democrat who by the way served in
Vietnam."
A Factiva search for "increasingly unpopular war and Iraq" turns up 145
AP stories (for some reason, not including this latest one), the
earliest from May 2004. We tried searching for "increasingly popular
war" and "decreasingly unpopular war," but came up empty. Apparently
according to AP, public opinion on this subject moves only in one
direction.
But if the AP insists that the war is always "increasingly unpopular,"
did it at least acknowledge in 2002 and '03 that it was a popular war?
Nope. A search for "popular war and Iraq" turns up 29 references since
Oct. 10, 2002--the day the House voted to authorize military action
against Saddam Hussein's regime. Most of them, however, referred to some
other war (the 1991 Gulf War, the broader war on terror) as a "popular
war." The closest we found to an acknowledgement that Iraq was a popular
war a pair of March 17, 2007, dispatches (actually different versions of
the same dispatch) calling it a "once-popular war."
Then there was this, from a roundup of 2007 election results (it
mentioned Iraq elsewhere):
Republican Rep. Saxby Chambliss unseated Democrat Max
Cleland, popular war veteran criticized as too liberal
for Georgia.
Since Cleland lost his re-election bid, shouldn't the AP have called him
an "increasingly unpopular war veteran"?
Ubiquitous
pick of Sarah Palin, the high priests and priestesses of the media have
marked her as an apostate. The Beltway class is in full-throated
rebellion against a nondomesticated conservative who might pose a threat
to their coronation of Barack Obama and the return of
Camelot-on-the-Potomac.
Here is a sampler of media comment on Governor Palin this week:
- Eleanor Clift, the McLaughlin Group: "If the media reaction is
anything, it's been literally laughter in many places across newsrooms."
- Sally Quinn, Newsweek: "It is a political gimmick . . . I find it
insulting to women, to the Republican party, and to the country."
- E.J. Dionne, Washington Post: "Palin is, if anything, less qualified
for the vice presidency (and the presidency) than [Harriet] Miers was
for the court. But there is one big difference: Palin passes all the
right-wing litmus tests."
- Maureen Dowd, New York Times: "They have a tradition of nominating
fun, bantamweight cheerleaders from the West."
- Ruth Marcus, Washington Post: "But as a parent in the media, I also
know that the Palins assumed this risk. Anyone who watched coverage of
the Bush twins' barroom exploits knew that the avert-your-eyes stance
toward candidates' children has its limits."
- Charlie Cook, Beltway pundit, on PBS's "Charlie Rose": "I had a friend
that had a young person tell them that they had three interviews to get
a job as a server at Ruby Tuesday! So this is like putting a whole --
for someone that hasn't played on a national -- Geraldine Ferraro had
more -- Dan Quayle had undergone more scrutiny, had played on a bigger
stage than this. This is putting an enormous risk on someone he didn't
know. And he has to just pray that it works!"
This is the same media whose chant for weeks -- no, months -- has been
"let McCain be McCain." If we know anything about John McCain, it is
that he is by instinct a reformer, sometimes to a fault. Yet when he
acts like McCain and picks a maverick reformer in his own mold, his
former media cheering squad turns on him for not conforming to Beltway
mores and picking someone they've all met 10 times in the CNN green
room.
They want a VP to be a kind of parliamentary choice, someone they have
already vetted, someone who's made them laugh with insider jokes at the
Gridiron dinner. The Beltway class whines constantly about how it wants
fresh voices in politics, but we guess this means a first-term
Democratic Senator rather than a first-term Republican Governor from
some godforsaken U.S. state few of them have ever been to.
We are instructed that Mrs. Palin isn't qualified, because she lacks
Washington experience. But until recently that was said to be a virtue
in Mr. Obama, who is at the top of his ticket. Meanwhile, there's hardly
a peep of media notice that the Obama campaign is preposterously trying
to remake Joe Biden into a poor scrapper from Scranton when he's been in
the Senate for 36 years. They all know Joe. But when Mr. McCain picks an
authentic middle-class mother who is also a Governor, we are told she's
not up to the job.
The spin du jour is that her choice reflects poorly on Candidate McCain
because she wasn't properly vetted. Yet this seems to be false. Campaign
vetter A.B. Culvahouse, White House counsel under Ronald Reagan, says
Mrs. Palin told the campaign about her pregnant daughter and her
husband's DUI at the age of 22. On Monday, Time magazine's Nathan
Thornburgh wrote from Wasilla, Alaska, that Bristol Palin's pregnancy
had been known by virtually everyone there, with little made of it. But
what do these private family matters have to do with Mrs. Palin's
credentials to be Vice President in any case?
The press in 2000 ignored marijuana use by Al Gore's son, as it should
have. But now we are told a teenage pregnancy is going to raise second
thoughts among evangelicals and "family values voters" about Mrs.
Palin's ability to be both a mother and a public official. This is also
false.
Leaving aside the embarrassing reality that the Beltway press corps
barely knows any evangelicals, religious leaders this week greeted the
pregnancy news with support for the Palins. Offering support for unwed
pregnant women and their families is a primary activity of these
churches from one end of America to the other. That might even make a
good story for someone this weekend.
What's really going on here is that the Beltway class can see how
popular the Palin pick is with Republicans outside Washington, and
especially with middle-class conservatives. As Richard Land, a leader
with the Southern Baptist Convention, said Monday, John McCain's
selection of Sarah Palin closed the "enthusiasm gap" between the two
parties.
There is nothing more dangerous to entrenched Washington power than a
populist conservative who looks unlikely to buy into Washington's
creature comforts. Take a close look at Governor Palin's record on
ethics and energy in Alaska, and it becomes clear what this Beltway
outburst is actually about. The irony is that while Senator Obama is
running on change, his acceptance speech made explicit that he's
promising only more power and money for Washington. Sarah Palin's
history of taking on the career politicians of a corrupt Alaskan GOP
machine -- her own party -- shows that she's the more authentic change
agent.
If Sarah Palin succeeds as a national candidate, she could help John
McCain proceed to a reform Presidency. Even if he loses while she does
well, she could emerge as a major figure in GOP politics for years to
come. This is why the media and political classes are so eager to
discredit her. They can't let it happen.
We hope Mr. McCain and the GOP are prepared to fight back. On the
evidence this week, it looks like an army of volunteers is forming up to
help them.
Ubiquitous
photographer, Jill Greenberg, did to John McCain's. The magazine's
forthcoming issue has a cover story on the Republican presidential
nominee, and Fox News reports on what happened:
During the shoot, she took several other backlit pictures,
which she then doctored and posted to her site. In one photo,
she added blood oozing from McCain's shark-toothed mouth and
labeled it with the caption "I am a bloodthirsty warmongerer
[sic]." In another, a caption over McCain's head says, "I
will have my girl kill Roe v. Wade," an obvious reference to
his running mate Sarah Palin's anti-abortion positions.
The New York Post [1] has the Atlantic cover, the ugly McCain photo,
the version with Photoshopped teeth and blood, and a headshot of
Greenberg, taken by someone kinder than her. The Atlantic, which
apparently had already gone to press, has an "Editor's Note" on its Web
site:
We stand by the respectful image of John McCain that we
used on our cover, and we expect to be judged by it. We
were not aware of the manipulated and dishonest images
Jill Greenberg had taken until this past Friday.
When we contract with photographers for portraits, we don't
vet them for their politics--instead, we assess their
professional track records. We had never worked with Jill
Greenberg before (and, obviously, we will not work with her
again). Based on the portraits she had done of politicians
like Arnold Schwarzenegger and her work for publications like
Time, Wired, and Portfolio, we expected her, like the other
photographers we work with, to behave professionally.
Jill Greenberg has obviously not done that. She has, in fact,
disgraced herself, and we are appalled by the manipulated
images she has created for her Web site of John McCain.
Saying that she failed "to behave professionally," though, does not
quite do justice to the strangeness of this act. It's one thing to take
unflattering photos of someone you find unsympathetic; every
conservative who has ever appeared on the cover of the New York Times
magazine will say this happened to him. But here is someone who is
apparently a reasonably accomplished artist, so filled with political
rage that she vandalized her own work in order to create a crude and
unpersuasive piece of propaganda. You would think she would have enough
pride in her craft not to do so.
Then again, we can think of at least one writer for The Atlantic of whom
the same can be said.
[1]: http://www.nypost.com/seven/09142008/photos/mccain914.jpg
Baldin Lee Pramer
So the Atlantic behaved respectfully and honorably. Where is the media
bias? Why do you find it necessary to post a deceptive subject line?
I'd say the bias, and the dishonesty, is yours.
Pramer
Dennis
"Ubiquitous" <web...@polaris.net> wrote in message
news:h6Odner6-sZO3k3V...@comcast.com...
No surprise about Greenberg's hate, at all. She's a lib, and that's all they
do...hate.
Name three things of significance Br-a-a-a-a-a-ck, The Magic Mulatto has
done; just three. We'll wait..............
Gas-bag Joe, The Plagiarizer says Br-a-a-a-a-a-ck, The Magic Mulatto is
"articulate and bright and clean." But we know B,TMM just ain't a right fit
to be President; the boy just ain't got the fundamentals. At his core, he's
just another grasping Chi-town pol. Just ask Chicago slum lord felon Tony
Rezko, and now Br-a-a-a-a-a-ck's Nairobi shack-dweller brother, George.
"Stand up, Chuck, and let 'em see ya"! Gas-bag Joe, The Plagiarizer to State
Senator Chuck Graham, a wheelchair bound paraplegic.
"Hillary Clinton is...more qualified than I am to be vice president,"
Gas-bag Joe, The Plagiarizer.
Dionysus
. tHe_PC_JeLLy BeAn!! .
> photographer, Jill Greenberg, did to John McCain's.
Gee, they didn't airbrush his red eyes or yellow teeth out.
Shame on them for showing the guy how he is!
Of course Faux news making peoples noses bigger, their ears stick out and
their hairlines recede was "fair and balanced", right?
. tHe_PC_JeLLy BeAn!! .
"Dennis" <no.sur...@never.net> wrote in message
news:b9adnVltn5Oyzk3V...@comcast.com...
> Name three things of significance Br-a-a-a-a-a-ck, The M<SMAk!>
Fuck off you racist cunt.
Dennis
". tHe_PC_JeLLy BeAn!! ." <. tHe_PC_JeLLy BeAn!! .> wrote in message
news:26mbar....@news.alt.net...
Bet your momma and sisters luv it when you kiss their privates with that
mouth...daddy, too.
. tHe_PC_JeLLy BeAn!! .
>
> ". tHe_PC_JeLLy BeAn!! ." <. tHe_PC_JeLLy BeAn!! .> wrote in message
> news:26mbar....@news.alt.net...
>>
>> "Dennis" <no.sur...@never.net> wrote in message
>> news:b9adnVltn5Oyzk3V...@comcast.com...
>>> Name three things of significance Br-a-a-a-a-a-ck, The M<SMAk!>
>>
>>
>> Fuck off you racist cunt.
> **********
Ubiquitous
From the roof of the Robert C. Byrd Intermodal Transportation
Center on Main Street, one can see the Wheeling Artisan
Center to the east, the Wheeling Stamping Building to the
south and Wheeling Heritage Port to the west--all flourishing,
thanks to the financial help of Sen. Robert Byrd.
To say the 90-year-old senator from West Virginia has brought
home the bacon during his half-century in Washington would be
akin to saying Congress likes to spend taxpayers' money.
The story informs us that earmarks sometimes "are the source of
political corruption--as was the case of former congressman Randy 'Duke'
Cunningham, a Republican who was convicted in 2005 of taking bribes in
exchange for Defense earmarks." This is the only reference to Cunningham
in a story about Byrd. So what is Byrd's party? The story never says,
though it is mentioned in a sidebar fact box. Surprise, he's a Democrat.
Day Brown
> USA Today reports on West Virginia's pork-mongering senior senator:
>
> From the roof of the Robert C. Byrd Intermodal Transportation
> Center on Main Street, one can see the Wheeling Artisan
> Center to the east, the Wheeling Stamping Building to the
> south and Wheeling Heritage Port to the west--all flourishing,
> thanks to the financial help of Sen. Robert Byrd.
>
> To say the 90-year-old senator from West Virginia has brought
> home the bacon during his half-century in Washington would be
> akin to saying Congress likes to spend taxpayers' money.
>
> The story informs us that earmarks sometimes "are the source of
> political corruption--as was the case of former congressman Randy 'Duke'
> Cunningham, a Republican who was convicted in 2005 of taking bribes in
> exchange for Defense earmarks." This is the only reference to Cunningham
> in a story about Byrd. So what is Byrd's party? The story never says,
> though it is mentioned in a sidebar fact box. Surprise, he's a Democrat.
for himself. I guess that's the diff between the parties. Whether you
think so or not, there're enuf examples of GOP politicians doing it for
themselves and their friends that voters have thot there is a diff, and
even tho the Democrats are stupid, they are not so often crooks.
Voters will forgive stupidity, an official may learn, but he never gets
over greed. The failure of the GOP to vigorously go after crooks in
their own party makes the voters think they are all crooks.
Ubiquitous
topic of journalistic bias--and, once again, finds it to be nonexistent:
Throughout this election season, most of the thousands of
messages I have received about Times news coverage have
alleged bias--bias in headlines, photo selections, word
choices, what the newspaper chooses to write about and what
it ignores, what it puts on Page 1 and what it puts inside.
Most of the complaints, but by no means all of them, have
come from the right. Nobody acknowledges the possibility
that, because of their own biases, they could be reading
more, or less, than was intended into an article, a headline
or a picture. Many go a step beyond alleging mere bias to
accuse The Times of operating from a conscious agenda to
help one candidate and destroy the other.
Hoyt has a point: One's own political biases do predispose one to find bias in
the media (and elsewhere). We've certainly had instances in which we've
thought we identified liberal bias in the media but were ultimately persuaded
we had been mistaken.
But Hoyt's exhortation to his readers would be more persuasive if he applied
it to himself. Somehow, although he often criticizes the Times on other
grounds, he _always_ absolves it of the charge of political bias. Could this
reflect his own bias, whether political or professional?
Ubiquitous
for Barack Obama, as did Hillary Clinton supporters back in the day. It turns
out that this perception is widely shared. According to a new survey from the
Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, 70% of Americans "believe
that the media wants Barack Obama to win the presidential election." Only 9%
think the media are pulling for John McCain, with 21% saying they don't know
or the media are neutral.
Pew asked the same question in the four previous elections, and found a
similar but far less dramatic pattern. In 2004, 50% said the media wanted John
Kerry to win, vs. 22% for George W. Bush. The percentage who didn't know or
said the media were neutral was as high as 31% in 1992 and has never been as
low as it is today.
To some extent, the media's perceived preferences may reflect a change in
public opinion. After all, indications are that a higher percentage of
Americans want Obama to win than wanted Kerry four years ago. But the increase
in voter preference is unlikely to be anywhere near as dramatic as the
increase in perceived media preference. Journalists' favorite candidate may
win this time around, but their reputation for impartiality is taking a
beating in the process.
zzbu...@netscape.net
> Conservatives and Republicans have complained that the media are in the tank
> for Barack Obama, as did Hillary Clinton supporters back in the day. It turns
> out that this perception is widely shared. According to a new survey from the
> Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, 70% of Americans "believe
> that the media wants Barack Obama to win the presidential election." Only 9%
> think the media are pulling for John McCain, with 21% saying they don't know
> or the media are neutral.
>
> Pew asked the same question in the four previous elections, and found a
> similar but far less dramatic pattern. In 2004, 50% said the media wanted John
> Kerry to win, vs. 22% for George W. Bush. The percentage who didn't know or
> said the media were neutral was as high as 31% in 1992 and has never been as
> low as it is today.
>
> To some extent, the media's perceived preferences may reflect a change in
> public opinion. After all, indications are that a higher percentage of
> Americans want Obama to win than wanted Kerry four years ago. But the increase
> in voter preference is unlikely to be anywhere near as dramatic as the
> increase in perceived media preference. Journalists' favorite candidate may
> win this time around, but their reputation for impartiality is taking a
> beating in the process.
Well, it has too. Since neither the crank US media not the neocon
Cheerleaders can seem to get it through their own auto-generated
bullshit,
and accept the quite simple facts-of-life that given that this is
2008,
they're the only people still fighting a war that ened in 1945.
Ubiquitous
with a man who may be the next president of the United States. The station was
so proud of her hard-hitting questions that it posted them online (you need to
watch the accompanying video to hear his answers). Here they are (quoting
verbatim):
1.) Your presidential campaign may go down as the most organized
in history. Yet the polls remain tight in Missouri. In the last
seven days what else can you say to sway undecided and McCain
leaning Missouri voters?
2.) Today, Bob Clark-founder of Clayco Construction sent a
letter to his employees. In part it read, "Sometimes, but
rarely, a person appears at the right time and the right place
to transform ordinary people into thinkers and doers who can
accomplish more than they ever thought they could. That truly
is the definition of inspiration. Barack Obama has this quality.
I have witnessed it personally many times."
In 2004 Mr. Clark raised thousands for the Bush campaign. But
for the past two years, he's raised hundreds of thousands of
dollars for your campaign. Please respond?
3.) Who has helped your campaign more; Missouri U.S. Sen. Claire
McCaskill or Oprah?
4.) What was it like when you were in St. Louis in front 100,000
people? What were you thinking as you looked out from the Arch
to the Old Court House and beyond?
5.) Many people are worried about your safety. What are your
thoughts in light of the alleged skin head plot?
Newsweek's Howard Fineman observes:
Much of the media coverage of Obama has been fawning to say
the least, and with good reason. He is one of the most winsome,
charismatic candidates to have appeared on the scene in decades.
That's just how they taught it in journalism school. A reporter's job is to
comfort the winsome and afflict the uncharismatic.
RichA
"Ubiquitous" <web...@polaris.net> wrote in message
news:LpCdnbveP5jqaJXU...@giganews.com...
zzbu...@netscape.net
Well, but that's also why neo-science, neo-engineering, neo-energy,
neo-robotics, neo-publishing, neo-jouralism, neo-computers, neo-cd,
neo-dvd,
neo fiber optics, and neo-batteries were invented. Since the
neo-fascist lackey cranks in the idiot US Press are actually dumb
enough to
believe that if there's an election going on somewhere in stooge
Washington, and the choice is between your choice and Boeing's
Choice,
the result will somehow mysteriously be any different than Boeing's
Choice.
Ubiquitous
Media bias was more intense in the 2008 election than in any other national
campaign in recent history, Time magazine's Mark Halperin said Friday at the
Politico/USC conference on the 2008 election.
"It's the most disgusting failure of people in our business since the Iraq
war," Halperin said at a panel of media analysts. "It was extreme bias,
extreme pro-Obama coverage."
Halperin, who maintains Time's political site "The Page," cited two New York
Times articles as examples of the divergent coverage of the two candidates.
"The example that I use, at the end of the campaign, was the two profiles that
The New York Times ran of the potential first ladies," Halperin said. "The
story about Cindy McCain was vicious. It looked for every negative thing they
could find about her and it case her in an extraordinarily negative light. It
didn't talk about her work, for instance, as a mother for her children, and
they cherry-picked every negative thing that's ever been written about her."
The story about Michelle Obama, by contrast, was "like a front-page
endorsement of what a great person Michelle Obama is," according to Halperin.
The former ABC News political director acknowledged that some of the press
coverage was simply reflecting the reality of Obama's presidential campaign.
"You do have to take into account the fact that this was a remarkable
candidacy," Halperin said. "There were a lot of good stories. He was new."
New York magazine's John Heilemann, one of Halperin's co-panelists, offered
another reason for all the positive press coverage Obama received.
"The biggest bias in the press is towards effectiveness," said Heilemann, who
is authoring a book on the 2008 race along with Halperin.
"We love things that are smart."
Because Obama's campaign was generally so well run, he argued, the press
tended to applaud even his negative tactics.
"We'll scold you for being negative," Heilemann said, "but if it seems to be
working, the tone of your coverage becomes more positive."
Another of Halperin's fellow participants, Los Angeles Times writer Mark
Barabak, disagreed more strongly with the Time writer's comments. Still,
Halperin's general point met with little resistance
"I think it's incumbent upon people in our business to make sure that we're
being fair," he said. "The daily output was the most disparate of any campaign
I've ever covered, by far."
Clairbear
news:4hjli4djg6dme04tn...@4ax.com:
> On Mon, 24 Nov 2008 5:50:07 -0500, Ubiquitous <web...@polaris.net>
> wrote:
>
>>By ALEXANDER BURNS | 11/22/08 3:15 PM EST Text Size:
>>
>>Media bias was more intense in the 2008 election than in any other
>>national campaign in recent history, Time magazine's Mark Halperin
>>said Friday at the Politico/USC conference on the 2008 election.
>>
>>"It's the most disgusting failure of people in our business since the
>>Iraq war," Halperin said at a panel of media analysts. "It was extreme
>>bias, extreme pro-Obama coverage."
>
> He's saying that because he's looking for a reason McCain lost.
>
We don't need to look far for the reason why McCain lost, He ran a lousy
campaign, Wall street tanked and Obama got 95% of the black vote and
convinced enough others with his still to get about 5-6% more of the
popular vote to win the states he need to win. The media bias contributed
but McCain did nothing to mitigate that.
>
>>Halperin, who maintains Time's political site "The Page," cited two
>>New York Times articles as examples of the divergent coverage of the
>>two candidates.
>>
>>"The example that I use, at the end of the campaign, was the two
>>profiles that The New York Times ran of the potential first ladies,"
>>Halperin said. "The story about Cindy McCain was vicious. It looked
>>for every negative thing they could find about her and it case her in
>>an extraordinarily negative light. It didn't talk about her work, for
>>instance, as a mother for her children, and they cherry-picked every
>>negative thing that's ever been written about her."
>
> He needs to provide those articles. For now, he's just making
> accusations.
>
Obviously you did not watch CNN,NBC,CNBC,MSNBC etc or reda any newspapers
from SF, LA, NYC or Chitown during the campaign. NBC news was practically
Obama central
alric Knebel
> http://www.ironeyefortress.com/C-SPAN_loon.html
> http://www.ironeyefortress.com
>
>
Ubiquitous
recognize U.S. citizens who have performed exemplary deeds of service for the
nation," on 23 people. Some of them, like James Billington and Robert P.
George, have done work in education or the humanities. Others, like Mitch
Bessler and Forrest Bird, made their mark in science or medicine. Donald
Powell and Robert Woodson have helped needy Americans. Two of the men who
received the medal only recently became civilians: Gen. Wayne Downing and Adm.
James Watkins, both retired military officers.
One of the honorees was Charles Colson. As the White House Web site explains:
For more than three decades, Chuck Colson has dedicated
his life to sharing the message of God's boundless love
and mercy with prisoners, former prisoners, and their
families. Through his strong faith and leadership, he has
helped courageous men and women from around the world
make successful transitions back into society. The United
States honors Chuck Colson for his good heart and his
compassionate efforts to renew a spirit of purpose in
the lives of countless individuals.
Colson, chief counsel to President Nixon, became a prison evangelist after his
own religious conversion behind bars. He went to prison after pleading guilty
to obstruction of justice during the Watergate investigations.
So how does the Associated Press headline the story? "Bush Gives Medals to
Watergate Figure, Others."
Clairbear
news:96mdnZJBy__bOt_U...@giganews.com:
I guess there really is not liberal media bias.....NOT
garre...@yahoo.com
> Colson, chief counsel to President Nixon, became a prison evangelist after his
> own religious conversion behind bars. He went to prison after pleading guilty
> to obstruction of justice during the Watergate investigations.
A prison conversion to JESUS. How convenient. I've got news for Chuck.
That guy's named is pronounced HAY-ZEUS and he's you cellmate.
> So how does the Associated Press headline the story? "Bush Gives Medals to
> Watergate Figure, Others."
That's what he was most known for.
> It is simply breathtaking to watch the hysteria with which
> Ubi and the Angry Right have been attempting to turn
> Bush's recession into Obama's. Too bad
> for them, it's failing.
Fixed your sig. Yer welcome.
Ubiquitous
2008." Some of them clearly fit: "No! No! No! Bear Stearns is not in trouble,"
insisted CNBC's Jim Cramer in May. Shelby Steele titled his book "A Bound Man:
Why We Are Excited About Obama and Why He Can't Win."
One could quibble about others, which, although wrong, were hedged via coy
wording. Analyst Bijan Moazami said AIG "_could_ have huge gains in the second
quarter." Oilman T. Boone Pickens said, "_I think_ you'll see $150 a barrel by
the end of the year."
But one clearly does not belong in a list of "worst predictions":
4. "The market is in the process of correcting itself."
--President George W. Bush, in a Mar. 14, 2008 speech
For the rest of the year, the market kept correcting and
correcting and correcting.
By Coy's own description, Bush's prediction was spot on. Is there any
explanation other than Bush Derangement Syndrome for its inclusion in this
list?
--
It is simply breathtaking to watch the glee and abandon with which
the liberal media and the Angry Left have been attempting to turn
our military victory in Iraq into a second Vietnam quagmire. Too bad
Ubiquitous
reporting [1]. Coulter's new book "Guilty" debuts today and Coulter was to
appear on NBC's Today Show this morning. At the last minute she cut from the
segment and then, according to some NBC insiders, banned for life. The reason?
Apparently NBC wasn't too thrilled with the theme of her book - liberal media
bias. Now if this next quote is true, you will enjoy it. A Today Show insider
said, "We are just not interested in anyone so highly critical of
President-elect Obama, right now ... It's such a downer. It's just not the
time, and it's not what our audience wants, either." It's beginning to look
like the liberal media are circling the wagons around Obama. They're going to
protect him big time. Remember Debra LaFave? She was the Tampa teacher who was
described as "to pretty to go to jail." Well Obama is too pretty to be
criticized. This is really going to be fun.
[1]: http://www.drudgereport.com/flashacn.htm
**Exclusive Details**
The nation's top selling conservative author has been banned from appearing on
NBC, insiders tell the DRUDGE REPORT.
"We are just not going to have her on any more, it's over," a top network
source explains.
But a second top suit strongly denies there is any "Coulter ban".
"Look for a re-invite, as soon as Wednesday," said the news executive, who
asked not to be named.
NBC's TODAY show abruptly cut Ann Coulter from its planned Tuesday broadcast,
claiming the schedule was overbooked.
Executives at NBC TODAY replaced Coulter with showbiz reporter Perez Hilton,
who recently offered $1,000 to anyone who would throw a pie at Ann Coulter.
Hilton is also launching a new book this week, RED CARPET SUICIDE.
Coulter was set to unveil her new book, GUILTY.
One network insider claims it was the book's theme -- a brutal examination of
liberal bias in the new era -- that got executives to dis-invite the
controversialist.
"We are just not interested in anyone so highly critical of President-elect
Obama, right now," a TODAY insider reveals. "It's such a downer. It's just not
the time, and it's not what our audience wants, either."
Others inside the peacock network strongly deny the book's theme is at issue.
For the book, Coulter reportedly received the most-lucrative advance ever paid
to a conservative author.
The TODAY show eagerly invited the author months ago, for her first network
interview on GUILTY.
The exclusive was to air during the show's 7 AM hour. The cut came Monday
afternoon.
Coulter was also to appear on the TODAY's fourth hour. A host even teased the
segment saying the 'conservative pit bull and bestselling author' would be a
guest.
NBC's cable outlet, MSNBC, will also become a Coulter-free zone, insiders
explain. Morning host Joe Scarborough is said to be concerned with the new
ban. "He's working to overrule it," tips a source.
Developing...
Anim8rFSK
Ubiquitous <web...@polaris.net> wrote:
> Ann Coulter got banned from NBC for life. At least that is what Drudge is
> reporting [1]. Coulter's new book "Guilty" debuts today and Coulter was to
> appear on NBC's Today Show this morning. At the last minute she cut from the
> segment and then, according to some NBC insiders, banned for life. The
> reason?
> Apparently NBC wasn't too thrilled with the theme of her book - liberal media
> bias. Now if this next quote is true, you will enjoy it. A Today Show insider
> said, "We are just not interested in anyone so highly critical of
> President-elect Obama, right now ... It's such a downer. It's just not the
> time, and it's not what our audience wants, either."
Wow
--
Bad Reboot's 'Crap Trek' 2009: "No Shat, No Show"
Rated "least anticipated film of 2009" by ETOnline
trotsky
> In article <49KdnU3_XrhM-f7U...@giganews.com>,
> Ubiquitous <web...@polaris.net> wrote:
>
>> Ann Coulter got banned from NBC for life. At least that is what Drudge is
>> reporting [1]. Coulter's new book "Guilty" debuts today and Coulter was to
>> appear on NBC's Today Show this morning. At the last minute she cut from the
>> segment and then, according to some NBC insiders, banned for life. The
>> reason?
>> Apparently NBC wasn't too thrilled with the theme of her book - liberal media
>> bias. Now if this next quote is true, you will enjoy it. A Today Show insider
>> said, "We are just not interested in anyone so highly critical of
>> President-elect Obama, right now ... It's such a downer. It's just not the
>> time, and it's not what our audience wants, either."
>
> Wow
Exactly: wow, a steaming pile of bullshit on the Drudge Report? Who knew?
z
they canceled her because they found out her jaw was no longer wired
shut.
Golum
news:29b63dbd-8401-427a...@j39g2000yqn.googlegroups.com:
> they canceled her because they found out her jaw was no longer wired
> shut.
>
Was the host a liberal Jew or just a liberal?
Ubiquitous
>> Ann Coulter got banned from NBC for life. At least that is what Drudge is
>> reporting [1]. Coulter's new book "Guilty" debuts today and Coulter was to
>> appear on NBC's Today Show this morning. At the last minute she cut from
>> the segment and then, according to some NBC insiders, banned for life.
>> The reason? Apparently NBC wasn't too thrilled with the theme of her
>> book - liberal media bias. Now if this next quote is true, you will enjoy
>> it. A Today Show insider said, "We are just not interested in anyone so
>> highly critical of President-elect Obama, right now ... It's such a downer.
>> It's just not the time, and it's not what our audience wants, either."
>
>Wow
I heard Rachel Maddow was on NBC Today show in her place. HAHAHA!
Maybe they'll have Keith on tomorrow.
David Johnston
wrote:
>Ann Coulter got banned from NBC for life. At least that is what Drudge is
>reporting [1]
Drudge lied.
John J
> "We are just not interested in anyone so highly critical of President-elect
> Obama, right now," a TODAY insider reveals. "It's such a downer. It's just not
> the time, and it's not what our audience wants, either."
Well, surprise, surprise. The News Industry is all about show business.
Who didn't know that?
Bugman
"John J" <no...@droffats.ten> wrote in message
news:kKydnSEttPb4lPjU...@supernews.com...
Today is an entertainment show. Coulter isn't entertaining.
Ubiquitous
>they canceled her because they found out her jaw was no longer wired
>shut.
Thanks for pointing out how liberals believe that "free speech" only
applies to those who agree with them...
--
It's now time for healing, and for fixing the damage the Democrats did
to America.
Jerry K.
wrote:
>gzuc...@snail-mail.net wrote:
>
>>they canceled her because they found out her jaw was no longer wired
>>shut.
>
>Thanks for pointing out how liberals believe that "free speech" only
>applies to those who agree with them...
You lose points for whining - and thanks for pointing out how little
you actually know about "freedom of speech" and the US Constitution,
as well as how little you care for the rights of private companies.
I suggest you take a look at the Constitution, specifically at the
First Amedment, wherein resides ~nothing~ about some network
determining who they prefer to have ~speak~ on one of their programs.
"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion,
or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of
speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to
assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."
- US Constution, Amedment 1, 1791
This "free speech" you speak of comes down to the ~Government~ cannot
constitutionally prohibit anyone's speech but private companies, the
press, and even television have every right to determine the makeup of
what they publish or broadcast - including in the case of NBC, who
they allow to bleat out of their pie-hole on one of their shows.
I don't give a crap about Coulter because in my opinion she's just
another talking head. Further, I believe her to be a rather lame
satirist who often demonstrates a huge propensity for intellectual
dishonesty and who weakly relies on shock and contraversy as a means
of creating attention - and, subsequently, income for herself, and
because she has often shown herself to be an enormous hypocrite. But
the two of us do appreciate the Grateful Dead so at least on some
level there's a little common ground and I'd party with her.
I don't give a crap about NBC, either because they are just a
television network who, like all private companies, are free to make
which ever decision they like on how they run their company.
It's an all too common whine when someone feels they or someone else
aren't being allowed to express their point of view, no matter the
venue and no matter that the venue is clearly not a government entity
and no matter that the prohition of their speech is not because of
some government law, that somehow there's some sort of insidious
restriction of their "freedom of speech" going on.
In other words, waaaa - poor widdle Annie got cancelled and this
somehow equates to her "freedom of speech" being taken away and the
oppressing "liberals" who cancelled her are hypocrites because they
only believe in not cancelling guests (and somehow ensuring their
"freedom of speech") as long as they agree with what that person has
said or might say.
Reality check - the conservatives have lost serious ground these past
two election cycles. Tough shit. Coulter's freedom of speech being
somehow abridged by a private company is the least of America's (or
the conservative's) problems.
Keep on trolling and we'll see where it goes.
Jerry
Ubiquitous
journalism" can turn into an excuse for biased editorializing. Tom Raum's
story, headlined "Analysis: GOP Urging Restraint in Stimulus Debate," begins
as follows:
Out of power, Republicans appear to be retreating to familiar
old ground. They're becoming deficit hawks again.
GOP lawmakers didn't seem to mind enjoying the fruits of
government largesse for the past eight years while one of
their own was in the White House. Now they're struggling
to regain footing at a time of economic rout, a record $1.2
trillion budget deficit and an incoming Democratic president
claiming a mandate for change. . . .
"Congress cannot keep writing checks and simply pass IOUs to
our children and grandchildren," says Sen. John Cornyn,
R-Texas. Asks House Minority Leader John Boehner, R-Ohio:
"How much debt are we going to pile on future generations?"
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., gets more
specific: "We would like, on the spending side, obviously,
to avoid funding things like a mob museums or water slides."
Mob museums?
Las Vegas' effort to include in the stimulus legislation federal
money to set up a museum to showcase Nevada's colorful and storied
past in organized crime has suddenly become the cited example of
wasteful spending for some Republicans, including McConnell.
Perhaps they hope the proposed project in the home state of
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., can divert attention
from the "Bridge to Nowhere," an Alaska project that was
initially a Republican initiative and which became the target
of Democratic scorn.
So Republicans have been guilty of hypocrisy, having failed to restrain
government spending while they were in power, notwithstanding their own
pretensions to being the party of smaller government. That's a fair cop if
ever there was one.
But the GOP hasn't had a majority in Congress for two years, and will not
regain one for at least two more years (and, let's face it, probably longer).
The Democrats are in power, and they are seeking to waste boatloads of money.
The Republicans have an excellent point, even if their own record makes them
less-than-ideal messengers.
Instead of considering the merits of the criticism, Raum seeks to discredit
the critics. His aim seems to be to help those who actually are in power
escape accountability.
Ubiquitous
Demonstrators burn an effigy of U.S. President George W. Bush
during a demonstration outside the U.S. Embassy in Kuala Lumpur,
in protest of Israeli aggression against Palestinians January 9,
2009. About 2,000 Muslim protesters gathered outside the U.S.
embassy in the Malaysian capital on Friday holding placards and
banners, and shouting anti-Israel slogans.
Here's a Reuters photo caption from today:
Hardline demonstrators burn posters of U.S. President-elect
Barack Obama, during a demonstration in support of the people
of Gaza, in front of the Swiss Embassy in Tehran January 13, 2009.
Not surprisingly, both captions are biased against Israel, the first referring
to "Israeli aggression," and the second claiming the poster-burners support
"the people of Gaza" when one presumes they actually back the Islamic
supremacist movement Hamas.
But note the difference: The guys who are burning Bush in effigy are merely
"demonstrators," while the guys who are burning Obama's poster are "_hardline_
demonstrators." Reuters' pro-Obama bias seems to be tempering its usual
anti-American bias. It will be interesting to see whether this continues to be
the case after Obama becomes president next week. Is Reuters merely an
anti-American news service, or is it a hardline one?
Ubiquitous
provide some relief. Most of the people who report the news are Democrats, or
at least sympathize ideologically with the Democratic Party. As a result, the
so-called adversary press is at its least adversarial when the Democrats are
in power and the Republicans are weak, as they are now. A case in point is the
second paragraph of the New York Times's story on Secretary of State-designate
Hillary Clinton's confirmation hearings:
Appearing before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Mrs.
Clinton showed a mastery of the issues that won praise from
her fellow lawmakers, and outlined a muscular view of American
foreign policy that she said would put diplomacy front and
center in the Obama administration.
Mastery! Praise! Muscular! She sounds just great. Go back to the Times
coverage of Condoleezza Rice's hearings four years ago, and you find no such
kind words. Instead, you see things like this:
By far the most severe questioning came from Senator Barbara
Boxer, a California Democrat, whose berating tone clearly
rankled Ms. Rice and brought an uncharacteristic flash of
irritation.
Now of course you can't necessarily fault the Times for covering two different
events differently. The Democrats probably were more adversarial toward Rice
than the Republicans are now toward Mrs. Clinton, so that accurate reporting
yields a difference in tone. Mrs. Clinton may also be the beneficiary (or
victim) of the soft bigotry of low expectations. Rice's academic and much of
her professional background was in foreign policy, so perhaps her mastery of
the subject could be taken for granted while Mrs. Clinton's could not.
But then there is this fawning profile of John Kerry, the new chairman of the
Foreign Relations Committee. Among other things, we learn that Kerry is "an
acknowledged authority on many aspects of the international landscape he will
be surveying," and that, according to Sen. Russ Feingold of Wisconsin, "He has
credibility not only within the Senate but among the American people as a very
serious player."
Why, the Times doesn't even mention that, in a shameless effort to pander to
reactionary voters, Kerry volunteered to serve in an immoral war in Vietnam!
Ubiquitous
but remember how much the liberal media bitched and moaned about Bush's
inauguration costing 50 million, but haven't said a thing about Obama
spending thrice as much.
http://dir.salon.com/story/news/feature/2005/01/20/media_on_inauguration
Shevek
> Watching the pre-Inaguration coverage on CNN this week, I couldn't help
> but remember how much the liberal media bitched and moaned about Bush's
> inauguration costing 50 million, but haven't said a thing about Obama
> spending thrice as much.
>
> http://dir.salon.com/story/news/feature/2005/01/20/media_on_inauguration
>
> http://tinyurl.com/9eytzy
>
Did you hear that "some are saying" Barack Obama's inauguration will
cost "$160 million," which is $100 million more than George W. Bush's
last swearing-in? That's the tale the crew at Fox & Friends was
telling on January 15. "Why does the thing have to cost so much?"
demanded co-host Gretchen Carlson. "I don't get it. George Bush spent
$42.3 million and that was just four years ago." She wondered why
Obama needed "another $100 million" for his celebration.
The Fox News crew wasn't alone. The Internet and cable news were
filled with chatter about the jaw-dropping (and unsubstantiated)
number suddenly attached to Obama's swearing-in. But the sloppy
reporting and online gossip about the price tag illustrated what
happens when journalists don't do their job and online partisans take
advantage of that kind of work.
It also highlighted the type of news you can generate when making
blatantly false comparisons. In this case, it was the cost of the
Obama and Bush inaugurations. The connection was unfair because the
Obama figure of $160 million that got repeated in the press included
security costs associated with the massive event. But the Bush tab of
$42 million left out those enormous costs. Talk about stacking the
deck.
The misinformation first arrived in the form of an underreported
newspaper article in America, and then one in London. Between them,
and thanks to furious transatlantic online linking, the reports gave
birth to the story that Obama's inauguration was going to cost nearly
four times what the country spent on Bush's bash in 2005 -- that the
Obama inauguration would cost almost $120 million more.
With its declarative headline, "Obama's inauguration is most expensive
ever at $160 million," the New York Daily News reported:
It will take Barack Obama less than a minute to recite the oath of
office -- and when he's done dancing at the inaugural balls Jan. 20,
the price tag for his swearing-in festivities could approach $160
million.
Obama's inaugural committee is in the midst of raising roughly $45
million in private funds, exceeding the $42.3 million President Bush
spent in 2005. In 1993, Clinton spent $33 million when Democrats
returned to the White House for the first time in 12 years.
Talk about red flags: "could approach"? See the extraordinary freedom
that kind of loose language allows? Of course, technically speaking,
it's true the inauguration spending "could approach" $160 million. It
also "could approach" $400 million or $900 million. There's literally
no limit to the number that could be inserted into the phrasing,
especially when the Daily News provided so little basis for the jumbo
figure.
The closest the Daily News came to explaining the $160 million was its
noting that the District of Columbia, Virginia, and Maryland had
submitted a $75 million request to the federal government to cover
inauguration costs, including security and transportation. Bottom
line: The Daily News provided no facts -- no evidence -- to support
its what-if $160 million price tag for the inauguration, a price tag
the newspaper declared as fact in its attention-grabbing headline.
The next day, a January 14 article in the London tabloid, the Daily
Mail, also used an inflated figure, but offered zero reporting to back
it up. (The Daily Mail piece created a big stir when the Drudge Report
linked to it.)
The Daily Mail lead: "Barack Obama's inauguration is set to cost more
than £100m [$155 million] making it the most expensive swearing-in
ceremony in US history."
The story continued:
The President-elect will take less than a minute to recite the
oath of office in front of an estimated two million people in the US
capital next week.
But by the time the final dance has been held at one of the many
inaugural balls the costs for the day will be a staggering £110m
[roughly $162 million].
The cost was revealed as Mr Obama scrambled to answer questions
about the nomination of Treasury Secretary pick Timothy Geithner.
"Was revealed"? Who revealed the $162 million figure? The Daily Mail
never said. And much like the Daily News, the figures mentioned in the
Daily Mail simply did not add up to the final cost the newspaper
hyped.
Unfortunately, that didn't matter. At least not to conservative
partisans who grabbed onto the Daily Mail story (via Drudge) and
announced a blatant hypocrisy existed within the press because, they
claimed, four years earlier, reporters and liberal pundits raised
questions about the cost of Bush's inauguration, but suddenly were mum
about Obama's, even though at $160 million, it was going to cost
nearly four times as much as Bush's bash. (Actually, it wasn't just
liberals or the press raising questions about the Bush inauguration; a
strong majority of Americans wished Bush, during a time of war, had
scaled back the glitz for his second swearing-in.)
Online, the inauguration condemnations were swift and fierce. The cost
of "Obama's upcoming celebration" was "dwarfing" any previous swearing-
in expenses and was climbing into "the $100 millions," claimed right-
wing weblog The Jawa Report, which relied on the Daily Mail for its
misinformation.
The unsubstantiated $160 million figure was also picked up and
repeated on MSNBC, where news anchors spent all of January 14
announcing Obama's inauguration was going to cost "$160 million." The
eye-popping dollar figure was accepted as fact, even though nobody in
the press could actually explain where that number had come from.
Plus, MSNBC suggested the $160 million tab just covered parties and
activities, not the larger security costs.
Here's why using the $160 million number and comparing it with Bush's
2005 costs represented a classic apples-and-oranges assessment: For
years, the press routinely referred to the cost of presidential
inaugurations by calculating how much money was spent on the swearing-
in and the social activities surrounding that. The cost of the
inauguration's security was virtually never factored into the final
tab, as reported by the press. For instance, here's The Washington
Post from January 20, 2005, addressing the Bush bash:
The $40 million does not include the cost of a web of security,
including everything from 7,000 troops to volunteer police officers
from far away, to some of the most sophisticated detection and
protection equipment.
For decades, that represented the norm in terms of calculating
inauguration costs: Federal dollars spent on security were not part of
the commonly referred-to cost. (The cost of Obama's inauguration,
minus the security costs? Approximately $45 million.) What's happening
this year: The cost of the Obama inauguration and the cost of the
security are being combined by some in order to come up with the much
larger tab. Then, that number is being compared with the cost of the
Bush inauguration in 2005, minus the money spent on security.
In other words, it's the unsubstantiated Obama cost of $160 million
(inauguration + security) compared with the Bush cost of 42 million
(inauguration, excluding security). Those are two completely different
calculations being compared side-by-side, by Fox & Friends, among
others, to support the phony claim that Obama's inauguration is $100
million more expensive than Bush's.
That's why the right-wing site Newsmax.com confidently reported that
Obama's swearing-in would cost "nearly four times what George Bush's
inauguration cost four years ago." So did Flopping Aces, a shining
light of the right-wing blogosphere:
President Barack Obama's inauguration next week is set to be the
most expensive ever, predicted to reach over $150m. This dwarfs the
$42.3m spent on George Bush's inauguration in 2005 and the $33m spent
on Bill Clinton's in 1993.
If portions of the press and the blogosphere want to now suggest that
the cost of security should also be factored into the final tab for
presidential inaugurations, they need to go back and recalculate the
cost for Bush's 2005 swearing-in in order to have an honest
comparison. Because with security included, the 2005 inauguration cost
a lot more than $42 million -- just as with security factored in,
Obama's will also cost a lot more than $45 million. (The final tab,
though, likely won't be known for months.)
The question for the press then becomes: How much did the government
spend on security for Bush's 2005 inauguration? How much did it cost
for the wartime administration's unprecedented move to turn the
nation's capital into something akin to an armed fortress, with
snipers on rooftops, planes flying overhead, Humvee-mounted anti-
aircraft missiles dotting the city, and manholes cemented shut?
Back in January 2005, that figure was impossible to come by. "U.S.
Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge said last week that he was
unable to estimate security costs for the inauguration," The
Washington Times reported. The cross-town Washington Post also had no
luck in 2005 finding out the cost of security: "[Government] spokesmen
said they could not provide an estimate of what the inauguration will
cost the federal government."
However, buried in a recent New York Times article published one week
before the controversy erupted over the cost of Obama's inauguration,
the newspaper reported that in 2005, "the federal government and the
District of Columbia spent a combined $115.5 million, most of it for
security, the swearing-in ceremony, cleanup and for a holiday for
federal workers" [emphasis added].
You read that correctly. The federal government spent $115 million
dollars for the 2005 inauguration. Keep in mind, that $115 million
price tag was separate from the money Bush backers bundled to put on
the inauguration festivities. For that, they raised $42 million. So
the bottom line for Bush's 2005 inauguration, including the cost of
security? That's right, $157 million.
Unless the Obama inauguration tab (including security) ends up costing
$630 million, we can safely say it certainly won't cost four times
what the Bush bash did in 2005. And unless the Obama inauguration tab
(including security) runs to $257 million, we can safely say the event
won't cost $100 million more than Bush's, as Fox & Friends claimed.
So, for now, can the press and partisans please stop peddling this
malignant myth?
—Eric Boehlert
http://mediamatters.org/columns/200901170003?f=h_top
--
Shevek
doc marten
Ubiquitous <web...@polaris.net> wrote:
>
> Why, the Times doesn't even mention that,
George Bush bought his "ranch" down in Crawford in 1999 shortly before
he started running for president. And now that he's done with
politics, he is moving out of there as soon as he possibly can. The
Bushes have bought a new home in a tony neighborhood (and until
recently a whites-only community) in Dallas. So, what happened to
retiring down to the ranch?
Well, it's what most of us suspected - all total bullshit. He was
never a cowboy. That ranch had nothing on it. No cows, no farming,
just a lot of bullshit brush that Bush pretended to clear (for what
fucking purpose?). The ranch was always a political gimmick. It was
purchased so that Bush could play the role of the Texas cowboy when in
fact he has always been the Andover cheerleader.
So, that pisses me off a little bit. And his brazen abandonment of the
ranch as soon as he is out of office just throws it in everyone's
face, as if he's saying, "You didn't really believe all that cowboy
bullshit, did you? You weren't that stupid, were you?"
But what pisses me off a lot more is how the press never told the
American people the truth. Now, it might seem like a small thing, in
light of all the horrors of the Bush administration and how the press
hardly challenged him on any of it. But it is truly indicative, and it
did matter when it counted - during the elections.
I don't know why the press feels the need to be so credulous,
especially when it comes to Republican candidates. Fred Thompson has
this fake red truck he uses whenever he campaigns for office. He
instantly puts it away when he's done with that shtick. Why doesn't
the press mock him whenever he gets in that stupid red truck that he
normally wouldn't be caught dead in? Why did they never challenge Bush
on his fake cowboy persona? Why didn't they ask him - hey, what the
fuck is this ranch for? And isn't it convenient you bought it right
before the election?
Why the hell has our press gotten so timid? And when did they think
their job became to reinforce the fake images and storylines of
politicians rather than to challenge them? It's like they're playing
their role in this scripted movie. It's almost as if they're being
paid to go along with the fraud. The man grew up in a very exclusive,
private boarding school in Connecticut. He was a snotty nosed
cheerleader. His grandfather was a United States Senator and his
father was the President of the United States of America. He was
possibly the most privileged man in America. And the press helped to
sell the American people on a line of bullshit about how he was a
simple cowboy from a ranch down in Crawford. And it helped to get him
elected!
That should be a stain on every reporter who covered him for the rest
of their lives.
Cenk Uygur
--
http://gssites.com/bbg/index.html
--
When the Power of Love,replaces the Love of Power.
that's Evolution.
Ubiquitous
>> Watching the pre-Inaguration coverage on CNN this week, I couldn't
>> help but remember how much the liberal media bitched and moaned
>> about Bush's inauguration costing 50 million, but haven't said a
>> thing about Obama spending thrice as much.
>>
>> http://dir.salon.com/story/news/feature/2005/01/20/media_on_inauguration
>>
>> http://tinyurl.com/9eytzy
>
>So, for now, can the press and partisans please stop peddling this
>malignant myth?
>
>—Eric Boehlert
>http://mediamatters.org/columns/200901170003?f=h_top
Troll O Meter
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^
|
z
> In article <M6GdnW3jyopYuPLUnZ2dnUVZ_vjin...@giganews.com>,
may not be any cows on bush's ranch, but it is one of america's
foremost sources of bullshit.
z
>
> read more »
the costs for security for obama's inauguration ought to be paid by
the mccain presidential campaign and the republican party, after
their insisting to america all campaign that he's a muslim socialist
deep cover terrorist sleeper agent with an agenda to destroy america.
z
> gzuck...@snail-mail.net wrote:
> >the costs for security for obama's inauguration ought to be paid by
> >the mccain presidential campaign and the republican party, after
> >their insisting to america all campaign that he's a muslim socialist
> >deep cover terrorist sleeper agent with an agenda to destroy america.
>
the costs for security for obama's inauguration - SUBJECT
ought to be paid - INTRANSITIVE VERB
by the mccain presidential campaign and the republican party, -
ADVERB PHRASE
after their insisting to america all campaign -ADVERB PHRASE
that he's a muslim socialist deep cover terrorist sleeper agent with
an agenda to destroy america. - DIRECT OBJECT OF THE PHRASAL VERB/
GERUND
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over the past month. It used to be that the AP held President Bush accountable
for everything bad that happened, even the weather. Now the wire service seeks
to credit bad things that don't happen to President Obama's account:
The success of the stimulus package may be measured less by
visible achievements than by what does not happen--the home
that is not foreclosed, the family that doesn't slip into
poverty, the disease that does not go undiagnosed.
But the AP hasn't given up on the old style of accountability, as evidenced by
this dispatch from Tokyo:
Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton's first official
overseas trip was overshadowed by harsh North Korean rhetoric,
epitomizing how new administrations often can be hemmed in by
problems inherited from their predecessors.
George W. Bush may be a private citizen, but the AP is still determined to
hold him accountable. Never mind that Bush, too, inherited the North Korea
problem from his predecessor, who was distantly related by marriage to the
current secretary of state.
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Her twin sisters were killed trying to flee Falluja in 2004.
Then her husband was killed by a car bomb in Baghdad just
after she had become pregnant. When her own twins were 5 months
old, one was killed by an explosive planted in a Baghdad market.
Now, Nacham Jaleel Kadim, 23, lives with her remaining daughter
in a trailer park for war widows and their families in one of
the poorest parts of Iraq's capital.
That makes her one of the lucky ones. The trailer park, called
Al Waffa, or "Park of the Grateful," is among the few aid programs
available for Iraq's estimated 740,000 widows. It houses 750 people.
As the number of widows has swelled during six years of war ...
But there's something about this story that doesn't quite add up:
Among Iraqi women aged 15 to 80, 1 in 11 are estimated to
be widows, though officials admit that figure is hardly
more than a guess, given the continuing violence and the
displacement of millions of people. A United Nations report
estimated that during the height of sectarian violence here
in 2006, 90 to 100 women were widowed each day.
How many of those estimated 740,000 widows lost their husbands as a result of
"six years of war"? If 100 women were widowed _each week_ for six years, that
would be 31,200 widows, just 4.2% of the total. Since the 90 to 100 estimate
is a peak, not an average, the actual number of women widowed in six years of
war has to be much lower.
Obviously some Iraqi women became widows through natural causes. But although
the Times story reads as if history began in 2003, in fact Iraq has endured
far more than six years of war.
Times reporter Timothy Williams appears not to have heard of Saddam Hussein,
who was Iraq's dictator from 1979 until the U.S. and its allies toppled him at
outset of the "six years of war."
In 1980, Saddam's Iraq launched a war against Iran, a conflict that killed
hundreds of thousands on both sides before they finally called a truce in
1988. Two years after that, Iraq invaded Kuwait. In 1991 a U.S.-led coalition
expelled Iraq from Kuwait. Estimates of the number of Iraqi deaths vary
widely, from a few thousand to 100,000.
There was also ethnic and sectarian violence within Iraq during Saddam's
rule--only unlike the recent "six years of war," it was conducted by the
government against civilians, who were largely civilians. In 1988, the Iraqi
regime used chemical weapons on Kurds at Halabja, killing at least 5,000. In
1991, the first President Bush urged Shiite Arabs in southern Iraq to rise up
against the regime. They did so but were crushed when U.S. support failed to
materialize. Tens of thousands were killed.
In the next 12 years--until the start of the Times's "six years of war"--there
was something of a lull in the violence, although Iraq remained technically in
a state of war because Saddam's regime refused to comply with the U.N.'s peace
demands. Those demands were enforced by international sanctions, which critics
claimed killed as many as half a million Iraqi children. Those estimates were
probably exaggerated, but there is no question that the sanctions had a
significant human cost.
By ignoring all this history, the Times also evades the question of what the
alternative would have been to "six years of war." One possibility is a
continuation of the status quo ante 2003--the maintenance of a sanctions
regime that allowed Saddam to continue to rule Iraq and constrained his
ability to make war, at the cost of slowly starving Iraq's people and economy.
Another possibility is that the international community eventually would have
yielded to pressure and abandoned the sanctions--which very likely would have
enabled Saddam to rebuild his war machine and embark on who knows what deadly
adventures, leaving who knows how many thousands of Iraqi women widows.
Of course, we can't fault Williams for failing to "report" what didn't happen.
But failing to report what did happen--to acknowledge those Iraqi war widows
who lost their husbands before 2003--paints a highly distorted picture.
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zzbu...@netscape.net
Well, it has nothing to do with left or right wing.
The dynamic duo of The Washington MGM Bozos and the stooge
New York Media Sound-Biters are headed into WWIII, and their the
only idiots
that cares who wins it.
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Bush and Obama entering the James S. Brady Press Briefing Room. Reporters
remain seated when Bush walks in, but stand for Obama.
CBS's Mark Knoller tries to explain. He says reporters remained in their seats
in the earlier clip so as "not to block the shot of TV cameramen and still
photographers in the back of the room who were trying to make a picture of the
president's walk-in. No disrespect was intended for President Bush and to the
best of my knowledge none was taken." Fair enough, but why did they stand for
Obama?
When some reporters stood up for President Obama last Friday,
they forgot about the needs of their colleagues in the back of
the room as well as the less formal atmosphere of the briefing
room. Certainly it was a sign of respect for the president, but
not one of disrespect for his predecessor.
It was President Obama's first time at the briefing room lectern
since taking office and for some new members of the White House
Press, it was their first time seeing a president enter the room
as well.
It could be true. But then again, does Knoller's explanation dissuade you from
thinking that reporters are more favorably disposed toward Obama than they
were toward Bush?
[1]: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_VAfJyzN3ak
--
The trouble with American journalism, in short, isn't that it's too skeptical,
but that it's too willing to throw skepticism to the wind when it suits the
agenda of proclaiming every war a Vietnam and every Republican president a
Nixon.
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clear statement supporting the antiregime protesters in Iran, as we and many
others spent much of last week urging. What you may not know is that the
president actually changed his tune on Friday--and not just in a written
statement but in a TV interview. The comments did not air on Friday, however,
apparently because flatfooted journalists at CBS failed to realize their
significance.
Here's the pertinent portion from the transcript of Harry Smith's interview
with the president:
Smith: Let's move on to news of the day. The Ayatollah Khamenei
gave his--speech today and gave his sermon. He said that the
election in Iran was, in fact, legitimate. He said, quote/unquote,
"the street--street demonstrations are unacceptable." Do you have
a message for those people in the street?
Obama: I absolutely do. Well, first of all, let's understand that
this notion that somehow these hundreds of thousands of people who
are pouring into the streets in Iran are somehow responding to the
West or the United States. that's an old distraction that I think
has been trotted out periodically. And that's just not gonna fly.
WHAT YOU'RE SEEING IN IRAN ARE HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS OF PEOPLE
WHO BELIEVE THEIR VOICES WERE NOT HEARD AND WHO ARE PEACEFULLY
PROTESTING AND--AND SEEKING JUSTICE. AND THE WORLD IS WATCHING.
AND WE STAND BEHIND THOSE WHO ARE SEEKING JUSTICE IN A PEACEFUL
WAY. AND, YOU KNOW, ALREADY WE'VE SEEN VIOLENCE OUT THERE. I
THINK I'VE SAID THIS THROUGHOUT THE WEEK. I WANT TO REPEAT IT
THAT WE STAND WITH THOSE WHO WOULD LOOK TO PEACEFUL RESOLUTION
OF CONFLICT, AND WE BELIEVE THAT THE VOICES OF PEOPLE HAVE TO
BE HEARD, THAT THAT'S A UNIVERSAL VALUE THAT THE AMERICAN PEOPLE
STAND FOR AND THIS ADMINISTRATION STANDS FOR.
And I'm very concerned based on some of the tenor and tone of the
statements that have been made that the government of Iran recognize
that the world is watching. And how they approach and deal with
people who are, through peaceful means, trying to be heard will,
I think, send a pretty clear signal to the international community
about what Iran is--and is not.
BUT THE LAST POINT I WANT TO MAKE ON THIS--THIS IS NOT AN ISSUE
OF THE UNITED STATES OR THE WEST VERSUS IRAN. THIS IS AN ISSUE
OF THE IRANIAN PEOPLE. THE FACT THAT THEY ARE ON THE STREETS UNDER
PRETTY SEVERE DURESS, AT GREAT RISK TO THEMSELVES, IS A SIGN THAT
THERE'S SOMETHING IN THAT SOCIETY THAT WANTS TO OPEN UP.
As HotAir.com's "Allahpundit" notes, however, the two paragraphs we've put in
bold above were cut from the interview excerpts aired on the "CBS Evening
News." Thus Katie Couric's viewers did not hear the president say publicly for
the first time that "we stand behind those who are seeking justice in a
peaceful way" and that "there's something in that society that wants to open
up."
They heard, instead, the familiar refrains: "We respect Iran's sovereignty,"
and, "The last thing that I want to do is to have the United States be a foil
for those forces inside Iran who would love nothing better than to make this
an argument about the United States." Somehow CBS found this week-old mush
more newsworthy than Obama's first clear statement of support for the
Iranians.
The White House appears to have wanted to make news with Obama's new
toughness. The "CBS Evening News" airs at 6:30 ET, and the interview excerpts
led Friday's broadcast. At 6:48--after the segment had aired but before the
broadcast was complete--the White House blog posted the full exchange under
the title "The President on Iran: 'The World Is Watching.' "
This does not seem to have drawn much notice--who knew the White House had a
blog?--and on Saturday the White House press secretary's office issued the
written statement reiterating the points that had ended up on CBS's cutting
room floor:
The Iranian government must understand that the world is watching.
We mourn each and every innocent life that is lost. We call on the
Iranian government to stop all violent and unjust actions against
its own people. The universal rights to assembly and free speech
must be respected, and the United States stands with all who seek
to exercise those rights.
As I said in Cairo, suppressing ideas never succeeds in making
them go away. The Iranian people will ultimately judge the actions
of their own government. If the Iranian government seeks the
respect of the international community, it must respect the dignity
of its own people and govern through consent, not coercion.
Martin Luther King once said--"The arc of the moral universe is
long, but it bends toward justice." I believe that. The
international community believes that. And right now, we are
bearing witness to the Iranian peoples' [sic] belief in that
truth, and we will continue to bear witness.
This was widely reported. Obama got his message out, albeit a day late. But
CBS could have reported it on Friday, and it would have had a big scoop. How
could the network have missed it?
What we have here is a failure to communicate, and the ultimate responsibility
must be laid at the feet of the communicator--i.e., the president. Obama
excels at conveying an attitude of calm detachment, which is a good skill for
a leader to have in a time of crisis. But it may be that he was too good at it
in this case--that he failed to provide the emotional cues that would have
made it clear to the folks at CBS that he was saying something new and
important.
But ideological bias at CBS might also have played a role. The Weekly
Standard's Michael Goldfarb, following a CBS newsman's Twitter feed, had a
mildly shocking Saturday report that bolsters this suspicion (Goldfarb is
quoting the Twitter tweets verbatim):
CBS White House correspondent Mark Knoller has been doing some
in-depth reporting on the president's trip to an ice cream
parlor this afternoon. He reports that "Obama had vanilla
frozen custard in a cup with hot fudge and toasted almonds."
He reports that "Sasha had a Brownie sundae: vanilla frozen
yogurt, hot fudge, cherry, sprinkles and whipped cream (which
she asked Dad to scrape off)." He reports that "Malia had
vanilla frozen custart in a waffle cone." And, "You're gonna
laff: Obama & the girls actually bought Frozen Puppy pops for
Bo: flavors: pumpkin, peanut butter and yogurt�"
When some twitterers complained that maybe President Obama's
time could be better spent given the crisis in Iran, Knoller
responded, "Surprised by the outrage at the ice cream outing.
What is it you expect or want the US to do about Iran? Attack?
War?"
Let us first say a word in defense of reporters like Knoller. Their
fascination with Obama trivia is embarrassing but understandable. The White
House beat has to be a horribly tedious job, as it consists mostly of waiting
around in case news happens. If their love for Obama brings a little magic
into their otherwise joyless lives, it would be churlish to begrudge them
that, even if it means the rest of us are subjected to fluff like "White House
Dog Photographed, Remains Cute" (Washington Post). And we reject as false the
choice between enjoying an ice cream cone and addressing the crisis in Iran.
But Knoller's taunting of his critics--"What is it you expect or want the US
to do about Iran? Attack? War?"--is revealing. The idea that those who
criticized Obama's weak stance last week did so because they desired war is
fairly widespread, but it is a highly partisan notion, and a kooky one at
that. It seems obvious that if the regime in Tehran falls, the risk of war
will be substantially reduced. Knoller is a reporter. He's not supposed to be
a partisan, much less a kooky partisan.
Then again, Helen Thomas is 87, and the best medical evidence suggests that
people who live that long eventually die. Maybe Knoller is angling to take her
place as American journalism's crazy old aunt in the attic.
Audie Murphy's Ghost
<web...@polaris.net> wrote:
What a bunch of horseshit. It shows no understanding of what a pool
reporter is supposed to do (which is, in short, to report every single
detail that occurs during the pool assignment, no matter how trivial
that detail appears to be) or of what Twitter is supposed to be. And
why should Knoller have to put up with the whining of a bunch of Twits?
Why was his question inappropriate? Did anybody ever answer it?
> Then again, Helen Thomas is 87, and the best medical evidence suggests that
> people who live that long eventually die. Maybe Knoller is angling to take
> her place as American journalism's crazy old aunt in the attic.
BTW, who's the halfwit who wrote this unsigned garbage?
David Johnston
wrote:
>By now you probably know that President Obama on Saturday finally put out a
>clear statement supporting the antiregime protesters in Iran, as we and many
>others spent much of last week urging.
Really? Why did he decide they needed to die?
Mason Barge
wrote:
> When some twitterers complained that maybe President Obama's
> time could be better spent given the crisis in Iran, Knoller
> responded, "Surprised by the outrage at the ice cream outing.
> What is it you expect or want the US to do about Iran? Attack?
> War?"
I'm gonna' have to find my old Beachboys parody 45:
"Bomb bomb bomb, bomb bomb Iran . . . "
zzbu...@netscape.net
> In an editorial titled "Low-Road Express," the New York Times sniffs
> that John McCain "has wholeheartedly adopted [Karl] Rove's low-minded
> and uncivil playbook." Sample:
>
> In recent weeks, Mr. McCain has been waving the flag of
> fear (Senator Barack Obama wants to "lose" in Iraq), and
> issuing attacks that are sophomoric (suggesting that Mr.
> Obama is a socialist) and false (the presumptive Democratic
> nominee turned his back on wounded soldiers).
>
> Mr. McCain used to pride himself on being above this ugly
> brand of politics, which killed his own 2000 presidential
> bid. But he clearly tossed his inhibitions aside earlier
> this month . . .
>
> This is the same New York Times that in February published an
> unsubstantiated story suggesting that McCain had had an affair with a
> lobbyist. The difference is that whereas McCain is engaging in
partisan
> politics, the Times was doing journalism. It seems the paper's
standard
> for the latter is considerably lower than for the former.
Well, since the only Journalism The New York Times even does
is Rupert Murdoch Journalism, you can rest assured that's why the
people
with actual post 1800 Journalism Brains even work on Weather
Satellites,
Digital HDTV, C++, SGML, XML, Optical Computers, USB, All-In-One
Printers
Distributed Processing Software, Electronic Books, Laser Disk
Libraries,
Compact Flourescent Lighting, Light Sticks, Digital Fiber Optic
Signal Lines,
On-Line Banking, On-Line Shopping, On-Line Publishing, Home
Broadband,
Atomic Clock Wristwatches, GPS, Digital Terrain Mapping, Blue Ray,
UAVs, AAVs, Sefl-Replicating Machines, Self-Assembling Robots,
Solar Energy,
Pv Cells, Cyper Space Batteries, Holograms, and Drones.
>
> --
> It is simply breathtaking to watch the glee and abandon with which
> the liberal media and the Angry Left have been attempting to turn
> our military victory in Iraq into a second Vietnam quagmire. Too bad
> for them, it's failing.
, it's failing.
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take military action against the Iranian nuclear-weapons program, the U.S.
will not "dictate" otherwise. A reader points out that Sarah Palin, who ran
against Biden in last year's election, said much the same thing in a September
interview with ABC's Charlie Gibson:
Gibson: What if Israel decided it felt threatened and needed
to take out the Iranian nuclear facilities?
Palin: Well, first, we are friends with Israel and I don't
think that we should second-guess the measures that Israel
has to take to defend themselves and for their security.
Gibson: So if we wouldn't second-guess it and they decided
they needed to do it because Iran was an existential threat,
we would cooperative or agree with that.
Palin: I don't think we can second-guess what Israel has to
do to secure its nation.
Gibson: So if it felt necessary, if it felt the need to
defend itself by taking out Iranian nuclear facilities,
that would be all right.
Palin: We cannot second-guess the steps that Israel has to
take to defend itself.
Palin reiterated the point in a later interview with CBS's Katie Couric.
This column agrees with both Biden and Palin and is glad to see that the
bipartisan consensus recognizing Israel's right to defend itself appears
sturdy. But we suspected not everyone would be so consistent, so we went back
to see what people had said about Palin.
Matthew Yglesias, who when he was young drew much praise for his thoughtful
and fair-minded commentary, wrote a blog post titled "Palin: If Israel Wants
to Bomb Bomb Bomb, Bomb Bomb Iran, That's Okay With Me":
Palin reiterated her absurd view that the President of the
United States shouldn't "second-guess" Israeli policy under
any circumstances.
Palin is okay at repeating various "pro-Israel" buzzwords,
but she can't run away from the fact that her underlying
position on this topic is stupid.
So when Biden said the same thing, did Yglesias call it "absurd" and "stupid"?
Well, is the pope Italian? Here's what he wrote yesterday:
This is being read by some . . . as a "green light" for an
Israeli attack. . . . I think the most straightforward
reading of what Biden said is rather different, he's trying
to distance the United States from any possible Israeli
military action by making it clear that what Israel does or
doesn't do is decided in Israel rather than in Washington.
The main problem with this, I think, is that probably nobody's
going to believe it. Already you see many Americans taking
Biden's statement that the U.S. doesn't control Israeli policy
to "really" mean that the U.S. is encouraging Israel to attack.
When Palin says it, it's stupid. When Biden says it, he gets graded on a
curve: The problem is that other people are too stupid to understand the deep
subtlety of Biden's thinking.
Then there's M.J. Rosenberg of TalkingPointsMemo.com. In September, he
described Palin as "robotic" and suggested that she is the puppet of a Jewish
cabal:
Now we know why among the very first people Sarah Palin sat
down with after being nominated was Joe Lieberman and the
head of AIPAC.
She needed the latest talking points and, boy, did she learn
her lines...
In other words, under the Palin administration, we won't
second guess Israel. I think I've got it.
Palin sure has.
And when Biden said it? Rosenberg kept mum until he was persuaded that the
vice president's words didn't really reflect U.S. policy. Then he wrote this:
The President said today that he has "absolutely not" given
Israel a "green light" to attack Iran.
So Biden either misspoke, was misinterpreted, or has just
been corrected by his boss. Israel will get no green light
to attack. We will, as Obama said all along, rely on diplomacy
to solve the Iran problem.
Fair enough, right? Wrong. Look what Palin said to Charlie Gibson just before
he asked about a hypothetical Israeli strike:
Gibson: So what do you do about a nuclear Iran?
Palin: We have got to make sure that these weapons of mass
destruction, that nuclear weapons are not given to those
hands of Ahmadinejad, not that he would use them, but that
he would allow terrorists to be able to use them. So we have
got to put the pressure on Iran and we have got to count on
our allies to help us, diplomatic pressure.
Gibson: But, Governor, we've threatened greater sanctions
against Iran for a long time. It hasn't done any good. It
hasn't stemmed their nuclear program.
Palin: We need to pursue those and we need to implement
those. We cannot back off. We cannot just concede that, oh,
gee, maybe they're going to have nuclear weapons, what can
we do about it. No way, not Americans. We do not have to
stand for that.
What Palin said last year was precisely what Obama and Biden have now said:
Diplomacy is the optimal way of dealing with the Iranian nuclear threat, but
if it fails, Israel has a right to defend itself. In a way, the inconsistency
of some of Palin's critics is reassuring. It shows that a good deal of
anti-Israel sentiment is mere partisanship masquerading as something uglier.
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rationing of medical care and drive a tiny car. But at least your taxes won't
go up if you make under $250,000 a year, right?
Oh, you poor naive soul. The Associated Press delivers the bad news in a
dispatch by Stephen Ohlemacher titled "PROMISES, PROMISES: Obama's Tax Pledge
Unrealistic":
Obama made a firm tax pledge during the presidential campaign,
repeating it numerous times in the weeks and months leading
up to Election Day: no tax increases for individuals making
less than $200,000 a year or couples making less than $250,000.
"Not your income tax, not your payroll tax, not your capital
gains taxes, not any of your taxes," Obama told a crowd in
Dover, N.H., last year.
But less than a month after taking office, Obama signed an
expansion of child health care financed by 62-cent tax
increase on each pack of cigarettes.
Obama also signed an anti-smoking bill in June that grants
authority to the Food and Drug Administration to regulate
tobacco. To pay for the new program, a fee is being imposed
on the industry--and presumably passed on to consumers--estimated
to generate more than $5 billion over the next decade.
While not directly increasing taxes, a House-passed version
of Obama's plan to reduce greenhouse gases blamed for causing
global warming would similarly increase American families'
home energy bills by $175 a year on average, according to
the Congressional Budget Office.
Obama hasn't offered a detailed plan to fix health care,
though his aides are working with lawmakers as they craft
proposals. Obama included only a down payment for health
care reform in the budget proposal he unveiled this spring.
He proposed limiting itemized tax deductions for individuals
making more than $200,000 and couples making more than $250,000.
The plan, which faces stiff opposition in Congress, would limit
deductions for mortgage insurance, state and local taxes and
charitable contributions, raising about $270 billion over the
next decade.
Obama also proposed a series of business tax increases and
accounting changes that would raise an additional $30 billion.
If only someone had warned us back when Obama was running for president! Well,
actually, John McCain and the Republicans did issue such warnings--but the AP,
in a series of "fact check" articles, declared that the warnings were false
and implied that they were lies.
On Sept. 2, the AP's Jim Kuhnhenn filed a dispatch from the GOP convention
titled "Fact Check: Checking the GOP's Speakers":
FORMER SEN. FRED THOMPSON, R-TENN.: "Now our opponents tell
you not to worry about their tax increases. They tell you
they are not going to tax your family. No, they're just going
to tax 'businesses'! So unless you buy something from a 'business,'
like groceries or clothes or gasoline, or unless you get a
paycheck from a big or a small 'business,' don't worry, it's
not going to affect you."
THE FACTS: Obama would raise income taxes on the wealthiest
and their capital gains and dividends taxes. He would raise
payroll taxes on wealthiest by applying it to the portion of
income over $250,000 and he would also raise corporate taxes.
Only small businesses that make more than $250,000 a year
would see taxes rise. Obama would provide $80 billion in tax
breaks mainly for poor workers and the elderly, including
tripling the Earned Income Tax Credit for minimum-wage workers
and higher credits for larger families. The Tax Policy Center,
a think tank run jointly by the Brookings Institution and the
Urban Institute, concluded that Obama's plan would increase
after-tax income for middle-income taxpayers by about 5 percent
by 2012, or nearly $2,200 annually.
An Oct. 27 offering from the AP's Beth Fouhy was headlined "FACT CHECK: McCain
Persists in Exaggerations":
McCain also accuses Obama of aiming to raise taxes on small
businesses, which he says would cause them to cut jobs. He
has recently fleshed out that point by invoking "Joe the
Plumber," who told Obama on a campaign stop in Ohio that he
wants to buy the plumbing business where he works, but is
afraid Obama's tax plan would make that impossible.
In fact, Obama would raise taxes on small businesses making
more than $250,000, but only about two percent of small
businesses in the country fall into that category. And Obama
is also proposing targeted tax relief for small businesses,
such as a tax credit for offering health care to employees
and elimination of capital gains taxes on startup businesses.
And on Nov. 3, 2008, the AP'sCalvin Woodward summed things up disapprovingly:
"Altogether, facts took a beating in the campaign. . . . When a non-licensed
plumber who owes back taxes and would get a tax cut under Obama is held out by
McCain as a stand-in for average working people who should vote Republican,
you know truth-telling took a back seat to myth-making."
In truth, facts took a beating in the AP's campaign coverage because the wire
service, in embracing an opinionated style of reporting it calls
"accountability journalism," mired itself in epistemological confusion.
The statements that Thompson, McCain and Joe the Plumber made, and that the AP
claimed to refute, were not factual claims at all. They were predictions. We
now have sufficient facts, as reported by Ohlemacher above, to conclude that
those predictions were accurate. But an accurate prediction ("the Steelers
will win the Super Bowl") is quite different from an accurate statement of
fact ("the Steelers won the Super Bowl"). If you don't grasp the distinction,
try going to Vegas and placing a bet on the Steelers to win Super Bowl XLIII.
So the AP repeatedly made a cognitive error in treating as-yet-untested
predictions as if they were statements of fact. Even more ludicrous, however,
is the basis on which the AP concluded that the GOP statements were false. It
treated Obama's campaign promise as if it were not only a statement of fact
but an incontrovertible one.
A promise is a statement of intent, not a fact. Sometimes people are unable to
do what they intend because of circumstances beyond their control. Giving
Obama the benefit of the doubt--assuming that he sincerely intended not to
raise taxes on people making under $250,000, and that circumstances made it
impossible to do otherwise--it's as if the AP had done a pre-Super Bowl "fact
check" along these lines:
CLAIM: The Pittsburgh Steelers are favored to win.
THE FACTS: Arizona Cardinals coach Ken Whisenhunt has made
clear that "our guys are ready to play" and that they intend
to be victorious.
But the AP's campaign coverage was worse than this. Politicians sometimes make
promises in bad faith--surely more often than American pro sports teams throw
games. By treating Obama's campaign pledge as if it were an established fact,
the AP displayed either a staggering naivet� or an appalling pro-Obama
partisanship.
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risible during last year's campaign--and they're still risible. The latest
contribution, a dispatch filed Saturday, is titled "FACT CHECK: GOP Joins Spin
Game Over Stimulus Jobs." Reporter Matt Apuzzo opines that "the convoluted
math" Republicans use "to disparage the recovery is as murky and meaningless
as the White House formula championing the stimulus."
We have to take Apuzzo's word for it that the White House is guilty of murk
and meaninglessness. But the logic of his critique of the GOP is hard to
follow. Here is how he rebuts the claim by Rep. John Mica (R., Fla.) that (in
Apuzzo's words) "transportation money is slow to get out because of 'red tape'
slowing things down":
THE FACTS: Republicans are correct that only a small percentage
of the $48 billion in transportation money has been spent. But
red tape is a red herring. In fact, stimulus projects have to
be ready to begin quickly. Projects that have yet to clear
permitting, environmental review or other bureaucratic hurdles
won't get funded because they won't meet the law's deadlines.
One wonders what Apuzzo thinks "red tape" means if it doesn't include
"permitting, environmental review or other bureaucratic hurdles." He
continues:
Rep. John Duncan, R-Tenn., said "doing away with all the
environmental restrictions" would speed up stimulus spending.
That mischaracterizes both the stimulus and the environmental
review process.
Since 1970, federally funded projects have required reviews
to ensure they don't harm the environment, public health or
safety. It's not just about saving endangered species.
Environmental restrictions prohibit developers from building
highways in areas that would pollute drinking water or send
water flooding into nearby basements.
Eliminating those restrictions would eliminate the public's
right to review and object to projects before they're built.
Apuzzo seems to be arguing that the environmental restrictions are worthy and
therefore should not be done away with. This may be true, but it is irrelevant
to Duncan's claim that doing away with them would speed up stimulus spending.
Apuzzo goes on to address that claim in this way:
Even if those requirements were waived for stimulus projects,
however, it likely would not matter. A May report by the White
House Council on Environmental Quality found that no stimulus
projects have been substantially slowed by environmental reviews.
Aha, Duncan is wrong because the White House says so! That would be the same
White House that is championing murky and meaningless formulas.
Then there's this:
REP. MARIO DIAZ-BALART, R-FLA., SAID: "There is a new
definition for dismal failure: Stimulus. This stimulus."
THE FACTS: The argument is based on the idea that unemployment
keeps going up despite the transportation spending. That's a
non-sequitur. The $48 billion in transportation money
represents just 6 percent of the total stimulus. A far greater
share of stimulus money, $288 billion, was spent on tax cuts,
and conservatives would never accept the argument that rising
unemployment proves that tax cuts don't work.
The fact is, Republicans don't need to create mathematical
head-scratchers to criticize the stimulus. Since President
Barack Obama signed the stimulus into effect in February,
the nation has lost more than 2 million jobs and unemployment
has climbed ever higher.
The second paragraph of the AP's rebuttal seems to concede Diaz-Balart is
right, and on the very ground the previous paragraph described as a non
sequitur. The final item is this:
REP. CANDACE MILLER, R-OHIO [sic; she's actually from Michigan],
SAID: Transportation money is not going to areas that need it
most because spending was based on an antiquated formula.
THE FACTS: She is correct.
Apuzzo's story would have been a lot shorter if he were consistent about
getting to the point this quickly.
Ubiquitous
assailed �wild misrepresentations' of his health care plan . . ., taking on
the role of fact-checker-in-chief for his top domestic priority."
We'll get to what the president said, but we'd like to dwell for a moment on
the AP's characterization of Obama as "fact-checker-in-chief." _Fact-checker_
and _fact-checking_ are journalistic terms of art. By describing the president
in this way, the AP suggests that he has taken on the role of a
journalist--or, perhaps, that the AP has taken on the role of purveyor of
political propaganda.
Some magazines, most famously The New Yorker, employ full-time fact-checkers,
whose job is to review every fact in a story and make sure it is accurate. At
publications that do not have full-time fact-checkers, editors often serve
this function on an ad hoc basis.
Lately, though, news organizations--the AP most prominent among them--have
started producing a _type_ of story called the "fact check." Such an article
consists of a series of assertions by a politician, each followed by what
purports to be an examination of the real facts. As we noted in October, the
"examination" usually goes beyond purely factual considerations and crosses
the line into opinion.
Worse, as we wrote last month, sometimes the AP will do a "fact check" when
the claim in dispute is not a factual one at all, but a prediction or a
statement of intention. Last year, for example, the AP ran several "fact
checks" of Republican statements to the effect that Obama, if elected, would
raise taxes on Americans who are not wealthy. The AP rebutted these claims by
accepting as "fact" Obama's assertions that he would not do so.
Now Obama is out making promises again, and the AP is describing HIM as a
"fact-checker." Doesn't this amount to an acknowledgment that the AP's own
"fact checks" are little more than partisan propaganda--or, now that Obama is
president, pro-government propaganda?
Ubiquitous
"Headed to a Health Care �Town Brawl'? Read This First":
Two independent organizations that are widely respected for
objective fact-checking on topics of political controversy
are FactCheck.org, a project of the Annenberg Public Policy
Center at the University of Pennsylvania, and Politifact, a
Pulitzer-prize winning project of the St. Petersburg Times.
Their research into critiques of the health care legislation
pending before Congress was cited Tuesday in a memo from staff
to two Democrats who are helping to shape the legislation--Reps.
George Miller of California, chairman of the House Education
and Labor Committee, and Chris Van Hollen of Maryland, a member
of the House Ways and Means Committee. Both panels approved
similar versions of the legislation.
The House Democrats' memo, with summaries of fact-checking
research and links to the fact-checkers' Web sites, follows.
Sure enough, the rest of the story consists of the memo from the two
Democratic congressmen.
This stuff just gets better and better. Yesterday we noted that the Associated
Press had gone from presenting Obama's campaign promises as "facts" that
refute putative Republican falsehoods to describing Obama as the "fact-checker
in chief." Now McClatchy is _literally_ letting Democratic politicians write
the "news."
No wonder newspapers are dying! Who needs 'em when there are so many
Democratic congressmen?
David Stout of the New York Times, meanwhile, decides to "fact check" a
_question_ at a town-hall meeting:
"Why does the government want to rush into this bill when
many don't want it?" Senator Ben Cardin, Democrat of Maryland,
was asked at a "town meeting" in Hagerstown. "Why are you
rushing this?"
Calmly, the senator replied in a snippet shown on CNN, "We've
got to take as much time as we need to get it right." And he
added, "The status quo is unacceptable."
The senator was too polite (or intent on survival) to correct
his questioner by pointing out that there is not one bill yet,
but rather several proposals working their way through five
committees in both houses of Congress, and that to talk of
"the government" as a single entity makes no sense, at least
in this context, because of the divisions between Republicans
and Democrats, House and Senate, Capitol Hill and the White
House.
Uh, right. Other than President Obama's demand that Congress pass ObamaCare
before the August recess, there's no reason at all to think there's been any
rush.
Ubiquitous
A: The AP admits the public is against it.
OK, that's not the world's funniest joke, but it is an accurate description of
the AP's latest "fact check" article. Written by Calvin Woodward, it could
just as easily have been produced for the campaign's "Setting the Record
Straight" page, except that Woodward's article acknowledges that the public is
opposed to many aspects of ObamaCare--or, as Woodward puts it, "The judgment
is harsh in a new poll. . . . Harsh, but not based on facts."
Yet Woodward's "refutations" are easily rebutted by _pro-ObamaCare_ sources.
Here they are, in order:
THE POLL: 45 percent said it's likely the government will
decide when to stop care for the elderly; 50 percent said
it's not likely.
THE FACTS: Nothing being debated in Washington would give
the government such authority. Critics have twisted a provision
in a House bill that would direct Medicare to pay for counseling
sessions about end-of-life care, living wills, hospices and
the like if a patient wants such consultations with a doctor.
They have said, incorrectly, that the elderly would be required
to have these sessions.
The end-of-life provision is something of a red herring. There are legitimate
concerns that it would give doctors a financial incentive to encourage
patients to sign pull-the-plug orders, and that patients would feel pressured
to do so by the doctor's authority. But it's true that they would not be
_forced_.
The more worrisome question is whether ObamaCare would lead to government
rationing of treatment. Here is what Obama himself said on this question in an
April interview with David Leonhardt of the New York Times:
Obama: The chronically ill and those toward the end of
their lives are accounting for potentially 80 percent
of the total health care bill out here.
Leonhardt: So how do you--how do we deal with it?
Obama: Well, I think that there is going to have to be a
conversation that is guided by doctors, scientists, ethicists.
And then there is going to have to be a very difficult democratic
conversation that takes place. It is very difficult to imagine the
country making those decisions just through the normal political
channels. And that's part of why you have to have some independent
group that can give you guidance. It's not determinative, but I
think has to be able to give you some guidance. And that's part
of what I suspect you'll see emerging out of the various health
care conversations that are taking place on the Hill right now.
In fairness, Obama did not seem to mean it when he called for a "democratic
conversation," but that's no reason to doubt that he meant the rest of what he
said.
Woodward continues:
THE POLL: 55 percent expect the overhaul will give coverage
to illegal immigrants; 34 percent don't.
THE FACTS: The proposals being negotiated do not provide
coverage for illegal immigrants.
Let us stipulate that this column does not care for the scapegoating of
immigrants, including illegal ones. That, however, is separate from the
question of whether the bill would in fact cover illegal immigrants. Members
of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus think it will, Roll Call reported last
month:
A CHC member, who requested not to be identified, said the
group is urging Pelosi to ensure that everyone--including
illegal immigrants--will be able to receive services as part
of comprehensive reform.
"We're pushing to include everyone in the health care bill.
Everyone," said one CHC member.
Asked if CHC leaders will ask Pelosi to specifically spell
something out in the bill to address illegal immigrants, the
Member said no. Rather, the Member said the CHC simply wants
to make sure the bill--as drafted--doesn't prohibit illegal
immigrants from accessing care.
"Sometimes if you don't say something, something happens," said
the Hispanic lawmaker.
Woodward's third point:
THE POLL: 54 percent said the overhaul will lead to a government
takeover of health care; 39 percent disagree.
THE FACTS: Obama is not proposing a single-payer system in which
the government covers everyone, like in Canada or some European
countries. He says that direction is not right for the U.S. The
proposals being negotiated do not go there.
Here is what Obama himself said in a 2003 speech to a union audience:
I happen to be a proponent of a single-payer universal health
care program. I see no reason why the United States of America,
the wealthiest country in the history of the world, spending 14%
of its gross national product on health care, cannot provide
basic health insurance to everybody. And that's what Jim is
talking about when he says everybody in, nobody out. A single
payer health care plan, a universal health care plan. And that's
what I'd like to see. But as all of you know, we may not get
there immediately. Because first we have to take back the White
House, we have to take back the Senate, and we have to take
back the House.
What Obama is proposing in place of single-payer is something called the
"public option," which would put the federal government into the insurance
business but not immediately give it a monopoly. Earlier this week, on the Web
site of the left-liberal American Prospect, Mark Schmitt explained how this
became the dominant Democratic idea:
Following [John] Edwards' lead, Barack Obama and Hillary
Clinton picked up on the public option compromise. . . .
It was a real high-wire act--to convince the single-payer
advocates, who were the only engaged health care constituency
on the left, that they could live with the public option as
a kind of stealth single-payer, thus transferring their energy
and enthusiasm to this alternative. It had a very positive
political effect: It got all the candidates except Kucinich
onto basically the same health reform structure, unlike in 1992,
when every Democrat had his or her own gimmick. And the public
option/insurance exchange structure was ambitious.
But the downside is that the political process turns out to
be as resistant to stealth single-payer as it is to plain-old
single-payer.
The question is: Is "stealth single payer" stealthy enough to get by Calvin
Woodward, or stealthy enough that he thought he could get it past his readers?
Woodward's final item is muddled enough that one can't quite say he's taking
sides;
THE POLL: 50 percent expect taxpayer dollars will be used
to pay for abortions; 37 percent don't.
THE FACTS: The House version of legislation would allow coverage
for abortion in the public plan. But the procedure would be paid
for with dollars from beneficiary premiums, not from federal funds.
Likewise, private plans in the new insurance exchange could opt
to cover abortion, but no federal subsidies would be used to pay
for the procedure.
Opponents say the prohibition on federal money for the procedure
is merely a bookkeeping trick and what matters is that Washington
would allow abortion to be covered under government-subsidized
insurance.
Obama has stated that the U.S. should continue its tradition of
"not financing abortions as part of government-funded health care."
Current laws prohibiting public financing of abortion would stay
on the books.
Yet abortion guidelines are not yet clear for the
government-supervised insurance exchange. There is strong
sentiment in Congress on both sides of the issue.
The fault here may lie more with the poll's author than with Woodward. The
distinction between "taxpayer dollars" and "dollars from beneficiary premiums"
not only is arguably "a bookkeeping trick," as Woodward acknowledges; it is
completely immaterial to those on the antiabortion side of this debate. They
do not want the government to express approval of abortion by funding it,
regardless of where the money nominally comes from.
Writing in Slate, Meredith Simons suggests what seems an expedient remedy:
keep abortion out of government insurance, and let private philanthropy fill
the breach. But she notes:
Progressives hate the idea of a private abortion fund. They
argue that abortion is a medical procedure like any other
and should be covered by any insurance plan, public or private.
Nobody has to set up charities for appendectomies--why do it
for abortions?
In other words, for the pro-abortion side, like the antiabortion side, this is
a matter of pure symbolism. They do not want the government to express
disapproval of abortion by declining to fund it, even if there would be no
practical effect on cost or availability. If, as Woodward writes, the
legislation "would allow coverage for abortion in the public plan," then this
question has been resolved in favor of the pro-abortion side.
There's one more difference between Obama and the AP: He is a politician
trying to get a piece of legislation passed. One expects him to shade the
truth, to downplay inconvenient facts. Politicians have even been forgiven for
outright lies. By contrast, of what use is a news service that is not
rigorously impartial and factual?
Ubiquitous
George W. Bush's first summer vacation as president:
On Friday, as new unemployment figures painted a newly
troubling portrait of the American economy, Mr. Bush placed
himself in the same scenes--golfing and fishing in a New
England paradise--that once caused his father electoral grief.
Simply amazing.
Here's the Bureau of Labor Statistics report, dated July 6, that "painted a
newly troubling portrait of the American economy":
The unemployment rate was little changed at 4.5 percent,
five-tenths of a percentage point higher than the average
for 2000.
As Barack Obama embarked on his first summer vacation as president last
week--also in a "New England paradise," Martha's Vineyard--the most recent
unemployment rate was 9.4%, more than double the summer 2001 figure. Covering
the Obama jaunt, the Times offers no hint that there's anything wrong with a
president taking a vacation during a time of genuine crisis. Indeed, it offers
this justification:
Mr. Obama, whom aides described as being amused by all of
the gloom-and-doom prognosticating over his health care agenda,
did not even consider skipping his vacation. Last year, he
talked about the importance of taking a break to avoid "making
mistakes."
That makes sense--and in any case, it's not as if the president actually
escapes his responsibilities when he goes on "vacation." But the Times's
coverage of Obama is a useful contrast to the paper's petty partisan sniping
against Bush.
Ubiquitous
whether to send more troops and deepen U.S. involvement in an increasingly
unpopular war," the Associated Press reports. Nonsense, "report" the AP's
Robert Burns and Ben Feller:
Obama's drawn-out decision-making on Afghanistan is sending
messages. To the Afghan government: Clean up your act. To
the Pentagon: I'm no rubber stamp. To the American public:
More troops can't be the sole answer.
To our allies: You can't trust American resolve. To our enemies: How do you
spell "surrender"? To America's brave soldiers: You are but pawns in my
political calculations. Those last three are ours, of course, not the AP's;
and they are equally biased in the opposite direction. But only equally
biased.
Here's another eyebrow-raising example of the AP's injecting opinion into news
coverage, this one by Adam Goldman:
In what could be one of the biggest counterterrorism seizures
in U.S. history, federal prosecutors sought to take over four
U.S. mosques and a New York City skyscraper owned by a Muslim
organization suspected of being controlled by the Iranian
government. . . .
The action against the Shiite Muslim mosques is sure to inflame
relations between the U.S. government and American Muslims, many
of whom fear a backlash after last week's Fort Hood shooting
rampage, blamed on a Muslim American major.
How in the world does Goldman know it is "sure to inflame relations" between
the government and Muslims? The only support he offers is this quote:
"Whatever the details of the government's case against the
owners of the mosques, as a civil rights organization we
are concerned that the seizure of American houses of worship
could have a chilling effect on the religious freedom of
citizens of all faiths and may send a negative message to
Muslims worldwide," said Ibrahim Hooper, spokesman for the
Council on American-Islamic Relations.
Ah, so it'll be one of those inflammatory chilling effects!
In reporting on populist host Lou Dobbs's departure from CNN, the AP's David
Bauder gives plenty of space to Dobbs's critics:
His resignation was hailed by activists who were seeking his ouster.
"Our contention all along was that Lou Dobbs--who has a long
history of spreading lies and conspiracy theories about immigrants
and Latinos--does not belong on the most trusted name in news,"
said Roberto Lovato, co-founder of Presente.org. "We are thrilled
that Dobbs no longer has the legitimate platform from which to
incite fear and hate."
Tom Saenz, president of the Mexican American Legal Defense and
Educational Fund, the leading Latino legal organization, said,
"The Latino community can and should celebrate that Lou Dobbs
is no longer on CNN."
U.S. Sen. Robert Menendez, a Democrat from Dobbs' home state
of New Jersey and the Senate's only Hispanic member, called it
"addition by subtraction" for CNN.
But in reporting on Anita Dunn's departure from the White House, the AP's
Philip Elliott gives plenty of space to her _criticisms_:
Since moving to the West Wing, she has been a fierce defender
for the administration, a top target of conservative commentators
and led a fight with Fox News.
"The reality of it is that Fox News often operates almost as
either the research arm or the communications arm of the
Republican Party," Dunn said last month. "And it is not
ideological... what I think is fair to say about Fox, and
the way we view it, is that it is more of a wing of the
Republican Party."
Elliott quotes no one from Fox, or any other Dunn critic. "Accountability
journalism," which the AP proudly introduced when George W. Bush was
president, seems to have morphed into "amiability journalism," defending the
administration in power--except when it is criticized from the left.
Obveeus
"Ubiquitous" <web...@polaris.net> wrote:
> In what could be one of the biggest counterterrorism seizures
> in U.S. history, federal prosecutors sought to take over four
> U.S. mosques and a New York City skyscraper owned by a Muslim
> organization suspected of being controlled by the Iranian
> government. . . .
While preventing the Iranian government from further developing their
nuclear weapons program seems like a very good idea, does this (should this)
really be classified as counter 'terrorism'? It seems to me that this issue
isn't about 'terrorism' at all.
Jax
> "[President] Obama has been accused by some Republicans of 'dithering"'about
> whether to send more troops and deepen U.S. involvement in an increasingly
> unpopular war," the Associated Press reports.
>>
Yeah, we can't have our president actually THINKING about the outcome
of his decisions, can we, Mr. Troll-O-Meter?
Ubiquitous
>of his decisions, can we?
President Obama has finally made up his mind, delivering the following
statement at the White House this morning:
Today, I'm announcing a comprehensive, new strategy for
Afghanistan and Pakistan. And this marks the conclusion
of a careful policy review, led by Bruce, that I ordered
as soon as I took office. My administration has heard from
our military commanders, as well as our diplomats. We've
consulted with the Afghan and Pakistani governments, with
our partners and our NATO allies, and with other donors and
international organizations. We've also worked closely
with members of Congress here at home. And now I'd like to
speak clearly and candidly to the American people.
Psych! Obama did say this, but not this morning. Rather, it was on March 27,
just four days before April Fool's Day. Back in the present, he's still voting
"present."
Ubiquitous
Alonso-Zaldivar, compares the House and Senate ObamaCare bills. We'd like to
compare this dispatch to the AP's dispatch earlier this week "fact checking"
Sarah Palin's new book. Here goes:
Number of AP reporters assigned to story:
� ObamaCare bills: 2
� Palin book: 11
Number of pages in document being covered:
� ObamaCare bills: 4,064
� Palin book: 432
Number of pages per AP reporter:
� ObamaCare bill: 2,032
� Palin book: 39.3
On a per-page basis, that is, the AP devoted 52 times as much manpower to the
memoir of a former Republican officeholder as to a piece of legislation that
will cost trillions of dollars and an untold number of lives. That's what they
call accountability journalism.
Ubiquitous
New York Times (admittedly not the hardest challenge in the world):
Let's play a game.
Let's say you conducted a poll with a fellow news organization.
The poll found that the president's approval rating had fallen
to 46 percent. The poll found that 56 percent of respondents
did not believe the president had a plan to create jobs. The
poll found that majorities disapprove of the president's handling
of the economy, the deficit, and his signature initiative,
comprehensive health reform. Moreover, the poll found that "fewer
than one in ten Americans say members of Congress deserve
reelection."
Would you title the article describing the poll results "Obama
Has Edge Over G.O.P. Among the Public"? Because that's what the
New York Times did.
Incidentally, you have to read to the end of the fifth paragraph
to discover that Obama's approval rating is "as low it has been
since he took office."
The poll was a joint effort with CBS News, and NewsBusters.org notes that the
network took a similar approach:
Thursday's CBS Evening News skipped [the] bad news for Obama
and instead highlighted some better news for the President.
Though 80 percent said "members of Congress more interested
in serving special interest groups" than the American people,
"the President gets better marks on that score," Katie Couric
touted, as "most think his priority is serving the people."
It's hardly surprising that Americans would be more apt to view "Congress"
unfavorably than the president. Congress, after all, is made up of hundreds of
members, of only three of whom can any American call himself a constituent.
Inasmuch as part of the job of a representative or senator is to pursue the
interests of his own state, to say that congressmen are "more interested in
serving special interest groups" than "the American people" verges on
tautology.
Times columnist David Brooks makes a somewhat commonplace observation: "Obama
is still admired personally, but every major proposal--from the stimulus to
health care--is quite unpopular." It's the opposite of the impeachment-era
Bill Clinton, who always scored badly in "personal approval" but very well in
job approval. Voters today, Brooks writes, "are reacting against the total
activist onslaught." They might like the job Obama is doing better if, like
Clinton in 1998-99, he had a Republican Congress to ensure that he wouldn't
actually get anything done.
Ubiquitous
Obama's televised health care summit next week, even though the president will
be running the show," reports Erica Werner of the Associated Press.
Werner's report includes one quote from a Republican congressman and one from
a GOP congressional staffer:
"I think what we have to do is keep it on the policy and
really continue to describe that we have listened to the
American people, and anyone listening to the American people
would say scrap this bill and begin again, and let's begin
again by focusing on lowering costs," Rep. Dave Camp of
Michigan, who will be attending the summit as the top
Republican on the House Ways and Means Committee, said
Tuesday. . . .
"Americans don't want another 2,700-page bill that raises
taxes and slashes Medicare for our seniors," said Don Stewart,
spokesman for Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky.
Neither of these quotes supports Werner's contention that "Congressional
Republicans see a chance for political gain." Indeed, elsewhere in the
dispatch Werner herself sums up the politics of the meeting this way:
The president has already said he'll moderate the forum,
and the location and staging at the Blair House guest
residence are of the White House's choosing, giving Democrats
home-court advantage. But Republicans say they have a different
advantage: Polls show Americans side with them on the substance.
All they have to do is remind viewers that's the case, and they
could chalk up something like a win that could make the going
even tougher for the Democrats.
Now it may well be true that congressional Republicans see a political
opportunity in the meeting. But if the source of that opportunity is that
voters think they are right on the substance, isn't that how politics is
supposed to work?
Ubiquitous
wrote:
Yesterday we noted that the New York Times, reporting on a survey finding
President Obama's approval rating at new lows, had gone with the headline,
"Poll Finds Edge for Obama With G.O.P. Among the Public." Today's Times
carries a story along similar lines: "G.O.P. Hopes for Senate Control Face
Hurdles."
The biggest hurdle, of course, is that the Democrats have a 59-41 Senate
majority, which means that the GOP would have to pick up 10 seats--in a year
when they are defending nearly half their seats. That this is even possible is
testimony to how badly the Democrats are doing--but the Times gamely portrays
it as a sign of Republican adversity.
If things keep going this way, we'll soon be reading Times stories like
"Senate Supermajority Still Out of Reach for G.O.P.," or, in 2012, "Third
Palin Term Seen as Unlikely."
Sid9
"Ubiquitous" <web...@polaris.net> wrote in message
news:Kv6dnVQFh7KLr-DW...@giganews.com...
.
A post from never-never land!
Ubiquitous
Subject: The president warns of violence from "extreme elements", and an example quickly materializes
"In a blunt caution to political friend and foe, President Barack Obama said
Saturday that partisan rants and name-calling under the guise of legitimate
discourse pose a serious danger to America's democracy, and may incite
'extreme elements' to violence," the Associated Pressreports from Ann Arbor,
Mich.
Two thousand miles away, another AP dispatch reports, there occurred an
example of exactly what the president was warning about:
Close to 20 businesses were damaged after what started as
a peaceful immigrants' rights march in downtown Santa Cruz
[Calif.] turned violent, requiring police to call other
agencies for help, authorities said.
Police spokesman Zach Friend said an estimated 250 people
started marching through the city around 10:30 p.m. Saturday.
It was a harmonious but "unpermitted and unsanctioned event,"
he said, until some in the crowd started breaking windows and
spraying paint on retail shops that line the downtown corridor.
Friend said he wasn't sure if the damage was caused by people
marching in support of immigrants' rights, or if the group was
"infiltrated by anarchists."
Anarchy signs were spray-painted on some of the buildings.
"They're a group of people who seem to fancy themselves as
revolutionaries, but what they really are are a group of
morons," Friend said.
You've got to love the way the AP describes this: It started as a peaceful
march but "turned violent." It was totally harmonious "until some in the crowd
started breaking windows." And the window breakers might have just been
infiltrators!
Compare this with the lead paragraph of the AP's March 20 dispatch on the
anti-ObamaCare tea-party protests:
House Democrats heard it all Saturday--words of inspiration
from President Barack Obama and raucous chants of protests
from demonstrators. And at times it was flat-out ugly, including
some racial epithets aimed at black members of Congress.
The claims of racial epithets have since been disputed and were never
substantiated, but let's give the AP the benefit of the doubt and assume that
at the time, the reporter knew of no reason to doubt the word of the
congressmen making the claims.
Even so, had the tea-party protesters gotten the Santa Cruz treatment, the AP
would have noted that the rally was _completely_ nonviolent, even if it
featured some ugly words; that there was no ugliness at all until the protest
"turned ugly"; and that the people who (allegedly) shouted the ugly words
might well have been infiltrators.
If the Santa Cruz protesters had gotten the tea-party treatment, by contrast,
the AP would have described the event simply as a riot and would not have
distinguished between the peaceful protesters and the violent few who might be
infiltrators anyway. What's more, conservative politicians and commentators
would be sounding a constant refrain--echoed by the mainstream media--that
politicians are inciting the violence with "antigovernment" statements like
this one, reported April 23 by CBS News:
President Obama suggested today that the immigration bill
expected to be signed into law in Arizona is a "misguided"
piece of legislation that "threatened to undermine basic
notions of fairness that we cherish as Americans, as well
as the trust between police and their communities that is
so crucial to keeping us safe."
We don't think that journalists should give the Santa Cruz protesters the
tea-party treatment or the tea partiers the Santa Cruz treatment. Both sides
ought to get the same treatment--fair treatment--from those whose job is to
cover the news impartially.
As for Obama, his efforts to demonize the opposition are unseemly and
unpresidential. Given the breadth of his policies' unpopularity, they amount
to an attack on the majority of Americans. That seems likely they will prove
politically unwise as well.